Sparks Like Stars: A Novel

Arayana meets Mom for dinner and hears about her work to vaccinate children in rural Pakistan. Tilly died at the airport when they landed 30 years ago; she had developed meningitis from the skull fracture she sustained in the accident. Aryana is a competent doctor and has the unique ability to smell disease. She still feels guilty about Tilly’s death, but Antonia reassures her. Aryana begged Antonia to get Shawna and Gabriel out of Janet and Everett’s house, which she did, but Aryana does not know where they ended up. She remembers standing at the window craving escape, thinking, “I’d wanted to fly, to feel weightless in the infinite sky, even if only for an instant” (240).

Aryana walks with Adam, whom she has been dating for a year. Adam reveals that he wants to run for office in the New York Assembly. Aryana has not told him about her past and this has created a distance between them.

Aryana suffers from migraines brought on by untreated stress. She has tickets for her and Antonia to see a production of Oklahoma!, part of an impulse she has been feeling lately to revisit the past. As a child, it was difficult to be around friends with their families. Aryana became obsessed with the story of Anastasia Romanov and speculations that she had escaped when the rest of her family was murdered in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918. Aryana has looked up information on the April 1978 coup but has not found much online. She learned her uncle was killed after the Soviet invasions. Since then, she has followed events in Afghanistan: the fight of the mujahideen, supported by the US, against the Soviets; the takeover by the Taliban; and the sudden uptick in public interest after the attacks of 9/11. Aryana focused on her obsession with Anastasia instead of the overwhelming feelings she has about what is happening in her country. When Anastasia’s body was found last summer, Aryana was upset. She wonders if Anastasia could have felt she was living when the rest of her family died.

Aryana sits with a patient whose daughter does not want to translate her mother’s prognosis to her. Aryana sees that the mother already knows what is happening to her but wants Aryana to help her daughter understand. Aryana meets with her friend Dayo, a fellow doctor, whose parents emigrated from Nigeria. Aryana was finishing her medical training when 9/11 happened. The attack on the Twin Towers reminded her of Arg. Most of the attackers were Saudi Arabian, but when it was revealed that the man who orchestrated the attacks on the US, Osama bin Laden, was hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan, “[t]he collective heads of the world swiveled toward my homeland” (261), Aryana says. One day while she was walking home with a hood over her head to keep out the rain, a group of white men in the street threatened Aryana, telling her to get out of the country and pointing their fingers at her head like a gun. She was deeply upset by the incident and talked about it with Dayo. She feels he can understand because his family lived through a civil war.

Aryana enters an exam room and is stunned to recognize the man sitting there. She looks at his files to confirm: it is Shair, now using the name Abdul Shair Nabi. She wants to ask if he killed her family and where he buried the bodies. Shair works in a parking garage and has cancer. His family lives with him in New York. Aryana meets Adam for dinner and tells him about another of her patients, but not Shair. She still holds back from telling Adam about her past. She has not gone to therapy because she is afraid she would not be granted her medical license if it looked like she had a history of mental health issues. She and Adam argue because he wants her to be warmer and more open with him.

Aryana attends a talk at a bookstore by a journalist, Clay Porter, who was embedded with troops in Afghanistan. He speaks sensitively of this time there. An audience member describes Afghanistan as a third-world country and Aryana speaks up, saying that the US and Soviet Union created the third world. Her remarks capture Clay’s interest, but Adam thinks Aryana should not have spoken up.

Adam tells Aryana he wants to make their relationship official. Aryana cannot imagine telling him her story, or that sometimes she wishes she had died with her family. She still feels frozen in her grief.

Aryana takes the train to Shair’s neighborhood. Grinding her teeth, she remembers a time in Turkey when she and Antonia joined a Kurdish Nowruz celebration, and Turkish soldiers attacked because they were trying to eradicate Kurdish culture and ways of life. In the lobby of Shair’s building, Aryana sees his daughter enter the elevator.

Shair brings his daughter to the clinic. Aryana presses him to talk about his history in Afghanistan and the coup. Shair says, in Dari, “What man can stop a river?” (302). Aryana demands he tell her where her family is buried. Then she leaves.

As she dresses for the play, Aryana looks at the ring she has kept, conflicted about why she clings to it. Aryana is dismayed to see that Adam shared a picture of her and information about her patients that is supposed to be private. She asks him to delete the social media post. As they watch Oklahoma!, Aryana comments on the caricature of the Persian character. Her office tells her Shair called asking to speak with her.

Unable to sleep, Aryana reads part of Clay’s book and feels he “has created a window into a world that lives in my memories” (316). She tells Antonia she wants to return the ring to the Kabul Museum. Shair comes to the hospital to find Aryana. He recognizes her as the girl he saved. Aryana replies that he did not save her. Shair says he was given orders to give their country a better future. She demands to know if he shot her family. He does not answer.

As she talks with Adam over dinner, Aryana realizes he sees her as an asset to his political campaign. He thinks Aryana will help him reach a broader demographic and find campaign donors. Aryana leaves the restaurant.

As they walk, Antonia tells Aryana that she filled a hole in her life. She tells Aryana that the Afghan government has formed a commission to search for the bodies of those killed in the revolution. Aryana, though she is an American now, feels conflicted about the US’s role in giving arms and stirring battles in foreign countries for their own purposes. Aryana tells Mom that she found Shair and has the chance to get answers.

Aryana gets through her clinic hours, then goes to Shair’s apartment and asks he be sent downstairs.

Shair leads Aryana to a cemetery not far away and shows her the grave of his son. Shair sent his son out of the country to protect him from the war, then brought the rest of the family to the US. Kareem was running a food truck when he was shot in a robbery. Shair asks Aryana if she believes in the seven ranks of heaven. He tells her a soldier took the bodies and “laid them to rest among giants with a view of Paradise” (349). Shair says he did not kill her family, and that they were not supposed to be there that night, but that that does not absolve him.

Aryana tells Antonia she wants to go back to Kabul. She meets with Clay and tells him that she lost her family in the Saur Revolution. She wants to know if the ring from Ai-Khanoum will be safe if she gives it to the Kabul Museum. She thinks of Ai-Khanoum almost as a living thing, Lady Moon, a larger-than-life goddess who flourished for a brief time.