Shair looked stymied, as if he were trying to translate words into a language he didn’t speak.

“Are you all right?” Neelab asked. She had my mother’s heart. She sensed uneasiness in others and felt an urgency to do something about it. But Shair did not look at her. He cleared his throat and waved us off without another word.

“The candle is not at his brightest today, is he?” I murmured as we hastily walked down the hallway. Neelab shook her head.

When we were far enough away, I turned to see if Shair was still watching us. Backlit by the sunlight that fell through the windows behind him, he had both hands on his hips. Face to face, I’d felt comfortable enough to speak freely with him, but from this distance, his dark silhouette quickened my step.

Neelab pulled on my arm.

“He’s just doing his job. If he didn’t scold us, someone would scold him. And much more severely.”

She was right. During a parade, Neelab and I had stood shoulder to shoulder, watching rows of soldiers march in sync past the president and his family. To the public’s eye, the formations were perfect. Men in uniform were propelled to synchrony by a drumbeat, by stripes and stars on breast pockets and tasseled epaulets. We watched the pomp of our country’s military with pride that day.

The very next week, Neelab and I snuck away from dinner and slipped into the former harem of King Habibullah. Decades after the king’s assassination, his killer had still not been identified. There was an abundance of suspects: his son who then assumed the throne, an English spy, a disgruntled peasant. The harem had once been home to forty women, all of them vying for the king’s attentions. I was convinced that we could find some hidden message or overlooked clue confirming that one of his concubines had had a hand in arranging his end.

But instead of solving the mystery of the murdered king, we stumbled upon a general glaring at a soldier accused of accepting a bribe. The soldier stood with his arms at his sides, his lip trembling. He denied the charge, first in a bold voice and then, as the general barked his contempt for liars, in a whimper.

From behind two columns wide enough to hide our presence, we watched the general’s hand slice through the air and clap violently against the soldier’s cheek. The sound reverberated against the walls of the two-storied room. We ducked our heads as if afraid to be struck by the ricocheting sound.

I wondered if Shair had ever been reprimanded so brutally. If I were more like my mother, I might have found a reason to ask him. It was odd, I realized, not to know anything about the men who were tasked with defending us against all the rest of the world.