Sparks Like Stars Page 6

  April 28, 1978

  “Act like you are asleep,” Shair whispered. But sleep wasn’t really what he wanted me to feign.

  Every muscle of my body tensed as he carried me away from the palace, moving so briskly and anxiously that twice I thought I would fall to the ground. I turned my head away from his chest and the stench of sin.

  He dropped me onto the floorboard of a car and tossed an old wool blanket over me—one that stank of cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes. I lifted a corner of the blanket, but the air in the car was just as stifling. Shair shifted gears, and we passed beneath the looming portico of the palace.

  When I was sure we had turned onto the road, I threw the blanket off my head.

  “Was it you?” I asked, my voice as gravelly as the road.

  He did not answer.

  “Was it you?” I repeated, louder.

  I saw his jaw clench. The car bounced as he raced over a pothole, slamming my shoulder against the backseat.

  “Did you kill them?” I moaned, trying to push myself to sitting.

  “Get down!” he snarled. I heard a click, the unmistakable cocking of a pistol. I obeyed, slipping back to the floor of the car.

  This was a side of Shair I’d never seen—one that, perhaps, had not existed just a week ago.

  “You must be quiet. Be very quiet!”

  As he steered away from the palace, the sharp smell of smoke did not fade. I pictured all of Kabul in shambles, the whole world ending abruptly.

  With every turn, I eyed the handle of the door, preparing for the moment when I could leap from the car and tumble out. But the car never slowed, and when it did stop, Shair hopped out and opened the back door before I could get my bearings.

  I tried to spring past him, but he caught me with one arm and hissed that I’d be making a big mistake if I didn’t obey.

  Once he’d confirmed there were no onlookers, he pulled me into the stairwell of one of the apartment buildings. I recognized the apartment complex and felt my chest swell with hope. I had an uncle who lived nearby. I just needed to get to him. Moonlight cast eerie shadows on the concrete landings. He opened the door on the third floor and pushed me into an apartment, much to the surprise of the woman inside.

  “Wha-what is this?” she asked, bewildered.

  “No one” was his curt reply.

  The woman blinked slowly, as if her eyes were adjusting to a dark space. She looked at my gashed foot, which was tracking blood onto the carpet.

  “He’s a killer!” I shouted. Shair and I glared at each other for a beat, nostrils flaring. He took a step, looming over me.

  “Why is she calling you a killer?” she demanded.

  “She’s a child of misfortune,” he declared, looking at me. “And she will be quiet.”

  “Misfortune? Do you mean she’s an orphan?”

  I was not an orphan. I have a mother and a father, I wanted to say, but my tongue knotted in my mouth.

  The woman crouched in front of me, trying to make sense of the situation.

  “My God,” she said as she looked me over, her face aghast. She raised her hand to touch me, but gasped when I slapped her hand away.

  “Tahera, stitch her foot. Then wash and feed her. She should sleep.”

  “Stitch her foot? I’m not a doctor! You can’t expect me to—”

  Shair pulled the apartment door closed behind him and brought the conversation to an abrupt end. Tahera ran to the balcony and stared into the street, muttering frantically. She spun around and, as if she’d hoped I would have disappeared when she had her back to me, cursed.

  She snatched a newspaper off the table and placed it beneath my foot to catch the blood.

  “Be still. What is your name?” she asked as she knelt before me.

  I did not answer.

  “Come,” she said, motioning for me to rise with her. “Here is the washroom. I’ll bring you clothes.”

  Either out of exhaustion or because her posture reminded me of my mother in prayer, I did not try to run from her.

  “Please. Let me go,” I said in a low whisper. My father’s brother lived two buildings away, as did my mother’s cousin. If I could just get my bearings, I was sure I could find them. I could even find a few other familiar homes across town if I could just get free.

  Tahera’s eyes fell upon the ring on my finger. I folded my arms and hid my hand from view.

  “I cannot do that,” she said haltingly.

