But Elle stayed sweet. I’d see the women other men had and hear the nagging. She never did that. She stayed a girl. I encouraged her to do the tattoos so I’d feel more like I was with a woman. I took her to the best parlor in Boston. She looked through the tattoos like a kid with a coloring book. It broke my heart. I felt maybe I’d done something wrong. Then she fell in love with the tattoo guy. Or that’s how it seemed. He was just nice to her, and she was simple. I went back and beat him up. It wasn’t his fault, but there are certain laws.
He lifted his hand again and rubbed his sternum. His eyes closed and his head hung and he began to snore. Clay took a stiff wool blanket and draped it over his shoulders. He then hung the gutted turkey from the eaves.
He put his few clothes and a blanket in a discolored duffel. His father slumped in the chair, his hands hanging toward his feet, a thinning patch on his crown. The muscular bulk of his back spread, the veins in his arms thick.
By dawn Clay was at a highway and got a lift until the early afternoon. He got two more rides and finally was driven well into the evening along Interstate 95 and left at an exit a half hour from Portsmouth. He slept in a stand of trees and woke with a tear in his jacket — he didn’t know why and worried it would make getting a ride difficult.
On his fourth day, he was in a semi, riding through Tennessee, the landscape tilting against the line of the interstate. His anger tasted metallic — unnatural, as if he’d taken medication on an empty stomach. It grew as he got closer to Lake Charles and considered how few options he had and how he would be seen upon his return.
The driver let him off, and the semi jerked forward, leaving a black slug of exhaust in the muggy air. Clay descended to the streets and crossed a bridge over a muddy arm of water onto a narrow island — crossed it, too, and stood on the bank of the ebbing Mississippi.
He threw his ruined jacket in, threw in everything but the cleanest pants and the black T-shirt from Demetrie. He’d arrive in Lake Charles as someone new, again.
He leaned his head back, his mouth open, the sunlight hot in his tears.
Part 6
United States and Kabul: February/April-May 2012
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美智子
Across the sullen water, the green of Arkansas glowed. I stood on the muddy shore, spring weeds already woody and faded, their tiny petals fallen.
After two weeks in Lake Charles, I’d traveled north by bus. In Kabul the dry earth had surprised me with its fertility — blossoming roses or pomegranate and mulberry harvests — whereas America’s wilderness seemed persistent and slovenly: along ditches, train tracks, and highways, behind bypasses and strip malls, between subdivisions and farms, like corridors through which the country’s imagined murderers wandered; nature’s whorish ravines everywhere.
Despite the land’s mythic danger, Americans rarely did more than talk. They asked where I was from, lectured me about what they knew of Japan from TV — love hotels, theme bars, and fast trains — and then spoke of themselves. While people in other countries had interests, Americans had missions: to own guns, eliminate taxes, guarantee privacy, spread the Gospel, or self-improve. In their stories, I sensed that all good required strife and they felt the need to be ready to confront every threat. When you had as much choice as they thought they did, maybe only extremes were meaningful. But I knew I wasn’t likely to understand these people any better than I did the Afghans. Still, as the writerly expats in Kabul have demonstrated, there is a market for writing about places in ways their inhabitants wouldn’t recognize.
In Aroostook, I spoke with the grandparents Clay never knew, ancient-looking though only in their sixties — hard-smoking and -drinking. They invited me to a game of horseshoes during which they hashed out what they could about his father and how he’d gone into foster care when they were teenagers. Like most, the little they knew was secondhand.
I met with Elle’s parents. They said the family should never have left — that traditions and generations had put them there. They had relatives among the first French in Maine, families who’d fled Canada after the 1837 rebellions. The rest emigrated south to work in the mills when Lewiston built the railroad spur that connected it to the Portland–Montreal line in 1873. They invoked history as if it could prevent the accelerating disintegration of their community.
