But inside those high walls, the air clears and I feel my shoulders relax. We ascend stone steps and walk the avenue lined with maple trees. The Mughal gardens are rectilinear in design, laid out in sections with right angles and straight borders. Behind us, adobe homes adorn the skirt of a high hill.
“This was one of my father’s favorite places to picnic,” I recount. “I don’t know how many biscuits I’ve eaten sitting on one of these tree branches. My mother would scold me and tell me to come down before I fell and broke a bone. But my father . . . my father made it seem like the trees had been planted a hundred years ago just so that I could climb them.”
Clay walks beside me, loose-limbed and attentive.
“Your mom sounds like my mom. I lost my mom a year ago, out of the blue. She used to ask me why I couldn’t write about sports or maybe even politics,” he tells me. “I was here when she passed. I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I reply, and Clay clears his throat.
Three men in heavy coats sit on a blanket on the lawn, playing cards. A light wind rustles the leaves of the trees overhead. One man slaps down a card and lets out a triumphant shout. His friends shake their heads and accuse him, merrily, of cheating.
I am reminded of my parents playing, my father sitting cross-legged and my mother with her legs tucked to her side, her eyes hidden behind dark round lenses. I would peer over my father’s shoulder as he arranged his fanned cards by suit, guarding them dramatically from my mother’s eyes.
Padar, if you’re not careful, you’ll lose to her again!
Sitara, I’m prepared for it. She’s won me over a thousand times already, my father would reply. He had a way of looking at my mother that made her look away and blush.
Sulaiman, please! Mom would chide, holding in her laughter behind a tight smile. Stop or I’ll not play with you at all.
You see, Sitara. If you don’t have the heart of a lion, do not travel the path of love.
We walk a flagstone path to the far end of the gardens. The swimming pool is empty of water, though that hasn’t deterred a band of small boys from playing in the hollow. Two boys sit on the edge, their legs swinging. They turn their heads away and cheer, as if they’ve conjured the cool splash of water on a hot day.
“Sometimes I look at kids here and see ghosts from my childhood. I look for my friends and neighbors and cousins in their faces,” I admit. “As if time might have stood still all the years I’ve been gone.”
“Time isn’t that courteous,” Clay replies, his voice weighted with melancholy. “People keep living and growing and changing and dying whether we’re there or not.”
We pass a tree stump, thick and gray as an elephant’s foot, and a marble masjid with scalloped archways. Men prostrate in prayer in the alcove of the structure, where slanted sunlight warms their devoted backs. We walk through wooden doors twice my height and enter another enclosure.
Babur ordered that this garden be constructed in the image of the gardens of Paradise. Clay and I circle his tomb, admiring the marble lattice of its exterior before stepping into the cool shade inside. The entire structure is a marble enterprise, with a tall, upright headstone.
“Do you believe in heaven?” Clay asks me. Stippled light falls through the latticework and creates the effect of waves on the tomb.
His question makes me think of what Shair said about the seven heavens as we stood over his son’s grave. Whether I landed in the heaven with water or the one with white pearls, or brass, or gold, wouldn’t matter to me. Nor would I care if I ascended to the heavens with the Angel of Death or Isa or stood in the shade of the enigmatic Lote tree with Moses. I only wanted to know whether God would spread a single family over its seven layers. Nothing beyond reunion mattered.
Shair would probably be buried today or tomorrow. I’d noticed an empty plot near his son’s, in that cemetery designed to stay verdant all year long.
Then I remember something else Shair said, something another soldier had relayed to him about the martyred.
He said he’d laid them to rest among giants with a view of Paradise.
I grab Clay’s arm.
“I need to go back to the prison,” I say. I call Mom and tell her we’ll be by soon to pick her up. I tell her I’ll explain when we get there. It must take all the strength she has not to press me for details.
As I explain my theory to Clay, I realize how flimsy it sounds. It’s just a few words remembered by a dying man. Still, I can’t let this go unexplored.
Moments later, we are in a taxi outside the American embassy. Clay goes inside to get Mom. I’m too anxious to deal with going through security now. Instead, I take out my phone and call the officer we met at the prison. He doesn’t sound surprised to hear from me.
“I have new information that I’d like to share with you,” I tell him.
“I’m listening,” he says.
“It’s best we speak in person. I’m headed to you now. We won’t be long,” I say before hanging up the phone. I don’t want to risk having him reject my theory over the phone.
I’m so distracted with what I might find at Pol-e-charkhi that I don’t notice the man with the short beard and dark eyes coming toward me until he’s closed the distance between us.
I look at him, my back pressed against the taxi.
I think about shouting or banging on the cab’s window to get the driver’s attention. But before I can do anything, the man is in front of me.
“Don’t run,” he says, as if he’s read my thoughts.
Chapter 60
The man is wearing a loose button-down shirt over gray slacks. He’s close enough that he could grab my wrist, but he makes no move to touch me.
I know he is the man who followed me when I left the restaurant. Though it was too dark to make out his features then, I recognize the shape of him. The slight hunch of his shoulders, the tilt of his head as he regards me.
