Upon his head, a crown of glittering stone

In the turning of tides, the world takes no shame

It is prompt to dole out both pleasure and pain.

I was standing. I felt fresh air on my face. With the window open, nothing stood between me and the sky. I tilted my head back and inhaled sharply, the air tasting as sweet as the roses in the palace gardens and as liberating as the first breath I’d taken coming out of the hatch at the Islamabad embassy.

I’ve come so far, I thought. But maybe I hadn’t gone far enough. I slid one leg over the window ledge, then the other, and sat perched on the narrow sill.

My heels tapped against the side of the house. I felt a tingle on the sole of my foot where the skin had thickened. It wasn’t pain—just a new somatic awareness. My body was conscious in a way it had never been before. My hands seemed impossibly small. My breathing felt labored, my bones porous and brittle. I felt a thousand years old and longed for rest.

I didn’t hear the doorbell ring or Janet’s insincere greeting. I didn’t notice the footsteps coming up the stairs. I didn’t even hear my sister’s name called, with all its syllables intact.

I had come so far. Perhaps I needed only to go a little further.

I teetered, as if I were on a Kabul rooftop while the room filled with the bitter smoke of desire and dissent, while sin and solitude dragged their talons across my flesh, while my flailing arms sought both refuge and revenge.

I longed for the crystalline prophesies of my father and released my hands from the window ledge.

Catch me, I cried to the wind, to the freedom in its current. Catch me!

Part II

November 2008

Chapter 33

Nia could have filed some reports with her higher-ups in the State Department and gone back to Kabul or moved on to a new post. She could have believed the foster care system was better equipped to raise a child than a woman who had already decided family life wasn’t for her.

But she didn’t walk away. She’s the type to run toward a fire, after all. Antonia claimed me, with all my scars and fears and outbursts.

Our years together have been anything but easy.