Ahmad had found an image to substitute for all that was lost: protruding cheeks, thin lips, a small, marvelous ear that had flashed from under the chador for an instant. Words came bubbling inside him. He took out his notebook and started in the language of love. “It broke,” Majeed said, teetering up to him, holding a photo frame snapped in two. Ahmad raised a hand to the boy, meaning not now, and turned back to the page. He was stuck at the first line when he could not find a rhyme for “turquoise,” but by the time his mother had rinsed the pistachios, walnuts, raisins, and even some of the sweets, he had written four lines in broken rhythm and loose rhymes about an ethereal and nebulous beloved. The main metaphor was that of the candle and butterfly and how eagerly the love-smitten insect would burn himself up in the flame for a fleeting kiss. He hid the notebook in his bag when his mother stepped out of the kitchen. They celebrated the night with wet nuts and soggy sweets that Majeed stuffed in his mouth, asking, “When’s my mom coming back?”
* * *
—
AHMAD WAS A CONSPICUOUS FIGURE in the snow that blanketed the city the next day as he lurked around the girl’s house hoping to catch a glimpse of her again. He walked around the neighborhood passing by her door over and over again. He stood under the skeleton of a locust tree and sat on the single step of a house. People threw looks at him as they passed. After several days standing in the snow for hours, while trying not to be seen by many, Ahmad had found out that the girl had two older brothers, both big, hulking, and scary with small eyes and scarred faces; a protective mother; and a sickly father who rarely left the house. A week had passed and Ahmad had seen the girl only once when she left home in the company of her mother. A number of streets away, they had entered a house and stayed for at least three hours. Toward the evening, when it started to get dark, Ahmad could no longer feel his toes. At night, he wrote poems and spent long moments staring into the air imagining what her name might be. As if tasting an unfamiliar fruit for the first time, he tested name after name in his head, before vetoing each for a more beautiful one. Nothing sounded good enough. He ditched school to try his luck in the morning, but all he learned was that she did not go to school. That was a big disappointment. She would not be able to read his poems.
* * *
—
THE END-OF-TRIMESTER EXAMS PULLED AHMAD back into the classroom. At the first one—history—as soon as he put his pencil on the paper, the image of Khan shuffling out of the apartment in disappointment flashed before his eyes. He paused for a second and then wrote his own name on top of the page with such determination that he drove the tip of the pencil through the exam paper. He knew Jamaal would give him the beating of his life as soon as the exams week was over and the serial cheating was revealed, but he was not going to remain passive. The first day after the exams he strolled into a neighborhood infamous for its feisty residents and street brawls where it was not hard to entice someone into a fight; all it would take was a look longer than a glance and a defiant face when he was asked, “What are you looking at? Never seen a man in the hellhole you’re from?”
The first two nights he mimed slipping on an icy street. “Again?” his mother asked the second night. The next time, he put up his fists with a grimace as Pooran poked a gentle finger on his swollen cheek. “With who? At school?” she asked. Ahmad nodded. “Why?” Ahmad stuck his tongue out and pointed to it. “They make fun of you?” Ahmad nodded. Pooran stepped into the kitchen and came back with the small cloth bag. “Did I ever teach you to lie?” she asked, rubbing ointment on his wounds and bruises and petting his head.
Inevitably, Ahmad and Jamaal each had to go to the principal’s office separately for explanations. After handwritings were compared, it took little investigation to determine that Ahmad told the truth. Jamaal was