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To Zarmina, Maliha, Fareed, Rasheed, Hamida, Hajji Chamin, and Hajji Habibullah.
Remember tea in Kabul? You told me what you wished other people knew about Afghans.
Thank you.
Also, for the woman in the unmarked grave on a quiet Tennessee hill.
1
Baba’s fingers are quick along the rebab’s strings. He doesn’t see me right away, so I hang back, listening to the music, enjoying the glow that seems to fill him when he plays. But then his eyes catch mine, and his smile widens into something just short of a laugh.
“Ah, son of my son, the young scholar!” he calls in Pashto. “And how was the new school?”
“Good.” Speaking the language of our people—the Pashtuns—brings me relief after struggling through English all day. I hurry toward the light of Baba’s eyes, the sound of his music. For the first time today, it feels like my skin fits. I drop my frayed backpack beside Baba, the Manchester United key chain jingling against the wall. The brick floor probably had color at some point, but it’s all covered in grime now. I sit and fold my legs, careful to tuck my feet under my thighs like my mor, my mother, taught me. “Really good, I think.”
Baba nods, and his strumming fills the stuffy air with music. The twangy sound bounces around the tight subway tunnel in loud echoes.
A man drops a twenty-dollar bill into the rebab case. I get a glimpse of his neatly trimmed beard and smile. He’s gone into the crowd before I can say thanks.
Back in Afghanistan, before the Taliban came, Baba was a famous performer. People would pay thousands of Afghani to hear him play. Here, rush-hour Bostonians leave a wide space around us with a funny looking-not-looking expression on their faces. Some of their steps pound a rhythm to match Baba’s song. Others walk out of sync, footfalls clashing against the tempo. My brain keeps wanting to blend the off-beat movement into the music.
“And have you made any friends yet?”
“No.” I focus on pressing a wrinkle in my jeans flat. I’m not sure I even looked anyone in the eyes all day. “But I was able to follow the reading exercise in language arts without too much trouble.”
Around the bend of the corridor, someone begins singing scales.
“Ah, the opera singer and her stereo have arrived,” Baba observes. Once she starts “Ave Maria,” we’ll have to pack up. It’s impossible to compete with an opera singer.
“Isn’t it cheating to use a stereo and mic when you’re already louder than the whole city?” I ask.
“Don’t be disrespectful,” Baba chides. “But yes, it is definitely cheating.” Baba stops playing and checks the coins in the rebab’s case.
Hiding my own grin, I help him scoop the coins into his wallet.
“Want to have a turn, Sami?” Baba asks, passing the rebab to me. The opera singer cranks up her stereo, and the first cheesy violin notes drift down the tunnel. “I will just go wash my hands, and then we can head home.”
“They say ‘go to the bathroom’ here,” I remind him, taking the rebab.
“I’ll go to the bathroom, then.” His eyes crinkle. “I have a special dinner planned when we get back, and I want to hear more about your first day at school. Then—if we find the right radio channel—we can listen to that Champions League final before bed.”
“All right.” I adjust the rebab in my lap, singing one of the Manchester United chants, “Hello! Hello! We are the Busby Boys!”
Baba hums as he wanders off. I flick my fingers over the rebab’s three main strings. The mulberry-wood base presses into my chest. One aid worker called it “boat shaped.” It’s deep enough that I have to wrap my right arm all the way around to reach the strings. The old goatskin covering the sound box still has a cream color at the center, but fades to a blotched brown on the edges and under the place I rest my fingers. Where the skin meets the wooden neck, mother-of-pearl inlays flash white, blue, green, and pink in the dim subway light. The pegbox at the end of the neck is carved in a flower design, with one end chipped from where Baba dropped it in Iran. The tassel—woven by my grandmother in blue and white string with red beads—swings as I adjust the rebab in my lap.
I take a slow, deep breath.
Songs always come to me if I wait still and quiet enough. Sometimes they’re songs I’ve heard Baba perform. But sometimes they’re something else—songs that travel a great distance and play through my hands like they aren’t mine at all.
Those are the most fun.
I begin to play, and my left hand dances over the rebab’s neck. I keep my right wrist loose and easy, strum-flicking. The beat builds in me, and the opera singer’s voice and the commuters’ footsteps fade. The outside world gets smaller and smaller, until it’s just me and the rebab.
But the world inside me expands. Even though my eyes are closed, I see my home. Not the apartment here in Boston, or the slum in Istanbul, or the cramped hostel in Athens, or the back room in Iran. I see my Kandahar house.
It is white stone with a high wall all around. The shattered glass on top of the wall sparkles in the afternoon light, the shards bright blue and sometimes yellow, like broken bits of sky. Pink bougainvillea flowers nod in a rare afternoon breeze. A workman repairing a hole in the roof of our house hums the song I’m playing now.
I play harder, louder, smelling the dust and dry heat and feeling the sun warm my neck.
