My chest tightened and I couldn’t draw enough air I’d stand there, gasping in my own little airless bubble of atmosphere. Because when he was around, the oxygen seeped out of the room. I made sure our paths crossed as little as possible, planned my day that way. HASSAN MILLED ABOUT the periphery of my life after that. I fell on my bed, buried my head under the pillow, and cried. But he didn’t do anything like that, and when I opened the door minutes later, he wasn’t there. I wished he would give it right back to me, break the door open and tell me off – it would have made things easier, better. “I’ll tell you what I want you to stop doing,” I said, eyes pressed shut. I buried my head in my lap, squeezed my temples with my knees, like a vice. Something thumped against the door, maybe his forehead. Lately, every time Hassan was around, I was getting a headache. “I think I’m just going to read,” I said, rubbing my temples. “I was wondering if you… if you wanted to come along.” “I’m going to the baker to buy naan,” he said from the other side. I was in my room, reading an abbreviated Farsi translation of Ivanhoe, when he knocked on my door.
To my dismay, Hassan kept trying to rekindle things between us. On my calendar, I circled the date of the first day of school and began a countdown. I’d wait to hear the door shut and only then I would walk down to eat. I’d hear Hassan shuffling around the kitchen in the morning, hear the clinking of silverware, the whistle of the teapot. I read a book every couple of days, wrote stories, learned to draw horses.
But when Baba was out – and he was out a lot – I closed myself in my room.
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