I listened to him recount the events of the night. But he didn’t answer all the questions he was asked. Time and again, I heard him say he could not offer official comment.

Leo sat with his knees angled outward, tapping a pencil against the table.

“How are all these people getting home?” Tilly asked.

I pressed an orange peel to my nose to combat the smell of smoke emanating from my hair and clothes.

“Pan Am is diverting a flight from Delhi. They’re coming here in a few hours, and we’ll get everyone home. The Pakistani army is going to escort us there,” he explained.

“Get us on that flight, Leo,” Tilly said, with just a flicker of the fire she’d had a day earlier.

Leo looked at Tilly with consternation. He lowered his voice, glancing around to see if anyone was listening in.

“We haven’t had the birth certificate verified yet,” he reminded her. “Without the documentation—”

“Documentation!” Tilly coughed. She was sweating, her cheeks flushed. She pinched her nose with a tissue. “Do you even hear yourself? Just a few hours ago, this girl saved the lives of every person in that vault, and you are hung up on a piece of paper. A piece of paper!”

I felt for the ring in my pocket, traced its now-familiar edges. If I was honest, part of me was afraid of getting on a plane and leaving this continent. And if I was completely honest, all of me was afraid of what would happen if I were to make it to America. Those two fears radiated through me at unique wavelengths.

But twice now I’d walked through fire. And I knew from the night of the coup that I had to keep moving, to continue taking steps in the hopes that God would bless my path. As I approached him, Leo eyed me warily.

In Dari, the word for witness, shahid, and the word for martyr, shaheed, differ by only a vowel. They are two leaves, splitting from a common stalk, catching light and rain at different angles. With a slight reshaping of lips, I could go from witness to martyr. Indeed, it felt as if the world around me was calling me by those two names and waiting to see to which I would answer.

“Your name is Leo,” I said. “In the stars, this is the name of the lion.”

Shair, the shameful soldier, had also been named after the king of the jungle, the ultimate beast. How many hopeful parents around the world had named their sons with such optimism, only to commit them to a lifetime of disappointment?

“Are you a lion?” I asked Leo.

Leo straightened his shoulders. He looked into my eyes for the first time since I’d met him. The pencil fell from his fingers and landed with a light clink on the glass table.