Patricia chatted with the other woman, whose hair and eyes made me wonder if she’d been painted by the same palate of colors as the sky. Both women looked a few years younger than Antonia, but that might have been because they carried backpacks instead of dossiers. Indigo sat in the driver’s seat, while a man with a half-folded map and a small booklet on his lap sat in the passenger seat, his right foot resting on the dashboard.
“Map, check. Eastern Bound, check,” he said, flapping the two together.
“Ah, the infamous guidebook!” Tilly asked. “May I see it?”
“Sure,” he said, reaching over the seat. “Worth every penny. Covers the trail from Istanbul to Kathmandu. Told us to stuff ourselves in Turkey and not expect good food again until we reached Kabul. That was pretty good advice. What do you say, friends?”
“My God, that bathhouse in Turkey!” Patricia’s friend groaned. “The harem? What was it called?”
“Hamam!” Patricia laughed. “I don’t think these people have public harems!”
“Did you see concubines there?” Tilly asked. “I’ve always wondered what it might be like to be a concubine.”
“You haven’t lived,” the woman said, “until you’ve had a decade’s worth of dead skin scrubbed off you by an enormous woman wearing red underwear.”
“You loved it. You told me it was the best birthday gift you’ve ever gotten,” her boyfriend insisted.
“I’ve thought very seriously about leaving you for that woman,” she said, eyes wide and devilish.
Tilly took the booklet from him and began to flip through it. I looked over her shoulder, catching bits and pieces. Indigo’s friend lit a cigarette with the car’s lighter and slipped a cassette into the player. Tilly started to hum and sway.
While I didn’t recognize the song, the smoke took me home, to rambunctious nights when aunts, uncles, and friends gathered for food and music. My aunt would play a tambourine while her husband sat cross-legged in front of a harmonium, air moving in and out of the bellows, sending vibrations through the reeds. My father’s fingers would tap a rhythm on a tabla, the heel of his palm thumping a bass beat. They were all amateurs. They weren’t literate in chords or sharps and flats but they made the house thrum until the early hours of the morning.
My mother always brought a dish of mantu to these gatherings. I might have been five years old when she first allowed me to help fill the dumplings. I would dip my finger into a bowl of water, wetting the four sides of the square dough. Next, a spoonful of minced onions and beef went into the middle. Then I would pinch the corners together, sealing the dumpling into a perfect point. Placed side by side in a round steamer, they looked like the beaks of nested baby birds peering skyward. My mother did not like to cook, but with this one dish she made every couple of months, she had created quite a reputation for herself.
Be smart with your efforts, she’d told me once.
I had always been my father’s spirited girl, the child who had grown up in the halls of the palace. But the absence of my family made me reconsider who I was. If it hadn’t been for my father’s outstretched arms, perhaps I never would have dared to leap from the sofa cushions. If it hadn’t been for my mother’s applause, I might not have dared to dance in our living room. I only moved as boldly through the world as I had because I knew they would catch me, no matter how far I fell.
Without them, I might be nothing more than a coward.
But maybe, I thought, if I could manage to feign bravery in this moment, then I could feign bravery at another moment. And maybe if I feigned bravery enough, I could grow into it.
The road ahead snaked between mountains, like a necklace disappearing into a bosom. Tilly lifted her hand and squinted against the sun’s glare. I closed my eyes, my eyelids transforming the sunlight into a thousand colors, bursting and flashing like fireworks only I could see. I wondered how many times my father had traveled this road without us, accompanying President Daoud Khan or other senior cabinet members on official trips. He’d always brought back treats from his travels. I may not have been able to recognize the cities by sight, but knew them by taste. Moscow was bits of wafer or pralines hidden in small cocoa bricks. Paghman, with its crisp mountain water, tasted like snowflakes on my tongue. Kandahar popped sweetly between my teeth, releasing the juice of pomegranates. Jalalabad made my cheeks pucker with its tart oranges. My mother would slice the rinds into strands, steaming them into a yellow rice with bright green pistachios and moon-white almond slivers.
