her with Agha alone EVER again, he wrote in his notepad with such force that Homa suppressed her questions into a hesitant nod. Agha kept calling Leyla’s name when she played with the other kids in the garden. Leyla would look in his direction, not sure whether to listen to her heart or obey her mother’s new rule.
I don’t want you to ruin her with your stories, Ahmad mouthed to Agha one day. “But she reminds me of you and Khan,” Agha said, “when you were her age.” His voice trembled as he talked. And you ruined us both. I won’t let your stories haunt my daughter for the rest of her life.
* * *
—
THAT NIGHT AGAIN SLEEP WOULD not come to Khan. He lay still in his bed, the blanket up to his chin, staring at the tarred ceiling. He uttered maledictions to the devil and closed his eyes, but an awareness in him flung his eyelids back open. He took his cane and got to his feet to look around the house, tearing through the fragile texture of the night, peeping at those sleeping in their rooms, lingering to make sure he heard them breathe. Wobbly and shaky, the elevator squealed as Khan worked the handle. He checked on Zeeba and Nana Shamsi from behind the window. They were lying in their beds in the moonlight. Khan turned back and stood there on the roof for a while looking up at the sky. Hands locked on his cane, he walked back and forth and thought. After a few minutes, he went toward the edge to take the elevator and it was then that he glanced down at the yard and saw something. It was floating in the hoez, still as a log and not much larger. It was Agha. Through the leaves of the persimmon tree, Khan could see moonlight shining on his unmoving body, a halo of glistening water surrounding him. He hurried onto the elevator and cranked his way down. Agha’s back and haunch were above the water, but not his head. Khan knelt by the hoez and rested one hand on the edge. The body was too far from his reach. He used his cane and tried to bring Agha closer to him, but the body only seesawed gently in its place without gliding any closer. Khan turned his cane around. He could barely breathe. Holding the wet tip in his hand, he reached the handle out for Agha. Khan inched forward, stretched his arm as far as he could, and finally the lion caught Agha’s pants. He pulled and heaved the cold body out of the water. He rolled the old man over on the edge of the hoez. Agha’s wet face gleamed in the moonlight, his permanent smile beaming at Khan. “Agha! Agha!” Khan called, panting for air. His throat burned. He could not believe that Agha would never open his eyes again to ask for something in his high-pitched voice. “Agha! Agha!” he called, his eyes starting to tear. But the old man opened his eyes. “Are you okay?” Khan asked. Agha blinked, but said nothing. “Can you see me? Can you hear me?” Agha’s lips parted. “Who would have thought, son.” Water dripped from his wrinkled lips. “I’ve become a fish.”
From that night on, Khan locked Agha’s room himself every night. “This madness has to stop,” he said to Agha before closing the door.
“Nothing can be stopped,” Agha said, “I have been around long enough to know that much.”
19
ETERMINED TO NOT ONLY PREDICT and spot the next turbulence the cats would cause, but also to prevent it, once again Khan descended to the basement, and to the maps that he had left untouched after Leyla had been born. More diligent than ever, braving a weariness that crept up the marrow of his bones, he set out recording what he witnessed. So determined was he in those days that he spent nights out sitting on doorsteps. He came back in the morning, with bloodshot eyes, to Agha pounding on the locked door.
“Give me the key,” Pooran said, “or I will have that door smashed open the next time he needs to relieve himself.”
Pooran spoke with such boldness that Khan handed over the key and walked to his room like a sleepless apparition whose only occupation was to keep a close eye on the streets so that in the course of the next years, he would witness the signs of something even graver