  I followed her to the bathroom, walking on the ball of my foot only. I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. I looked like a feral animal, fresh from an alley fight. My hair was greasy and matted with flakes of plaster. My clothes were soiled and stiff. My lips were cracked and scabbed. I bent my knee and saw the split flesh on the sole of my foot. The two edges like a gaping mouth, with bits of dirt and flakes of glass embedded in the wound. No wonder it sent shocks of pain up my leg to walk on it.

  I moved mechanically. Tahera used a pitcher to pour tepid water over me. My scraped cheek burned. A collage of bruises appeared on my arms. My foot had started to bleed again. Brown water pooled at my feet before disappearing down the drain.

  Tahera dressed me, looking away anytime I looked at her. I followed her back to the living room and sat upright on a cushion on the floor while she retrieved a basket from the closet in the hallway. She stared at its contents and then at my foot.

  “Don’t touch my foot,” I hissed, drawing it toward me protectively.

  “I don’t want to,” she said, her voice so close to breaking that I almost pitied her. “But it is badly cut. You can barely stand on it.”

  Shair had warned Tahera to keep the apartment lights off. She placed a candle so close to my foot that I could feel its warmth on my skin. With a pair of stainless steel tweezers in her trembling hand, she plucked debris from my wound. I buried my face in a cushion, reeling from a pain I hadn’t felt until now.

  It took Tahera a dozen attempts before she was able to thread the needle. I watched her bring the needle to my foot and exhale through tight lips. She blinked rapidly and readjusted the candle. I sobbed stupidly. It was just flesh, after all.

  I jerked when the needle pricked my skin. Tahera held on to my ankle with one hand. Shair must not have gone far because he appeared then and quickly assessed the situation. When he knelt beside me, Tahera offered the needle to him, but he rejected it with a quick shake of his head. Instead, his hand wrapped around my ankle like a vise and held my foot to the floor.

  I kicked with my free foot and managed to hit the square of his jaw. Tahera gasped. He cursed under his breath, his hands turning into fists. I braced myself for a retaliatory blow.

  “If you’re going to sew, then do it,” I said to Tahera, sticking my foot out toward her. I would not show fear. “But I don’t want his hands anywhere near me.”

  Tahera held the quivering needle against my skin for so long I thought she might put it down and leave my foot open. Then she inhaled sharply, and I felt the sting as it pierced my skin. I bit my lip and counted twelve passes of the needle, the tip dulling with each plunge. White bursts of light flashed behind my closed lids.

  When it was over, Tahera tore a pillowcase into strips and used them to bandage my foot. She pulled a blanket over me and retreated into their bedroom, looking exhausted and desperate to get away.

  Shair sat in a chair, guarding over me. Determined not to fall asleep in his presence, I sat upright and stared at the compartments of the wall unit opposite me. I pinched my palm or my arm when I felt my eyelids growing heavy. When I heard Shair’s breathing grow long and deep, I slid a glass ashtray off the end table next to me and felt its weight in my hand before I tucked it under my thigh. Was it heavy enough to knock him out?

  Time would tell.

  Eventually, exhaustion won and I fell asleep as well. When I opened my eyes, Tahera was once again kneeling at my side. Three children stood behind her. There was a boy who looked around Rostam’s age and a girl who ap
peared a few years younger than me. I recognized her dress, a purple frock with a satin sash. I would have worn it for another year if my mother hadn’t insisted that it had become inappropriately short. I wanted to rip it off this girl’s body. The youngest was a toddler the same height as Faheem. I sat up sharply, keeping the blanket pulled to my chin.

  Shair emerged from the kitchen with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Beneath the blanket, I felt around for the ashtray but found nothing. I looked up and saw it in Shair’s hand. He tapped his cigarette so firmly against the ashtray’s curved edge that ashes scattered into the air.

  Shair cleared his throat and summoned his children. He spelled out simple rules for them. No one was to mention me outside the home, nor were they to ask me any questions. They would not entertain any of my requests, nor would they approach me.

  As her husband spoke, Tahera brought me a plate of bread and a cup of tea.

  “Eat something,” she said.

  I did not budge.

