What would happen to me in America? To think of going there without my family was a bitter prospect. How was I to survive on my own? Would I be sent to an orphanage?

“It might not be forever,” she said, seeing my crestfallen face. “But for some time, until we can find your family. And until we can be sure Kabul is safe for you.”

Antonia set the scissors on the coffee table. I pulled my foot to me, seeing holes where the needle had pierced through my skin and pink lines where the thread had pulled my skin together. I could almost smell the bitter smoke that had enveloped Arg the night of the coup.

“I will go,” I said.

Antonia nodded.

“Okay. I just need to figure out exactly how to get you there without taking any chances. I have an idea, but it means we’ll need to talk about your sister.”

My sister? As if the living were helpless, Antonia was turning to the dead. It was almost laughable.

I’d once overheard a distant relative complain at a family party that promotion to a higher rank didn’t seem to be his fate. He had been a soldier for years but had nothing pinned to his chest to show for it.

Padar, I’d asked my father as he carried me to bed late that night, why would Allah not give him a better fate?

Though I was heavy-lidded and yawning at the time, his reply remains clear in my memory.

Allah does not deliver your fate fully formed, my father had said. It is up to you to shape it. But fate doesn’t bend easily. Think of a blacksmith bending a rod. He cannot, without daring to hold the rod to fire.

I was beginning to understand what it meant to hold my fate in my hands, and to know that I’d have to withstand fire if I wanted to bend it toward survival.

Chapter 15

“With your sister’s American birth certificate, we could get you out of the country and into the United States,” Nia said. “But that means I have to find a way into your home.”

I knew exactly what that meant and immediately took out pen and paper to begin sketching out a plan for the two of us to go to my house and try to retrieve the certificate. The sight of an American woman with an Afghan child, though, would bring dangerous attention.

“You can wear chadori,” I proposed. “You do not talk. Only I am talking. We walk fast and come fast.”

“I cannot let you go there. It’s best if I go alone,” she insisted.

“I’ll go with her,” Tilly offered, stirring a lump of sugar in her tea. Her eyelids were dusted with a glittery blue powder to match her dress. “I wandered all over the city when I got here, and it wasn’t a problem at all.”