“I didn’t kill Baba, idiot. I saved your little butt.” I looked deeper into a silent alleyway that twisted and turned back on itself. It felt as if the houses were huddled closer together here. I heard the call to night prayer from a nearby mosque and wished the truck would drive us toward that voice. I liked the calls, because five times a day they reminded me that God was the greatest—greater than Baba and Mama, or me and Chia, or the principal and janitor. In my head, God was a smiling moon who loved Chia and me.
The truck, to my astonishment, obeyed my wish, and finally I glimpsed the elaborate blue dome that rose above the roofs across from our house. I banged on the window behind the driver’s seat, and the truck came to a sudden halt, jolting us forward. The mustachioed man hopped out of the cab and slammed the door in his excitement. “Which one?”
I pointed, and he rang the bell. No answer. He pounded on the rusty metal gate flanked by cement walls too tall for us to climb. Nobody responded to his repeated knocks either. He paced back and forth, muttering to himself. “Man! What type of parents . . . Who could forget their kids like that? I swear they’d be better off in an orphanage.” He kicked the gate of our brick house.
He scratched his stubble, deliberating. “I have to run. My wife needs her shot. She has diabetes. I have to run to the pharmacy before they close.”
I turned my back on him and wished that he would just leave.
“Forgive me, barkholakan. Sit tight by the gate, all right? Your parents should be home soon. I will check back in a little bit, and if they’re not home yet, I will take you to my home.” He patted Chia’s head and stalked back to his truck, muttering, “And my wife says I’m a bad father.”
I sat down, my back against the wall. Chia did the same. We were cold and hungry, hugging our knees, staring at the pebbles on the ground. The truck’s exhaust filled my nostrils. My stomach made strange hee-haw noises. “I’ve got a donkey in my tummy.”
We chuckled.
Out of the blue, Chia said, “Save Baba.”
“You’re a fool, Chia.”
He was quiet for a while and then asked, “Will you save me next time the wolf attacks?”
“I already killed it.”
“Tell me one of your funny stories,” he demanded.
“I don’t feel funny right now.” I laid my index finger across the top of my upper lip and mimicked the janitor. “They’d be better off in an orphanage.”
“What’s an orphanage?”
“Hey.” I pointed to the smiling moon in the sky, and he followed the direction of my finger.
“How about some of Rumi’s instead?” I offered. Chia loved those stories. I told him the tale of the parrot that broke the oil jar. Her owner beat her over the head for it, and old Polly lost her feathers as a result. The parrot sulked for seven days. When a bald man came into her sight, she shouted out to him, “So, whose oil jar did you break?”
Chia chuckled and rested his little head on my bony shoulder. Even I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open. I’d told him I had killed the wolf, but what about thieves? What if my wishes didn’t come true and I couldn’t defeat anyone because I had turned nine, the age when girls must start covering themselves up?
“What are you doing out here?” Mama was panting, coming up the hill from the bus stop.
“We . . . um.”
“Inside. Now.” She picked up our bags and unlocked the iron gate. It still had traces of the janitor’s shoe print on its flaking burgundy paint. We ran through the front yard and the dim garage and mounted the stairs two at a time, but we found we could go no farther, because Baba was passed out across the hallway.
“Alan. Alan.” Mama called out. Our satchels looked heavy in her hands.
Baba cracked an eyelid and rolled over a bit, making a narrow pathway for us. “Just like that,” he slurred. “Bang.”
I kicked over one of the arak bottles on the floor, pretending it was an accident. The strong scent of anise-flavored liquor had become all too familiar in our home since my uncle, Baba’s oldest brother, had been killed in the uprising last year.
Mama hugged Chia, carrying him to the bedroom on the right side of the entrance. Our main floor had two adjoining bedrooms: one that I shared with Chia, and one for our parents, though Baba had taken to sleeping alone in the attic.
“What the hell is going on here?” Mama asked me when she returned to the living room. I couldn’t answer. “What were you doing outside at this time of night?”
Then she turned to my father, still lying in the hallway. “First my mother is rushed to the hospital, then my kids are out this late, and now you. Why did you let them out? Why are they still in their uniforms?” Then back to me: “Why didn’t you two change after school?” She removed her headscarf and fanned herself with it, then turned back to Baba. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Tah . . . teror,” Baba groaned softly—assassinated. His forehead was pressed to the floor, his arms and knees curled under him like an infant.
Mama sighed and collapsed on her knees. “Mother’s dementia is getting worse. She ran into the street today. Three cars crashed because of her, and one struck her.”
“In the daylight. They shot him. Baaang,” Baba mumbled.
“Who? Who’re you talking about? Did you hear what I said? My mother was hit by a car. Who was shot?” Mama heaved herself up and crossed the hall to the kitchen. “You know what? Don’t even tell me. I know what it is. Politics again, I bet. Some Kurdish leader got assassinated—another one.” She opened the fridge; I was pretty sure she wouldn’t find anything in it. “Because that’s all you care about. And you care more about that than your kids and your wife.” She slammed the fridge shut, gave me a withering look, and retreated to her bedroom.
I felt as though the events of the night had sliced me open and my organs had dropped out of my gut. I deserved all the bad things that were happening to me, because I never completely covered my hair and body. Sometimes my wrists showed. Sometimes hair sprouted out from beneath my headscarf.
Baba tried to get up but crumpled again. Mama’s room was dark, but I could hear the low murmur of her voice, whispers that had no audience.
I stole quietly into the kitchen and groped behind the dish cabinet, where I’d hidden a bag of dried apricots I’d purchased with all the cash I’d saved up from my birthday and Newroz. I quietly soaked the apricots and added a teaspoon of salt. There was only the noisy hum of the fridge and the chirping of crickets in the backyard. I covered the bowl with one of the stained tea towels and hid it inside the grimy cabinet.
Noiseless, I then snuck into the bedroom, where Chia was already sound asleep, and climbed into the upper bunk. Baba still babbled away in the hall. My doll was tucked carefully under my blanket. Baba had wanted to name me Nishtman, Kurdish for homeland, except it had turned out to be on the long list of forbidden names the government had compiled. Nobody could prevent me from calling my doll Nishtman though. I brushed her woven hair with my fingers and whispered that Fatima’s father had brought a camera to school, and I badly wanted a camera too. She didn’t need to worry though; I had a plan to earn some money to buy one.