Sparks Like Stars

by Nadia Hashimi

  Grief starts before anyone has gone missing.

  I roll onto my side and squeeze my eyes to shut out the light of the pale moon.

  Chapter 41

  I am on the number 7 train going home, my finger running over the edges of a square of paper on which I’ve written an address while reviewing scans and upcoming appointments. Shair will return to clinic in two days to hear me explain how best to keep him alive, a discussion I may be uniquely unqualified to lead in this case. I don’t stand up when the train reaches my station. Instead, I watch the doors slide closed and watch the brick buildings blur as the train accelerates. The number 7 train rumbles deeper into the borough that is a compressed capsule of the world.

  I massage the angles of my jaw, feel the knotted muscles of my face. I am grinding my teeth more. Adam has told me it sounds like nails dragging across a chalkboard. When I was younger, Mom tried rubbing my back before bed, reading me soothing stories at bedtime, and even had me treated for parasites. Nothing stopped it. After I fractured a tooth, Mom had a custom guard made for me. It doesn’t stop the grinding but has saved me from breaking more teeth. I try not to let Adam see me wearing it, which he thinks is vanity.

  The doors open and I get off, jostled by people in a hurry to hit the gym or get home to a husband or to a teenager who favors television over homework. As I walk away from the station, the roar and clack of the train fades behind me. I did not pack an umbrella, which is enough to guarantee rain. The sky starts to drizzle. Cold droplets fall on my hair and stipple the concrete sidewalk. Though my wool coat is lined, I can almost feel the dampness through the layers. I move my nylon bag full of notes I still need to chart to my right shoulder.

  I will get to them eventually.

  My eyes stay on the rise and fall of the round toes of my flats.

  Plenty of my colleagues live outside the city. They have cars and front yards and walk-in closets. I prefer the crowds, the small footprint. When I’m hungry for air and space, I take the train out of the city and visit Mom. We pick out zucchini and heirloom tomatoes at farm stands and stroll down the town’s Main Street. From her balcony, the sky looks like a page out of an astronomy book. I’ve shared a lot with her, breathing in the clean air.

  I have not yet told Mom about Shair. If I were to tell her, she would be rational and protective of me, and I am determined not to let rational thought get in my way right now. I’m keeping too much to myself these days. I’ll fix this all soon.

  I’ve been to this neighborhood before, once to find a sari for the wedding of a medical school classmate. As I wandered in and out of shops, Bollywood music floated into the streets, just as it had in Kabul. I peered into the window of a fried-chicken store and saw a man who was surely Afghan handing a white paper bag to a customer.

  Decades ago, Horace Bullard, the son of a black plumber and a Puerto Rican mother, started the Kansas Fried Chicken franchise, one-upping the recipe of Kentucky Fried Chicken by adding a dash of Puerto Rican sabor. Rumor had it that he selectively sold his stores to Afghans because they’d taken up arms against the red flag of communism.

  The Cold War, battered and deep-fried, played out in Harlem and Flatbush. Afghans, their clothes splattered with cooking oil, became soldiers of capitalism and the American Dream. I watched the numbers of Afghans in the country multiply as more and more families fled the war and resettled in New York and northern Virginia and San Francisco.

  The year we lived in Istanbul, Mom asked me if I wanted to attend a Kurdish Nowruz celebration. I couldn’t resist the chance to revisit a holiday of my childhood. We watched heavy-bosomed grandmothers stand shoulder to shoulder in white dresses dotted with colorful pom-poms, kicking their feet in synchrony. I saw men leap over fires, cheered on by brothers and friends. A grandfather sang a ballad, his fingers plucking the strings of a tanbur.

  It reminded me so much of home that I closed my eyes and listened, exchanging the Kurdish songs for ones stored in my heart. I felt the ground pulse with vibrations from the hundreds of people gathered to welcome a new year.

