Wahir paused from his beads. “What's wrong with the girl? Her lips are blue.”
“My cousin has a bad cough.”
“There is a doctor by the western edge of the camp,” Wahir mumbled, resuming his bead clacking.
“An American,” snorted Romel as he stuffed a mound of rice in his mouth.
“Thank you for telling me.” Johar piled his bags in a corner near the door. “We will not take up much room.”
“No, you won't,” agreed Romel, stretching his feet toward Johar's bags. Zabit stared wide-eyed at Bija's bluetinged face.
The sound of Zabit and Romel gobbling their rice made Johar's mouth water. What would they do for food? He must get his cousin to the doctor, but if she could eat a bite first, it would do her good. Johar pulled a hat—the one with the sunburst design—from his pack and held it out. “Would this do in return for a handful of rice?”
Romel's eyes gleamed with interest, but he held back. “I said we do not have enough. Didn't you hear me the first time?”
Wahir's beads fell silent. “Give them a fistful, boy.”
Romel scowled as he slapped a clump onto the plastic cloth near Johar's feet and grabbed Johar's hat. Bija scrambled over and stuffed in a mouthful. As she chewed, she began to cough again, but this time she couldn't stop and with each cough her lungs produced a wretched gurgling.
Was she breathing? Her eyes were wide, but she didn't seem to see him. Johar couldn't let her choke to death! He scooped her up, hurried her outside and tied her to the donkey's saddle. He mounted and raced the beast toward Suryast's western edge, to the building with the red mark.
What a disaster! thought Johar. The line of sick people stretched over the ridge into the fading sun—maybe thirty people deep—just as Vikhrim had warned. Bija's eyes rolled back to show the white parts. Her breaths were barely audible. Bija might die if they waited in line. She needed help now! Every nerve in Johar's body strained to ride faster. The donkey clambered along the cracked plain, sending up clouds of dust. Finally they reached the front of the line. Johar leaped down, untied Bija, and pulled her into his arms.
He pounded fiercely on the flimsy wooden door. “My cousin is dying!”
“My son is sick too,” yelled an angry man, “and we've waited for hours to get up to the doctor's door.” He pushed Johar away, but Johar swerved around him and pounded harder on the door.
“What are you doing, you selfish boor?” demanded a one-legged man behind the first. He hopped on one foot as he brandished his cane. “I've waited all morning in the wretched sun to get a leg.”
“American doctor, please help! She's dying!” Johar yelled in English through the open window.
The door swung open. A man with cloud-colored hair around a pink face emerged. Behind him was a woman in owlish spectacles, also with pale skin. “What's the trouble, Nils?” the woman asked the man.
The pink-cheeked man began speaking to Johar in Dari. “What is the trouble?”
“I'll show you trouble!” screeched the one-legged man. He smashed Johar on the back with his cane. “The boy jumped the line.” Johar winced in pain but held his place.
“Stop!” Nils grabbed the cane. “Patience,” he shouted, prodding the man back into the angry crowd. Nils stationed himself between Johar and the throng like a human shield.
The spectacled woman approached. She began to examine Bija, peering down Bija's throat and listening to her chest with a metal stethoscope. “Rales,” she muttered.
“Can you help my cousin?” Johar begged in English. “She cannot breathe!”
The woman raised her eyes to his, startled by Johar's words. She turned and opened the door. “Bring her in.”
The crowd roared. “Thrash that boy! He cut in.”
“Just because the boy speaks Ingleesi.”
Speaking in Dari, Nils attempted to calm the crowd. “Your turn will come. We will see you all.”
Johar's heart pounded as the woman took Bija in her arms and carried her into the compound. She laid Bija on a metal table, stuck an instrument down her throat in a concentrated motion, then pulled it out. Johar came over and helped to hold Bija steady. She shuddered and coughed, then began to breathe—breaths that beat like hummingbird wings. Bija was still alive! The doctor rubbed the instrument along a glass slide, then removed some blood with a needle.
“This medicine will treat her infection.” The woman said. She rubbed a patch of Bija's skin with a piece of cotton, then poked another needle into her arm.
