Sparks Like Stars Read online

  “Which is exactly what Jesus would do,” Tilly added.

  My hands trembled. I looked from one woman to the other, knowing my life depended on my ability to make the right decision, to remember everything my mother and father had taught me, to think of them without breaking in two, to know when to run and when to stay, to know how much of myself I would have to shed to carry on. My foot was on fire. With my ears buzzing as loud as jet engines, it was hard to see or hear my own thoughts.

  Maybe Boba had been wrong about me. Maybe Malalai’s warrior blood did not course through my veins.

  I fell to the floor in a dead faint.

  Chapter 13

  I woke with a groan, stiff-limbed and groggy. As I blinked, my vision came into slow focus. I saw a dresser, its drawers marked with scrapes so deep they left the wood’s pale flesh exposed. A lapis pendant dangled from the two carved spires at the top of the mirror. Sunlight fell on the blue stone with veins of white mineral. A medicine bottle sat at the end of the dresser.

  I peeled the blanket off and listened to the soft pad of footsteps in the hall and Tilly’s hushed voice. Otherwise, it was oddly silent. In the way Boba never realized just how loud the television was until my mother would shut it off, I hadn’t understood the volume of the thrumming in my head until it was no more.

  A change of clothes sat on the edge of the bed—a shirt, pants, and even underwear in my size. The clothes on me were damp with sweat. I hid behind the door and fumbled to put them on hastily. I opened the door a sliver, then a little more.

  “Well, look who woke up on the right side of the bed today!” Tilly exclaimed when I limped out of the bedroom. I had to look up to meet her eyes.

  Wearing a green linen dress, Tilly stood on the seat of the armchair holding a stapled stack of papers. A string of multicolored beads hung around her waist. Her hair, the color of rain clouds, was pinned at the back of her head. The boxy shape of the dress and its square neckline echoed the angles of her body, the horizontals of her collarbones and shoulders, the verticals of her nose and legs. My eyes lingered on the plush pink slippers on her feet.

  “Before you come any farther, do you have any weapons on you?” she asked, holding a hand up to halt my entry. Antonia emerged from the kitchen, looking relieved.

  My neck flushed with embarrassment.

  “Good,” she said, waving me over so that I could help her descend from the chair. “Now, time to get some food into your tummy or those antibiotics might give you a bellyache. There’ll be more time for rehearsal later. And now that you’re feeling more like yourself, do you think you could at least tell us your name?”

  “Sitara,” I said.

  “Sitara,” Tilly repeated.

  For the next few days, I was cared for like a most precious patient. Antonia checked my wound often and took my temperature. With me, their voices were light as birdsong. With each other, their conversations were often clipped and punctuated with facial expressions that needed no translation.

  While Antonia’s work pulled her from the apartment, Tilly went only as far as the shops downstairs. Coming back with a melon or a bottle of orange soda, she would reenact her conversations with the store owners and talk about how the women in the market reminded her of Cleopatra. Tilly talked about Antonia too. She told me that her daughter had once set a man’s broken arm after he’d fallen off the back of a truck in Turkey. Tilly brushed my hair and brought me plates of food she insisted would help clear the poisons from my body. She sang to me and read aloud from a book about a woman who’d fallen in love with a man who rode around town on horseback.

  My wound improved. Red faded to pink. The yellow fluid dried out. I still walked gingerly, but came closer to planting my foot solidly on the floor.

  Tilly started calling me Star, the English cognate of my name. I spoke only a handful of words and, even then, only to answer their questions. But silence is a heavy coat, and I found myself desperate to shed the weight.

  One night I stood in the doorway of the kitchen watching Antonia dry the dinner dishes. She turned just briefly to smile at me before putting the plates into the cabinet and rubbing the silverware dry. The drawer slid shut with a quiet thump. Antonia folded the towel in half, hung it from the rim of the sink, and stepped into the living room. Then she sat cross-legged on the floor and motioned for me to join her. I positioned myself, as I always did, so that I could both see and reach the apartment door. Tilly, wearing earrings made of iridescent glass beads that dangled from her lobes, sat on the armchair.

  “You are safe here,” Antonia said twice, first in English and then in Dari. She had changed out of her work clothes and into a pair of soft cotton pants and a plaid shirt. Strands of hair that had fallen loose from her ponytail framed her face and gave her a youthful appearance. “And if you trust me, I will do anything I can to help you. Do you understand?”

  More and more, I was beginning to see that Antonia was like my father in her work: she was a peacekeeper, and a most trusted adviser. In the conversations I overheard, I could see that the embassy depended on her. If she was in such command over the phone, certainly she must be one of the most important officials in the embassy.

  Like a critical director on a movie set, Tilly gave a subtle nod for me to continue.

  “Yes. I am okay here,” I said slowly, clumsily.

  “Okay. That’s good,” Antonia replied.

  I took a deep breath, then put forth my big request.

  “I want to go to my house, please.”

  “Your house?” Antonia repeated, treading carefully. “Where is your house?”

  My mind raced as I second-guessed my own plan. Did I really dare reveal where my family had lived? Every clue could help people figure out my identity, and I was still not certain that was a wise move.

