Mariam was five years old the first time she heard the word harami.

It happened on a Thursday. It must have, because Mariam remembered that she had been restless and preoccupied that day, the way she was only on Thursdays, the day when Jalil visited her at the kolba. To pass the time until the moment that she would see him at last, crossing the knee-high grass in the clearing and waving, Mariam had climbed a chair and taken down her mother's Chinese tea set. The tea set was the sole relic that Mariam's mother, Nana, had of her own mother, who had died when Nana was two.

Mariam could never decide what to do with it. Should she use it as a centerpiece for the table, or should she display it on the shelf? In the end, Mariam had moved it from one spot to the other, now the table, now the shelf, at least twice a day.

Nana had raised the girl and, on occasion, even lobbed a word or two of half-hearted praise her way. But Nana had been consumed by her own misery, absorbed by her own hardships, and, in the end, had little connection with Mariam, little warmth to offer her.