Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller - The Broken Circle - A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan

“It went very well,” he said. “There were no complications.” He told us it would be a few more hours before we could see her, though she wouldn’t wake up for some time. We would be able to visit, but only briefly because she needed to be on a ventilator overnight.

After he left, I felt a weight lift. One of my brothers said he had known she would be fine. Padar patted my shoulder. Shapairi leaned back in her chair, smiling for the first time that day.

A couple of hours later, we were allowed into the recovery room. Mommy was hooked up to several monitoring machines and an IV. She was very groggy, and we were supposed to walk by her bed, then leave. I stood by the bed’s railing, my hands clamped to the cold steel. A ventilator pumped air into her lungs in a steady rhythm, her chest rising and falling. The ventilator was only a precaution, the doctor had said. Yet to see her tethered to the machine made her seem less alive. Her eyes were closed, her lids tinged with red, as if her life lay on the surface of her skin.

“Enjeela. We must go,” Padar whispered in my ear. He took my shoulder in a firm hold and led me away. He ushered us through the hospital to the entrance. He watched from the curb as we all climbed into a rickshaw. We left him alone, standing on the sidewalk in front of the hospital, his hand raised in a solitary wave to us. He would sleep in the room that night and see her through her most difficult hours. Just as he had done for us during our travels here.

The day had wrung every bit of energy out of me. As soon as we arrived home, everyone disappeared into their rooms. I dragged myself upstairs to bed. As I fell off to sleep, I couldn’t get the last picture of Mommy out of my mind, wired up to those machines. So weak and helpless.

I awoke early the next morning, and all of us went through getting ready and eating in a meditative quiet. Even on the rickshaw ride to the hospital, we hardly spoke a word to each other. Zia wasn’t his usual jocular self, and Vida sat beside me staring out the window, all the bounce and enthusiasm drained out of her.

My thoughts began to drift to the days in Kabul without Mommy. Chaos. Uncertainty. Restlessness.

A few months later, Mommy had convalesced well and was up and walking around, slowly working her way back into her routine as she gained strength. We all marveled at how she had recovered and were happy to see her energy and vitality return. One night at dinner, Padar arrived with a particularly bright glint in his eyes.

“I have an announcement.” Padar leaned over his plate and glanced up and down the table. Mommy sat beside him, quietly touching her food with her fork. We all stared at him wide-eyed. It was so unlike him to tell us anything unless the situation was dire. Like when he sprang Masood on us in the middle of the night and said we had to leave right then. There was no discussion, just leave. I gripped my fork in one hand, knife in the other, wanting to hold on to something. “You all must know that we’ve been living on our savings for the last two years.”

Yes, I thought. That’s what has us all worried.

“We can’t do that forever.” He eyed each of us. Was he reprimanding us silently for how much we cost him? “But I don’t want you to worry about money, because we aren’t running low.”

Across from me, Zulaikha let out a sigh. Zia smiled. Ahmad Shah still had a furrowed brow.

“But we will someday if I’m not able to find work. It’s been impossible for me to find any opportunities here.”

Everyone sat perfectly still.

“So your mother and I have come up with a plan.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “One that will be good for all of us.”

“Are we going to have to move?” Vida asked.

He smiled at her question and took a breath before he spoke. “Yes.”

I squeezed my fingers so tight around the utensils I could feel the pain in my knuckles. Smiles turned to frowns. Zia sunk down in his chair.

“We are moving to America.”

“America?” Ahmad Shah shouted. Forks and knives dropped to the plates with a clatter. “America!” he kept saying, as if a shock of electricity had shot through him. He clapped and hooted. Laila began jumping up and down, saying something about playing volleyball. Even demure Zulaikha had a grin on her face, as if she had secretly pined for America all along.

“Won’t that be wonderful,” Vida said, shaking my arm beside me. Her enthusiasm was electric. I found myself smiling and wanting to join in the euphoria of the moment, but I couldn’t. My life was here in New Delhi. I would have to move away from my friends, my school, the boys I was coming to know, the festivals, the music, the dancing and singing. It would be leaving Kabul all over again. I couldn’t imagine for one moment how America could be superior to the island of happiness I already had.

Ahmad Shah’s carrying on became louder and louder over the idea of moving to “the land of opportunity.” He kept talking about going to the beach and meeting girls with yellow hair. I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. A resentment boiled up inside till it must have shown on my face.

“Enjeela, aren’t you happy about this?” Padar said, leaning toward me. “This is good news. Everything you could ever dream of is in America.”

I wanted to tell him every bit of my feelings, but I dared not be disrespectful. “But I was just getting used to it here.”

Padar patted my head, then smoothed down my hair. He moved a strand off my face, as if to reassure me. But I had moved enough in my life already, and in that moment I decided I didn’t want to move any more.

“Can I be excused?”

Padar pursed his lips before nodding. I rose and dragged myself upstairs. I showered, then dressed for bed. I stood by the window, gazing out at the quiet street. This was my home now. Why should I leave?

Beside my bed, I knelt down and prayed. “Please, God. I don’t want to go to America. I want to stay here with my friends and keep going to my school. I don’t want to travel again. Ever again.”

That night, visions of living through days of mud and starvation, wearing the same stinky clothes for weeks at a time, slogging through mud-caked villages of bearded men with anger in their eyes sifted through me in phantasmagoric scenes. Then there were the faces of family and friends that flashed on the wall of my mind—people I would most likely never see again, like Izmarai and Aunt Gul. The others were a swift-moving collage of smiles, laughs, and words swallowed in a chaotic mist, as if they knew they were leaving me forever, and it was okay.

I awoke tangled in my sheets, startled by the memories that fled from me. A soft light streamed through the open window. I was still safe at home, alone in my room. A new conviction welled up in me that I could never return to a country torn apart, and as much fun as India had become to me, it was not home. America seemed so far off, but Padar was right. America was a place of grand dreams where we could start fresh and build a future.

I understood how hard it would be to start a new life, how we would have to make sacrifices for one another to prosper in a new land with a new language, and I envisioned the things we could achieve if we worked hard, trusted and looked out for one another, and kept moving forward. That was all in my future, and my past had prepared me.

In the writing of this book, Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller worked with John DeSimone, who is the author of Leonardo’s Chair and The Road to Delano and the coauthor with Raana Mahmood of Courage to Say No .