Though my spirits were decaying, my body was recuperating. The stitched gash on my foot looked better. My abrasions were healing, and the bruises on my forearms, from where I’d bitten myself silent, had faded into yellow halos. Tahera tended to my wounds, sometimes making idle conversation to fill the void.

“The woman next door has such terrible taste in music. One of these days I’m going to remind her that she’s not the only person living in this building.”

“My mother was never afraid to speak her mind,” I replied gruffly.

Tahera only blinked in response. She hastily tied a bandage and disappeared into the kitchen, stopping her cooking and cleaning from time to time to look at me.

Only the youngest child interacted freely with me, and I almost wished he didn’t. He broke my heart and saved me all at once. He would sit beside me and offer me whatever food he was eating—bread, raisins, milk. Sometimes he and I fell asleep together on the living room cushions, and I would wake expecting to see my brother’s face.

Tahera would scold the baby if he lingered around me, but she did little to keep him away. Sometimes she seemed glad to have him preoccupied with the strange girl in the living room. Sometimes she lied to Shair about where the baby had played all day.

When it was time for meals, the family would sit cross-legged around a vinyl tablecloth spread across the living room floor. The baby was tucked beside his mother, eating morsels of rice and spinach from her fingers. The older children shot sidelong glances my way. Shair and his wife exchanged only a few words at a time, their thoughts bottled in my presence.

My place was in the corner of the room with a bowl of food separated for me. I had little appetite and probably ate more from the baby’s hands than I did at mealtimes.

I stared at the balcony and thought of the distance between this apartment and the ground. Even if I were brave enough to jump, I knew Shair would snatch me by my shirt or hair before I could get my second leg over the railing.

From behind a gauzy curtain, I stared into the windows of other apartments. I looked down at the street and a small field where boys would gather to play soccer. Kabul, from what I could see and sense, had not been decimated. I heard car horns, songs on the radio, and children shouting. There was a distinct absence of gunfire, of wailing. I could not understand why it seemed that only my world had come to a screeching halt.

“My uncle lives in that building there. I want to go to him,” I said for the thousandth time.