But he, too, fears the Afghan: the violence and chaos of his homeland that he might bring into his safe Calcutta existence. He’s never been outside of Calcutta, and lives vicariously through Rahamat, daydreaming of caravans slowly making their way through high mountain passes. The father, too, has complex attitudes towards the fruit-peddler.

The family forgets all about their Afghan friend, including the adorable little girl she could be America after we’ve had our playtime with Afghanistan: “As for the fickle Mini, even her father would have to admit that her behavior was not very praiseworthy. Rahamat is not the “perfect refugee.” In a fight with an Indian customer who tries to lie his way out of paying for a shawl he’s bought-a common experience for migrant workers who find themselves cheated out of wages by native employers-he stabs the customer, and is thrown into jail. “If I tried to laugh off her suspicions, she would launch into a succession of questions: ‘So do people’s children never go missing? And is there no slavery in Afghanistan? Is it completely impossible for a huge Afghan to kidnap a little child?’” Last year, the Hindustan Times newspaper and Juggernaut Books organized a readathon of the story featuring 18 of India’s top celebrities. 113 of this collection, which can be downloaded on Kindle.) Here’s another translation, available online.

There are no perfect English translations of the story, but read this version first if you’d rather not know the plot. On a planet on the move, whether you’re slotted as a refugee, migrant, expatriate, or tourist, can mean, literally, the difference between life and death. ‘Kabuliwallah’ is a story, not about a political refugee, but about someone who has to leave his troubled land to find work and to support his family. What desperation made them cling to a plane taking off into the sky? What do they dream of, who do they love? ‘Kabuliwallah’ provides some of the answers-and also raises other questions, about the complex attitudes of hosts to migrants. At least two of them held on until the plane took off, and fell from it-two tiny black dots crudely circled in red in a Twitter post. The most harrowing image from the evacuation of Kabul was the hundreds of people clinging to the giant U.S. And, come to think of it, it deserves to be re-read in India now, which is experiencing a government-led upsurge of fear and hatred of Afghan Muslim refugees.

It is one of the greatest stories about the migrant experience every written, and it deserves a global audience outside India-particularly now. It makes me cry every single time I read it. It’s became a phenomenon in India: it’s a part of school syllabi all across the country, has been made into numerous films in multiple Indian languages, and still shapes popular Indian attitudes towards Afghans. So I re-read ‘Kabuliwallah’, a story written by the Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore in 1892. Watching the horrific scenes in Kabul-the anguish of parents handing their babies to soldiers, the bodies falling from planes-made me reach for something deeper, more profound, that could help me understand the human dimensions. Sometimes the best take on current affairs is found not in the punditry of the cable shows but in great literature.

Afghan find escape video game