Chapter Thirteen SOK

Atiq speaks to Zunaira, and he can't imagine that she killed a man. He implied that the man must have beaten her and that he drove her to do it. Most women would probably have agreed with this, hoping to escape their sentence, but Zunaira is not anything like most women. She actually said that she was at fault because she did not realize the good fortune she had been blessed with. I think that this was really brave of her, and I think that this shows that she may feel remorse, even though Mohsen's death was not her fault. Atiq is convinced that Zunaira was in no way responsible for Mohsen's death, and he cannot believe how injust it is that she is going to be killed because of the lack of investigation into the case. He rants on to Musarrat how she is innocent and how she did not do anything wrong. He ends up freaking out on Musarrat, and that is when I think she started to realize how serious Atiq was. Atiq returns to the jail. After much thought, he opens the door and tells Zunaira to run. He says he will not let them kill her. Zunaira replies, "We've already been killed, all of us. It happened so long ago, we've forgotten it". This really sums up what I see in Atiq. His spirit, characteristics, personality, and soul were all killed by the Taliban years ago, along with many other people in Kabul. Though they exist physically, in all other aspects they are dead. I agree with Zunaira 100% and I think her statement probably affected Atiq a lot.