1
Baba’s fingers are quick along the rebab’s strings. He doesn’t see me right away, so I hang back, listening to the music, enjoying the glow that seems to fill him when he plays. But then his eyes catch mine, and his smile widens into something just short of a laugh.
“Ah, son of my son, the young scholar!” he calls in Pashto. “And how was the new school?”
“Good.” Speaking the language of our people—the Pashtuns—brings me relief after struggling through English all day. I hurry toward the light of Baba’s eyes, the sound of his music. For the first time today, it feels like my skin fits. I drop my frayed backpack beside Baba, the Manchester United key chain jingling against the wall. The brick floor probably had color at some point, but it’s all covered in grime now. I sit and fold my legs, careful to tuck my feet under my thighs like my mor, my mother, taught me. “Really good, I think.”
Baba nods, and his strumming fills the stuffy air with music. The twangy sound bounces around the tight subway tunnel in loud echoes.
A man drops a twenty-dollar bill into the rebab case. I get a glimpse of his neatly trimmed beard and smile. He’s gone into the crowd before I can say thanks.
Back in Afghanistan, before the Taliban came, Baba was a famous performer. People would pay thousands of Afghani to hear him play. Here, rush-hour Bostonians leave a wide space around us with a funny looking-not-looking expression on their faces. Some of their steps pound a rhythm to match Baba’s song. Others walk out of sync, footfalls clashing against the tempo. My brain keeps wanting to blend the off-beat movement into the music.
“And have you made any friends yet?”
“No.” I focus on pressing a wrinkle in my jeans flat. I’m not sure I even looked anyone in the eyes all day. “But I was able to follow the reading exercise in language arts without too much trouble.”
Around the bend of the corridor, someone begins singing scales.
“Ah, the opera singer and her stereo have arrived,” Baba observes. Once she starts “Ave Maria,” we’ll have to pack up. It’s impossible to compete with an opera singer.
“Isn’t it cheating to use a stereo and mic when you’re already louder than the whole city?” I ask.
“Don’t be disrespectful,” Baba chides. “But yes, it is definitely cheating.” Baba stops playing and checks the coins in the rebab’s case.
Hiding my own grin, I help him scoop the coins into his wallet.
“Want to have a turn, Sami?” Baba asks, passing the rebab to me. The opera singer cranks up her stereo, and the first cheesy violin notes drift down the tunnel. “I will just go wash my hands, and then we can head home.”
“They say ‘go to the bathroom’ here,” I remind him, taking the rebab.
“I’ll go to the bathroom, then.” His eyes crinkle. “I have a special dinner planned when we get back, and I want to hear more about your first day at school. Then—if we find the right radio channel—we can listen to that Champions League final before bed.”
“All right.” I adjust the rebab in my lap, singing one of the Manchester United chants, “Hello! Hello! We are the Busby Boys!”
Baba hums as he wanders off. I flick my fingers over the rebab’s three main strings. The mulberry-wood base presses into my chest. One aid worker called it “boat shaped.” It’s deep enough that I have to wrap my right arm all the way around to reach the strings. The old goatskin covering the sound box still has a cream color at the center, but fades to a blotched brown on the edges and under the place I rest my fingers. Where the skin meets the wooden neck, mother-of-pearl inlays flash white, blue, green, and pink in the dim subway light. The pegbox at the end of the neck is carved in a flower design, with one end chipped from where Baba dropped it in Iran. The tassel—woven by my grandmother in blue and white string with red beads—swings as I adjust the rebab in my lap.
I take a slow, deep breath.
Songs always come to me if I wait still and quiet enough. Sometimes they’re songs I’ve heard Baba perform. But sometimes they’re something else—songs that travel a great distance and play through my hands like they aren’t mine at all.
Those are the most fun.
I begin to play, and my left hand dances over the rebab’s neck. I keep my right wrist loose and easy, strum-flicking. The beat builds in me, and the opera singer’s voice and the commuters’ footsteps fade. The outside world gets smaller and smaller, until it’s just me and the rebab.
But the world inside me expands. Even though my eyes are closed, I see my home. Not the apartment here in Boston, or the slum in Istanbul, or the cramped hostel in Athens, or the back room in Iran. I see my Kandahar house.
It is white stone with a high wall all around. The shattered glass on top of the wall sparkles in the afternoon light, the shards bright blue and sometimes yellow, like broken bits of sky. Pink bougainvillea flowers nod in a rare afternoon breeze. A workman repairing a hole in the roof of our house hums the song I’m playing now.
I play harder, louder, smelling the dust and dry heat and feeling the sun warm my neck.
My plar, my father, reads by the window, his glasses sliding down his nose. My mor jani calls to him. We are all going to be late for the wedding if he doesn’t hurry. But I can’t hear her, my memory is not sharp enough. Her henna-decorated palms are red when she leans out the door to wave me in. Her mouth moves, but I no longer remember the sound of her voice.
I’m almost there. Every time I play, I can almost hear her.
But I can’t quite make the memory clear, and even as the music rises, even as it pulls me in until the notes are sharp, quick pings, I am losing. I am losing the memories.
Was my plar’s hair graying, or was it black as tar on a kite string? Was my mor jani’s voice bright, or was it weary? Did the workman smoke, or did he sing?
I squeeze my eyes closed tighter in concentration. I’m losing them—
Something jolts the rebab.
Suddenly my hands are empty.
My eyes fly open. A teenager hurries with the crowd toward the platform. The rebab is in his hand. He snatched it from my lap.
For three long heartbeats, I’m too stunned to move.
Then I scramble to my feet. “Hey!” I wheeze, trying to get enough air to speak. My legs steady, and I start to run. “Hey! Stop!” My voice still comes in a squeaking whisper.
We’re both heading toward the opera singer, and her song lifts to a deafening crescendo. I can’t even hear myself yell over the volume of her speakers.
A man’s elbow almost knocks my eye, and a woman’s briefcase blocks me from squeezing past her. Far ahead now, in a sudden shift of the crowd, I spot the teenager’s black coat. He must have tucked the rebab inside, because I can’t see it anymore.
“Stop!” I shout, my voice cracking with the effort.
No one listens, least of all the thief. I press against arms and legs, but they push back.
“Watch it,” snaps a young woman.
“Back off,” growls an older man.
A sudden surge pushes me onto the platform. It’s packed so tightly I can’t spot the thief at all. I slide along the wall and jump up on the edge of a bench where a bunch of college students are sitting. Balanced on one foot, I scour the crowd.
The train arrives. Everyone presses into the already crowded cars.
There! The thief shuffles onto the train and pushes his way toward the center. The rebab is in his right hand.
“Stop!” I scream. A few heads turn. I lunge off the bench, but too many people press between me and him. The adults tower above me. I shove my shoulders against their arms, fighting my way forward.
The T train gives two loud beeps. The doors are closing.
I burst free at the platform’s edge. The doors slide shut right in front of my nose.
The teenager is only a few feet away. He glances at me, and his eyebrows lift a fraction. He’s pimply, the redness bright on his pale skin, and he has gray eyes and shaggy blond hair.
“Stop him!” I bang on the window and wave at the passengers. The train begins to move, slowly at first. I run beside it, down the bumpy danger strip where the adults aren’t standing. “Please—please—!”
The people in the train don’t hear, or don’t care. The speed builds, and I’m falling behind. I’m falling away from the rebab.
Then, with a swoosh, the train disappears into the tunnel. I’m standing on the platform, breath heaving, ears ringing.
The rebab is gone.
Text copyright © 2018 by Alyssa Hollingsworth
