As soon as Boba stepped fully into the hallway, it looked like someone shoved him by one shoulder, then the other. The sound of gunfire registered a second later, and I watched my father’s body slump to the floor like a rag doll.
I understood immediately that he was gone. I looked back at the open bedroom door and saw my mother pressed against the far wall of the room, directly opposite me. Our eyes met. I signaled my mother to hide, to run, to find a way to escape the monster that was about to enter our room.
The air was thick as a storm cloud.
My mother let out a mournful groan. Her voice slipped into the hallway, past my father’s body, and settled, like a breath, in my ear. Mother swaddled Faheem with her body, her fingers covering his eyes. She tilted her head and looked at me longingly, lovingly, even as two looming silhouettes stepped into the frame and she recognized that this was not a night of mercy.
Madar, I tried to cry as children and the silver-haired do when they face the sharp end of the world. If heaven lies at a mother’s feet, what hope is there in her absence?
Madar, the summoning of a salve, the singing of a lamentation.
Chapter 6
April 28, 1978
I dared not peek out from behind the curtain. Hidden from view, I grasped at every possibility that kept my family alive. Surely someone—anyone—was rushing them to a hospital where they would be stitched up and restored. I prayed for white gauze and syringes and the able hands of doctors. But these hopes were flimsy as soap bubbles, especially as voices I did not recognize echoed through the hallways unchallenged.
When I was four years old, I’d been awakened one night by my mother’s shouts. A burglar had crept onto the roof of our Kabul home and sent a vase crashing as he’d slipped into our home through a window. When he fled, my father gave chase, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. He caught the man on the roof of a home one block away. At least, that’s how I remembered it.
It was as likely that he’d chased the man down the street as it was that he had catapulted across the homes of our neighbors while they slept. Regardless, this was my memory of the night, and it became part of how I saw my father. It was the reason I believed my father could and would protect us from any danger. I remember when he walked me to school I would watch his shadow stretch long ahead of us and believe it was the shape of truth. To me, day or night, Boba was larger than life.
That was why I could not comprehend why I’d seen Boba buckle as he had. I expected him to appear in the window at any moment and pull me onto the roof of the building to escape. I peeked at the clock on the wall. After three hours of standing, the muscles of my legs burned. Still, I stood as straight as I could, trying to keep my body hidden in the small sanctuary behind the curtain and out of view to anyone looking up from outside.
Where was everyone? Why hadn’t President Daoud exploded onto the scene with loyal troops to round up the murderers? I listened hard and eventually heard the boom of President Daoud’s voice rise from somewhere deep in the palace.
Traitors!
I couldn’t make out any other words.
I felt unmoored and wanted badly to slide down and give myself over to the floor. The moon still glowed bright, but in an hour or so the rising sun would turn the horizon pink.
I listened to the movement of boots, the thud of thick soles on fine carpets. I heard orders barked and loud grunts of exertion. I dared not peek. I only looked down at the darkened carpet beneath my feet and waited for the stench of my urine to lead the soldiers to me.
They moved up and down the length of the hall, going in and out of rooms. I closed my eyes tight, though what I saw with my eyes shut was more terrifying than what I saw when I kept them open.
Footsteps entered the library slowly. I heard a man’s breathing, the sharp intake of air through flared nostrils. I was working up the nerve to smash my elbow into the window and take my chances leaping to the ground when the curtain snapped back. I found myself face to face with a soldier—or, more precisely, the unblinking eye of a Kalashnikov. I closed my eyes shut and quaked.
I do not know how much time passed this way, with my existence dependent on one finger curled against a trigger.
At some point, I opened my eyes.
The rifle’s tip quavered but stayed trained on me. I dared to look past the barrel to the trembling arms that held it up. I saw a man, panting, his red-rimmed eyes bulging. He looked over his shoulder and back at me.
He wiped his palm on the thigh of his pants.
“You must go!” he hissed, nudging my arm with the rifle’s barrel. I jolted when the warm metal touched my skin. “Go!”
He wiped the sweat from his brow.
I whispered a prayer, looking past him at the emptied bedroom across the hall. My eyes fell to the darkened floor.
“I want to be with them.”
The soldier went to the doorway, looked down the hall, and then returned to me. He grabbed my arm and walked me out of the library with the end of his rifle pressed between my shoulder blades.
I walked, not daring to look at him.
I heard footsteps and the murmur of voices coming from the direction of the president’s quarters.
Neelab? I forced my best friend out of my thoughts and focused on taking quiet steps.
“You can’t hide. There’s nowhere to go,” he said, his breath hot and rancid in my ear.
Would he let me hide?
Beneath the hallway table. In the kitchen cabinets with the gallons of cooking oil. In the bathroom with the painting of the bird on its wall. Behind the bar in the banquet room. All my ideas were terrible.
Then I remembered the basement.
My pace quickened.
“Where?” he asked.
I made my way to the narrow staircase that led to the kitchen. I stepped carefully and the soldier followed.
Judging by the opening and shutting of cabinets and drawers, there were at least two men in the kitchen.
