When the Moon Is Low

  “This is all I have left,” I said and reluctantly slipped a gold ring with a turquoise stone off my finger. “This was a wedding gift from my late mother-in-law, God give her peace. Now I pray I’ll find a way to feed my children.”

  “God is great, my sister,” he said as he stole a quick glance at the stone before stuffing it in his jacket pocket. “Your children will be provided for.”

  THE ROAD ROUGHENED AS WE LEFT HERAT’S LIMITS. WHEN THE van came to a stop, we all held our breath. I put my hand on Saleem’s.

  “This is the border,” the driver announced. “The guarded passage is ten kilometers that way. There’s a trail that cuts through the mountains. I’ll lead you across. It’s not easy, but many have crossed it before you. Keep your children close and keep them quiet. Watch your feet. There are loose stones, scorpions, and snakes to worry about. Watch for my flashlight.”

  Saleem and Samira pressed themselves against me, terrified by the driver’s warnings. Under my burqa, Aziz’s breaths felt moist and rapid on my neck, as if even he felt nervous.

  We trod carefully, following the distant yellow glow of our guide’s flashlight. When I heard a hiss, I nudged the children along without breathing a word. They were frightened enough without naming the shadows. For hours, we stumbled through the dark, falling and scraping knees, bending ankles. I’d flipped my burqa back and let it drape behind me, like the other women. I’d swaddled Aziz with a long muslin cloth and tied him around my torso. I held my children’s hands as we did our best to tread carefully.

  Samira’s hand pulled out of mine and I heard a yelp.

  “Samira! What happened? Where are you?” I strained my eyes to make out her shape.

  “She fell, Madar,” Saleem said calmly. “I’m holding her hand.” Even as Samira’s ankle had turned in under her, he had held on.

  Samira whimpered softly in the dark.

  “Can you stand, my love?” I watched the distance between us and the others widen.

  “Get her up and walking,” the driver hissed at us. “We cannot fall behind.”

  I felt around for her ankle. My hand touched something wet and warm, and I realized she must have cut it against a rock. I prayed it was not too bad. I took a scarf from our bag of clothing and tied it around her ankle.

  The driver’s light grew dimmer. My heart fluttered with alarm.

  My daughter pressed on, though I could tell she was limping. Saleem did his best to support her weight, but he too needed to be careful with his footing.

  God forgive me for putting them through this.

  An hour later, the mother of the family ahead of us slipped, with her two-year-old in her arms. Their cries rang out in the night.

  The flashlight turned on them. The mother’s face looked horrified.

  “What have I done?” Her husband was at her side, helping her up. The baby’s arm had twisted grotesquely, bent between the elbow and wrist in an obvious break.

  They were distraught. I wanted to help but didn’t know how.

  The baby howled when his father tried to touch his arm. The driver stood over them, sighed heavily, and spit into the darkness.

  “Look, there’s nothing you can do for him here. If you have something with sugar, give it to him. It might quiet him down. We must keep moving. He’ll fall asleep soon enough.”

  THE BABY’S MOANS CARRIED ON INTO THE DAY. HIS MOTHER HELD him gingerly and did her best to keep his arm from jostling.

  It was easier to walk in the day but harder to look at the children. Their eyes were heavy, their feet blistered and bleeding, and their lips parched.

  We stopped only for a thirty-minute break—daylight would be upon us soon. I rationed out our food and gave the children a few bites of Raisa’s biscuits. I dripped water into Aziz’s mouth, but he was listless. I nursed him under my burqa. He suckled, but weakly.

  Saleem and Samira curled up next to each other and fell asleep in seconds. Samira’s ankle was swollen and purple. Her small gash had started to scab. I ached to think how she’d kept up with us.

  At dawn, Iran came into view. Waiting for us, at the foot of the trail and at the side of a small road, was a dark van. The driver motioned for us to follow as he jogged to the vehicle. He slid the door open and we piled in, the smell of stale sweat and acrid breath concentrating in the small space. I could see my hesitant relief mirrored in the faces around me. We’d made it this far but were still very close to the border. If the van were stopped, we might be sent back to the checkpoint and returned to Afghanistan.

