Their bedroom had been ransacked. Dresser drawers gaped open, and clothes were strewn across the bed. My mother’s jewelry box, a lacquered piece my father had brought from India, had been looted. Their cream and navy comforter lay crumpled on the floor and even the bed itself looked askew.
Though it had been nearly a month since the coup, I would not have been surprised to find their bodies in that room. It looked like they’d been killed a second time. I wanted to leave and never come back. I wanted to clean everything up. I wanted to pack everything in this house and take it with me. I wanted to hurt the people who had done this. I wanted to curl up in my parents’ bed.
But I knew I couldn’t stay here. I might suffocate if I did. I went to my mother’s nightstand and pushed on both sides. I rattled the table until the secret compartment slid open, and found the bundle of papers held together with a rubber band. I put it in my bag with clammy hands.
I opened the door to my mother’s armoire. Her carefully curated wardrobe, the pieces she’d discovered in secondhand shops, the ones she’d sewn by her own hand, inspired by European designs, and the blouses my father had wrapped with tissue paper and given to her—they were all gone. Only a pair of jeans remained, tossed to the floor.
I looked up and saw the leather cover of a bound photo album. Even on my tiptoes, I could not reach it. I brought over the chair from my mother’s vanity table and stood on it. My fingers touched the edge of the album, pushing it backward and nearly out of reach. I groaned and stretched my body until my calves and shoulder could go no farther.
I did not give up. One millimeter at a time, I pulled the book to the lip of the shelf and ducked when it tumbled onto my head. Photographs slipped out of the plastic sheaths and spilled out onto the floor. I scrambled to gather them. Even as my fingers worked, I caught glimpses of my parents’ faces, of my brother’s dewy eyes, and felt a knot grow in my throat. I would have sat down and had a storm of a cry then were it not for the voices I heard.
There was no mistaking their proximity this time, though I couldn’t tell where they were coming from or where they were going. I scrambled to grab a handful of photos and collect the bag I’d brought.
The front gate was a trap, given the soldier stationed there. I had to leave through Ashraf’s yard again, but there was no coop for me to climb on our side of the yard. Escaping meant following in my father’s footsteps the night he’d chased a burglar from our home. In a flash, I was on the balcony, pushing off the railings and planting my elbows on the flat roof. I hoisted myself up, one knee at a time, panting so loudly that I expected the neighborhood lights to turn on.
Hunched, I crept across the roof toward Ashraf’s home next door. Ashraf’s voice boomed from below. Had he heard my footsteps? Or had my weight sent plaster flakes scattering from their ceiling onto their heads? I crept along the perimeter of the house to reach the far end.
I dangled myself from the edge, palms sweaty. I landed with a thud on the balls of my feet and one outstretched wrist. The pain moved from bone to bone, firing across my rib cage.
Had Ashraf’s wife looked outside, surely she would have thought a corpse had dropped from the sky. But she’d not noticed, and after a few moments I pulled myself to stand. My legs wobbled slightly. I steeled myself behind the walnut tree before stepping back into the street.
The soldier cleared his throat. I prepared to run. As I walked past him I realized he was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. He did not stir.
I walked back toward the apartment with the same measured pace, keeping my eyes on the ground. I was a mere two streets away from Chicken Street when a police officer stopped me.
“Hey, little girl,” he called out. I pretended not to hear, but he called out again, quickening his step to catch up to me. I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Are you deaf?”
“I’m so sorry,” I replied, my voice sounding shrill to my own ear. The photographs bulged conspicuously in the back pocket of my pants. I prayed he wouldn’t notice. “I must not have been paying attention.”
“It is late for you to be wandering about alone.”
“You are so right. I would much rather be in bed.”
“Where is your home? I want to see that you get there.”
I had prepared for this. Now it was time to test my cover.
“It is very brave of you to offer, kind officer.”
“Brave?” he asked, confused.
I nodded emphatically.
