Flowers from Afghanistan

by Suzy Parish

  I placed the toy in Bashir’s outstretched hand, and it was done. My last link with Little Mac severed. He clutched the pinwheel to his chest as if it was a treasure. It felt like my heart tore inside me.

  All that was left to me was a cold marble tombstone in Dogwood Hill Cemetery with a boy’s name, date of birth, and date of death.

  Bashir’s face lit up. He ran circles, spinning the bright blue pinwheel. He laughed as the breeze made the little wheel spin, spin as it was created to.

  Gul had been watching all this closely as he swept up shop. Every now and then when I looked up, I noticed his eyes studying us, Bashir and me. He seemed to be struggling with a thought. His brows were drawn together, and his whole being appeared to be weighed down with an invisible burden.

  I was his last customer of the day.

  “I would like to drink chai with you.” He placed the broom and dustpan against the chipped tile wall.

  “Now?” I’d really rather have left. That way I wouldn’t have to watch the pinwheel spin around the room.

  “Yes, I am done for the day. Please, do the honor of drinking with me.” He carefully packed his barber tools away in the drawers of his stand. He meticulously placed each pair of scissors, each comb exactly where he wanted it. His life was orderly at camp. I bet he longed for the same order outside those walls. In Kandahar, life was unpredictable.

  “Please wait while I change clothes.” He emerged in a moment dressed in his native garb, the cream prayer cap perched solemnly on his head.

  I didn’t know what he was up to, but he was deep in thought.

  We ordered at Green Bean’s window.

  “Two chai, please.” I dug in my pack for my wallet, but Gul waved me aside.

  “I am paying today, please.”

  With a look from him, I knew I would insult him if I objected. He was so solemn. I had never seen Gul this way before. I knew he had a lot on his mind, but this was not the parable-quoting man who was so quick to laugh. I drank on Gul’s tab.

  We gathered our drinks and claimed a table facing the mountains. I loved those mountains. The bases were shrouded in fog, and the jagged tops gleamed most of the year, white with snow. I tried to memorize them. I’d leave them soon.

  Bashir took his place at the table beside his father, mischief all over his face. I never knew what he was planning next. The next minute he was up, running circles around the patio, spinning his new toy in the wind.

  “Bashir, come here,” Gul called in Dari.

  The boy immediately stopped at his father’s side. For all his energy, Bashir was an obedient son. He never questioned Gul, just did as he was told. Such trust in his green eyes as he gazed up into his father’s eyes, eyes that now filled with tears. What stirred up this emotion?

  Gul took my right hand, his brown hand hard and sinewy from years of working barber’s shears. Though he couldn’t be much older than I was, in a way, Gul seemed ancient. Though I was a police officer and had seen and heard things that would age the average American, Gul lived in a land that had no pity on man, and his body was ravaged by it.

  He took Bashir’s hand and placed it on mine. He spoke to Bashir in Dari and then turned to me.

  I swallowed down the question that came to my lips because I knew he was not finished speaking. My head pounded. I was jittery. Before I could get the question out of my mouth, Gul turned to me.

  “We can no longer stay in this country.”

  I knew the weight of his words because I knew that he loved this place. The mountains, the rose bushes blooming in such an unexpected place as a military camp.

  Gul’s face had aged significantly since the day we met. Lines crept around his mouth, and his eyes seemed sunken. He placed his hand over mine as I held Bashir’s. “I told you many months ago, the dreams I had for my only son. The situation is such here that I fear he will never have the opportunity for the education I want for him.”

  Bashir grinned up at me, a gapped-tooth smile. His baby teeth were dropping away, his childhood with them.

  “I am asking you, Mac McCann, to give us sponsorship once you are in the United States. I will see that he gets an education. One day he can return and help the people of his birth.”

  “You mean you want Sophie and I to sponsor your family?”

  “Yes, that is what Sergeant Thorstad called it. I asked him for a way to make sure Bashir gets an education, and he said that we need a sponsor in America.”

  Sophie’s instructions came back to me. I heard her in my mind the day she told me, “If there is anything else you stumble on that we can do for them, you already have my agreement, even if you can’t get hold of me first.”

  I knew what she would tell me to do. She’d tell me to say yes.

  Our lives were about to change once again. For now, we would not only be the parents of a newborn, but we would also help a family navigate the waters of temporary residency. My throat was tight. For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Then I grabbed Gul in a bear hug. I wanted to reassure him. I wanted to let him know how seriously I took this duty. Father to father.

