“What is your father’s name?” she asked gently. Her Dari, mercifully, was rooted in the present tense and stole nothing from me.

“Sulaiman Zamani,” I said, his name swelling in the room until it filled every corner.

Antonia repeated his name, her head tilted to the side as if she were trying to dislodge a memory.

“Was he in the president’s cabinet? And was he working with the French and the Kabul Museum on the antiquities collection? I was at the Ai-Khanoum—”

Antonia froze. She glanced quickly at my hands, which were clasped in my lap, the ring rotated so that my fingers only partially hid the stones.

“Oh,” she said, startled.

I tucked my hands under a throw pillow.

“You know him?” I asked. Tilly looked at her daughter, her eyes mirroring the hope in mine.

Antonia nodded. She’d met my father on at least three occasions and remembered him as a very thoughtful and articulate man.

I wanted to hear her talk more about my father, but she wanted me to continue.

“My m-m-mother,” I stammered.

I told her about my family with words that fell heartbreakingly flat. They were so much more than their names would imply, but it was all I had for now. I resurrected them in this small way, in this safe space with Antonia and Tilly listening intently. I moved back and forth in time, from the harrowing moments of the coup to the halcyon days that preceded it.

And though I trembled and stammered as I talked about them, it did not kill me, as I had feared it might.

“Your father studied in America, didn’t he?”

I nodded.

“Where were you born?”

“Here,” I said. “Only my sister born there.”

“Your sister?” Antonia repeated, then waited for me to explain. I told her about my sister’s brief life, captured in a shoebox of mementos. Then I told her about Neelab, who had been like a sister to me, and Rostam, my friend. I told her that the president’s family had been in another area of Arg that day. I wanted to believe Neelab and Rostam were still alive somewhere.

“The soldiers,” I said. “They change to bad. Everything change.”

To call it “change” felt like a pale version of the truth, but I didn’t know words like “betrayal,” “treason,” or “mutiny” then.

“People do terrible things for power,” Antonia admitted. “What about the soldier who brought you here? Did you know him?”

Shair. I told her everything about him—how he hadn’t bothered to warn us about the coup and might have shot my family. I told her about him dragging me out of the palace and trapping me in his apartment, with his family gawking at me.

“You brave, brave girl,” Tilly said, her voice gritty and low. Her chin quivered slightly as she spoke. “To think what you’ve been through. And yet here you sit, strong as stone.”