The old man smiled. “I’ll try to remember and that’s a promise. Come back and find me.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Thank you so much.” And I meant it. Now I knew my mother had liked almond cake with honey and hot tea, that she’d once used the word “profoundly,” that she’d fretted about her happiness. I had just learned more about my mother from this old man on the street than I ever did from Baba. Walking back to the truck, neither one of us commented about what most non-Afghans would have seen as an improbable coincidence, that a beggar on the street would happen to know my mother. Because we both knew that in Afghanistan, and particularly in Kabul, such absurdity was commonplace. Baba used to say, “Take two Afghans who’ve never met, put them in a room for ten minutes, and they’ll figure out how they’re related.”
We left the old man on the steps of that building. I meant to take him up on his offer, come back and see if he’d unearthed any more stories about my mother. But I never saw him again. WE FOUND THE NEW ORPHANAGE in the northern part of Karteh-Seh, along the banks of the dried-up Kabul River. It was a flat, barracks-style building with splintered walls and windows boarded with planks of wood. Farid had told me on the way there that Karteh-Seh had been one of the most war-ravaged neighborhoods in Kabul, and, as we stepped out of the truck, the evidence was overwhelming. The cratered streets were flanked by little more than ruins of shelled buildings and abandoned homes. We passed the rusted skeleton of an overturned car, a TV set with no screen half-buried in rubble, a wall with the words ZENDA BAD TAL IRAN! (Long live the Taliban!) sprayed in black. A short, thin, balding man with a shaggy gray beard opened the door. He wore a ragged tweed jacket, a skullcap, and a pair of eyeglasses with one chipped lens resting on the tip of his nose. Behind the glasses, tiny eyes like black peas flitted from me to Farid. “Salaam alaykum,” he said.
“Salaam alaykum,” I said. I showed him the Polaroid. “We’re searching for this boy.”
He gave the photo a cursory glance. “I am sorry. I have never seen him.”