Sparks Like Stars

by Nadia Hashimi

  Did he know he would not live to see me return?

  So close. I was so close.

  I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and see meteors burning out in space, violent flashes of light. Since the night of the coup, Shair has made me feel like the worst version of myself, and I have resented him for that too.

  I put on my running clothes and lace up my sneakers. I slip out of the room without Mom noticing. The day must have exhausted her. When we get back home, I’ll find ways to spend more time with her. No matter what happens during this trip, I don’t want her to worry about me.

  The exercise room is locked at this late hour. I should try to go back to sleep or read or look for snacks in our room, but instead I venture to the lobby and beg one of the front desk staff to open the gym door for me.

  Whether out of pity or fear, a bleary-eyed man obliges. I thank him, the word coming out in Dari. He pauses just before he leaves, one foot in the hallway.

  “Are you Afghan?” he asks in Dari as well. I nod. He presses his lips into a thin line. “Are you . . . are you all right, sister?”

  I smile weakly.

  “I’m as all right as any of us,” I reply, and he lets out a long sigh.

  “Then I’ll pray for you too,” he vows. I listen to the soft pad of his fading footsteps before I move to the treadmill.

  And I run.

  Within minutes, the leaden feeling around my head begins to lift. I drink in all the oxygen in the room and expunge the dust from my lungs. I feel the burn in my calves, my thighs. I run harder and the burn gives way.

  It has taken them thirty years to find this site. And now that they’ve found the bodies of the president and his family, there will be no reason to search for a handful of his advisers whose names never made it into any of the history books.

  Beads of sweat slide down my forehead, stinging my eyes.

  I must let go. I cannot bring them back, nor can I have another conversation with Shair.

  It is intolerable.

  I will lose my sanity if I think of what I could have done differently, if I find all the permutations that could have led to a different outcome. I won’t do it.

  I will turn the ring over to the museum tomorrow and book an earlier flight home. Clay can stay and chase his stories. He is more at home here than I am anyway. I need to get back to my apartment, my patients, my life.

  Six miles later, I slow the treadmill.

  I return to the balcony and await the melodic beckoning of the azaan. The dawn sky is a palette of pastels. I watch the apricot sun take her place against the whispers of clouds. When I have taken it all in, I slip back into the room and find Mom dressed but looking pale without her rouge and lipstick.

  “Oh, thank God,” she says, dropping her toothbrush on the dresser. “I thought you’d run off with some wild plan. . . .”

  I sink into the bed and tell Mom that I do, in fact, have a plan. I lay out the agenda in my most matter-of-fact voice, as if I’m reviewing the results of a scan with a patient.

  “Are you sure you want to leave?” she asks.

  “I think I have to,” I reply, then pause before continuing. “Shair is dead.”

  “Oh, Ary.” Mom sinks into the bed next to me. I blink back tears. I’m willing to bet Mom is thinking of the very same moment I am recalling, when Shair pushed me into the safety of her arms. We are family because of him.

  “Okay. All right,” Mom says, righting herself and turning to the logistics of the task at hand, as she has done time and again over the last thirty years. She walks to the phone and calls Clay to break the news to him while I head for the shower.

  We eat breakfast, our table draped in silence. I look from Clay to Mom.

  “I’m all right,” I tell them. “Truly I am.”

  They hardly look reassured.

  “I’m going to get back to the hospital. Mom’s going to get back to her work, and Clay is going to get back to Selena and his book talks,” I insist.

  “I don’t need to rush back to my publicist,” Clay says, his voice soft as velvet. “I’ll go with you to the museum. And anywhere else you want to go, if you want company. I’m sticking around Kabul for a while. I’ve got a couple of weeks before my next string of book events.”

  Selena is his publicist. I blush, feeling dumb to have assumed she was so much more. I’m also a little surprised that this revelation stirs something in me.

  Mom’s eyebrow lifts in surprise. Ever my savior, she claps her hands and reiterates the day’s plan.