I even spoke with Fred, calling him in Phoenix, where he’d married a young Mexican woman. His voice was soft and clipped with hesitation, so that he always sounded on the verge of stopping. In his words, I was startled to perceive Clay, his father, and even Elle as outsiders, part of a tribe whose French identity persisted but no longer referred to anything clear.
All spring, I traveled, keeping tabs on Tam through Facebook. She couldn’t post her activities during the embed but kept her profile active with photos from previous trips. There was an image of her and her friends running across a de-mined field in Bamiyan — the result of a drunken bet, though everyone knew (mostly knew) that the field was safe, just really muddy! She posted a photo of a Panjshiri guard berating an Italian news crew for having a snowball fight near Masood’s tomb, and mused on the expats’ lack of respect for Afghan values, the Western inability to understand the gravity of the Panjshiris’ sacrifice fighting the Soviets and the Taliban — how everything for us was tourism or gap-year self-enrichment, if we were lucky. She posted an overturned car burning on the roadside. Her friends didn’t appear to realize it was all old material: You’re my hero! How did you get so brave? Wipe out the Taliban so you can come home, beautiful!
Tam eventually broke up with me over Skype. I was grateful. This way it was all very casual. She said she didn’t do long-distance well. The emotional intensity we’d shared had vanished. She sounded professional and matter-of-fact, and we eventually began talking about her embed and how long it was taking to wrap up edits.
After we said goodbye, I realized I was no longer so concerned that Tam would write about the car bomb and the school. My novel would be different: about the craving for war’s transformative power and the way some people — needing to risk everything to validate what they believe — chase endlessly toward the frontiers of their lives. Behind this, there was something else, harder to pin down — Americans trying to redeem, with repeated triumphant stories, the chaos and the violence on which their nation was built.
Since I’d been alone in the US, the peacefulness of being away from Afghanistan had calmed me. The muscles around my heart began to release a tension I hadn’t perceived. Now, when I remembered the safe room, I experienced a growing sense of sadness and horror. I realized how little I’d slept in the past month, how often I got up to write manically until dawn. I began to fall into long, dreamless slumbers from which I woke with a sense of terror, sweating and shaking, feeling the bullet hurtle past my ear.
After the safe room, none of us had discussed the death of the house guard, or whether there had been only one. Now, even the slaughter of the insurgents there to kill us began to represent more than my survival. They gave meaning to the statistics I’d repeatedly read about poverty, unemployment, and the compromises Afghans made to support families and survive the winter. The Taliban recruited by capitalizing on the government’s nepotism and graft — on the hopelessness of the teeming youth. The country’s average age was eighteen, more than sixty percent of the population younger than twenty-five.
I was so ignorant of anything but my own experience that I didn’t even know if any of the Afghan Special Forces trying to save us had been wounded or killed.
Memories haunted me: walking out from the safe room, into the odor of burnt flesh, bodies slumped and smoking; peering into the burning car as if into a blackened crèche; the hand on the asphalt, its palm turned up like that of a Muslim in personal prayer.
Gradually, it seemed to me that I, too, had been hunting trauma — death, loss, solitude, alienation — convinced it could teach me, or that I could mas
ter pain and understand the taxonomy or syntax of suffering.
Once we have lived through violence, are we drawn back to it, like insects wandering into a world of artificial lights, tiny proximate suns, our ancient sense of navigation confounded, so that we proceed in circles until we annihilate ourselves?
JUSTIN
Justin woke gasping. All he remembered was light. It wasn’t mystical. It was the imprint of his injury, the flare, the splotched color: phosphenes and blood pulsing in the eye. It hadn’t happened in years, but the nightmare used to be common, making him question his faith — that dreams didn’t filter down from the divine but were memories of pain, the way injuries in muscle and bone leave traces.
The heater’s elements lit the bed. He lay on its edge, as close to the warmth as possible, wearing his jacket, wrapped in blankets, hands between his thighs.
