Free When the Moon Is Low by Nadia Hashimi Page B

hold her back from her goals.
    KokoGul was too distressed to eat. I hid behind her heavy sighs. My sisters gave one another curious looks, eager to get away from the eerie silence of our meal and share their thoughts where my father wouldn’t hear.
    A quiet panic raced through me. It was entirely possible that I’d been complicit in this boy’s demise. It was also possible that I was more than merely complicit. I might have been wholly responsible for God taking his life.
    I chewed carefully, afraid I would choke. Allah was in a fickle mood.
    I wondered if my neighbor had heard the news. The thought of him sent my mind reeling in a whole other direction. I questioned his intentions and the meaning of the words he’d sent into the heavens.
    I fought the urge to run out of the house and into the orchard, to call on him to explain what had happened.
    I would have to wait.
    Apart from my mother’s death, I was mostly certain that the world churned around me, unaffected by my existence. Maybe that was not so.
    TWO DAYS LATER, OUR HOME HAD RECOVERED ITS COMPOSURE. My sisters accepted that I had nothing to say about the boy’s death. KokoGul had resigned herself to continue on in her unexalted household. Padar- jan went to Agha Firooz to pay his respects, an exchange the two fathers had never anticipated. In my harried state, I started the laundry and realized I’d forgotten the soap. On my way to get the soap, I remembered the meat needed to be marinated. Hours later I found the forgotten laundry, sopping wet and still waiting.
    My chest about to burst, I wandered into the orchard. Every step felt like a trespass. The branches that had once welcomed me like open arms now seemed to point at me with accusing fingers, witnesses to my crime.
    I coughed lightly.
    “ Salaam, ” he called out cautiously.
    “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here.”
    “Good, it’s you,” he said brightly. “I wasn’t sure either.”
    The cheer in his voice felt blasphemous.
    “Did you not hear the news?” I whispered.
    “News? What news?” His tone grew solemn.
    “About the boy. You really don’t know?”
    “What is it? You sound distressed.”
    “He died.”
    “What? Is this some kind of joke, Fereiba?” he whispered back. There was a bite to his tone that surprised me.
    “I would not joke about such a thing,” I said. In my next breath I blurted out what I’d been wanting to scream since KokoGul broke this news at dinner. “It’s true. He’s dead and it’s almost as if we had prayed for it but we didn’t, did we? What did we ask for? What sin have we committed?”
    “Lower your voice,” he cautioned. “You are serious then. Of course, we never prayed for such a thing. Don’t be foolish. Tell me what happened to him.”
    I related everything I had heard from KokoGul. I’d gone over the events in my head so many times, it was almost as if I’d watched his last afternoon. I pictured him gasping, grabbing at his chest, his skin a fiery red, a storm raging from within and circling tight around his throat.
    “Fereiba- jan, listen to me. This is shocking news and I know it might feel odd given our conversations but believe me, I had no intention of bringing him any harm. It was a prayer to God, not a curse. Whatever happened, it was never in our hands.”
    “But we prayed—”
    “And that was all we did. We wished no evil upon anyone, I promise you. We only meant for you to be spared from misery. You must know that.”
    The orchard let out a soft breath, and the knot around my chest loosened. He was right. I did know that we’d meant nothing so fatal in our wishes. And I’d known from our first exchange that this voice in the orchard had a good heart. He had acted as a friend when I had no one to trust with my private thoughts. Even now, he was my onlyfriend in a place and time where friendships between boys and girls did not exist. There were brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, husbands and wives—but no