Page 52 of Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin #4)

W HEN WE FIRST LAND IN this city called Tucson, Isaad and I are struck by the towering mountains ringing the horizon. For one moment, it almost looks like home.

Then, we disembark into a furnace blast of heat, unlike anything we’ve known. We stagger, take a second step, stagger again.

Your arms, Zahra, are wrapped tight around my neck. I use your weight to center me, focus my footsteps, which are shaky and uncertain. I don’t want to be here. I don’t know why, but ever since the caseworker showed up yesterday with our relocation instructions…

My skin feels too tight, my limbs twitchy, my mind agitated. I feel like there’s something extremely important looming just beyond my grasp. I should know… What should I know?

Isaad, on the other hand, is in full swagger.

He practically explodes out of the plane’s hatch and vaults down the stairs.

He’s spent the entire night Googling everything there is to know about Tucson.

Job opportunities, best neighborhoods for schools, the existing Afghan community.

He’s already decided we will do this, and go there, and try that.

The faint echo of musical chords chiming in my ears. A song I might have heard once, but it’s been a long time now.

An older woman appears before us. A fellow Afghan, impeccably groomed with her stylishly short black hair, dark eyes, and beckoning smile.

“Manda Nabashin, Bakhair Amadin,” she welcomes us.

She introduces herself as Aliah. She’s a volunteer, works with resettling families, has so many recommendations for us.

Next to her stands a pretty blonde, America personified, with her freckled face and earnest gaze.

She has secured an apartment for us, will take us to our new home.

Isaad immediately bombards her with questions about the school district and professional opportunities.

Aliah continues to stare at me and you, Zahra, with such quiet intensity, I wonder who she’s lost.

A fresh prickle across my scalp. A shiver running up my spine.

The musical chords sounding louder. Beckoning. Come play with us, they whisper in my ear.

It comes to me. Patterns. The warp and weave of the world. A whirlwind of numbers, a cacophony of words. The shimmer of chaos right before I pluck apart the tumbling bits and string them together in an order of my own making.

It’s been so long since I’ve peered into the abyss and seen the divine. Not since my days of Haldol and antidepressants.

I try to weave the pieces together now. A stranger’s look of yearning as she gazes upon me for the first time.

The feel of the searing desert air, baking my unprotected face.

The fierce clutch of my child’s arms, tight around my neck.

Threads, tangling and untangling, knitting together, falling apart.

And for one moment…

The click eludes me. The universe resumes its random spinning, moving too fast for my medicated mind to follow.

“She’s beautiful,” the woman, Aliah, speaks at last. “How old?”

“Four,” I manage.

The woman flashes another smile. “I think you will be very happy here.”

Isaad and the chattering housing coordinator start moving forward while Aliah and I fall in step behind.

And you, Zahra, my child of silence, murmur a single word against the crook of my neck. You have intuited what my mind couldn’t follow, like recognizing like.

You whisper, “Auntie.”

And I know in that moment you are right.

At the first sight of our living quarters, Isaad is horrified.

I’m indifferent. I drift through the dingy rooms capped with water-stained ceilings while you patter along beside me, holding my hand.

I don’t care where we stay. Mostly, I inspect each corner for signs of Habib’s sulking spirit or Jamil’s gentle presence.

I inhale in the hallway, sniff the kitchen, hoping to catch a whiff of my mother’s perfume.

I want my ghosts to be happy. Otherwise, I will have nothing of home left.

A cockroach scurries down a wall. Ashley apologizes profusely. Isaad comments the ones in Abu Dhabi were bigger. You giggle.

Finally, Aliah leads us to the modest sitting area, where she pours cups of fragrant saffron tea and sets out dishes filled with sweets, nuts, and fruit, welcoming us to our new home.

Traditional Afghan hospitality. It has been so long…

I feel my eyes begin to sting, while across from me, Isaad is clearly moved.

“Auntie,” you whisper again.

I don’t know that Aliah hears you, but she once more has that look on her face.

Isaad drills Ashley on rental contracts and how to contact the landlord and who is responsible for the grounds and, oh, yes, we will need a better air conditioner.

I flip through a binder Aliah has prepared with information on local halal grocery stores, mosques, and medical centers, not to mention bus lines, language classes, community events.

I pause long enough for you to scan each and every page. I know your gift for memory already. Isaad suspects. He seems delighted rather than appalled, which is promising. As for your other talent, seeing what others cannot see, knowing what others cannot know…

Neither you nor I will ever speak of such things with him. It’s our secret, such as the one I had with my mother. As she protected mine, so I will protect yours.

