بخش 5

In Afghanistan, yelda is the first night of the month of Jadi, the first night of winter, and the longest night of the year. As was the tradition, Hassan and I used to stay up late, our feet tucked under the kursi, while Ali tossed apple skin into the stove and told us ancient tales of sultans and thieves to pass that longest of nights.

When I was older, I read in my poetry books that yelda was the starless night tormented lovers kept vigil, enduring the endless dark, waiting for the sun to rise and bring with it their loved one. After I met Soraya Taheri, every night of the week became a yelda for me. And when Sunday mornings came, I rose from bed, Soraya Taheri’s brown-eyed face already in my head. In Baba’s bus, I counted the miles until I’d see her sitting barefoot, arranging cardboard boxes of yellowed encyclopedias, her heels white against the asphalt, silver bracelets jingling around her slender wrists. Soraya. Swap Meet Princess. The morning sun to my yelda.

I promised myself that I would talk to her before the summer was over, but schools reopened, the leaves reddened, yellowed, and fell, the rains of winter swept in and wakened Baba’s joints, baby leaves sprouted once more, and I still hadn’t had the heart, the dil, to even look her in the eye.

The spring quarter ended in late May 1985. I aced all of my general education classes, which was a minor miracle given how I’d sit in lectures and think of the soft hook of Soraya’s nose.

Then, one sweltering Sunday that summer, Baba and I were at the flea market, sitting at our booth, fanning our faces with newspapers. Despite the sun bearing down like a branding iron, the market was crowded that day and sales had been strong—it was only 12:30 but we’d already made $160. I got up, stretched, and asked Baba if he wanted a Coke. He said he’d love one.

“Be careful, Amir,” he said as I began to walk. “Of what, Baba?” “I am not an ahmaq, so don’t play stupid with me.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Remember this,” Baba said, pointing at me, “The man is a Pashtun to the root. He has nang and namoos.” Nang. Namoos. Honor and pride. The tenets of Pashtun men. Especially when it came to the chastity of a wife. Or a daughter.

“I’m only going to get us drinks.” “Just don’t embarrass me, that’s all I ask.” “I won’t. God, Baba.” I walked toward the concession booth initially, then turned left at the T-shirt stand—where, for $5, you could have the face of Jesus, Elvis, Jim Morrison, or all three, pressed on a white nylon T-shirt. I spotted the Taheris’ gray van two rows from ours, next to a kiosk selling mango-on-a-stick. She was alone, reading. I meant to simply walk by again and I thought I had, except suddenly I was standing at the edge of the Taheris’ white tablecloth, staring at Soraya across curling irons and old neckties. She looked up.

“Salaam,” I said. “I’m sorry to be mozahem, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“Salaam.”

“Is General Sahib here today?” I said. My ears were burning. I couldn’t bring myself to look her in the eye. “He went that way,” she said. Pointed to her right. The bracelet slipped down to her elbow, silver against olive.

“Will you tell him I stopped by to pay my respects?” I said.

“I will.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Oh, and my name is Amir. In case you need to know. So you can tell him. That I stopped by. To… pay my respects.”

“Yes.”

I shifted on my feet, cleared my throat. “I’ll go now. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

I began to walk. Stopped and turned. I said it before I had a chance to lose my nerve: “Can I ask what you’re reading?”

She blinked.

I held my breath. Suddenly, I felt the collective eyes of the flea market Afghans shift to us. I imagined a hush falling. Lips stopping in midsentence. Heads turning. Eyes narrowing with keen interest.

What was this?

Up to that point, our encounter could have been interpreted as a respectful inquiry, one man asking for the whereabouts of another man. But I’d asked her a question and if she answered, we’d be . . . well, we’d be chatting. Me a mojarad, a single young man, and she an unwed young woman. One with a history, no less.

She turned the book so the cover faced me. Wuthering Heights. “Have you read it?” she said.

I nodded. I could feel the pulsating beat of my heart behind my eyes. “It’s a sad story.”

“Sad stories make good books,” she said.

“They do.”

“I heard you write.”

