One day Zulaikha and Noor came flying through the gate, calling for Padar. Zulaikha looked ghostly, all of her skin covered in a fine dust. Her school uniform was filthy, and tears streaked down her face, leaving flesh-colored rivulets. Her eyes were a watery red, like she had been crying for hours. Her tightly braided hair had been pulled loose, and dust-coated strands were everywhere. I jumped down from the tree and ran across the courtyard to them as they reached the front door.
“What happened?” I asked. Zulaikha tried to talk, but she could not stop weeping.
“Let’s go inside,” Noor said, pushing me roughly toward the door, something he never did. His eyes were terrified. I followed both of them into the kitchen, where Padar sat at the table sipping chai, lost in thought. I often found him like this during the day when he didn’t go to work—lost in a trance, blocking out everything around him.
“The Russians are bombing the schools with poison gas,” Noor said almost in a whisper, as if he couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud.
“Where is Laila?” Padar asked sharply, snapping out of his thoughts. She and Zulaikha went to the same school. Zulaikha began trying to explain that there was gas that smelled, and it was everywhere. Kids had just started fainting, and she could not find Laila in the chaos.
“She’s there somewhere,” she said, exhausted. “Kids were throwing up and falling down…” She trailed off in another eruption of tears.
Padar ran out of the house, down the driveway, and down the street toward the school. We waited for him by the gate. While he was gone, Zulaikha cried and shook so hard she couldn’t talk. All of us began to fear for our sister. In a half hour, we saw Padar rushing back up the street carrying Laila, her feet and arms dangling, her head lolling back, and her mouth wide open. He brought her inside and placed her carefully on her bed. For several long minutes, Padar tried CPR, but still she didn’t open her eyes or rouse. He picked her up, cradled her in his arms, and rushed outside to his car. Noor opened the back door, and he laid her gingerly across the back seat.
“Stay inside and lock the doors,” he said as he jumped behind the wheel. We stood frozen in the doorway, the sounds of screaming and crying echoing in the distance as he sped off to the hospital.
Zia and Zulaikha kept talking about what had happened to Laila at the school, but I could only picture her unconscious body, limp and lifeless. The poisonous gas had done something to Zulaikha too, because she wasn’t herself. She was lethargic and drowsy, and it was difficult for her to complete her sentences. I had never felt any fear running through these streets before, but now this invasion had penetrated our walls, emotionally and physically. I could be killed. We all could be killed. What if Padar gets killed? What if he doesn’t return? How are we going to live? Something slipped away from me, from all of us. I wasn’t old enough to understand exactly what it was. Death and dying were as close to me now as my own beloved sisters.
I must have been up in the tree for an hour or more when Padar pulled into the drive. Laila was sitting up in the front seat. Noor came out to help her into the house. I jumped down from the tree and met everyone else running out as we all gathered around her. She was weak, and her skin was pale as a full moon. Padar shooed us away as he and Noor brought her inside and settled her in the living room. She wanted to sleep, but the doctor had told Padar to keep her awake. If she fell asleep, she could fall into a coma, maybe even not wake up. She didn’t want to talk, though, so while Noor fed her, we tried to get her to smile with cheers like the ones she always did for us on the volleyball court.
When it was my turn to talk, I knelt and looked up at her. Propped up on the sofa, she stared down at me. Her face had been washed, and someone had combed the fine dust out of her hair. She gave me a vacant look as I recounted the fun times we’d had together, the games we’d played together, and how when she got better, we’d go outside and run in the yard and play volleyball, and everything would be like it was before the tanks arrived. Her eyes were expressionless as she listened to me. I don’t think she believed a word of what I was saying. I wasn’t sure I did either.
8
UNEXPECTED VISITOR
One summer evening before Padar had barely drained his first Scotch, there was a loud banging at the front door. Mommy had been gone for nearly two years, and this banging on the door brought me running. Had she come home? Not a day passed that I didn’t wonder if she were alive.
The beating against the door kept on until Padar swung it wide open. Several grim-faced men in business suits filled the doorway; Russian soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders stood tall behind them in the driveway. They began talking to Padar in Russian, so I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but Padar responded in an argumentative tone, which grew angrier as the discussion went on. They talked while standing there in the doorway well past dinnertime.
When it was over, Padar slammed the door and stomped into the living room, cursing and fuming. “They want me to spy for them,” he said, slouching into his chair in the family room. He slugged down a fresh drink and stared red-faced at the wall.
“How?” I asked.
He only shook his head and gazed off into space.
That summer, the same men came to our door often, talking with Padar outside our front door hour after hour. Afterward he would come inside, angry and flustered and swearing profusely. They wanted information from inside the American embassy, and they obviously believed they could wear him down to get him to cooperate.
The Russians told him about American conspiracies and plots against the Afghan people. That the Americans wanted to possess Afghanistan as a base in order to spy on Russia. That Americans didn’t care about the Afghan people, but only what they could steal from them. The Americans would rape the land of its minerals and wealth and leave the people with nothing. They insisted that the Russians were friends of the Afghan people. They wanted only what was best for the future of the nation.
Padar hated the Russians, and his resolve to not betray his American employer never wavered. Yet they didn’t give up trying to convince him. They followed him when he drove to work, and at the end of the day, they were waiting by his car to follow him home. They became a presence in Padar’s life almost as constant and reliable as Scotch.
That fall I began school. On my first day, Padar walked with me. A big black car followed not too far behind us, and he told me to keep looking straight ahead. “Those bastard Russians are following us again.” He never appeared to be afraid or intimidated, just angry that they were so persistent and so obnoxious. He never broke down and worked for them, and I admired that he was so strong and fearless. But as brave and strong as he acted in front of the Russians and soldiers, at home he buried himself deeper in his Scotch glass.
By this time we were all sleeping on the floor or the bed or in the spacious walk-in closet of Ahmad Shah’s room. Padar often stayed up late drinking, and it was in those fall months after I started school that Padar and Uncle finally came to an agreement about the farmland, which plunged our home into an even darker place. They made the decision to walk away and deeded the land to the farmers who lived there. Though it was what Padar wanted, he knew that it would be more difficult to support us without the revenue the farm had brought in. I rarely saw him sober after that, and soon he began channeling his extra energy and drunkenness into midnight poetry sessions, which we were all required to attend.