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They approach the first Taliban checkpoint. Marjan averts her eyes. She whispers for Hawa to do the same. A bearded fighter
with a turban, his once-white tunic gray with grime, sticks his head into the car window. The tip of his gun pokes out from
behind his shoulder. The taxi driver announces that he is merely dropping his passengers off.
“What papers do you have?” the Talib demands. He cannot be more than twenty years old and has the eyes of a boy. Marjan almost
pities him.
“Brother,” Marjan pleads. “My father is at the airport now. He is very ill and needs me to care for him. I have no papers.
I am here only with my daughter.”
“Where is your father going if he’s so ill?” he asks.
“His doctor told him he needs to go abroad to be cured of his illness,” she tries. “He has no one but me. Please, be merciful.”
“Was he a good father?” the Taliban asks. He seems genuinely curious.
“He taught me to pray,” she says.
Hawa listens intently, notices that a long scar runs the length of the back of his hand and wonders what other wounds he has.
The Talib looks off to the distance for a moment. Marjan, sensing indecision, rests her hand on the open window so that the
foot soldier can see the colorful edges of the bills tucked into her hand.
The Talib takes a long drag on his cigarette, throws it onto the ground, and in one swift move snatches the money from Marjan’s hand. He has pocketed more in the past two weeks than he has earned in four months of fighting.
“Go on! Go!” The Talib waves the car on gruffly.
They make it through the checkpoint. The driver is eager to unload his passengers and leave the chaos of the airport.
“Stay close to me,” Marjan says to Hawa as they inch their way in the direction of the gate Jenna has directed them to, a
gate away from the site of the bombing. An hour goes by, and they have made pitiful progress. In front of them is a human
barricade. People are frustrated. They are not their best selves. There is little time, patience, and hope left. They either
get out now or slink back to their homes and wait to find out what the country will look like tomorrow.
Maybe a different gate? she asks Jenna. Jenna says she will ask her contact. Marjan feels like a blindfolded crossing guard.
She looks at her daughter. Her cheeks are already flushed with heat. She hands Hawa the water bottle and encourages her to
take a small sip. The sun is indeed brutal.
Another hour goes by. They continue to squirm and push their way toward the gate. If she could just get one American soldier
to see her.
Marjan sends Jenna and the others an update.
It is hard to move, she writes. Please tell your friend we are here. My headscarf is orange.
She quickly swaps her headscarf for the orange one she’s purchased. She snaps a picture of herself in the bright scarf and
sends it to Jenna.
I’m sending it now. But try to get closer.
Shouts ripple through the crowd behind them. Hawa hears a pop. And then another.
“Madar!” she shouts, ducking her head.
“Keep your head down!” Marjan shouts, trying to position herself as a shield over her daughter’s body.
Two Talibs are firing into the air just above people’s heads, as they have been doing to control the crowds.
Screams and shouts follow. People crouch, hands over their heads.
Two marines stand on the wall nearby. They’re looking in the direction of the gunshots, hands on their triggers. Marjan looks around and sees a chance.
She whips the orange head scarf off her head and waves it in the air. She is on her toes, reaching for the sky.
“Here! Please, we are here!” she shouts. “Hello!”
She waves both arms around wildly, the scarf flapping like a bird caught in a net. The marines stand side by side. One points
in her direction, and Marjan jumps.
“Here! Yes, yes, yes! We are here!”
She continues to wave her orange headscarf. The gunshots have quieted. The crowd is upright once more, people stepping and
worming through openings.
“Madar!” Hawa shouts. “Is that man looking at you?”
This gives Marjan fresh energy. She can’t tell if the marines are looking at her, but maybe Hawa is right. Her eyes are fixed
on them, trying to decipher their posture, their movements. One turns and looks over his shoulder. Or maybe her shoulder.
Marjan cannot tell from here.
“Madar!” Hawa pulls on her arm, and Marjan looks down at her daughter, follows her gaze a hundred yards to her left and realizes
that indeed there is a man looking at her.
She would recognize his face anywhere.
At the sight of Abdul Khaliq, Marjan goes breathless. For an instant, she is a girl again, soft and small as a sparrow. Her
muscles go slack.
Then she looks at Hawa.
“Get down!” Marjan orders her daughter. Hunched over, she leads her away from the father she’s never met. Marjan balls up
the orange headscarf as they duck and weave between people. She stuffs it into her bag and pulls out her black headscarf.
She lets go of Hawa’s hand for just long enough to put it on.
Along the way, Marjan spots a group of people gathered around a tree. She looks over her shoulder and doesn’t see Abdul Khaliq.
She wraps the orange headscarf around a low branch just behind the cluster of people. No one even notices.
“This way,” she says, pulling Hawa toward the street. She looks left and right, desperate for a place to hide. Hawa follows, her bag slapping against her hip, her legs threatening to buckle. But she presses on because she cannot let her mother down.
“Madar, there!” Hawa shouts. She is pointing to a taxi unloading passengers, a family of five.
Before the last child exits, she shoves Hawa into the back of the car.
“Hey, hey! What are you doing?” the driver asks.
“Please!” Hawa cries to the driver. “We need to leave!”
Marjan promises to pay the fare.
“Change of heart?” he asks as he pulls away from the curb. “Good idea. People need to have some self-respect. Stop panicking,
I told my wife. Stay in the homeland and you’ll see. No one will bother us.”
Marjan keeps Hawa low on the seat but looks back in time to see Abdul Khaliq standing by the roadside, her orange headscarf
in his fist like a captured flag.