“Nothing,” Soraya said, smiling.
“Liar.” I lifted Baba’s blanket. “What’s this?” I said, though as soon as I picked up the leather-bound book, I knew. I traced my fingers along the gold-stitched borders. I remembered the fire works the night Rahim Khan had given it to me, the night of my thirteenth birthday, flares sizzling and exploding into bouquets of red, green, and yellow.
“I can’t believe you can write like this,” Soraya said.
Baba dragged his head off the pillow. “I put her up to it. I hope you don’t mind.”I gave the notebook back to Soraya and left the room. Baba hated it when I cried.
A MONTH AFTER THE WEDDING, the Taheris, Sharif, his wife Suzy, and several of Soraya’s aunts came over to our apartment for dinner. Soraya made sabzi challow--white rice with spinach and lamb. After dinner, we all had green tea and played cards in groups of four. Soraya and I played with Sharif and Suzy on the coffee table, next to the couch where Baba lay under a wool blanket. He watched me joking with Sharif, watched Soraya and me lacing our fingers together, watched me push back a loose curl of her hair. I could see his internal smile, as wide as the skies of Kabul on nights when the poplars shivered and the sound of crickets swelled in the gardens.

As words from the Koran reverberated through the room, I thought of the old story of Baba wrestling a black bear in Baluchistan. Baba had wrestled bears his whole life. Losing his young wife. Raising a son by himself. Leaving his beloved homeland, his watan. Poverty. Indignity. In the end, a bear had come that he couldn’t best. But even then, he had lost on his own terms.
After each round of prayers, groups of mourners lined up and greeted me on their way out. Dutifully, I shook their hands. Many of them I barely knew I smiled politely, thanked them for their wishes, listened to whatever they had to say about Baba.
“...helped me build the house in Taimani...“ bless him...
“...no one else to turn to and he lent me...”
“...found me a job... barely knew me...”
“...like a brother to me...”
Listening to them, I realized how much of who I was, what I was, had been defined by Baba and the marks he had left on people’s lives. My whole life, I had been “Baba’s son.” Now he was gone.

Baba couldn’t show me the way anymore; I’d have to find it on my own.The thought of it terrified me.Earlier, at the gravesite in the small Muslim section of the cemetery, I had watched them lower Baba into the hole. The ??mul Iah and another man got into an argument over which was the correct ayat of the Koran to recite at the gravesite. It might have turned ugly had General Taheri not intervened. The mullah chose an ayat and recited it, casting the other fellow nasty glances. I watched them toss the first shovelful of dirt into the grave. Then I left. Walked to the other side of the cemetery. Sat in the shade of a red maple.