Into the Sun

by Deni Ellis Béchard

You have something to say?

  No, I don’t think so.

  Don’t bullshit me. What’s your name?

  Idris.

  Nice to meet you, Idris.

  Thank you, Mr. Clay.

  Call me Clay. So, what’s on your mind?

  The waitress brought another beer and went back into the kitchen. A pan scraped and banged against the stovetop. A knife moved rapidly on a cutting board. The door swung closed.

  This businessman you mentioned.

  Ashraf Tarzi?

  Yes, that one. I have a second cousin who was a police officer under the Taliban, and —

  What? He’s a Talib now?

  No, not at all. It was just a job.

  Story of my life. But he still knows people?

  Yes. Maybe he can help.

  I doubt it, but I’ll give you my number. Maybe we can hire him from time to time.

  Clay took out his cell, waiting to hear how Idris would present himself as the hardworking young Afghan Clay had mentioned needing. Idris’s eyes were desperate, an expression more common than street signs in Kabul: hungry for a job, or frustrated, or angry, or all three. Clay couldn’t save anyone, but taking something from Justin — even a driver or a student — might feel good.

  There’s something else, Idris said.

  A sister in Al Qaeda?

  No. There’s a boy in our school. He goes to American University, but he takes English classes with me. His father is Kamal Rashidi.

  The name rings a bell, Clay lied. In fact, he knew more about this man than he did about his own father.

  He is very powerful, Idris said. He owns many businesses, and he and the other man you mentioned, Mr. Tarzi, they had a fight about construction contracts. It was in the papers. Tarzi accused Rashidi of bribing the government people so he could get contracts, even though he was overcharging.

  That’s common enough, isn’t it?

  There was going to be an investigation. But Tarzi disappeared. The journalist said Tarzi was threatening to investigate Rashidi.

  Well, maybe we should track down that journalist. How about you give me your number?

  Idris rattled the digits off, and Clay punched them in. He shoved the phone in his pocket. The bathroom door swung open, and Justin walked out, rubbing his throat as if someone had tried to strangle him in the shitter.

  These had always been Clay’s gifts — prescience and a sense of timing.

  Justin seemed determined now to make the conversation tense, but Clay wasn’t going to talk about his eye. The match was perfect, the prosthetic only a little sad.

  There were basically two types of people: those who knew themselves from the outside in, and those from the inside out. Justin was the sort who stuck to a plan, gave practiced replies, and wondered later, when everything was going wrong, why his gut had been boiling. Clay lived with a visceral awareness, the tension in his solar plexus and his skin like an advance warning system. But now, after he and Justin said goodbye, as he rode his motorcycle over roads unlit but for the occasional lamp above a gate, his head remained busy.

  He’d wrapped his face with a scarf, and to keep from standing out, he didn’t wear a helmet. He veered onto his street, his mind snapping back to clarity as he made an obstacle course of the uneven surface, standing and kicking into the pedals to right himself.

  Outside his gate, the earth, cut by motorcycle tracks, looked like gills. He drove in and parked under the overhang. The guard hurried out, always too late, and then returned to the guardhouse, its doorway glowing with the battered light of a cheap TV.

  Clay’s apartment was on the third and final floor, empty but for a bed and a desk, a few reading lamps and some weights. Outside his windows, neighboring compounds spread out like magnified skin cells he’d seen projected in an army classroom as a medic explained burns. His room offered the protection of anonymity. The little barbed wire on the walls was unconvincing, for show, like a Western girl in a headscarf.

  In the dark, he started a fire. Flames writhed inside the open bukhari, shadows flickering along the walls, calling to mind people darting away from a searchlight. In the cold air, the fire’s warmth caressed his face with the fleetingness of autumn sunshine.

  He pulled off his boots and lay down. He knew meeting Justin would be unpleasant, but Clay had wanted to see what he’d created: a prisoner of conscience. It was no mystery that people like Justin were attracted to places like Kabul because they felt guilty that others were doing their country’s dirty work.

