Put him down, Agha, youre killing him,?one of the passengers said. Its what I intend to do,?Baba said. What none of the others in the room knew was that Baba wasnt joking. Karim was turning red and kicking his legs. Baba mbt uk kept choking him until the young mother, the one the Russian officer had fancied, begged him to stop. Karim collapsed on the floor and rolled around fighting for air when Baba finally let go. The room fell silent. Less than two hours ago, Baba had volunteered to take a bullet for the honor of a woman he didnt even know. Now hed almost choked a man to death, would have done it cheerfully if not for the pleas of that same woman. Something thumped next door. No, not next door, below. Whats that??someone asked.pair of kerosene lamps. A low murmur buzzed through the basement, beneath it the sound of water drops trickling somewhere, and, something else, a scratching sound. Baba sighed behind me and dropped the bags. Karim told us it should be a matter of a couple of short days before the truck was fixed. Then we mbt sale d be on our way to Peshawar. On to freedom. On to safety. The basement was our home for the next week and, by the third night, I discovered the source of the scratching sounds. Rats. ONCE MY EYES ADJUSTED to the dark, I counted about thirty refugees in that basement. We sat shoulder to shoulder along the walls, ate crackers, bread with dates, apples. That first mbt night, all the men prayed together. One of the refugees asked Baba why he wasnt joining them. God is going to save us all. Why dont you pray to him?? Baba snorted a pinch of his snuff. Stretched his legs. Whatll save us is eight cylinders and a good carburetor.?That silenced the rest of them for good about the matter of God. It was later that first night when I discovered that two of the people hiding with us were Kamal and his father. That was shocking enough, seeing Kamal sitting in the basement just a few feet away from me. But when he and his father came over to our side of the room and I saw Kamals face, really saw it... He had withered--there was simply no other word for it. His eyes gave me a hollow look and no recognition at all registered in them. His shoulders hunched and his cheeks sagged like they were too tired to cling to the bone beneath. His father, whod owned a movie theater in Kabul, was telling Baba how, three months before, a stray bullet had struck his wife in the temple and killed her. Then he told Baba about Kamal. I caught only snippets of it: Should have never let him go alone... always so handsome, you know... four of them... tried to fight... God... took him... bleeding down there... his pants... doesnt talk any more... just stares... THERE WOULD BE NO TRUCK, Karim told us after wed spent a week in the ratinfested basement. The truck was beyond repair. There is another option,?Karim said, his voice rising amid the groans. His cousin owned a fuel truck and had smuggled people with it a couple of times. He was here in Jalalabad and could probably fit us all. Everyone except an elderly couple decided to go. We left that night, Baba and I, Kamal and his father, the others. Karim and his cousin, a square-faced balding man named Aziz, helped us get into the fuel tank. One by one, we mounted the idling trucks rear deck, climbed the rear access ladder, and slid down into the tank. I remember Baba climbed halfway up the ladder, hopped back down and fished the snuffbox from his pocket. He emptied the box and picked up a handful of dirt from the middle of the unpaved road. He kissed the dirt. Poured it into the box. Stowed the box in his breast pocket, next to his heart. PANIC. You open your mouth. Open it so wide your jaws creak. You order your lungs to draw air, NOW, you need air, need it NOW But your airways ignore you. They collapse, tighten, squeeze, and suddenly youre breathing through a drinking straw. Your mouth closes and your lips purse and all you can manage is a strangled croak. Your hands wriggle and shake. Somewhere a dam has cracked open and a flood of cold sweat spills, drenches your body. You want to scream. You would if you could. But you have to breathe to scream. Panic. The basement had been dark. The fuel tank was pitch-black. I looked right, left, up, down, waved my hands before my eyes, didnt see so much as a hint of movement. I blinked, blinked again. Nothing at all. The air wasnt right, it was too thick, almost solid. Air wasnt supposed to be solid. I wanted to reach out with my hands, crush the air into little pieces, stuff them down my windpipe. And the stench of gasoline. My eyes stung from the fumes, like someone had peeled my lids back and rubbed