She let him guide her across the road and up the track.
There was honeysuckle growing along the path, and milkweed too. Bees were buzzing over twinkling wildflowers.
The driver took her hand and helped her cross the stream.
Then he let go, and he was talking about how Herat's famous one hundred and twenty days' winds would start blowing soon, from
midmorning to dusk, and how the sand flies would go on a feeding frenzy, and then suddenly he was standing in front of her, trying to cover her eyes, pushing hеr back
the way they had come and saying,

"Go back! No. Don't look now. Turn around! Go back!"

But hе wasn't fast enough. Mariam saw.
A gust of wind blew and parted the drooping branches of the weeping willow like a curtain, and Mariam caught a glimpse of what was beneath the tree: the straight-backed chair,
overturned.
The rope dropping from a high branch. Nana dangling at the end of it.