  Over the phone, Elle had told Clay that she’d briefly met Justin in the street and urged him to make peace. She’d asked Clay to do the same, but he hadn’t been interested until she told him where Justin would be teaching: AOF — Academy of the Future. The absurdity of the name had struck him when he was doing his research. Luck like this didn’t come often. The school was on a list of places people in Rashidi’s family visited.

  And yet, as Clay spoke to Justin, he was surprised by his urge to hurt him. His anger had always been there, making him quick to spot injustice, needing to be purged with exertion. At the bar, he became irritated by the very sight of Justin — his gym build and the precautionary beard that failed to hide his flushed cheeks and soft lips. Idris wasn’t the kind of kid who belonged in a pretentiously named school. Clay had been that boy wanting out.

  He sat up and put his elbows on his knees. Risen above the mountains, the moon lit the city: the slots of roads abandoned, the Afghans and expats asleep or watching pirated DVDs. Afghanistan taught people to live on the inside. That’s why he was curious to find out what Idris could bring him. Hungry, fucked, or just fucked over by those who were supposed to teach him the way, Idris had no doubt learned that everything had a price if you weren’t afraid.

  Clay took his cell and typed a message.

  Talk to Rashidi’s son. Get to know him. Call me if you find anything, but don’t tell anyone about this. I can’t pay you if you do. Sound fair?

  He hesitated between Got it? and Sound fair? He guessed the boy was hungrier for fairness than authority. And if he told Justin, it wouldn’t matter. Clay wasn’t breaking the law or even any code he himself ascribed to.

  He lay back. He’d noticed how — when he stopped moving forward and stayed too long in one place, when the future’s gravity lost its purchase — the past took hold. It was the sort of thing that would never have crossed his mind before his discharge.

  JUSTIN

  I do not think it is me, Idris said as he drove through an empty roundabout.

  It is I, Justin told him. That would be correct. Most people say it is me.

  Thank you. Is it better to be formal?

  That depends. It is me probably sounds more natural. What were you saying?

  That I do not think it is I Frank dislikes. It is bigger than me.

  Justin resisted correcting him again. He had vertigo, the city like swirling smoke around his head, his anger the only weight in his body.

  What does Mr. Frank think will be Afghanistan’s future? Idris asked. The women will not be choosing it. Even if we have a woman president, men will fight unless they are given education.

  Justin had meant to buy food at the supermarket Frank had told him about. The school was on Kabul’s outskirts, and Frank’s cook came three times a day, making hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, or rice and potatoes that she thickened with vegetable oil. There was never meat or fruit or green vegetables. As Idris talked about his goal to study science in America, Justin interrupted to ask if they could stop at the store. He didn’t feel like coming back into the city tomorrow.

  Yes, Mr. Justin. The food at the school is not so good. I know.

  Idris steered them onto another anonymous street and slowed to ease the tires in and out of ruts. Compound walls locked in the narrow lane, razor wire streaming against the sky.

&
nbsp; After 9/11, Justin had understood that evil was real, and later that his own evil had come through his eye. He’d stood like King David lusting over Bathsheba, although Elle had not been innocent and he’d not acted brutally. But he had learned the stakes of spiritual warfare — that he would pay the consequences if he were weak before the devil’s temptations. Since his arrival, he’d allowed himself to be irresolute.

  He held his breath before each exhalation until his chest felt hard, the way a fasting body becomes taut, percussive in its awareness, a hint of rage in its focus. Military discipline had never lost its appeal: its minimalism carved determination into men, their muscles swift with perfected motions.

  The supermarket, Finest, was a tall building with an armed guard. Idris waited in the car as Justin went to the entrance. The guard frisked him and sent him down a corridor to a metal door, where he was let inside.

  Beneath the fluorescents, foreigners pushed shopping carts: an older, heavyset man with a gray crew cut, several women in their thirties and forties.