  Our guide sat by the van’s driver. The two spoke in low tones, pointing at the road ahead of them.

  I watched the dusty landscape through the window. Though Iran had the same colors and smells of Afghanistan, it felt foreign and strange. We were far from home.

  The little boy’s groans synchronized with Aziz’s. His crooked arm lay across his chest, swollen, contorted, and purple. His mother stared at it helplessly and wiped away tears. Her husband called out to the driver.

  “Excuse me, friends, but we need to take my son to a doctor. His arm is in terrible condition and he’s in much pain.”

  “The contacts at your destination will help you find a doctor.”

  “But, please, it’s been broken for so long. It’s getting worse every minute.”

  “I don’t know where the doctors are and you are in this country illegally, in case you have forgotten. If you want to be safe, you will wait until your contacts can take him somewhere.”

  Luckily, Samira’s ankle had not gotten much worse. It was still swollen, but the gash was healing. Aziz was a bigger concern, lacking the energy to fuss.

  The open landscape gave way to buildings and a grid of roads. The smugglers dropped us off at an apartment building in Tayyebat, a border town. It was a four-story building with cloudy windows that overlooked the street.

  “Take off those burqas. Wear these.” The driver tossed two black cloaks into the back of the van so we could better blend in with the Iranian women.

  We were sent to an apartment on the second floor. The other family headed up to the third floor.

  “May God be with you,” I said as we parted ways. “I’ll pray for your little boy’s arm to heal quickly.”

  “And may God be with you too, my brave sister,” came the mother’s broken voice. “Allah keep you all healthy and safe in this journey.”

  The trip from Afghanistan to Iran had been a largely silent one. It was not a time for making friends. I did not have enough for my own children and could not afford to befriend a stranger who might take any little bit of what we had.

  The door opened and a woman ushered us into the two-room apartment. I was grateful for shelter. This was one way for sympathetic Iranians to house Afghan refugees and earn some money in the meantime. I was much more at ease around this strange woman than the shifty men who’d gotten us here. She fed us a simple feast of bread and yogurt. We slept soundly for the first time in days.

  After one night, we were put on a local bus and sent to a similar apartment in Mashhad, a bigger city where we would be staying until we were ready for the next leg of our journey. Our time in Mashhad was relatively easy. We were hosted by another Afghan family who had fled Kabul a few months earlier. They had crossed the same treacherous desert trail and narrowly escaped capture once they entered Iran. They were living as refugees now with modest means but generous spirits.

  In exchange for a small sum, we were given a room and a place to take a warm bath. The children were fed and Samira’s ankle returned to a proper size and color. Aziz cooed contentedly—a most inspirational sound. We were restored.

  Iran had opened its doors and accepted hordes of Afghans as refugees. Countless others lived there illegally. But Iran was never in the plan Mahmood and I had devised. Many Afghans complained of being treated poorly, and opportunities were scarce. If I wanted to give my children a real chance, we needed to continue. The longer we waited, the heavier our feet would become.

/>   WITHIN A MONTH, I’D PLANNED OUR ROUTE TO TURKEY. I BOOKED bus tickets to Tehran, the country’s capital. In my flowing black burqa, my tired children in tow, we blended in with Iran’s peasant class, migrating across the country in search of a better life.

  From Tehran, we caught another bus and traveled across the border into Turkey, this time using the passports Abdul Rahim had secured for us. The customs officer stared at me and my passport picture, stamped it, and handed it back with an uninvited caress on my wrist that I ignored in light of our falsified visas.

  We’d put one more border behind us—one more buffer between us and the life we’d left behind. Turkey looked less like Afghanistan than Iran had. The language, the earth, the food—everything was one degree more foreign. On reconsideration, it was we who were foreign. We were drifting into lands where we were not welcome and scared every step of the way that we would be sent home, a fate I could not bear to consider.