Johar sighed deeply. The din of the crowd, which had faded in those awful moments, returned in a swell outside the window. “Will she live?” he asked in English.
With sturdy hands the woman set Bija on a cot by the wall. “We hope so.” She removed her glasses. Her eyes and the strands of hair that peeked from her scarf were both the slate color of goat's wool. “Your cousin is one sick little girl with an extremely high fever. I suspect that she has bacterial pneumonia. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Understand.”
“How is it that you know such good English?” The woman motioned him to a folding chair. Her owlish eyes pierced his.
“I learned from my aunt. She is schoolteacher near Baghlan.” Johar loosened his fists. He'd been clenching them so tightly, the nails had cut notches in his flesh.
“But even for a teacher to know such good English!” The doctor crossed her arms and leaned into the table.
“Aunt's brother is in England. He give us books.”
“Aha!” The woman smiled, her stern features softening. “My name is Dr. Louise Garland. What's your name?”
Johar blushed and looked down. He wasn't used to speaking with foreigners, even though she was a doctor. “Johar. Name of cousin is Bija.”
“Call me Dr. Garland. This may sound rather sudden, but—” Her next words made Johar look up suddenly to return her gaze. “We are in desperate need of translators here at the clinic. Nils, my nurse and translator, will leave for Kabul in a few days. We are severely understaffed. You see, I am from America, and I speak no Dari.”
“You want me for translator?” Johar glanced at Bija, who was sleeping. “Can we get ration tickets and wheat? We hungry.”
“I'll make sure you get ration tickets, and I could pay you something. If you want it, the job is yours.” Dr. Garland straightened up and began to busy herself putting instruments in order. “I will speak to the main office right away.”
“When I to begin work?” Johar asked.
“Tomorrow morning. Nils will show you how to work the phones, help with the patients, send e-mail.”
E-mail. Someone said they had computers with e-mail in the library in Kabul. Things were happening so fast. “And my cousin?”
“She will need more shots tomorrow. In the meantime, watch her carefully.”
“So. It is serious, this pneumonia?”
Dr. Garland nodded.
Johar would watch his cousin as carefully as a mama lynx watched over her young. He must keep her alive. Johar was relieved and anxious all at once. One day and four words—the job is yours—had propelled him from despair to hope.
weight
New York,
early October 2001
Dawn couldn't talk Jude into staying at the squat, but he did visit. He even hit it off with the Goth guy, who'd also come to New York to act. The three of them would often sit on the stoop and yak—about school, why they'd run off, and what they wanted out of life—while they watched Puerto Rican moms push strollers up the avenue. Dawn visited Sander's only when Jude was with her. She was leery of Pax and intimidated by Sander's groupie girls. Meanwhile, Jude played phone tag with his parents, telling them he was okay, promising to come home soon.
Jude and Dawn continued their routine of playing flute and dancing spacey jigs for food money, then eating lunch in Union Square. She pleaded with him several times to come down to ground zero with her. He'd declined each time, but one morning she talked him into it. They sat on the
insurance company steps, across from St. Peter's and three blocks from the site. The ledge of this building was as close as they could get to the craters of the twin towers, which were obscured behind the plywood fence. Sitting across from the church, they could just make out the ruined steel beams above the fence, huge as mountains, tipping precariously out of tortured steel abutments. Beyond that were the dinosaur cranes, twisting and digging in front of office buildings whose windows had imploded. Constant smoke plumed upward.
Jude sulked and paced. “Why did I let you talk me into this?” he complained. Even though they had made up, something had changed between them since the day after the tragedy. Jude recited lines from the play he'd starred in last year as he paced on the stairs next to the ledge. “A day unlike any other. A day, my love, for the undertaker.”
“Quiet, Jude!” Dawn yelled. “What's the matter with you? It's not some off-Broadway farce here. Show some respect for the dead.” Jude's theatrics drowned out the weight—the dense, tragic weight that begged to be felt.
“But it's so depressing,” he moaned.