“No one wants to come to my house anymore. That’s why I’m out this late in the evening. If it were not a most serious emergency, I would not have been sent out for a lemon.”
I pulled the lemon out of the bag and held it delicately, as if it might hatch.
“A lemon?”
My throat was so dry I thought my words might not make it out.
“My family home has been cursed by a djinn. Terrible things have been happening to our friends and family within a day of leaving our home. We found a jaadugar to lift the curse. We had everything she needed except for the lemon.”
His hands went to his hips.
“So, I must be getting home before . . .” I shook my head forlornly. I dropped the lemon back into the bag that held my bundle of papers and trained my eyes on the ground.
“Your home is close by?” he asked hopefully.
“Yes, sir. Just around the corner and halfway down the block.”
He looked down the street, craning his neck.
“Run along then. I’ll watch after you.”
I walked away with measured paces, my legs twitching to break into a run. I dared not turn around until I’d made it around the next corner. I nearly tripped over a sleeping dog, stumbling to stay on my feet, before making it back to Chicken Street and seeing that the lights were still off.
I pounded up the stairs and found the door as I’d left it: with a folded piece of paper blocking the lock.
I sank onto the sofa, the bag still in my hand. When my breathing started to slow, I took out the bundle of folded papers. The rubber band snapped, and they fell loose onto my lap. I sifted through them until I found the one I needed.
CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH
STATE OF OKLAHOMA—DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
STATE FILE NO: 135-55-027484
My mother’s name was in one box, my father’s name in another. There was an address that meant nothing to me, a home I’d never lived in. My sister had weighed six pounds and ten ounces, born two years before me in an America I’d never seen.
The paper had long, angled signatures with loops and crosses. It bore a blue stamp and an emblem, a five-point star in a circle.
Aryana Zamani.
Sister in the sky, I thought with fresh tears streaming down my face, how is it possible that you are all I have at this moment?
Chapter 19
Antonia paced the apartment wearing a button-down shirt with a ruffled collar, her skirt billowing with every turn. The skirt was so long that it gave the impression she was floating.
“I just can’t believe you would do something so . . . so . . . dangerous. Anything could have happened to you out there!”
“I should have stayed,” Tilly muttered, wiggling out of her vest. A button popped and skittered across the floor. Tilly didn’t bother to reach for it, tossing her vest onto the coffee table. “Why didn’t I stay?”
The success of my mission did little to comfort them.
They’d stared as I’d spread the documents across the living room table like a hand of cards—my sister’s American birth certificate, my Afghan birth certificate, and Faheem’s as well, my mother’s high school diploma, and the deed to the home in my father’s name.
The photographs told the story of us. My mother in a white veil, her lips painted a deep red, her eyes bashful and lowered. In another photo, my father balanced Faheem on one knee while I planted a kiss on top of my brother’s head. I could still feel his feathery baby hair tickling my lips. My grandmother perched proudl
y on a chair on a patch of grass, with my mother sitting at her feet, her legs tucked under her and her eyes hidden behind round sunglasses. She wore a summery dress with capped sleeves and a loose bow at the collar.
It hurt to look at them. It hurt more to look away.
“You could have been taken. You might have been seen,” Antonia said, rising out of her seat and moving to the window. She pulled the curtain back and looked both ways down the street.
“I am careful. No person follow me.”
“Did you speak with anyone?” Antonia asked.
When I did not answer immediately, Antonia sat in front of me.
“Tell me,” she said gravely.
I recounted the exchange with the police officer, confirming that he’d not asked my name or followed me back to the apartment. I had passed undetected, careful to make an extra loop before walking down Chicken Street just to be sure no one had tracked my steps.
“You are a clever fox!” Tilly exclaimed.
Antonia shook her head, then reached for Aryana’s birth certificate, handling the paper with the kind of care reserved for artifacts.
In the morning, I changed into a pair of Levi’s jeans, a red pullover, and a navy blue baseball cap.