For a year after losing his eye, he wanted only to sleep. He delayed college, and when he forced himself outside, he stayed close to home, studying his surroundings, trying to remember where things were, stumbling often into all he failed to see. The pain of the phantom eye incited his rage that others were fighting his wars.
He’d often examined his remaining eye, seeing the trajectory of steel pellet through the clarity of the cornea and aqueous humor and lens, puncturing the vitreous body and retina. Herbivores had eyes on the sides of their heads, their field of vision nearly all around so they could detect predators, who had eyes in front, the overlapping binocular vision giving them a sense of depth and allowing them to close in on targets. Justin was no longer a hunter. He couldn’t even bring himself to peer into the fleshy hole when he cleaned his prosthetic.
After his injury, the dream of light had come steadily for more than a year — and then sporadically, once or twice a month. One morning, he startled awake thinking of Judas and the power of betrayal to lay bare a truth: two boys in a forest, caught in a selfish contest, and through their sin, setting each other on their respective paths. He was in college then, and he went to the chapel and vowed to purify his injury with faith.
The dream left him after that. He excelled in his studies, working with eagerness and discipline. He ventured out more and more, gradually stripping his fear away.
Now the dream was back. From it, he had a recollection of Clay, aiming in the night, and somehow, it also seemed to be Idris.
The heater’s meager glow warmed Justin’s eyelids. A memory tugged at his mind, an impression he’d had at the restaurant. When he’d come out of the bathroom and seen Clay and Idris at the bar, the distance between them had seemed unnatural, as if they’d been forcing themselves to look away.
When he woke again, Sediqa was knocking on his door. Her makeup didn’t hide her pallor.
My uncles are watching the school, she told him. They suspect something.
He took his teaching materials and went downstairs, too angry to eat. The only real pleasure he’d had in the past week was the emails he’d exchanged with Alexandra. She’d written that expats who’d been here longer said the city was changing dramatically and a generation of young people were growing up with Western values. Reading her words, he’d felt that transformation was possible, that every little action created a shift. She was finishing up a report for a deadline, so they’d planned to meet Thursday.
Classes were mostly empty. None of the students had done their homework, and by the time Conversational English rolled around, Justin was surly. The slack-jawed young man with the smudged face was there again. Toward the end of the lesson, someone began playing with a soccer ball in the driveway, repeatedly kicking it against the exterior of the school’s wall.
After class, Justin went outside. Idris appeared to have just arrived and was standing there as Faisal and a girl competed for control of the ball. Frank had warned Justin never to reprimand Faisal since his father was one of the few people who donated to the school. Faisal was small, fifteen at most, with a clump of curly hair. He’d written an essay about how his father kept him in Afghanistan so he didn’t lose sight of his roots. Though he attended a private high school during the day, he came here afterward to improve his English and get a broader view of Afghanistan. Three girls who’d been in class joined in the game. They called for Idris to play, but he refused.
Idris, did you finish those worksheets? Justin asked. He’d found them online — challenging grammar exercises to keep Idris motivated.
I am almost done with them. They are very good. I am sorry I am slow.
That’s fine. Can I borrow your phone for a minute? Mine isn’t working.
Sure, Mr. Justin. Idris handed him a blue Nokia. Justin went upstairs and scrolled through the cell’s call log. The same number was there, over and over.
Idris, he said, when he returned the cell, I’m concerned you’re not committed to getting a scholarship. You haven’t been around much.
Sediqa will get it, Idris told him without emotion.
Justin struggled to make sense of why Idris and Clay would be in contact. An image from the dream came back to him: dim figures speaking, saying things he’d never know — the anxiety that there was so much he would never understand. And then the light flared and he woke.
Mr. Justin, are you okay?
Of course. I was thinking about the worksheets. We have to go over them. This is the level of grammar you’ll need once you’re in an American college.
The last volunteer teacher, Idris said, he told me that Americans hardly know grammar.
That’s not true. Besides, the standards are higher for foreign students.
