Sparks Like Stars

by Nadia Hashimi

  “Okay. I just need to figure out exactly how to get you there without taking any chances. I have an idea, but it means we’ll need to talk about your sister.”

  My sister? As if the living were helpless, Antonia was turning to the dead. It was almost laughable.

  I’d once overheard a distant relative complain at a family party that promotion to a higher rank didn’t seem to be his fate. He had been a soldier for years but had nothing pinned to his chest to show for it.

  Padar, I’d asked my father as he carried me to bed late that night, why would Allah not give him a better fate?

  Though I was heavy-lidded and yawning at the time, his reply remains clear in my memory.

  Allah does not deliver your fate fully formed, my father had said. It is up to you to shape it. But fate doesn’t bend easily. Think of a blacksmith bending a rod. He cannot, without daring to hold the rod to fire.

  I was beginning to understand what it meant to hold my fate in my hands, and to know that I’d have to withstand fire if I wanted to bend it toward survival.

  Chapter 15

  “With your sister’s American birth certificate, we could get you out of the country and into the United States,” Nia said. “But that means I have to find a way into your home.”

  I knew exactly what that meant and immediately took out pen and paper to begin sketching out a plan for the two of us to go to my house and try to retrieve the certificate. The sight of an American woman with an Afghan child, though, would bring dangerous attention.

  “You can wear chadori,” I proposed. “You do not talk. Only I am talking. We walk fast and come fast.”

  “I cannot let you go there. It’s best if I go alone,” she insisted.

  “I’ll go with her,” Tilly offered, stirring a lump of sugar in her tea. Her eyelids were dusted with a glittery blue powder to match her dress. “I wandered all over the city when I got here, and it wasn’t a problem at all.”

  “And made a few friends along the way, didn’t you?” Antonia replied glibly.

  Tilly slurped her tea loudly, her brightened eyelids fluttering over the rim as she ignored her daughter’s comment.

  “I know my home. I can find everything. You go alone, you will come back with nothing,” I warned. Antonia paced the living room, one hand on her hip.

  “Fine,” she said. “But we’ll need to move carefully so we’re not noticed. Do you think you can do that?”

  As planned, Antonia purchased a blue chadori from the market. Tilly ran her fingers over the mesh window and draped the supple fabric over her arm.

  “Nia, do you remember the costume I wore in that production of The Glass Menagerie?”

  “How could I forget? I sat through twenty-four performances,” Antonia said dryly.

  “Twenty-four sold-out performances,” Tilly corrected.

  The following day I wore one of the dresses Antonia had bought for me from the same secondhand shop my mother used to frequent. Antonia pulled her hair back, then loosened it and retied it. In the cover story I’d devised, Antonia would play the part of an Afghan woman too modest to show her face in public or speak to strange men. Since I was a child, I would speak for her.

  “It’s a marvelous plan, Nia,” Tilly said, nodding her head in approval. “One that requires a bit of performance even in the absence of dialogue. Girls, forget you’re acting. Be who you say you are and you’ll have the audience wrapped around your dainty little fingers.”

  “Are you okay?” Antonia asked me. I tensed, realizing fear was a contagion and that Nia and I were at risk of infecting each other with it. I stood and put my hand on the doorknob, hoping bravery was just as transmissible.

  Tilly squeezed us both and kissed our cheeks. She stood in the doorway to see us off.

  “You’ll both be spectacular!” she said, as if we were headed off to our first day of school.

  I kept my gaze up but my head lowered. At the end of Chicken Street, Antonia whispered to me to slow down. My foot had been healing rapidly, and I was moving faster than Antonia could. As I watched her feet catch on the long hem of the chadori, I was reminded of a joke my mother had once made.

  The longer the chadori, the less likely people are to trip and fall, she said. I had looked confused. Not the woman wearing the chadori, she clarified, but the perverted men who gawk at women’s ankles.

