“Okay, okay. Let’s start with some basics,” she said. “I’m Antonia.”

“You can call her Nia, if that’s easier. I used to call her that when she was just a little girl,” the older woman interjected cheerily. Nia was a lot easier for me to pronounce. Even in my head, I couldn’t make the syllables of her full name roll out smoothly.

“And this is Tilly, my mother,” Antonia said.

They behaved nothing like any mother and daughter I’d ever seen.

“What is your name?” the woman named Tilly asked, her eyes wide and childlike. Her fingers toyed with the fuchsia scarf that hung around her neck. Then her expression soured and she turned to her daughter. “Oh, I can’t do anything but speak to her in English! Can’t you ask her in Afghani?”

“Dari,” her daughter corrected softly. She was doing a fair job of pretending not to look at my nails bitten to the quick and the half-healed bruises and scrapes on my body.

“Fine, in Dari then. And ask her if she—”

“Mother, please!” Antonia said, and Tilly blinked tightly and pressed a fingertip to her lips.

“Nam-e-shoma chee ast?” Antonia asked stiffly. Her Dari surprised me, and not just because she’d addressed me with the formal you, a kind of respect that was never given a child. Though she had only asked my name, I did not answer.

Her mother suggested a few more questions to ask, her eyes darting from me to her daughter.

“Mother, can you leave this to me, please?”

Tilly nodded. She had her elbows on her knees, and though she was thin, her movements were so jaunty that she could have been mistaken for a child.

“You are safe here. I want to help you,” Antonia continued in Dari. “Was that man your father?”

“What did you ask her?” Tilly whispered.

“If that man was her father.”

“The man with the gun?” Tilly balked. “That was certainly not her father. They have completely opposite energies.”

Antonia blinked slowly.

I remained silent, still unsure what to make of the entire situation. I was away from Shair but now in the hands of foreigners.

The older woman pursed her lips and let out a long whistle. She said something about Afghanistan being a very exciting but strange country. Antonia stood and disappeared into an adjoining room. A moment later, she emerged with sheets, a blanket, and a pillow, all of which she set on the far end of the sofa. Then she went to the kitchen and brought back a collection of offerings—two slices of buttered bread, a bowl of pistachios, an apple, and a foil-wrapped chocolate. She placed the tray next to the untouched cup of mango juice.

“Will you call the police?” Tilly asked her daughter.

With her eyes on me, Antonia shook her head.