Hayal’s eyes watered. She had trouble getting the words out.
It was not language that got in the way of our communications that day. Had he spoken Dari fluently, I still would not have understood my son’s prognosis. The doctor looked at me, and in his eyes, I could see he was not surprised by my reaction. I would refuse to accept, he knew, just as so many mothers did up until the very end and sometimes long after.
I pushed aside everything I was being told and held on to what I could do. I needed something tangible to keep me afloat.
“I will give him this medicine,” I said. “How many times a day? For how long?”
They understood me. Doctor Ozdemir made loops in the air with his pointer finger, continuously. Hafta meant week in both Turkish and Dari. Every week, he motioned with his hand that the medicine should go on. I nodded.
“Return in two weeks’ time,” the doctor said. Hayal nodded, thanked the doctor, and asked him something I did not catch. Doctor Ozdemir shook his head and gently waved her off. He touched my elbow and stroked Aziz’s forehead before he walked out.
I was numb. Hayal started to usher me out the door with only that small square of paper in her hand.
I didn’t know how much the medicine would cost. We retraced our path back to the house, a quiet between Hayal and myself. At the pharmacy, I pulled bills from my change purse to pay for the bottle of liquid the pharmacist prepared. Not wanting to wait, I pulled the blanket back from Aziz’s face and pointed to his mouth. Hayal relayed my urgency and the mustached man nodded. He opened the bottle and poured a small amount into a plastic spoon. I brought the dark liquid to Aziz’s thin lips.
My child’s heart was more broken than mine. I buried the rage I felt toward my husband, for his decisions that had brought me here. So much was not his fault and I knew that when I had the strength to be rational. But other times, when my shoulders started to give under the pressure of it all, thoughts of my husband were clouded with resentment. I saw pigheadedness instead of perseverance, pride instead of principle, and denial instead of determination. The light of our marriage dimmed. I prayed for a way to love my husband in death as wholly as I’d loved him in life.
In the name of God, the merciful and compassionate, cried my heavy heart.
CHAPTER 22
Saleem
SALEEM HAD LISTENED QUIETLY AS MADAR-JAN RELAYED THE doctor’s thoughts. She maintained her composure with clipped phrases and the reassurance that the medication had already made a difference. But the truth was in the space between her words, the hollows that Saleem and Samira had grown to recognize and fear. Samira met her brother’s gaze, her face drawn under the weight of all she left unsaid.
Saleem had kept his eyes on his baby brother. Aziz was sleeping comfortably, his breathing quieter. Hakan, having heard the news from Hayal, had sighed, shaking his head. To Saleem, it was a look of pity and he resented it. He sweated in Polat’s field every day so that he would not have to be pitied. The expression on Hakan’s well-meaning face, the hand on his shoulder—Saleem wanted to run from it all.
Saleem sat on the edge of the school soccer field, plucking blades of grass. Judging by the sun’s position in the sky, the children should be coming out soon. He could feel them stirring in their seats, watching the minutes pass and anxiously waiting for their teachers to dismiss them. A lifetime ago, in a far-off land, Saleem had been the same—eager for the moment when he could stuff his papers and pencils into his knapsack and scurry out the door.