They had stayed away. They had stayed quiet. For eight long months they had stayed quiet and hungry and obedient, while the landlord took their money and kept them prisoner in this dismal place.
Now they had no more money, three of them were dead and more would be dead soon.
If Noosala stayed in this room, she would die a silent, desperate, lonely death. If she left, she would probably die a screaming, painful death, either at the hands of the Uzbek police or at the hands of the Taliban.
Or maybe not.
Maybe she would live. Maybe she would ride a great train of suffering for a long, long time, but there might be one day when that train would stop, and she could have a belly full of food and a face full of sun.
I want to live, Noosala thought.
She stepped up to the window. She took hold of the drapes. She yanked them open.
Behind her she heard moans and a feeble “What are you doing?” But no one was strong enough now to stop her.
The bright light hurt her eyes. She blinked the pain away and looked out the window.
There was no police station across the street. There were no police on the sidewalks. All she saw were small apartment buildings and children playing marbles.
Noosala banged on the window. The children looked up.
“Help!” she screamed in Pashtun. “Help us!”
She waved her arms.
The children went back to their game. She yelled and banged and waved until they looked up again.
The children on the sidewalk huddled together in quick conversation. They gathered up their marbles. Two ran into one of the houses. The other two ran toward Noosala’s building.
Soon there was banging on the door and children were calling out in a language Noosala didn’t know. The children’s voices were joined by other, older voices, and then Noosala heard the sound of the lock being broken.
Strangers rushed into the room, stunned at the sight of the sick and the dead.
“I can work,” Noosala said in Pashtun, even though it was clear they could not understand her. “I can look after children and clean and cook and weave carpets and do any kind of work you want me to do.” She went from stranger to stranger, appealing to them for help.
The strangers looked too overwhelmed and too bewildered to know what to do with her or with any of the others who were coughing and vomiting on the plastic rug.
A policeman came through the door. He took one look at the room, then spoke quickly into his radio.
Help was coming. Or pain was coming.
Death was coming. Or life was coming.
Noosala decided not to wait.
In the middle of the confusion of people arriving and people being carried out, Noosala slipped by herself down the stairs and out the door of the building.
She breathed in her first fresh air in eight months.
Then she walked.
She did not look back.
10
The War Chair
Sue was sitting on a swing.
She dangled her feet loosely over the gravel below and moved herself idly back and forth as if she didn’t care. She watched the ground appear to move beneath her feet.
“Suey, I am talking to you,” Mom said. “Don’t just sit there. Give me some sign that you hear me.”
“She hears you,” said Barry, Sue’s older brother. He was on the swing next to hers but he wasn’t swinging. He was sitting bone-still, which was not all that easy to do on a swing. “The whole town hears you,” he muttered.
Sue wanted to giggle but she didn’t.
“Do we really need your lip today?” Mom asked Barry. “I’m trying to make this easy for you. Do you think this is easy for me? It wouldn’t hurt you to help me for a change.”
“Don’t put this on me!” Barry snapped back. “I didn’t make you and Dad fight all the time.”
Their mom got to arguing with Barry and left Sue alone.
Sue really wanted to swing. She wanted to pump her legs and push with her back and make the swing move high and fast so that she could feel the air whoosh around her.
Mom was in the way. She stood in front of them, just enough on Barry’s side and just enough on Sue’s side to make it impossible for either of them to swing.
“I hope you’re not going to go in there with that snippy attitude,” their mother said to Barry.
Sue cringed at the word “snippy.” She knew Barry hated it, too. It wasn’t right that Mom was tossing it around today, this very strange day.
Their mother really wasn’t being fair to Barry.
Just that morning, between mouthfuls of cornflakes, Barry had whispered to Sue, “This isn’t my fault, is it?”
I don’t know, Sue had thought. I don’t know anything. But she looked right at him and shook her head. Then she opened her mouth at him to show him all the mashed-up cornflakes in there.
It made him laugh and earned her a “Quit fooling around” from their mother.
“I’m sure it’s a nice place,” Mom said now. She fished through her purse, looking for a cigarette.
“You quit,” Sue said. “Remember?”
“Picked a damn fool time to do that,” their mother said to herself, sighing as she closed her purse.
“Better late than never,” Barry said, which got him a Mom-frown, even though Sue knew he meant it as a compliment. Barry sometimes said the wrong words when he was nervous.
Mom checked her watch. “I guess we’d better go in. Come on. Stand up. Let me look at you.”
Sue and Barry stepped off their swings. Mom slicked back Barry’s hair and pulled up Sue’s left knee sock, which had slipped down around her ankle.
“I know you’re scared, but it’s going to be all right,” their mother said. “If they ask you how you are, you tell them you are fine. If your father asks how you are, you tell him the same thing. Tell him I’m fine, too, if he asks.”
“He won’t ask,” Sue said.
