Indigo didn’t reply.
“Things are fiery here. There’s a child here that needs saving. And when you have a chance to save a child, you don’t overthink it. Heroes just do it, like your grandmother did, and that’s why you were walking along the Kabul River talking to strangers about her.”
“Whoa, a child?” Indigo exclaimed. He shook his head and raised both palms in protest. “An actual child? No, thanks.”
“Indigo, let’s just hear them out,” Patricia said gently.
“You know what? Here’s what I think we should do. Let’s just forget we had this conversation,” Antonia said.
“Forgotten,” Indigo insisted. “We’re definitely not looking for this kind of trouble.”
“This isn’t trouble,” Tilly said. “How could you call a child trouble?”
Indigo stood then, and Patricia rose with him. Antonia walked to the door, ready to see them out. It might have ended there. They might all have walked away from that living room if Patricia hadn’t put her hand on Indigo’s shoulder.
“Baby, remember what you read to me in Bamiyan when we slept under that great Buddha?” she asked. “The bright light of seeking can blind a person from finding anything at all. We’re not looking. We’re finding.”
I cracked the door open a hair in time to watch Indigo fall back into his seat with the weight of stones.
Chapter 17
“The soldier who brought you here,” Antonia said, as she took slow strides across the living room. “I knew I’d seen him before. He was guarding the new minister of education. I had a meeting with him just after the coup and that man—you say his name is Shair?—was standing outside the office. I’d forgotten until this morning. I sat down to call the minister and that’s when I made the connection.”
“So that’s how he knew you!” Tilly exclaimed. She was sewing buttons onto a caramel-colored suede vest with fringes, a costume for the upcoming performance of a musical called Oklahoma! that Antonia and her colleagues were putting on.
“Must be. And it wasn’t a bad idea. Star is safer with us than anywhere else right now. He must have followed me to this apartment,” Antonia explained.
“I hate him,” I said, though these words were inadequate.
“I understand that completely. But he got you out of the palace, and he may be able to help us get you out of the country.”
“No!” I cried. “I will not go with him!”
“Of course not! I would not do that to you,” Antonia said, crouching before me, pleading with me to trust her. Her hair fell forward, framing her face. “I only want him to help us get the birth certificate from your home. I think he can do that this week, on the night of the Oklahoma! performance.”
Tilly began humming, her eyes half closed.
“We’ve invited people from the other embassies, from the colleges, and from the new government. It’s a bizarre time for a show, but I’m hopeful we can use it to our advantage.”
I’d found the script for Oklahoma! before I realized Antonia was leading a production here in Kabul. I found it odd that people from the embassy would spend their free time singing and dancing on a stage for all the Foreign Service officers and Afghan notables to see. I could not imagine my father or his colleagues doing any such thing and most especially not in the wake of a coup. Americans were not fazed by much, I gathered.
“Tell us your plan, Nia,” Tilly sang out. She held out the vest and admired her handiwork. “We’ve got to be in on it to make it work.”
Antonia kept her eyes on me, even as Tilly slipped into the vest and buttoned it up. She moved side to side, the suede fringes swinging.
“I’m going to schedule another meeting with the minister. If the same soldier—Shair—is on guard duty again, I’m going to press him to get the birth certificate for us the night of the show. That’s the night the general won’t be there. He’s already confirmed he’s coming to the show.”
I glared at Antonia.
“I know you don’t want him in your home, but you saw what happened last time,” Antonia said plainly. “There’s no other way. Now tell me exactly where the birth certificate might be.”
I told her about my mother’s nightstand and the hidden drawer, the thin compartment between the top drawer and the top of the nightstand. She handed me a yellow notepad and asked me to draw a map of our home. My first attempt was a mess of lines. It looked nothing like a home. The second attempt was worse. I crumpled the paper and pressed the tip of the pen to a fresh page, biting my lip as I tried to stop my hand from shaking.
Antonia watched over my shoulder.
I drew the straightest line I could, and then another. I drew a series of parallel lines to mark the stairs and made a big X in the square representing my parents’ bedroom. I slid the pad across the table.
“This is good,” Antonia said, studying the page. She folded the paper and tucked it between the pages of her notebook.
“Mother, I need to talk to you about the night of the performance,” she said.
“What is it now?” Tilly asked.
“We can’t leave her alone here, and I need to be at the show. I’m going to have someone else play your part. I need you to be with Star that night.”
“Why wouldn’t we bring her to the show?” Tilly asked, flummoxed. “Surely you’ve heard of the brilliance of hiding in plain sight.”
“Mother, please,” Antonia said.
“I can have someone I know come and stay here with her,” Tilly suggested, but Antonia refused.
“I will not trust her to anyone else.”
“You’re right,” Tilly said brightly. “Just tell my castmates that I’m terribly sorry to have let them down. And tell the ambassador too. He’s been telling folks that the show will have an actual star onstage. Did you know the Chinese ambassador is coming to see me specifically?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised you’d be this way,” Nia said. “Nothing’s changed.”
Tilly inhaled sharply.
“I can stay alone,” I said. “You say this is two and half hour. It is not too long. I stay here and sleep.”