I pointed at the kitchen and then down. The soldier walked around me, lowered his weapon, and plodded down the steps. He moved heavily across the kitchen tiles.
I couldn’t make out what he said. I wondered if I should run back down the hall instead of trying to get to the basement.
“All clear. This floor too. There’s nothing more to do here.”
“Yes. That’s why the commander asked me to get you. Some changes to your assignments, maybe.”
I flinched at an explosive sound—a cabinet door slammed shut.
I squatted in the stairwell, my hands over my ears when I was grabbed by the arm and jerked into an empty kitchen. Fingers pressed into the bones of my forearm.
“Go!” he commanded, and I hurried toward the basement door.
I slipped into the pitch-black basement, my legs shaking. The door behind me closed shut before I’d made it down even two steps. I found the banister and felt for each plank with my toes before taking another step. When my feet touched the cold floor of the basement, the door above opened again. I ducked just as a white light skittered down the steps. A flashlight.
I picked it up and clicked it off.
“That was me tripping over your mess,” I heard the soldier holler. “Are we ready to clear out or not?”
It was Shair’s voice. I was certain. It had been his face behind that rifle.
“A lot messier than it needed to be,” he added.
Keys jangled.
“We have a lot to move before daybreak. You can drive.”
Shair stood at the top of the stairs, clutching in his sweat-slick palm a ring of keys and the dangerous secret of my existence.
Chapter 7
April 28, 1978
Just eighteen months earlier, I’d had my first encounter with death. My grandmother lay in a coffin, gray-lipped and wrapped so tightly in a sheet of white muslin that it would have suffocated her if she had still had breath in her body.
While Boba heaved a shovelful of dirt on the lowered coffin, Madar-jan
whispered in my ear that my grandmother would be welcomed into the gardens of heaven. I found it hard to reconcile that ascending destiny with the coffin interred under two meters of earth. I’d watched my grandmother tend to her plants, pruning one stem at a time and checking the soil’s moisture with a finger. Like her plants, she bloomed with the sun and wouldn’t even draw the curtains in her home. How could this dark hole be her path to heaven?
Nonetheless, I chose to believe in the hope my mother offered so that I didn’t despair at the thought of my grandmother in eternal darkness.
The first time I heard footsteps approaching the basement door, I held my breath and prayed that I could wrap my arms around my mother again in those celestial gardens. But the footsteps retreated and left behind a deepening silence, one that summoned the soft echoes of my father’s voice.
That look in your eye when you know you are right, you remind me so very much of the legendary Malalai and her battle cries. Half-dead men defeated the British because of her. Afghanistan’s secret weapon has always been her women.
But, Boba, I’m just a girl.
What a thing to say! As if a girl is made of lesser materials. Have you forgotten the words of Rumi? You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.
I had never truly given myself over to those words until this moment.
The thought of the ocean inside me, with its infinite drops, ran through me like a charge. My existence was integral to the universe.
What was Malalai’s battle cry, Boba? I asked the silence. My father’s voice replied.
Young loves, give your youth to this battle and be proud
Or by God you’ll live with shame as your shroud!
I hurt to think of the afternoon when Boba had brought me to this space, wanting to show me the treasures of a lost world. I crept deeper into the alcove, wanting to touch the crates he’d touched again. I wished Neelab could be here with me now, so we could at least hold on to each other. My fingers trembling, I opened the latch just as Boba had done. I ducked into the black hole and pulled the secret door closed behind me.
It had occurred to me at some point in the last few hours that the absence of gunshots might not mean the killing had ceased—it could mean that there was no one left to kill. I was devastated. I was also furious at Shair. Had he fired the shots that killed my family? That he had saved me by bringing me down here did nothing to dampen my rage.
The three knobs of the safe pressed into my spine. I pushed back in frustration. I thought of Ai-Khanoum, where a whole civilization disappeared beneath the ground.
No, I told myself. I will not let these people disappear me.
My fingers curled around the flashlight Shair had thrown to me. I clicked it on and pressed the light against the palm of my hand, making it glow pink. I turned to face the safe and shone the light on the dials.
I had seen the combination, hadn’t I?
The dials felt heavy. I twirled the one on the left first, slowly. I stared at the numbers, willing the combination to rise from the ashes. I twirled again and closed my eyes.
I saw Neelab and the nervous anticipation on her face when Boba had revealed the safe to us. Her nose had crinkled with glee. I felt her fingers wrapped around my arm, a friendly and excited squeeze. I heard her voice then, distant and fleeting.
Of course you remember, Sitara. You never forget a detail.
When I opened my eyes, I gave the dial one more twirl and landed on 63. Then I fixed my attention on the second dial, tapping the knob as if to ask for help.
Twenty-seven.
With the light in my left hand, I rotated the top dial until I heard a soft click.
I was missing only the last number—the one that had been hidden from view by my father’s arm. I had never seen this number.
I pressed my forehead against the metal door of the safe. It was a number between 1 and 100. I turned the dial to 1 and tried the handle, but it didn’t give way. I moved the dial to 2 and tried again. Another tick forward to 3.
