He turns his back to me.
“When there is poison in the blood, do you need an aspirin or an antidote?” Shair asks enigmatically. A gust of wind tilts him. He takes a step and rights himself.
“And I’m asking for answers, not more questions.”
He exhales through his nose, the skin beneath his eyes is thin and violet-hued. The silver in his stubble catches the light from a sodium lamp.
“My orders were to stay at Arg that night, after the dead had been loaded onto a truck. Another soldier was given the keys. He was young, barely old enough to shave. I thought he might vomit into his boots. They didn’t give him driving orders until he left the grounds. They said nothing more about it to the rest of us.”
“Liar,” I accuse, my voice gravelly.
“Those who knew were sworn to secrecy. Threatened into secrecy. In those days, one unfortunate word could get a person thrown into Pol-e-charkhi prison. Or worse,” he says. “I pulled that kid aside and told him that he’d better lay the martyred to rest in a fitting way. I told him there were good people among the dead and that he alone could grant them their final dignity. It was the best I could do for them. When I next saw him, he told me he’d done what he could. He said he’d laid them to rest among giants with a view of Paradise. He wanted to tell me more, but I stopped him. My family was already waist-deep in risk.”
“Liar,” I repeat. But something tells me Shair is telling the truth.
Shair stares at the shadows we cast, the way they fall onto the ground but not on his son’s headstone.
“Your mother was a kind woman,” he says.
“After thirty years, are you still not capable of being honest? Tell me what you did to them. Have you no decency?”
“Decency,” he scoffs. “What will you do with this information? I am curious. If I were to tell you I did not kill them, would you hunt down the man who pulled the trigger? And if I said they died by my gun, would you claw my eyes out?”
“You want to believe I’m a vengeful monster? Go on. But that doesn’t absolve you,” I reply.
“Let me ask you, sweet girl, as our lives are like tangled chains hanging around a neck. Do you hear Kabul’s whispers in your ear? Does she call you too?” he asks, and I wonder if he’s losing his mind. But to me, he’s still the gruff soldier who silenced me with a hand over my mouth. “If she does, do not listen. It’s a siren’s call.”
I don’t want his advice. Poison gathers in my throat.
“Why won’t you say it?” I ask.
Shair stares at the empty space beside Kareem’s grave. He gazes into his cupped hands, either filling them with prayer or cursing their emptiness.
“You might believe me, you might not. But I never could have harmed your mother or your brother. Not any child, for that matter. I wasn’t the one who killed your father either. None of you were supposed to be there that night. But even that doesn’t absolve me.”
I cannot speak.
“How desperately we struggle for meaningless things—revolution, martyrdom, bricks of gold,” he says. “When the only thing worth fighting for is a glimpse of heaven in this life.”
The darkness beneath the skirts of the evergreens deepens. The soft glow of the sodium lamp falls upon the stoic letters of Kareem’s name, a small miracle arranged by the architect of light.
Chapter 49
“You what?” Mom says, lowering her coffee mug. Two more people step up to the barista and order without looking at the menu. I move my handbag to the empty chair beside me.
“If I don’t go now,” I explain, “it means I don’t really want to know what happened.”
“It most certainly does not mean that.” Mom rejects my logic. She gives her coffee another stir, the spoon clinking against the ceramic. “You don’t have anything to prove, Aryana. But I get it. I understand why you want to go. I just want to be sure you’re prepared for whatever you might find there.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” I say, my words weightless.
Mom’s eyes close for a beat, her face melts into an expression of intertwined angst and love.
“This day was always coming,” she says, locking eyes with me. “I did think you’d talk to me before booking a flight, though.”
She is trying not to feel hurt, but I can see that she is. I wasn’t trying to keep her in the dark.
“I love you, Mom,” I say, the words rolling easily off my tongue. They didn’t always. For years, loving Mom felt like a betrayal. I could hardly acknowledge it to myself without feeling stained. “I’ve waited decades. I can’t wait another second.”
Mom puts her hand over mine, and her eyes well with tears.
“Even if nothing comes of this search, I want to take the ring back,” I say. The stones had grown heavier over the past few years. The ring felt less like a talisman and more like a rusted yoke.
The coffee shop’s door opens again. Mom, facing the door, raises her hand. Clay nods and walks over to join us. I hang my bag on my chair to make room for him.
“Clay,” he says, shaking Mom’s hand. “Good to meet you.”
“Antonia,” she replies. “And I’m glad to meet you as well.”
Clay slides into the wooden chair and sets his phone down on the table.
“It’s good of you to make time for us,” Mom says.
Clay grins.
“I make a living by chasing people down for a conversation. I figure if I make it easier on other people, maybe my next interview will be a little easier to land.”
“You believe in karma,” Mom observes.
“I believe in a lot of things that are real,” he replies with a grin. “Let me grab a cup of coffee. Anything for you ladies while I’m up there?”
We shake our heads, and he makes his way to the counter.
“You’re ready for this?” Mom looks at me, her eyes clouding with melancholy. I nod and smile tightly as Clay returns a moment later with a mug of steaming black coffee.
