Orange for the Sunsets by Tina Athaide

Author:Tina Athaide
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

31

Asha

“ASHA!” PAPA SHOUTED. “Let’s go.”

From her bedroom, Asha heard the front door slam shut. She shoved her feet into her sandals and snatched her carrom striker off the nightstand. At Mama’s insistence, she’d spent the past five days stuck in the house. No school. No meeting friends at the Entebbe Club. So, when Papa asked if she wanted to go into town with him this morning, of course she’d wanted to. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Papa had spent time together. Phone calls, late night meetings . . . there wasn’t any room for her. She’d make sure today was different—convince him to stop for a snack at Café Nile, and even a game of carrom.

“Bye,” Asha called to Fara, and stepped outside without waiting for a response. The passenger door was open and Papa crouched against the seat, pulling papers out of the glove box.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Papa stood, leaving the papers scattered on the seat and floor. “I’m looking for our passports. I can’t find them anywhere. You haven’t seen them . . . have you?”

“What?” Asha couldn’t look at Papa. Her eyes would give her away. She stared at the open glove box and reached for the carrom striker in her pocket. “Passports. I don’t know. Um . . . N-n-no. I haven’t seen them. I don’t have them . . . why would I?” Shut up, Asha, she said to herself. She stopped talking, the knot of lies gathering in her throat.

Papa ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know where they are. . . . Maybe I left them at the bank.”

Asha tightened her fingers around the striker. She pictured the passports hidden inside her carrom bag and blinked faster, wondering why Papa wanted their passports now. There’d been no talk of them leaving. “Why do you want them?”

“Better to be safe,” said Papa. “It’s getting harder to get out. London is making trouble about taking us. . . . If we don’t get our vouchers now, who knows where we’ll end up.”

So this trip with Papa wasn’t about spending time together. It was about him getting them out of Entebbe. Asha wondered if Mama knew. She sank into the seat. Good thing she’d taken their passports. They’d probably have left already if she hadn’t hidden them.

Cars honked the closer they got to India Street. Papa stared straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel like it was about to fly off. A brown envelope lay tucked against his leg. Asha picked it up. It was tightly sealed—licked and taped—with no name or address. Her fingers traced the outline of something thin and hard inside. It felt like a small book—too small for a novel . . . but about the right size and shape of something familiar—a passport book. But if she had their passports, whose were these?

“Stop it,” Papa said sharply. He snatched the envelope out of Asha’s hands.

Asha slumped back against her seat. The blast of a car horn yanked her attention outside.

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