  A new light was in Gul’s eyes, bright and profound.

  I’d carved my name on a bench my first week in Afghanistan. Some would make a difference greater than a name on a bench.

  Bashir Hadi would be such a one.

  36

  Thorstad refused to give up his ticket. I was only joking anyway. I put in my time and disembarked from my final flight.

  I was almost home. The fifteen-hour flight from Dubai was again torturous, but I didn’t mind. I was out of my seat as soon as they gave me the go-ahead. I grabbed my bag from the overhead, nearly missed hitting the passenger’s head behind me.

  Then they gave us the go, and I moved as rapidly as I could down the aisle, down that tunnel-vision corridor that wound until one felt as if one was lost in an awful dream. But I wasn’t lost. I was almost home.

  Everyone I passed I wanted to yell at that I was going to see my wife and my unborn child.

  The smells and sights were familiar again.

  I was moving, and my feet couldn’t stand still. I was on the escalator and had second thoughts. I should have double-timed it down the stairs. Why did this thing move so slowly?

  The airport was crowded. I scanned for Sophie. The crowd moved along so slowly. Too slowly.

  Sophie, where are you?

  My duffle bag was stuffed with last minute items. The strap cut into my shoulder, but I didn’t care.

  And then, I saw her, standing at the side of the crowd. She hadn’t seen me yet.

  No words. Just motion. Just momentum. I threw my bag to the floor and ran to grab Sophie, pulled her into my arms, and twirled her around. The surprised look on her face reminded me, and I set her down gently.

  The waist of her thin cotton top was rounded, a little bump.

  I bent, planted a kiss on her belly.

  Sophie had tears running down her face. They dripped off her chin and mingled with mine as I pressed my lips to hers and pulled her in.

  “I’m never leaving again.” I kept saying it. “Never, Soph, never again.”

  She repeated my words until I muffled them with my lips.

  I was just an awkward nineteen-year-old again, sitting in a foggy-windowed truck, kissing my girl for the first time. I pulled her as close to me as I could, and she buried her face in the crook of my neck. I kissed the top of her head, breathed in her blackberry-woodsy perfume.

  ~*~

  The sun swept over Dogwood Hill Cemetery to the west. It dragged long shadows across the tombstones and set the carved words in even greater relief against the white stone.

  We stood at Little Mac’s grave. Grass covered the once-raw earth. Sophie carefully arranged flowers in the little urn attached to the headstone. Silhouetted against the sky, she bent low to see the name inscribed on the stone. She traced the letters with her finger. Sophie guided the pudgy fingers of our ten-month-old, the light of my life, my precious daughter. S
he had my reddish hair, curling in ringlets around her face, but her features were unmistakably her mother’s. The same delicate forehead and pouty lips.

  “See here?” I pointed so Maddie could see the letters. “That’s your big brother’s name.”

  Letters she didn’t understand yet, but one day she would.

  “Hmm,” Maddie mumbled.

  She was more interested in two brand new pinwheels she clutched in her tiny fist. One pink. One blue.

  Sophie patted the ground next to the headstone. “Help Mommy put them here for your brother.”

  Together they bent down and planted the metallic pinwheels in the soft, warm earth.

  I took Sophie’s hand and squeezed it gently. She tilted her chin up and gave me one of the smiles I so lived for.

  Our hardship had been a priceless gift in disguise.

  A gift, bought with endless stretches of loneliness, paid for with tears, obtained at high cost through self-sacrifice.

  The gift of appreciation was a gift I’d guard with my life.

  A commotion from behind the headstone turned my head.

  Licorice-headed, six-year-old Bashir emerged from behind Little Mac’s headstone, and my heart felt as if it would burst with joy.

  I could never have anticipated our halls would be full of toy cars once again, that our house would explode with a little boy’s shouts. Gul managed to find an apartment only blocks from our home, and Bashir accumulated quite a collection of cars and track for them to roll along our living room floor. Sophie thought I spoiled him, but I didn’t feel that way at all.

  Bashir ran in circles, spinning a bright blue pinwheel. He ran over to Little Mac’s headstone, and at my urging planted his next to the other two, then threw himself giggling into my arms.

  He was already one of the top students in his class.

  One day he’d return to Afghanistan, but for now, I’d enjoy his laughter.

  A breeze kicked up, and three pinwheels spun comfortingly.

  Spun as they were created to.

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