When the Moon Is Low

  SALEEM HAD FALLEN ASLEEP THINKING OF WHAT KAMAL’S FATHER had said.

  Grudges don’t die—people do.

  Saleem woke abruptly to the sound of Madar-jan shrieking. She ripped the bedsheet off him. He bolted upright, his eyes bloodshot. Her hands were on him, touching his chest and face.

  “What happened? Why is there blood on your clothes? Where are you hurt?”

  The night came rushing back. Saleem cocked his head back and put his hands over his eyes.

  “It wasn’t me. I’m not hurt,” he said. Samira was wide awake, staring nervously. “They were shooting, Madar-jan. It was terrible.”

  “Shooting guns? What in God’s name are you talking about?”

  Madar-jan was not fully convinced that her son was whole and searched his body for hidden wounds.

  Saleem pulled her hands away and stood up to shake the slumber from his eyes. He had tossed his bloodstained clothing by the floor cushion, a gruesome sight in the early morning hour. He told her everything, keeping his voice low in hopes that Samira wouldn’t be too frightened. He told his mother how he’d helped lift the bride’s brother into the car so he could be taken to the hospital.

  If he’d had a bit more sleep, he might have had the sense to filter some of the gore. By the end, he was crying. He’d been unable to move for so long, he lamented. She listened intently, a hand over her mouth in disbelief. Samira had moved closer, sidling next to her mother, and listened with the intent of an adult. Madar-jan whispered words of gratitude to God for sparing her son.

  Madar-jan pulled Saleem to her and rocked him as she did Aziz. He didn’t resist, cherishing the smell of his mother, the comfort of her arms, and her kisses on his forehead. She asked Samira to put the water to boil and get breakfast started for Hakan and Hayal. Samira rose obediently.

  “And your friend, Kamal . . . he was not hurt either?”

  “No, Madar-jan, he was outside with me. He is all right.”

  “His mother and father?”

  “They were not hurt.”

  When Hakan and Hayal came down for breakfast, Saleem repeated the entire story once more. His Turkish had improved immensely since he had started hanging out with Kamal and the boys. He searched for a few words here and there but relayed the night’s events to them. Hakan and Hayal sat stone-faced. Hayal instinctively put a hand over Fereiba’s. To Saleem, the violence at the wedding was starting to feel more like a story than an actual event.

  Madar-jan searched their faces for an explanation. How could something like this happen in Intikal? Hakan rose and said he was going to Kamal’s house to see his father. He was dressed and out the door within minutes.

  “I’m late for work. I should already be at the farm, Madar-jan,” Saleem said, instinctively looking at his watch. “I’ll get hell for coming in at this time.”

  “Saleem, bachem, you are not going to the farm today. After everything that happened last night, it’s out of the question. I want you with me.”

  Saleem looked down at his hands and realized he was trembling slightly. He knew he must have looked like death and had the sudden urge to bathe, to scrub the night’s events from his skin with hot water.

  Hayal made him a cup of tea with honey and brought him a plate of bread and cheese. Saleem ate silently. Samira stayed close by but quiet. She warmed a bottle of milk for Aziz and propped him up on her lap so that he could take his breakfast. For the first time in a long time, it looked like the Waziri baby with the broken heart was in better shape than the rest of the family.

  Saleem went to the washroom and turned the water as hot as it would go. He let the water cascade over his head, his face, his shoulders. He closed his eyes and saw the bride’s face, blood streaked across her cheek. He heard her brother’s moans. Saleem opened his eyes to try to see something else, but the visions were burned into his retinas. He scrubbed at his skin until it was red and raw. His temples throbbed. He turned the water off, his skin stinging at the towel’s rough touch.

  Madar-jan sat in the bedroom, on the edge of her bed. She looked mournful.

  “Madar-jan?” Saleem said, hesitantly.

  “I thought we were okay here,” she whispered. “This was not supposed to be like home.”

  Saleem sat beside her.

  “I brought us here because we thought it would be safer. We thought this would be better for you. What have I done?”

  Without Padar-jan around, there was no one to share the blame for the plan that had landed them in Intikal. Saleem pressed his forehead against her shoulder.

  “We could not stay in Kabul, Madar-jan. We had nothing left. We were going to starve there—or worse.”

