ONE IMMIGRANT

The boy never forgot the morning when he woke up with a severe sore throat after he tried to swallow his breakfast. His stepmother moistened two of her fingers, pushed them into the ash-filled fire pit, and then wrestled with the swell. It did not work, but he threw up a twenty-centimeter-long worm in his vomit. She then sent the ailing boy to his mother for help. Robab Khanom, the mother, did not...