They left the swings and walked across the dirt yard to the low building next to the parking lot. The sign on the building read Family Mediation and Supervised Visitation Service.
Mom opened the door. “Let’s go.”
I don’t want to go in there, Sue thought.
She backed away from the door.
“Suey, I said, let’s go! Your father will be here in a moment and I’m not supposed to be around when he gets here. You want me to get in trouble with the court? Is that what you want? Get inside.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Who wants to?” Mom took Sue’s hand to pull her along.
Sue sat down, right on the sidewalk. It was a stunt she vaguely remembered doing when she was younger and being forced into something she didn’t want to do, like go to bed.
The ground seemed a lot farther down than it did when she was three.
“Are you kidding me?” her mother asked. “Suey, you are six years old!”
“Seven,” said Barry.
Their mother shot Barry a quick glare, then turned back to Sue.
“You look absolutely foolish sitting there,” Mom said. “Well, I’m not going to force you. I’m not going to carry you in. That’s all I need, to have someone see me fighting with you. Barry, go get somebody. Tell them that Sue doesn’t want to see her father.”
“I want to see Daddy!” Sue protested. She started to cry. Why was everything so hard?
“Who am I supposed to get?” Barry asked. “I don’t know anybody in there.”
Mom went inside the building. Barry stood over Sue, watching her cry.
Do something! Susan begged him with her thoughts. She did not want to keep crying and sitting on the sidewalk, but she did not know what else to do.
Barry sat down on the sidewalk beside her.
A middle-aged man
with a big middle walked by carrying a plastic bag full of stuff from the Bulk Barn. He stared at Sue and her brother as he passed.
“Dogs sit on the ground,” he said.
“What did you say?” Barry yelled at him. “You calling us dogs? Get over here and say that. We’ll bite your face off. Yeah, coward, just keep walking. Go home and fill your face with Crunchy Munchies or Hungry Hippie or whatever it is you’ve got in that bag. Keep moving! Run! RUN!”
But the Bulk Barn man was already way down the street.
“Hungry Hippie,” Sue laughed. Then she hiccuped. Her nose was running. She didn’t have a tissue. She was going to use her hand but Barry tore a leaf from a hosta plant in the garden and gave it to her to use instead.
“Careful, it’s poison ivy,” Barry said as she cleaned her face with it.
Sue just grinned. She knew it wasn’t poison ivy. She held the soiled leaf out to him.
“I don’t want it.”
“What do I do with it?”
They looked around.
“Put it through the mail slot,” Barry suggested. She did, and she knew it was the wrong thing to do but it felt like absolutely the right thing to do.
“Let’s get this dumb thing over with,” Barry said.
“It is dumb,” Sue agreed. They went inside.
No one had told Sue what to expect, so she had made up what she thought the family center would look like. She thought it would be like a doctor’s office, and also like a principal’s office, and also like church.
It was like none of those things and it was like all of those things.
There was a big desk like a principal would have. There were filing cabinets along the wall like a doctor’s office would have. And there was a feeling of hushness and seriousness like in church. There were also a few old sofas, a low table full of little-kid toys, shelves with books and games like Monopoly and another shelf with coloring books and crayons.
A door with a picture of Superwoman on it opened and their mother came out, drying her eyes. She was followed by an old woman in a long, full skirt and a rainbow-colored blouse that seemed to fluff out in all directions.
Mom bent down to Sue and Barry. “Your father will be here soon. I have to go. This is Ms. Dira. She will look after you until he gets here. Be good for Daddy. Or don’t. I don’t care.”
Rainbow woman coughed a little.
Mom looked at her, then said, “Behave yourselves at your father’s house. Have a good time. I’ll see you in two days.”
She hugged them both quickly and left.
Sue sighed deeply. Part one of this strange day was over. Part two was on now — dealing with this funny-looking lady. Part three would be with Daddy. She and Barry hadn’t seen him since he moved out three weeks ago.
Would he look different? Would he still like them? Where would she sleep at his house? Would he remember how to make them supper? Did he remember she didn’t like peas?
Ms. Dira smiled at them and opened her mouth to say something, but she was interrupted by shouting from outside.
Barry ran to the window, Sue right behind him.
Their father had arrived and their mother had not yet left. The two of them were in the parking lot screaming at each other. They slapped the cars. They stomped away, then turned back for more yelling.
“This is their war,” said Ms. Dira, who was standing behind Sue and her brother. She put one hand on Sue’s shoulder and another one on Barry’s. “This is their war, not yours. This is their choice, not yours.”
She led them away from the window and they all sat together around the low table.
“My parents fought all the time,” she said. It was hard for Sue to imagine that someone with so many wrinkles ever had parents. “I had to find something that I liked, that was just for me. Otherwise I would have disappeared into their fights.”
“What did you find?” Sue asked.