“What do you think?” Nia asked her mother.
“Aren’t you going to draw some stars and stripes on her?” Tilly asked.
Antonia ignored her.
“I think it works. Now, I just need a few more days and I think I’ll have a plan for how we leave.”
Tilly looked at her daughter, cockeyed.
“What do you mean by that? We have a plan already. Indigo and Patricia are our plan.”
Antonia shook her head.
“It’s not safe. They have two other passengers I’ve not vetted. Hell, I haven’t even properly vetted those two. I haven’t seen their car. What if it stalls on the road?”
“Speaking of stalling,” Tilly grumbled.
Antonia’s eyes lighted on me like a butterfly on a bloom.
Antonia reminded me of my father, steadfast and diligent. I wondered if Antonia’s cautious nature would keep us in this apartment a bit too long. I thought of Faheem hiding in plain view, his hands over his eyes. I was not a child. I knew this apartment wouldn’t cloak my existence forever.
Tilly stirred a spoonful of instant coffee into a cup of boiling water and sat down with her novel. She watched as Antonia scribbled in her notebook and made calls from the rooftop.
“Why can’t you have a boyfriend in the CIA?” Tilly asked under her breath.
That evening I listened to the slow song of the azaan and tried my best to feel inspired. The muezzin’s voice seemed more beseeching than coaxing, a mournful melody. Though I didn’t rise, I cupped my hands together under the blanket and prayed for God to keep me safe, to grant my family entry to the gardens of heaven, and to forgive me for resenting Him as much as I did.
If faith was a life raft, mine was riddled with holes.
I had nearly fallen asleep when I heard their hushed voices.
“Can you even imagine what will happen if people find out an American from the embassy snuck an Afghan girl out of the country with a couple of hippies? Let me work out a better way.”
“Please don’t hate the idea because it’s mine, Nia,” Tilly said. She sounded nothing like the woman who had danced, with rolling hips, across the rooftop or the woman who belted out songs from musicals. Tilly sounded more like the woman she was when her lipstick had faded, when she slept with her mouth half open, or when the lift of her leafy cigarettes had spun its way out of her bloodstream. She was a different woman at night, when the lavender scent of her perfume dissipated, when she smelled elemental and organic, like the musk of fallen leaves.
“Mom, this isn’t about me or you. It’s about her,” Antonia insisted.
“Maybe that’s true,” Tilly said, sounding exhausted and unsure. “But I also know you don’t trust my judgment. And I can’t blame you for that. If I thought apologizing would do any good—”
Tilly’s voice broke.
“I can’t do this now, Mom,” Antonia said, a hitch in her voice. “We can’t do this now. Let’s take care of this girl and leave that one be. We’re fine, I promise.”
I heard sniffles. A throat cleared. A deep sigh. A chorus of discomfiture.
When I opened my eyes in the morning, Antonia was at the breakfast table sipping coffee.
“Sitara,” she said, rising to sit at the end of the sofa. She gave my ankle a light squeeze. “I need you to trust me. I’m going to get you out of here safely. It may take a few more days to figure it out, but we will do this.”
I nodded because it was all I could do.
When Antonia had gone, Tilly wrapped her arms around me. She brushed strands of hair from my temple.
“Let’s wash up and get dressed,” Tilly suggested. “We need some sunlight.”
I did as she suggested, slipping into the corduroy pants and pullover Antonia had bought for me. I brushed my hair slowly, thinking I needed to take control of the situation. My sister’s birth certificate was on the bookshelf. I knew my way around Kabul’s streets. I was still a child but old enough to move through the city undetected.
You must take a step, before you ask God to bless your journey, my father used to tell me. If I wanted God to protect me, I needed to do my part. When I thought of slipping away from Antonia and Tilly and taking that step on my own, I felt a tug at my heart stronger than I would have expected. We were not related by blood, though looking at the rift between mother and daughter, I didn’t know if that mattered much.
