Sparks Like Stars Page 7

  I pressed my lips together in defiance.

  Shair’s nostrils flared. His breaths were short, compressed.

  “Let me read you something,” he said. He retrieved a folded piece of newspaper from the breast pocket of his olive-colored uniform. He unfolded it and began reciting names.

  “Fareed Agha. Mirwais Khan.” He paused between names, watching my face to confirm I recognized the names. “Abdullah Raheem.”

  These were my father’s friends, the men I had called “uncle.” The people who patted me on the head and marveled at how tall I’d grown. The men who slipped brightly wrapped candies into my palm on holidays and told me to treat myself to ice cream.

  “All these men have taken positions in the new government.”

  I winced.

  “There are other names that do not make it into the newspapers. Those are the ones who have disappeared,” Shair said plainly, as if it all made perfect sense. He released his hold on me.

  I crumpled to the floor.

  When night fell, I stared out the window at the pointy nose of Taurus until my eyelids grew heavy. Shair took his place sitting guard over me. Kabul was in a deep slumber when I woke to Shair slapping a stretch of duct tape over my mouth. I tried to scream, to kick and claw, but stopped when I saw that he had his pistol pointed at me again.

  “Not a sound,” he warned.

  Tahera surely heard my struggle. I imagined her on the other side of the bedroom door, wringing her hands.

  Shair wrapped a shawl over my head and shoulders and led me out of the apartment. Despite my limp, he moved us quickly and silently through the building’s stairwell and then, checking to make sure no one was around, pushed me headfirst into the familiar smell of stale cigarettes and gasoline. This time, though, he shoved me into the passenger seat of the car. He walked around and slid into the driver’s seat, tucking the gun beneath his thigh.

  My stomach sank when he pulled away from the austere apartment complex. He drove in silence until we reached the Ministry of the Interior, which I recognized despite the damage it had suffered. Here, finally, was evidence that something horrible had happened.

  “Do you see?” he said, pushing the back of my head so my forehead pressed against the window. I said nothing. He pulled his hand away and drove west to show me more pockmarked buildings. Then he drove toward the barricaded road that led to Arg, and my heart nearly stopped. A cluster of soldiers guarded its entrance. He drove out of the city, down a lonely road. A dust-colored compound that seemed to stretch forever came into view.

  It was Pol-e-charkhi prison.

  “You see this place? The president did us a favor when he built this place. Now we have somewhere to put his people.”

  The tips of machine guns poked out from guard towers along the compound’s perimeter.

  Shair spun the steering wheel. His driving was erratic. I stayed close to the passenger door and waited for the right moment to throw myself from the car. He made a hard left and circled through one of the city’s roundabouts, stopping the car beneath a waving PDPA banner.

  He glared at me and I understood. It didn’t matter how many buildings stood unharmed. It didn’t matter that a hole had not opened in the earth or sky. Everything had changed. Everyone had changed.

  Shair grabbed me by the nape of my neck and pulled my head toward the windshield, forcing me to look outside. He jabbed at the glass, smudging it with fingerprints.

  “Anyone you thought was your friend or family before will slam their door in your face or risk the same happening to them. Your people are gone. Your Kabul is gone.”

  His rage swelled and swelled until it spilled out the lowered windows and swirled around the car like a sandstorm. He took the gun out from under his leg and held it loosely between his hands. The air grew thin, as if the oxygen had been siphoned out of the car.

  “Your Kabul is gone,” he repeated.

  Then, Shair crumpled. He buried his face in his hands. The vanishing of the lion terrified me more than his anger. I knew I had to get out. I pulled on the door handle, but it was locked. I pounded on the glass and rattled the handle, desperate to escape before Shair did whatever it was he had planned for tonight.

  “Child,” he said mournfully. “I have no choice. I never did.”