  But when I opened my eyes, I saw a squadron of helmeted Turkish police officers closing in. I grabbed Mom’s hand, and she followed my gaze. Batons struck the backs of silver-haired men and women wearing embroidered vests, and shrieks filled my ears as we ducked into a narrow alley, knocking over a stand of copper vases on our way. We did not speak until we were in the safety of a taxi on the other side of the neighborhood.

  The government was seeking to stamp out Kurdish traditions, and Mom was furious at herself that she hadn’t foreseen the crackdown. No one, though, had anticipated the Turkish reaction to the Nowruz celebration. We both steered clear of nostalgia after that. I told myself it would get easier with time.

  But I am still drawn to my people. I have watched from afar as the country sank into civil war and then resurfaced with a new, fundamentalist face. I saw pictures of men with rockets on their shoulders and imagined the roofs falling, the barefoot survivors running toward a border. My ears perk up when I hear my mother tongue. I have dug up old songs on the internet and had small conversations with myself in Dari in the privacy of my apartment.

  I look up at the apartment buildings on this block and wonder how many windows belong to people who used to be someone else too. Taking a seat on the low cement wall in front of one building, I look at the six-story structure across the street. Its glass-enclosed lobby holds two black armchairs and an artificial ficus plant.

  The rain continues to come down gently while I wait.

  My phone rings. If I answer Mom’s call, I will lose my nerve. I text her that I’m still at work and return the phone to my pocket.

  People enter and exit. I stare at their faces and try to rewind the years.

  After an hour, I cross the street and enter the vestibule. I run my finger down the directory, a gray panel with dozens of slots. nabi is in apartment 5B. The outside door opens, and a woman enters, a cell phone pressed to her ear.

  “Yes, yes. But no movie for the kids. Mom, that’s not a good idea,” she moans. I take a step back to give her room to get through.

  “Do you need to get in?” the woman asks me, moving the phone away from her mouth as two bags of groceries dangle from the crook of her arm. A few inches shorter than me, she has the slightest hint of an accent. She tips back the hood of her rain jacket before fishing keys out of her pocket.

  “No thanks,” I say and flash a smile. “I’m waiting for someone to come down.”

  She nods, unlocks the door, and enters the lobby, where her voice echoes against the tiled floor and walls.

  “Madar-jan,” she says, shifting into Dari, “can we have this conversation face to face in one minute? I’m in the lobby.”

  I cannot stop my head from swiveling to have a second look at her. She must have sensed me watching, because she turns back too. I blink and look away. In a different life, I might have done exactly as she is doing right now—asking my mother if the matter can wait until I walk through the door.

  But Shair’s daughter and I have led two very different lives. I don’t expect her to recognize me. I don’t know what her parents told her about me once I left their apartment.

  Facing the street, I pretend to check my phone. I hear a ding and imagine her disappearing behind the closing doors of the elevator, ascending to the fifth floor of the building, and making her way into an apartment that I imagine looks just like the one in Kabul’s Macroyan apartment complex.

  “This is not Kabul,” I whisper, to stop myself from sliding headlong into the past. I leave the building and head back home.

  As the train pulls into the station at my stop and the brakes screech to a halt, I think about the tracks that run directly between my home and Shair’s apartment. Seeing him has reminded me of my early years here. Since the day he reappeared, my sleep has been fitful, conversations exhaust me, and running doesn’t bring the relief it always has.

  Whatever is about to come will either give me the
answers I’ve been waiting for or unravel me completely.

  Chapter 42

  Shair returns to clinic today, and I have meticulously planned the details of our encounter. I have him scheduled as the last patient of the day so that I can take my time and not worry about keeping anyone waiting on me. I have asked that he be brought into the room farthest from the reception area so the staff does not overhear our conversation. I have pulled my hair into a high bun to stretch my height.

  My phone buzzes with a text from Adam.

  Morning. Sleep well?

  Not at all, but I keep this to myself.

  Morning to you too. You’re up early.

  Adam generally isn’t up at this hour. He’s a night owl, fueled by energy drinks and the rush of deadlines.

  Not exactly. Pulled an all-nighter with my team. We came up with some great ideas.

