“Be ready tomorrow,” he says. “We’ll send a car to your hotel. But be warned. You may think you’ve come only with grief, but that’s not true. You’ve come with hope too. Don’t blame me if you leave Kabul feeling robbed.”
Chapter 55
We’ve chosen a restaurant hidden from the street by thick blast walls. Once I’ve scanned the room and located all the exits, I take a second survey of the restaurant’s decor, which is nothing like the damask and rococo designs of the hotel dining hall. The chairs here are not lacquered. There are no chandeliers.
Our table is set against a wall of exposed brick, and our faces are illuminated in candlelight. We are in a restaurant named after Rumi, the Sufi poet. Expats gather around low-set tables, resting against merlot-colored pillows and cushions with arabesque motifs. Lanterns hang from the ceiling and cast a light as soothing as birdsong.
Mom and I sip saffron tea, liquid sunsets, from ceramic mugs with Sufi wisdom written into the glaze.
My soul is from elsewhere and I intend to end up there.
The weight of the poetry and the warmth of the drink help settle me. At least a dozen nationalities are represented in the room. Calligraphy in the Nastaliq style gilds the walls. Each word, each letter, creates shapes on the wall—a whirling dervish, a vessel, a mountain peak, a winged bird. This restaurant would fit perfectly in my transforming neighborhood back home.
Books are arranged artistically on floating shelves with small signs inviting customers to feed their souls while they feed their bodies. I reach over and select a thin volume of poetry written by a woman who had been murdered by her husband. I flip it open and my eyes fall on a line printed neatly at the very center of the page.
Sparks rain from my sighs like stars
Our waiter sets down steaming plates before us. As if he’s pushed a rewind button, my head spools in reverse, back to the dinners of my childhood. Seasoned kofta kebabs adorned with lemon wedges and perky sprigs of cilantro and mounds of long-grain rice browned with caramelized sugar and topped with sautéed and julienned carrots, plump raisins, and pistachio slivers. Mom dips her fork into the fried eggplant drizzled with tomato sauce, garlicked yogurt, and a dusting of dried mint.
“Well,” Mom begins. Her headscarf, like mine, has fallen to her shoulders.
“It’s been a long day for us all.”
When Carla came to the cafeteria and apologized that she hadn’t yet gotten the right person on the phone, Mom had asked if she could join Carla on the calls and Carla had reluctantly agreed. Her call to the ministry came through while I’d been sitting across from the mustached man.
“And you didn’t have to grease the wheels a little?” Clay asks me as he tears off a piece of warm bread. I’ve filled them in on my visit to the ministry and relayed the information I was able to obtain.
“Not at all. He just asked me to keep it quiet. Said he was breaking all kinds of rules for me.”
“And he didn’t give any hint where this place might be?” Mom asks again. She huffed a bit when I told her where I’d gone but bit her tongue. She and I both know she would have done the same. Rather, she has done the same.
“Not at all,” I reply. Clay’s phone chimes with a message. Selena’s name appears on the screen. Clay reads it, taps out a quick reply, and then sets his phone back on the table.
“There’s a small kebab stand down in the market. I mean, literally a stand. The guy fries onions and tomatoes in this pan wide as this table. That kebab was almost worth two days of gastrointestinal hell.”
Clay’s willingness to dodge bullets and torture his bowels in his quest for the truth astounds me.
“Poor Selena. She’s got to be wringing her hands every time you leave home,” I say.
“Selena? Nah. The more danger I get into here, the happier she gets,” Clay says.
I want to ask what he means, but bite my tongue so I don’t risk offending a man in love. It occurs to me, though, that this is the first time Clay has mentioned Selena, and his eyes hardly lit up to see her name on his phone.
Is that how Adam and I acted toward each other? I had long ago stopped feeling the small thrill of his phone calls or text messages. Maybe walking through fire makes it hard to feel sparks.
