When two men entered the room together, I pushed my chair back and readied myself for anything. They had plastic-covered badges clipped to their shirt pockets, but I couldn’t steady my thoughts enough to read what was written on them. One had a mustache and sideburns that looked like lamb’s wool. He held a clipboard in his left hand. The other man was clean-cut, not a hair out of place.

“Where is Tilly?” I asked. The solitude had given me enough time to formulate fears and questions and to translate the latter into English. “I want to go to Tilly.”

One man sighed with exasperation. The other scratched his head and sat in the metal chair facing me.

“Sorry, but that’s not possible right now. She was very sick and needed to see a doctor right away,” he said, his words patronizing and slow. “We want to ask you a few questions first.”

They started by asking me my name. Aryana Zamani, I told them. When they asked my date of birth, I told them the day, month, and year recorded on my sister’s birth certificate. Then they asked for the names of my parents. I took in a long, deep breath and wondered if I was saying too much or not enough.

Once we get home, Tilly had said, as if I were returning to America instead of fleeing there for the first time, we’re going to tell people your true story. You will have nothing to hide there. We will keep you safe.

Antonia had agreed, even as she’d chewed her lip and looked for holes in our strategy. And there were plenty of holes to be found in the plan we’d concocted to get me from Kabul to the United States. But alternatives were scarce and even more dangerous, which was why I’d landed in a room as white and threatening as an avalanche.

“Did you know anything about the embassy attack in Islamabad?”

“We were there,” I said.

He was going to ask another question, but his colleague elbowed him and shook his head.

“May we?” the mustached man asked, pointing to my bag. It sat beneath the table, the strap of the bag looped around my foot as if it might otherwise drift away.

My small duffel bag held all I had: two pairs of clothing that Antonia had purchased for me, my notebook, the frayed copy of Eastern Bound, and the handful of photos I’d gathered from my parents’ bedroom.

“It is my bag,” I said, to explain why they should not be allowed to go poking through it.

“Yes, your bag,” they replied. Cheshm safed, I wanted to shout. To call someone white-eyed was to imply that their eyes could not see reason or decency. It was a phrase my father reserved for the most brazen politicians.