And yet I did not feel out of place in this apartment. Tilly had become like a grandmother to me, the two of us fused by the weight of the world around us.
“Let’s take in this gorgeous morning before it disappears,” she announced. She’d changed into a lilac tunic with straight-leg navy pants. She wore a necklace of knitted flowers, pouty petals surrounding silver beaded centers. We climbed the stairs to the rooftop. I stretched my legs and let the air fill my lungs. We’d been outside only a few moments when my stomach began to growl. Both Tilly and I often forgot to eat. I hadn’t had anything for breakfast and wondered if she was hungry. Tilly snored lightly, lulled to sleep by a reaffirming sun.
There were hard-boiled eggs in the fridge and some bread left over from the night before. I would fix her a plate too.
I walked down the stairs and through the apartment door. I walked through the living room and into the narrow kitchen. I was pulling two plates from the cabinet when I heard a door open behind me.
Had Antonia come back already?
I stepped out of the kitchen and found myself face to face with a man who smiled oddly at the sight of me, as if his search was over and he’d found what he’d come looking for.
But I hadn’t expected to be found. The second his hand touched my shoulder, the scream I’d stifled since the night of the coup erupted from my throat, loud enough to stir the sullen martyrs in their graves.
Chapter 20
Indigo was lucky I hadn’t reached for the paring knife again. He stared at the shards of the ceramic plate I’d dropped and shook his head.
Tilly! I’m a friend of Tilly’s, he’d stammered when I started to shout. Didn’t you hear me knock?
He and Patricia had decided to leave a day ahead of schedule, he told Tilly when she came down the stairs. He didn’t want to leave without checking in. Tilly had looked at me.
“What do you say, Star? What is your heart telling you?” she asked, looking equally ready to head out the door with Indigo or climb back up the stairs and resume her morning nap under the sun.
I looked at this man Nia wasn’t willing to trust and wondered if she was right. He was gulping down a glass of water Tilly had handed him. He looked too scared to be scary.
Antonia wanted time to figure out the perfect plan. She wanted to work with people she knew, but I was worried about the people she knew. She was at the
ministries and arranging meetings with the very people who had organized the coup. What if one of her contacts told them about me? Aware that there was no such thing as a perfect plan, I said resolutely, “It is time to go.”
Tilly cleared her throat and told Indigo we needed a few moments to gather our things. She brought the duffel bag to me and scrawled a note to Antonia. We didn’t discuss it. We left as if we’d been expecting Indigo to appear, as if we were headed out of town for a holiday.
Indigo promised to get us to Islamabad. He said it wouldn’t be hard to find the U.S. embassy once we were there. After that, he said, we would be on our own. Tilly nodded.
Stepping out of the apartment, I wondered if I was making the right decision. Tilly looked more relieved than nervous. The van smelled of cigarettes and stale bedsheets. The woman next to me eyed me with excitement, though she pretended to be looking at something outside my window.
“Her name is Patricia,” Tilly said, pointing at her. She put her hand over mine. “My gosh, you’re still shaking. Indigo must have given you quite a fright back there.”
Kabul grew small as we rolled south, down a road I’d traveled with my family. We were joined by another couple. They were all overlanders, as I later learned they were called—Americans and Europeans trekking along a meandering trail from Turkey to as far as Goa, in western India. They stopped in Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Kashmir along the way, dipping into the local culture and the local weed. They picnicked by lakes and bought embroidered scarves to carry back home. They haggled halfheartedly, amusing artisans and shop owners.
The other couple in the van knew nothing about my situation and thought I was Tilly’s grandchild, half-Afghan and half-American and very wary of strangers. We were on our way to Islamabad, Tilly said, because she was in urgent need of specialized medical care for a blood disease. I thought it was a brilliant cover story. Between Tilly’s bony wrists and my honey-colored hair and green-speckled eyes, we each looked our parts.
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