“I'm from Baghlan, sahib. I travel to see my uncle in Charikar.” Not exactly a truth, but the first story Johar's panicked mind could summon. His uncle Tilo had lived in Charikar but was far from there now.
“Jor.” Bija tugged on Johar's shalwar, restless. “Play.” Johar's heart pounded as he raised the pattu higher to muffle her words.
The guard lowered the machine gun to his side and strode close. “Turn back. We cannot guarantee your safety.” Curious, the younger guards followed closely behind.
Johar breathed slowly—in, out, in—as if by calming himself he could make the men lose interest. “I'll be fine,” Johar assured the beady-eyed guard. He snapped the donkey's reins to go. Bija poked him in the side, and he jerked with discomfort.
The man raised his gun once more. “I said halt! Dismount.” He leveled it to Johar's brow. Johar understood then that it wasn't a matter of ensuring his safety at all. The old guard's eyes fixed on the lump that was Bija. “Smuggling, eh?” His knotted eyes grew shiny with interest as he drew close to Johar, who now stood beside the donkey. Johar gripped Bija, still under the pattu, close to his chest. The others leaned in, suddenly interested at the prospect of smuggled goods.
What if they take Bija? worried Johar. If he'd had the nerve to own a gun like other boys, Johar could have blown these bullies to dust.
The guard, smelling of grilled meat, grabbed Johar's pattu and yanked it open.
“A child!” The man spat on the ground, then began to rifle through Johar's clothing. Bija yelped and clung to her cousin, her doll clutched in one hand, the cloth of Johar's vest in the other.
The younger guards left to interrogate an incoming group at the checkpoint. The beady-eyed man began to search one side of the donkey's pack. Johar prayed the man would not feel the wool sewn into the borders of the quilts. The guard unearthed a pan, Ramila's keshmesh, and some bread. “This is all?” he asked. Johar nodded.
Then the man moved to the other side of the donkey. He reached into the folds of the saddle pack and pulled out Johar's English dictionary and the Rabi'a book. This was bad, very bad! The guard thumbed through both with a frown. “Nothing else, eh? Then what are these books? These are not Quran. This poetry, this Ingleesi, is good for a jail sentence!” He hurled the books to the ground.
Bija began to whimper. She balled her free hand into a fist and held it in front of her eyes, as if to protect herself from the guard's sharp tone.
The man's gaze settled on Bija. “Yes, good for a jail sentence along with that doll.” He ripped the stalk doll from Bija's fingers and crushed it under his heel. Bija howled as if he'd plunged a scimitar through her chest. “No images of people will be tolerated. It was decreed.”
Johar knew then that the beady-eyed guard would snatch Bija and torture him without a flicker of remorse. What would happen after? Johar could hardly bear to think. He would rot in prison much longer than a woman, even a teacher, and Aunt Maryam might never know what had become of them. Johar's mind snapped precariously from one dark imagining to another as the younger guards argued with a new arrival at the checkpoint.
The guard began to bind Johar's hands.
Johar spoke loudly, urgently, to project over Bija's weeping. “Sahib, I may have one thing for you—if you let us pass.”
“Eh?” The guard's eyes shone with greed. He loosened the strap. “What is it, boy? Quickly, now.”
Johar unrolled the waistband of his kameez. “Your feet will be cold soon. Snow is coming to this pass, no?”
“Snow, yes.” The guard picked up an oil lantern. He screwed up his eyes in the dim glow to examine the objects Johar held. “Boy, what is it?”
“Socks. For you.”
“Bah! You expect to bribe your way with these rags?” The guard grabbed them. “Go now,” he grumbled, motioning forward with the lantern. “Be off with you, and don't come back here.”
“Many thanks, sahib.” Johar spurred the donkey to action just in time to avoid the younger Talibs, who had finished their other interrogations and now approached.
Johar hurried the donkey down the road, murky except for star haze softening the fog on a hut here, a bit of brush there. Bija mourned her doll and continued to cry hopeless tears for the next hour.
There were few on the path this late. The occasional truck rumbled by with goods for the bazaars. Lone men with heavy eyes limped by, bundles and rifles hanging from their shoulders, and a family passed on two donkeys, both loaded with piles of blankets and sleeping children.
