shoes on the hard floors echoing along corridors, indistinct words spoken by indistinguishable people, and the irregular moans of someone in pain. He created the world of the hospital in his head: the nurses in white uniforms with white hats; doctors with longer uniforms and polished shoes; metal beds with clean, white sheets; a medicine cabinet somewhere full of bottles and vials; a little girl in the waiting area whose high fever was melting the metal chair she was sitting on; the smell of formaldehyde; a faint whiff of stale flowers somewhere; and suddenly a familiar smell that was alien for a second. It was the smell of apples and fresh soil and new shoes. It was the smell of his mother, then the smell of her hands that ran on his face and in his hair and shortly after, another smell: Khan’s. But Agha’s smell was absent. Where is Agha? Ahmad mouthed. Is he okay?
Pooran looked at Khan, not sure what to answer. “He’s home, son,” Khan said, laying a hand on Ahmad’s hand. “They don’t allow wheelbarrows in here.”
At the end of the visiting hours, all the sounds and smells left but Pooran’s, which stayed through the night.
* * *
—
IN THE MIDST OF HIS darkness on the second day, Ahmad heard high-heeled footsteps enter the room. Then came the rustle of a bouquet of flowers before he felt the weight of it beside him on the bed. Their smell camouflaged the strangely familiar scent of the woman barely recognizable under the perfume she wore. Ahmad turned his anticipating head toward her. “I haven’t heard from my brother in eight months.” It was Sara. “I fear they might have caught him. I wouldn’t have come to you if I had anywhere else to go. Ahmad, you know Salman, he’s not as strong as he makes himself seem. Can you put in a word? Ahmad, my father can’t take it anymore.” Ahmad groped for his pen and pad on the table by his bed, scribbled blindly, and handed the pad to Sara. The disarray of crooked words still had some beauty to it. How is Ameer?
“He’s good.”
Just good?
“He’s taken after his uncle. We’ve got to make sure he won’t do anything stupid, me and his father. He does things, I guess, that he hides from me.”
Ahmad wrote on the pad with force. Who’s his father? He waited for an answer. None came. He waved the pad in the air where he thought Sara’s face was, but she stayed silent. He scribbled again.
I want to see him. When they open my eyes.
“I’ll try to manage it.” Ahmad heard the rustling of a tissue. “I should go now. He’s waiting. Will you help me?”
Ahmad sat up in his bed. He wrote.
Ameer is here?
“Yes. He drove me.”
Ahmad gesticulated to Sara before he realized he had to write. Bring him in.
When Sara went out, Ahmad combed his hair with his hand and pulled at what he had on to straighten any crinkles that might be there. His mind traveled back to the night in Sara’s house where he went for Raana, that faraway girl. He heard the footsteps and Sara’s voice almost at the same time. “This is Mr. Torkash-Vand, your uncle’s friend.” The emphasis on “your uncle’s friend” was without a delay and unmistakable. Ahmad turned his face toward the sound. He could feel the presence of two people; the rustling of clothes was audible, their mere gravity palpable. “They were friends since childhood.”
She did not say “we.” She hid from her son what she had boldly talked about in front of her husband that day in her house. Ahmad heard what might have been a shifting of weight from one foot to the other.
“It’s good to meet you, sir.” The first time Ahmad had seen him, Ameer was the calm little boy who had held his Uncle Salman’s hand at the door while shooting curious looks into the forge. Ahmad touched his temples, picked at the edge of the tape that held the white gauze over his eyes, and ripped them off. Sara stifled a faint cry. Ahmad’s skin burned. Light invaded his closed eyes. The back of his head throbbed. He pressed his eyelids together and squinted to blurry patches of color. Two figures stood before him. One was a woman, but the other was not a boy. He was almost as tall as Sara. That could not be Ameer. “This is bad for your eyes,” Sara said. “Close your eyes.”