If only I could share this news with Saleem. I look for him everywhere we go. I see boys of his height or with his hair color and pray that one of them will come running toward me. I hear his voice in crowds and turn frequently and abruptly, wondering if I’m walking past him without knowing it. What if he is here but cannot find us? Samira knows and is unsurprised by my behaviors. She does the same. Harder than anything is not knowing where he is.
I dare to imagine a perfect world. I dare to dream that the woman writing my story on those many pages will stop and remember that a boy by the name of Saleem Waziri is here and in search of his family. I dream that I will tell him his brother is well. I dream that we receive a letter declaring that we will not be sent away and that we will be allowed to work and go to school and stay in this country where the air is clear and life is more like metal than dust.
And while I’m thinking of these things, a woman in a green hospital uniform walks toward me. Her hair is covered in a blue puff, the same grating blue as the walls. She removes her mask as she approaches. I stare at her face, anxious to see what news she will bring of my son. I can tell nothing from her eyes. I dare not stand up because she may very well knock me down with what she is about to say. I have no choice but to wait and listen.
It shouldn’t be much longer now.
CHAPTER 46
Saleem
AGAIN, A NEW LANGUAGE. AGAIN, A NEW PEOPLE.
But everything was the same. It was the familiar feeling of being lost. The same things made his skin clammy and his mouth dry: uniforms, refugees, checkpoints, trains, and the sight of food.
After what felt like an eternity, Saleem felt the ship stop moving and the trucks began disembarking. The truck had rolled off the ramp into the port in Bari, the eastern coast of Italy. Getting off the truck had been the tricky part. Saleem had waited for the truck driver to make his first stop and open the back door. When he did so, Saleem pitched his coiled body off the platform, nearly knocking the driver to the ground. Like a mouse discovered in a cubbyhole, he scrambled to his feet and took off running.
Run. Just run.
Sunlight stung his unaccustomed eyes. He ran toward the road. There was yelling behind him. He ran faster and turned left when he saw an opening between two buildings. It was a street corner. When he’d put enough distance behind him, he slumped down between two Dumpsters and waited.
It was dusk before Saleem started to walk again. He walked with purpose but without direction, a bewilderment in his step that he’d made it this far. Saleem’s eyes drifted upward to buildings that stood stories high. He had stumbled into a metropolis, the likes of which he’d only seen in his father’s books.
Here, Saleem thought with both trepidation and hope, I can be lost.
Saleem wandered through the narrow streets as cars and taxis zipped past him. A family walked by. The mother pushed a baby carriage while the father carried a young boy on his shoulders. Saleem looked away. For all the miles and months between him and Kabul, the hurt stayed close, no farther than the pigment in his skin. Would he ever look at a father and son and not feel the poison pulse through his body? Until the night Padar-jan had been taken, he’d never noticed fathers and sons. His eyes were drawn to them now, a self-inflicted thrashing that he could not resist because each time he hoped, with that part of a boy that refuses to stay beaten down, that this time would be the time the vinegar would turn back to juice.
Then there were mothers. And young girls of Samira’s age. And healthy toddlers. More and more, Saleem had to turn his eyes away when he looked at the world. He was even more alone than he thought.
Saleem worked up the nerve to enter a small store. He traded a few euros for a sandwich and juice. The shop owner bagged his purchase and went back to his business.