  In the anemic light, the aisles looked like a narrow warehouse: frozen meats, spices, jars of artichoke hearts and pesto, everything labeled in both English and Arabic, and shipped out from the United Arab Emirates. Justin bought peel-top canned fruit, beef jerky, mixed nuts, apples and oranges. There were second, third, and fourth floors for electronics, appliances, and clothes, almost entirely from China.

  A woman entered the aisle.

  Justin? Alexandra smiled. He coughed into his fist and said nothing.

  Are you okay? she asked, nearing him tentatively.

  I’m fine, he said.

  The air here is so bad. It must be hard to arrive sick. How is the school?

  It has potential. How about where you’re working?

  Potential, she repeated, the word long in her accent, each syllable given equal attention. They stood before each other as if they hadn’t walked together at night.

  He angled himself away slightly, closing his eyes to cough. In Houston or even Lake Charles, he’d hardly notice her, but now she seemed like the only woman, shipwrecked here with him. Her amber irises had vanished again, her pupils mirroring his head — a tiny bearded icon. He pictured his own eyes, one small and bloodshot, the other limpid, impassive.

  The school will require work, he said. It’s what God wants.

  God? All problems come from God. Religion is such an American thing. It has never made sense to me, for such a modern country.

  Her cheekbones and the corners of her eyes tilted up. His own ran straight, but Clay’s conferred a remorseless air on him. In college, Justin had read that in nineteenth-century Europe, people believed a downward slant to the eyes indicated a criminal nature.

  Someone is waiting for me, he said. I need to go.

  She nodded. Goodbye then.

  He went downstairs. There was a brief final pull in his gut, the acknowledgment of his desire. A second later even that was gone. He paid for his groceries as foreigners went outside carrying white bags, winter air blowing past the metal door.

  美智子

  Downtown, at sundown, throngs of people moved in silhouette through the packed traffic: turbaned heads and beards, the uniform shapes of burqas, men in Western clothes with keffiyehs at their throats, or on motorcycles creeping through the congestion, knees almost brushing fenders. Headlights came on here and there. Near the gutter, a legless beggar worked a crank with his arms, turning the wheels of the platform on which he traveled. At a checkpoint, I passed two police hunched over a smartphone laughing, their faces washed in pale light. Another smoked, pelvis and belly thrust out, his thumb hooked in the strap of his Kalashnikov.

  This was nearly two months before the safe room, when Tam and I had been dating only a few weeks and I still grappled with fear, each excursion an act of bravery. The sky seemed to tilt, sloping into the eastward darkness above the rooftops. The branches of the trees on her street ran in spate against the west’s dusty blue.

  At Tam’s house, I slipped through the metal door of the compound into relative quiet. The guard wished me shab bekheir before retreating into his room. I glimpsed the staticky pulsations of his TV, a flowery electric kettle on the floor, and orange toshaks, the cushions Afghans slept or rested on.

  Tam’s two dogs came from the terrace between the leafless rosebushes and sniffed my shoes. I worked my fingers through the yellow fur beneath their ears, the city’s dust puffing around my hands.

  Inside, Tam was placing a bowl of shaved Parmesan on the table set for two, with green ziti and tomato sauce.

  “When you walk in public, do people notice you?” she asked. She came over and kissed me. “I wish I could pass as an Afghan.”

  “There are redheaded Afghans.”

  “It’s not my appearance. It’s something else. The way we walk gives us away.”

  “It’s also the way Westerners look around. Americans have forgotten the use of peripheral vision,” I explained. “How you take in the world changes how others see you. Afghan women are cautious. A gaze isn’t innocent. It’s an invitation.”

  “How can you resist looking?”

  “I don’t, but it’s a patient kind of looking. I let the information filter in from the corners, or I take it in when I check for traffic. Besides, I’m as tall as a man here.”

  “Is that why you cut your hair like that?”

  “Yes. It’s multifunctional.” I tipped my head so that my hair fell from behind my ears. “Now I’m a woman.” Then I pushed it back again.

