It felt impossible to be moving through Kabul in the crystalline light of day without my mother or father. I expected everyone around me to be able to tell I was an orphan, as if it were written across my forehead. Uniforms set my nerves afire, and there seemed to be soldiers everywhere. I had lost faith in so much around me in those weeks, barely trusting the ground to hold as I walked over it.

And I felt oddly like a traitor, as if I had no right to be walking through the streets after what had happened to my family.

I waved down a taxi and had him deposit us at an intersection just a few blocks from my home. We would walk the rest of the way. I wore a headscarf to keep me at least partially disguised from neighbors and anyone else who might recognize me. We took slow, measured steps until my house came into view.

And then I froze.

It was as if I’d stepped back in time. President Daoud’s white Toyota was parked outside our home. For a moment, I believed Kaka Daoud was in our living room, perhaps discussing an important matter with my father. But when a soldier stepped out of the car and lit a cigarette, I whirled around and buried my face in the blue pleats of Antonia’s chadori.

Antonia urged me to breathe.

We were three houses away.

“I want to go home,” I told Antonia.

“Absolutely. We can catch a taxi on the next street,” she replied. “Let’s go home and rethink our options.”

What were they doing in my home anyway? Were they touching my father’s suits or books? My mother’s hairbrush? Had they trampled on Faheem’s toys with their bloody boots? What if they had destroyed the photographs I’d come to collect?

“My home,” I said.

I could not see Antonia and could barely hear her over the crash of thoughts in my head. I wanted to stand in the kitchen where my mother cooked noodle soup with red beans and chickpeas, in the living room where my father checked my homework, and in my parents’ bedroom where I taught Faheem the sport of hiding our father’s briefcase to keep him from going to work.

I had my hands on our privacy wall when Antonia grabbed me. I tried to wriggle out of her grip.

“What’s going on here?” a voice boomed.

The smoking soldier stood over us, a nub of a cigarette dangling from his lip. He had his hands on his hips, just inches away from a revolver.

Antonia held my hand tightly. She remained slightly hunched and raised a hand under her chadori, as if to beg forgiveness.

“Have you lost your mind, little girl?”

“I have not,” I said defiantly, though my actions suggested otherwise.