I square myself to him, though I don’t feel threatened. Some other sensation pulses through me, one I cannot name.
“Who are you?” he asks me.
“Why do you ask?” I reply.
He comes a half-step closer and looks into my eyes, searching for something.
“Sitara?”
I cannot breathe.
“My God,” he says, though I’ve not confirmed or denied anything. He shakes his head.
From the corner of my eye, I see a police officer watching us.
“Who . . . who . . .” I stumble as I begin to make sense of his face. I am looking at pieces of the past—the heavy-lidded eyes of a dead president, the dimpled chin of my best friend. I know before he says his name that I am as close as I can be to the halcyon days of my childhood, that I am standing before my co-conspirator and playmate Rostam.
“You’re here,” I say stupidly. I touch his forearm, and his eyebrows knit together. “How is this possible? You were in Arg that day!”
“As were you,” he says, his voice tender. He looks older than he should, ragged as a wanderer. I want to embrace him but hesitate. Though I know him, we are far from the sanctuary of childhood.
“And Neelab?” I ask, hoping with every fiber of my being.
He shakes his head, and I am crushed anew.
When Mom and Clay approach, Rostam is just beginning to tell his story. They both look concerned about the man standing so close to me that passersby take notice. Clay opens his mouth to say something but stops when he hears the crack in Rostam’s voice.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” he says. “How did you escape?”
We return to that day like warriors telling stories around a fire. I tell him how I slipped out of the bedroom to stare at the stars. I tell him about the soldier and the basement and two American women.
“We drove across the border,” I say, looking over at Mom. “And then went to America. I used my dead sister’s birth certificate to gain citizenship. She raised me.”
I tell Mom a
nd Clay that Rostam was a dear childhood friend and the grandson of President Daoud. They understand then, as best they can, what it means for us to see each other after so many years have passed.
Rostam and I return to the night of the coup and fill in the missing details.
Rostam and his family had been sequestered for hours. He and his grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins had played cards to pass the time. The children felt like they had stepped into a movie, something fictional and exciting.
That ended when shots broke out—first the indiscriminate strafing from above and then the deeply personal gunshots.
The family struggled with what to do. Someone wanted to raise a white flag. His grandfather and grandmother refused to leave, but urged the others to flee with the children. Cars had circled around to the palace entrance, ready to take them into the countryside.
It was too late.
A bullet struck Neelab in the chest. Rostam caught her, but the breath had already been knocked from her. The wounded moaned with pain. Blood streaked the floors. They tore curtains apart to make bandages and cried for help. In the middle of the night, soldiers caught Rostam attempting to escape and shoved him back into the room with the end of a rifle.
Kill me before they do, he heard his cousin beg. Rostam’s uncle had only held his son tighter.
When the second round of gunshots erupted, Rostam’s father had fallen but not before he told his son to try to get out through the gardens. Rostam had tried to do just that but slipped before he could get out of the room. He fell to the floor, a sharp pain in his leg. He touched his pants, wet over the wound. He couldn’t tell how much blood was his and how much was Neelab’s. When two soldiers approached him, he’d looked back at his father’s dying face and waited for the bullets that would end his life.
But they didn’t shoot him.
As they lifted him, Rostam’s hands had slid over the wet floor. He realized the bullet had struck a nearby boiler and only grazed his leg. The wetness he felt was water, not his blood.
Rostam would never know why they had taken him to a hospital for treatment when they had executed so many of his family members. He spent a month and a half in the hospital, visited by the chief doctor and guarded over by soldiers. When he was deemed well enough, he was shackled and sent to Pol-e-charkhi, where he was reunited with other family members who had been spared—uncles, aunts, and cousins.
“We lived seven to a cell in that dungeon,” he says. “We were allowed outside only to relieve ourselves. The rest of the time, we listened to the cries of the tortured through the stone walls. I hardly slept, wondering when it would be my turn to keep the others awake.”
“How long were you there?” I ask.
“Six months. Then one day, it was over. The shah of Iran sent a plane and put us up in a hotel in Tehran for a month before we went to Switzerland.”
Just before the coup, Rostam’s mother had gone to Europe for treatment of a lung condition. News of the attack on Arg reached her, and she’d been warned not to return. From what she had been told, there was no one for her to return to anyway.
When Rostam reached Switzerland, he’d fallen into her arms and apologized profusely that he’d not been able to protect Neelab. She’d apologized for not being with them that night. They live in Germany now. Rostam returned to Kabul three months ago when he heard about the commission to locate the bodies.
Tears slide down my cheeks. Rostam rubs both eyes harshly, blotting his tears.
“The other night . . . was that you in the street? Were you following me?” I ask.
Rostam nods.
“I have become friendly with someone at the Ministry of the Interior,” he says. “He told me someone named Zamani claimed to have lost her family in Arg. When he said your father’s name, I nearly choked on my tea. I didn’t know what to believe, or why you were using your sister’s name. He told me you were staying at the Intercontinental. I’m embarrassed to say how much time I spent watching the hotel, but I needed to see with my own eyes if it was really you.”
