Into the Sun

by Deni Ellis Béchard

  But in the encroaching, exterminating glory of his species, he was a broken filament, a struggling, inconsequential rodent. And yet he woke to the blast’s reverberations aching through him, filling him, the way he imagined the universe beginning, exploding, rippling outward.

  Daily, he stood before the mirror: the starved boy was disappearing, putting on weight. The gravitas of self-reflection and even sorrow made him older and more handsome. His eyes had lost their eagerness and credulity. He’d once believed in others without reason.

  To break his solitude, he began taking classes at a private technological institute, his level remedial — math and basic science. He befriended Fathima, who’d come from Sri Lanka to study there. Her English was perfect, and they met at the mall or had dinner together, and talked about books. She was a moderate believer, and when he told her his ideas, she listened but said that men must not become enamored of their ability to explain. His romance with her seemed, but for their accents and the color of her skin, like the TV shows he’d loved.

  Though he tried to stop justifying his survival and enjoy his life, he often could not help but remember what he’d done. He should have killed Frank, who treated Afghans like children, who believed his presence was needed for them to rise. But there had been too many hopes with Frank. Idris wanted to argue with him, to prove him wrong.

  In Dubai, whenever he heard Afghans speaking Dari or Pashto, he avoided them, glancing only to make sure he didn’t know anyone. He read the Afghan news online and people’s Facebook pages, though he never again logged into any of his former accounts. Tarzi had been returned, and Rashidi got Faisal back and sent him to America. Soon after, Tarzi was shot in the street while getting out of an armored SUV. Other than the mullah and Noorudin, the only people who knew about Idris’s involvement were Rashidi and Clay’s partner, and they all thought he was dead.

  Idris went to the mall to buy a present for Fathima’s birthday. He crossed the marble floors, past tourists from around the globe, past two sheiks in white robes and checkered headscarves, on their way with their families to Ralph Lauren Kids or the aquarium. In a mirrored wall, he saw himself, older and more resigned, and behind his reflection, in the crowd, a young Afghan man dressed in jeans and a beige hoodie, with familiar Hazara features. Idris pretended he hadn’t noticed, struggling to remember.

  Idris, the Hazara said — the voice was a woman’s, and not an Afghan’s at all — I need to speak with you.

  He didn’t move. He tried to place her, and then he did. He’d seen her occasionally among Justin’s friends, though he didn’t know where she was from.

  Not here, she told him. You’re in danger. Walk with me.

  He took a step. Why? From whom?

  For years he’d watched movies, never expecting to hear someone speak their lines in any way that would be relevant to him.

  People are watching you, she said. Please trust me.

  美智子

  We took our time through the crowds in the raised walkway back to the metro, caught the train and then jumped out at a station, ran across the platform, and traveled in the opposite direction. We did this several times, neither of us speaking. When Idris suggested we go to his place, I told him they knew where he lived. We left a station and took a taxi and went into a small café in a quiet neighborhood. I chose a table near a window that faced a largely deserted side street awash with harsh, late-morning light.

  “Who is after me? How did you find me?”

  “I want an exchange.”

  “What exchange?”

  “I want your story. I want to know how you escaped Kabul and why you killed them. Then I will tell you who is after you and give you all the files they have on you.”

  “And what will you do with this story — send me to prison?”

  “No. Nothing will happen to you.”

  “But you will write it then? You must be a journalist like all the others.”

  We stared at each other, my eyes looking into his to transmit by emotion what I knew would be difficult to unravel in words.

  “I will never mention your new name,” I said, “or even your old one.”

  “And how will you know if I am speaking the truth?”

  “I will be able to tell.”

  We considered each other a while longer before his expression softened and he nodded.

  “I will give you the truth,” he said, “because really, outside Afghanistan, who cares? You can tell the whole world. No one will do anything. So I will tell you, and then you will explain why you are here and you will help me if you can.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  Maybe he was thinking that he’d been caught after all and should at least give his version of the story. He had nothing to lose. If I were to divulge his existence, he would soon be in prison and, in all likelihood, dead. But once he began speaking, describing his childhood, his words broke into a flood. Like Frank, he’d been arguing within himself, justifying his actions.

  We sat for hours as he deciphered his decisions during his final weeks in Kabul. He annotated each of his choices with the experiences of his youth.

  “A future,” he said. “What would a person not do for a future? They had their dreams — Frank, Justin, and Clay — but I had mine, and they did not know that.”

  “And Alexandra?”

  “When something is set into motion, how can you stop it? No one is in control of this war. So much has been moving for so long. That is what I learned. We can grieve for those who are destroyed, but there is nothing else to do. She went to Afghanistan. She and her people were part of the war. She put her life in the way. I chose myself.”