  “Aziz was okay there. He was fine until we left home.” Her eyes were glossy, filled with thoughts of a rosy yesterday that existed only in her mind. “Samira wasn’t washing strangers’ dirty dishes and folding their laundry. You weren’t working your hands to a bloody mess from dusk till dawn. We were okay in Kabul, but I brought us here.”

  Fereiba had wanted to keep her children healthy, fed, safe, and free from working as indentured servants. She’d failed on all accounts.

  “Madar-jan, we were not okay there.” Saleem crouched in front of her, jarred by the way his mother seemed to be speaking about him and not to him. “Don’t you remember? We were scared. We had no money and couldn’t leave the house. There was barely air to breathe.”

  “I wanted my children to be children. I wanted them to laugh, to play . . . to learn. I wanted them to do the things that I should have done as a girl. How far must we go? How fast must we run?”

  Saleem could not find the words, much less arrange them in a way that would bring any relief. It broke him to hear his mother talk this way and to know the thoughts she was likely hiding from her children on most days. Her smiles, her cheerfulness—had it all been to make them feel reassured? Her eyes were tearless. She was not speaking out of emotion. These were thoughts that came from the most honest part of her spirit. This was the result of her careful analysis and her astute observations. This was very real.

  “We’ll be okay, Madar-jan, you’ll see. This was the worst of it. We’ll get to England before you know it and we’ll be okay.” Saleem’s voice wavered. He was nowhere near as confident as his mother.

  But Madar-jan’s expression changed, as if a switch turned on. Her lips tightened and her eyes focused with a glint of resolution. She pulled her shoulders back and met Saleem’s hopeful gaze.

  “Yes, my son. That’s exactly it. We will go to England.” Saleem felt relieved that his mother had shaken her trancelike state. He nodded in eager agreement.

  “Yes, Madar-jan, we just need to set aside a little more—”

  “No, we must leave. We are leaving Intikal. We are leaving Turkey.”

  “Leaving Turkey? But, Madar-jan, we haven’t—”

  “God could not have sent a clearer sign. The time has come for us to continue our journey. We will thank Hakan and Hayal for their hospitality, pay whatever debts we owe, and pack our belongings. Every day that we stay here is digging ourselves into a deeper hole. If we don’t leave now, we may never go.”

  Madar-jan believed in moving forward. She always had.

  CHAPTER 25

  Saleem

  HAKAN AND HAYAL WERE ALMOST TEARFUL WHEN THE WAZIRI family left. Fereiba tried to pay Hayal for the final month of rent, but Hayal gently refused. With her heart in her throat, she told Fereiba to use the money to take care of the children. She handed Madar-jan a bag of foods she had prepared—enough to last a few days without spoiling. The mothers hugged tightly. In the months they had lived together, they’d become good friends. Hayal was the whisper in Fereiba’s ear telling her God sent miracles in unrecognizable forms. Fereiba, distracted by her circumstances, did not always recognize the voice in her ear and sometimes took it for her own. But Hayal was a true friend, lifting Fereiba without needing to be named or thanked.

  Samira clung to Hayal. She did not want to let go of her t
eacher and her friend, her source of security.

  Hakan watched with leaden shoulders. He’d kept a respectable distance from Fereiba and the children. They were orphaned and vulnerable, and he did not want to transgress their privacy as he knew the rest of the world would. What they had been subject to and what they would be subject to were beyond his control. All he could do was give them a respite under his roof, which he did because he believed it to be right.

  Hakan had taken on a father’s pride when he looked at Saleem. The boy was strong-willed and determined. He was teetering between boyhood and manhood, a dangerous time. He saw the way Saleem looked at his mother, the look of a boy who refuses to believe what he has not learned for himself. Fereiba would struggle with him, Hakan predicted, but Saleem was too devoted to stray far. He wrapped an arm around Saleem’s shoulders and squeezed.

  Saleem was taller than he had been when he first met Hakan coming out of prayers so many months ago. He bit his lip, feeling as if he was betraying his father by leaning into Hakan’s paternal gesture. These small moments gave him resilience, though.