Clay stabs a piece of kebab with his fork, inspects it, then brings it to his mouth. He chews thoughtfully, as if he’s going to issue a final score for the chef. But when he’s swallowed, he swipes his napkin across his mouth and looks at Mom.
“When you were here,” he asks her, “did you have any idea of what was about to come?”
Mom pauses before answering, her face shadowed with regret.
“I was sent to Kabul as a reward for dealing with roadside militants and rampant crime in my two previous posts. Here, we were having soirees with Foreign Service officers from all over the world late into the night. For most of my time here, the biggest news was finding out an ambassador’s wife had caught him in bed with a leggy economic officer from another embassy. We were having the time of our lives hanging out with each other in this beautiful country.”
“What about the Russians?” Clay asks. “Were they part of the fun?”
“Sure,” Mom recalls, adding a spoon of cilantro chutney to her plate. “It was before the war.”
“But it was during the Cold War,” Clay notes. “So part of the mission must have been about checking their presence.”
“As officers of the U.S. Foreign Service, our mission was to build diplomatic relations between the United States and Afghanistan,” Mom says in the carefully arranged language of a Foreign Service officer.
“Diplomatic relations with Afghanistan were one tactic in the Cold War strategy,” Clay responds. “You’ve got the Russians and the Americans trying to be best buddies with the Afghan government. Two muscle-flexing superpowers playing tug-of-war, and they shredded this country to pieces.”
Mom sets down her fork.
“That might seem like a neat little explanation for how things went down, but you fail to grasp that we were building real relationships with real people. I knew President Daoud. I’d met his family. We weren’t here to battle Russians.”
“Not militarily, no.”
They seem to have forgotten that I am at the table as well. Mom’s hands are clasped together primly, her head cocked to the side. Part of me thinks I should intervene now, but I also know that one way or another they will have this conversation, either tonight or another day. Part of me knows this is the conversation I have avoided having with Mom for much of my life, purely out of love.
I’ve felt a headache coming on since we sat down. Taking my pills on an empty stomach will be torture, so I focus on eating and try to ignore their debate.
“Look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to offend,” Clay insists. “I’m just looking at it objectively.”
“You’re very critical of our work. But the Russians were probably the ones who masterminded the coup. And they poured millions and millions into this country and made sure people were grateful for their Polytechnic University—”
“And we did the same with American University,” Clay adds.
“They built Salang Pass . . .” Mom continues.
“We started that dam . . .”
“And the Macroyan apartment complex . . .”
“While we sent in almost two thousand Peace Corps volunteers to teach English,” Clay says softly. He’s not cocky in his retorts, just insistent.
Mom leans back in her chair and folds her arms across her chest.
“Okay, smart-ass. Let’s say we were going tit for tat. The coup changed everything. It was a Russian-orchestrated prelude to a kiss, the military invasion of this country, and the beginning of the end. You saw the Russian tanks with your own eyes, didn’t you?”
“And I saw the Stinger missiles Reagan sent over like they were party favors.”
I set my napkin beside my barely touched plate and push away from the table. When I stand, both Mom and Clay become s
till.
“I can’t listen to this,” I announce brusquely.
A waiter, a thick-browed man in his early twenties, pauses at our table to check in on us. Clay takes a sip of water and Mom purses her lips.
“Is there anything I can bring for you?” he asks in a deeply accented voice.
“A ceasefire would be great,” I grumble.
The waiter looks bemused.
“Sorry, sister, this is not on our menu,” he says. He turns his attention to a more tranquil table by the windows.
Mom is on her feet, her hand on my forearm.
“Ary, sweetheart,” she starts, but I shake my head.
“It’s okay, Mom. It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. You’re right. Clay’s right. But I didn’t come here to do a postmortem on the Cold War. I came here to find my family.”
Mom bites her lip. She looks pained, as if she might have absorbed my headache through her hand on my arm.
Clay exhales sharply.
“I need a walk,” I say. They both rise to leave with me, remorse on their faces. “You guys should stay and finish eating . . . and talking.”
