THERE WOULD BE NO TRUCK, Karim told us after we’d spent a week in the rat-infested basement. The truck was beyond repair.
“There is another option,” Karim said, his voice rising amid the groans. His cousin owned a fuel truck and had smuggled people with it a couple of times. He was here in Jalalabad and could probably fit us all.
Everyone except an elderly couple decided to go.
We left that night, Baba and I, Kamal and his father, the others. Karim and his cousin, a square-faced balding man named Aziz, helped us get into the fuel tank. One by one, we mounted the idling truck’s rear deck, climbed the rear access ladder, and slid down into the tank. I remember Baba climbed halfway up the ladder, hopped back down and fished the snuffbox from his pocket. He emptied the box and picked up a handful of dirt from the middle of the unpaved road. He kissed the dirt. Poured it into the box. Stowed the box in his breast pocket, next to his heart.
PANIC.
You open your mouth. Open it so wide your jaws creak. You order your lungs to draw air, NOW, you need air, need it NOW But your airways ignore you. They collapse, tighten, squeeze, and suddenly you’re breathing through a drinking straw. Your mouth closes and your lips purse and all you can manage is a strangled croak. Your hands wriggle and shake. Somewhere a dam has cracked open and a flood of cold sweat spills, drenches your body. You want to scream. You would if you could. But you have to breathe to scream.
Panic.
The basement had been dark. The fuel tank was pitch-black. I looked right, left, up, down, waved my hands before my eyes, didn’t see so much as a hint of movement. I blinked, blinked again. Nothing at all. The air wasn’t right, it was too thick, almost solid. Air wasn’t supposed to be solid. I wanted to reach out with my hands, crush the air into little pieces, stuff them down my windpipe. And the stench of gasoline. My eyes stung from the fumes, like someone had peeled my lids back and rubbed a lemon on them. My nose caught fire with each breath. You could die in a place like this, I thought. A scream was coming. Coming, coming...
And then a small miracle. Baba tugged at my sleeve and some thing glowed green in the dark. Light! Baba’s wristwatch. I kept my eyes glued to those fluorescent green hands. I was so afraid I’d lose them, I didn’t dare blink.
Slowly I became aware of my surroundings. I heard groans and muttered prayers. I heard a baby cry, its mother’s muted soothing. Someone retched. Someone else cursed the Shorawi. The truck bounced side to side, up and down. Heads banged against metal.
“Think of something good,” Baba said in my ear. “Something happy.”
Something good. Something happy. I let my mind wander. I let it come: