had a grasp on other far-flung parts of their minds.
In Maxâs case, sheâd been calm enough not to scramble through all their belongings, trying to parse back together her history from the clues. She had still shut the door when she left, and had maybe taken some food and supplies with her on her way out. It was eerie.
And she had taken the tape recorder with her. Ory had searched the entire shelter, and was sure of it. It was nowhere there.
Mahnaz Ahmadi
IN THE SUMMERS, NAZâS ARCHERY PRACTICE WAS VERY EARLY, before the humidity became too unbearable. From June to August, Boston was like the inside of a clay baking tagine. It was almost worse than Tehran. She had to get up at four A.M. , but would still watch the news for updates on Hemu Joshiâs condition while she dressed in darkness before pulling herself away to go to practice.
It only got worse. By the third week, Hemu had forgotten almost everything about his life. He couldnât recognize his mother, and when asked if he had any siblings, couldnât name his brothers. He could recite his phone number but not his address. He knew he was born and raised in Pune, but didnât seem to know that Pune was in India or that India was a country. Then he forgot what cricket was.
On the archery range, Naz tried to concentrate, but her mind wasnât there. She wondered if she should go back. India was scarily close to home. Her sister emailed and said to stay, not to give up her training, that there was nothing she could do in Iran to help anyway. Naz hid her phone in her sports bra between shots, then would lean down so her hands were hidden and text someoneâher next-door neighbor, her friends back in Tehranâanyone, it didnât matter. They were all talking about the same thing. Did you see the test where HJ could only remember 4 of the days in a week? Or HJ just tried to list all the streets in his neighborhood, did you watch that one?
Yeah. Did you see the clip where they showed him pics of his classmates from high school and he tried to name them? theyâd reply. It was constant. After a few days, Naz started to worry she was going to get kicked off the team, but then she peeked down the line of targets and realizedthe other archers were all doing the exact same thing. Go to CNN live stream, they have an update.
She kept waiting for good news, but there never was any. Only bad and worse. Then the Angels of Mumbai began to follow Hemuâs path as well, just like the Nashik Cherubs. All suffering various degrees of amnesia, with no discernible pattern across age, sex, education, or geography. There was one woman from Mumbai who seemed to be decaying the slowest, while one of the teenagers from Nashik had completely forgotten all the facts of his childhood and his ability to speak Marathi, the local dialect, within five days of becoming shadowless.
Scientists from every country took over the television channels, armed with hypotheses and ideas for experiments to explain why the shadows never came back, or why without one, a mind starts to flake away like ash on a cindered log. In India, doctors ran test after test on Hemu, trying to prove it was early-onset Alzheimerâs, trauma-induced amnesia from one too many cricket balls to the head, stress from the fame, hippocampal damage due to alcoholism he didnât have, whatever. They took a brain scan from a patient in the United Statesâa middle-aged man who had suffered total and permanent retrograde amnesia in a car accident just a few weeks before Hemu Joshiâs own case appearedâto compare to that of Hemu. Patient RA, he was dubbed by the media, to protect his privacy. Oddly, there was nothing abnormal about Hemuâs images. The news reported that the two men even met, the American amnesiac and Hemu Joshi. They flew Patient RA from New Orleans all the way to Pune for a week, to see if talking to another person suffering a similar affliction might knock
In Maxâs case, sheâd been calm enough not to scramble through all their belongings, trying to parse back together her history from the clues. She had still shut the door when she left, and had maybe taken some food and supplies with her on her way out. It was eerie.
And she had taken the tape recorder with her. Ory had searched the entire shelter, and was sure of it. It was nowhere there.
Mahnaz Ahmadi
IN THE SUMMERS, NAZâS ARCHERY PRACTICE WAS VERY EARLY, before the humidity became too unbearable. From June to August, Boston was like the inside of a clay baking tagine. It was almost worse than Tehran. She had to get up at four A.M. , but would still watch the news for updates on Hemu Joshiâs condition while she dressed in darkness before pulling herself away to go to practice.
It only got worse. By the third week, Hemu had forgotten almost everything about his life. He couldnât recognize his mother, and when asked if he had any siblings, couldnât name his brothers. He could recite his phone number but not his address. He knew he was born and raised in Pune, but didnât seem to know that Pune was in India or that India was a country. Then he forgot what cricket was.
On the archery range, Naz tried to concentrate, but her mind wasnât there. She wondered if she should go back. India was scarily close to home. Her sister emailed and said to stay, not to give up her training, that there was nothing she could do in Iran to help anyway. Naz hid her phone in her sports bra between shots, then would lean down so her hands were hidden and text someoneâher next-door neighbor, her friends back in Tehranâanyone, it didnât matter. They were all talking about the same thing. Did you see the test where HJ could only remember 4 of the days in a week? Or HJ just tried to list all the streets in his neighborhood, did you watch that one?
Yeah. Did you see the clip where they showed him pics of his classmates from high school and he tried to name them? theyâd reply. It was constant. After a few days, Naz started to worry she was going to get kicked off the team, but then she peeked down the line of targets and realizedthe other archers were all doing the exact same thing. Go to CNN live stream, they have an update.
She kept waiting for good news, but there never was any. Only bad and worse. Then the Angels of Mumbai began to follow Hemuâs path as well, just like the Nashik Cherubs. All suffering various degrees of amnesia, with no discernible pattern across age, sex, education, or geography. There was one woman from Mumbai who seemed to be decaying the slowest, while one of the teenagers from Nashik had completely forgotten all the facts of his childhood and his ability to speak Marathi, the local dialect, within five days of becoming shadowless.
Scientists from every country took over the television channels, armed with hypotheses and ideas for experiments to explain why the shadows never came back, or why without one, a mind starts to flake away like ash on a cindered log. In India, doctors ran test after test on Hemu, trying to prove it was early-onset Alzheimerâs, trauma-induced amnesia from one too many cricket balls to the head, stress from the fame, hippocampal damage due to alcoholism he didnât have, whatever. They took a brain scan from a patient in the United Statesâa middle-aged man who had suffered total and permanent retrograde amnesia in a car accident just a few weeks before Hemu Joshiâs own case appearedâto compare to that of Hemu. Patient RA, he was dubbed by the media, to protect his privacy. Oddly, there was nothing abnormal about Hemuâs images. The news reported that the two men even met, the American amnesiac and Hemu Joshi. They flew Patient RA from New Orleans all the way to Pune for a week, to see if talking to another person suffering a similar affliction might knock
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