a lemon on them. My nose caught fire with each breath. You could die in a place like this, I thought. A scream was coming. Coming, com mbt online ing... And then a small miracle. Baba tugged at my sleeve and some thing glowed green in the dark. Light! Babas wristwatch. I kept my eyes glued to those fluorescent green hands. I was so afraid Id lose them, I didnt dare blink. Slowly I became aware of my surroundings. I heard groans and muttered prayers. I heard a baby cry, its mothers muted soothing. Someone retched. Someone else cursed the Shorawi. The truck bounced side to side, up and down. Heads banged against metal. Think of something good,?Baba said in my ear. Something happy.? Something good. Something happy. I let my mind wander. I let it come: Friday afternoon in Paghman. An open field of grass speckled with mulberry trees in blossom. Hassan and I stand ankle-deep in untamed grass, I am tugging on the line, the spool spinning in Hassans calloused hands, our eyes turned up to the kite in the sky. Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we dont have to say anything--thats how it is mbts between people who are each others first memories, people who have fed from the same breast. A breeze stirs the grass and Hassan lets the spool roll. The kite spins, dips, steadies. Our twin shadows dance on the rippling grass. From somewhere over the low brick wall at the other end of the field, we hear chatter and laughter and the chirping of a water fountain. And music, some thing old and familiar, I think its Ya Mowlah on rubab strings. Someone calls our names over the wall, says its time for tea and cake. I didnt remember what month that was, or what year even. I only knew the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become. THE REST OF THAT RIDE is scattered bits and pieces of memory that come and go, most of it sounds and smells: MiG mbt shoes australia s roaring past overhead; staccatos of gunfire; a donkey braying nearby; the jingling of bells and mewl cheap mbt shoes ing of sheep; gravel crushed under the trucks tires; a baby wailing in the dark; the stench of gas mbt shoes review oline, vomit, and shit. What I remember next is the blinding light of early morning as I cl mbt shoes clearance imbed out of the fuel tank. I remember turning my face up to the sky, squinting, breathing like the world was running out of air. I lay on the side of the dirt road next to a rocky trench, looked up to the gray morning sky, thankful for air, thankful for light, thankful to be alive. Were in Pakistan, Amir,?Baba said. He was standing over me. Karim says he will call for a bus to take us to Peshawar.? I rolled onto my chest, still lying on the cool dirt, and saw our suitcases on either side of Babas feet. Through the upside down V between his legs, I saw the truck idling on cheap mbts the side of the road, the other refugees climbing down the rear ladder. Beyond that, the dirt road unrolled through fields that were like leaden sheets under the gray sky and disappeared behind a line of bowl-shaped hills. Along the way, it passed a small village strung out atop a sun baked slope. My eyes returned to our suitcases. They made me sad for Baba. After everything hed built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life: one disappointing son and two suitcases. Someone was screaming. No, not screaming. Wailing. I saw the passengers huddled in a circle, heard their urgent voices. Someone said the word fumes.?Someone else said it too. The wail turned into a throat-ripping screech. Baba and I hurried to the pack of onlookers and pushed our way through them. Kamals father was sitting cross-legged in the center of the circle, rocking back and forth mbt online , kissing his sons ashen face. He wont breathe! My boy wont breathe!?he was crying. Kamals lifeless body lay on his fathers lap. His right hand, uncurled and limp, bounced to the rhythm of his fathers sobs. My boy! He wont breathe! Allah, help him breathe!? Baba knelt beside him and curled an arm around his shoulder. But Kamals father shoved him away and lunged for Karim who was standing nearby with his cousin. What happened next was too fast and too short to be called a scuffle. Karim uttered a surprised cry and backpedaled. I saw an arm swing, a leg kick. A moment later, Kamals father was standing with Karims gun in his hand. Dont shoot me!?Karim cried. But before any of us could say or do a thing, mbt footwear Kamals father shoved the barrel in his own mouth. Ill never forget the echo of that blast. Or the flash of light and the spray of red. I doubled over again and dry-heaved on the side of the road. ELEVEN Fremont, California. 