My sister Najiba was permitted to visit us. I fell into her arms. To be around family is to feel the possibility of growing roots again. When they asked about Saleem, my heart dropped. I’d been hoping he’d somehow made it to England ahead of me and was already in his aunt’s home, waiting for us to make our way there. My sister held me tightly. Her family came with her, Hameed and the children. The reunion was bittersweet, clouded by Mahmood’s absence. Hameed wiped away tears to see me without my husband, his cousin. For the moment, everything else between us, the twisted way he’d married into our family, was pushed aside. I had other, more pressing worries. Saleem was still missing. My sister did her best to keep my spirits up.
He will come soon enough, Fereiba-jan. He’s always been a clever boy. He is his father’s son.
Yes, he is.
We live in a small apartment now with a single bedroom and a small kitchen. It is modest and glorious all at once. While they consider our pleas, we have been granted identification cards and a few pounds per week for food. More than anything, I am grateful that they have evaluated Aziz. The dear doctor from Turkey was right. Aziz had a hole in his heart and needed surgery urgently, the doctors here told me. They would treat him while we waited for our case to be reviewed. With or without an interpreter, there was no way to express how grateful I was to hear that.
If only I could share this news with Saleem. I look for him everywhere we go. I see boys of his height or with his hair color and pray that one of them will come running toward me. I hear his voice in crowds and turn frequently and abruptly, wondering if I’m walking past him without knowing it. What if he is here but cannot find us? Samira knows and is unsurprised by my behaviors. She does the same. Harder than anything is not knowing where he is.
I dare to imagine a perfect world. I dare to dream that the woman writing my story on those many pages will stop and remember that a boy by the name of Saleem Waziri is here and in search of his family. I dream that I will tell him his brother is well. I dream that we receive a letter declaring that we will not be sent away and that we will be allowed to work and go to school and stay in this country where the air is clear and life is more like metal than dust.
And while I’m thinking of these things, a woman in a green hospital uniform walks toward me. Her hair is covered in a blue puff, the same grating blue as the walls. She removes her mask as she approaches. I stare at her face, anxious to see what news she will bring of my son. I can tell nothing from her eyes. I dare not stand up because she may very well knock me down with what she is about to say. I have no choice but to wait and listen.
It shouldn’t be much longer now.
CHAPTER 46. Saleem
AGAIN, A NEW LANGUAGE. AGAIN, A NEW PEOPLE.
But everything was the same. It was the familiar feeling of being lost. The same things made his skin clammy and his mouth dry: uniforms, refugees, checkpoints, trains, and the sight of food.
After what felt like an eternity, Saleem felt the ship stop moving and the trucks began disembarking. The truck had rolled off the ramp into the port in Bari, the eastern coast of Italy. Getting off the truck had been the tricky part. Saleem had waited for the truck driver to make his first stop and open the back door. When he did so, Saleem pitched his coiled body off the platform, nearly knocking the driver to the ground. Like a mouse discovered in a cubbyhole, he scrambled to his feet and took off running.
Run. Just run.
Sunlight stung his unaccustomed eyes. He ran toward the road. There was yelling behind him. He ran faster and turned left when he saw an opening between two buildings. It was a street corner. When he’d put enough distance behind him, he slumped down between two Dumpsters and waited.
It was dusk before Saleem started to walk again. He walked with purpose but without direction, a bewilderment in his step that he’d made it this far. Saleem’s eyes drifted upward to buildings that stood stories high. He had stumbled into a metropolis, the likes of which he’d only seen in his father’s books.
Here, Saleem thought with both trepidation and hope, I can be lost.
Saleem wandered through the narrow streets as cars and taxis zipped past him. A family walked by. The mother pushed a baby carriage while the father carried a young boy on his shoulders. Saleem looked away. For all the miles and months between him and Kabul, the hurt stayed close, no farther than the pigment in his skin. Would he ever look at a father and son and not feel the poison pulse through his body? Until the night Padar-jan had been taken, he’d never noticed fathers and sons. His eyes were drawn to them now, a self-inflicted thrashing that he could not resist because each time he hoped, with that part of a boy that refuses to stay beaten down, that this time would be the time the vinegar would turn back to juice.
Then there were mothers. And young girls of Samira’s age. And healthy toddlers. More and more, Saleem had to turn his eyes away when he looked at the world. He was even more alone than he thought.
Saleem worked up the nerve to enter a small store. He traded a few euros for a sandwich and juice. The shop owner bagged his purchase and went back to his business.
He found a dimly lit children’s park. He walked past the swings and the slide and the sandbox. He walked over to the carousel, a disk painted in primary colors. Saleem pushed the metal rail of the carousel and gave it a spin. It wobbled with a slow, hair-raising squeak. Night transformed playgrounds into ghost towns, empty of the redeeming sound of children laughing and giving chase.
Saleem lived in those voids. He lived in the uninhabited spaces of night, the places where bright, cheerful faces would not be. He lived in the corners that went unnoticed, among the things people swept out the back door.
With his knees tucked in, he slept the night behind the carousel and woke just as the sun came up. Horns were honking and the city was stirring to life again. Saleem made his way to the sidewalk. Today, he would plan.
Women with grocery bags and small children walked by. The shops looked familiar. The language sounded foreign. Things were different but the same. Saleem stayed alert for uniforms. With England as his destination, he needed to find the best route to get there. He’d managed to get by on buses in Turkey and thought he could try for the same here. He worked up the nerve to approach an elderly woman, her back hunched with age. He asked in a mesh of Greek and English for the bus station. The woman looked annoyed and waved him off, tapping down the road with her cane. Saleem continued down the block, his hands in his pockets.
He spotted a gray-haired man sitting alone outside a café. He had just folded his newspaper and was tucking it under his arm when Saleem approached and did his best to articulate his question again.
The man nodded, his face mostly covered by the wide brim of his hat. His voice had a soft rasp, weathered by the years.
“Dov’e’ la stazione? Si, si.”
With a series of hand gestures, the man pointed to a main road and a turn to the left. He repeated himself, speaking slowly and patiently until he was certain Saleem had a general sense of the direction he was to take.
Saleem put his hand over his chest and lowered his head in thanks, feeling much like Padar-jan in this gesture.
Street signs were not helpful. Saleem came to an intersection and wondered if this was where he was supposed to turn to the left. He walked for a few more moments and saw a wide structure, its entire façade a series of arched entryways and ornate windows. Two buses turned in to the road that curled around the building. Seeing a police officer sipping coffee up ahead, Saleem made a subtle, panic-stricken shift and veered off a side street. Two blocks later, he returned to the main road and, with the police officer well behind him, headed straight for the station.