  It felt impossible to be moving through Kabul in the crystalline light of day without my mother or father. I expected everyone around me to be able to tell I was an orphan, as if it were written across my forehead. Uniforms set my nerves afire, and there seemed to be soldiers everywhere. I had lost faith in so much around me in those weeks, barely trusting the ground to hold as I walked over it.

  And I felt oddly like a traitor, as if I had no right to be walking through the streets after what had happened to my family.

  I waved down a taxi and had him deposit us at an intersection just a few blocks from my home. We would walk the rest of the way. I wore a headscarf to keep me at least partially disguised from neighbors and anyone else who might recognize me. We took slow, measured steps until my house came into view.

  And then I froze.

  It was as if I’d stepped back in time. President Daoud’s white Toyota was parked outside our home. For a moment, I believed Kaka Daoud was in our living room, perhaps discussing an important matter with my father. But when a soldier stepped out of the car and lit a cigarette, I whirled around and buried my face in the blue pleats of Antonia’s chadori.

  Antonia urged me to breathe.

  We were three houses away.

  “I want to go home,” I told Antonia.

  “Absolutely. We can catch a taxi on the next street,” she replied. “Let’s go home and rethink our options.”

  What were they doing in my home anyway? Were they touching my father’s suits or books? My mother’s hairbrush? Had they trampled on Faheem’s toys with their bloody boots? What if they had destroyed the photographs I’d come to collect?

  “My home,” I said.

  I could not see Antonia and could barely hear her over the crash of thoughts in my head. I wanted to stand in the kitchen where my mother cooked noodle soup with red beans and chickpeas, in the living room where my father checked my homework, and in my parents’ bedroom where I taught Faheem the sport of hiding our father’s briefcase to keep him from going to work.

  I had my hands on our privacy wall when Antonia grabbed me. I tried to wriggle out of her grip.

  “What’s going on here?” a voice boomed.

  The smoking soldier stood over us, a nub of a cigarette dangling from his lip. He had his hands on his hips, just inches away from a revolver.

  Antonia held my hand tightly. She remained slightly hunched and raised a hand under her chadori, as if to beg forgiveness.

  “Have you lost your mind, little girl?”

  “I have not,” I said defiantly, though my actions suggested otherwise.

  “If you haven’t,” he said in that condescending tone adults use to make children see the wrong of their ways, “then why make your poor mother run after you like that?”

  The door of our home opened then, and another man emerged. From the epaulets on his shoulders and the cap on his head, I knew this was someone of rank, an officer. He cleared his throat. The soldier crouched before me whirled around to face his superior.

  My breath caught in my throat. I recognized the man, a general I’d seen in my father’s company. I hid my face in Antonia’s chadori. Her arms circled tightly around me.

  “This is not playtime,” he snapped at the soldier.

  “Forgive me, sir, but I was not—”

  “Let’s go!” The general commanded the soldier to go to the car. I held my breath, waiting for him to recognize me. Antonia, without loosening her hold on me, whirled around and started to march us back toward the corner of the street. Her chadori swung wide enough to veil my terror-stricken face.

  The car door closed and the engine g
rumbled to life. We kept walking, Antonia maintaining an even pace. I heard the motor approach us and sensed the car slowing down.

  “Khanum, one moment,” the general said, calling on Antonia to pause. As I stood between Antonia and the privacy walls of the homes, I regretted that I’d ever left her Chicken Street apartment. “Do you live on this street?”

  Antonia shook her head slowly and then took another step forward.

  “Then what are you doing here?” he asked, enunciating his words so there was no chance for us to misunderstand.

  If Boba were alive, I thought to myself, he would be demanding you answer that very same question.

  But I’d gotten us into this mess, and I had to get us out.

  “My mother is a midwife. She was called upon to visit a woman in need,” I said, keeping myself behind the drape of Antonia’s chadori.

  My heart beat a thousand times before he spoke again.

  “You are too young to be seeing new life enter this world.”