  Antonia began naming neighborhoods. When she named the quiet neighborhood at the base of a mountain, my foot began to tap out a nervous rhythm.

  “That’s good. Your house is not very far from here.”

  But a house is like a watermelon rind, important only because it holds a sweet and tender fruit.

  “Tell me about your family,” Antonia said carefully, gently.

  My eyes fell to the floor.

  “My family . . . my family is in Arg when . . . only me . . .”

  I felt more like a girl confessing a crime than recounting one, my face hidden in my hands. Antonia placed a gentle hand on my forearm.

  “I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

  And then she said nothing, though she looked like she was holding back a thousand questions. Instead, she rose and went to the kitchen, returning with a glass of water.

  “What is your father’s name?” she asked gently. Her Dari, mercifully, was rooted in the present tense and stole nothing from me.

  “Sulaiman Zamani,” I said, his name swelling in the room until it filled every corner.

  Antonia repeated his name, her head tilted to the side as if she were trying to dislodge a memory.

  “Was he in the president’s cabinet? And was he working with the French and the Kabul Museum on the antiquities collection? I was at the Ai-Khanoum—”

  Antonia froze. She glanced quickly at my hands, which were clasped in my lap, the ring rotated so that my fingers only partially hid the stones.

  “Oh,” she said, startled.

  I tucked my hands under a throw pillow.

  “You know him?” I asked. Tilly looked at her daughter, her eyes mirroring the hope in mine.

  Antonia nodded. She’d met my father on at least three occasions and remembered him as a very thoughtful and articulate man.

  I wanted to hear her talk more about my father, but she wanted me to continue.

  “My m-m-mother,” I stammered.

  I told her about my family with words that fell heartbreakingly flat. They were so much more than their names would imply, but it was all I had for now. I resurrected them in this small way, in this safe space with Antonia and Tilly listeni
ng intently. I moved back and forth in time, from the harrowing moments of the coup to the halcyon days that preceded it.

  And though I trembled and stammered as I talked about them, it did not kill me, as I had feared it might.

  “Your father studied in America, didn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “Where were you born?”

  “Here,” I said. “Only my sister born there.”

  “Your sister?” Antonia repeated, then waited for me to explain. I told her about my sister’s brief life, captured in a shoebox of mementos. Then I told her about Neelab, who had been like a sister to me, and Rostam, my friend. I told her that the president’s family had been in another area of Arg that day. I wanted to believe Neelab and Rostam were still alive somewhere.

  “The soldiers,” I said. “They change to bad. Everything change.”

  To call it “change” felt like a pale version of the truth, but I didn’t know words like “betrayal,” “treason,” or “mutiny” then.

  “People do terrible things for power,” Antonia admitted. “What about the soldier who brought you here? Did you know him?”

  Shair. I told her everything about him—how he hadn’t bothered to warn us about the coup and might have shot my family. I told her about him dragging me out of the palace and trapping me in his apartment, with his family gawking at me.

  “You brave, brave girl,” Tilly said, her voice gritty and low. Her chin quivered slightly as she spoke. “To think what you’ve been through. And yet here you sit, strong as stone.”

  Antonia touched her fingertips to my knees.

  “I don’t know how, but I will help you,” she vowed, and I wanted desperately to believe her. “I will not let anyone else hurt you, and I don’t know how but we will find a way to make this better.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Nia. You start by putting your arms around the girl!” Tilly said through tears. She crossed the room and crouched next to me, wincing as she bent her knees. She smelled of oranges and cinnamon and the stubby cigarettes she smoked but also faintly musty—a scent I couldn’t name.

  The phone rang. Antonia ignored it. She slid back, making room for Tilly to pull me into an embrace. She sat against the wall with her knees pulled to her chest, perhaps pondering the unkeepable promises she’d just made.

  Tilly pulled away for a moment, her cotton shirt darkened by my tears.

  “It’s an inside-out world, isn’t it? Sometimes the world turns inside out and we’re in the center and it’s oh so dark and we think we will never, ever see the sun again,” Tilly whispered, cupping her hands together. Her voice rising feverishly. “But it won’t stay that way because little girls can turn the world outside in again and keep it spinning and spinning. My little Nia knows it. Oh, come here, you sweet thing.”

  She pulled me close again, a tangle of aches and pains and regrets.

  We rocked together as a predestined pairing. Like two lines of a couplet. Like two edges of a jagged wound. Like a lost mother and a found child.

  Chapter 14

  “Hard to believe it was three weeks ago today. I was right here on this roof, not knowing what I was seeing. Nia kept calling, ‘Get off the roof, Mom,’” Tilly said, imitating Nia’s voice. She gazed at the sky. “I saw it all, but I didn’t know what my eyes were seeing. And to think . . .”

  Her words drifted off. I imagined her on this roof while Sukhoi jets crossed the skies above the palace, firing upon us.

  I sat cross-legged beside her with my notebook on my lap, as had become my routine. I’d been scribbling details of my life, bits of conversations with my parents and Faheem’s habits, afraid I would lose the private moments we had shared. Without asking what I was writing, Antonia had come home with a new notebook, sliding it across the table as casually as if she were passing a napkin. Grateful, I filled the lined pages for hours at a time, though the effort often left me drained and freshly devastated.