Mom notices my hesitation and clears her throat.
“Clay, as I mentioned in my email to you, I worked in Kabul. I was there until 1978.”
“Hmm. A year before the Soviets invaded. Why’d you leave then?” he asks. I tense at the realization that Clay will ask many questions because that is his nature, and because it has been my nature to avoid people like him.
“The Saur Revolution occurred that spring,” Mom says, and Clay nods. Mom pronounces Saur like “sour,” which sounds wrong in one way but right in another.
“The mission didn’t close down then, but some of us came home. Some stayed on a bit longer.”
Clay turns his attention to me.
“Were you there with her?” he asks.
“I was,” I say, then take a deep breath before I continue. “I lost my family around the time of the coup and came to the U.S. with Mom.”
Clay’s expression grows somber.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
I nod and press on. I cannot linger here.
“I really wanted to speak to you about what you saw in Kabul while you were there. I read your book. The conversation at the bookstore got a bit sidetracked.”
“If I remember correctly, you had a lot to do with us getting sidetracked.”
“Well, you know what they say. Keep biting your tongue and one day you won’t have one,” I say.
“Is that quotable medical advice?”
Mom takes a long, slow sip of her coffee. Her eyes twinkle over the rim of her mug.
I rest my elbows on the table and make sure Clay sees I’m completely serious.
“I wanted to ask you about the antiquities and the museum. With the Taliban still lurking and all that’s happening, did it feel like the collections were safe there?”
“They were safer than they had been in the past,” Clay offers, qualifying his comments. “Would they be safer in Midtown Manhattan or the Louvre? Maybe. But that’s not where they belong. Can I ask what’s inspired your interes
t in the returning of the antiquities?”
I don’t immediately answer, and this time Mom does not step in. Clay leans back in his chair and tries a different approach.
“Let me tell you what I know, and then you can tell me more about why you’re asking. I started in Kabul in 2001. I went to get a firsthand look at the Taliban. Had a friend who hated them from the moment they blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas, though he didn’t seem to care about much else they did. By then, everyone in America knew how they treated women. They weren’t all that great to men either, but that’s another story.”
Clay shakes his head.
“People didn’t really know what the Taliban looked like, though. I knew I could cut my teeth in Afghanistan, so I found myself a fixer and went out to the front line.”
Clay is one of those creatures in this world who run toward the fire, who feel pulled in by crisis. Mom nods, his words resonate with her. She would have done the same had it not been for me. She would have spent all her days stationed in places where cardboard governments ruled in name and warlords ruled in truth had I not fallen into her life.
“So we went north. I’d grown out a decent beard. We managed to slip by unnoticed until eventually we got to this spot along the Amu Darya, river water running cold and fast. I was standing on a sandy bank looking at the western advance line. There was a decrepit Soviet tank tipped over. Not much evidence of conflict on that side. There was just nothing there to shoot at.”
Clay runs his fingers through his hair.
“I’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with me that morning, and I thought I was going to be sick. I told my fixer I needed to make some notes and took off for a little walk. So I walked away, looking for privacy, and came upon this Corinthian column lying on the ground in a shallow trench. I started looking down at my feet, and there were pieces of pottery scattered on the ground. I picked up a couple of pieces and felt them in my hand, and I just knew I was standing on history, real archaeological history.”
“Had you heard of Ai-Khanoum before then?”
Clay shakes his head.
“Nope. And I didn’t have much time to poke around there either. I heard some pops in the distance, and my fixer came running to find me. He pointed out some black clouds in the sky and said he’d taken me close enough. I started reading up when I got back to Kabul.”
“Many of the relics from Ai-Khanoum had already been excavated, though,” I say. “Any chance you heard about their whereabouts?”
Clay nods, while his eyes look carefully into mine, as if he’s looking to untangle something.
“I’d heard people from the national museum hid stuff in the basement of the palace in Kabul. That’s in the book too.”
I press my feet to the floor of the coffee shop, anchoring myself. Boba had been preparing the treasures of Ai-Khanoum for transport to the museum. It is unlikely they ever made it out of the palace. Instead, they were joined by whatever else the guardians of the museum could manage to smuggle into the palace before the Taliban rolled through to cleanse the city of icons.
I take a deep breath. Since speaking with Shair, I have become even more determined to face my past.
“I have a ring from Ai-Khanoum. I’ve had it for years, but I don’t think it should be with me anymore. It should be in the Kabul Museum.”
Clay takes his second sip of coffee. I’m sure it is cold by now, but he seems like the type of person who is accustomed to consuming food and drink at the wrong temperature.
“But before I turn it over, I need to know it will be safe there.”
“Can I ask how you came to be in possession of this ring?” Clay asks gently.
I feel Mom’s eyes on me. I look out the window. Day has succumbed to dusk, and the city begins to twinkle.
Ai-Khanoum, city of the Lady Moon. How had she felt when men speaking in foreign tongues brushed the dust from her walls, when she saw her reflection in the glistening eyes of explorers eager to claim her?