The old lady giggled and looked from side to side as if there were spies all around that were eager to learn her secret. Then she reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out a small cloth bag. She opened the drawstring and emptied the contents of the bag into the palm of her hand.
“Marbles,” Ms. Dira said. “I like marbles.”
“Marbles?” Sue asked.
“When I was a little girl, I had a marble collection that I kept in an old cigar box under my bed,” Ms. Dira said. “Whenever my parents fought, I took out my collection and looked at it and played with it and I felt better.”
“You still like marbles?” Barry asked. “For real?”
“For real,” said Ms. Dira. “I love the shape of them, the colors, the feel, the things I can do with them — everything! I love them so much that I became an expert. As a matter of fact, I am one of the leading marble experts in the world right now! Did you know that the ancient Egyptians made marbles? Lots of civilizations had them.”
Ms. Dira talked a bit more about marbles. Then she asked Sue, “What does your brother love to do?”
“Barry watches people,” she said. Barry looked shocked, but of course she knew that! “He is very curious about other people.”
“Barry might take that curiosity and use it to become a writer. Or maybe a psychologist, someone who tries to figure out why people do the things they do. Maybe he will become a detective and solve mysteries. Barry, what does your sister love to do?”
“Sizes,” Barry said. “She likes big things next to small things, but, like, the same things.” He looked frustrated trying to explain it.
“Like having a regular nickel next to the giant nickel,” Sue said.
Ms. Dira nodded. “Sounds like Sue might be a builder or an artist, or maybe she will design amusement parks and roadside attractions. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
“That we have things we love to do?” Barry asked.
“Yes. Those things are yours. They are yours whether your parents fight or get along. They are yours no matter what happens. Your parents are choosing to go to war. You can choose to focus on the things you love.”
“We love our parents,” said Barry. Sue nodded.
“They love you, too. You are their children but you are also your own people. Let them have their war if that’s what they choose to do. You did not cause their war and you cannot stop it. When they are done, they will be very proud of the choices you have made, and you will have found a way to create your own happiness. Then you will have something that makes you happy no matter what happens in your life.”
“Marbles make you happy?” Sue asked.
“Marbles make me very happy,” said Ms. Dira. “Tell you what. Why don’t you each choose one of my marbles? Keep it in your pocket, and when you feel like you are being drawn into your parents’ war, you can hold your marble and think of the things that are yours that make you happy.”
Barry quickly chose a red one. Sue took more time, examining a green one with sparkles before deciding on a marble that had blue and yellow winding through it. They tucked their marbles away in their pockets.
The family center door opened. Their father came in. He looked flustered.
“Let’s go, kids,” he said. “Your mother has already eaten up fifteen minutes of my time with you.”
Sue and Barry waved goodbye to Ms. Dira and left. They got into their father’s car.
“What do you love to do?” Sue asked their father.
“We’re going to hit traffic,” he replied.
Sue felt the marble in her pocket.
Then she reached across the car seat and took hold of her brother’s hand.
And held on tight.
11
The Hope Chair
Jafar is not sitting.
He is running.
He is running a happy run. A work-for-the-day-is-done run. A heading-to-school-and-food
run, the best run of them all.
Jafar runs on feet made tough from heat and use. Feet that can pound pavement and fly over gravel without hardly noticing the small sharp stones.
Jafar runs through the city, a city that he knows so well he could probably navigate it blindfolded. Every day is the same, yet every day is also different. Sometimes a rain has just ended and the air smells washed of all the engine grime and cookfire smoke. Sometimes he sees a shopkeeper he hasn’t seen in a week and they wave at each other. Sometimes a stray mama dog has a new batch of puppies, and Jafar coaxes them out from beneath the rubbish bin so that he can pet their tiny heads and look into their big, big eyes.
Today, though, there is no stopping for puppies. There is no stopping for anything.
Today there is only running.
He runs through streets that have given him shelter in doorways when a sudden rain starts to fall. He runs under bridges and along a river where his family once had a shack, until the developers bulldozed it away. He runs by the spot where his friend sold batteries until a delivery truck backed up and crushed him.
Each block, each street, each building, each rubbish tip holds pieces of Jafar’s life.
He sees himself as a toddler, his mother pouring water over him on the sidewalk in an endless effort to keep him clean. He sees the river where he helps his mother do the laundry, scrubbing the family’s clothes on rocks. He sees the recycling depot where he would go with his father, each carrying sacks of trash they would turn into money. The gutter where he found the ball that day, bright green and highly bouncy, small enough to fit into his pocket. The closed gate of the private school where he gave that green ball to a boy who was shaking the gates and crying. The corner where he hawked newspapers when he was eight. The shop where he stole crackers when he couldn’t find work and where his mother made him return them. The tiny park where he played with a tiny kitten that was in the arms of a tiny girl.
Jafar is all over this city. Sometimes he waves to the shadows of his former self, but not today. Today he is not interested in remembering. Today is all about looking forward.
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