Still Come Home. Katey Schultz

is visible through the screen of Aaseya’s burqa, and she shifts on her feet to bring a different view into focus. Money flashes—crisp, green US dollar bills—passed like poison seeds from the fighter to the vendor. Two-days walk from a US base, a handful of years since any occupation, and here—an Afghan vendor taking American dollars without pause? She hasn’t seen that currency since Ms. Darrow showed the schoolgirls her purse one day, all the womanly items it contained. Such a treasure then. Now, the image sends shrapnel through Aaseya’s chest. The money can mean only one thing: the Americans are coming, and if the Americans are coming, these Taliban will be waiting. Imar will become a mere backdrop to their battle with one inevitable outcome.

      Aaseya wouldn’t believe she has even seen the bills if it weren’t for what happened next, the vendor casually making change and the little boy from outside her window rounding the corner at top speed, running into the fighters, and knocking the currency to the ground.

      “Pest!” the leader kicks at the boy tangled in the fabric of his dishdasha. Several more bills drift through the air, and coins tumble from his pocket.

      “You dog!” shouts the other fighter. Both grab for the money.

      The boy stands and dusts himself off. In the scuffle, a fresh date has fallen from his pocket and rolled into the dirt. He reaches for it but not quickly enough.

      “What’s this?” the Taliban fighter says mockingly. He swoops down and takes the date. “Looks like we have a thief here.”

      The boy’s eyes widen.

      Aaseya leans toward Massoud’s booth. “Do you see this? Friend, you have to do something.”

      “Get,” Massoud says, barely a whisper. He won’t look at her.

      “I’ll leave,” she says. “Just forget I was here. Go help that boy.”

      “You get!” Massoud says again. “Get back and away. I refuse to let you endanger me, you dishonorable whore.”

      The fighters look up, curious, and Aaseya’s breath escapes in a wave. She rushes toward the boy.

      “There you are!” she says, grabbing his bony shoulders. She looks at the ground, addressing the fighter humbly. “I’m sorry. My son was only doing errands for me.”

      “Muuh-uuuh,” the boy blathers. He empties his pockets—shell casings, old springs, a broken pair of sunglasses, a plastic button. The stash tumbles from his hands as he tries offering it to the fighters.

      “Over here,” Massoud calls. “One free loaf for any servants of Allah, the most merciful, the most powerful.”

      The fighters look up, and with that, Aaseya and the boy are gone, slipped behind the nearest booth, between the side flaps of tents, past the hookah stand and the butcher’s table, through a small huddle of goats, ducking under a display of headscarves, pushing through the line for the kebab vendor. And then it’s just Aaseya—the anonymity of her burqa, the stifling air, the bird in her chest beating its wings.

      Where did the boy go? Disappeared again, as elusive as water. She knows he made it through the butcher’s station where they both slowed down to dodge hanging carcasses above the slippery ground. Maybe he hid amidst the scarves and keffiyehs.

      Aaseya looks for him briefly, then hurries out the far end of the bazaar toward the dead end of town where the old schoolhouse looms like a bad memory. It hurts to think how many days she spent believing Ms. Darrow would come back, certain studying was not only her privilege but her right. Beyond the schoolhouse, an overflow block for vendors’ booths and tents opens up. It’s quiet now, more like a park or garden space for nomads. At the end of the park, the tight walls of mountains forming either side of the Imar valley meet in a U-shaped trap. Aaseya has heard that another village lies not too far beyond that ridgeline, though nobody she knows ever traverses the upper slopes. Imar has always been described as cut off, physical isolation a part of her daily existence for as long as she can remember. But before the upslope begins its steep climb, the loop road arcs along the base of the valley and back around the bazaar, paralleling the edge of town and wrapping round to the entrance of the village. She meets the road and walks steadily, occasionally checking over her shoulder to see if she is being followed.

      Before long, the loop road ends and opens toward the wider road leading out of the valley. It’s a junction Aaseya knows well, occasionally allowing herself to walk this far from the apartment. From here, the view widens down the length of the valley and outward to the uninterrupted desert, and she can imagine how it will be when they first arrive—tails of dust, the reek of gasoline, the strangeness of some of them with pink skin and a different language. Do the Americans know what’s waiting for them? How little it takes to disrupt a life? There’s no stopping whatever those dollars have set in motion.

      She studies the view one last time, considering. She’s never stepped past this point, but she imagines it would be the beginning of something better. Somewhere in the near distance, Rahim must be digging in the creek beds, his makeshift job of forming bricks only possible in the wake of war’s destruction as families slowly rebuild. Somewhere else nearby, there must be Taliban too. She recoils at the thought, as if something is being pulled from her grasp and sucked into a vacuum of cold. She turns her head from one side to the other, letting the panorama of horizon in through the screened view of her burqa. Some mornings, the sky here fills with pink and orange tendrils that unreel like spools of yarn, stretching from north to south. But now, the sun sits mid-sky, the world hyper-saturated in blues and browns. Aaseya folds her arms and pinches the flesh where her forearms crease at the elbows, a slight twinge across her skin. She pinches again and thinks of the apricot. How promising its texture. Hardly a spot of mold. She pinches again, recalling Shanaz’s admonitions, the possessive timbre of her voice. Heat blooms across her forearms, and she pinches again, so tender. She imagines sinking her teeth into the apricot, holding the pit in her mouth. How she would clean the sweet flesh away with her tongue and find the pit in the center. She can see it clearly—that apricot pit like a missile careening from her mouth through the screen of her burqa with piercing speed as she yells every curse imaginable in the face of those Taliban. Those imposters. Those loathesome creatures riddled with more lice than the roadside carcass of a dog. She’s lucky she survived. That’s what Rahim always tells her. That’s what Shanaz wants her to believe. Just as surely as Aaseya imagines that apricot pit zeroing in on its target, Aaseya feels the skin across her forearms break beneath her fingertips, bleeding into clarity.

      There’s no denying it: Shanaz is the one who tipped off the Taliban. And the Taliban must have believed her, mistaking Aaseya’s family compound for an American hideout. The Taliban reduced her fate to one moment of dust and vibration that stole everything from her but her own heartbeat. They hurt Ms. Darrow, hurt everybody, and although the Americans may be coming soon with their own measure of fate, it’s too late. It’s not enough. Aaseya has her own explosions to carry out, and now she envisions Shanaz with black kohl around her eyes. She wants the Taliban to rape Shanaz, to kill her, but then Aaseya’s vision shifts, and her enemies turn to face her. Warmth moves across her fingertips—blood is the only proof she’s still alive—and as her accusers point their fingers at her mockingly, the apricot pit explodes on target. Body parts pepper the open desert like so many seeds of war.

      As Aaseya approaches her apartment, she hears the sound of bare feet not far behind. How bad will it be if the fighters followed her? She sees herself tossed onto the ground, legs spread. Sees them spit on her, burn her hair and her eyes. Maybe it’s her due—catching up. She never should have survived the blast. Rahim and Shanaz might even be grateful if she died now, released from association with her disobediences.

      “What is it?” she says and turns to face her follower.

      The boy must have stayed close, after all. Feeling floods her limbs, and she looks at her burqa, noticing a few small dots of blood where the fabric sticks to her arms. She almost rushes to him in relief.

      He points to the tap stand near Aaseya’s apartment steps.

      “There’s not any water,” she shrugs.

      The boy crosses the street, and