第六章 | 灿烂千阳
1 / 10
"I want Mullah Faizullah," Mariam said.
查看中文翻译
They buried Nana in a corner of the cemetery in Gul Daman. Mariam stood beside Bibi jo, with the women, as Mullah Faizullah recited prayers at the graveside and the men lowered Nana's shrouded body into the ground.
查看中文翻译
Afterward, Jalil walked Mariam to the kolba, where, in front of the villagers who accompanied them, he made a great show of tending to Mariam. He collected a few of her things, put them in a suitcase. He sat beside her cot, where she lay down, and fanned her face. He stroked her forehead, and, with a woebegone expression on his face, asked if she needed anything? anything?-- he said it like that, twice.
查看中文翻译
It was when Mullah Faizullah's slight, stooping figure appeared in the kolba's doorway that Mariam cried for the first time that day.
查看中文翻译
"Oh, Mariam jo."
查看中文翻译
"Of course. He's outside. I'll get him for you."
查看中文翻译
He sat next to her and cupped her face in his hands. "You go on and cry, Mariam jo. Go on. There is no shame in it. But remember, my girl, what the Koran says, 'Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He Who has power over all things, Who created death and life that He may try you.' The Koran speaks the truth, my girl. Behind every trial and every sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason."
查看中文翻译
第六章 | 灿烂千阳
2 / 10
ON THE RIDE to his house, Jalil sat in the backseat of his car with Mariam, his arm draped over her shoulder.
查看中文翻译
"You can stay with me, Mariam jo," he said. "I've asked them already to clean a room for you. It's upstairs. You'll like it, I think. You'll have a view of the garden."
查看中文翻译
But Mariam could not hear comfort in God's words. Not that day. Not then. All she could hear was Nana saying, I'll die if you go. I'll just die. All she could do was cry and cry and let her tears fall on the spotted, paper-thin skin of Mullah Faizullah's hands.
查看中文翻译
When the car stopped before Jalil's house, the driver opened the door for them and carried Mariam's suitcase. Jalil guided her, one palm cupped around each of her shoulders, through the same gates outside of which, two days before, Mariam had slept on the sidewalk waiting for him. Two days before -- when Mariam could think of nothing in the world she wanted more than to walk in this garden with Jalil -- felt like another lifetime. How could her life have turned upside down so quickly, Mariam asked herself. She kept her gaze to the ground, on her feet, stepping on the gray stone path. She was aware of the presence of people in the garden, murmuring, stepping aside, as she and Jalil walked past. She sensed the weight of eyes on her, looking down from the windows upstairs.
查看中文翻译
For the first time, Mariam could hear him with Nana's ears. She could hear so clearly now the insincerity that had always lurked beneath, the hollow, false assurances. She could not bring herself to look at him.
查看中文翻译
第六章 | 灿烂千阳
3 / 10
The stairs she and Jalil took were wide and covered with a similar carpet, nailed down at the base of each step. At the top of the stairs, Jalil led her to the left, down another long, carpeted hallway. He stopped by one of the doors, opened it, and let her in.
查看中文翻译
"Your sisters Niloufar and Atieh play here sometimes," Jalil said, "but mostly we use this as a guest room. You'll be comfortable here, I think. It's nice, isn't it?"
查看中文翻译
Inside the house too, Mariam kept her head down. She walked on a maroon carpet with a repeating blue-and-yellow octagonal pattern, saw out of the corner of her eye the marble bases of statues, the lower halves of vases, the frayed ends of richly colored tapestries hanging from walls.
查看中文翻译
The room had a bed with a green-flowered blanket knit in a tightly woven, honeycomb design. The curtains, pulled back to reveal the garden below, matched the blanket. Beside the bed was a three-drawer chest with a flower vase on it. There were shelves along the walls, with framed pictures of people Mariam did not recognize. On one of the shelves, Mariam saw a collection of identical wooden dolls, arranged in a line in order of decreasing size.