I stand outside the restaurant for a few moments, letting their argument dissipate into the night air. I start walking in the direction of the hotel, though I know it is late and the air is thick with car exhaust and the smoke of burning wood, plastic, tires, and coal. I think of the six million people in this city and the scarcity of oxygen.
After two blocks, I pause.
Someone a few meters behind me has been walking at my pace and in the same direction since I left the restaurant. I glance over my shoulder. I cannot make out his features from this distance, but I can see he is wearing dark slacks and has his hands stuffed in his pockets. I cross the street and walk to the end of the block, past a furniture store and a print shop. I pause to look at the signs in the print shop window. The man stops walking again.
I spot a taxi a few feet ahead and make my way to it. I tap on the glass, and the driver looks up, surprised. He rolls down his window, and I tell him I need to get to my hotel quickly. He nods and I slip into the backseat.
As the driver pulls into the road, I turn. The man is standing in front of the print shop, where I stood only moments ago. I see the light of a cell phone in his hand, but he’s not looking at the screen—he’s watching the taxi.
At the hotel entrance, a female guard pats me down behind a curtain. If her hand lingered on my chest for a second, she would have felt my heart pounding. When my purse and body have passed through the security layers, I take the elevators up to the room and open the safe, my fingers trembling. The jewelry box sits alone and vulnerable in its small cell.
I open the box and touch the stones. Will the ring be protected here? Will it mean half as much to anyone as it has meant to me?
I tuck the box into the pocket of my cardigan, then leave the room and make my way down the hallway, into the elevator, and up to the empty rooftop balcony. The temperature has started to drop again. I peer out onto the swimming pool and the faint lights of cars approaching the hotel entrance.
From this humble summit, a hilltop set against mountains, I turn my gaze to the starlit night. The long tail of Draco still curls around Ursa Minor, as it did when I was a little girl. The sky is full of conquests and sorrow, heroes and villains, monsters and magic.
“Can you see me better from here?” I whisper to the still night, my cheeks tingling with cold. Below, the city is a pale reflection of the sky. I fill my lungs with the smoke of burning rue and grumbling generators, of freshly baked bread and a hint of gun smoke, of bright cardamom and heady hashish. The air intoxicates me, turns me foolish and honest as a drunk.
“Forgive me,” I say, with my hand raised to the blanket of stars above, ashamed of how long it has taken me to return to the place I came from, to ascend into the elsewhere I’m intended to be.
Chapter 56
The azaan echoes across the dawn sky, the hopeful muezzin singing that prayer is better than sleep. I have forgotten how to pray. The surahs I had learned to recite in my childhood in the sacred language of God were the first casualties in my private war. But the call wakens me, even if it doesn’t waken something in me. I slide one leg and then the other out of bed. Mom is a few feet away on the second bed, curled on her side with her back to me.
I imagine Tilly here with us, listening to the azaan. I picture her whipping a comforter off the bed, spreading it on the floor, and prostrating herself to see what it is like to worship a foreign God. The image brightens my morning.
I open my laptop and see a new message from Adam in my inbox.
Hey. Your phone’s going straight to voicemail. I left my thumb drive at your place. Stopped by to try to pick it up but your neighbor says you haven’t been around in a few days. Hope you’re enjoying your vacation. Kindly FedEx it to me or drop it off at my office.
I hear Adam’s voice in my head. I hear him enunciate “vacation” and picture him tapping out one bitter letter at at time. There is a new email signature that links to a website. I click on it and see an image of Adam the candidate in a dress shirt, sleeves rolled up so his forearms are exposed. He’s shaking hands with a Black man in a tan Carhartt jacket standing outside a subway stop. Adam’s wearing his cocktail party smile.
It occurs to me that Adam’s friends all look like him. His previous girlfriends all looked nothing like me. His website says he’s running to stand up for the everyday people of his neighborhood, but I’ve never seen him spend more than a few moments with anyone that couldn’t be mistaken for his brother. I look out the window, recall the Sufi-themed restaurant and the walk to the Ministry of the Interior. I try to imagine Adam dipping a toe into this world.