Rostam has come today to the American embassy to see if they would give him any information on who I might be. My heart soars to realize he had been looking for me and that I have been found.
“I’ll be going home soon,” Rostam says. “My mother wasn’t well enough to make this trip, and I have to get back to her. Most days she does not recognize me.”
I remember how his mother would gather Neelab and me in her arms and beg us not to get into any mischief around the palace. I hate to think of the suffering she’s endured.
“I will be heading back home soon too,” I tell Rostam. “But we’re going back to Pol-e-charkhi first. I need to check once more.”
Rostam nods. He doesn’t need me to explain to him why it’s so important to find them.
“May I join you?” he asks.
“Are you sure?” I want him to come with us but also realize that means returning to the place where he was held prisoner as a child and where many of his family members were buried.
“Yes,” Rostam says, straightening his shoulders. “Staying away changes nothing.”
We pile into the taxi. Mom sits in the backseat between Clay and me. Rostam slides in beside the driver. The drive to the prison is quiet. Rostam turns his head a few times to ask me about my work or if I’ve heard from anyone else we used to know. Clay asks him a few questions too. I suppose he can’t help himself.
Hamburg is home. This is his third trip to Kabul. He used to work as a tech consultant but lately cares for his mother.
“Now that I have settled this matter, I can focus on getting back to work,” he says in Dari to me, as if he owes me some explanation.
I catch his eyes falling on Clay and wonder if he assumes anything about us. A lifetime ago, Neelab teased that I could one day make us real sisters if I would just marry her brother. Seeing him now, I wonder what would have become of us if it hadn’t been for the coup. If we’d been allowed to grow up as children with parents and siblings in a childhood unscathed, what would our relationship have grown into?
He scratches the back of his head, and I note that he’s not wearing a wedding band. I wonder if his life has been a mirror image of mine. Now that he’s exhumed and reburied his family, does he feel any lighter?
I fight back the urge to reach over the seat and hold on to him for fear of losing the one soul who knew me as Sitara, a girl who smiled for the stars.
Chapter 61
When the driver pulls up to the outside gate of the Pol-e-charkhi prison compound, I see his eyes skate over the long wall running the length of the compound and the guard towers. Though I’ve paid him handsomely for waiting outside the embassy and driving us this far out of town, he tells us we’ll have to call another taxi to bring us back to the city. He’s eager to get away from this place.
I try to see Rostam’s face, but he keeps his eyes trained ahead. I don’t think he’s even looking at anything in particular. I touch his shoulder lightly.
“You can wait here,” I say.
I am the first person out of the car. An armed officer approaches me, his posture alert until he recognizes me from our last visit.
“I called your supervisor on our way here,” I explain. “He’s expecting us.”
The officer eyes me and the car with suspicion. He looks at the taxi driver, who shakes his head and points to us as if to say coming here was not his idea.
The officer walks to his station to make a call.
“Clay, can you work on him, please?” I say.
Clay nods, but then turns.
“Wait, what should I tell him?”
“Tell him to meet me out there,” I say as I slip away from the car and head off on my own.
It is a stretch to think I might know why they have not yet found the rest of the bodies. Maybe I’m reading too much into what the soldier told Shair about his mission that night. Maybe I’m trusting Shair’s memory more than I should. I won’t know until I
’ve looked in that circle of trees I saw the last time I came here, when I stood over the place where the bodies of the president and his family had been uncovered.
In Babur’s gardens, I saw a grave for a king who was just as dead as any peasant. His tomb may have been built of marble, and it may have been more spacious than others, but it was still a grave. The gardens around it made it a place of beauty. Shair had chosen to bury his son in a place that was peaceful because of the evergreens and the flowers people laid on the tombstones. Even in life, we crave the green lush of heaven’s gardens.
I wonder if the soldier who drove the last of the bodies away from Arg had seen that circle of giant trees. I wonder if he took Shair’s words to heart and decided to lay those bodies to rest among woody giants with a view of Paradise in their green canopy.
I walk around the corner of the compound and head in the direction of the excavation site. I walk quickly, not wanting anyone to catch up to me right away. The closer I get to the site, the less explaining and convincing I’ll have to do. I hear a car door slam behind me.
I look over my shoulder and see that Mom is watching me from a distance. Maybe she’s staying back so she doesn’t draw more attention to me crossing this dusty plain. Maybe she knows I need to make this small trek on my own.
I pull my headscarf across my mouth and nose. My throat already feels rough and parched.
As I approach the hill, I hear the echo of distant shouts. Up ahead, I can see the circle of soaring trees at the far end of the shooting range. I look over my shoulder once more and see two men peering out from a guard tower. I can’t make out what they’re saying. It’s hard to hear with my pulse thrumming in my ears.
My step quickens. I break into a jog, wanting to be there already. I slip and fall onto my knees. I am back on my feet without stopping to dust myself off. I reach the circle of trees and rest my hand on the gnarled bark of a giant. The girth of their trunks testifies to the decades they have lived in this spot, this small community of sentries, witnessing and guarding Kabul’s secrets.
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