“Give me a few more minutes, please.” For Dawn, the nights at C Squat and the days on this ledge had been an odd comfort. She'd stared obsessively at onlookers as tears streamed down their faces. How could they flow so freely? Hers were frozen deep inside. When people wanted to stop crying, could they just will themselves to stop? How could you dam up a waterfall?
Jude stretched up as far as he could on the stairs, craning his neck. “It's just that it's so horrible, Dawn. It goes on forever; and the smoke—”
Dawn took out her flute and cleaned it with the chamois square. “What are they doing in there today?”
He leaped off the stairs and climbed onto a fence perpendicular to the site gate, teetering slightly before finding his balance. “Loading a flatbed with beams. Spraying water on the fire. Drinking coffee.” Dawn noticed a National Guard soldier posted at the makeshift gate, eyeing Jude warily. “I can't deal with Armageddon, Dawn.”
“Fine,” Dawn sighed, “I'll come down by myself from now on.” She pressed the flute to her bottom lip, cleared her scratchy throat, and played a drawn-out G. She purred it up to B, D, then a high E and lingered there. On her exhale she felt something: a gentle push, a whisper, a sudden breeze.
Something seemed to echo. Her eyes were drawn to the opening in the gate, past the guard where the sun glinted off a jagged shard of the latticed tower. Two seagulls floated through the rubble. Dawn turned to Jude. “You say something?”
“Negative.” Jude leaped down and winked at the guard, who quickly shifted his gaze. “I'm out of here, girlfriend. This place is haunted. Are you coming?”
Dawn didn't answer. Maybe St. Peter's arches across the street had produced the echo. She played a soft G. The note spread out until the church walls absorbed it. No echo. Dawn yanked apart the flute pieces and flung them in the case. “Jude, you're so impatient. Should we just go to our other spot for some extra money?” They began to walk up Hudson Street.
“I can't,” Jude muttered. “I've got something to tell you.” Jude's face had turned pasty. He looked guilty.
“What is it?”
Jude stopped and faced her. “You know I'm on your side and you're like my best friend in the whole world and all that stuff….” He slouched like a mutt that had just wet the carpet.
“Well, yeah.”
“I'm going home, Dawn.”
“You mean to Pax and Sander's?”
“No, Dawn. Back to San Francisco.”
“You can't! I mean—” Dawn laughed nervously. “What about us—my music and your acting and—”
“It's over. For now, anyway.” Jude shook his head.
“Hey, I'm sorry I decided to live at C Squat,” Dawn blurted out. “It wasn't because of you. It was something I had to do. We'll hang out more. Make it fun and—”
“It's not about that, Dawn,” Jude cut in. “I'm going home in a few days. My parents sent me a plane ticket. Don't worry. I didn't tell them you were here, but you could still go back. Call Victor. He'd fly you back.”
She would be alone again. Abandoned. That thing she'd felt so many times before was spreading inside Dawn—her insides getting cold and stiff, like hamburger meat in the freezer, so hard you could hit the block on the stove with all your might and it wouldn't break. But some parts stayed soft and raw.
Jude had that look of pity on his face. “I'm not like you, Dawn.”
The biting parts inside her flamed up, furious. “What's that supposed to mean? That I'm some kind of street trash? Just because you come from a good family where your mom and dad love you and stand by you and indulge your every whim doesn't mean you're a better person than I am. Shit, if I had all that stuff, I never would have run off to New York. I'd be studying flute and thanking my lucky stars every day I had parents like yours. And I wouldn't be such a prick. You were so into your own selfish pain at the Trade Center site. What about the people who actually had to die?”
“Yeah,” Jude mumbled. “You don't believe me, but I feel bad for them.”
Dawn watched tears pool over Jude's lids and run down his sunken cheeks. Her own eyes burned with dry loathing. “You might feel bad for them,” she said, “but you feel much worse for yourself.”
“So you think I'm a selfish, spoiled wimp. What about you, huh? You connect with this big tragedy, but when there's a real person in front of you, you're a total ice queen.”
“Says the drama queen.”