  Chapter 10

  Shair didn’t kill me. Instead, he drove me to the far end of Chicken Street, where we sat in his car, the engine and lights shut off. I’d been in many of these shops with my mother but had never seen them dark and shuttered. When I peeled the tape from my mouth, Shair did not protest. He leaned back in his seat, and we sat in silence until an hour passed and he sat up sharply.

  “Get out,” he said, opening his own door and coming around to my side. I followed him out of the car to a dark niche between two shops.

  At the sound of footsteps, Shair poked his head out. He hissed at me to keep my back pressed against the wall. Conscious of the revolver in his hand, I obeyed.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked, growing impatient enough to test him.

  Shair did not answer.

  When I thought my legs might give out, he pulled at me.

  “Walk behind me,” he growled. He kept a hand on the sleeve of my shirt. I considered breaking away but was duly terrified of being stopped by a bullet in my back. His pace was brisk. We were closing in on two women a few meters ahead of us.

  “Don’t hurt them,” I whispered to him. “Please!”

  The women stood in front of a door, one reaching into her purse. As we approached, she whirled around.

  “Salaam, who are you?” she said, loudly enough that a sleeping stray yelped in protest. She had stepped, protectively, in front of the other woman. She clenched her right hand in a fist with keys pointing out from between her fingers like tiny blades.

  From behind Shair, I examined the two of them. The one who had turned her hand into a claw appeared close in age to my mother. The woman behind her was a good bit older, with thick wooden bangles that clacked on her thin wrist. She looked confused until her gaze fell upon the revolver Shair held at his side.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the older woman shouted in English, stepping between the younger woman and Shair. They hadn’t even noticed me.

  “Mother, let me handle this,” the other woman said, her voice controlled and firm. She never took her eyes off Shair’s face, not even when she pulled her mother back by her sleeve.

  Shair looked from one to the other, then took a single step to his left. The women’s eyes fell on me.

  “You help girl,” Shair said in halting English. “Kabul dangerous.”

  He was going to leave me with them. Shair disappeared into the night, his footfalls like raindrops on a roof.

  You help girl. Kabul dangerous.

  Their eyes rolled over me slowly, as if there were some message to decipher in the gray T-shirt and trousers I was wearing, a boy’s outfit that hung loosely on my frame. I didn’t realize my hands were balled into fists until I saw their eyes flicker at them. Still, I kept them tight and ready.

  “Wait! Who are you? Is this your daughter?” The younger woman whispered loudly down the street. But Shair had disappeared into the dark, like a candle flame extinguished between two fingers. I heard the familiar sound of his car rumbling to life one street over.

  Daughter. Before our tutor, my father had taught me the English words for family members, marveling at how close their words were to ours. Daughter—dokhtar. Mother—madar. Father—padar. Brother—braadar. In the most precious names, he said, the differences between East and West dissolved.

  “Isn’t that bizarre!” the older woman said. “He didn’t even take our handbags!”

  They looked from me to the darkness as if they weren’t sure what else might emerge from the night.

  “Hello,” the younger woman said to me in English. She spoke cautiously. “My name is Antonia. What is your name?”

  I did not answer.

  She said
more, but my heart was pounding so hard that I couldn’t hear her words, much less try to understand them. She motioned to the doorway behind her, placed a hand on her chest, and then pointed to the window of her apartment. I heard her say khaana, home, and chai. I looked at the shop behind her and saw the stairs that led to the apartment above it.

  I turned to look at the neighborhood. A turbaned man pushed an empty wooden cart past the far end of the street. A taxi sped by without stopping. There were very few people walking around that night. I wondered if there were people who knew me or my father. I wondered if I should take my chances and make a run for a familiar home, maybe even my own home.

  Before I could give it another thought, two men in military uniform rounded the corner. I inhaled sharply and flattened myself against the shop window. The American women swiveled to follow my gaze. In a flash, the woman named Antonia ushered me through a door and up a flight of stairs. I was inside an apartment above a bakery before I could resist.