  I was leading my children into an unknown world, and whatever happened to us, to them, was my responsibility. It would have been easier to close my eyes and disappear, to not be responsible for their next meal or keeping them safe while we trespassed borders. But these lives depended on me, even Saleem who could brood like a grown man and questioned the choices I made. The shadow of hair on his upper lip, the way he shouldered our bags, the wristwatch he coveted—Saleem believed he was a man. As much as I needed him to be just that, I was also afraid for him. The person most likely to drown in the river is the one who believes he can swim.

  In a pouch I’d sewn into my dress was all the money I’d managed to gather by selling off our household belongings. Gone were our dishes, a silver plated tray, a chiming clock. I kept my jewelry in the pouch as well. It was all we had to finance our trip to England. Mahmood had chosen England because we had family there. I wasn’t sure it was the best decision but he insisted.

  I did not want to impose on our relatives in England, especially when I didn’t have Mahmood by my side. But to change our destination would be letting a time in my past matter more than it should. I could not afford to be sentimental about material belongings, but I could be as emotional as I wanted about my husband. I wouldn’t change our destination now. I wouldn’t change a thing Mahmood had decided for us. In some way, it made me feel my fingers were still intertwined with his, following his lead.

  Besides, I had no better plan in mind. We would go to London.

  CHAPTER 18

  Fereiba

  WE LANDED IN THE SMALL TURKISH TOWN OF INTIKAL, A COZY village skirted by large plots of farmland. The air was clean, and the green landscape reminded me of my father’s orchard. On our first afternoon, we set out to secure shelter. Thankfully, Mahmood had taught Saleem enough English that he was able to communicate with at least some locals. My son’s English was undeniably better than mine.

  “Come, Saleem. Let’s go and talk with the men there,” I said, pointing to a group of men coming out of a masjid. I fixed my head scarf. I’d put away the black Iranian burqa to better blend with the dress of this new country. It felt good to wear a simple head scarf. It was like slipping into my past.

  “Madar-jan, why don’t you wait here with the little ones. It’s better if I talk to them alone. You don’t speak much English anyway.”

  I wanted to disagree.

  “I can do this, Madar,” Saleem said, looking straight at me.

  I nodded.

  I watched on as Saleem walked from one man to the next, each waving him off with a head shake, a scowl, a shrug. Saleem looked around. I saw him toy with the watch on his wrist, glance at it briefly, and survey a group standing near the mosque’s side entrance.

  An older man emerged, dressed in a suit that showed the fades and frays of frequent use. Saleem’s eyes were drawn to him as were mine. His stature, his salt-and-pepper hair, and the gentle smile on his face—if my husband had lived another twenty years, he would have looked like this man. Whether Saleem had the same thought or if there was something else about the man that drew him in, I dared not ask. He approached cautiously. The man cocked his ear as Saleem spoke then looked over in our direction, squinting.

  The man’s name was Hakan Yilmaz. He and his wife, Hayal, lived in a modest home just a few blocks from the main part of the village. He’d worked for years as a professor of politics while Hayal had been an elementary school teacher. They’d raised two boys, now grown men with families of their own. When the couple retired, they moved back to Intikal to be near Hakan’s sisters and brothers. They were warm and unassuming people—more worldly than their modest village home would indicate. They were the kind of people who saw an Afghan mother traveling with three children and could guess the story behind such a sight.

  Saleem had explained to Hakan that we were looking for simple shelter and that we would gladly pay for a brief stay. Hakan put a hand on Saleem’s shoulder and led us to his home where we met his wife, Hayal. Hayal, a petite woman with soft eyes, was delighted to have a babbling baby in their home. Long retired, she still had the presence of a schoolteacher. Her brown hair was tied back into a neat bun and she wore a simple navy blue cotton dress with a small tan sash around her waist. Samira took to her immediately.

  They showed us to a small, vacant bedroom with its own door to the outside. We were welcome to use the kitchen, they said, and made no mention of how long we could stay.

  My heart found an ally in Hayal, though we did not share a language. In words and gestures she likely did not understand, I explained that I’d been a teacher in Afghanistan before the Taliban and that the children had fallen behind despite my homeschooling efforts.

  I nearly sang out with joy when we laid our heads on soft pillows, our full bellies and the kindness of strangers keeping us warm.