So many nights I’ve dreamed of a woman whose figure ran the length of a city. I see her emerging from the khaki earth, a goddess waking from slumber. Sand slips away from her knees and forehead, moonlight fills in the slivers of space between her limbs and frames the skyline of her face, the arch of her spine, the contours of her breasts. She dips her toes into the tumbling waters of the Amu Darya, her movements graceful as in a fairy tale. It is a dream from which I am always eager to wake because I know, if I linger, I will only doom myself to see her fall again.
Chapter 50
From this dizzying height, the earth looks like a topographical map, with contours implied by shifts in hue. From this height, the eye cannot discern road from river—or friend from foe.
A few months ago, an American airstrike went awry. Sixty children were among the dead. I didn’t look at the pictures, but still my head swam with images of small, grayed lips and lifeless eyes. Of motionless angels wrapped in white sheets. I was struck with a migraine so severe I could hardly think straight as visions snapped through my head like shrapnel.
I cannot allow that to happen now. I open my bag and swallow two pills, washing them down with a sip of cranberry juice.
“What are you thinking?” Clay asks. He has the middle seat and Mom has the aisle. She’s fallen asleep, as she always does, moments after takeoff. I knew I would one day return to Afghanistan but hadn’t imagined what that voyage might look like.
Where do I begin?
“Nothing, really. Just haven’t seen this view for a while,” I say.
When we met in the coffee shop, I’d only meant to talk to Clay about the Ai-Khanoum ring. He didn’t need to know how I’d come to be in possession of it, and I wasn’t going to tell him if he asked. But sitting across from him, I had a change of heart. I was tired of holding everything in. I had asked him if, as a journalist, he was obligated to maintain confidentiality.
Well, as a journalist, I have an obligation to protect my sources. But I don’t think I’m here as a journalist. I’ll tell you what. I don’t know where this conversation is going, but I do promise, as a person, to keep my lips sealed. I’m good at that.
I’d hoped for something closer to an oath but found myself reassured by his hand over his heart, a gesture I knew he’d picked up from his time in Afghanistan.
I had told Clay everything while Mom listened. There was no way around it. These were all details of one entangled story.
Clay’s expression hadn’t belied the least bit of surprise. He’d listened intently, but without reacting. He wasn’t patronizing or disbelieving. I started with the coup and moved quickly through the moments that orphaned me. Though I kept my account skeletal, my escape from Arg and my homeland tumbled out of me so easily that I wondered why I’d hidden all of it from Adam for so long.
I didn’t expect Clay to want to accompany us on this trip, and yet here we are. If I had known in the coffee shop that I’d be sitting next to Clay for a ten-hour flight, I don't know if I would have had the courage to tell him quite so much. Now I wonder if I look to him like another casualty of war, if he’s imagining the scars on my psyche, or if he’s going to ask questions that tilt me into dark thoughts. I am not accustomed to such insecurities. They are something between uncomfortable and painful, like shoes half a size too small.
“Aryana,” he says, taking a book out of his bag and resting it on his tray. “What happens if this trip doesn’t give you the answers you’re looking for?”
I look at him to gauge his intent.
“Just making conversation,” he says, putting his hands up defensively. “This isn’t an interview.”
Clay is here for a story, but not my story. When Mom told him about the search efforts for the remains of those killed in the coup, he let out a long, heavy breath. He called me the next day and asked if he could join us. I made him promise not to write anything about me, and he agreed. Though the coup had defined my life, it was barely a blip in the newspapers or history books, so I’m grateful he w
ants to write now about what happened in April 1978, even if his focus is on the antiquities lost that night.
“I’m not prepared to face that possibility,” I admit.
“The search could go on for months or years. You don’t plan on spending that much time in Kabul, do you?”
I shake my head.
“I can’t. I have to get back to my practice.”
“You enjoy what you do?”
“There’s nothing else I imagine myself doing,” I reply. “It’s who I am.”
“People talk about cancer like it’s a war too. A different kind of war.”
“I’ve never liked that, turning people into soldiers. It works for some people who win but others aren’t up for the fight,” I say. I flex my feet to keep my blood circulating in my calves. When Mom wakes up, I’m going to remind her to do the same so she doesn’t develop a blood clot. “Surrender doesn’t make them any less brave.”
Clay flexes his feet as well, taking my cue. “What do you think it’s going to feel like to be back there?”
I’ve asked myself that same question. I don’t know how I’ll feel when my feet hit the tarmac. I’m not sure how I feel about my motherland anymore, and I’m even less sure how she feels about me.
I’m nervous about the possibility that my country will find a way to reject me, or that I’ll be overwhelmed at the sight of Arg or the discovery of the graves of my parents and brother.
Clay must sense that I can’t organize an answer to his question. He fills in the silence.
“I grew up in Kansas, and not even Kansas City. Just a sleepy little town full of good people during the day and only the sound of crickets at night. They thought about shutting down the local prison once, but that would’ve left a third of the town out of a job. I couldn’t wait to get out of there when I was a kid, so I only applied to colleges that were far from home.”
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