I’d been alone in the apartment for brief periods, when Antonia was at work and Tilly stepped out to pick up groceries or replenish her supply of cigarettes. The apartment had become a safe house for me.
Antonia tapped the eraser end of a pencil against the tabletop in a precise rhythm, three quick taps and two slow taps, a debate in beats. Tilly had rested her case and didn’t feel the need to say another word. They bickered so much that they could do it in silence now. An hour later, Nia offered a plan. Tilly would participate in her small role, then excuse herself early and return to the apartment.
Antonia was gone the next two nights for dress rehearsals. Tilly stayed with me, flipping through the script and complaining about the instant coffee Antonia had brought home. She filled the long days telling me stories she likely wouldn’t have told in her daughter’s presence. She told me about the time Antonia had trapped a squirrel in a shoebox, and how she’d once kicked a fourth-grade classmate between the legs for trying to kiss her.
“I used to watch her play outside her school from across the street. I loved to see her jumping rope or sitting on benches with her friends,” Tilly said, pouring piping hot tea into a cup. “She could play alone and be just as happy as when she was in a crowd. I wasn’t around much when she was little. I had shows up and down the coast and spent more time on buses than a bus driver.”
“But she was with you?”
“No, she was home with her father. He was a very good father. He used to love seeing me onstage, but then complained that the stage was the only place he could see me. He kept it up for a long time, caring for Antonia all alone. Until one day he didn’t wake up. Nia got herself dressed and walked to school. She came home and tried to wake him up again. She dressed and fed herself for two days before she broke down in tears while a teacher read a story to the class. That teacher stayed with her while they sen
t people to the house.”
“What happened?”
“It was a heart attack that killed him. Antonia was a couple years younger than you are now. When I came home, I found two trays of food she’d made for her father. She’d even fed the cat and brought in the mail.” Steam swirled above Tilly’s cup, misting her eyes. “She was a strong girl, just like you. She was alone. I think that’s why she has such empathy for you. She sees herself in you.”
“What is empathy?” I asked.
“Oh, how can I describe empathy,” Tilly pondered, then stood up sharply. She extracted a tube of lipstick from her bag and drew a frowning face on her cheek. She pointed to the frown, her face pinched with sorrow. “Do you see this? Now come give me a hug.”
I wrapped my arms around Tilly and our faces met, cheek to cheek. Then she opened a compact and pointed to the faint frown face on my cheek.
“That,” she said, her voice breaking as we both stared at the pigment I’d absorbed from her, “is empathy.”
Tilly baffled me in many ways but she also could sound like clarity itself.
“Why is Nia angry with you?” I asked.
Tilly closed her eyes. There were tiny black smudges on her eyelids and just below her eyes.
“I nursed Nia until she was three years old. You had to see it. I would slip backstage between scenes, and there she would be, ready to jump into my arms. Lights, camera, breasts! I couldn’t figure out how to make her stop. She didn’t really need it. She was eating hamburgers with pickles by then, for heaven’s sake. So one day I sprinkled cayenne pepper on my nipples and—”
She scowled. Tilly was a kaleidoscope of emotions, spinning and transforming constantly.
“God gives people children without confirming their credentials first. I wasn’t good at doing all the things she needed me to do. I wasn’t there to help her or the person she loved most in the world. I’ve flown around the world to be with her now, but that doesn’t change what I was then.”
Tilly raised her arms, maybe to see if she could take flight again. Then she let them flop to her sides and sighed.
“It’s a messy business, having children. Parents are supposed to be wise and worthy and selfless, and really, it’s the other way around. Most of the time you can get away with the masquerade and it feels great. But then you walk off the stage and into the daylight, and suddenly the whole world can see it was all bad makeup and props,” Tilly said, tears sliding down her cheeks, wetting the pain she’d drawn on her face.
By some dark magic, I watched Tilly shrink with sorrow and grow with love. She grew distant even as she drew me in, and my own cheeks became slick with tears as I thought of how much love I’d lost.
Chapter 18
The night of the musical, I listened to Antonia address last-minute urgent calls for black paint, a wooden bucket, and a ten-gallon hat and reassure a nervous cast member who was deeply afraid she would forget all her lines at curtain call.
I watched Tilly dab cream onto her face, dust powder onto her nose and cheeks, and draw a brown pencil along her lower eyelid. She pulled her skin taut at her temples and cursed at the wrinkles that reappeared when she let go. She applied the same red lipstick she’d used to teach me about empathy and blew a kiss at the mirror. She was as heavily painted as an Afghan bride on her wedding day.
“Stage lights make it look like you’re not wearing any makeup at all,” she explained. “If it’s not bold, it’s a waste of time.”
I wondered if I could attend the show without being noticed. Besides my father, most men wouldn’t deign to lower their gaze to meet mine. So many adults treated me as if I were a canary in a cage, expecting me to chirp and flutter when they tapped on the bars and wanting me to be still and silent when they turned their backs.
Tilly, fully made up and with her costume draped over her arm, stood by the door. Antonia went through the apartment drawing the curtains. She reminded me to stay away from the windows and declared the rooftop off-limits as well.