  “Saleem, your family has a long and difficult journey ahead. God sees all that you’ve done for them and for yourself. I’m sure your father is quite proud of you and the man you are becoming. We will pray for you. Trust with caution and don’t get discouraged.”

  Saleem nodded solemnly. Hakan’s words surprised him and made him feel small. He had snuck to the soccer fields when he said he was at the farm. He had smoked cigarettes and pocketed snacks from the street kiosk when the shop owner’s back was turned. He’d resented his baby brother’s needs and even Padar-jan for being so stubborn that he’d kept his family in Afghanistan until it was too late. No one knew these pieces of Saleem. He was cagey, a boy with secrets. He wanted so much to be the person Hakan described.

  He looked at Hakan’s face, still discomfited by the inexplicable resemblance to his father’s. He felt the memory of his father fading with each passing day. Some nights, Saleem lay awake, trying to recall Padar-jan’s image, his voice, his smell. With each day, yesterday was pushed into a darker cranny of his mind. With each night, Saleem had to reach deeper into those recesses to find his father. Saleem clung to the images he had, fearful they would fade into a blinding whiteness. This, too, he was ashamed to admit.

  Saleem hadn’t bothered to go back to the Polat farm even though he was owed five days’ worth of wages. He knew Polat would refuse to pay him if he wasn’t going to be returning. Ekin, who’d returned to haunt him as if nothing had happened, would find another way to busy her afternoons. With Kamal, Saleem’s farewell was awkward. Their friendship had been based on the lightness of childhood, boyish activities of little consequence. The bloodied wedding and Saleem’s departure brought a weight to their bond that neither boy expected or wanted. Kamal, not bothering to brush the hair from his eyes, quietly wished Saleem a safe journey. Saleem turned his back on his first friend outside of Afghanistan, knowing they would never speak again.

  THE WAZIRI FAMILY LEFT INTIKAL ON A BUS HEADED TOWARD Turkey’s west coast, where ports and ships provided easy passage to Greece. They had the Belgian passports Abdul Rahim had secured for them and would not have to rely on smugglers. If these passports got them through customs, they would be well worth the high price Madar-jan had paid for them.

  The bus ride was long, bumpy, and quiet. The Waziri family watched Turkey’s verdant landscape go by in silence. They were leaving behind a life they’d come to enjoy, days that passed with the comforting rhythm of a drumbeat. Again, Madar-jan was leading them into an unknown.

  It was a day’s journey to Izmir, on Turkey’s western shore. When they neared Izmir’s port, Saleem’s senses were hit with the briny air, a smell unfamiliar to his landlocked nose. He looked at the others. Their eyes shimmered, reflecting the glimmering turquoise waters. The sea, a place where sunlight bounced from here to there, from water to the hull of a ship to the wings of a seagull. Samira smiled, the sun warming her face. Fereiba stroked her daughter’s hair. It was a brief moment of joy, but one that gave them reason to press on.

  Saleem found a ticket booth and purchased one-way rides for the entire family. The ticket agent, busy chatting with the agent in the adjacent booth, barely looked at their passports. He waved Saleem off when he inquired about a ticket for Aziz.

  Tickets in hand, they turned again to the cerulean expanse and marveled at the enormous ships docked there. Never before had they seen waters bigger than a river.

  “Water is roshanee, it is light. To be surrounded by so much of it . . .” Fereiba let the sea air fill her lungs. “This must mean something good for us.”

  Her family needed the light of good fortune.

  The ticket agent had pointed out a navy blue ferry, a building afloat. Saleem’s stomach leaped with boyish excitement. He led his mother and siblings to the pier to claim their seats. The wind cast a microshower of cool droplets on their cheeks. Samira’s hair flew into her face and she giggled trying to brush it away. Saleem and his mother paused. It had been a lifetime since they’d heard that laughter.

  Choppy waves lapped at the boat, and Saleem and Samira leaned over the rails to get that much closer to the ocean. The ride was too short and well before they’d had their fill, the crew announced their arrival in Chios, a Greek island where the Waziri family was to catch yet another ferry to Athens.

  Surrounded by tourists in shorts and backpacks and commuting Greeks, Saleem and his family hoisted their bags over their shoulders and tried their best to look inconspicuous. Each leg of their journey had a checkpoint, a place where their pounding heartbeats and falsified documents could give them away.