How did she know? I wondered if her father had told her, maybe she had asked him. I immediately dismissed both scenarios as absurd. Fathers and sons could talk freely about women. But no Afghan girl—no decent and mohtaram Afghan girl, at least— queried her father about a young man. And no father, especially a Pashtun with nang and namoos, would discuss a mojarad with his daughter, not unless the fellow in question was a khastegar, a suitor, who had done the honorable thing and sent his father to knock on the door.

Incredibly, I heard myself say, “Would you like to read one of my stories?”

“I would like that,” she said. I was about to say more when the woman I’d seen on occasion with Soraya came walking up the aisle. She was carrying a plastic bag full of fruit. When she saw us, her eyes bounced from Soraya to me and back. She smiled.

“Amir jan, good to see you,” she said, unloading the bag on the tablecloth. Her brow glistened with a sheen of sweat. Her red hair, coiffed like a helmet, glittered in the sunlight—I could see bits of her scalp where the hair had thinned. She had small green eyes buried in a cabbage-round face, capped teeth, and little fingers like sausages. “I am Jamila, Soraya jan’s mother.” “Salaam, Khala jan,” I said, embarrassed, as I often was around Afghans, that she knew me and I had no idea who she was.

“How is your father?” she said.

“He’s well, thank you.”

“You know, your grandfather, Ghazi Sahib, the judge? Now, his uncle and my grandfather were cousins,” she said. “So you see, we’re related.” She smiled a cap-toothed smile, and I noticed the right side of her mouth drooping a little. Her eyes moved between Soraya and me again.

“Sit down, Amir jan,” she said. “Soraya, get him a chair, bachem. And wash one of those peaches. They’re sweet and fresh.”

“Nay, thank you,” I said. “I should get going. My father’s waiting.”

“Oh?” Khanum Taheri said, clearly impressed that I’d done the polite thing and declined the offer. “Then here, at least have this.” She threw a handful of kiwis and a few peaches into a paper bag and insisted I take them. “Carry my Salaam to your father. And come back to see us again.” “I will. Thank you, Khala jan,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Soraya looking away.

“I thought you were getting Cokes,” Baba said, taking the bag of peaches from me. He was looking at me in a simultaneously serious and playful way. I began to make something up, but he bit into a peach and waved his hand. “Don’t bother, Amir. Just remember what I said.”

It went on like that for a few weeks. I’d wait until the general went for a stroll, then I’d walk past the Taheris’ stand. If Khanum Taheri was there, she’d offer me tea and a kolcha and we’d chat about Kabul in the old days, the people we knew, her arthritis. Undoubtedly, she had noticed that my appearances always coincided with her husband’s absences, but she never let on. “Oh you just missed your Kaka,” she’d say. I actually liked it when Khanum Taheri was there, and not just because of her amiable ways; Soraya was more relaxed, more talkative with her mother around. As if her presence legitimized whatever was happening between us.

One day, Soraya and I were alone at their booth, talking. She was telling me about school, how she too was working on her general education classes, at Ohlone Junior College in Fremont.

“What will you major in?”

“I want to be a teacher,” she said.

“Really? Why?”

She looked at me shyly. “Well, when I was in fourth grade in Kabul, my father hired a woman named Ziba to help around the house. She had a sister in Iran, in Mashad, and, since Ziba was illiterate, she’d ask me to write her sister letters once in a while. And when the sister replied, I’d read her letter to Ziba. One day, I asked her if she’d like to learn to read and write. She gave me this big smile, crinkling her eyes, and said she’d like that very much. So we’d sit at the kitchen table after I was done with my own schoolwork and I’d teach her Alef-beh. I remember looking up sometimes in the middle of homework and seeing Ziba in the kitchen, stirring meat in the pressure cooker, then sitting down with a pencil to do the alphabet homework I’d assigned to her the night before.

“Anyway, within a year, Ziba could read children’s books. She started calling me Moalem Soraya, Teacher Soraya.” She laughed again. “I know it sounds childish, but the first time Ziba wrote her own letter, I knew there was nothing else I’d ever want to be but a teacher. I was so proud of her and I felt I’d done something really worthwhile, you know?” I thought of how I had used my literacy to ridicule Hassan. How I had teased him about big words he didn’t know.

