People enter and exit. I stare at their faces and try to rewind the years.

After an hour, I cross the street and enter the vestibule. I run my finger down the directory, a gray panel with dozens of slots. nabi is in apartment 5B. The outside door opens, and a woman enters, a cell phone pressed to her ear.

“Yes, yes. But no movie for the kids. Mom, that’s not a good idea,” she moans. I take a step back to give her room to get through.

“Do you need to get in?” the woman asks me, moving the phone away from her mouth as two bags of groceries dangle from the crook of her arm. A few inches shorter than me, she has the slightest hint of an accent. She tips back the hood of her rain jacket before fishing keys out of her pocket.

“No thanks,” I say and flash a smile. “I’m waiting for someone to come down.”

She nods, unlocks the door, and enters the lobby, where her voice echoes against the tiled floor and walls.

“Madar-jan,” she says, shifting into Dari, “can we have this conversation face to face in one minute? I’m in the lobby.”

I cannot stop my head from swiveling to have a second look at her. She must have sensed me watching, because she turns back too. I blink and look away. In a different life, I might have done exactly as she is doing right now—asking my mother if the matter can wait until I walk through the door.

But Shair’s daughter and I have led two very different lives. I don’t expect her to recognize me. I don’t know what her parents told her about me once I left their apartment.

Facing the street, I pretend to check my phone. I hear a ding and imagine her disappearing behind the closing doors of the elevator, ascending to the fifth floor of the building, and making her way into an apartment that I imagine looks just like the one in Kabul’s Macroyan apartment complex.

“This is not Kabul,” I whisper, to stop myself from sliding headlong into the past. I leave the building and head back home.

As the train pulls into the station at my stop and the brakes screech to a halt, I think about the tracks that run directly between my home and Shair’s apartment. Seeing him has reminded me of my early years here. Since the day he reappeared, my sleep has been fitful, conversations exhaust me, and running doesn’t bring the relief it always has.

Whatever is about to come will either give me the answers I’ve been waiting for or unravel me completely.

Chapter 42