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before him, as Parwana banged pots in the kitchen, and told them stories his grandmother had passed on to him when he had been a boy, sending them off to lands populated by sultans and
jinn
s and malevolent
div
s and wise dervishes. Other times, he made up stories. He made them up on the spot, his tales unmasking a capacity for imagination and dream that always surprised Abdullah. Father never felt more present to Abdullah, more vibrant, revealed, more truthful, than when he told his stories, as though the tales were pinholes into his opaque, inscrutable world.
    But Abdullah could tell from the expression on Father’s face that there would be no story tonight.
    â€œIt’s late,” Father said again. He lifted the kettle with the edge of the shawl draping his shoulders and poured himself a cup of tea. He blew the steam and took a sip, his face glowing orange in the flames. “Time to sleep. Long day tomorrow.”
    Abdullah pulled the blanket over their heads. Underneath, he sang into the nape of Pari’s neck:
    I found a sad little fairy
Beneath the shade of a paper tree
.
    Pari, already sleepy, sluggishly sang her verse.
    I know a sad little fairy
Who was blown away by the wind one night
.
    Almost instantly, she was snoring.
    Abdullah awoke later and found Father gone. He sat up in a fright. The fire was all but dead, nothing left of it now but a few crimson speckles of ember. Abdullah’s gaze darted left, then right, but his eyes could penetrate nothing in the dark, at once vast and smothering. He felt his face going white. Heart sprinting, he cocked his ear, held his breath.
    â€œFather?” he whispered.
    Silence.
    Panic began to mushroom deep in his chest. He sat perfectly still, his body erect and tense, and listened for a long time. He heard nothing. They were alone, he and Pari, the dark closing in around them. They had been abandoned. Father had abandonedthem. Abdullah felt the true vastness of the desert, and the world, for the first time. How easily a person could lose his way in it. No one to help, no one to show the way. Then a worse thought wormed its way into his head. Father was dead. Someone had slit his throat. Bandits. They had killed him, and now they were closing in on him and Pari, taking their time, relishing it, making a game of it.
    â€œFather?” he called out again, his voice shrill this time.
    No reply came.
    â€œFather?”
    He called for his father again and again, a claw tightening itself around his windpipe. He lost track of how many times and for how long he called for his father but no answer came forth from the dark. He pictured faces, hidden in the mountains bulging from the earth, watching, grinning down at him and Pari with malice. Panic seized him, shriveled up his innards. He began to shiver, and mewl under his breath. He felt himself on the cusp of screaming.
    Then, footsteps. A shape materialized from the dark.
    â€œI thought you’d gone,” Abdullah said shakily.
    Father sat down by the remains of the fire.
    â€œWhere did you go?”
    â€œGo to sleep, boy.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t leave us. You wouldn’t do that, Father.”
    Father looked at him, but in the dark his face dissolved into an expression Abdullah couldn’t make out. “You’re going to wake your sister.”
    â€œDon’t leave us.”
    â€œThat’s enough of that now.”
    Abdullah lay down again, his sister clutched tightly in his arms, his heart battering in his throat.
    â€¦
    Abdullah had never been to Kabul. What he knew about Kabul came from stories Uncle Nabi had told him. He had visited a few smaller towns on jobs with Father, but never a real city, and certainly nothing Uncle Nabi had said could have prepared him for the hustle and bustle of the biggest and busiest city of them all. Everywhere, he saw traffic lights, and teahouses, and restaurants, and glass-fronted shops with bright multicolored signs. Cars rattling noisily