When the Moon Is Low(72)

“Oh, my son. God keep you safe from harm. Saleem-jan, give me their address. I’ll mail the passport. Your friend, Rokshaana, she came to the train station. She saw us. She knew who we were. She’s so kind and she said she’ll come again here later today. She can help me mail this passport to you.”

Madar-jan had met Roksana? Saleem slipped back into the chair and rested his forehead on his hand. His head hanging, he closed his eyes and let gratitude wash over him.

Thank you, Roksana. Thank you.

Hakan tapped on his watch. The calling card would soon run out of time.

“Madar-jan, I don’t have much time left on this card.” He turned to Hakan and asked for their address. He relayed it to Madar-jan as quickly as Hakan could scribble it on a scrap of paper.

“Saleem-jan, bachem, I’ll mail you the train ticket and the passport. Forgive me, we will take the train, maybe tomorrow. Aziz needs to see a doctor. But be very careful, please! Say a prayer with every step and keep your eyes open. Sweetheart, believe me, I wish I didn’t have to—”

The line went dead. Saleem cradled the receiver. As his mother’s voice vanished, Saleem’s journey changed. He was on his own now. Tonight would be the last night that the Waziri family could sleep in relative peace, aware of each other’s whereabouts and well-being. Saleem’s family had met Roksana and she would guide them through the next few steps. Fereiba was comforted knowing Saleem was with Hakan and Hayal. Tonight, if they could just keep their minds off tomorrow, they would all get some rest.

Saleem crawled onto the familiar mattress and fell asleep in seconds.

HE WOKE IN THE MORNING, HIS EYES OPENING TO THE SAME cracking plaster he’d watched for months. He returned to the fault lines, the places where the paint had chipped away and the ceiling peeked through, exposed for what it really was. Saleem ran his fingers through his hair and down his arms. He touched his side and winced when he reached his flank. He expected to feel the same fault lines on his own body, places where the weight of the load had started to break him open and expose him for what he was.

Early morning light drifted through the gauzy, cotton curtains. The fog was lifting. Saleem had slept more than half a day and woke with a renewed clarity.

He would wait for his passport. It could take two weeks for the passport to arrive. That would be two weeks without income. There was only one thing to do. Saleem got up and buttoned his shirt. He would go back to the farm.

MR. POLAT SMIRKED AND SPAT, BUT HE NEEDED THE HELP. HE told Saleem to go into the field and begin his work. The Armenian woman chuckled to see him as if she’d known all along he’d be back. She shook her head and resumed her work, muttering something under her breath that he would not have understood even if she’d yelled it out to the skies.

Saleem understood though.

What use was it? You packed your bags and sat on a boat and prayed and for what? Nothing has changed because nothing will. You tried to cut free of these vines, but they will only grow tighter around you.

Saleem said nothing to her but stood for a moment with his back to the sun, his shadow stocky and bold between the rows of tomato plants. She was wrong. Everything had changed since he’d last been on this farm. He was a true refugee now but one who had seen the ocean. He’d heard the sound of waves and smelled the salted ocean air. Every step of the journey had altered him, changed his very coding irreversibly. He had crossed the waters once and would cross them again—accompanied not by his family but by the tiny mutations in his being that gave him the strength to do it on his own.





CHAPTER 35


Fereiba


I WISH FOR NO MOTHER TO FACE THE CHOICE I HAD TO MAKE. Nothing could be harder.

I’m weighed by a guilt so heavy that it takes every ounce of strength I have to put one foot in front of the other and continue.

How Saleem found his way back to Intikal, I will not know until I see my son again. I never should have let him leave that hotel room. I should have been his mother and raised my voice and stood my ground. My skin prickled that day when he talked of going to the market. Can a mother commit a greater sin than ignoring her intuitions? I pushed it aside because I wanted to give him the space he wanted, the space his father believed he needed to become a man.

Mahmood was not always right. I can see that from here, clear as the brilliant blue sky. He made decisions with his mind. He stood for what he believed to be right and logical and good—all romantic notions that failed us. Kabul was no place for ideals. I knew that. I told him as much. Ideals and guardian angels are for children and times of peace. They have no place in this world. We should have left Kabul long ago, followed my siblings to safer places while we were still whole. I let him overturn my intuition, snubbing our noses at God’s warnings.

To hate him, though, would be another shade of blasphemy.

He is not here, and I cannot alter the path we decided on together. I cannot change the conversations we had. I stood by him because I loved him and trusted him and wanted to honor the choice we made. His goodness, the nectar he offered the world, attracted one, then two, then a swarm of bees. They circled him, humming, until that moment when they released their venom. Even after he was gone, I could still hear the sound of them, circling my family. But this was my own doing. I let Saleem, my firstborn, walk out the door and into an unforgiving world and now I cry that he has not returned. I am the mother I swore I would never be.