I pictured my mother’s back over the stove, steam floating to her face as she lifted the pot’s cover. It was all so vivid, so real. I felt the familiar lump in my throat again.
“My goodness,” Tilly exclaimed. “We couldn’t possibly be . . . Are we taking that road?”
I didn’t have to look to know what had caused her alarm. The tortuous road we were on, an asphalt gift from the West German government, was not for the faint of heart.
On our right was the jagged face of the mountain, its peak hidden from view. Boulders perched precariously on the mountain’s visage, freckled with orange wildflowers and patches of yellow-green grasses. On our left was a drop so sheer it might have been a fall off the far edge of the earth. Cars moved in both directions on this winding road, signaling one another with a wave or a honk of the horn.
A dark shape crossed the sky, flapped twice, and swooped over the van. I couldn’t tell if it was a buzzard or an eagle or if a piece of the mountain had broken off and the great sky had conspired to keep it from falling.
The ascent sent a tickle through the passengers. Patricia knelt on her seat, her face pressed against the glass. The air thinned. I felt the rev of the engine through my feet. Indigo’s friend reached over and turned up the volume on the radio. The singer was a man, his voice a high-pitched daydream. The overlanders joined the chorus, which was the one line of the song I could make out.
Ohhhh, I just want to be your everything!
“Slow down, babe,” Patricia cajoled. “This road is pretty wild.”
“I’m gonna get us there.”
Indigo’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. Patricia must have noticed too. Her hand went to Indigo’s shoulder and stayed there as she whispered into his ear.
I looked away, feeling like an interloper.
Just as Patricia looked back and smiled beatifically at me, a truck approached head-on. The lorry weaved slightly, the ropes straining to keep its bundled cargo in place. The truck’s horn bleated, breaking through the ballad. Indigo yelled and jerked the steering wheel to the right. The van tilted, its tires lifting off the road just enough to make my stomach rise and fall. Tilly howled, her hand flying across my chest to secure me. My head bounced against the back of Patricia’s empty seat.
Metal and glass crunched against the unforgiving mountain.
I touched my head, blinking to clear the confusion. Patricia lay, facedown, in the small space in the middle of the van. Indigo yelled her name as he fumbled with his seat belt. The two men and the other woman scrambled to reach her, their limbs knotting the hollow of the van.
I feared, very seriously, that Patricia was dead, even as they called her name. Before the coup, death had been a plaything. My friends and I had laughed and joked about it. We’d made it part of our imagined stories. But I hadn’t believed in it because I hadn’t really seen it. If the sun rises every day, it is hard to imagine that it is not promised.
But now that I’d seen death, I knew it was a thing with teeth.
I buried my head in Tilly’s shoulder, not wanting to watch as Patricia’s friends pulled her onto the seat. Even when I heard her groan, I still did not dare look. From the floor of the van, she cursed at Indigo, which made him breathe a sigh of relief.
“You really scared me there. Oh, Patty, you scared me bad.”
My eyes were still clamped shut, my face pressed into the small space beneath Tilly’s collarbone.
Tilly.
I thought back to the nigh
t she’d knelt on the floor of Antonia’s apartment, rocking me as if I were hers. And the way her arm had sprung to keep me from flying out of my seat.
Why wasn’t that arm curled around me now?
“Tilly?” I said, looking up at her. A scarlet line trickled from above her left eyebrow, where the skin had split apart. Her eyes fluttered slightly.
“Tilly!” I called again, stupidly. I grabbed her by the shoulders.
The sun’s rays fell directly on Tilly’s head, her silver hair shimmering. I pressed my cheek to Tilly’s. It was because of me that she sat in the cradle of mountains, bleeding.
“Forgive me,” I whispered in Dari.
I turned my head to look out the window and saw the flighted creature, observer or omen, soaring above us with wings in full salute.