  Tahera lifted the blanket to get a look at my foot. I grabbed fistfuls of wool in my hands, not wanting to be on display. Tahera pointed to the ring on my finger.

  “What is that?” she whispered.

  When she reached for my hand, I jerked back. The cup of tea she’d set beside me toppled, the tea disappearing into the carpet.

  “Tahera!” Shair said sharply. “Don’t touch a thing on her.”

  Tahera’s face flushed as if her husband had just called her a grave robber. She pulled her shoulders back indignantly and scowled at her husband.

  “This is temporary,” Shair said. It was unclear if he was speaking to me or his wife or all of us in the room. “All you have to do is stay quiet.”

  Over the next few days, I made several attempts at escape. I bolted for the balcony and for the front door. I tiptoed from the living room at night and waited for moments of distraction in the daylight. Each attempt succeeded only in inciting an argument between Tahera and Shair. Sometimes my attempts led to my being bound at the wrists for hours.

  With each passing day, the soldier looked more haggard. Tahera remained tepid with me, sometimes kind but more often looking at me as if I’d robbed her of something. The apartment being a modest one, I was privy to most conversations between them. Shair railed at his own brothers for calling him a godless Communist. Tahera worried about her cousin whose loose tongue and political opinions might get him killed under this new regime. The radio announcer declared that the Communist Party would be installing a new government, one that would do more than pay lip service to the Afghan people.

  I turned Shair’s name over in my mind. Shair meant “lion.” Neelab and I had called him a candle when he was, instead, a deadly jungle beast.

  Sham. Shair. These two names said together became a new conjoined word, sham-shair, which meant sword. Feeling like I’d been sliced apart, this new name made more sense than anything I’d endured in the last days.

  The children heeded their father’s warnings and eyed me from a generous distance. After the first couple of days, even Tahera seemed to set up a perimeter. The one time I’d called out to my mother in a half-asleep state, I’d woken to find Tahera inching backward, as if afraid the word Madar would settle on her like cigarette smoke on a wool vest.

  “Shair, you must be honest with me,” she’d whispered to her husband late that night when the children had gone to bed. I could make out their figures in the kitchen, where a single candle glowed. “What will happen to us if this girl is found in our home?”

  Shair rose to his feet. He opened a cabinet and reached between the jars of sugar and corn flour. He withdrew the revolver, turned it over in his palm, and tucked it into his waistband.

  “Let’s hope we never find out.”

  Chapter 9

  I woke to the sound of shouting. The soldier’s lanky son stood on the far end of the living room, pointing a finger at me. He called for his mother, his face pinched with revulsion. I looked down and saw a red stain on the cushion where I’d been sleeping. I felt a wetness between my legs.

  “What have you done?” I shouted, rising to my feet. I retreated and pressed my back against the wall, certain that I had been stabbed in my sleep.

  “Hush! No one has done anything to you,” Tahera said wearily. She lowered her voice. “You are no longer a child. Women bleed every month. It is a sickness we must bear.”

  She handed me a rag and underwear, then closed the bathroom door. She did not tell me where the blood came from or why.

  Shair’s son kept his distance from me after that day, looking at me like I was a stray dog who’d brought fleas into their home. But his eyes lingered on me while I ate, when I closed my eyes, and when I asked for permission to use the bathroom. I hid my face most of the time, feeling awash with a shame I didn’t know was possible.

  Day after day, Shair’s daughter emerged from the bedroom wearing clothes I recognized—an orange corduroy skirt, a striped top, denim pants. I seethed to recall how carefully my mother had tied the bundle for Shair to take home.

  “Did you do something terrible?” she asked me one day, her voice a whisper. “Why is my father punishing you?”

  “Because he’s a monster!” I shouted, unable to stomach her looking down at me while wearing the clothes I’d just recently outgrown. She stayed far away from me after that.

  Though my spirits were decaying, my body was recuperating. The stitched gash on my foot looked better. My abrasions were healing, and the bruises on my forearms, from where I’d bitten myself silent, had faded into yellow halos. Tahera tended to my wounds, sometimes making idle conversation to fill the void.