“Okay, okay. I will not go to the baam,” I promised. Tilly looked alarmed.
“The bomb?” she asked, unaware that the Dari word for “roof” is pronounced the same as the English word for a large explosive.
“The roof,” Antonia said, clarifying. We stumbled upon these confusions daily in our bilingual conversations, filling the gaps with whatever was within reach.
I locked the door behind them, as ordered, and gave them enough time to make it down the street before I peeked out the window and confirmed that they had turned the corner. Shuttered storefronts left the street quiet and dark.
To the sound of the ticking clock, I changed into a shirt and pants and tied my hair back. I knotted a headscarf under my chin and buckled my shoes with trembling fingers. Running through my checklist, I placed a lemon and a piece of bread in a plastic bag and took one deep, steadying breath before entering Chicken Street.
I rehearsed my story in my mind. Like Antonia, I’d spent the last two days rehearsing for tonight, practicing lines from a script of my own creation. As I’d hoped, most people did not notice me or the lemon bouncing against my hip. Even stray dogs were too disinterested to uncurl themselves as I passed.
When I spotted a police officer on the corner, I went down a side street and came back on the other side of him. This added minutes to my route, but I was determined to be smart, not hasty. Like a mouse in the dark, I moved through the clay labyrinth of Kabul.
And it worked.
I stood at the end of my block, looking for signs of movement inside my home. This time there was no car parked outside. None of the neighbors were outside either. There was an unseasonable bite in the air, a chill that seemed to have driven everyone into their homes and out of their yards.
I walked in measured steps toward my house, the second from the last on this block, passing a row of homes connected by rooftops and hidden by privacy walls that partitioned yards and ran the length of the block.
I was close enough to see the latch of our front gate, the latch that had been loose for about a year. Even if the gate was locked from the inside, it gave way if the door was pushed up and in at the same time.
I was twenty feet from the gate when a soldier ambled around the corner. My foot seemed to hover in the air until I could force it back to the ground and keep walking. The soldier and I were headed straight for each other, a face-off. I could barely breathe.
To my horror, the soldier stopped directly in front of my home and, with movements fit for a stage, arranged his feet and shoulders into a guard’s posture.
I did not slow my step, my thoughts racing as I passed him in front of our gate. Saying a quick prayer, I stopped at the door to our neighbor’s home, the one just after ours. I placed my hand on their latch and pushed. The gate yielded and swung inward with a jarring creak.
Once inside their yard, I pressed my back against the thick trunk of their walnut tree. When I was confident no one inside had heard the gate open, I tiptoed closer to the house. A window glowed from behind a lace curtain. A radio announcer reported on another day bursting with progress in the hands of a regime dedicated to uplifting the people.
I slipped around the corner and stayed lower than the rosebushes abutting the house. I was halfway across the yard but by no means in the clear. I needed to climb over the shared wall that separated this house from mine. I eyed the chicken coop positioned against the wall to see if I could climb on top of it without collapsing the structure.
As if to protest my plans, there was a burst of clucking and fluttering of feathers.
“Ashraf! Turn that radio down or you won’t hear me. Did you not feed the chickens today? You can’t expect eggs from hungry hens.”
Ashraf never fed the hens. I’d heard this very argument a thousand nights from my bedroom.
“I think I know what killed our rooster,” Ashraf grumbled loudly.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
The radio announcer’s voice faded. I step
ped closer to the coop and tore the bread I’d brought into pieces, stuffing the chunks through the mesh. The hens began to peck at the ground, their squawks turning into a low, contented clucking. I wasted no time, hoisting myself onto the roof of the chicken coop. The plywood bowed slightly with my weight.
I reached up, curled my fingers around the lip of the wall, and pulled with all my might. The past weeks spent fidgeting in an apartment and picking at food had weakened me. Breathless and terrified that the neighbors would discover me, I tried to pull myself up.
Behind me, a door clanged.
With my forearms scraping against the wall and my foot slipping twice, I gave one more heave and managed to swing my leg over. I eyed the steep drop beneath me as I dangled myself into our empty yard, but before I could think about it too much, I lost my grip and fell to the ground. The impact shot up through my ankles, and I curled into a ball, stifling a groan.
On the other side of the wall, Ashraf cursed the chickens.
Our home was dark and strangely intimidating. I concentrated on my mission as I walked past my mother’s flower beds and a stone birdbath and slipped in through the back door.
As Antonia had suspected, marauders had gone through our belongings. The floor was littered with splayed books, cigarette stubs, and sofa cushions. It smelled nothing like home.
I stood before the shelves that ran half the length of our living room, the rows of books that were as much a part of my father as his left arm. My mother had organized her literature collection in the order in which she’d read the books. She’d explained her reasoning to me once, her fingers running across the spines.
I can retrace my steps this way, the stories that became part of me before I was a mother and those I read with you in my arms.
Voices carried in on an evening breeze sent me pounding up the stairs and into my parents’ bedroom. I closed the door behind me and held my breath until I was certain no one had entered the house.
But when I turned around, what I saw felt like a punch in the stomach. The plastic bag fell from my hand and the lemon rolled out.
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