Chapter 21
Tilly, leaning against the mountainside, swore she was fine. She let Patricia’s friend press a tissue to her forehead, and the bleeding stopped within a few minutes. She puffed out her cheeks and rolled her eyes, giving me a squeeze when it did not elicit a laugh from me.
“I’m fine now, really.”
The wound looked ugly, but far from fatal. Someone pulled a bandage out of a backpack and hid the gash under it. I wondered if it would need stitches or antibiotics. I didn’t want her head to look like my foot.
Indigo, Patricia, and their friends examined the front of the van and decided its injuries were not fatal either. One headlight had shattered, but it was still daylight and the other would be enough to light the road at night. The hood of the van had tented in slightly, making it impossible to open. But the engine rumbled to life, much to Indigo’s relief. Cars continued to come blazing along the road, and Indigo signaled everyone to get back into the van.
“We’re like bowling pins out here,” he said, trying to make light of the situation. No one laughed, not even nervously.
We continued our journey without music, without much talking. The van and the explorers within it had been jolted, the chemistry altered.
We emerged from the mountain pass and saw the sprawling city of Jalalabad stretch out before us. I did not know these streets or buildings. I had only experienced this city as a carefree child, following my parents.
The city was home to a few points of interest that my father had pointed out. Mausoleums of kings, a Hindu temple, and a medical school that one of my father’s cousins had attended. My father wanted me to become a doctor too and even used my interest in the stars to convince me medicine was my destiny.
I’ve told you about Ibn Sina, the astronomer. He was also the father of modern medicine. From here to Europe, physicians used his text to treat disease and save lives.
He was a genius, Padar. My teachers have assured me I am not.
Why do you need teachers to tell you what you are? Have I not told you about the falling girl?
Tell me again, I had insisted, because his explanations were adventures.
If Ibn Sina were here, he would tell you to imagine yourself as a falling girl. You are suspended in air, clouds so thick you cannot see. Your limbs are spread wide and touch no surface. Nothing reaches you. Nothing touches you. And yet you know you exist. How is that possible?
I had not wanted to disappoint him, but I wasn’t sure I understood Ibn Sina’s philosophical ponderings. I had closed my eyes, playing the part of a girl floating through space. I existed because I was here to say so. Even in suspension, I could think and breathe and be me.
You need no one to confirm you. You are everything you believe yourself to be.
We crossed a bridge, drove down tree-lined streets and past rows of homes. We stopped on a busy street. Though we’d traveled only a couple of hours, the temperature was much warmer than in Kabul. Indigo and his friend left for a few minutes, then returned with a bag of oranges and freshly baked bread. A few minutes later, Tilly had a heap of orange peels on her lap. With fingers and chins sticky with citrus juice, we could breathe a little easier. Indigo’s friend snapped a couple of photographs of the kiosks on the side of the road. Patricia and her friend posed halfheartedly for a picture before we got back into the car.
We circled through a roundabout, crossed the eastern end of the city, and continued along the highway that would take us to Pakistan. Signs of a border checkpoint appeared. Indigo wiped his brow with the back of his hand.
“Border coming up. Everybody got what you need?” Indigo asked, trying to sound casual.
Tilly rifled through her handbag. She pulled out her passport and the birth certificate. She searched some more, muttering to herself.
“Is everything okay?” Patricia asked sweetly, rubbing her shoulder. She’d pulled the neck of her top down earlier and shown us the faint bloom of bruises across her upper arm.
“I can’t seem to find my granddaughter’s passport. This is just terrible,” Tilly lamented. “I could have sworn I put it in my bag. I left it on the kitchen table so I wouldn’t miss it. Sweetheart, did I give it to you?”
She looked at me, a hand to her temple. I shook my head and pretended to look around our feet, as if it might have been dropped.
“What should we do?” the other American woman asked.
“I don’t think they’ll make a big deal. Let’s just tell them we’re Americans,” her boyfriend suggested.