  “If I am not too young to witness death, then surely I am not too young to witness life.” The words were out of my mouth before I could talk sense into myself. Antonia’s hand squeezed mine tightly, in panic or anger.

  “So you have witnessed the fragility of life. Did it not frighten you to come close to marg?” the general asked, his arm resting on the open window of the car door.

  It was an odd time for my mind to realize that the name of the palace, Arg, rhymed with the Dari word for death, marg. How convenient, I thought, for poets who might one day pen a verse about the night the blood of patriots soaked the carpets and splattered the halls of the citadel.

  “Hakim,” the general said without looking at the soldier in the driver’s seat, a soldier so eager to please his superior that he had forgotten to close his mouth. The general rested his hand on the outside of the car door, his fingers tapping against the white metal. On his pinky finger was a ring I recognized as my father’s. “Does this little girl not look like someone we know?”

  Chapter 16

  I knelt behind the bedroom door, obeying Tilly’s instruction to remain out of sight. With my eye pressed to the keyhole, I managed to catch a small glimpse of the man and woman who had settled into the sofa at her invitation. The golden-haired man’s name was Indigo. He wore a thin brown jacket and flared blue jeans. His gray paisley scarf was knotted at his neck, with its long end hanging over his chest like an elephant’s trunk. The woman with Indigo was named Patricia. She had round-rimmed glasses and fine brown hair she wore in a long braid. Patricia sat hip to hip next to Indigo, so I guessed she was his wife.

  I heard cupboard doors opening and closing as Tilly told them they absolutely had to try the salty cookies from the bakery downstairs.

  “Salty cookies?” the woman asked.

  “They’re like biscuits—but not at all like biscuits—sprinkled with black sesame seeds. They’re flaky and bizarre and you’ll love them,” Tilly promised as she pushed a plate toward the two visitors.

  Antonia walked into the apartment then. She’d been on edge ever since the general had stopped us on my street. His driver, Hakim, had shrugged and motioned to the dashboard clock that they were going to be late.

  Farewell, then, the general had said with a wave. Bring healthy, patriotic Afghan children into this world, good ladies.

  It was clear from Antonia’s stiff greeting that she had not been expecting visitors. Tilly made the introductions in a voice as light and cheery as a red balloon.

  “I’m sorry, but Tilly didn’t mention she’d be having anyone over,” Antonia said sharply.

  “Aren’t surprises grand?” Tilly exclaimed. “Now, look what I’ve gotten them to try for the first time. Why break bread together when you can break cookies?”

  Antonia looked over at the bedroom door. If she spotted my eyeball, she did not react to it.

  “He was in the middle of a story,” Tilly explained. “So they buy the camels?”

  “So, like I was saying, these three German fellas buy four camels off this Afghani man,” Indigo said. “They each get one to ride, and then the fourth is there to carry their load. They’re a mini-caravan, lumbering across the desert with shadows ten times their real size. They go about twenty miles that day and then set up camp. One of the fellas is smart enough to tie up the camels’ feet so they won’t wander off.”

  “Germans are meticulous,” Tilly commented.

  “Morning comes. These three Germans wake up, stretch, and go out to check on their camels, and lo and behold, the camels have vanished. But they’re clever Germans who just had a good night’s rest, especially since they didn’t have to go the last twenty miles on foot. So they start following the hoofprints in the sand and—get this—all four camels had trekked the twenty miles back to their owner.”

  “A tourist scam like no other,” the woman added brightly, as if something about the scam pleased her.

  “It’s a true story. My friend met one of the Germans. That Afghani man made a killing off those camels every single time some soft-footed overlanders passed through.”

  “Afghan,” Antonia corrected. “The people are called Afghan. Afghani is the currency.”

  “Funny money,” Tilly said. “Not that ‘dollar’ makes all that much sense, come to think of it.”

  “Where are you from, Indigo?” Antonia asked.

  “Ohio, both of us. We were running in the same circles for a couple of years before we got together. Patricia’s brother was one of the students shot at Kent State. Lucky he got away with just a hole in his leg. A whole lot of Americans died to keep the Communists out of Vietnam.”

