Sparks Like Stars

by Nadia Hashimi

  The captain ordered everyone, including me, to stay seated until Tilly could be lifted onto the stretcher on the tarmac. Two men in uniforms hoisted the gurney into the back of an ambulance.

  “I will go with her,” I insisted. But they shook their heads. I panicked, pulled away from them, and chased after the twirling red lights, dwarfed by a cavalry of planes. Fingers pressed into my arms hard, then harder, when I shouted in protest.

  Tilly and I had come so far. We had been through so much. She had made promises to me, and I clung to them even as I watched her disappear.

  Chapter 27

  The end of one day is the start of another.

  “This is temporary,” they said to me, these people without names. They sat me in a stark room and entered only to deliver bad news. It was not the welcome Tilly had promised.

  Blurred by exhaustion and a flight across time zones, I couldn’t tell if the man who entered now was the same one who had walked in earlier. There were no clocks on the wall or windows to the outside world. A man in a button-down shirt brought me bread, a dense circle of dough with a sprinkling of black seeds on top. The bread had been sliced in two and a creamy white spread oozed out from between the two halves. I pushed it away, my appetite spoiled every time I thought of Tilly, pale and breathless.

  With my hands beneath the table, I felt for the ring stitched into my pocket. I prayed they would not search me. This ring and I, twin survivors, were the last vestiges of our respective empires.

  When two men entered the room together, I pushed my chair back and readied myself for anything. They had plastic-covered badges clipped to their shirt pockets, but I couldn’t steady my thoughts enough to read what was written on them. One had a mustache and sideburns that looked like lamb’s wool. He held a clipboard in his left hand. The other man was clean-cut, not a hair out of place.

  “Where is Tilly?” I asked. The solitude had given me enough time to formulate fears and questions and to translate the latter into English. “I want to go to Tilly.”

  One man sighed with exasperation. The other scratched his head and sat in the metal chair facing me.

  “Sorry, but that’s not possible right now. She was very sick and needed to see a doctor right away,” he said, his words patronizing and slow. “We want to ask you a few questions first.”

  They started by asking me my name. Aryana Zamani, I told them. When they asked my date of birth, I told them the day, month, and year recorded on my sister’s birth certificate. Then they asked for the names of my parents. I took in a long, deep breath and wondered if I was saying too much or not enough.

  Once we get home, Tilly had said, as if I were returning to America instead of fleeing there for the first time, we’re going to tell people your true story. You will have nothing to hide there. We will keep you safe.

  Antonia had agreed, even as she’d chewed her lip and looked for holes in our strategy. And there were plenty of holes to be found in the plan we’d concocted to get me from Kabul to the United States. But alternatives were scarce and even more dangerous, which was why I’d landed in a room as white and threatening as an avalanche.

  “Did you know anything about the embassy attack in Islamabad?”

  “We were there,” I said.

  He was going to ask another question, but his colleague elbowed him and shook his head.

  “May we?” the mustached man asked, pointing to my bag. It sat beneath the table, the strap of the bag looped around my foot as if it might otherwise drift away.

  My small duffel bag held all I had: two pairs of clothing that Antonia had purchased for me, my notebook, the frayed copy of Eastern Bound, and the handful of photos I’d gathered from my parents’ bedroom.

  “It is my bag,” I said, to explain why they should not be allowed to go poking through it.

  “Yes, your bag,” they replied. Cheshm safed, I wanted to shout. To call someone white-eyed was to imply that their eyes could not see reason or decency. It was a phrase my father reserved for the most brazen politicians.

  “No.” I shook my head. The two men looked at each other, one raised an eyebrow. Their eyes drifted to the floor as I nudged the bag under my chair with my foot. I folded my arms across my chest.

  With a shrug, they decided to leave the issue of the bag and resume the questioning. They had taken my birth certificate before they’d brought me to this room and now placed it on the table before me.

  “Is this yours?” the mustached man asked.

  I nodded.

  “Look,” the other added, “you understand us, right? So here’s what you need to know. That nice lady who brought you here is going to be in a whole lot of trouble if you don’t start answering our questions. You may just be a kid, but we need to know who you are and why you’ve come here. If you don’t talk, that lady is going to jail instead of the hospital.”

  The mustached man’s eyes flashed to his colleague for a split second and then returned to me. He did not contradict his colleague.

  My heart sank to think of what Tilly had gone through on my account. From being quarantined with me in Antonia’s apartment to the accident on the road to Jalalabad and being trapped in the vault of the embassy, this woman I did not know had stood by me as steadfastly as any grandmother. Already I owed her my whole heart. I could not bear to think they would punish her for her kindness, not when she was so very ill.

  “This is my paper,” I said plainly, pointing at the birth certificate. “My mother and father name is here.”

  “So you were born here. How long did you live here?”

  “Two years,” I said, feeling inadequate.

  They started over, asking again the same questions that I’d not answered before. Little by little, my reluctance gave way and I gave them our address in Kabul, told them what my father did, and said that my grandparents were not living. The mustached man began making notes on his clipboard. I answered everything with the fewest possible words, both because of my limited English and because I did not want to give them any more information than I needed to.

