“It is late for you to be wandering about alone.”

“You are so right. I would much rather be in bed.”

“Where is your home? I want to see that you get there.”

I had prepared for this. Now it was time to test my cover.

“It is very brave of you to offer, kind officer.”

“Brave?” he asked, confused.

I nodded emphatically.

“No one wants to come to my house anymore. That’s why I’m out this late in the evening. If it were not a most serious emergency, I would not have been sent out for a lemon.”

I pulled the lemon out of the bag and held it delicately, as if it might hatch.

“A lemon?”

My throat was so dry I thought my words might not make it out.

“My family home has been cursed by a djinn. Terrible things have been happening to our friends and family within a day of leaving our home. We found a jaadugar to lift the curse. We had everything she needed except for the lemon.”

His hands went to his hips.

“So, I must be getting home before . . .” I shook my head forlornly. I dropped the lemon back into the bag that held my bundle of papers and trained my eyes on the ground.

“Your home is close by?” he asked hopefully.

“Yes, sir. Just around the corner and halfway down the block.”

He looked down the street, craning his neck.

“Run along then. I’ll watch after you.”

I walked away with measured paces, my legs twitching to break into a run. I dared not turn around until I’d made it around the next corner. I nearly tripped over a sleeping dog, stumbling to stay on my feet, before making it back to Chicken Street and seeing that the lights were still off.

I pounded up the stairs and found the door as I’d left it: with a folded piece of paper blocking the lock.

I sank onto the sofa, the bag still in my hand. When my breathing started to slow, I took out the bundle of folded papers. The rubber band snapped, and they fell loose onto my lap. I sifted through them until I found the one I needed.

CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH

STATE OF OKLAHOMA—DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

STATE FILE NO: 135-55-027484

My mother’s name was in one box, my father’s name in another. There was an address that meant nothing to me, a home I’d never lived in. My sister had weighed six pounds and ten ounces, born two years before me in an America I’d never seen.

The paper had long, angled signatures with loops and crosses. It bore a blue stamp and an emblem, a five-point star in a circle.

Aryana Zamani.

Sister in the sky, I thought with fresh tears streaming down my face, how is it possible that you are all I have at this moment?

Chapter 19