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.
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.
I have reasons for my choice. Aziz looks terrible. He has not gained weight and I see the strain in his sallow face, the tiny blue vein running across his temple, the bones of his back looking like beads on a string. I need to get him to help if he’s to live to see his brother again. He is so light in my arms. He is my last child, the one I will carry for as long as I can, because he makes me a mother for that much longer. When he is awake, I watch his movements. I see Saleem in him too. He is very much like his older brother, headstrong and resilient. Each struggles in his own way but Saleem can stand on his feet. His voice, coming from the safety of Hakan and Hayal’s home, told me he could find his own way.
I made a choice. We took the train from Athens. Could I have done things differently? I could have. But my intuition told me that Aziz could not. Forgive me, Saleem, but we could not wait for you. For your brother, the brother I know you resent and adore, I had to move on.
There could be nothing worse than choosing between two children. Ask me to choose between my right arm and my left and I will give you one. But ask me to choose between two of my children and my heart shatters into a thousand pieces. Children are touched by heaven—their every breath, every laugh, every touch a sip of water
to the desert wanderer. I could not have known this as a child, but I know it as a mother, a truth I learned as my own heart grew, bent, danced, and broke for each of my children.
Samira watches me in silence. She is no longer a girl, her body assuming the delicate curves of a young woman. Thank God, she looks to be much wiser than I was at her age. I was naïve. I think of how I believed people—the boy in the orchard, KokoGul. I imagine my daughter holds her tongue because she knows words mean nothing, accomplish nothing. She’s shown the quiet strength of a woman since we left Kabul. She has done as much for her little brother as I have. She has rocked him through his sweaty fits, patiently fed him when he would push the food away, and shouldered our bags when I could not. All of this matters more than any words she could say, though I yearn to hear her voice again. More than anything, I want to hear her laughter.
She misses Saleem. She’s incomplete without him and will not speak until he returns—until something is given back to her by a world that just keeps taking away. Her heart mirrors my own, and it is for her that I hold back my tears. I’ve had enough. I’m tired of being trapped. Each morning when I wake and find that nothing has changed, I think I am finished.
Were it not for my children, I would be. For them, I cannot be finished yet.
I may find Saleem again. I may put my arms around him and hear his voice and have him returned to his family. Even if I am so fortunate, I will not be the same. I will always be the mother who left a son behind. It is the hell I live in now and will live in forever.
The train has pulled out of the station. We are on our way. People look at us but our tickets are not questioned, nor are our documents. Some would call that lucky but lucky is relative.
Samira stares out the window; Aziz’s head rests against her side. She is thinking of her brother, no doubt, and wondering if her mother has made the right choice. I cannot explain it to her. It is a thing that cannot be packaged into words.
SALEEM RUSHED HOME EVERY DAY TO SEE IF THE PASSPORT AND
train ticket had made it to Intikal. A week after he’d returned, he had sheepishly approached Hakan and produced a few bills to compensate for his room and board. Hakan shook his head and told Saleem not to speak of money again. Saleem bit his lip and nodded, an ineloquent but understood gesture of thanks.
Ten days went by and still no envelope from his mother. Saleem’s mood was further fouled by Ekin’s interest in his return. She stood behind the farmhouse pretending to read or tend to the herb garden Polat’s wife kept behind their kitchen. She made an effort to stay visible, watching Saleem from the corner of her eye. She said things Saleem did not want or need to hear.
“Where did you go?” Ekin laughed. “My father cursed for two days when you didn’t come back. You’re lucky he let you work again.”
Polat, from time to time, would shoo her back into the house, but he seemed oblivious to her fascination with Saleem. Their conversations were unbalanced. She talked and Saleem listened, afraid to say anything
that could be taken the wrong way. He bit his tongue as she droned on about school and radio and things he could not possibly know.
Sixteen days and still no passport in the mail. Saleem was having trouble sleeping. Hakan had tried calling the hotel again, but the owner said the family had left long ago. Saleem could only hope that meant that they’d boarded the train successfully and possibly with Roksana’s help. Maybe they’d even made it to England by now, though he wasn’t sure Madar-
jan
had a plan for getting from Italy to England.
The passport was a whole other matter. Saleem had no way of knowing if the documents had been mailed or if they’d made an error with the address. Maybe they’d been confiscated by the postal system. He would wait. That precious booklet with his grim-faced photograph and invented birthday was the only way he could avoid the death traps the Attiki boys spoke of. He remembered the dark figures who had transported them across the border into Iran. He’d heard the man push his mother for more money, and he’d heard worse stories from others. The underground world was one without laws or codes or safety nets. Some people were transported successfully. Others never made it. No one knew what really happened in the shadowy world of smuggling beyond the few stories that bubbled to the surface.
ON A MONDAY AFTERNOON, EKIN SAUNTERED BEHIND THE HOUSE
where Saleem was tilling the soil for a new crop and wondering what he would do if the passport didn’t arrive by the end of the week.
“I bet the water runs black when you bathe,” she said with a grin.
Saleem kept his head down and dug the hoe heavily into the dirt. She wasn’t sure why he hadn’t laughed.
“You do not speak much. I don’t know why you are so quiet. Did you work on a farm where you came from? I’ve lived on this farm all my life, but I bet you’ve picked more tomatoes in a day than I have in a lifetime.”
Saleem, in a different state of mind, might have been able to realize
that she meant some of what she said as flattery. To him, she was as soothing as sandpaper.
Ekin was wearing a calf-length pleated skirt and a blouse. She leaned against the rail of the fence and began to play with the cuff of her socks, pulling one up to her knee and then the other. Saleem thought of Roksana. The two girls were so different.
“Does your mother work too?”
“No.”
“What about your father?” She was bullish. Saleem’s fingers clutched at the handle of the hoe tightly enough that he made himself nervous. He shook his head.
“I have work.” His words were stretched taut and ready to pounce. Ekin paid no attention.
“I know. You are a good worker and that’s why Baba took you back. He said at least you’re not like the others.” Ekin pursed her lips. “I’ve heard some of the immigrants bring drugs with them. Baba says that’s what makes so many people lazy and slow.”
“Ekin, leave me alone! I am working!” he thundered. He could not bear a single sentence more from her. Ekin’s jaw dropped.
“You yell at me?” She sounded stunned.
“You don’t know anything about my family or why I have to work here on this farm. I’m tired of listening to you!”
“I know more than you do!” she cried defensively. “You don’t know how to talk to someone who’s trying to be nice to you. You only know about tomatoes and animal shit! At least I go to school and don’t stink everywhere I go! Maybe you should learn about a few things before you start screaming!”
“You know so much? You know nothing! I went to school too, but schools close when rockets fire on our homes. We leave and come to this country and here I work for almost no money. I work to be with my family . . . to have food for my family. You know how it is to be alone? No one to help you?” Saleem’s voice faltered. He still had the hoe in his hand and was working it into the soil with a concentrated
fury. He’d nearly forgotten Ekin was there, making her mostly unimportant.
“I do not know where my family is,” Saleem said in a melancholy whisper. “Your baba thinks he gives too much money but I work many days for nothing. I work here again because I have
no
choice.”
Ekin was quiet. Finally.
Saleem channeled his anger and focused on the work he had to do. He didn’t bother to look up and see the expression on Ekin’s face. He did not see her eyes water or the way she bit her lip or slipped away trembling. Dig, pull, lift. Dig, pull, lift. He swung the hoe because it was all he could do.