The car was full of passengers and all seats were occupied except for one. Third row isle was a good seat. He took the seat and did not look outside the window. The yellow walls were hypnotic. The advertisement was irritating. The metal poles looked too icy to touch and were perhaps smeared with strangers’ snot. Although the dark green seat was not as plush as his old sofa, he fell asleep on it. From thirteen o’clock to thirteen sixty-nine, all the passengers got off. He was left alone. A young girl in black boots stepped onto the train and stood next to him.

I hadn’t seen the moon in twenty years. I looked up at the sky with my mouth gaping open, taking in the night air through my nostrils, adjusting my eyes to the fine balance between the light and the dark. I stumbled forward between the two men holding their rifles.

When disappeared girls are lucky, they go to other places and hook their husbands’ names to theirs like snake cords to clothing sacks. Then they send messages back home, telling us who they are now. Before today, when I was a child, I thought this was what happened to my sister, Azmera. I thought she disappeared to New York and became Azmera Mitslal, a man’s wife, a woman, with a face and a life as new as a baby’s. But Azmera was not lucky. This is what I am learning now.