My plar, my father, reads by the window, his glasses sliding down his nose. My mor jani calls to him. We are all going to be late for the wedding if he doesn’t hurry. But I can’t hear her, my memory is not sharp enough. Her henna-decorated palms are red when she leans out the door to wave me in. Her mouth moves, but I no longer remember the sound of her voice.
I’m almost there. Every time I play, I can almost hear her.
But I can’t quite make the memory clear, and even as the music rises, even as it pulls me in until the notes are sharp, quick pings, I am losing. I am losing the memories.
Was my plar’s hair graying, or was it black as tar on a kite string? Was my mor jani’s voice bright, or was it weary? Did the workman smoke, or did he sing?
I squeeze my eyes closed tighter in concentration. I’m losing them—
Something jolts the rebab.
Suddenly my hands are empty.
My eyes fly open. A teenager hurries with the crowd toward the platform. The rebab is in his hand. He snatched it from my lap.
For three long heartbeats, I’m too stunned to move.
Then I scramble to my feet. “Hey!” I wheeze, trying to get enough air to speak. My legs steady, and I start to run. “Hey! Stop!” My voice still comes in a squeaking whisper.
We’re both heading toward the opera singer, and her song lifts to a deafening crescendo. I can’t even hear myself yell over the volume of her speakers.
A man’s elbow almost knocks my eye, and a woman’s briefcase blocks me from squeezing past her. Far ahead now,
in a sudden shift of the crowd, I spot the teenager’s black coat. He must have tucked the rebab inside, because I can’t see it anymore.
“Stop!” I shout, my voice cracking with the effort.
No one listens, least of all the thief. I press against arms and legs, but they push back.
“Watch it,” snaps a young woman.
“Back off,” growls an older man.
A sudden surge pushes me onto the platform. It’s packed so tightly I can’t spot the thief at all. I slide along the wall and jump up on the edge of a bench where a bunch of college students are sitting. Balanced on one foot, I scour the crowd.
The train arrives. Everyone presses into the already crowded cars.
There! The thief shuffles onto the train and pushes his way toward the center. The rebab is in his right hand.
“Stop!” I scream. A few heads turn. I lunge off the bench, but too many people press between me and him. The adults tower above me. I shove my shoulders against their arms, fighting my way forward.
The T train gives two loud beeps. The doors are closing.
I burst free at the platform’s edge. The doors slide shut right in front of my nose.
The teenager is only a few feet away. He glances at me, and his eyebrows lift a fraction. He’s pimply, the redness bright on his pale skin, and he has gray eyes and shaggy blond hair.
“Stop him!” I bang on the window and wave at the passengers. The train begins to move, slowly at first. I run beside it, down the bumpy danger strip where the adults aren’t standing. “Please—please—!”
The people in the train don’t hear, or don’t care. The speed builds, and I’m falling behind. I’m falling away from the rebab.
Then, with a swoosh, the train disappears into the tunnel. I’m standing on the platform, breath heaving, ears ringing.
The rebab is gone.
2
Baba is already at our spot when I return. He looks rapidly between the rebab case and the crowd. Searching for me.
Even though I can see he’s worried, my feet drag. I keep near the wall to avoid the crush of people on their way to the platform. My chest feels like it’s filled with sand.
The opera singer has moved on to “Think of Me,” and I resist the urge to kick her stereo as I walk by.
The rebab was the only thing that survived our escape. The only thing left of home. The only way Baba made money.
I’ve lost it.
Baba sees me, and his shoulders give a big heave. I walk faster. When I was ten, shortly after we arrived in Istanbul, I got lost in the market. All the colors spun and burned in my head, and I ran, ran until my legs shook and my breath rasped—and when I found Baba, we hugged and cried right in the middle of the street. I want to throw my arms around him now, but I can’t. I’m twelve and too old for that.
And anyway, this time it’s my fault.
“Sami, where were you?” he asks in rapid Pashto, checking my head like he thinks I’ve injured myself. “Why did you leave? Are you all right?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes. He seems satisfied that I am in one piece, and his expression changes from worry to confusion.
He glances at my hands and the empty case. “Where is the rebab?”
I lower my gaze. I can’t whisper—not with the opera singer’s noise—but I struggle to get my voice strong enough. “A teenager snatched it out of my hands. He jumped on the T.”
“What?” Baba says, suddenly quiet.
“He stole it and ran away.” I stop. Swallow. “The thief’s gone. The rebab’s gone.”
Baba does not speak. He’s so silent. I glance at his face. His skin is gray, and his eyes are wide and dark.
I feel so tight I might snap, like one of the rebab’s strings. I wish he’d say something. I wish he’d yell. I wish he’d strike me. I wish he’d do anything to stop looking like that.
“It is all right, Sami,” he says at last, so soft I read his lips more than hear the words. He pats my head and leaves his hand resting on my hair. “It is all right. We will be all right. Khuday Pak mehriban dey.”
God is kind. If that’s true, why do I feel like he betrayed us—again? I keep the biting, broken question to myself.
“We can report it to the police,” I say. “Maybe they could catch him.”
Baba shakes his head absently. I’m not sure if he does not want to report it because he doesn’t trust the police—he never has—or because he’s too tired.