I’m equally concise in my reply.
Out of country. Will send it when I return.
“What time is it, sweetheart?” Mom mumbles.
“Too early,” I whisper back.
She rests her head on her bent elbow and considers me.
“What were you just thinking about, Ary?” Her voice is throaty with slumber.
Everything. Nothing.
“The azaan reminded me that I’ve forgotten how to pray. And it made me think of Tilly,” I confess, grinning. “I was thinking if she were here, she might have tried praying.”
Mom’s laughter is faint at first. Then it swells and pulls me in. A moment later, the sound of our laughter fills the quiet of our room. She sits up and wipes a tear from her eye.
“Let’s do it,” she says.
“Let’s do what?” I ask.
“Pray.”
“But I don’t remember how.”
Mom stands up in her flannel pajamas and walks to the window to take in the melting dawn sky. She parts the curtains and a pink glow spills into our room and onto the wrinkled bedsheets, the muddied boots by the door, and the headscarves hanging on the backs of chairs.
Mom surveys the room, taps her chin with her finger. I pull the comforter off my bed, spreading it out on the floor. I remember my father once telling me that whether prayers were made on a gold-threaded rug or on a straw mat, they carried the same weight with God.
Mom bends at the waist, her spine curving as she brings her face toward her knees in a yoga pose that is sister to a prayer posture. I do the same but less gracefully, touching my hands to my knees and drawing a deep breath. We rise and kneel in synchrony, then bring our heads to the floor. Mom’s hands are stretched out in front of her in a child’s pose, balasana. I touch my forehead to the comforter and hear my mother whisper the word for this spiritual submission—sajada.
The Arabic words float in my consciousness, but I don’t reach for them. My head grows heavy, as if I am a tipped hourglass and it is filling with sand. I come up slowly into a kneeling position. The desert in me rearranges once more. Sands shift back into place and my chest lightens.
“There’s a saying I heard once,” Mom shares. “Prayer is you talking to God. But meditation is God t
alking to you.”
The warbling of a bird blends into our thoughts.
“I remember Tilly sitting on the roof of the apartment one day with this wild glow on her face . . .” My words come out in a sputter. When I see Mom wipe a tear from her cheek, I stop. I could kick myself. “Oh, Mom. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Mom insists, her face pinched. She wraps an arm around me. “You know, we’re so damned afraid that talking about the ones we’ve lost will hurt us as much as losing them did. So we just stop talking about them. But that’s when we truly lose them.”
She’s right. I’ve stopped myself from thinking about my family because I’m afraid of spiraling into grief that has no bottom, into a place from which I cannot climb out.
“When I was a kid and I lost my dad, people told me I had to move on. They made me think grief was like a cold,” she continues. “If you don’t act sick, you’ll get better. And if you don’t get over it in a week, then you’re weak or there’s something really wrong with you. But I think it’s okay to mourn people out loud for more than a few days. I never said that to you. I’m sorry, I didn’t know better.”
In that moment, I realize why I’ve lived my adult life feeling like my insides are made of sandpaper. I’m just as culpable as Shair in robbing myself of my family. I have not allowed them to be part of me, failing to understand that their light can be my dawn—that a good day begins with a good mourning.
“But Tilly,” Mom says, touching the comforter with her fingertips, “my mother didn’t brush feelings away. She sank into them, and sometimes so deeply that it scared me. I think that’s why I made every effort not to be like her.”
“She had regrets too,” I tell Mom. “But she called you a superhero.”
Mom looks at me, half her face in shadow.
“When you showed up,” Mom says, her voice rocky, “you stole her heart. I remember talking to her while you slept one night. I was so afraid of making a mistake with you that I was just about paralyzed. But Mom grabbed me by the shoulders and said, ‘Nia, when you find a child you can save, you don’t overthink it. You save her or you lose yourself.’”
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