“With grace.” She smiled at the ceiling. Ameer wanted to know who else handled his shovel with grace. There had been this one man who was not a shoveler, but had been decent. He had come one night and wrote strange things about cats in the margins of a fashion journal he grabbed from the nightstand. He had not said a word the whole night and took the journal with him when he left. There was something special in the way he wrote that Goli could not explain. She did not say those things to stir Ameer’s jealousy, but he was happy the man had not shown up again or given his name, even a fake one. He had been a nobody; there one night, gone the next. Ameer put more money into Goli’s account and soon forgot about the man.
* * *
—
AHMAD HAD NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT the girl again either. With his mind less cluttered than an hour before his visit to New Town, he went straight to Sara’s house. He was still not sure how to tell Sara or what, for that matter, was most important to tell. He had a cab and a bus ride to decide what to say:
It had taken him three years, but finally he had a poem, the poem. He had started shortly after Homa left him and finally he had written the poem of pure love, and they could use it to free Salman from the prison.
That was a clumsy, meaningless account that confused even Ahmad. The bus stopped and he stepped down onto hardened snow. He walked fast and soon unwound his scarf from around his neck and stuffed it into his pocket. Passing the ice cream shop that marked halfway between the bus stop and Sara’s house, he promised himself a bowl of saffron ice cream if it went well.
Sara herself was the consolingly familiar face that opened the door and tilted her head to the side with her arms akimbo as if to say, You again! What do you want now? But her arms fell to her sides and her eyes sparkled with interest and concern when she read Ahmad’s note. Anxiously, she asked him in and shook her head as Ahmad told her about his plan, making her gold earrings swing back and forth wildly. With Salman and Sara’s father dead, Sara was the only immediate family left, the only person who could visit Salman. But Sara did not want to hear more. She got to her feet and looked down at Ahmad. First, she was afraid; she could not bring herself to convey a message even in the crowded hall where every visitor and inmate tried to shout over the others. Salman had five more years in the general ward and he would be out. Solitary confinement and investigations were behind him. He was a burned wick that no one cared to hold a flame to anymore. What awaited him was boredom, not pain. Ahmad got up from his chair, too.
“You show up after God knows how long, with this? With more danger?” No one wants to be in there a day more than he has to. Sara looked at the notepad and said, “We’re past our years of adventure.” She closed the door behind Ahmad, but she knew he was too obstinate to quit. Her not taking action could be more dangerous for her brother, because now she had given the rein to Ahmad. Sleep evaded her. Yielding to anxiety after only five days, she picked up the phone and called Ahmad’s house. No one answered. She called Khan’s house. Pooran did not know where Ahmad was and that frightened Sara more. She counted down the three days until the next visiting Thursday and told Salman about Ahmad’s visit. Salman fell silent for some time. Then he leaned toward the glass and lowered his voice to an almost inaudible volume. “What was it?”
Sara shook her head.
“You don’t trust me?” he said leaning back into his chair.
Within four days after he first broached the idea to Sara, Ahmad had written over two hundred pages of poor-quality poetry in praise of nature and a nebulous ethereal beloved. With the help of Dr. Afshar, he printed and bound the poems into the semblance of a published book and sent it in. The prison inspector leafed through the book in his room. He liked some of them, and making a mental note