  That’s good! I want to hear about it. You should get some sleep first, I reply.

  I grab my bag and lock my apartment door behind me. The hallway is dimly lit and quiet as I walk toward the elevator bank. The smell of coffee tells me at least one of my neighbors is up.

  I press the button and my breath catches in my throat when I see my hazy reflection in the elevator doors. I’m wearing an olive blouse tucked into a deep brown skirt. My cardigan has wooden buttons, and the gold of my necklace catches the light.

  It shouldn’t surprise me that I look like my mother. I buy clothes that remind me of her, dresses and skirts that I can hang in my closet to imagine I am a child peering into my mother’s wardrobe. I have outfits that resemble each of the ones she is wearing in the photographs I snuck out of Kabul.

  My chest tightens. I am sitting at the foot of a volcano, heat slithering toward me. I take a step to the side so I can no longer see my reflection and pull out my phone to distract myself. Adam hasn’t fallen asleep yet it seems.

  Met with my finance team yesterday. Things going well. Dollars rolling in but we need to widen the circle. Been meaning to talk to you about that. Maybe tonight?

  I feel myself stiffen. It will take some effort to get used to Adam’s new world, his priorities. Meet-and-greets and drinks with donors, interviews, and his face on flyers. I wonder what my father would make of this world, of the money and the spinning of stories. Once Adam knows everything, he’ll understand why I’ve eschewed politics in any form until now.

  Adam’s also forgotten that Mom’s coming into town today.

  Taking Mom to see Oklahoma! tonight, remember? Call me later. Congrats on the dollars!

  I roll my eyes. Congrats on the dollars? The longer I stare at the screen the more ridiculous the words look. I have never celebrated money. But I cannot unsend it, so I put the phone away and ready my metro card.

  Clinic moves at a frantic pace. I check the schedule every chance I get to be sure Shair hasn’t called in to cancel. Lacey’s hair is faint pink at the ends. She is wearing glasses with lilac frames. When she hands me a chart, I look up and see that the glasses don’t have lenses.

  “Lacey, your glasses are . . . missing?” I say, baffled.

  Lacey laughs and taps the hinge of her frames, then presses her fingers to her lips like we have some inside secret. I envy how lightly she moves through her day.

  I do not eat lunch. I see one patient after another, one family after another. I’m on my third cup of coffee and feeling like my heart might pound out of my chest when I sit with a forty-year-old man diagnosed with a tumor that is choking off his small intestine. He works as a docent at a museum. His wife holds their one-month-old girl in her arms. The baby’s mouth makes small sucking movements as she sleeps, and small as she is, she has filled the room with that newborn scent—talcum and milk. His wife looks like she hasn’t slept in days. She rocks her child closer to her chest, as if cancer might jump off the counter and sink into her pink skin. I know this is the last time they’ll bring the baby to clinic.

  I see a woman in her fifties who is a sculptor and a dance teacher. There is less of her than at our last visit, as if she’s wet clay on a pottery wheel, being reshaped into something new. I’d seen her three months ago, but on the day of surgery she called the office and said she was going to try homeopathic treatments recommended by her friend.

  “I am glad to see you again.”

  “I don’t know how this happened. I did a lot of research. I thought this would help more,” she says, her voice small.

  “It is not your fault. There’s nothing you did wrong,” I say. Even heavy smokers are shocked when they are diagnosed with cancer. Not one person I’ve ever cared for has seen it coming.

  “I know. It’s everywhere now,” she says. “I think it’s in our food. We’re probably stuffing our mouths with it and wondering how it gets into us. Why aren’t they researching this?”

  “We don’t have all the answers,” I admit.

  I manage to steer the conversation back to her disease and her treatment, conscious of the fact that she may not be wrong. And that my work is a little like trying to drain the ocean with a bucket.

  All the while, I sense the ticking of the clock. Shair is my next patient.

  Lacey hands me his chart when I come out of the room.

