Chapter 13: When Angels Cry - My Name Is Samim

Iran, spring 2021

Zayn knocked on the wooden door, and it opened with a loud screech.

A thin old woman in a long brown dress and scarf stepped out of the house. Her small black eyes, half hidden under droopy eyelids, were fixed on my uncle’s lifeless face in the wheelbarrow. We held our breaths, bracing for her curses, but her wrinkled face showed no emotion.

Zayn lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Auntie. We really needed help, and I lied. But he will die if we do nothing, and he is a good man, I swear!”

The woman looked at my uncle, then Zayn, then me, and finally gestured with her head for us to come in.

We grabbed my uncle by his arms and dragged him out of the wheelbarrow and inside the house. After we laid him on the floor, we collapsed beside him, wheezing.

The woman brought a bowl of steaming water, a bottle of a sharp-smelling spirit and a cloth. She rolled up my uncle’s trouser leg, cleaning the wound with water and alcohol.

My uncle’s eyes snapped open. “Aaargh!”

I turned away, cringing. He must have been in so much pain!

But the wound, the blood and the screaming did not bother the woman. Her expression remained calm as she bandaged the leg, gave my uncle some medicine, and told us to move him onto a bed in the corner.

“The bullet is still in his leg. He needs a doctor,” she said, washing the blood off her hands in a rusty washbasin by the window. Her voice was steady, as if she treated injured strangers every day.

Zayn followed her, begging, “But he can’t go to the hospital! Please, Auntie!”

“Then he dies,” she replied, as if it was no big deal.

I fell to my knees. “Please, Auntie, we beg you, please help us!”

The woman walked to the stove in the corner, picked up an iron kettle and poured herself a glass of steaming tea.

“There is no need to beg. If there was anything I could do for him, I would do it. I’m just telling you what’s going to happen,” she said, sipping her tea and looking through the window into the blackness outside.

Zayn and I stared at each other, lost. What should we do?

Uncle Roshan’s tired voice broke the silence. “You must go.”

I rushed to his bedside and grabbed his hand. “Not without you!”

My uncle pulled himself up, grunting. My hand was still in his hand.

“I’ll get better.” He sighed. “And then I’ll catch up with you two. But right now, you must leave.”

I shook my head. “No! We will find a doctor, and if we must, we will go back to Afghanistan. But I’m not losing you too, Uncle!”

Uncle Roshan drew a slow breath. Sweat dotted his paper-white face.

“I have money, Auntie,” he said to the old woman. “Can I stay for a day or two to gather my strength?”

The woman studied him, her dark eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Who are you running away from?”

“Death.”

The woman chuckled. “Death will catch you very soon if you don’t see a doctor.”

My uncle smiled and lowered his eyes.

The woman’s grin suddenly vanished, and her grey eyebrows drew together. She looked at Zayn and me, and when my uncle lifted his gaze, she gave him a single nod.

Uncle Roshan sighed with relief and turned back to me. “Others will be out there waiting too, so they will send another truck after all of you. I’ve been told that’s what they do if something like this happens. But you must get out there and find the next handler.”

I shook my head. “Not without you, Uncle.”

Uncle Roshan lay silent for a while, gathering the strength to speak. I watched him, my body shaking, praying he’d let us stay with him.

“You must go, Samim. We have no choice,” he finally said.

I didn’t want to listen. “We do have a choice! We can go to Kabul and live somewhere else! We will go to a place where the Taliban won’t find us!” I knew in my heart that wasn’t true, but I was desperate to keep us together.

My uncle’s hand shot out, gripping my shirt, pulling me close. His eyes burned into mine. “You must listen to me, boy. They will find us. And they will burn our next house, and the house after that, and they will turn your next school to rubble too. And in one of those houses or one of those schools, you will draw your last breath a lifetime too soon, and there will be nothing I can do to save you.”

“Why? Why would they do this to us?” I cried out, my chin shaking.

Uncle Roshan released my shirt and fell back onto the bed, cowering in pain. “Because they know who we are and who your parents were.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is a reason they set my house on fire, Samim. Your parents… they were helping Americans.”

My mouth dropped as I stared at my pale uncle, hundreds of questions racing through my foggy mind.

“Your father was like a doctor in the village,” Uncle continued. “The Taliban sometimes drove him to their hideouts to treat the injured fighters. Your mother would then pass on their locations to the Americans.”

I shook my head.

This is crazy! The pain is making him talk like a madman!

“I learned their secret the day your mother’s school was bombed,” Uncle continued. “Your parents suspected the Taliban had found out about them, so they asked me to take you and your sister to my house for safety.” Uncle paused and drew another breath. “Only I couldn’t do it that week. I was going to get you both the next week, but it was too late.” His voice cracked. “There isn’t a day I don’t think about your sister, Samim. She would have been alive if I’d taken you both when your parents asked me. I will never forgive myself for that.”

I stared at my uncle, frozen. My head didn’t want to understand his words.

“Your parents were heroes. They risked their lives because they wanted a fairer world for you and your sister. They wanted you to live in peace rather than fear.”

I shook my head, fury in my chest mixing with a sob.

So, we are homeless, injured and on the run because my parents were spies?

“They did it for you, Samim,” my uncle repeated.

I clenched my teeth, too angry to speak.

How could they? They knew how dangerous it was! How could they do that to us?

Uncle reached for my hand, panting. “You must go now, son.”

I shook my head. “Not without you, Uncle. Please. I beg you.” My voice was weak this time, just like my faith.

Uncle Roshan squeezed my hand tight. “You’ll find the way, and I’ll find you.”

Suddenly it was all too much, and I dropped my head, pressing my forehead against his hand. I wanted it all to end. The thought of losing him, too, was unbearable.

My uncle put his other, weak hand over my head.

I cried as if an ocean was raging inside my chest, spilling out through my eyes. I thought it would drown me, but my uncle kept saying it would all be okay.

“How do you know?” I asked him between sobs.

He lifted my wet chin and looked me in the eye. “Because I know when children weep, angels cry. And God doesn’t let his angels cry for long.”

Zayn and I held on to those words for as long as we could. But it turns out God does let his angels cry for a long time, and sometimes, I wonder if God hears them at all.

* * *

“I’m so sorry, Samim,” Miss Nadia’s voice brings me back to the room.

Exhausted, I drop my head and rub my wet eyes.

Mr Higgins straightens up, leans back on the chair and takes his glasses off. “So your parents worked for the Americans?”

I bob my head, too exhausted to speak.

“Anything else you know about that?”

“No. Just what Uncle Roshan told me: my parents helped the Americans and the Taliban found out. That’s why they were after us.”

Mr Higgins jots something in his notebook. He underlines the words, stares intently, then snaps the notepad shut.

“That will be it for today, thank you Samim,” he says, and I charge out of the study.