  “The woman next door has such terrible taste in music. One of these days I’m going to remind her that she’s not the only person living in this building.”

  “My mother was never afraid to speak her mind,” I replied gruffly.

  Tahera only blinked in response. She hastily tied a bandage and disappeared into the kitchen, stopping her cooking and cleaning from time to time to look at me.

  Only the youngest child interacted freely with me, and I almost wished he didn’t. He broke my heart and saved me all at once. He would sit beside me and offer me whatever food he was eating—bread, raisins, milk. Sometimes he and I fell asleep together on the living room cushions, and I would wake expecting to see my brother’s face.

  Tahera would scold the baby if he lingered around me, but she did little to keep him away. Sometimes she seemed glad to have him preoccupied with the strange girl in the living room. Sometimes she lied to Shair about where the baby had played all day.

  When it was time for meals, the family would sit cross-legged around a vinyl tablecloth spread across the living room floor. The baby was tucked beside his mother, eating morsels of rice and spinach from her fingers. The older children shot sidelong glances my way. Shair and his wife exchanged only a few words at a time, their thoughts bottled in my presence.

  My place was in the corner of the room with a bowl of food separated for me. I had little appetite and probably ate more from the baby’s hands than I did at mealtimes.

  I stared at the balcony and thought of the distance between this apartment and the ground. Even if I were brave enough to jump, I knew Shair would snatch me by my shirt or hair before I could get my second leg over the railing.

  From behind a gauzy curtain, I stared into the windows of other apartments. I looked down at the street and a small field where boys would gather to play soccer. Kabul, from what I could see and sense, had not been decimated. I heard car horns, songs on the radio, and children shouting. There was a distinct absence of gunfire, of wailing. I could not understand why it seemed that only my world had come to a screeching halt.

  “My uncle lives in that building there. I want to go to him,” I said for the thousandth time.

  The room went silent. The children looked from their mother to their father. Shair chewed his food, unfazed. Tahera held a piece of bread in front of
her mouth, as if she’d forgotten what to do next.

  “I will scream. I will scream so loud that the whole neighborhood will hear me,” I threatened, my voice rising. Tahera’s bread fell from her fingers.

  “Hush, child,” she pleaded.

  “I’m not a child anymore, remember?” I bit back. “As if that matters. Look at him. He is a grown man and cannot answer when I ask him if he killed my family. Do you not care to ask what happened to the woman who sent the clothes your daughter wears? Do you not care to ask him why I’m alone? Do you not care to know who lies beside you at night?”

  Because I was glaring at Tahera, the thunderous clap of Shair’s hand across my face stunned me. I held my burning cheek.

  Tahera burst into tears. The teenage boy’s eyes went wide, and the daughter and toddler pulled closer to their mother.

  Tahera began mumbling under her breath, rocking back and forth as if in prayer.

  “Your uncle,” Shair said, standing over me, “stopped by a vizier’s office yesterday. He offered his help to the new government. How stupid of you to think he would take you in and risk being thrown in jail.”

  My uncle. As the eldest brother, he’d never forgiven my father for disagreeing with his politics. Would he really shelter me if he’d shut my father out?

  “Shair, we cannot go on this way. You have to do something,” Tahera declared. “I have not stepped outside this apartment for a moment since she’s been here.”

  “I know that!” Shair roared. He hurled the ashtray against the wall. At the sound of glass breaking, I ran to the balcony and burst outside as if the entire apartment were consumed in flames.

  “Help me! He killed my family! Please help—”

  A hand clapped over my mouth. In a flash, I was yanked back into the apartment. Shair pinned me against the wall by my shoulders, leaning in so close I could see the wild squiggle of blood vessels in his eyes.

  “What if she tries something like that again?” Tahera cried.

  “Then I’ll shove her over myself and we’ll be done,” Shair swore, looking straight at me. “I’ve told you not to bother asking pointless questions. Ponder this instead, if you’re so smart. What would happen to anyone foolish enough to take you in?”