  “In a gown, as you requested. Doubt you’ll be in there long. He’s not much of a talker,” she says.

  I stand outside the door for a beat. When I step into the room, Shair draws his shoulders back. He is perched on the exam table, his legs dangling over the side. His calves are thin, tendinous. The years have not been good to him. I picture him standing in the elevator of his building, breathing in the mixture of sweat and spices and car exhaust.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Nabi,” I say. As I shut the door behind me, I see that he is not alone. The woman I saw in the lobby of his building sits in the visitor’s chair, legs crossed. She has placed her handbag and her father’s neatly folded clothes on the chair beside her.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Shephard,” I say. I do not reach out to shake her hand as I normally would. “How are you related to Mr. Nabi?”

  “I’m his daughter,” she says, looking over at her father. She does not recognize me from the lobby.

  Shair mumbles something in greeting, but I cannot hear him over the roar of my own thoughts. I tuck the rolling stool under the sink. I will not sit today. I will not be diminished in any way.

  “Your father mentioned you in his last visit,” I say. I set his chart down on the counter. “It’s good of you to be here with him today.”

  She nods.

  “I would have come last time if I’d known. He doesn’t tell us . . . didn’t tell us about the appointment.”

  “This is not your fault,” I tell her. “We’ve got a lot to talk about—good and bad. I’ve reviewed the imaging of his abdomen.”

  His jaw tightens, and he looks at his daughter from the corner of his eye. She fidgets in her seat, tries to find the right posture to receive what I am about to say.

  “But he said his pain is in his back. Is this for the heartburn?”

  I lean against the edge of the counter. I feel pity for his daughter, despite everything.

  “Has he not discussed his diagnosis with you?”

  She looks again at her father, but he raises an eyebrow in my direction. He wants me to tell her. I give her a moment to brace herself. Everyone deserves that much.

  “He has stomach cancer,” I explain, and she pales at my words. “It has spread beyond his stomach.”

  She plants both feet on the floor, blinks rapidly.

  “Are you sure? I don’t think . . . he quit smoking a long time ago,” she says in an attempt to redeem him. “How many years has it been?”

  “Not every cancer is caused by smoking,” I reply. I am usually warmer with patients. I don’t like that I’m a different doctor right now, but there is so much more happening in this room. “Mr. Nabi, you’ll need surgery. I can remove most of the tumor.”

  I review the details, half of which they will forget. Words like �
��chemotherapy” and “radiation” sound more and more like “nuclear” and “apocalypse” in a room like this. I list the risks and benefits of treatment, which is like sitting two elephants on opposite ends of a seesaw.

  “You can take time to think about this, but I wouldn’t wait too long to decide. The sooner we act the better the results will be.”

  “You do the surgery?” he asks me.

  “Yes,” I say, though I’ve already decided I won’t. Once I’ve had a real conversation with him, I will refer him to one of my colleagues.

  Shair uses the palm of his hand to brush his hair to the side. He clears his throat.

  “If I don’t do this surgery,” he says calmly, “what is happening?”

  “Boba!” His daughter’s eyes brim with tears. Her voice is a hoarse whisper as she makes a single plea to her father—please.

  “It is a fair question. If you choose not to have surgery, the cancer will continue to spread. It will become more difficult for you to eat. You will continue to lose weight and become weaker. And it will continue to spread.”

  His daughter’s eyes fill with tears. A small whimper escapes her lips.

  “How much time? With surgery and without surgery?”

  “It’s hard to say. Without surgery, maybe three months. With surgery, perhaps a year or two. It really depends on how the tumor responds to chemotherapy and radiation as well.”

  His breathing fills the silence.

  “What are you most worried about?” I ask automatically. I have not forgotten who I was when I first met Shair, nor can I forget who I am standing before him now. And I want to know everything about him, including the fears he harbors.

  “I don’t want,” he says, then shakes his head and points to his open mouth, his stomach, the insides of his elbows. “I don’t want tube, tube, tube, and machine.”

  His daughter mumbles something under her breath.