I’d wished with all my heart that Boba and Antonia could have debated this directly.

The men asked my grade in school, and I felt a hole in my story. I worried, as unaccustomed liars do. If I told them I was in fifth grade, my age would not have matched. But what if I told them I’d been in year seven? Could they contact my school? I imagined my principal on the phone with these men, informing them that no child named Aryana Zamani had ever sat in her classrooms.

I saw just how easily they would suss out my lies. I sat on my hands to stop them from trembling.

Tell them the truth, Antonia had said. Boba had said the same.

And that’s what I did. When I named Arg, they looked as if they’d never heard of the place, so I had to explain to them that it was the presidential palace. When I said President Daoud Khan’s name, one of the men asked me how to spell it. His colleague elbowed him and motioned for him to write down my story. I continued to relate the events of the coup, just as I had with Antonia and Tilly. As I told these two men that my family had been killed before my eyes, I was surprised to find that I could speak of that moment without collapsing to the floor. I worried briefly that I wasn’t grieving enough. It was hard to measure, since I’d been grieving alone.

I sniffled, wiping my nose on the back of my hand. One of the men got up and looked around, then handed me a napkin. I thanked him.

And then I continued until I had told them all the big truths about the night Shair delivered me to Antonia at gunpoint, about Tilly and me crossing the border into Pakistan, and how I’d helped us escape from a hatch door to the roof of the Islamabad embassy.

Pages of notes later, the official looked at his partner, and I could see that whether I told them I’d been in fifth grade or seventh grade or what the principal of the school might say did not matter to them one bit. I had given them details about a coup, details no child could have imagined. Antonia was right. The big truths obscured the little lies. I drank the water they’d brought for me and hoped they would lead me out of this room soon.

“You heard anything about a military coup over there?” one man said.

“Let’s just keep in mind, she’s a kid. Last night Ella told me she saw a three-legged deer baking cupcakes in our backyard,” his colleague replied.

“Now I go to Tilly,” I said, wanting nothing more than to confirm with my own eyes that she had a doctor at her side.