The soldier’s eyes graze over my heavy wool coat. I try not to think of the bullets sitting in the weapon at his side. I turn away from them and take two steps before they stop me again.

“Where have you come from?” the taller soldier asks.

I nod my head behind me, in the direction of the embassy.

“American embassy,” he declares, as if he’s solved a puzzle.

They ask where I am headed, and I tell them my plan, the one I came up with this morning when I saw Carla’s polite smile, the one that inspired little confidence that she would manage to connect us to anyone of use.

“The Ministry of the Interior,” I reply.

An eyebrow perks.

“What business do you have there?”

I cannot tell if he’s asking me out of curiosity or protocol.

“With your permission, I’d like to pass,” I say, pointing in the direction of the ministry.

“Do you know the way there?” he asks.

I tell them it is no more than five minutes away, a nearly direct walk from where I stand. They begin to laugh.

“Better take taxi. You lost here,” one soldier advises. He gives me choppy directions to the Ministry of the Interior. It is not where it used to be, not in the place my father used to point out to me when we drove around Kabul.

I walk the length of Arg, wondering if any children race around the grounds as we once did, if they play history as we did, and if they storm into the president’s office and fire imaginary bullets out of the tips of their fingers.

I slip into the congestion of Chicken Street as if drifting into a dream. The motley wares of shops spill out from their storefronts. Carpets hang on balcony railings, sacks of spices sit outside glass storefronts, and embroidered vests and dresses dangle from tattered awnings. Sunlight turns the kicked-up dust of foot traffic into a nostalgic haze.

A passing man raises an eyebrow at me, teasingly. Another blows cigarette smoke directly into my face—a lewd exhalation. I hold my breath and bite my tongue to avoid making matters worse as women have learned to do.

I look up at the apartment where I’d stayed with Mom and Tilly and imagine I see the pale pink curtain flutter. The store below is no longer a bakery. I step inside, and the shopkeeper, a long-faced man with a short beard, gives me a nod. He adjusts the wool cap on his head and points at the small carpets hanging from the wall, the shelves lined with metal handicrafts.