The Greatest Sacrifice—August 31, 2021, by Anita Vijayakumar

Two seven-year-old girls—one Afghan, one American—entwine fingers at the crumbling runway in Kabul, the only city in their memories. The American’s passport—a navy book embossed with a gold eagle and sunflower crown—is tucked in her father’s suit beside his foreign diplomat papers. The Afghan’s navy and gold passport bearing the words “Republic of Afghanistan” was never created. Her family’s means are limited to scrabbled food and faded clothes offered by humanitarian aid workers. It wasn’t always this way, but leaving the country is now a fool’s dream. Weeks from now, the Taliban will have amended their phantom passports to read “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.”

“Let’s go, darling!” shouts the American’s father, extending his umbrella. “The last plane is leaving!” She sees his hand: ink-stained from signing his final stack of correspondence. Blue smudges, like the artwork swinging from a fridge at the embassy several kilometers away. The girls had giggled while painting it. Their tears of laughter coalescing; their differently-hued hands overlapping. Just like now. But now their tears are something far different.

The girls’ spindly arms and bony hips converge like interlocking soldiers. Rain pelts their hair. They are folded into each other’s daily lives like sugar in cake. The other’s absence is unfathomable. They try to keep this moment alive, keep their lives in this moment. 

 *

After the school bell rings its daily dismissal, they ride their bikes to Wazir Akbar Khan Park, their favorite. Their fathers run behind. The girls sail the skies on rickety swings, spotting juniper trees as they reach their zenith, marigolds as they hurl back towards earth. One’s father taught them how to navigate bikes through the park’s gravelly trails. The other’s pointed out signs of landmines lining the roads.

The flags at the U.S. Embassy had been lowered that morning. After seizing Afghanistan’s provincial capitals like errant chess pieces—starting with Zaranj in the south weeks before and ending with Jalalabad in the east—the Taliban had finally captured Kabul. The Afghan President fled. Every man, woman and child were forsaken. Evacuations began immediately. 

*

The American girl and her father flew a CH-47 helicopter to the airport; the Afghan girl’s family bounced in an open truck filled with rotting pomegranates. The girl, her parents, three grandparents, and four siblings had handed the driver their remaining afghani, far too little payment for the fruit they’d tossed overboard. They carried no bags. No food. The driver looked at them and nodded. It was a one-way ride.

The American girl’s father was the U.S. ambassador to Kabul for five years. The Afghan girl’s father: his translator. Friday afternoons, when negotiations broke for prayer, they took the girls to Cherry Berry Frozen Yogurt Parlor two blocks south of the embassy. Ordered fig topping for one, crushed pistachios for the other. With sticky hands, the girls dragged their fathers to the five-hundred-year-old Gardens of Babur. They climbed maple trees and marveled at the buildings stuck in the distant mountainside like Legos in a chocolate hill. The American girl’s mother had died during childbirth. The girl knows her mother would have loved those mountains. She would have squeezed her sticky hand.

The Afghan girl’s uncle had guarded American forces at the Balram Air Base for five years until two weeks before. He had three daughters of his own. Counting her: four. He’d insisted the Taliban’s return to power must be prevented at any cost. His girls needed to read. They mustn’t be beaten in the streets for wearing thin socks. If he was killed, his wife shouldn’t be tortured for begging for food. He’d been too loud.

The cost: his life. One life amongst hundreds in the last breaths of a twenty year war. One life the Afghan girl had wrapped her arms around tightly. His Special Immigrant Visa to the U.S. was in his pocket when he was gunned down. A picture of his daughters tucked inside.

*

Gunfire rings out just beyond the airstrip. American troops raise their weapons. Afghan men plead for seats on the plane. The American girl sees grown men fall to their knees.

“Just take our kids,” they beg. “We’ll stay behind.” 

But there is no room. The flight is only for Americans. Hundreds of Afghans have waited on the blistering tarmac for days in hopes the U.S. government—or any government—would take them as refugees. Yesterday, a man fell from the sky as a plane took flight. His body—found miles away on an unfinished rooftop.

The ambassador faces his translator, now fissured through his glasses, blurry from rain and tears. He’d tried to get his family refugee visas. He’d appealed to everyone. He’d failed. He bows his head in respect, knowing the man’s fate. The man bows back. “I understand. Same here.”

A sudden gust whips the American girl’s mask off her face. It flutters clumsily, butterfly wings laden with dew. Lands in a mud puddle. The girls stare as the muck sucks at it, centimeter by centimeter, until it is swallowed. 

The plane’s tinted windows reveal outlines of bent heads, anxious rocking. The flight is bursting; some seats carry two. The remaining Americans from the city’s hospital. Their diagnosis: severe COVID. They cough and sniffle. Many clasp portable oxygen tanks, their faces tinged blue. Kids’ masks are long gone. 

A man shouts from the doorway. “We’re packed liked sardines, let’s go!” 

The American girl’s father grabs her hand, pulls. The Afghan girl touches him. “Please.” She turns to her friend. Slowly, gracefully, she removes her mask, the one her mother washes nightly. 

The American girl protests in Pashto, now her first language. “I can’t. It’s your only one.” Tears cut trails down her cheeks.

“I’ll cut up my school uniform,” her friend replies. “I won’t need it anymore.” She places the mask against her friend’s face, secures the straps behind her small ears. Their eyes meet. Brown on blue, blue on brown.

“There,” she whispers. “You are safe. Now go.”

I spent my childhood in an Indian village with my grandparents. After moving to Chicago, I had to learn English to speak to my father. I clacked away at his old typewriter until the English words I was learning wove into stories, essays, and poetry. I obtained a Creative Writing degree and became a psychiatrist, allowing me to bring a megaphone to the lips of my patients whose stories fill the world with wonder. I have publications in The New York Times Tiny Love Stories, HuffPost Personal, and River Teeth, amongst others, and am currently writing a novel about identity, both lost and found.