“Star, come sit with me on the couch. It’s past time to get those stitches out.”

We sat together on the couch, my foot on Nia’s lap. She held my foot with both her hands, rubbing my heel gently and nodding.

“The infection has cleared up. It’s looking much better.”

“You are like doctor,” I said, which made Nia laugh.

“Hardly. I’ve just spent a good amount of time in places where there weren’t many.”

Nia brought a pair of scissors, tweezers, and a roll of gauze from the bathroom. New, pink skin had grown over much of the thread Tahera had used to close the wound on my foot. Nia snipped some threads easily, but had to nudge the tweezers into the flesh to free the rest. I bit my lower lip and looked away.

“What was Tilly doing upstairs?” she asked.

“She is sleeping,” I replied. “She is very tired.”

Nia shook her head.

“I’ve got to pick up some vitamins or something on my way home from the embassy,” she muttered. “She’s thinking about who knows what and forgets to eat.”

“She is like you,” I said.

I must have caught Antonia off guard. She pressed her lips into a thin smile and returned her attention to the stubborn, buried threads in my foot.

I looked toward the entryway and saw Nia’s bag by the door. Every time Nia left, my heart pounded. I worried about what might happen if she didn’t return or if someone showed up at her door. What Shair had said to me made more sense now than it had on that dark night. This was not my home anymore. I could go nowhere. I could seek no one. And I certainly couldn’t stay in this apartment forever.

“The soldier,” Antonia began, as if she’d read my mind, “I’m afraid he is right. I am working on options. The longer we wait, the more chance there is for people to learn that you’re here. People are afraid to talk about the coup for fear they’ll end up in jail. You are a witness to that night, Sitara.”

Her delicate phrasing did not cloud the danger she was communicating.

“I think we can get you to America,” she said. She rubbed my heel firmly, which helped to distract from the soreness around the edges of the wound.

America.

I’d once asked my parents if they would ever want to live in America again. I’d heard from them about highways wide enough for three cars to travel in the same direction side by side, grocery stores with so many varieties of breakfast cereal that it warranted its own aisle, and university campuses with people from all over the world. My father had laughed and told me about a town in the south, Lashkargah, where Americans lived. Now they want to live here, he’d said.