  In the living room, the woman shut the windows and drew the curtains. She instructed the older woman to go to the kitchen and bring juice for me while she peered out the window. I had never heard someone order an elder so brusquely, but the older woman seemed glad for the instruction.

  “I’ll fetch us some juice!” she announced, then crossed the room in sprightly steps. A moment later, she emerged from the kitchen with a bottle of mango nectar and an empty glass. She filled the glass with thick, orange juice.

  I did not take it. My father told me that butchers place a sugar cube in the mouths of lambs before they are slaughtered. I would not be an ignorant lamb.

  “Have a sip at least. You look a bit wilted,” she said gently.

  I looked at my feet.

  “You’re absolutely right,” she said, as if I’d just admonished her. “Let’s give you a moment to breathe first. Not to mention you probably don’t understand a word coming out of my mouth.”

  But I did understand most if not everything she said, thanks to the practice I’d had with my parents and lessons from my tutor.

  The woman placed the glass on the coffee table and took a seat on the sofa. She pointed to the armchair, but I remained standing, keeping my body as close to the apartment door as possible.

  The younger woman, Antonia, was still at the window, looking left and right. I knew she was looking for Shair. I hoped he was gone for good but couldn’t be sure. Satisfied that there was nothing to see, she took a seat beside the older woman.

  “Okay, okay. Let’s start with some basics,” she said. “I’m Antonia.”

  “You can call her Nia, if that’s easier. I used to call her that when she was just a little girl,” the older woman interjected cheerily. Nia was a lot easier for me to pronounce. Even in my head, I couldn’t make the syllables of her full name roll out smoothly.

  “And this is Tilly, my mother,” Antonia said.

  They behaved nothing like any mother and daughter I’d ever seen.

  “What is your name?” the woman named Tilly asked, her eyes wide and childlike. Her fingers toyed with the fuchsia scarf that hung around her neck. Then her expression soured and she turned to her daughter. “Oh, I can’t do anything but speak to her in English! Can’t you ask her in Afghani?”

  “Dari,” her daughter corrected softly. She was doing a fair job of pretending not to look at my nails bitten to the quick and the half-healed bruises and scrapes on my body.

  “Fine, in Dari then. And ask her if she—”

  “Mother, please!” Antonia said, and Tilly blinked tightly and pressed a fingertip to her lips.

  “Nam-e-shoma chee ast?” Antonia asked stiffly. Her Dari surprised me, and not just because she’d addressed me with the formal you, a kind of respect that was never given a child. Though she had only asked my name, I did not answer.

  Her mother suggested a few more questions to ask, her eyes darting from me to her daughter.

  “Mother, can you leave this to me, please?”

  Tilly nodded. She had her elbows on her knees, and though she was thin, her movements were so jaunty that she could have been mistaken for a child.

  “You are safe here. I want to help you,” Antonia continued in Dari. “Was that man your father?”

  “What did you ask her?” Tilly whispered.

  “If that man was her father.”

  “The man with the gun?” Tilly balked. “That was certainly not her father. They have completely opposite energies.”

  Antonia blinked slowly.

  I remained silent, still unsure what to make of the entire situation. I was away from Shair but now in the hands of foreigners.

  The older woman pursed her lips and let out a long whistle. She said something about Afghanistan being a very exciting but strange country. Antonia stood and disappeared into an adjoining room. A moment later, she emerged with sheets, a blanket, and a pillow, all of which she set on the far end of the sofa. Then she went to the kitchen and brought back a collection of offerings—two slices of buttered bread, a bowl of pistachios, an apple, and a foil-wrapped chocolate. She placed the tray next to the untouched cup of mango juice.

  “Will you call the police?” Tilly asked her daughter.

  With her eyes on me, Antonia shook her head.

  “No,” she said pointedly. “I will not call the police. I will not call anyone until I know how to best keep this child safe.”

  I was relieved to hear her say this and hoped she was speaking truthfully. I’d been poisoned against trusting anyone in a uniform and didn’t know if I’d ever recover from that.