  “I’ll go to the embassy,” she begins. During our first visit there, she told a small circle of Carla’s colleagues that she’d met most of the warlords and top-billed leaders of the mujahideen. They’d been firebrands at the local colleges while Mom was stationed in Kabul. Carla has asked Mom to come back and brief the team on what she remembers, since a handful of those men had returned to Kabul after years abroad. “I’m sure they’re just indulging an old-timer. I can’t be helpful now except to tell them not to make the same mistakes we made.”

  Her comment surprises me. Not wanting to see her and Clay embroiled in another long conversation about what mistakes she means, I review my plan for this morning.

  “And I’m headed to the museum,” I say, rising from my seat. Clay brushes crumbs from his lap and takes one last sip of water before joining me.

  We part ways in front of the hotel. Our taxi heads south while Mom’s goes east, toward the green zone. Clay sits in the backseat with me. I am exquisitely aware of the few centimeters of backseat between us. We are in Afghanistan and subject to judgmental eyes, but that’s not the only reason.

  “You should write about the remains that were found,” I tell him. The cab rolls in and out of a deep pothole, jostling us in our seats. I recheck my seat belt and motion for Clay to buckle his. “They’re holding back now, but they’re going to have to go public with it soon. He was the president.”

  Clay grimaces.

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  “It’s a worthy story,” I insist.

  “No question,” he replies. He turns and looks straight into my eyes, holding my gaze steadily despite the uneven road. “But this story is too close to you, Aryana.”

  “It was the beginning of everything, Clay. People need to know how we got to all of this,” I say, waving at the world outside. “You see that. I know you see it.”

  “It’s too close to you,” he repeats. “I came to write about the museum, the war. Not you.”

  “You can write about both. You don’t have to make a choice,” I insist.

  In the square set of his jaw, I see his resolve.

  “Every article I write is a deliberate choice, Aryana. I go through a list of questions before I pick up my pen. Is it important enough to me? To other people? Can I do the story justice? Will I hurt anyone in telling this story? Will I find something I won’t want to write about?”

  I rest my forehead against the car window and take in the neighborhood, an adobe relief.

  “And if it doesn’t pass muster, then I don’t do it. Because there are enough journalists swooping in here claiming they ‘discovered’ something that’s been here forever. Or writing up poverty porn to get a byline.”

  Neither of us says another word until we pull up to the gates of the two-story museum, an elegant building of gray stucco and white architectural detail. The lawn in front, with its stone pathways and petite trees, is reminiscent of an English garden or a private school. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a bell toll and see a dozen boys in pressed uniforms come sauntering out the front door.

  In stark contrast to the museum, the guards’ station is a wooden shack with an uneven roof. Two men emerge wearing pigeon-colored uniforms. One has a rifle at his side.

  “Do you think they’re loaded?” I ask.

  “It’s never occurred to me that they might not be,” Clay admits.

  We walk through the gates topped with concertina wire. Through the front
door, we enter the spacious atrium with freshly painted walls and bright lights. A man wearing a charcoal-colored turban and white tunic and pantaloons regards us with faint interest. He pauses in his polishing of a glass placard as we pass by, and I read the inscription: A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive.

  He collects our admission fee and motions for us to proceed. Our footsteps pad softly against the tile floor. As far as I can tell, Clay and I are the only visitors here. Inside the purse I hold close to my side is the coveted ring that has traveled to the other side of the world and back again. This museum is a far cry from the ones I’ve visited in Europe or back home in New York City. I’m feeling torn.

  I examine each room with a discerning eye, looking for signs to guide my decision. We are in a long, light-filled room looking at a glazed bowl painted with lapis pigments when we hear the clack of shoes echoing in the hall.

  “Madam. Sir. Welcome.” A bespectacled man with a thick thatch of hair crosses the room and greets us with a respectful bow. His face is young, and his pants and jacket are a size too big, as if he’s dressed in hand-me-downs. “I am Nasrat, the head of the museum. Thank you for coming.”

