I listen, as if they might send an answer in the mountain breeze. Being in Kabul has sharpened my senses. I can see and hear my parents more clearly, as if I’ve tweaked a dial and caused the static to fall away.

Sitara! Come hold your brother’s hand. I hear them call my name. I can smell the fried leeks my mother would stuff into dough to make savory flatbreads.

I see my father lift Faheem in his outstretched arms for a taste of flight. He tosses him into the air, and Madar watches her precious son become airborne for a heartbeat, then exhales to see him return safely to Boba’s arms. Though nervous, she does not stop Boba, and I understand, because, like her, I can resist neither the pride on my father’s face nor Faheem’s elation to defy gravity.

Pieces of my father’s midnight song return to me:

I lie in rest, and yet you travail

Your glimmering love set to prevail.

His voice pulls at my heart, like fingers on the string of a rubab. How silly I was to laugh at this song when I was a girl, to think he was chiding me for wanting to stay awake past my bedtime.

Another pothole.

They have named a road after the singer who died in a tunnel in a suspicious car crash not long after the coup. He had criticized the Communist regime at a time when dissidents were disappeared dozens at a time.

We are fast approaching the American embassy. The driver lets us out at the gates, where police officers eye us from a distance. They scan our faces and our clothes well before we move through the official security checkpoints and our bags are sent through an X-ray machine.

“It looks so different,” Mom says, admiring the renovated structure. The pattern of glass panes on the facade reminds me of fish scales. Two flags, American and Afghan, fly high overhead.

We pass through another security checkpoint. Mom’s connections and former position win her no special treatment here, her homecoming dulled by all that has happened since she served in this mission.

A woman with her hair in a youthful ponytail leads us to an office. She offers us water or juice, which we decline. Clay and I sit, but Mom paces the room, looks at the books on the shelf behind the desk, and then sighs and paces some more.

I shift in my chair. My back and hip are bruised from yesterday’s treadmill mishap, but my legs still crave a run. I can’t be still too long.

“Any idea who we’re meeting?” Clay asks, taking a leather-bound notebook out of his bag.

Before Mom can answer, the door swings open and nearly hits her back.