“Yeah, I am. It’s just . . . it’s just so different now. I used to only think of those last moments. It was so hard to think of anything else. But now I feel like I can have so much more back, and it’s nothing like having them again, but it’s something. It’s a lot.”

I think of Dayo and what she said about lightning and thunder, the flash and the bang. I think of the patients I’ve returned to and the storms they are enduring. I was wrong to think I could move on quickly. I expected so much more of myself than I expected from people I care for.

“That’s a big step,” Clay says as he takes my hand in his. I smile and lean toward him so our shoulders touch.

“I wonder what the little girl in the cemetery is doing now,” I muse. On our way to the airport in Kabul, I’d asked for one last stop at the cemetery. I’d walked up a hill with haphazardly arranged graves, some in protective metal enclosures that looked too much like cages for my taste.

As I’d approached the graves, a little girl carrying a bucket of water had appeared. She must have spotted me from a distance and scared off her competition. The cemetery had become a land of opportunity for children looking to help feed their families. She offered to sprinkle water on the graves of my loved ones to wash away their sins and maybe even inspire a patch of green to grow.

She’d been generous with the water, wetting the dirt as I said my silent goodbyes. I’d given her a bill that made her eyes go wide and asked her to look after their graves a few more times for me.

“She’s probably wondering when you’ll be back,” Clay says.

I don’t know the answer to that question yet. A lifetime ago, Shair had told me that Kabul was no longer my home. He’d been right, but only in a literal way. The city would always be a part of me, and I would always be a part of her. Our stories are intertwined.

I think of Rostam, wandering Kabul looking like a ghost of himself. He video-called me from Germany a week ago and introduced me to his wife and children. Though they were polite and even cracked a few jokes, the conversation quickly petered out. We were strangers, after all. Even Rostam struggled to come up with things to say, and after a few moments we promised to talk again soon. I take comfort in knowing he is surrounded by love. That might be all I can salvage from what we once were.