Okay then, Idris said, I will do the worksheets. But for now I must study with my friends.
He started toward the door.
Are you forgetting your books? Justin asked.
Idris stopped, not moving, not even seeming to breathe.
You are right. They are in my … my room.
Justin followed him to the pantry. Inside, Idris slipped some papers into a textbook.
Thank you for reminding me. This is so important.
There was nothing in Idris’s voice: not mockery, nor anger. He quietly left.
As Justin stood, the footsteps of girls crossed the floor upstairs. He needed to think, maybe to sleep and find his way back to the dream, to understand where he’d erred — how his suffering and the faith that overcame it could have led him to failure.
CLAY
In the safe room, Steve slid the door closed and brought up the camera feeds, showing the empty yard and the street: two schoolboys walking home with matching black backpacks, a woman in a burqa hauling grocery bags, an old man bent double, his spine bulging above him as he reached ahead with his cane. Clay sat, and Steve poured the whiskey.
Nothing’s recording in here? Clay asked.
Steve’s girth had expanded since his bodybuilding equipment had arrived, his neck thick and sinewy.
Everything’s off, he said.
I may have a lead, Clay told him — an Afghan who’s friends with Rashidi’s son. He can get close to the family.
Clay chose his words carefully. He talked in the established circular way about how saving Ashraf Tarzi might require a sacrifice. He didn’t say the sacrificing of ethics.
I have a good feeling about Idris, he continued. He’s hungry. He’s willing to do what’s necessary.
If we don’t do something soon, Tarzi won’t survive, if he’s even still alive.
Each comment nudged the door open, neither of them outright saying how far they were willing to go. But Kabul was a place of conspiracies, so why not conspire? No matter what foreigners did, the Afghans would accuse them of dramatic and underhanded plots. Most believed the Americans funded the Taliban just to justify the occupation.
And what if Rashidi’s not involved with Tarzi’s disappearance? Steve asked.
It’s the only plausible explanation. Any other
kidnapper would have announced a ransom. Rashidi was in direct competition. They were bidding against each other.
So then Tarzi’s already dead.
People keep hostages for months — for years in this part of the world. It’s money in the bank. Killing a man like that would be a waste. They’re probably waiting for the right time. Rashidi will make Tarzi disappear for a few major contracts and then go for the ransom money. If we use Idris, we’ll have a quick answer. And if nothing comes of it, we wash our hands.
I doubt Tarzi’s family will pay us much more without a solid lead.
They sat in silence, like Quakers in congregation, awaiting the next revelation. When none was forthcoming, Clay stood.
You should get out more, Steve told him as he opened the safe room door. There’s this thing I do when I crash the expat parties. I spot the new female journalists, the independent ones who think they’re going to stumble onto a prize-winning corruption story their first week. I talk about all I know, the wrongdoing and double-handedness. Sometimes it works. There was one Aussie girl who thought she was living in an Ian Fleming novel while I was getting laid proper.
Clay made himself chuckle. I’ll keep it in mind.
The traffic was slow, streets crammed as people got off work, dust and exhaust gusting, wind lifting it so that it resembled the darkness of an oncoming front. Clay dodged cars on his motorcycle, following residential streets and alleys, his shocks pulsing as he left the asphalt.
Two years earlier, he and Steve had been saying that Kabul would soon be the Baghdad of ’07, but that hadn’t happened. The civilian surge was dwindling, and security companies had begun going elsewhere. Billionaires and autocrats were hiring them to train elite guards or manage private armies. He’d once read that the Roman Empire’s decline had been apparent in its increased dependence on mercenaries of dubious loyalty. But to make a comparison struck him as thin. The mercenaries pouring out of America might be the ronin of a decadent, warlike society, but they were less a sign of empire’s decline than business as usual. Regardless, he would never be one of those guys with an exotic assault rifle walking government employees into guesthouses while Western journalists went about on their own, smoking and gossiping.
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