  She went into the kitchen and brought out charcuterie on a wooden cutting board, peppered salami alongside strips of Parmesan rubbed with raw honey. We sat, and as we ate, she told me about a journalist who had to repeatedly go through checkpoints to get his visa renewed. Though he was used to being groped during searches, today an officer had frisked him, whistled, and pinched his nipples. She laughed, touching my arm.

  As she served the pasta, I asked her how many housemates she had. She said Alexandra was the only one at the moment; the other bedrooms were vacant.

  Even cooked, the tomatoes were firm, from the Pashtun south or Pakistan, the basil fragrant and a little woody, wild and seedy tasting. For dessert, there was a small block of Mexican chili chocolate that snapped and splintered under the knife, served alongside contraband cherry compote and dense rich cream.

  Outside, the gate clanked. The guard had turned on the terrace light unnoticed while we were eating. A shadow passed across the curtains, the door opened, and Alexandra crouched, putting down her groceries to take off her boots. Tam called to her and asked if she’d like to join us for dessert.

  “No thank you. I don’t want to disturb you.” Alexandra came to the table. She spoke precisely, as if she’d worked hard to chisel her consonants free of her birth language.

  “You seem upset,” Tam said. “Are you okay?”

  I’d noticed Alexandra’s slight discomfort but thought it was because she’d walked in on our dinner.

  “I was offended,” she told us, and then added quickly, “not by you, but …”

  “Sit down,” Tam told her.

  Alexandra put her groceries on the counter. She came and sat, crossing her arms on the edge of the table, the way an expectant student or a chess player might.

  “Justin,” she said, “that idiot.”

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “I thought I did too.”

  In a brief aside, Tam filled me in on Justin and Alexandra, but just for show: after we’d watched them leave L’Atmos, Tam had dubbed him the Mullah and we’d wondered what war-zone grail he was seeking.

  “The one time I saw him,” Tam said to Alexandra now, “he seemed unfriendly.”

  “That’s the way his face is. I’m pretty sure he’s missing an eye. But there’s so much going on under the surface.”

 
She described the scene in the grocery store, him standing there, seeing her and saying nothing. She was sure he would have walked away if she hadn’t addressed him.

  “New people can be like that,” Tam said as she went to get a third dessert plate. “They’re in shock. Afghanistan stirs things up, and it takes them a while to figure out who they are here.”

  She brought Alexandra cream, compote, and chocolate.

  “Michi changes her voice depending on what she’s reading or who she’s talking to,” Tam explained. “I wasn’t sure how to interpret her at first. I’d wait and listen, and then, after a while, she’d become familiar.”

  Her observation surprised me. I smiled to indicate it was true.

  “Maybe she’s just responding to your accent,” Alexandra told Tam.

  “I think there’s more than that. I can see the chaos go away.”

  Alexandra hesitated before talking about Justin again, the care with which he moved, his cautious way of touching things. “He’s less entitled than most,” she said.

  “Do you feel a real attraction to him or does he just seem safe?” Tam asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Her interest hinted at an inner conflict that long preceded Justin, and even when I saw them together later, the distance between them was almost material, like an invisible body, a space painted on a canvas between two figures.

  We picked at the remaining chocolate, pressing our fingertips against the slivers to salvage every grain of taste. I asked Alexandra about her work, and she explained how men’s crimes — not just in Afghanistan — often resulted in the punishment of the women who were the victims.

  She sat straight in a gray shalwar, poised, archaic in her features, Latin in her way of proclaiming, almost regal. I pictured her body under her clothes, the strength and beauty that abnegation can give in youth. I sensed in her what I felt in Tam and knew in myself — the desire to have the courage to confront every fear.

  After Alexandra said good night, Tam and I piled the dishes for the maid who came each morning. Not until we were in her room did I notice the distance between us. She seemed unlit; it was an impression I had sometimes, moving between people, between countries — even from one idea to the next — as if I’d looked into the sun and my eyes had to recalibrate.