查看中文翻译
第六章 | 灿烂千阳
4 / 10
Mariam lay down. Closed her eyes. After a while, she heard him softly shut the door.
查看中文翻译
From the window, Mariam watched impassively what she had wondered about and longed to see for most of her life: the comings and goings of Jalil's daily life. Servants rushed in and out of the front gates. A gardener was always trimming bushes, watering plants in the greenhouse. Cars with long, sleek hoods pulled up on the street.
查看中文翻译
Mariam sat down on the bed.
查看中文翻译
Jalil saw her looking. "Matryoshka dolls. I got them in Moscow. You can play with them, if you want. No one will mind."
查看中文翻译
EXCEPT FOR WHEN she had to use the bathroom down the hall, Mariam stayed in the room. The girl with the tattoo, the one who had opened the gates to her, brought her meals on a tray: lamb kebab, sabzi, aush soup. Most of it went uneaten. Jalil came by several times a day, sat on the bed beside her, asked her if she was all right.
查看中文翻译
"Is there anything you want?" Jalil said.
查看中文翻译
"You could eat downstairs with the rest of us," he said, but without much conviction. He understood a little too readily when Mariam said she preferred to eat alone.
查看中文翻译
第六章 | 灿烂千阳
5 / 10
I'm all you have in this world, Mariam, and when I'm gone you'll have nothing. You'll have nothing. You are nothing!
查看中文翻译
On Mariam's second full day at Jalil's house, a little girl came into the room.
查看中文翻译
But where do I belong? What am I going to do now?
查看中文翻译
"I have to get something," she said.
查看中文翻译
"It's called a gramophone. Gramo. Phone. It plays records. You know, music. A gramophone."
查看中文翻译
"You know what this is?" she said. She opened the box.
查看中文翻译
And as Mariam watched Jalil shake these strangers' hands, as she saw him cross his palms on his chest and nod to their wives, she knew that Nana had spoken the truth. She did not belong here.
查看中文翻译
Mariam sat up on the bed and crossed her legs, pulled the blanket on her lap.
查看中文翻译
The girl hurried across the room and opened the closet door. She fetched a square-shaped gray box.
查看中文翻译
Like the wind through the willows around the kolba, gusts of an inexpressible blackness kept passing through Mariam.
查看中文翻译
From them emerged men in suits, in chapans and caracul hats, women in hijabs, children with neatly combed hair.
查看中文翻译
第六章 | 灿烂千阳
6 / 10
Mariam shrugged. She didn't say to this girl that she'd once named a pebble after her.
查看中文翻译
"Can you do that?" she said thickly.
查看中文翻译
"It's from an Iranian film. I saw it at my father's cinema. Hey, do you want to see something?"
查看中文翻译
I will use a flower petal for paper,
查看中文翻译
You are the sultan of my heart,
查看中文翻译
"Do you know it?"
查看中文翻译
The little girl smiled. She had Jalil's smile and his dimpled chin. "How did you know?"
查看中文翻译
"You're Niloufar. You're eight."
查看中文翻译
the sultan of my heart.
查看中文翻译
Niloufar plugged in the gramophone. She fished a small record from a pouch beneath the box's lid. She put it on, lowered the needle. Music began to play.
查看中文翻译
"No."
查看中文翻译
Before Mariam could answer, Niloufar had put her palms and forehead to the ground. She pushed with her soles and then she was standing upside down, on her head, in a three-point stance.
查看中文翻译
And write you the sweetest letter,
查看中文翻译
"Do you want to hear a song?"
查看中文翻译
"No."
查看中文翻译
Niloufar dropped her legs and pulled her blouse back down. "I could teach you," she said, pushing hair from her flushed brow. "So how long will you stay here?"
查看中文翻译
Mariam shrugged again.
查看中文翻译
第六章 | 灿烂千阳
7 / 10
"She says you did. I don't care. What I mean is, I don't mind if you did say it, or if you are my sister. I don't mind."