He does not say any more. Not when we pack up the empty case. Not when we take the T home. Not when we walk down the alley to our apartment. Not when he makes dinner. We spread the dastarkhan—the tablecloth—on the floor and lay out the meal together—chicken kebabs, naan, and watermelon, my favorites. Baba must have planned this special dinner for my first day of school. He produces two Cokes and passes one to me. My stomach shrinks.
His voice is wispy and old when he asks, “So school was good?”
“It was fine,” I say. “Different, but—fine.”
He nods. Just the single question seems to have exhausted him, and he does not ask more. We eat in silence. I can’t remember the last time we didn’t talk during a meal, and the strangeness creeps into the air around us like smoke. The food tastes flavorless, and the soda hurts my throat. As soon as I am done, I sneak away into our second room—a shared bedroom. The two mattresses lie directly on the floor against opposite walls. I sit on mine and open a math book to study.
It’s strange to start a new school in May—I only have about a month until summer. But the aid agency that brought us to America had me take a few tests and recommended that I be placed immediately.
I’m nearly done with my homework when the window in the living room scrapes as Baba wedges it open. The mosque down the street begins the azaan for maghrib prayers. I join Baba, facing toward the qibla, the direction of Mecca. We recite the familiar words together, and I hope God hears my silent plea as we bow on our musty-smelling prayer rugs. Please.
Please … what? We lost so much when we fled Afghanistan. Sometimes I think the only thing that kept us from breaking was the rebab. It was our heart and our past, but it was also a promise. It was our hope.
But now there is nothing. Only silence. And this void has come from me. I caused Baba pain. The rebab was taken from my hands. And how can I undo that? Without our songs, what will be our hope?
Please, please, please, I pray. Please what? I can’t find the words to finish the prayer. Please, please, please, I continue, trying to trust that the cracks in my chest will show God what my words are missing. Please.
When we finish, Baba settles on the toshaks against the wall. They’re not really toshaks, though—they’re just big pillows. He slides one photograph out of his worn leather wallet. Even though I can’t see it from here, I know what it is: a picture of my mor and plar at their first wedding anniversary, both wearing serious expressions, though their eyes smile. The wrinkled photo paper has browned at the corners. An uncle mailed it to us while we were in Istanbul. It’s an echo of a song, a faded glimpse of our old life.
I sink down on the toshak beside him. “What will we do, Baba?”
“We thank God for our fortune. Alhamdulillah.” He puts an arm around me and rubs my shoulder.
“Should we go to the police?”
“No.” His response comes quick and strong. I stiffen. His hand pauses, then continues in the same steady rhythm. “We do not raise problems. We do not ask for more when we have all we need. Besides, we will have a few months of living stipend from the agency. That will keep this apartment, at least. And I can find a job to take care of the rest. Perhaps the Indian restaurant on the corner needs a dishwasher.”
I think of Baba, whose playing used to make weary people dance and broken people laugh, wasting his hands on dirty dishes. As the image lingers in my head, the rest of the prayer springs into my mind so suddenly I almost gasp.
Please help me make it right.
Something in me ha
rdens. I don’t say anything, because I know it’s crazy even before the idea has fully formed in my head. But I vow it in my heart.
I’ll get the rebab back.
3
But the next day, I’m still no closer to a solution. I know when, where, and how the rebab was stolen. I know what the guy looked like. But I don’t know why. What does he want with a stolen rebab? I can’t imagine he cares about playing it. The only thing I can think is that he wants to sell it.
I head into the boys’ bathroom at school, still turning the problem over in my head. In Afghanistan, he probably would have taken it to another town’s market. But there aren’t markets like that here—not that I’ve seen.
Every stall in the bathroom is covered with graffiti, though the walls of the last two are faded from recent scrubbing. I slip into the farthest stall, gaze glancing over the words Ms. Nolan sucks! After I’ve done my business, I hear the bathroom door open, and two boys my age come in.
I go to the faucet without looking their way. They pay me as much attention as a tile on the wall.
“Pete really got it this time,” says one boy. His skin is a little darker than mine and his hair about an inch shorter, just a buzz cut. “The pawnshop owner recognized his picture right away.”
“I heard it was Jim who actually stole the bracelet, though,” the second, shorter boy chimes in. “He just told Pete to sell it, and Pete did without ever realizing it belonged to Ms. Nolan!”
I slowly dry my hands with a paper towel, but my thoughts are racing. Pawnshop? Is that a place where people can sell stolen things?
“Yeah, well, Jim didn’t make him do all this,” the first boy says, laughing. In the mirror, I see him gesture to the graffiti on the stalls.
I exit into the hall and check my printed schedule, just to be sure I know where I’m going. Study session next, which means I’ll be expected in the library. I head in that direction, repeating the new word in my head: Pawnshop. Pawnshop.
Other kids call greetings to each other or cluster around lockers. Down the hall, some students start shouting. A fight. I keep my head down and duck into the library.
The Eleventh Trade Page 1
