Sparks Like Stars Read online

  “The Russians will be here?”

  “And the Americans, the Indians, and the French too. And maybe some others.”

  “But our tutor taught us that the Americans and Russians do not like one another. Will there not be fighting?”

  “No, my love,” Mother replied, smoothing my hair. “Food and art are very capable peacekeepers. And besides, they should know better than to have their schoolyard scuffle in our home. Our people have seen enough. We finally have the peace we deserve.”

  I knew the history to which she was alluding. I could recite Afghanistan’s record of fighting off conquerors and knew that every changing of the guard came with turbulence. Most people in my world adored President Daoud Khan. But out in the public gardens one day, I had heard a man singing a popular song. He’d replaced the lyrics with ones that haunted me and lodged in a corner of my brain with the power of rhyme:

  My brother turned martyr by your dark night,

  Sleep lightly, dear President, sleep light.

  “Perhaps I should join the event? I might be able to write about it for the newspaper,” I suggested in my most erudite voice.

  Mother pursed her lips.

  At the end of the last school year, our principal had announced a writing contest for the graduating eighth-graders in our school.

  How can the people of Afghanistan best celebrate our nation’s Independence Day?

  Though I was only in the fourth-year class and not much of a writer, my brain churned with discussions I’d had with my parents over dinner about the three times Afghans had to fight off the British. I penned an essay that began with a verse by the British poet Rudyard Kipling.

  When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,

  And the women come out to cut up what remains,

  Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

  An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

  The world read Kipling’s poem, I explained, and saw Afghan women as butchers, whereas these women were defending their homes and families from invaders. Afghans could best celebrate Independence Day by recording our history in our own words.

  I had slipped my carefully written paper into the principal’s box. On the final day of classes, the principal called me into her office. I was terrified that a teacher had reported me for daydreaming or poor penmanship.

  Ask your parents to pick up this Thursday’s newspaper, Sitara. Your essay won the contest and will run in the paper.

  My father came home with half a dozen copies, and my parents beamed to see my byline. President Daoud even joked that I might have a place in his cabinet before I graduated from school.

  “It’s far too late for you to be up,” Mother said. “Ask your father for a personal debriefing another day. He’ll certainly oblige.”

  I could tell from the tone of her voice that she would not be swayed.

  “I’m too tired anyway. Go on and have fun. I’ll rest with Faheem now.”

  My mother closed the doors of the library behind us and followed me into our guest room across the hall, a room I could find with my eyes closed from anywhere in the palace. I knew the wallpaper patterns by heart, including where the paper was starting to lift at the corners. I knew how many bulbs were in each chandelier and which windows to open to invite a fragrant breeze.

  Our own home on the other side of the Kabul River was a fraction of the palace in size but warmer in every way that mattered. I shared a bedroom with my brother, an arrangement that suited me fine. Because I was seven years older than him, I was usually responsible for him when Madar was tied up in the kitchen or with guests.

  I changed into the pajamas my mother had laid out for me. Faheem’s small foot tapped against the mattress in a steady, restless rhythm. Sliding into the low bed and kissing his temple, I pulled the bedsheet over my shoulder and lay facing Faheem. His legs grew still, and he exhaled deeply.

  “Sleep well, my sweets.”

  “Good night, Madar-jan.”

  I feigned a yawn, careful not to overdo it. I listened to the fading click of her heels, imagining her moving down the hallway, past my father’s office and Kaka Daoud’s office. The president’s living quarters were on the opposite side of the second floor. That was where Neelab slept, so there was little chance of bumping into her in the middle of the night by accident.

  Before she’d left the room, I heard my mother whisper one word of thanks under her breath—shukur.

  My mother was ever grateful. People who had suffered generally were. When my parents were first married, my father was one of eighteen students granted a scholarship to study engineering in the United States in a place called Oklahoma. A handful of universities wanted Afghans to study engineering and agriculture so they could go back and work alongside the American companies building dams and towns in Afghanistan.

  I wished I knew more about Oklahoma, but they never spoke much about their time there. I only knew that the land was so flat that they thought the sun could take a seat on the horizon. Roads seemed to stretch into forever, and the city looked like it could swallow Kabul whole. Though few people they met in town could have found Afghanistan on a map, they were friendly. One neighbor welcomed them with a pie and a jar of pork sausages that my father passed along to an American classmate. He immersed himself in his studies, determined to become valuable to Afghanistan’s future. Though my mother wasn’t there for her studies, she learned to drive and became fluent in English by taking classes at a library and watching television shows and repeating the lines aloud.

  She also gave birth to my sister, who lived and died before I took my first breath. Everything I knew of my sister fit in the palm of my hand: one photograph of my mother holding her swaddled in a blanket and one of her propped on my father’s knee, an American birth certificate, and a beaded silver bracelet with an evil eye charm.

  The charm had failed to protect her, though. Shortly after my parents returned to Afghanistan and introduced my sister to cooing aunts and uncles, she was struck by an unrelenting fever. She was gone in a matter of days, leaving my parents’ arms empty and their hearts broken.

