When the Moon Is Low(104)

AS PROMISED, HE WENT BACK TO THE APARTMENT AT SEVEN thirty. Visar didn’t bother to invite him in. He handed Saleem a manila envelope and the backpack.

“Hey, boy! Your train leaves in thirty minutes. Do not be late.”

“Okay,” Saleem promised.

Visar was about to close the door when he grabbed Saleem by the nape of his neck, his fingers digging into Saleem’s flesh.

“If you not in Paris when the man wait for you, he find you and he kill you. You understand this?” His tone was icy.

Saleem swallowed the knot in his throat and nodded.

He was released.

Saleem made it two blocks down the street before realizing he was walking in the wrong direction. He checked his watch. He had twenty minutes to get on that train. He opened the envelope and pulled out an authentic-looking Greek passport with his picture and a false name. Saleem stuffed it back into the envelope quickly and looked to make sure no one was watching. Inside the envelope was also a train ticket. Saleem was on the move again, with no time to waste.

SALEEM ENTERED THE STATION WITH A NEW DREAD. TAKING INVENTORY, he had some valid-appearing papers to show any inquiring officer, a handful of clothes, and a toy stuffed with undoubtedly illegal contents. If he were stopped and searched, the bear would surely draw suspicion.

Five minutes.

Saleem struggled to match the ticket in his hand with the gates listed on the announcement boards.

A tap on his shoulder. Saleem whipped around to find a police officer looking down at him with a frown. His stomach dropped. Before he could bolt, the officer spoke.

“Where are you going?”

“I have a ticket,” Saleem blurted.

“Show me.” He took the ticket from Saleem’s trembling hand and looked up at the board. He pointed to the left. “Gate seven. Quickly.”

Saleem mumbled an awkward thanks and did his best to walk, not run, to the gate. He fully expected to hear a voice call out for him to halt. He dared not look over his shoulder.

Keep moving. Keep walking. Look for gate seven.

He found the gate and turned back around quickly. No one had followed him.

One minute.

Saleem got on board and found the seat number assigned on the ticket. Just in time.

He took the stuffed bear from the bag. A woman sitting across the aisle looked over and smiled warmly. How odd he must have appeared—a boy-man traveling with a beloved stuffed animal. He gave the bear a squeeze. There was something firm within the stuffing, squarish in shape. Saleem pushed the bear back into the bag and warned himself against being too curious.

The conductor signaled the train to set off. Out the window, the adjacent train looked as if it were moving ahead. Then there were trees and tunnels. Green and gray. Alive and dead. Saleem was as safe as he was unsafe.

He handed the conductor his ticket and waited for an accusing look or at least a question. But Saleem, with his backpack, looked very much like one of the many students aboard this car of the train. The others sat in the seats behind him, laughing loudly and swapping magazines. The conductor moved to the next car, and the students, one by one, tucked headphones into their ears or fell asleep against a neighbor’s shoulder, leaving nothing but the hum of the train.

Saleem thought of his childhood friends from Afghanistan. Had they been allowed to grow up together without rocket-rain, surely they would have been just as jovial and rowdy. But war had a taming effect. Kabul’s children were not children for long.

Roksana was not like this group. She seemed to have absorbed some of the solemnity of her fellow Afghans without ever having stepped foot in the country. Her father’s aloofness had sparked in her an obligation to delve into the struggles of her own people. He admired her for it, doubtful he would have had the same inclination.

Saleem wasn’t sure what he would have been had he had a life like Roksana’s. Two parents, school, a peaceful country. He would not have been this Saleem. This Saleem was the sum of a series of dreadful moments.

He turned the watch on his wrist. A few more scratches on the glass, probably from the night before.

Look what’s happened to us, Padar-jan.

Had Saleem and his family left Kabul earlier, they could have had a better chance. They could have had a peaceful life in London, maybe near Khala Najiba’s family. Saleem and Samira would be in school now, attending classes and struggling with homework assignments, learning a new language. It was an image so perfect, so imaginary that it played like a cartoon in Saleem’s mind.

But Padar-jan had instead chosen to keep his family in Kabul and hope for better days—despite the growing unrest, the killings, the droughts.

Why did you choose this for us? What good came from us being there so long after everyone else left?

SALEEM AWOKE WITH A JOLT. THE TRAIN HAD STOPPED. HE looked around and saw new passengers boarding; others had already disembarked. A man was loading his bag into the overhead area.

“Excuse me—Milan?” Saleem pointed out the window.

“Si,” he answered with a nod.

Saleem grabbed the backpack and bolted out the train door, nearly knocking over an elderly couple. He threw his hands up in a quick gesture of apology. He had only thirty minutes, he had been told, to find the connecting train that would take him to Paris. He hoped the train hadn’t been stopped long. He dug the tickets out of the envelope and again tried to match it up with the information screens that flashed overhead.