Bija finally cried herself to sleep. Johar kissed her dirtstained face and wrapped her tighter against the chill. Far from the town and in the stony pit of night, he heard hyena howls and the scurrying of weasels. Johar kept on past his endurance. He must create as much distance as possible between himself and those who hunted him. Where was his brother now, and would Daq worry about Johar, as Johar had about him? At least Daq was strong and could take care of himself. Aunt Maryam's welfare worried Johar more. Would she be let free to travel south through the Khyber Pass to Camp Suryast? Would Daq? Camp Suryast was rumored to be huge. Even if by some miracle they all made it there, it would be like three lizards searching for one another in a desert.
Khushhal's poem sifted like a breeze through the sagging canopies of Johar's despair: I parted with them at Khwarrah with sad heart. Love's troubles are like fire, Khush-hal, what though the flame be hidden, its smoke is seen.
Johar prevailed almost until dawn, when he tied the donkey to a tree and dropped beside it. He and Bija went to sleep in quilts by its base as the wind fluttered the leaves above.
Johar dreamed they were passengers in a truck piled with ripe melons, grapes, speckled plums, and pomegranates. Grape juice dripped down Bija's chin as she gobbled. Johar stuffed melon in his mouth and was laughing, laughing, laughing.
He awoke with a start. Sweat beaded his pounding head. He cupped his hand to shade his eyes from the sun and heard Bija's sharp cries of thirst and hunger: “Aab! Naan!” His belly ached for the same. He would need twice the food to feed his cousin. How would he ever survive?
Bija's cries mixed with a woman's guttural moans. Johar spun around. In his exhaustion last night they had dropped without regard. The fluttering last night was a sea of flags in a makeshift graveyard. Each flag stood to honor a dead person. The plane tree under which they had slept was covered by devotional tacks—every tack denoted a prayer. The woman was hunched over a freshly dug grave, and she rocked back and forth, clutching her head as she moaned. Her child, a girl in a dusty hijab, slightly older than Bija, worked at digging a hole near her mother, all the while reciting a singsong verse between watery coughs.
Bija paused from her tears to observe the girl, then swung back around and pulled on Johar's sleeve. “Naan, Jor!”
Johar retrieved their modest food bag and offered Bija a piece of bread with one precious dab of honey. Bija chewed it hungrily. The mourner's child got up and ran to Johar's side, coughing. She stared at the bread with black-currant eyes. Johar placed a piece in her hands as well.
After morning ablutions, Johar dotted another piece of bread with honey and savored it with the tiny bites he'd seen Aunt Maryam take. He leaned back, not yet ready to journey on, and turned his face to the sky. Such a blue it was, a lapis blue like Maryam's earrings. A sheer light filtered onto the mountains ahead, lending them the delicacy of pastel parchment.
Bija's face poked into his as she leaned on his crossed legs. “Jor, doll,” she murmured miserably. She had not forgotten.
Johar stumbled up and dusted himself off. He searched for objects in the sand, while the woman's low moaning duetted with Bija's high cries. Johar cracked off dry twigs from a shrub and made a stick figure. Next he rescued a bit of torn flag from the sand and with it fashioned a skirt. He tied the skirt with a strand of mulberry-hued wool he fetched from his pack.
When Bija looked up from wiping tears on their quilt, she gasped with surprise as he held out her gift. “Dolly!” she sho
uted. Bija ran to the girl in the dusty hijab and showed it off proudly. Johar was already crafting another one for her.
As the girls chuckled and squealed with their dolls, the mother paused from her mourning to raise her head. Johar couldn't see the curve of her mouth under her burqa, but he knew she smiled from the way her dark eyes crinkled through the eye grating.