  You’ll need to keep it simple, Antonia had said to me on the phone in Islamabad. Tell them the truth, as much of the truth as you can bear to tell. They need to understand what you went through so that they can understand how important it is for you to stay.

  But my name is not the truth, I’d replied.

  My father had such disdain for liars and cheats. The corruption of an entire nation begins with one lie, I’d heard him say.

  But Antonia had seen it differently.

  The truths you will tell are far bigger and much more important than this one small change.

  I’d wished with all my heart that Boba and Antonia could have debated this directly.

  The men asked my grade in school, and I felt a hole in my story. I worried, as unaccustomed liars do. If I told them I was in fifth grade, my age would not have matched. But what if I told them I’d been in year seven? Could they contact my school? I imagined my principal on the phone with these men, informing them that no child named Aryana Zamani had ever sat in her classrooms.

  I saw just how easily they would suss out my lies. I sat on my hands to stop them from trembling.

  Tell them the truth, Antonia had said. Boba had said the same.

  And that’s what I did. When I named Arg, they looked as if they’d never heard of the place, so I had to explain to them that it was the presidential palace. When I said President Daoud Khan’s name, one of the men asked me how to spell it. His colleague elbowed him and motioned for him to write down my story. I continued to relate the events of the coup, just as I had with Antonia and Tilly. As I told these two men that my family had been killed before my eyes, I was surprised to find that I could speak of that moment without collapsing to the floor. I worried briefly that I wasn’t grieving enough. It was hard to measure, since I’d been grieving alone.

  I sniffled, wiping my nose on the back of my hand. One of the men got up and looked around, then handed me a
napkin. I thanked him.

  And then I continued until I had told them all the big truths about the night Shair delivered me to Antonia at gunpoint, about Tilly and me crossing the border into Pakistan, and how I’d helped us escape from a hatch door to the roof of the Islamabad embassy.

  Pages of notes later, the official looked at his partner, and I could see that whether I told them I’d been in fifth grade or seventh grade or what the principal of the school might say did not matter to them one bit. I had given them details about a coup, details no child could have imagined. Antonia was right. The big truths obscured the little lies. I drank the water they’d brought for me and hoped they would lead me out of this room soon.

  “You heard anything about a military coup over there?” one man said.

  “Let’s just keep in mind, she’s a kid. Last night Ella told me she saw a three-legged deer baking cupcakes in our backyard,” his colleague replied.

  “Now I go to Tilly,” I said, wanting nothing more than to confirm with my own eyes that she had a doctor at her side.

  “No,” the clean-shaven man said, looking at the birth certificate again. He turned it over and held it up to the light, as if it were a gem and he was assessing its clarity. “That’s not how this works. You do tell a mighty story, but we’ve got to do some homework now. You’re going to be going somewhere else until we can figure out what’s what.”

  Chapter 28

  Once upon a time in Kabul, I stood at the far end of my block and spotted four boys gathered in a circle. These boys had been troublesome in the past. They pestered younger children and made a sport of kicking a ball against a neighbor’s gate and then hiding around the corner. I walked toward them, wanting to see what had captured their attention.

  The boys had crowded around a stray dog, one with tawny fur and dark-rimmed eyes. The boys had tied a rope around his hind leg and were taking turns poking at his prominent ribs and hunched shoulders with a long stick. The dog yapped and whimpered, gnawing at the rope.

  Leave him alone! I’d hollered at them.

  The stick passed from hand to hand. The boys either hadn’t heard me or chose to ignore me. As I stepped closer, I noticed that one of the dog’s front paws was deformed. It was shorter than the others, not quite reaching the ground. Given the shape he was in, it was a wonder he was still putting up a fight.

  The dog managed to kick up a small tornado of dust as he struggled against the pull of the rope and the boys orbiting his misery.

  I shouldered my way through the ring and took the stick out of one boy’s unsuspecting hand. I snapped it in half and then snapped those pieces in half again. A boy holding the rope stepped toward me.

  What do you think you’re doing, stupid? he demanded.

  How can you call me stupid with a face like that? I fired back, with all the drama of a Bollywood hero. What incredible hunters you are to have captured a lame dog! God save you all, future heroes of our country.

  I coiled the rope around my hand.

  A boy in an untucked shirt and threadbare jeans made a go for the rope, clawing at my forearm. I pulled sharply away, but when I turned my back to him, he reached over my shoulder, then under my elbow. I stomped on his foot, and he let out a howl. I stomped on his other foot. His friends snickered to see him hopping backward. After two hops, he fell onto his backside. I hurdled one last jeer as he crawled away.

  If your father asks about your scraped knees, be sure to tell him you were fighting with a girl!

  The boys departed, leaving me and the dewy-eyed dog in the street. Or I thought it was just the two of us until I heard slow and steady clapping. I whirled around and saw Boba standing in the doorway of our house. How much had he seen?

  Boba crouched down to get a better look at the dog’s sores. His lower lip had been torn and one of his nails snapped back. Boba clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in pity.

  People are God’s cruelest creations. They’ll step on the smallest of backs to feel an inch taller.