No one wanted to turn back. Getting me across the border without a passport required trying our luck with the border patrol officers or concealing me in the van and trying to slip me through. Indigo, Patricia, and the other overlander couple argued the risks of each option. Tilly stayed out of the debate, wringing her hands and nattering to herself about how she really needed to get to that doctor in Islamabad. I pressed myself close to my forgetful grandmother. It didn’t take much acting for me to look like her anxious grandchild.
In the end, in a decision made by no one person, the back of the van was opened. Bags were removed and I was instructed to lie down in the trunk, the narrow space behind the last row of seats. I had to steady my breathing going in, as I was reminded of being shoved into the back of Shair’s car. We were just a small stretch of road away from the border. Tilly stroked my head and kissed my cheek before they buried me under bags.
“This just feels a little crazy,” the man said to Indigo.
“It won’t be for more than a few minutes. What’s crazy is that a piece of paper could be so important.”
“If we end up in an Afghan prison . . .”
“It’ll be a step up from your apartment back home,” Indigo said, finishing his friend’s sentence.
A nervous snort. A throat cleared. I lay curled on my side, feeling every bump in the road. After a few moments, the car slowed and I heard the radio turn on. Indigo greeted someone, his voice bright as the Jalalabad sun.
I listened carefully and tried to imagine what was happening. I heard no shouting or panic. Footsteps moved around the car, approaching the trunk door. I held my breath, praying my legs or head were not visible between the duffel bags and backpacks.
“Hey, hey, American!” an accented voice called out. My mind flashed with visions of palace guards, uniforms that belied allegiance.
There were two loud thumps against the back of the van. Indigo shouted something.
If I had to run, I would run. If I had to fight, I would fight. The drum in my chest beat insistently. My head twirled with a strange kind of vertigo, as if I were falling from the sky.
Chapter 22
“Oh, Indigo. You look like you’re going to lose your lunch,” Tilly chided, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “Did you think we wouldn’t make it into Pakistan?”
The overlanders looked exhausted, as if the five hours we’d spent together since Kabul had been more like five years.
In truth, it was the five minutes we’d spent at the border that had really sapped their strength. I’d heard Tilly at the rear of the van talking about needing some fresh air. She described the van careening into the side of the mountain. I thought I heard
a tremble in her voice. Her voice was so close, inches away. She said she had a terrible headache and hoped to see a doctor as soon as they crossed into Pakistan.
How kind of you, she’d said. How did you know I was thirsty?
I could imagine the soldiers looking at her silver hair, the Band-Aid on her forehead. Any self-respecting Afghan man wouldn’t keep a withering elder on her feet for long or badger her with questions. Even I wanted to offer her a chair.
The van rumbled along in silence. I avoided looking at the others, feeling like I caused a whole lot of trouble everywhere I went.
Indigo parked the van across the street from the American embassy, a long brick building two stories high. We stood under a plane tree on a street with gated embassies on either side of this compound. Cars and people moved in both directions on the tree-lined road. The embassy was bordered by a brick wall. Police officers who looked to be Pakistani guarded the gray metal gate at the entrance, and an American flag was hoisted high a few meters behind the gate.
“When you doubt what kind of person you are, come back to this moment,” Tilly said to Indigo and Patricia. She spoke as if she were a coach, sending her battered players into the final quarter. “This precious girl is out of danger because you came for her. This is who you really are.”
Patricia wrapped her arms around Tilly and me and squeezed us tight. The gesture surprised me. She smelled of talc and incense, smoke and flowers, and with my face buried in the soft cotton of her tunic, I was a shade embarrassed once I realized I was clinging to her. I let go and stood at Tilly’s side.
The other couple looked relieved to see us go, waving to us from inside the van. They were going to spend a week in Islamabad and maybe venture into the countryside. Indigo needed to get the vehicle fixed before they went back to Kabul and retraced their steps to Turkey. Patricia’s eyes misted when she talked about going home to the United States.
“You’re one tough cookie,” Indigo said as he gave Tilly a hug.
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