He leaned back once more, gazing at the flags, ragged in the wind, and imagined that this was a day after all wars were over, when the land was safe and brother was not torn from brother. He could almost imagine it here, in this humble place of death where souls were honored by a bouquet of flags set lovingly in the sand.
hit
New York,
September 11, 2001
Lucky's Coffee on Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth Street was a reliable spot for Dawn and Jude to set up shop. People went in grouchy, then paraded out with coffee and a bagel in their bellies, apparently guilty enough that they'd eaten and the street kids hadn't to throw money their way. Dawn made sure to be friendly with all the vendors, and they welcomed the crowds that her music attracted. If Dawn and Jude worked all morning, they could each pocket around twenty-five dollars. The hat was set up on the pavement with Dawn's sign propped in front—Need Money for Food— that she had drawn with Sander's purple markers and taped to the cardboard back of her award for musicianship.
Usually Dawn's morning medley was Ian Anderson's fast-paced “Thick as a Brick,” some breathy Radiohead, the vibrant Telemann. When she played she would slip into an altered state, caught in the music's passion, her body supple yet straight, her eyes directed toward the sky. Jude would dance his spacey jig, all elastic arms and slithering body mirroring her flute's crescendos and dips like the snake in a charmer's lure. His long hair would thrash around his charismatic smile.
Most days the routine attracted quite a crowd, but this morning everyone seemed lazy and distracted. Indian summer infused the senses. The day was a sunlit seventy degrees, the kind of air that made Dawn think of apples, school binders, and summer's last swim. It also didn't help that Jude looked too darn middle-class with his silk shirt and new denims to pass for a panhandler. Dawn warned him not to wear the fancy outfits. She had on her ripped tiedye and patched jeans. The last thing they wanted to do was advertise that they had a bit of cash and a roof over their heads.
Besides, that roof was iffy at best. Ever since the ill-fated jam session Pax had developed a seriously superior attitude toward Dawn. Not to mention that Sander's hot looks and musical expertise still made her nervous. But what really panicked her was that it was only a matter of time before Edith and Tom figured out where Dawn and Jude were. And when they found out, they'd tell Victor.
Dawn was playing the last stanza of the Telemann when kongg!—something like a sonic boom shuddered through the street. She bit her tongue in a reflexive startle. Her eardrums felt as if they'd imploded. The blast trembled window glass and ricocheted off brick walls. “What was that?” asked Dawn as the crowd suddenly dispersed.
“Who knows?” Jude replied, snatching up the hat and stuffing the cash in his pockets. They paused on the pavement to listen for more booms. Dawn noticed that traffic seemed to tangle and pedestrians were starting to dash around on the sidewalks.
“People are acting weird,” said Dawn. “What do you think happened? Where did that noise came from?”
“Dunno. Maybe a semi crashed down on Fifth.” They'd walked this area, boning up on street names.
“Must've been severe.” She pulled apart the flute's three sections and placed them in her case. “Let's check it out.” People started to shout and scatter up the street. “What the hell's going on?” Dawn asked Jude as they hurried along Sixth Avenue and turned east on Fourteenth Street toward Fifth.
“It could be a drug bust,” Jude replied as two police cars sped past, their roof lights spinning red.
As they walked past jeans and electronics stores, street vendors and a Starbucks, workers began to spill from offices onto sidewalks. More sirens shrilled. “This is way too huge for a drug bust,” Dawn remarked.
“Someone must have gotten murdered,” said Jude.
“Well, it sure stinks.” An odor like charcoal starter began to sour the air.
At the corner of Fourteenth and Fifth a lady was ranting, “It hit! It hit!” She pointed southward into the sky. An old woman at the bus stop stared downtown too, mumbling, “Omigod, omigod, omigod!”
Dawn and Jude looked up to where the lady was pointing. “Jude, a building's on fire.” Smoke billowed from behind a brick apartment building.
“Where?” he asked, craning his neck.
“Wait.” Dawn shifted her gaze to the left, past the brick building. “One of the World Trade Center towers is on fire!”
“No way.” Then Jude saw it too—a cord of furious black unwinding into the robin's-egg blue sky.
Everyone was shouting and talking at once, crisscrossing paths and skittering like ants. Traffic jammed to a standstill. All eyes focused on the twin towers.