1980s Baba loved the idea of America. It was living in America that gave him an ulcer. I remember the two of us walking through Lake Elizabeth Park in Fremont, a few streets down from our apart mbt stockists ment, and watching boys at batting practice, little girls giggling on the swings in the playground. Baba would e cheap mbt nlighten me with his politics during those walks with long-winded dissertations. There are only three real men in this world, Amir,?hed say. Hed count them off on his fingers: America the brash savior, Britain, and Israel. The rest of them--?he used to wave his hand and make a phht sound ?-theyre like gossiping old women.? The bit about Israel used to draw the ire of Afghans in Fremont who accused him of being pro-Jewish and, de facto, anti Islam. Baba would meet them for tea and rowt cake at the park, drive them crazy with his politics. What they dont understand,?hed tell me later, is that religion has nothing to do with it.? In Babas view, Israel was an island of real men?in a sea of Arabs too busy getting fat off their oil to care for their own. Israel does this, Israel does that,?Baba would say in a mock-Arabic accent. Then do something about it! Take action. Youre Arabs, help the Palestinians, then!? He loathed Jimmy Carter, whom he called a big-toothed cretin.?In 1980, when we were still in Kabul, the U.S. announced it would be boycotting the Olympic Games in Moscow. Wah wah!?Baba exclaimed with disgust. Brezhnev is massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I wont come swim in your pool.? Baba believed Carter had unwittingly done more for communism than Leonid Brezhnev. Hes not fit to run this country. Its like putting a boy who cant ride a bike behind mbt discount the wheel of a brand new Cadillac.?What America and the world needed was a hard man. A man to be reckoned with, someo buy mbt shoes ne who took action instead of wringing his hands. That someone came in the form of Ronald Reagan. And when Reagan went on TV and called the Shorawi the Evil Empire,?Baba went out and bought a picture of the grinning president giving a thumbs up. He framed the picture and hung it in our hallway, nailing it right next to the old blackand- white of himself in his thin necktie shaking hands with King Zahir Shah. Most of our neighbors in Fremont were bus drivers, policemen, gas station attendants, and unwed mothers collecting welfare, exactly the sort of bluecollar people who would soon suffocate under the pillow Reganomics pressed to their faces. Baba was the lone Republican in our building. But the Bay Areas smog stung his eyes, the traffic noise gave him headaches, and the pollen made him cough. The fruit was never sweet enough, the water never clean enough, and where wer buy mbt shoes e all the trees and open fields? For two years, I tried to get Baba to enroll in ESL classes to improve his broken English. But he scoffed at the idea. Maybe Ill spell cat?and the teacher will give me a glittery little star so I can run home and show it off to you,?hed grumble. One Sunday in the spring of 1983, I walked into a small bookstore that sold used paperbacks, next to the Indian movie theater just west of where Amtrak crossed Fremont Boulevard. I told Baba Id be out in five minutes and he shrugged. He had been working at a gas station in Fremont a mbt online nd had the day off. I watched him jaywalk across Fremont Boulevard and enter Fast & Easy, a little grocery store run by an elderly Vietnamese couple, Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen. They were gray-haired, friendly people; she had Parkinsons, hed had his hip replaced. Hes like Six Million Dollar Man now,?she always said to me, laughing toothlessly. Remember Six Million Dollar Man, Amir??Then Mr. Nguyen would scowl like Lee Majors, pretend he was running in slow motion. The others,?Karim panted between labored breaths. In the basement.? How long have they been waiting??Baba said, standing over Karim. Two weeks.? I thought you said the truck broke down last week.? Karim rubbed his throat. It might have been the week before,?he croaked. How long?? What?? How long for the parts??Baba roared. Karim flinched but said nothing. I was glad for the darkness. I didnt want to see the murderous look on Babas face. THE STENCH OF SOMETHING DANK, like mildew, bludgeoned my nostrils the moment Karim opened the door that led down the creaky steps to the basement. We descended in single file. The steps groaned under Babas weight. Standing in the cold basement, I felt watched by eyes blinking in the dark. I saw shapes huddled around the room, their silhouettes thrown on the walls by the dim light of a