Eight

Fall 2010

This evening, I come home from the clinic and find a message from Thalia on the landline

phone

in my bedroom. I play it as I slip off my shoes and sit at my desk. She tells me she has a cold,

one she is sure she picked up from Mamá, then she asks after me, asks how work is going in

Kabul. At the end, just before she hangs up, she says, Odie goes on and on about how you

don’t

call. Of course she won’t tell you. So I will. Markos. For the love of Christ. Call your mother. You

ass.

I smile.

Thalia.

I keep a picture of her on my desk, the one I took all those years ago at the beach on

Tinos—Thalia sitting on a rock with her back to the camera. I have framed the photo, though if

you look closely you can still see a patch of dark brown at the left lower corner courtesy of a

crazed Italian girl who tried to set fire to it many years ago.

Seven

Summer 2009

“Your father is a great man.”

Adel looked up. It was the teacher Malalai who had leaned in and whispered this in his ear. A

plump, middle-aged woman wearing a violet beaded shawl around her shoulders, she smiled at

him now with her eyes shut.

“And you are a lucky boy.”

“I know,” he whispered back.

Good, she mouthed.

They were standing on the front steps of the town’s new school for girls, a rectangular light

green building with a flat roof and wide windows, as Adel’s father, his Baba jan, delivered a

brief prayer followed by an animated speech. Gathered before them in the blazing midday heat

was a large crowd of squinting children, parents, and elders, roughly a hundred or so locals

from the small town of Shadbagh-e-Nau, “New Shadbagh.”

Six

February 1974

EDITOR’S NOTE,

Parallaxe 84 (WINTER 1974), P. 5

Dear Readers:Five years ago, when we began our quarterly issues featuring interviews with

little-known poets, we could not have anticipated how popular they would prove. Many of

you asked for more, and, indeed, your enthusiastic letters paved the way for these issues to

become an annual tradition here at Parallaxe.

Five

Spring 2003

The nurse, whose name is Amra Ademovic, had warned Idris and Timur.

She had pulled them

aside and said, “If you show reaction, even little, she going to be upset, and

I kick you out.”

They are standing at the end of a long, poorly lit hallway in the men’s wing

of Wazir Akbar Khan

Hospital. Amra said the only relative the girl had left—or the only one who

visited—was her

uncle, and if she’d been placed in the women’s wing he would not be

permitted to visit her.

Four

In the Name of Allah the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful, I know that I

will be gone when

you read this letter, Mr. Markos, for when I gave it to you I requested that

you not open it until

after my death.

Three

Spring 1949

Parwana smells it before she pulls back the quilt and sees it. It has smeared

all over Masooma’s

buttocks, down her thighs, against the sheets and the mattress and the quilt

too. Masooma

looks up at her over her shoulder with a timid plea for forgiveness, and

shame—still the shame

after all this time, all these years.

“I’m sorry,” Masooma whispers.

Two

Fall 1952

Father had never before hit Abdullah. So when he did, when he whacked

the side of his head,

just above the ear—hard, suddenly, and with an open palm—tears of

surprise sprung to

Abdullah’s eyes. He quickly blinked them back.

“Go home,” Father said through gritted teeth.

From up ahead, Abdullah heard Pari burst into sobs.

One

Fall 1952

So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one. But just the one. Don’t

either of you ask me

for more. It’s late, and we have a long day of travel ahead of us, Pari, you

and I. You will need

your sleep tonight. And you too, Abdullah. I am counting on you, boy, while

your sister and I are

away. So is your mother. Now. One story, then. Listen, both of you, listen

well. And don’t

interrupt.