Then it is time for both women to depart.

The apartment immediately feels completely alien. Not a home, just a new and differently designed box. We have been in so many the past four years.

“We will make this work,” Isaad declares boldly, his immense size already dominating the space.

I don’t bother to correct him, as Habib has finally appeared, spinning his favorite knife upon his fingertip, while eyeing us both with his too-knowing gaze and triumphant grin.

I feel it again. A shimmer in the air, a clang of discordant notes. A pattern I should be able to recognize.

I’m left with a fresh shiver down my spine, while you gaze at me with open concern.

I do my best to summon a smile.

But I already think Tucson will prove a dangerous choice.

Isaad buys a car to deliver takeout food to people.

I get a job cleaning rooms at a beautiful resort.

Many of the other women are from Afghanistan.

During breaks, their cheerful chatter in Dari and Pashto washes over me like a comforting stream.

If I close my eyes and just listen, for a minute or two, I can believe I’m home.

I do my best to make friends, but I have journeyed too far from my country and myself, I can’t remember how to act or what to say. Mostly, I sit in silence.

My twitchy feeling from our initial arrival refuses to relent.

I have a constant itch between my shoulder blades, often whirling around for no reason.

The other women begin to whisper, especially when Habib and Jamil start following me to work and I have to remind them again and again not to bleed on the carpet.

I come home exhausted, but fall asleep, only to suffer terrible nightmares.

I dream of blood and death and bullets. Of my father’s mutilated face, of young Omid’s blue-tinged lips. Of strangers whose names I recorded on a whiteboard only to watch them die hours later.

I take to once again watching you sleep, Zahra, holding vigil because I can feel the threat growing closer, a near constant pressure against the base of my skull.

When you wake up, we work on re-creating the matrices. Over and over. You have the memory; it’s just a matter of teaching you a steady hand. It’s very important you get them right. I don’t have much time left.

One day, I catch Isaad counting out pills, checking to see if I’m still taking my Haldol.

In his mind, my hallucinations have returned.

I don’t have the heart to tell him Habib, Jamil, my mother are more than mere figments of my imagination.

They are my burden to bear as well as my only true comfort; I trust their senses better than my own.

He flushes and returns the bottle before getting to my stash of antidepressants. It’s just as well. So many nights I’ve stared at the line of orange bottles and yearned to just open my mouth and pour, pour, pour.

Anything to dam the river of bloody dreams pouring through my sleep.

I hold myself tighter, determined to cling to my sanity through sheer force of will. I learn mass transit and strip malls and overly cold grocery stores with their prepackaged foods. I practice new social customs and American habits. I do not want to fail Isaad.

I don’t want to fail you.

Then one day, riding home on the bus.

I see him. Right there in flesh and blood. My brother, Farshid, standing on the sidewalk. He’s turned slightly away. But the hair, his profile, the set of his shoulders. He holds himself differently, too rigid, as if in terrible pain, and yet—

I clamber to my feet, shouting at the bus driver to stop.

Then as the other passengers start yelling at me to sit down, the man twists around. He finds my frozen form standing in the bus window. He stares straight at me.

Except it is not my brother, Farshid.

It’s our cousin, Habib. The one I killed, thought I killed, tried to kill.

But now, very much alive.

And clearly coming to get me.

I don’t remember starting to scream.

I mostly remember not being able to stop.

Once I got out of the hospital, it took several precious days more to get Isaad to believe me, to understand the full danger not just to me, but to you and him.

We made the decision I should disappear, while Isaad takes the necessary steps to protect you.

It only cost me one last secret, kept from the man I have grown to love.

For if Isaad knew the other news the doctor had to tell me…

I think of my mother so often these days, and the terrible choices too many women are forced to make.

Isaad will keep you safe, Zahra. He was not the fire in my heart nor the husband of my choosing. And yet he has become my anchor, a pillar of strength even during moments of darkest despair.

My family awaits. I see them in my dreams. My mother and her fashionable ensembles. My father and his parting look as he heads out the door. My brother, teasing me as we race between dark green branches heavy with bright red fruit. Two halves of one whole.

We all belong to Allah. Into his graces we shall return again. There’s no sorrow, just the comfort of his all-encompassing embrace.

I miss them more than I can say.

I love you more than I have words.

And now, my precious daughter, I will honor my mother one final time.

Chin up.