But then things got even worse than that: Mother became ill.  She stayed up and coughed all night, and became thinner and thinner. Because of the war, there were no medicines to make her better, you see, so even if we had taken her to a hospital, it would have been of no use. I was so frightened for her; I slept in the same bed as she did at night with my head on her shoulder and my hand on her heart, to make sure that it was still beating in the morning when I woke up.  I fed her spoons of broth and wiped her brow when she had fever. I kept praying to God that a miracle would make my mother better.

One morning, my mother woke in the very early hours, just after dawn. “Listen, Shahbano! Can you hear?”

“What, Mother?” I said, alarmed, because I could hear nothing.

“The doves, Shahbano, the doves! The doves… they are singing so beautifully…”  And my mother smiled, listening to the doves singing to her as she breathed slow, long breaths, until no more breath came from her body.