At 33, the locks released and the handle relented. I took a deep breath, then inched backward to give the door room to open. If it groaned this loudly when Boba opened it, I had not noticed. For now, it seemed that no one on the floor above me had noticed either. I swept the flashlight across the safe and peered inside.
I opened one small crate at a time. I touched the plaster of a miniature bust and the gold of a multistranded necklace. What would happen to these pieces? What would happen to me? Surrounded by these precious survivors, I wondered if I could plot an escape. I replaced every treasure in its lined box with care—all the treasures but one.
I slid the turquoise and garnet ring onto my left hand, touching the hammered metal of the band and the smooth surface of the stones. It twirled loosely around my finger. I turned the ring so that the stones were tucked into my palm and made a fist to keep it from slipping off.
It was quiet upstairs, and that quiet emboldened me. I had just crept out of the alcove when I heard the basement door open. I slipped backward, my feet shuffling in a panic. I was barely in the alcove by the time they were in the basement, close enough that I could smell the smoke and sweat on their uniforms.
“Bring that old radio upstairs. I think I can get it working again,” said one of the soldiers.
“Yes, sir.”
When their footsteps drew near, I silenced my screams by biting into the heel of my hand and digging my fingernails into the thin flesh of my knee.
“What about this carpet?”
“Maybe. Unroll it and see if it’s worth carrying upstairs or if it’s down here out of sight for a reason.”
At that moment, the entire palace rocked once more. I fell onto my side, and a yelp escaped my throat. Thankfully, the soldiers had shouted even louder, and in a flash they ushered one another back up the stairs.
A second boom rattled the walls. I tucked my head between my knees believing the entire palace was about to come crashing down on me.
I crawled out of the alcove once more. The soldiers were gone. The radio was gone. The unfurled carpet was covered in plaster and bits of paint.
A year before, on my birthday, our house had rattled with the force of an earthquake. I had been half awake when my mother grabbed me by the hand, Faheem on her hip, and pulled us out of the house.
Outside is safer, she’d hollered.
Madar-jan. From the night of the coup on, I would forever wonder if the look in her eyes in that final moment had been love or fear.
I heard crashing overhead and imagined pots, chairs, and chandeliers falling to the floor. A tower of stacked boxes in the basement toppled over, glass broke somewhere. My hands flew to my head instinctively.
This was not an earthquake. Earthquakes did not smell of gunpowder, sweat, and blood. This would not cease until the entire palace was destroyed.
The will to live is strongest in those who have a reason to live, something to save. I should have had none, and yet I refused to go quietly. I can only imagine it was because my parents had insisted that their every hope for the future lived in me.
I climbed the stairs, the air growing thicker with smoke as I neared the door. I opened it slowly and a sliver of hazy light fell on my face. Hearing no voices in the kitchen, I entered. I looked over at the stairs that led to the upper level and felt my throat tighten again. The floor was littered with upturned pots and broken plates. A light fixture dangled precariously overhead.
I took one step and a sharp pain made me pull my foot back. I balanced with one hand on a wall and lifted my foot. A triangle of glass poked out of my sole like a shark fin.
Leaning against the wall, I shut my eyes tight and pulled the shard out with one swift motion. Hearing shouts nearby, I pressed on. I hobbled into the long hallway and looked from one apocalypse to another as I passed each room. A shattered Chinese vase. Toppled dining chairs. A jagged, zipperlike crack on the ceiling. A parlor door dangling on a hinge. The badly splintered door to
the president’s office with three gaping holes in it.
I peered into the parlor that had been Neelab’s favorite hiding place for games. An emerald-green settee was hacked in two. One leg had broken off the marble coffee table, making it look like the table had taken a nosedive into the carpet. A painting lay facedown on the floor.
Through this parlor, I could get to the south side of the palace, where high shrubs offered some cover. I dashed to the open window, throwing one leg over the ledge and then the other. The palace air, thick with destruction and sin, dissipated as I exited. Straining to see through the red smoke, I found a single star. It was all the light I needed to find my way.
I walked, sidestepping, with my back to the palace wall. If I could get to the road, I would somehow find refuge in Kabul.
But as I turned the corner, the twinkle of that star exploded into a blinding beam of light. Fingers dug into my arm, and a hand clapped over my mouth before I could shout. I tried to wrest free but stopped when I saw the subtle glint of metal, a revolver on a hip.
A gun. All I had to do was reach out and grab it.
What if Malalai had not been crying out to revive the battered soldiers? What if she had been shouting those words to ready herself for battle?
A chorus of voices erupted.
We are all soldiers of some kind. My mother’s voice summoned a crescendo of the drumbeat in my chest.
Go to your Gawd like a soldier.
You are the entire ocean in a drop.
The luminous laughter of an angelic little boy.
Sitara’s going to set you straight now.
Voices rose and collided in my head, drowning out the sizzle of burning grass and furniture and the distant rumble of tanks.
I filled my lungs with the smoky night air and made a single commitment to neither live nor die as a coward.
Chapter 8
Sparks Like Stars Page 5