Ama Ferei’s face looked taut and angry. The skin around her nose and the corners of her mouth were cracked and peeling. Her scalp was littered with tiny white flakes.
They exchanged pleasantries and went inside, Gulnaz and Zeba finding their way to the opposite side of the room.
The roll of fingers on a tabla drowned out the chatter. The mood was festive, but Zeba was too distracted to appreciate it much.
For most of the night, Zeba watched Ama Ferei rub and scratch at her arms angrily. She stopped whenever her sister-in-law leaned in to speak to her but resumed just as soon as she turned away. Zeba imagined her aunt’s entire body covered in a prickly sheath of scales beneath her cotton dress.
On their walk home that evening, Zeba looked at her mother’s face, glowing in the creamy light of the moon. Sometimes, it felt absolutely wondrous to be daughter to the green-eyed sorceress.
CHAPTER 5
YUSUF HAD FLOWN FROM KENNEDY AIRPORT TO DUBAI, THIRTEEN hours pressed against the window of a 747. He checked into a marble-floored hotel with gaudy chandeliers and plush lounge furniture. Exhausted, he slept for half a day, waking only to wander through the souk in the evening amid knots of pale-faced tourists and white-gowned locals. Storeowners were almost uniformly darker-skinned foreigners, selling goods from India in shops with tentlike openings. Windows shimmered with sets of bangles and elaborate necklaces of eighteen-karat yellow gold. Yusuf quickly tired of the extravagance. He ate kebabs at a sidewalk café and thought of his long-awaited homecoming.
THE TWO-HOUR FLIGHT TO KABUL PASSED QUICKLY, AND YUSUF stepped off the plane and into a state of wonder. From here, the land of his childhood looked unscathed, as if the events of history were nothing but a bad dream. The mountains were exactly the same as those in his memories.
It was a short walk from the tarmac to the terminal, with airport workers in fluorescent green pinnies pointing the way.
Yusuf picked up his luggage from the conveyor belt and met a taxi at the front of the building. It was a short drive from the airport into Kabul, and Yusuf’s eyes stayed glued to the windows. He caught a glimpse of the airport’s main entrance as they drove away.
The wide glass doors were framed by two portraits. On the right was Ahmad Shah Massoud, the martyred Lion of Panjshir who’d led the Northern Alliance in battle against the Taliban. With his flat, round pakol hat perched atop a head of thick, wavy hair, Massoud had been painted looking off into the distance. His mustache and beard were modest, his looks rugged. In this, as in nearly every picture of him ever captured, he looked like he could have been strategizing an attack on the Taliban or turning over verses of poetry, a combination that described the soul of the nation.
On the left was Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s first president following the ousting of the Taliban in 2001. Karzai’s posture, in contrast, was like one from a royal portrait. The traditional chappan—stripes of green, gold, and royal blue — was draped over his shoulders, and a peaked lambswool hat sat atop his head. His grayed facial hair was neatly trimmed, and through small but proud eyes, he looked outward, past the people entering the airport and toward the resurrected Kabul.
The taxi driver asked Yusuf why he’d come back. He saw plenty of expats returning, but young men traveling alone were always here for a reason other than visiting family.
“Do you have a business here?” he’d asked.
“No, no business.”
“You want to open a business?”
“No, I’m here for a job.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“A lawyer? For some foreign company?”
“No, I’m working with an international organization that provides attorneys for Afghans. I’m here to work for the people.” Yusuf could feel the driver’s curiosity was mixed with something else — skepticism or resentment, perhaps. He knew scores of Afghans had flocked back to Kabul to take advantage of the postwar opportunities. They sold land at inflated prices, built hotels, and grabbed up foreign subcontracting opportunities. Yusuf decided to shift the conversation and asked the driver about the U.S. withdrawal.
“Everyone leaves,” the driver said with a dismissive wave. “Why should we expect them to stay? But they’ll be back.”
“How do you mean?”
“We’re going to have bigger problems here as soon as they leave. We all know that. Sometimes you’re so worried about getting rid of the ants in your house that you don’t notice the mice lying in wait.”
“Don’t you think it’s time for Afghans to look after our own country, though? We have to learn to stand on our own feet.”
The driver scoffed, honking his horn as a car nearly sideswiped his vehicle. The roads were jammed with yellow station wagon cabs, Toyotas, wheelbarrows, and pedestrians. Cars were so closely packed on the street that drivers could roll down their windows and reach into the next vehicle.
“Easy for you to say,” he muttered. “You don’t live here.”
“Actually, now I do.”
The driver reached for the gear shift and slid into neutral, letting the car drift forward. He didn’t say another word.
Yusuf turned his attention to the streets that looked vaguely familiar. On some stretches of road, he was struck with a feeling somewhere between déjà vu and true memory. At a roundabout, Yusuf could almost feel his father’s hand holding his. The number of new buildings with shiny steel-framed construction and large glass windows surprised him. Red banners announced slashed prices on home furnishings.
Yusuf asked to be dropped off at a hotel in the upscale part of town, where most foreign nationals stayed. The driver smirked, feeling vindicated.
AFTER OPENING HIS BAGS AND DRINKING THE BOTTLED WATER he’d purchased in the lobby, Yusuf put his feet up and called his mother.
“How was your flight? Have you eaten anything?” Her voice was tense with worry.
“It was fine. Of course I’ve eaten, Madar-jan. I’m here to work, not to go on a diet.”
“Don’t mention that word to me,” she said bitterly. “I’ve been on a diet for the last fifteen years and have gained twenty pounds.”
“Without that diet, you might have gained thirty. Consider it a success,” Yusuf offered.
“You can make an argument for anything, can’t you? Listen, I know you only have a few days there, so please don’t waste time. Go to your Kaka Siar’s house as soon as you can. You promised me.”
Yusuf groaned.
“I will! I thought you wouldn’t mind if I called you before I went looking up our old neighbors.”
“This phone call would have been a lot more interesting if you could tell me you’d stopped by their house for a cup of tea.”
Kaka Siar was not actually Yusuf’s uncle. He and his family had left for Iran around the same time that Yusuf’s family had gone to Pakistan. Kaka Siar had three daughters. The youngest had just turned twenty-four years old and was named Meena. As children, Yusuf had looked after Meena while their parents passed plates of food around and discussed the ongoing war — he a school-age boy and she a toddler. Over the years, he never minded her following him around. He’d always been gentle with her, in a way that made his mother and Meena’s mother smile with pride.
Yusuf remembered when they’d left Kabul. He’d been a bit more distant from Meena that year, less interested in entertaining a six-year-old when he was eleven and eager to enter adolescence. Still, Meena clung to him like an older brother, and he never could bear to disappoint her. He would sit, cross-legged, and tell her stories or listen to hers. The world outside their homes was harsh, and he felt a sense of duty to make her smile.