  My father had told me about the United States fighting in Vietnam. I remember how he had to spin the globe to get from America to the far end of Asia.

  “Twenty years we’d been stuck in Ohio. Almost our whole lives. Patricia and I wanted to get out and breathe. We hopped on the trail in Istanbul six months ago. Went through Turkey and Iran and then into Afghanistan. Reading. Eating. Partaking. We were supposed to be in Pakistan by now to celebrate my birthday, but we just keep straying off course.”

  “Actually, there is no course,” Patricia said. “Have you read Siddhartha? Amazing, really.”

  “A couple years back. It is very good,” Antonia replied and then swiftly redirected the conversation. “I’m surprised the coup didn’t scare you off. What made you stay?”

  “That was wild, wasn’t it?” Indigo exclaimed. Though I couldn’t see their faces, I saw Patricia lean into him. “A bunch of our friends headed out a couple days after it happened. Honestly, I didn’t know what was going on. Thought they might be holding some military parade or something.”

  “Antonia’s interested to know when you’re planning on leaving and how,” Tilly inserted, her tone soothing. “She works for the embassy, so they’re always keeping tabs on Americans here. For safety reasons, of course.”

  “Yeah,” Indigo said, drawing out the word and running his fingers through the silk of his hair. “I’ve been around long enough. I don’t think that’s all there is to it.”

  “Mother, can we have a word, please?” Antonia said, rising from her seat.

  “We won’t be long,” Tilly said, as they stepped into the bedroom. Antonia looked at me, then turned to her mother.

  “What were you thinking, bringing a couple of hippies here?” she whispered with her back to the door.

  “You said we need to get Star out of the country without the wrong Afghans finding out. These people can do that,” she explained.

  “These people. What exactly have you been doing with these people?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Tilly asked.

  “This is so like you to do this,” Antonia muttered. “I told you I’m working on a plan with my contacts, people who understand the situation, not with some free spirits who help you get high.”

  “You need to get her out of the country now. You said yourself that your people refuse to take
a child with family here. And if her uncle is one of the bad guys now—”

  “The bad guys?”

  “Yes, the bad guys!” Tilly said, shooting me an apologetic look. Until now, they’d had these conversations when they thought I couldn’t hear them.

  “And who are the good guys, Mother?” Nia asked. She sat on the corner of her bed.

  “Aren’t we the good guys? You and your friends at the embassy?”

  Nia said nothing. She stared at the wedge of comforter between her legs. Tilly cupped my face in her hands. Her fingers felt cool and soft against my face. She said something about leaving the guests alone too long and returned to the living room. Nia stood and followed her.

  I went back to the door so I wouldn’t miss a word. Antonia let out a long, slow breath and leaned forward in her seat.

  “There is a person who needs to leave Afghanistan,” Antonia said, finally breaking the prickly silence. “Quietly.”

  I heard the sofa creak and the man clear his throat.

  “Is that why you invited us over?” he asked.

  “What route are you planning on taking to get to Pakistan?”

  “What does ‘quietly’ mean?” he asked.

  Antonia didn’t reply.

  “Are you asking me to smuggle someone out of the country?” Then he laughed, a staccato laugh with sharp inhales. “That’s the craziest proposition I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard some crazy stuff. I’m out to see the world, not the inside of an Afghan prison.”

  “Indigo, it’s a delicate matter,” Tilly added. “Do you remember the first conversation we had? You found me walking along the Kabul River and stopped me to tell me how much I reminded you of your grandmother.”

  “Thought you might shoot me on the spot.”

  “I was just short a gun and a bullet. But then you told me about your grandmother. About what a hero she was. How she’d practically walked through fire to rescue her two children from a burning house.”

  “It’s true,” Patricia agreed. “She really did save two kids.”

  “Indigo, have you ever wondered what you would do if you’d been there?”