  Boba, are you angry? I asked.

  Very, he answered. And disappointed.

  I bit my lip, nervous.

  I came out because I heard the ruckus. I saw you stomp on that boy’s foot. That was disappointing.

  Because I shouldn’t have confronted them?

  Because you didn’t need your father’s help, he said, rising to his feet. Now, let’s set this poor dog free.

  As if offended by the conversation, the dog growled. I took a step back, shocked. The dog shook his head and bared his yellowed teeth.

  But I helped him, I said, feeling betrayed.

  Boba took the rope from my hand and held the dog at arm’s length.

  Don’t expect him to bow at your feet because you saved him today. He’s saved himself every other day of his life.

  As I was shuttled from one office to another, from one curious stranger to another, I couldn’t help but feel like that stray dog. Men and women asked me a hundred recycled questions, prodding me like a nine-year-old boy wielding a stick. I had no escape. I spent the first night in a room at the airport where I was alone for such long periods of time that I feared I might have been forgotten.

  The morning started with more questions from the same man who had seemed most doubtful about my story.

  “Please, I want to see Tilly. Please,” I begged.

  By the next afternoon, I was in a car.

  “Where we go?” I asked the woman escorting me out of the building. She had a large leather bag hanging on her shoulder, bulging with papers and a notebook. She too had a name badge clipped to her sweater. Ann, it read. Child Protective Services. Documents were so important to Americans, it seemed, that they pinned them to their clothing for all the world to see.

  “We’re going to a hospital,” Ann replied, and my spirits soared. Finally, I would be with Tilly. I was eager to see how much she’d recovered since I’d watched her being loaded into the ambulance, her skin mottled.

  A dark blue sign surrounded by trees and small plants announced the hospital. Ann drove the car right into a multistory building just for cars. It was the first time I’d seen a parking garage, and I was stunned by its size.

  The hospital was a sprawling building next door to the parking garage, connected by a concrete path. We entered the building and went down a maze of hallways until we reached a clinic. Ann handed a sheet of paper to the receptionist, a woman with a blouse so low-cut I could see the crests of her breasts. She read the paper and spoke to someone on the phone before agreeing to lead me to a room in the back.

  “They bring Tilly here?” I asked Ann. “I can see Tilly now?”

  Ann looked perplexed, like she didn’t know how to answer my simple question.

  “Yes, but no.”

  “Why?”

  The door opened. A doctor entered, smiling brightly. His white coat was snug on his belly, two of the buttons looking strained. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He wore a name badge too, but his was decorated with a cartoon elephant.

  “Ar-y-a-na,” he said, his eyebrows raised as he carefully enunciated the syllables of my name. He looked back at the paper the receptionist had left on the counter. “Welcome, Aryana.”

  He shook Ann’s hand and sat on a chair facing me. He squinted as he looked at me, as if he couldn’t decide where to begin.

  “Do you know why you are here?” he asked.

  I didn’t.

  “I want to see how strong and healthy you are. And if there’s something we can do to help you, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  This did not sound terrible. Not yet anyway.

  The doctor asked me many of the same questions. I told my story again. It was mechanical at this point. I’d found ways to distill it to its most important parts, the ones that drew the long, mournful looks from the Americans. The doctor let out a heavy sigh.

  He was kind, his voice soft and feathery. I imagined happy grandchildren at his feet, delighting in his affection. I began to relax. Ann
checked her watch. He asked me whether I took any medications or if I’d ever had surgery on any part of my body. He asked if I’d broken any bones or stayed in the hospital for long periods of time, if I’d ever fainted or had nosebleeds or felt my heart racing when I was sitting perfectly still. He asked if I suffered from headaches and wanted a detailed description of my most recent bowel movement. When I did not understand his words, he used his own body to demonstrate. It would have been comical under different circumstances.

  “When was your last menstrual cycle?”

  I had no idea what he was asking.

  “Your period. Blood,” he said pointing to his own crotch, hidden beneath a white coat. At the mention of blood, all of mine rushed to my face and I lowered my head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but I was still mortified. “I have to ask.”

  I wish it could have ended there. Stripped bare by a barrage of questions, I was then handed a thin cotton gown and told to undress. The doctor left the room. Ann motioned for me to remove my clothing. When I hesitated, she stood up. Reluctantly, I did as I was told, knowing that only Ann could get me to Tilly.

  The doctor returned and began his examination. He placed the cold bell of his stethoscope on my chest and my back and peered into my ears and mouth with a scope. He tapped on my knees and elbows with a rubber hammer and then instructed me to lie down.

  I looked to Ann. She pointed first to my head and then to one end of the exam table. The doctor put two hands on my belly, one on top of the other, and pressed down, moving a couple of inches at a time. I wondered if he thought I’d hidden something inside my abdomen. Then he moved to the end of the bed and said he needed to look at something.

  I was almost certain he’d said the word “gentle,” so I thought everything would be okay. He lifted my gown and I brought it back down with my two hands, pulling my knees up to my chest and trying to sit on the table. I looked to Ann, who hadn’t moved from her seat, as if she’d known all along what this doctor was going to do.