查看中文翻译
"I never said I was," Mariam lied.
查看中文翻译
"I don't know."
查看中文翻译
"My mother says you're not really my sister like you say you are."
查看中文翻译
Mariam lay down. "I'm tired now."
查看中文翻译
"You can stop that now," Mariam said, turning to her side. "The music, I mean."
查看中文翻译
"My mother says a jinn made your mother hang herself."
查看中文翻译
Bibi jo came to see her that day too. It was raining by the time she came. She lowered her large body onto the chair beside the bed, grimacing.
查看中文翻译
"This rain, Mariam jo, it's murder on my hips. Just murder, I tell you. I hope… Oh, now, come here, child. Come here to Bibi jo. Don't cry. There, now. You poor thing. Tsk. You poor, poor thing."
查看中文翻译
That night, Mariam couldn't sleep for a long time. She lay in bed looking at the sky, listening to the footsteps below, the voices muffled by walls and the sheets of rain punishing the window. When she did doze off, she was startled awake by shouting. Voices downstairs, sharp and angry. Mariam couldn't make out the words. Someone slammed a door.
查看中文翻译
第六章 | 灿烂千阳
8 / 10
He showed her the Koran he had brought with him and opened it. "I figured no sense in skipping our routine, eh?"
查看中文翻译
"You know I don't need lessons anymore, Mullah sahib. You taught me every surrah and ayat in the Koran years ago."
查看中文翻译
The next morning, Mullah Faizullah came to visit her.
查看中文翻译
"You're kind to say that, Mariam jo."
查看中文翻译
When she saw her friend at the door, his white beard and his amiable, toothless smile, Mariam felt tears stinging the corners of her eyes again. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and hurried over. She kissed his hand as always and he her brow. She pulled him up a chair.
查看中文翻译
He smiled, and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I confess, then. I've been found out. But I can think of worse excuses to visit you."
查看中文翻译
"You don't need excuses. Not you."
查看中文翻译
"I keep," Mariam began. She had to stop, feeling like a rock had lodged itself in her throat. "I keep thinking of what she said to me before I left. She --"
查看中文翻译
He passed her his Koran. As he'd taught her, she kissed it three times -- touching it to her brow between each kiss -- and gave it back to him.
查看中文翻译
"How are you, my girl?"
查看中文翻译
第六章 | 灿烂千阳
9 / 10
"You stop that. These thoughts are no good, Mariam jo. You hear me, child? No good. They will destroy you. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault. No."
查看中文翻译
"I shouldn't have left her. I should have --"
查看中文翻译
"Nay, nay, nay." Mullah Faizullah put his hand on her knee. "Your mother, may Allah forgive her, was a troubled and unhappy woman, Mariam jo. She did a terrible thing to herself. To herself, to you, and also to Allah. He will forgive her, for He is all-forgiving, but Allah is saddened by what she did. He does not approve of the taking of life, be it another's or one's own, for He says that life is sacred. You see --" He pulled his chair closer, took Mariam's hand in both of his own. "You see, I knew your mother before you were born, when she was a little girl, and I tell you that she was unhappy then. The seed for what she did was planted long ago, I'm afraid. What I mean to say is that this was not your fault. It wasn't your fault, my girl."
查看中文翻译
Mariam nodded, but as desperately as she wanted to she could not bring herself to believe him.
查看中文翻译
第六章 | 灿烂千阳
10 / 10
ONE AFTERNOON, a week later, there was a knock on the door, and a tall woman walked in. She was fair-skinned, had reddish hair and long fingers.
查看中文翻译
"I'm Afsoon," she said. "Niloufar's mother. Why don't you wash up, Mariam, and come downstairs?"
查看中文翻译
"No, na fahmidi, you don't understand. You need to come down. We have to talk to you. It's important."
查看中文翻译
Mariam said she would rather stay in her room.
查看中文翻译

阅读难度

小说篇幅

小说分类