  THE NEXT MORNING HAYAL BROUGHT OUT A CRATE OF ELEMENTARY math books and stories in English. Samira’s eyes widened with an excitement that thrilled and hurt me. I explained to Hayal that Samira was bright but hadn’t spoken since we’d left home. Hayal seemed to understand, connecting the missing father with my daughter’s mutism. She looked over at Samira and patted the empty chair next to her. Samira sat down as Hayal turned to the first page.

  I could hear Saleem in the next room, and though I knew only a handful of English words, I caught that he was talking to Hakan about finding a job. He would work hard, he promised.

  I hadn’t spoken to Saleem about working. I stepped away from Hayal and Samira and walked over to the window. Hakan spoke of nearby farms where migrant workers found employment. I wanted to interrupt, but I didn’t.

  My thoughts drifted.

  I’d had no idea when Mahmood’s hand was first placed in mine what he would come to mean to me. Among the few photographs I’d brought was one from our wedding, a simple ceremony. I’d worn an emerald green dress, pleated from the waist down and with lacy shoulders. My face had been made up by one of KokoGul’s friends. My lips and eyelids were heavy with colors that I would never again wear. Mahmood wore a black suit, the collar of his dress shirt flaring out past the lapels, and a red rose tucked into his breast pocket. Mahmood had looked steadily into the camera, but I stared blankly at the floor.

  When I looked at that picture, I wanted to go back in time and tell myself to look at him, my husband. I wanted to tell that bride that she, like the guests eager for a lavish celebration, should rejoice in this union.

  He was much more than a husband. It took time for our love to grow but it did, in patches and spurts, fed by the good and bad of the world around us. Every promise we kept, every squeeze of the hand, every secretive smile we exchanged, each crying child we comforted—every one of those moments narrowed the distance between us. By that night, that horrible night when Mahmood was ripped from our lives, the space between us had vanished. We were pressed against each other, a husband and wife bound together not by marriage, but by the harmony of our hearts.

  Death could not undo us, I’d learned. My hamsar was with me still. He would watch over u
s, my beloved husband, as we made our way into tomorrow.

  Fate will make things right in the end, though only after the work has been done, the tears have been shed and the sleepless nights have been endured.

  I wanted to believe him.

  For my family to reach a new life, I would need to rely on Saleem. I would need to admit he was not a child. Mahmood had been better at giving Saleem the space to stretch his wings. I coddled my children, ever afraid of being an inadequate mother. I wanted to do all the things for them that hadn’t been done for me. I wanted them to feel taken care of, loved, and secure. I was failing.

  Saleem looked at me differently now. Gone was the boyish sparkle, that trusting gaze that made me feel like I could do no wrong. He stood by my side, not trailing behind. It was time for me to give him the space he needed.

  I had brought us this far—from Kabul, through Iran and into Turkey. This had been my journey. My story.

  But what would happen to us from this moment on would be as much Saleem’s tale as it would be mine. I could not continue telling his story for him. It would not make me less of a mother if I let go of his hand and let him stand on his own feet. If only Mahmood were around to tell me I was doing the right thing and that I was no less of a mother for mothering him less.

  I could hear my husband’s hushed voice. I could feel his hands resting on my shoulders. If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel his kiss on my forehead.

  Let him speak, Ferei. You’ve told our story. Now let Saleem tell his.

  CHAPTER 19

  Saleem

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, HAKAN TOOK SALEEM TO THE VILLAGE limits where leather-faced people huddled in groups. There were men and women of all shapes and sizes, and a handful of children clinging to their mothers’ skirts. Hakan explained that trucks would pick up the workers and deliver them to the farmlands where work was plentiful.

  Hakan felt uncomfortable leaving Saleem, but his presence was not helpful. He turned the corner and went to pay his sister a visit. It was spring and temperatures were rising, even this early in the morning. Saleem touched his fingers to his face, feeling the row of fine hairs on his upper lip. This day marked a new Saleem. He was determined and ready to be treated like a man. Even his mother had looked at him differently this morning—as if she could sense the change in him.