  In a few minutes, Tilly fell asleep in the folding chair. She slept often and deeply, probably because she moved with the energy of a twister while she was awake. She groaned softly in her sleep, her neck at an awkward angle. I took the fuchsia shawl off her lap, balled it up, and placed it under her head.

  I walked to the edge of the roof. I saw mountains in the distance, saw the staggered rooftops of the next block. I resented the throngs of people who moved through the day as if what had transpired three weeks ago had been nothing more than a movie. Voices, taut with sorrow, floated over from a nearby apartment.

  “His mother takes food to the prison every day. They won’t even tell her if he’s dead or alive.”

  “Doesn’t your husband know someone in the army? Can’t he ask him?”

  “And what if he tells his superiors that I’ve asked? These animals will disappear him in the middle of the—”

  “Shh!”

  A window slammed shut. Maybe people weren’t as unaffected as I thought. Kabul was turning into a city of eavesdroppers, liars, and skeptics. People spied on people they believed to be spies.

  I opened the door to return to the living room. Antonia had her back to me, the telephone receiver pressed to her ear. On the dining table was a short stack of manila folders. She didn’t notice that I’d entered.

  “With all due respect, please don’t ask me what my women’s intuition is telling me,” Antonia said, throwing a hand in the air with exasperation. “I work off information, not intuition. We’ve got files on most of the new people in charge. We need to establish relationships with them now. Moscow has wanted everyone else out of their way for a long time.”

  Her voice softened then, becoming the assuaging tone she used with me.

  “I know he was your friend, sir. I know you lost many friends that night. We all did. But at this time, we’ve got to separate our personal feelings from our professional obligations. We can’t make emotional decisions.”

  I walked to the couch and lifted the corner pillow. I found the pale green tin Antonia had given me to hold the ring. I didn’t want to take it off, but she warned me that it was too fragile to be worn. She stuffed a handkerchief in the canister and watched as I placed the ring inside. I checked on the ring often, as if it might suddenly vanish.

  Antonia spun around, suddenly aware of my presence. She bit her lip and pressed her hand to her forehead.

  “Maybe it’s best we discuss this in person,” she said when her eyes met mine.

  Nia said goodbye and cradled the receiver. She offered a thin smile and beckoned for me to join her.

  “Star, come sit with me on the couch. It’s past time to get those stitches out.”

  We sat together on the couch, my foot on Nia’s lap. She held my foot with both her hands, rubbing my heel gently and nodding.

  “The infection has cleared up. It’s looking much better.”

  “You are like doctor,” I said, which made Nia laugh.

  “Hardly. I’ve just spent a good amount of time in places where there weren’t many.”

  Nia brought a pair of scissors, tweezers, and a roll of gauze from the bathroom. New, pink skin had grown over much of the thread Tahera had used to close the wound on my foot. Nia snipped some threads easily, but had to nudge the tweezers into the flesh to free the rest. I bit my lower lip and looked away.

  “What was Tilly doing upstairs?” she asked.

  “She is sleeping,” I replied. “She is very tired.”

  Nia shook her head.

  “I’ve got to pick up some vitamins or something on my way home from the embassy,” she muttered. “She’s thinking about who knows what and forgets to eat.”

  “She is like you,” I said.

  I must have caught Antonia off guard. She pressed her lips into a thin smile and returned her attention to the stubborn, buried threads in my foot.

  I looked toward the entryway and saw Nia’s bag by the door. Every time Nia left, my heart pounded. I worried about what might happen if she didn’t return or if someone showed up a
t her door. What Shair had said to me made more sense now than it had on that dark night. This was not my home anymore. I could go nowhere. I could seek no one. And I certainly couldn’t stay in this apartment forever.

  “The soldier,” Antonia began, as if she’d read my mind, “I’m afraid he is right. I am working on options. The longer we wait, the more chance there is for people to learn that you’re here. People are afraid to talk about the coup for fear they’ll end up in jail. You are a witness to that night, Sitara.”

  Her delicate phrasing did not cloud the danger she was communicating.

  “I think we can get you to America,” she said. She rubbed my heel firmly, which helped to distract from the soreness around the edges of the wound.

  America.

  I’d once asked my parents if they would ever want to live in America again. I’d heard from them about highways wide enough for three cars to travel in the same direction side by side, grocery stores with so many varieties of breakfast cereal that it warranted its own aisle, and university campuses with people from all over the world. My father had laughed and told me about a town in the south, Lashkargah, where Americans lived. Now they want to live here, he’d said.

  What would happen to me in America? To think of going there without my family was a bitter prospect. How was I to survive on my own? Would I be sent to an orphanage?

  “It might not be forever,” she said, seeing my crestfallen face. “But for some time, until we can find your family. And until we can be sure Kabul is safe for you.”

  Antonia set the scissors on the coffee table. I pulled my foot to me, seeing holes where the needle had pierced through my skin and pink lines where the thread had pulled my skin together. I could almost smell the bitter smoke that had enveloped Arg the night of the coup.

  “I will go,” I said.

  Antonia nodded.