“My mother was a teacher too,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “My mother told me.” Then her face reddened with a blush at what she had blurted, at the implication of her answer, that “Amir Conversations” took place between them when I wasn’t there. It took an enormous effort to stop myself from smiling.

“I brought you something.” I fished the roll of stapled pages from my back pocket. “As promised.” I handed her one of my short stories.

“Oh, you remembered,” she said, actually beaming. “Thank you!” Suddenly her smile vanished, and her eyes fixed on something behind me. I turned around. Came face-to-face with General Taheri.

“Amir jan. Our aspiring storyteller. What a pleasure,” he said. He was smiling thinly.

“Salaam, General Sahib,” I said through heavy lips.

He moved past me, toward the booth. “What a beautiful day it is, nay?” he said, thumb hooked in the breast pocket of his vest, the other hand extended toward Soraya. She gave him the pages.

“They say it will rain this week. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” He dropped the rolled pages in the garbage can. Turned to me and gently put a hand on my shoulder. We took a few steps together.

“You know, bachem, I have grown rather fond of you. You are a decent boy, I really believe that, but—” he sighed and waved a hand “—even decent boys need reminding sometimes. So it’s my duty to remind you that you are among peers in this flea market.” He stopped. His expressionless eyes bore into mine. “You see, everyone here is a storyteller.” He smiled, revealing perfectly even teeth. “Do pass my respects to your father, Amir jan.” He dropped his hand. Smiled again.

As it turned out, I didn’t get to brood too much over what had happened.

Because later that week, Baba caught a cold.

It started with a hacking cough and the sniffles. He got over the sniffles, but the cough persisted. He’d hack into his handkerchief, stow it in his pocket. I kept after him to get it checked, but he’d wave me away.

Then, two weeks later, I caught him coughing a wad of bloodstained phlegm into the toilet.

“How long have you been doing that?” I said.

“What’s for dinner?” he said.

“I’m taking you to the doctor.”

I took him to the county hospital in San Jose. The sallow, puffy-eyed doctor who saw us introduced himself as a second-year resident. “He looks younger than you and sicker than me,” Baba grumbled. The resident sent us down for a chest X ray. When the nurse called us back in, the resident was filling out a form.

“Take this to the front desk,” he said, scribbling quickly. “What is it?” I asked. “A referral.” Scribble scribble. “For what?” “Pulmonary clinic. He gave me a quick glance. Pushed up his glasses. Began scribbling again. “He’s got a spot on his right lung. I want them to check it out.” “A spot?” I said, the room suddenly too small. “Cancer?” Baba added casually. “Possible. It’s suspicious, anyway,” the doctor muttered. “Can’t you tell us more?” I asked. “Not really. Need a CAT scan first, then see the lung doctor.” He handed me the referral form. “You said your father smokes, right?” “Yes.” He nodded. Looked from me to Baba and back again. “They’ll call you within two weeks.”

I wanted to ask him how I was supposed to live with that word, “suspicious,” for two whole weeks. How was I supposed eat, work, study? How could he send me home with that word?

I took the form and turned it in. That night, I waited until Baba fell asleep, and then folded a blanket. I used it as a prayer rug. Bowing my head to the ground, I recited half-forgotten verses from the Koran—verses the mullah had made us commit to memory in Kabul—and asked for kindness from a God I wasn’t sure existed. I envied the mullah now, envied his faith and certainty.

The pulmonologist, Dr. Amani, a soft-spoken man with a crooked mustache and a mane of gray hair, told us he had reviewed the CAT scan results and that he would have to perform a procedure called a bronchoscopy to get a piece of the lung mass for pathology. He scheduled it for the following week. I thanked him as I helped Baba out of the office, thinking that now I had to live a whole week with this new word, “mass,” an even more ominous word than “suspicious.” I wished Soraya were there with me.

It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names. Baba’s was called “Oat Cell Carcinoma.” Advanced. Inoperable. Baba asked Dr. Amani for a prognosis. Dr. Amani bit his lip, used the word “grave.” “There is chemotherapy, of course,” he said. “But it would only be palliative.” “What does that mean?” Baba asked.

Dr. Amani sighed. “It means it wouldn’t change the outcome, just prolong it.”

“That’s a clear answer, Dr. Amani. Thank you for that,” Baba said. “But no chemo medication for me.”

