Find Her, Fix Him

22 | Green of soldiers, red of blood

"What is it you want to show me, Paa?" I ask, swinging my legs impatiently. I love my father, but I want to get back outside into the light and the air, and my sister. My father senses my impatience, and he laughs at me. When he ruffles my hair, his hand makes me feel protected.

"Patience, my little Afghan Beckham. Save your restless energy for the football field, eh, son?"

"Yes, Paa. Sorry."

"Close your eyes, my Khan."

I do. Even when I want to open them, I force myself to keep them squeezed tightly shut. It is hard, and I begin to wonder how long I have to not look for. I want to peek between my fingers. I am not sure how much longer I can wait, but then Padar tells me that I can open my eyes. There is a little wooden box infront of me. I am not sure whether or not my father wants me to be excited. He laughs at my face. My father's laughter is also one of my favourite sounds in the world.

"You have to open it, Khan!"

I do. I reach inside, and pull out a disc of what looks and feels like a type of bronze stone. There is some sort of shape carved into it's surface, but I am not sure if the reason I can't tell what the shape is is because the artist wasn't very good or if it is meant to be like this. I am still not sure how to act. I don't know if my father wants me to be excited about this bronze stone. What is there to be excited about? I can't kick it like a football. I can't eat it.

"Afghan bronze," says my father, and he is looking at me with serious eyes. "The stone of our land, my Khan. This was passed down from my father's father to my father, and then to me. It was meant to keep us grounded. To remind us of our home, and where we truly come from. Now, I am passing it on to you. Keep it on your person, and you will never lose the Afghan in you. You will never lose who you are."

I frown into my father's face, turning the stone over in my hand. It feels smooth and slightly warm, like it holds fire inside it. "But Padar- why would I ever lose who I am?"

He just smiles at me. It is the same smile that echoes in my mind years later when Nesta is holding me tightly in her arms in the back of a truck that is taking me away from my homeland and into something dark and unfamiliar that I don't know.

"Has someone checked his pulse?"

It is a female voice that is asking, but it isn't the voice of the girl who I want to hear. Then I remember that the girl whose voice I want to hear has left me, just like everyone else has. I never thought my father would leave me, but he did, and now she has, and I wonder if I should leave myself too. I am tired. My body is beginning to hurt me. My limbs are aching, and my throat feels like it is full of copper. No, not copper. Blood.

If I left my body, I wouldn't be hurting anymore.

If I left

I could see her

Ashal.

"What are you thinking about, Khan?"

Ashal and I are sitting in the wildflower meadow behind the village, the mountains rising up infront of us like big, blue guardians. I am fourteen, and she is thirteen. Uncle Hafiz gave me a second-hand mobile phone for my birthday. It doesn't work very well because we don't really have signal out in our village, but it is a novelty, and I can show it off to the rest of the boys. I can show it off to Ashal, too. She said that no one needs mobile phones when we have the fields and the mountains right on our doorstep. I humoured her, because I like Ashal. I like her a lot.