“Where is my little boy? Wherever might he be?” my mother sang out. But her voice was tinged with melancholy. Perhaps she was lamenting, as all parents do, the truth my brother had yet to learn—that closing his eyes would not make him invisible to those determined to find him.

Chapter 5

April 27, 1978

After that day it was as if the palace was a purse and someone had pulled its strings. Arg became a dark and suffocating chamber. I overheard my parents debate whether it would be best for us to leave. But then a commander increased the number of armored tanks stationed outside the palace’s high walls and the bolstered security reassured Boba.

President Daoud’s family had been sequestered in the sunroom of Dilkhusha. When I heard someone call Rostam’s name across the lawn, I wondered if my friends had tried to slip away and pay me a visit. Hours later, there was still no sign of them. I huffed to think I had to wait for the storm to pass before I could rejoin Neelab and Rostam.

My mother gave me little room to wander, ordering me to stay close by. I felt like a prisoner in a place that had always been my playground. We were still across from the presidential library, so I could at least find an escape on those rich shelves.

My mother kept mainly to the bedroom with my brother. Faheem had been complaining of a stomachache since the night before. She’d been spooning warm fennel tea into his mouth while he tried to bury his face in his chest. I was seven years old when he was born. I remember curling myself around Madar’s growing belly and feeling my brother’s sharp kicks. Excited as I was to meet this new sibling, I also worried that he might siphon off all my parents’ attentions.

But once he was born, I was so smitten by his tiny fingers and powdery smell that I didn’t resent him one bit. And Madar’s lap somehow had room for both of us, the curious anatomy of a mother’s love.

I would press my head to her chest and hear the rhythmic thumping of her heart, as if a clock sat caged in her chest. I listened for it anytime I lay next to her, pushing away gnawing thoughts of hearts subject to the limits of time.

At noon, the hilltop cannon boomed as it always did. Though the morning had dragged, the hour had still snuck up on me. I was starting to feel hungry and wondered if I should help prepare something for Madar and Faheem. My father was tied up in discussions that didn’t seem to be going anywhere because he still hadn’t emerged with any good news.