  But entering Greece turned out to be much easier than they’d anticipated, and they were soon on the next ferry. Chios to Athens was a longer journey, more opportunity for Fereiba to soak in the vast waters and pray they would herald brighter days. Eight hours later, they reached the port of Piraeus, and nerves began to kick in again. Samira had fallen asleep, her head resting on Saleem’s shoulder. Madar-jan bit her lip nervously as they neared the dock.

  The men in uniforms standing at the pier ratcheted up the family’s anxiety. Saleem and his mother kept their faces steeled. Saleem’s stomach quivered as if he carried under his shirt a balloon stretched so taut that the slightest movement might cause it to burst, alerting the world to his transgression. They were ushered forward with the crowd. Saleem felt eyes boring into his back, but nothing happened. Soon they were standing amid the flurry of taxis in the port city of Athens.

  Turkey has one foot in Europe and the other in Asia. Things will be different in Greece, Hakan had cautioned them. You will be outside the Muslim world, for better or worse.

  Saleem and his mother knew Pakistan, Iran, and India had grown increasingly fatigued by the burden of Afghan refugees. This was not the case with Europe or America. People who fled to Europe never spoke of returning. Word of their happy, new lives traveled like the scent of ripe peaches in the summer breeze. Europe had sympathy for the war-ravaged people of Afghanistan and offered an outstretched hand.

  Hakan had been concerned by Saleem’s rosy view of what life would be like in England. Saleem had talked of attending school and having his mother return to teaching. Hakan knew immigrants, including thousands of Turks, faced misery in Europe, but he cautioned only gently. Some would hate the Waziris for trespassing, for sucking at their nation’s teats, for looking different. But there was no better alternative for the Afghan refugees, and he felt it useless to disappoint them so early in their journey.

  Saleem had pushed aside Hakan’s warnings. Now the family walked about the port city, wondering if it might be possible to pass for Greeks. Since they’d left Intikal Madar-jan had folded up and put away the head scarf that had been forced upon her by the Taliban. She was happy to leave it behind. Here in Greece, she could dress as she did in the Kabul of her youth. Fereiba ran her fingers through her loose hair, feeling renewed.

  They st
opped in three hotels looking for lodging but were discouraged by prices too steep for their shallow pockets. One front desk clerk took pity on Saleem and directed him to a smaller, cheaper hotel a half kilometer away. She drew him directions on a paper napkin before returning her attention to the small television under the desk.

  Attica Dream turned out to be the best they could do. Saleem negotiated the rate from forty euro to twenty, promising to be very clean and quiet. The clerk, a woman in her fifties, saw Madar-jan with three children and four bags in tow and then turned to a leather-bound ledger on the desk, tapping her pencil on the grid of numbers and dates. Attica Dream had survived decades without renovations, and the owners did not seem to mind the lack of interest in their lodgings. They’d long been overshadowed by newer hotels in the area and the owners didn’t seem to care much. Their advancing age would drive them out of business, if the lack of guests didn’t.

  The clerk sighed heavily and nodded in agreement, trying to appear as if it were a huge sacrifice to rent the room for so little. Saleem pulled out the bills he had changed in Chios and paid the woman for one night while she extracted a key from a wooden box. Saleem led his family up the creaking steps and into the room with two beds. The mattresses were old and lumpy, but they were happy to get off their feet, stretch their legs, and rest their shoulders.

  Saleem’s legs throbbed as his head hit the pillow. He closed his eyes and thought of how far they’d come. Maybe it had been the right time to leave Intikal. Or maybe they should have left long ago. This was the next phase of their travels, Madar-jan had told them.

  So here we are in Greece, Saleem thought as he tried to get to sleep. But now what?

  CHAPTER 26

  Saleem

  THE HOURS CREPT BY WITH SALEEM AWAKE, LISTENING TO THE remote sounds of conversation and footsteps on the street below. Athens was alive at all hours. Eventually sunlight began to filter through the gauzy curtains. Samira stretched her arms and arched her back with her eyes still shut. Aziz flipped onto his belly, and Fereiba’s legs slid to the floor. She rubbed her eyes and stood. Saleem felt very adult watching them wake, as if not being able to sleep indicated some sort of maturity.