When we stepped out of Dr. Amani’s office, Baba lit a cigarette. He smoked all the way to the car and all the way home.

As he was slipping the key into the lobby door, I said, “I wish you’d give the chemo a chance, Baba.”

He kneaded me on the chest with the hand holding the cigarette. “Bas! I’ve made my decision.” “What about me, Baba? What am I supposed to do?” I said, my eyes welling up.

A look of disgust swept across his rain-soaked face. It was the same look he’d give me when, as a kid, I’d fall, scrape my knees, and cry. “You’re twenty-two years old, Amir! A grown man! All those years, that’s what I was trying to teach you, how to never have to ask that question.” He opened the door. Turned back to me. “No one finds out about this, you hear me? No one. I don’t want anybody’s sympathy.” Then he disappeared into the dim lobby. He chain-smoked the rest of that day in front of the TV. I didn’t know what or whom he was defying. Me? Dr. Amani? Or maybe the God he had never believed in.

For a while, even cancer couldn’t keep Baba from the flea market. Baba greeted acquaintances from the old country and I haggled with buyers over a dollar or two. Like any of it mattered. Like the day I would become an orphan wasn’t inching closer with each closing of shop.

Sometimes, General Taheri and his wife strolled by. The general, ever the diplomat, greeted me with a smile and his two-handed shake. But there was a new reticence to Khanum Taheri’s demeanor. A reticence broken only by her secret, droopy smiles and the furtive, apologetic looks she cast my way when the gen-eral’s attention was engaged elsewhere.

Sometimes at the flea market, Afghan acquaintances made remarks about Baba’s weight loss. At first, they were complimentary. They even asked the secret to his diet. But the queries and compliments stopped when the weight loss didn’t. When the pounds kept shedding. And shedding. When his cheeks hollowed. And his temples melted. And his eyes receded in their sockets.

Then, one cool Sunday shortly after New Year’s Day, Baba was selling a lampshade to a stocky Filipino man while I rummaged in the VW for a blanket to cover his legs with.

“Hey, man, this guy needs help!” the Filipino man said with alarm. I turned around and found Baba on the ground. His arms and legs were jerking.

“Komak!” I cried. “Somebody help!” I ran to Baba. He was frothing at the mouth, the foamy spittle soaking his beard. His upturned eyes showed nothing but white.

People were rushing to us. I heard someone say seizure. Someone else yelling, “Call 911!” I kneeled beside him and grabbed his arms and said I’m here Baba, I’m here, you’ll be all right, I’m right here. As if I could soothe the convulsions out of him. I felt a wetness on my knees. Saw Baba’s bladder had let go. Shhh, Baba jan, I’m here. Your son is right here.

The doctor, white-bearded and perfectly bald, pulled me out of the room. “I want to go over your father’s CAT scans with you,” he said. He put the films up on a viewing box in the hallway and pointed with the eraser end of his pencil to the pictures of Baba’s cancer, like a cop showing mug shots of the killer to the victim’s family. Baba’s brain on those pictures looked like cross sections of a big walnut, riddled with tennis ball–shaped gray things.

“As you can see, the cancer’s metastasized,” he said. “He’ll have to take steroids to reduce the swelling in his brain and anti-seizure medications. He checked his beeper. “I have to go, but you can have me paged if you have any questions.”

“Thank you.”

I spent the night sitting on a chair next to Baba’s bed.

The next morning, the waiting room down the hall was jammed with Afghans. They filed in and paid Baba their respects in hushed tones. Wished him a swift recovery. Baba was awake then, groggy and tired, but awake.

Midmorning, General Taheri and his wife came. Soraya followed. We glanced at each other, looked away at the same time. “How are you, my friend?” General Taheri said, taking Baba’s hand.

Baba motioned to the IV hanging from his arm. Smiled thinly.

“Your coming here has brightened my eyes.” The general smiled and squeezed Baba’s hand. “How are you, Amir jan? Do you need anything?” The way he was looking at me, the kindness in his eyes . . . “Nay thank you, General Sahib. I’m . . .” A lump shot up in my throat and my eyes teared over. I bolted out of the room.