  I wish I could have seen my two daughters side by side, Boba sometimes said. But she will never be far from our thoughts. I have picked a star in the night sky and imagine that is her in the heavens, forever our light.

  With a kind of magic I didn’t fully appreciate as a child, my parents spun grief into gratitude. I knew my mother was thinking of my long-gone sister as she watched Faheem nestle close to me. We were, she never tired of telling us, the greatest comforts God could have given her. Being a child, I took this to mean we had suffered our allotted tragedy.

  By the time I was ten years old, I did not curl in my father’s arms or seek kisses from my mother for every scrape as often as I had the year before. I did not chase their affections, believing that they, like sands in the desert, existed in infinite supply.

  Chapter 2

  When I could no longer hear my mother’s footsteps, I brought my hand out from under the bedsheet and tickled the tip of Faheem’s nose. He did not stir. I peeled back the sheet and slid one foot, then the other onto the floor. Faheem did not wake even as I tiptoed across the room and opened the door just wide enough to slip through. I stepped past the library and rounded the corner of the hallway, the clanging of aluminum pots and lids growing louder. To my left was a narrow set of stairs that led to the rear of a bustling kitchen as the palace staff prepared to serve dinner for the dignitaries. I continued down the hallway, my path dimly lit by small sconces.

  At the sound of approaching footsteps, I froze. I held my breath and listened. I heard what sounded like a door close at the far end of the hall. When I was sure footsteps were not approaching, I put one foot in front of the other, stepping with my heel first. I’d not moved three steps when I paused again.

  This time I was certain I’d heard something.

  I pressed my spine against the wall and looked left and right, already knowing th
ere was nowhere to hide here. My heart thumped loudly.

  I inched farther along until I reached an arched cutout. Tucked into its rounded space was a half-moon table draped in embroidered silk. Atop the table was a vase of pale green onyx.

  I paused, debating the chances of running into someone if I made a dash for the end of the hallway.

  That’s when I felt someone—or something—grab my ankle. I gasped and fell forward. My arm grazed the table and braced my fall. I rolled onto my back and saw the vase teeter perilously on the table’s edge before coming to rest. Relieved, I looked to my left.

  “Neelab!”

  Crouched between the legs of the table was Neelab, with a bright and mischievous grin. She’d pulled the table cover to the side.

  “You little sneak!” I hissed. “You nearly killed me!”

  “Danger lurks around every corner,” Neelab whispered ominously. She emerged slowly from her secret nook, unfolding her lanky limbs.

  I forgave her for scaring me and vowed to find an even better hiding spot for our next round. We crept quietly to the end of the hallway. A curved staircase led to the downstairs banquet room, and just to the side of the arched entrance was a serving station. With our backs pressed against the wall in the darkened stairway, we could stay out of sight and still have a pretty good view of the festivities.

  The serving station boasted an array of glass bottles that I knew were not meant for children. My father did drink on occasion. It seemed to make him more playful, like the version of him that would crawl on the floor with Faheem and me. But I’d also seen some of his friends become terribly angry after a couple of glasses. At a party two months ago, one general scolded me for not greeting him formally. When I saw him vomiting in the bushes later that evening, I raced to the upstairs room where all the children had gathered, even waking the ones who had drifted to sleep. I brought them outside with the promise of Russian chocolates if they helped me surprise a general in need of cheer. The man was still hunched over with a handkerchief to his mouth when the little gang I’d assembled greeted him with a loud salute, their flat hands raised to their foreheads.

  My father only pretended to chastise me for that one.

  I spotted my mother on the far end of the room. She was standing with Neelab’s mother and grandmother, the first lady, as they spoke to a few foreign women. They could have been posing for a magazine cover with their small purses tucked primly under their arms, pleated skirts falling just below their knees, and tortoiseshell hair clips. I continued to scan the room.

  “I see your grandfather,” I whispered. “But where’s the box?”

  Surely the box wouldn’t be far from the president. I kept my eyes on Kaka Daoud, who stood beneath a wide tapestry depicting a team of buzkashi players on horses. The horses, thick-veined and muscular, seemed ready to leap out of the fabric. The players wore sheepskin coats and stretched their hands to the ground to capture the goat carcass and score a point. One player, a whip between his teeth, had the carcass in one hand and red reins in the other.

  The president, a solidly built man with a high forehead, wore a simple black suit. He seemed to be looking at the floor, frowning, as he listened to a military officer I did not recognize. The officer, in an olive jacket with brass buttons, looked flustered. His hands moved frantically as he spoke, one of them landing on the president’s arm.

  I hadn’t noticed my father approaching, and yet there he was, leaning in to whisper something in Daoud Khan’s ear. He issued a polite nod to the military officer and with a hand on the president’s back, guided him toward a Russian dignitary. His slim frame made the president’s paunch more prominent, and I found myself wishing our president would at least pull his shoulders back.

  My father said something that made the Russian pivot so that both men stood with their backs to the rest of the room. I could see only slivers of their faces. Their stiff postures and firmly planted feet reminded me of ceramic dolls.

  Their formation broke with handshakes and grim expressions. My father’s eyes followed the Russian man as he walked past the row of chafing dishes and exited the room. I had no idea what the men were discussing. I was more taken by the way my father always seemed to rearrange people and ideas with a meaningful look, a raised eyebrow, a tapping finger—and he wasn’t even president.