  We exchange a few pleasantries with Nasrat and discover that he has personally curated the exhibits. He asks about our work and reason for being in Kabul. I tell him I’m a physician but here with Clay for research. My vague explanation doesn’t trouble him. He walks with us, speaking breezily of arranging rooms while respecting chronology.

  We pass an eighteenth-century horseman carved of wood. A stone vase with nude figures in relief. A traditional Kuchi-style Afghan dress. We turn a corner and come upon a slab of concrete carved with the letters of an ancient world.

  “This is the Rabatak inscription from the rule of Emperor Kanishka,” Nasrat explains. “The writing is Bactrian and Greek. It is from the second century.”

  Clay snaps a couple of pictures with his phone, testing different angles.

  “Our history includes many rulers, many religions.” Nasrat’s brows lift in the direction of the doorway, and he speaks to Clay in a mock-conspiratorial tone. “But we speak this softly. No need to wake the Taliban.”

  “Do you have any pieces from Ai-Khanoum?” I ask.

  “Doctor-sahib, thank you for asking about Ai-Khanoum,” Nasrat says. He walks us to the end of the room and points to a row of empty glass cases.

  “Most Bactrian pieces are not here,” he laments softly. His accent is heavy, but his command of English remarkable. He goes on to tell us about the shell game played with relics of the ancient world—artifacts moved from the museum to the Serena Hotel, to vaults beneath the bank. Many were looted along the way and fell into the international black market.

  “The Begram ivories were stolen and sold and are now in England’s museum. Our antiquities are more welcome than refugees. But slowly, inshallah, we will bring them home. This is my work,” Nasrat says with pride.

  I get the feeling that an older man should be doing this work, one with gray hair and a wrinkled face and musty books on his shelves. But there are few old men in this country. This is a land of adolescence, pockmarked and developing, challenging authority and stepping into the shoes of ancestors.

  Nasrat is a hopeful academic. He teaches at the university. He has a wife and two children, and he hopes his children will benefit from the teachings of history.

  “This small corner of Kabul,” he says, waving his arm to point to the carefully arranged artifacts in the room, “one day many people will come to see. Regime comes and goes. Alexander and his servant—both are dust. A bowl, a hairpin, a ring—only the things we create stay and tell our story.”

  Nasrat looks at me, his eyes well with conviction.

  “Doctor-sahib, you save a person’s life in this moment. A museum will save our lives after we are gone.”

  I thought I would be inspecting the museum’s walls and fixtures to see if the building was secure enough to hold the ring. But it is Nasrat who makes me realize that the ring’s fate is no less important than the museum’s fate. This institution deserves this piece of history.

  “I have something that should be here,” I say. “Could we step into your office for a moment? I need you to promise to make it part of the collection.”

  Nasrat, intrigued, leads us to his windowless office, in which a two-shelf bookcase is crammed with texts and unbound manuscripts.

  As Clay watches, I reach into my bag and pull out this most precious item. My voice does not break as I open the box and reveal the paired stones of the ring, as I tell the young curator that this piece was excavated by the French at Ai-Khanoum and should join the other treasures. Nasrat blinks slowly, looking from the ring to me to Clay—allowing plenty of time for me to have second thoughts, but I do not.

  Nasrat rises, closes the door, and wipes his forehead with a handkerchief when he returns to his seat.

  “As if this were just another day,” he breathes. Nasrat pours us each a small glass of green tea from a thermos on his desk. Tendrils of cardamom-infused steam soothe my senses. He holds his cell phone, his finger hovering over the buttons for a long beat before he begins to dial.

  Nasrat speaks to an official from the Ministry of Culture on the phone. A message goes out to a representative of UNESCO. The proper channels have been notified. The ring is in good hands. I stand and slide the strap of my bag over my shoulder, taking one last look at my talisman.

  “You must tell me how you came to have this,” Nasrat entreats. “You could not have been more than a child when Ai-Khanoum was excavated. Surely you did not dig this ring out of the earth yourself!”

  “No,” I reply, thinking of the way I’d clung to the ring, like a drowning girl holding on to a life preserver, and how we’d floated out of the castle together. “It was the other way around.”