I wept in the hallway, by the viewing box where, the night before, I’d seen the killer’s face.

Baba’s door opened and Soraya walked out of his room. She stood near me. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans. Her hair was down. I wanted to find comfort in her arms.

“I’m so sorry, Amir,” she said. “We all knew something was wrong, but we had no idea it was this.”

I blotted my eyes with my sleeve. She put her hand on mine. Our first touch. I took it. Brought it to my face. My eyes. I let it go. “You’d better go back inside. Or your father will come after me.” She smiled and nodded. “I should.” She turned to go. “Soraya?” “Yes?” “I’m happy you came. It means …the world to me.” They discharged Baba two days later.

That night, Baba was lying on the couch, a wool blanket covering him. I brought him hot tea and roasted almonds.

“Can I do anything else for you, Baba?” “Nay, bachem. Thank you.” I sat beside him. “Then I wonder if you’ll do something for me.

If you’re not too exhausted.” “What?” “I want you to go khastegari. I want you to ask General Taheri for his daughter’s hand.” Baba’s dry lips stretched into a smile. A spot of green on a wilted leaf. “Are you sure?” “Then give me the phone.” My heart was doing pirouettes in my chest.

“General Sahib, Salaam alaykum …Yes, much much better . . . Balay …You’re so kind. General Sahib, I’m calling to ask if I may pay you and Khanum Taheri a visit tomorrow morning. It’s an honorable matter …Yes … Eleven o’clock is just fine. Until then. Khoda hafez.” He hung up. We looked at each other. I burst into giggles. Baba joined in.

Baba wet his hair and combed it back. I helped him into a clean white shirt and knotted his tie for him, noting the two inches of empty space between the collar button and Baba’s neck. I thought of all the empty spaces Baba would leave behind when he was gone, and I made myself think of something else. He wasn’t gone. Not yet. And this was a day for good thoughts. The Taheris lived in a flat, one-story house in one of the residential areas in Fremont known for housing a large number of Afghans. I helped Baba out of the Ford and slipped back behind the wheel. He leaned in the passenger window. “Be home, I’ll call you in an hour.”

“Okay, Baba,” I said. “Good luck.” He smiled. I drove away. In the rearview mirror, Baba was hobbling up the Taheris’ driveway for one last fatherly duty.

I paced the living room of our apartment waiting for Baba’s call. What if the general said no? What if he hated me? I kept going to the kitchen, checking the oven clock.

The phone rang just before noon. It was Baba. “Well?” “The general accepted.” I let out a burst of air. Sat down.

“He did?” “Yes, but Soraya jan is upstairs in her room. She wants to talk to you first.” “Okay.” Baba said something to someone and there was a double click as he hung up.

“Amir?” Soraya’s voice.

“Salaam.”

“My father said yes.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m so happy I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m happy too, Amir. I . . . can’t believe this is happening.”

I laughed. “I know.”

“Listen,” she said, “I want to tell you something. Something you have to know before . . .”

“If it will make you feel better, tell me. But it won’t change anything.”

There was a long pause at the other end. “When we lived in Virginia, I ran away with an Afghan man. I was eighteen at the time…rebellious . . . stupid, and . . . he was into drugs …We lived together for almost a month. All the Afghans in Virginia were talking about it.

“Padar eventually found us. He showed up at the door and . . . made me come home. I was hysterical. Yelling. Screaming. Saying I hated him . . .

I heard her put the phone down. Blow her nose. “Sorry,” she came back on, sounding hoarse. “When I came home, I saw my mother had had a stroke, the right side of her face was paralyzed and …I felt so guilty. She didn’t deserve that.

“Padar moved us to California shortly after.” A silence followed.

“How are you and your father now?” I said.

“We’ve always had our differences, we still do, but I’m grateful he came for me that day. I really believe he saved me.” She paused. “So, does what I told you bother you?”

“A little,” I said. I owed her the truth on this one. It did bother me a bit, but how could I, of all people, chastise someone for their past?

“Nothing you said changes anything. I want us to marry.”

She broke into fresh tears.

I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with. I opened my mouth and almost told her how I’d betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out, and destroyed a forty-year relationship between Baba and Ali. But I didn’t. I suspected there were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage was just one of them.