“Come on!” Dawn started to jog, and Jude followed. They made a break down Fifth, past a bowling alley, a deli, a Citibank branch, and a bookstore. Dawn ran steadily downtown, as if by running toward the towers, the image would become less bizarre, controllable somehow. Surely firefighters would have it under control before long. Finally she stopped at the corner of Fifth and Eleventh Street. She and Jude stood with a large crowd, watching the tower burn.
“Did the pilot fly into the tower by accident or on purpose?” a kid asked a traffic cop.
“Honey, I don't know,” she answered. “If it was an accident, it was some accident.” She began to mutter what sounded like a prayer.
“You think a pilot hit the building on purpose?” Jude's voice cracked. “You've got to be psychotic to fly a plane smack into a building.”
The cop shook her head. “Honey, you ain't kidding.”
“It looks like it took out a huge section,” Dawn said. She shuddered. How many people would that mean, and what about the floors above?
“This is too awful,” Jude said quietly.
They started walking again. Ambulances and fire engines blared. Their wail warped into audio trails as the rescue cars raced past. A couple in a Subaru clung to each other. College kids huddled in front of the arch by Washington Square Park. Other groups of stunned people hovered by the opened doors of vehicles parked in the middle of sidewalks. Crowds moved in a steady stream. Their faces were drawn and fearful. Dawn overheard bits of conversation.
“Those people won't make it out.”
“Doesn't Larry work near the top of the tower?” A heavy man in a blue suit asked the woman next to him.
“Yes. What floor's he on?”
“Hundred and something.” The man fumbled for his cell phone and dialed. “Can't get through. I'm getting a strange busy signal. Much too fast.”
“The cell phone antennas were on one of those towers,” cried the gray-suited lady.
“Yes. Some of them,” the man replied grimly. He redialed. Everyone who had a cell phone was dialing, but it looked like hardly anyone was getting through.
Jude nudged Dawn. “Hey, that guy got through.” A man walking past was weeping and yelling into his cell at the same time.
“I should call my parents,” Jude murmured.
Time seemed to warp. It seemed prolonged, excruciating. Seconds ticked by. Dawn thought of Louise in the desert. “Stop burning,” she begged under her breath.
“My husband works in the north tower,” a woman sobbed as she limped up the middle of the street with one high heel off and her nose streaming. “My husband!”
I've got to help her, thought Dawn, but she felt useless. She wished she could run after the woman, give her something to stop her pain. “My sneakers,” blurted Dawn, and she started to remove them.
“Huh?” Jude turned to her, confused.
“I'm going to give—” Dawn started to explain, but when she held up her sneakers
she saw another person already handing the woman shoes. Jude nodded silently.
Apartment windows were flung open. Someone cranked a car radio to full volume. “One of the World Trade Center towers has been hit. It is unclear whether this is an accident or the work of terrorists,” said the radio announcer.
“Terrorists!” Dawn looked again to the towers, craning her neck to see them through the smoke. She spotted a silver object. “Jude,” she shouted, her breath coming in stabs, “look at that plane.” She shook his arm. “Another plane's flying too close!”
“Oh, God, I see it,” Jude whispered as they watched another jet streak in from the west. It careened straight into the second tower and tore a parking-lot-sized gash into the building's wall. What remained of the wall burst into orange fireballs. “The tower's exploding!” Jude yelled. He grabbed Dawn's arm and shook it. “Who's doing this?” he cried. “Did you see that plane just fly into that fucking tower?” Jude yelled hysterically. “Is this some kind of war?”
“War. This isn't real, it can't be,” murmured Dawn. Jude's spindly fingers on her arm kept her from screaming, from hurrying to Sander's, grabbing her flute, and running up to the George Washington Bridge and clear out of Manhattan.
They were many blocks away, but they could still smell the acrid reek of burning fuel and plastic. It stung Dawn's nostrils. People covered their mouths with scarves and jackets. A construction worker passed out painter's masks. An old man was hacking.
“No accident,” Dawn murmured. Horror vibrated to her core. She imagined the passengers as the jet made contact with the wall. The workers must've been at their desks, switching on their monitors, sipping their first coffee, she thought. All those networked computers were melting into plastic soup. People must have been trapped in those boiling rooms with no air. There was no way they could have escaped below a floor of solid fire.
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