  Chapter 59

  “We leave in thirty-six hours,” I say, hanging up the call. With the help of people at the embassy, Mom has booked new tickets for us. As much as I wanted to leave early, I do feel a bit disappointed to be turning away so soon.

  But what more is there to do? I have seen the ruins of my family home and the gleaming new stores. I have walked through streets guarded by soldiers from a dozen countries and seen bright-eyed children chat up those soldiers like old friends. I’ve visited the triumphs of the many empires that ruled this land as well as the deadly munitions left behind. There are addicts shooting up in the desiccated bed of the Kabul River and women vying for seats in a resurrected Parliament. The shopping malls are new, the music is old. The people are paradoxes as well, wizened and doe-eyed, hopeful and traumatized.

  “Will you come back?” Clay asks. He has brought me to a teahouse where young men and modestly dressed women congregate, a small rebellion against conservative traditions.

  “I don’t know,” I reply. And I truly don’t. “I would come back if they discovered another grave, but I can’t really hold out hope for that. It’s too consuming . . . and disappointing.”

  Clay takes a sip of his black tea, steeped to a deep mahogany color.

  “Waleed just sent me a message. His sister wants to know if you’d come help train some of the surgeons here. They’re eager to learn, from what he tells me.”

  I bring my cup of kahweh to my face and inhale the soft bouquet of scents. I detect minerals leached from the earth, cracked cardamom pods, a swirl of cinnamon, a hint of saffron dust, and a whisper of cloves. A single rose petal floats on the surface. My parents never served tea this way in our home.

  “I’d like to. I just don’t know if I can say yes right now.”

  Clay nods, understanding.

  “You’ve got to do what’s right for you.”

  “And what about you? What story will you be working on next?” I ask.

  “I want to do a piece highlighting the impact of war on kids,” he explains. “I mean, the impact our strikes have had here. I haven’t gotten much interest in it, to be honest. People want to read abo
ut violent Afghan men. They don’t want to hear about a kid who lost his parents in friendly fire.”

  “But you’re still going to write it,” I guess.

  Clay looks down at the table.

  “Have you heard of the napalm girl?” he asks. I’ve seen the picture but let Clay remind me of the backstory.

  “This photographer snaps a shot of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl running down the street without a stitch of clothes on her, not even socks. The skin on her arm is dripping off, and there are clouds high as mountains behind her, and it looks like she’s come running from some dark hell. There are guys in helmets walking on the road too. You can tell from the look on her face and the way her ribs are showing, like she’s using every bit of lung power she’s got.”

  I set down my mug.

  “It’s a horrific picture but an incredible piece of photojournalism. I mean, it’s the whole story in this black-and-white image. The truth it conveys is undeniable, but they still tried to come up with any excuse not to run it. Nixon thought it was ‘fixed.’ And then there was the issue of her nudity.”

  “People have an easier time kissing their elbows than believing war touches kids,” I say, lifting the wilted rose petal from my cup, feeling its velvety skin between my fingers. When I look up, Clay is looking at me intently, as if I’m tea leaves at the bottom of the cup.

  I look at him just a second more, just long enough to see him—one shoulder a smidge lower than the other from the backpack he keeps slung over it, the faint lines around his eyes from sun glare on Afghan plains, the perfectly mussed chestnut hair.

  “Have you been to Bagh-e-Babur?” I ask.

  “Not with you,” he says.

  I purse my lips and bury a smile.

  The gardens are a mere ten minutes away. I can feel eyes on us as we step out of the taxi. I glance over my shoulder, but no one looks like the man who followed me outside the restaurant. I am certain by now that my anxieties got the best of me that night.

  We stand just outside the high walls surrounding the gardens. I catch a few men looking at me. I’m dressed in a long skirt and a tunic with sleeves that fall to my wrists, like so many of the women here. And yet I exude an otherness that demands their attention. For a second, my neck warms with the heat of their curiosity, at the possibility that they are passing judgment on an Afghan woman walking with an American man.