  The women took off their shoes and tucked them into a closet along with their jackets. They changed into pajamas and took turns using the bathroom. Antonia filled a cup of water for her mother.

  Then, without barricading any doors or standing guard over me, they slipped into the bedroom and left the door half open. I heard a click and the room went dark. Thankfully, Antonia had left a small lamp on at the far end of the living room so I could still see my surroundings. The silence grew long, and I convinced myself the women had fallen asleep.

  I stared at the food left out for me and felt my stomach knot with hunger.

  I wished I could look to my parents for guidance. With a nod, a slow blink, or a slight lowering of the eyebrows, they would remind me to offer a polite salaam or signal that I could accept a lemony Vzletnaya candy from a general. I longed for even a wordless cue now.

  Should I?

  I searched the silence for a reply but heard none. My stomach growled loudly, and I decided I needed to quiet it. I took in all the food that had been left for me, starting with the juice and finishing with the chocolate. I left only the pistachios because I couldn’t crack a shell without thinking of the evenings spent listening to my father tell me stories of the far corners of the world as he slid salted green nuts into my eager palm.

  Madar, Padar. Please find a way to speak to me.

  What would become of me in this apartment? Though I was not trapped here at gunpoint, I still felt like a caged animal. I heard my father singing along to a song on the radio, looking at me in a way that told me he wished I could feel the Sufi lyrics the way he did.

  Why in prison do you choose to reside,

  When the door to freedom is open wide?

  Did that mean walking out the door of this apartment? I was too frightened of the unknown to do that.

  I tiptoed to the bookshelf, which had only a small stack of books, a mug full of pens, and some folders and booklets. Curious, I took a closer look. The booklet had a picture of a carriage on it with a single word written in large font across the page—Oklahoma.

  I blinked hard. I felt my mother’s breath on the top of my head, my father’s hands on my shoulders. Could it be that they’d found a way to signal me from beyond?

  I thought of the mother and daughter sleeping a few feet from me, who had taken me in at gunpoint. If I was going to survive, I would have to begin trusting someone.

  �
��My name is Sitara,” I whispered, my voice as thin as the gauzy curtain that separated me from a roiling Kabul.

  Chapter 11

  Antonia began tiptoeing around the bedroom at first morning light. I could sense her looking into the living room and did my best not to stir. In the next forty minutes, she appeared in the door frame and retreated again at least three times. At her fourth pass, I sat up and pulled the blanket around me like a shawl. I’d trapped her in her bedroom long enough.

  She entered the living room and kept her voice hushed.

  “I hope you slept well,” she said, making just brief eye contact with me before stepping into the bathroom. That suited me just fine.

  Tilly emerged from the bedroom, plopped down next to me on the sofa, and touched my hair.

  “Good morning,” she said softly. “Did your head dance with dreams?”

  This woman had a funny way of speaking.

  A walkie-talkie on the table whirred with static and then a voice I couldn’t understand. Antonia popped out of the bathroom, a toothbrush in one hand. She brought the device to her ear and issued a brief reply before returning to the bathroom. I heard running water and gargling.

  That morning Antonia seemed too busy doing three things at once to ask me any questions. I watched her button her pants while she discussed lunch options with Tilly. The walkie-talkie buzzed to life twice more, and each time she fired off concise responses without pausing her reading or slicing or pulling the curtain back to peer at the street below.

  “Don’t call him until I get into the office. It won’t pay to get ahead of ourselves.”

  And just a few moments later, with a hand on her hip:

  “I’ve already got a write-up. Why does George always seem compelled to do work that’s already been done?”

  When she realized I was watching her, Nia moved to the kitchen and lowered her voice. I listened for signs of danger but heard only the clink of glasses and crumpling of paper. Needing the bathroom, I rose. On my way there, I glanced into the kitchen and saw Nia folding and refolding a dishrag while she held a phone to her ear.