  In the privacy of our home, when he was nothing more than our father, he had nicknames for me. I was his jewel, his doll, his butterfly. When I grew too big to be bounced on his knee, he would still treat me to ice cream. He would return from abroad with presents—nesting dolls from Kiev, a sandalwood jewelry box from Delhi, a hand-painted bowl from Istanbul—that made me hungry to see this great world with my own eyes. For Faheem, who was still too young to understand why Boba was gone for a week at a time, he brought a plastic revolver and a model jet. The best part was that he took the time to wrap the gifts in newspaper, giving us a few more seconds of delicious suspense.

  Maybe that was why I sensed the energies shift downstairs. I noted that a cluster of guests had gathered around a high-topped marble table in the center of the room, necks craned and ears cocked.

  “The box,” I said.

  Neelab nodded in agreement.

  Someone clinked a fork against a glass, and the buzz quieted. President Daoud peered at a wooden crate set on the table. The Russian man he’d been speaking with earlier extended his arms toward the guests and encouraged them to clear space. People obliged and took a half-step backward.

  “We have waited so long for this moment,” a bald man announced.

  “Which minister is he?” Neelab asked.

  “He’s from the Department of Very Important Matters,” I said.

  “Oh, right—the one that will handle your punishment when you get us in trouble tonight,” she replied. Then the minister began speaking.

  “This is a sampling of the treasures excavated from the ancient city of Ai-Khanoum over the past twelve years. Imagine it, my friends, a great civilization found under layers of earth! Tonight we say our sincerest thanks to the Russians and to the French for retrieving this history. Tonight, the future of Afghanistan meets its gilded past.”

  Ai-Khanoum, in the northern part of the country, was one of the farthest reaches of an ancient Greek kingdom. I’d been reading so much about the constellations and the myths associated with the Greek gods that I’d gotten Neelab interested as well. We tried to guess at what treasures might have been left behind centuries ago.

  The room stirred with polite applause, the clinking of glasses, and celebratory drags on cigarettes.

  The minister picked up a crowbar that had been placed next to the crate and placed it in the hands of the Russian.

  “Finally!” Neelab said, squeezing my arm softly. We’d waited a month for this crate to arrive and then another week for these thirty people—a mix of Afghan, French, Russian, and American nationals—to gather for the revealing of what lay inside. My mother and father were now standing side by side, speaking with foreigners I didn’t recognize.

  “I bet they pull out a sculpture of a bull. Taurus, right? Or what was the one you found today, a dragon?” Neelab whispered to me.

  “Shh! I can’t hear what the Russian is saying.”

  The Russian spoke in halting Dari, his accent so thick that I could barely make out his meaning.

  “. . . These pieces of old Afghanistan . . . a new home in the Kabul Museum . . . all that remains of a civilization . . .”

  A hum of approval moved through the room, while I sat back with my arms folded. How could a kingdom capable of erecting cities in far-off lands be reduced to a few trinkets in a crate?

  I wanted to get a closer look.

  The Russian man lifted a velvet-lined box into the circle and opened it. He pulled back a square of fabric and tilted the container, arms extended above his shoulders and the heads of the guests so everyone could see its contents. When he swiveled slowly and by degrees to the right, I nearly slipped down the steps,
struggling to get a better view.

  It was a gold ring with inset teardrops of turquoise and garnet. The stones were nearly the size of my fingernails and easily seen even from a distance. The room thrummed with wonder.

  “Centuries . . . centuries old . . . beautiful Bactrian gold,” the Russian explained. “Proof of the long history between Greeks and Afghanistan.”

  “And of the longer relationship between women and jewelry!” shouted a jovial voice. My mother laughed. The mood was bubbly. Even the president’s usually stoic face had lightened.

  The Russian continued retrieving items from the crate. He held up coins, a bone figurine, and a small statue. My father and President Daoud slipped away from the festivities, coming together to stand side by side beneath the tapestry with half-emptied glasses in their hands.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the image of them with their backs to that woven buzkashi scene. The two men who loomed tall as mountains in my world were suddenly dwarfed by rearing stallions and their whip-clutching riders, a stampede ready to storm this very room.

  Chapter 3

  Arg was guarded by a handful of soldiers who were meant to be seen, not heard. I once asked my father if they had ever considered replacing the soldiers with uniforms on sticks. My father pondered my ridiculous questions with the same attention that he gave my more earnest ones. He would narrow his eyes and turn my words into an image in his head, an X-ray revealing the carefully aligned bones of my reasoning. I stood inches taller in his presence. And for a child to feel grand in the storied, soaring halls of Arg was no small feat.

  Because the soldiers were present, we found ways to turn them into props for our play. To engage in some amateur espionage, Neelab and I tracked their movements and assigned each one a secret code name. The soldier with green eyes we called Sabzi, or spinach. When we were his only audience, he would make his eyes cross and pinch his nose as if he’d just smelled a foul odor. Our parents and all the other adults in the palace only ever saw a solemn face on him.