“At least I connect with people. I guess for you, actually talking to people is too damn messy.” Jude brushed his tears with his silk cuffs. “Are you really sad, or do you just get off on being dark and moody? Maybe you're the one who's addicted to drama.”
“Well, you're addicted to superficiality.” Dawn pointed to Jude's new studded jeans and silk shirt. “How can you go on a shopping spree after a tragedy like this? I used to think you were a kindred spirit. I guess it was wishful thinking.”
He shook his head. “Look, I'm just not cut out for this. My parents are freaking hysterical.” He reached out to touch her arm. She shook it off. “Whatever,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, whatever.” Dawn turned and shot across Canal Street. Car horns blared at her and a bike messenger squealed to a halt, cursing her out. She hurried through the cobbled streets of Soho, around semis unloading, past furniture stores, and across Houston as the light clicked to yellow. Jude had been disrespectful at the site. And what about me? she wondered. Am I there for the right reason? One thing was for sure—Jude was a spoiled mama's boy, so good riddance to him.
When she reached Union Square, Dawn went behind the hedge and tried to catch her breath. She had run too fast. Panic rifled through her. With Jude gone, there would be no one to help her laugh it off. Things would be so much more serious now. She set up the satellite phone and dialed. It rang and rang and rang. What am I thinking? No one had ever been there for her—her birth mom, the DiGiornos, Louise. Dawn's finger went up to cut the connection.
“Hello?” Dawn jumped. It was a young man's voice with a heavy accent.
“Uh—uh, hello,” Dawn stammered.
“What can I do for you, miss?”
“Who are you?” Dawn asked curtly.
“My name is Johar. May I help you?”
“Is Louise there?”
“Who?”
“Dr. Garland.”
“Dr. Garland away from clinic at this moment. May I give her message?”
Dawn ignored his question. “Do you work with Dr. Garland? Is she all right?”
“I work as translator. I speak with Dr. Garland every day. She OK.”
“Did you talk to her today?”
“Yes, I speak. Are you daughter?”
“Um—”
“Dr. Garland says she has daughter who may be calling. Must worry too, about mother.” He paused. “Hard to have mother all way over here.”
Who was this guy? She shouldn't tell him anything. For a
ll she knew, he could be a terrorist! Dawn hung up and slumped to the ground. She stared at the tattered notices and drawings along the fences. It didn't take long for hope to sink into grief.
socks, hats, guns
Suryast, Pakistan,
early October 2001
Johar dared not say how sick Bija had been, dared not mention Suryast, the Taliban's capture of Daq, or that they might be searching for Johar as well, for who knew into which hands this letter might fall? At least Maryam would know him by his handwriting. More news of American bombings spread through the camp within hours. Kabul had been hit, as Johar knew it would be. He felt ill when they said a bomb had struck the radio station where Aman worked. The airfield near Baghlan was also hit. Even here, above Suryast, there was a constant drone of warplanes and distant smoke from mortars.
Nils, the ICRC nurse from Switzerland, promised to carry Johar's letter to Baghlan on his way north. Johar provided directions to Maryam's compound and Ramila's as well. Maybe she would have news of his aunt. With a kiss to the paper, Johar thanked Nils and placed the note in his hand.
With Nils gone, Johar plunged into clinic tasks with vigor. He rehearsed the lines “May I help you?” and “What can I do for you?” in order to answer Nils's phone properly. Dr. Garland taught Johar which medicines treated which illness. She demonstrated procedures for common ailments like amoebic dysentery, cholera, jaundice, malnutrition, loss of limbs, pneumonia, and infection. Nils had given him rudimentary lessons on a computer and a lesson in e-mail. Johar was finally learning how to use things he'd always thought so modern and fast.
The bulk of the work was translating for Suryast's constant flow of patients. He worked alongside Dr. Garland, though he was timid about working intimately with a foreign woman. Nonetheless, Johar gave it his all.
The first patient was a girl as thin as camel thorn, whose cheekbones pushed through pallid cheeks. Johar translated Dr. Garland's question into Dari. “How long since your daughter has had fruits or vegetables?” he asked the young girl's mother.
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