Sparks Like Stars: A Novel

Antonia discusses the new regime with colleagues at the embassy. The People’s Democratic Party is now in charge. Sitara has an infection in her foot but, worried Antonia and Tilly might be spies, she is afraid to ask for help. She picks up a knife, thinking to defend herself, but then faints from fever.

Sitara’s infection is treated with antibiotics and Tilly and Antonia continue to care for her. Tilly calls her Star, the English version of her name. Sitara asks to go to her family’s house. She explains what happened to her parents and about Shair. Antonia promises to help. Tilly offers comfort.

It has been three weeks since the coup. Tilly describes watching the attacks from the roof of their apartment. The city feels tense, with many people in prison. Everyone is afraid to talk about the coup, worried about spies. Antonia fears for Sitara’s safety.

Antonia suggests that they could use her sister’s birth certificate to get Sitara out of the country, since Aryana was born in the US. Sitara insists on going with Antonia to her family home, though seeing soldiers makes her nervous. She feels guilty about walking freely through the streets when her family is gone. When she sees a soldier in front of her home, Sitara panics. A general addresses her, and Sitara is afraid he will recognize her. He is wearing a ring that belonged to her father.

Tilly interviews two hippies, Patricia and Indigo, to see if they might smuggle Sitara out of the country. They are from Ohio but traveling through Asia, what the locals call overlanders. Indigo saw the Buddha statues in Bamiyan. Antonia does not approve of asking these two for help.

Antonia recalls how she knows Shair; he is a guard for a new minister. Antonia thinks they might be able to ask him to get the birth certificate from Sitara’s house, where it is hidden in her mother’s nightstand, on the night they are performing Oklahoma! at the embassy. Tilly is in the play, and they expect many high-ranking people to attend. Tilly explains Antonia’s childhood to Sitara and expresses regret that she was a distant mother.

Sitara watches Tilly put on makeup for her performance and hears an announcer on the neighbor’s radio discussing how the new government is working for the Afghan people. After Tilly and Antonia leave, Sitara walks to her house and climbs the neighbor’s chicken coop to get over the fence. The house has been ransacked, and Sitara is upset by the devastation in her parents’ bedrooms; it feels like they have been killed all over again. Sitara finds a packet of documents in her mother’s nightstand and takes pictures from the family photo album. To escape, she runs over the roofs of the neighboring houses. When a soldier stops her in the street, she gives him an orange and says her house is under the spell of a djinn. Safe at the apartment, Sitara examines the birth certificate with its name, Aryana Zamani, and thinks of her sister in the sky.

Sitara examines the photographs she brought and thinks, “It hurt to look at them. It hurt more to look away” (138). Antonia tells Sitara she needs a few more days to make proper arrangements. The next morning, Sitara sees a man in the apartment and screams.

Indigo promises to take Tilly and Sitara to the US embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. They join another couple, more overlanders who are traveling a tourist trail from Turkey to India through Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Kashmir, following a route recommended in a guide called Eastern Bound. They discuss the places they have visited, which seem exotic to them. Indigo drives their van through the mountain pass, a narrow and twisting road. He swerves to miss a truck and they collide with the mountain. Tilly hits her head, and Sitara feels guilty and upset.

Tilly insists she is all right, and they drive through the town of Jalalabad. Sitara remembers her father pointing out the mausoleums of kings, a Hindu temple, and a medical school. Her father told her about Ibn Sina, an astronomer and the father of modern medicine. They hide Sitara beneath the luggage in the back to get her across the border into Pakistan. At the checkpoint, Sitara fears the soldiers but drums up her courage, thinking that she would fight if she had to.