and striped pajama bottoms, Nosser sat in the veranda, his rifle in his lap and a glass pitcher by the leg of the chair, barely noticing Pooran, rarely turning his head to acknowledge what she said. When time came for sleep, Pooran took him by the arm to her room where she had put an extra pillow on the bed. “I can’t lie down,” Nosser said. “Why?” Pooran asked. “I’m the guard.” All night he stood by the door, rifle in his arms, leaning against the frame, and when Pooran woke up shortly after the break of dawn, he said, “I had missed the way you snore,” then he took his empty pitcher and went to the kitchen for water.
Pooran swept the yard and had the windowpane replaced. Whether or not Nosser turned a head toward her did not matter. She told him how she missed Nana Shamsi as if she had lost her mother a second time. She told him how Ahmad had grown up and how the past years that he was not with them had rolled by and how she felt there was no stopping her life from falling apart. Squatting by the flower bed, she shouted to Nosser that in a week or two, the lantanas would bloom, the clusters of color would appear in white, yellow, and pink turning later into orange and red and purple. All through summer bees and butterflies would flit from flower to flower. The vine needed better support. Pooran brought the broken ladder from the corner of the yard, leaned it against the wall, and wound the supple stems and tendrils around the rails and rungs.
“What do you think?” she asked Nosser. Nosser turned his head but did not say anything.
On the fourth night, Pooran filled up Nosser’s pitcher and went to bed with a foreboding in her chest. She woke several times, each time worriedly sitting up and looking toward the door, each time finding him where he was, in the doorframe. The last time, Nosser turned his head and said, “When I was the guard, no eye opened even a crack.” He said it with such reassurance that the next time Pooran opened her eyes was when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Nosser was standing by her side, back in his uniform. It was still dark but the kind of darkness that preceded the morning.
“I must go.”
Even though Pooran knew all along that the moment would come, she locked her arms around him and cried until the uniform was wet against her cheek. “My job is done here,” Nosser said. “Khan will be back today.” Pooran felt the weight of his hand on her head. “I must go back.”
“Where?” She looked up at him.
“To the war.”
“The war is over, Nosser.” The war had ended in early fall the previous year, around the time Khan had succeeded at enrolling Ahmad in high school. The grocer had put an extra egg in Pooran’s bag and congratulated her. Then everyone was talking about it. But the Russians had not left. They stalked the streets as if nothing had changed.
“I will miss you,” Nosser said and bent over to kiss her. As he left the room, Nosser took the pitcher from the floor. Pooran jumped out of the bed and walked behind him into the living room, through the short corridor, out onto the veranda, down into the garden, and across to the front door. All the way, and even when he was closing the door behind him with a metallic clank, Nosser did not turn around to throw a last look at her. Pooran cried until the sun was up. Then she brushed the dried mud from the carpets with her hands and put the dirt in a vial.
* * *
—
KHAN CAME BACK THAT DAY. Pooran rushed past him to Nana Shamsi and sank herself in her arms. Nana patted Pooran on the back and assured her with a smile that she had had a good long chat with the prison ladies. The fresh, soft putty around the windowpane and the absence of Ahmad revealed the story to Khan. Pooran saw his anger in the way he pressed his lips together under his large mustache. Then Khan turned away from the window and asked Pooran if anything important had happened when he was gone. “Ahmad’s not back yet,” Pooran said as she followed Khan to his desk. “I said anything important.” He sat at his desk. Pooran shook her