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must send enough to pay those expenses.”
    â€œHow much will that be?”
    â€œI don’t know. But we must find one so you’ll be ready to leave.”
    Shaheen had left nearly one year ago. We were not officially engaged, as I had delayed the ceremony. But our families wanted this alliance and he believed in tradition. I had postponed our engagement three times, much to my family’s exasperation. First for work, and then to wait for my parents to return from Delhi. But I couldn’t do anything when Mother was diagnosed with cancer. Still, there was another, more desperate reason I never admitted even to myself—I was still in love with another.
    Before he’d left Kabul Shaheen sent a note and I passed it around to the rest of the family in silence. The handwriting was neat, even prim.
    Dear Rukhsana,
    Forgive me for this hurried note. I have just learned from my father that within the hour we will be leaving Kabul for good. If I had been told earlier, I would have come to see you and tell you that no matter how far we go, I will be waiting for you to join me in America. You must leave too, as soon as you can, to meet me, as it is now too dangerous to live in this country for people like us. I wait only to see you and then we will marry.
    Affectionately,
    Shaheen
    The note had taken me by surprise. Even if he’d had only an hour, he could have hurried over to say his good-byes. Probably, his father had stopped him in case he told me their secret plans to escape, and Shaheen was an obedient son. There were UN sanctions against international flights out of Afghanistan, apart from infrequent ones permitted to Dubai, China, and Karachi. To get on one of those the passenger needed an official clearance, and his family would not have been given permission to fly out of the country. The smuggler would have taken them by road into Pakistan, bribing border guards to let them through, and then helped them get their visas from the U.S. embassy.
    Without Shaheen’s help and sponsorship, I could find a way out of my country, but be denied entry into another. I would be destined to drift around the peripheries of those nations, like a lost soul seeking a final resting place. Whichever way I did it, it would cost money. Or I might not make it out of Afghanistan at all.

Writing the Letter
    I WOKE THE NEXT MORNING STILL SMILING FROM a dream in which I was floating high above my mountain walls, looking down on their peaks, and then Jahan joined me and we held hands, laughing at the sensation of flying.
    Of course, when the time came, I would be very earthbound, with a smuggler, in the company of others fleeing our native land. I could be the lone woman and that made me afraid. I had heard that, apart from the bribe, the border guards would also demand a woman’s body for their quick use, and to refuse them was to be denied passage. I imagined the journey from what I had heard through whispers—an old Land Cruiser packed with people, traveling at night, hiding in houses during the day, fearing every moment that the smuggler would abandon us in unknown terrain, among hostile strangers. Worse. He would betray us, turn us over to the Taliban who would beat and then execute us for our crime.
    I dressed quickly to escape my thoughts and went down to make our breakfast. I took the tray upstairs and set it on the bed. Mother had a surprisingly good appetite and finished the pilau and all of her meat. I gave her the usual medications and she swallowed them obediently, making a face, then settled back to doze.
    â€œI’d better go to the market and shop,” Jahan said as I came downstairs.
    â€œSend Abdul.”
    â€œNo, I need a walk. And some money.”
    We went into Father’s study where we kept our money. It was also the family library. The shutters were always closed, so the room was dark, and we always felt that we were entering a sacred place. It was a room of memories, and our