  In the course of those hours, Idris became familiar, an individual not beholden to the laws of the family or the tribe. I sensed that he, like so many people I knew, no longer saw his life as a turn of the wheel, as the carrier of the next generation, but now lived as if his were the last, as one soon might be.

  “And what will you do now?” I asked.

  “I will stay here or move to another country, and maybe I will someday go back to Afghanistan. The Americans will be gone. No one will remember me, and everything that happened will be forgotten. This story, if it even matters, will be mine to tell.

  “So now,” he said, “you tell me why I should be afraid.”

  Steve’s interest in him finally made sense. If he could give the Afghan police Idris — someone who was supposed to be dead — he could draw the attention from himself. He could say he’d been investigating Idris as part of his K&R contract to get back Tarzi, that Idris was involved in the kidnapping and killed everyone in the car. But for that to work, Idris couldn’t give his side of the story. If Steve wanted exoneration, a dead body would be better than a living one.

  I explained all this, and with my laptop I showed Idris the photos.

  “Is your money at your home?” I asked.

  “That would be foolish.”

  “Do you need to go home?”

  “I do not. But I will.”

  He lifted his eyes, dark, shining irises framed by black lashes, absent of malice.

  “You think I am going to run, that I will spend my life escaping from country to country.” He shook his head. “Do you still have your Afghan cell?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I use it?”

  He took it and called a number. He spoke in Dari a long time. I made out repeated apologies and Steve’s name. He hung up.

  “Do you want to know what I have done and how simple it is?” he asked. He popped the back off my phone, took out the battery, and removed the SIM. He slid the phone to me.

  “I have called Rashidi and told him that Steve worked for Tarzi’s family and kidnapped Faisal. I said that I discovered who Steve was before I fled the country, that I had to leave because I would be killed. I told him I am a refugee, but
that I read about Faisal’s safe return. I told him that if Faisal is alive now, it is because of me. And I told him that Steve knows about Rashidi and the mullah, and his involvement with the attack, that Steve is going to reveal both me and Rashidi to the police, and that I gave my life for his family.”

  “So it is that simple?”

  “It is. Steve will be taken care of.”

  “And me?”

  “I would not go back to Afghanistan if I were you, or mention my name, or write it.”

  I said nothing. I’d known the danger this presented and, in a way, it was satisfying: to complete this journey that had existed until now in my imagination and face its challenges, to be part of the story that had almost taken my life and place it back into history. All I had left to do was determine its ending. I just had to stand and walk out of the café, into the light of the street.

  IDRIS

  Maybe this time the murder was merited, if such a thing was possible. He would have to decide later. He’d acted with tired determination, unsure of what he was defending. Rashidi’s voice — his astonishment and then his warmth, and his promise to deal with the man who’d kidnapped Faisal — had been reassuring, cathartic, like a sense of freedom, like sunlight on his skin — the way it would feel, he knew, when he finally got up and stepped out the door.

  Speaking to the young woman had felt strangely good, as though his story mattered, no matter how much he was afraid of being found out. He’d been surprised by the insistence in his own words, the tone he used as he justified himself — by how much it sounded like Frank.

  They’d been sitting in silence, his nerves ringing in his ears. The way they evaluated each other was tense, almost menacing, like a standoff in a desolate street somewhere, in front of a saloon maybe — that sort of thing.

  So, he said, you have finished your investigation?

  Yes. I think so.

  Then I would like to ask you a question.

  Please do.

  Am I guilty? Do you think, after everything you have learned and seen, that I am guilty?

  Slowly, appearing to hold herself in place, she looked him over as deliberately as he did each day before he went out, studying himself in the mirror: a young, grave man, his shirt open at the collar, ease in the cut of his hair. She lingered on the hints of sadness around his mouth, at the edges of his eyes.

  This thin, unreadable person before him would leave with a secret he could not contain, and everything in his past would not be neatly shut away. She must know this, must be afraid he would decide she presented too great a risk.

  He wanted her to stay, to speak and tell him her story now, her own reasons for being here.

  She inhaled, slightly lifting her chin, her gaze relaxing, as if she’d come to the end and whatever she’d needed or been holding was gone — and seeing her expression, he breathed too, believing suddenly and without reason that he would be safe, though uncertainty lingered in the muscles of his chest. But maybe there is always a little fear just before the moment of release.

  You are alive, she told him.

  He inclined his head faintly and closed his eyes.

  Yes.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the following people for their generous support during the writing of this novel: Austin Lin, Nancy Romer, Lew Friedman, Bonnie Huang, Mark Preston, Kevin Lin, Patrick Thomas, Joey McGarvey, Aoife Roberts, Joanna Demkiewicz, Abby Travis, Christy Edwall, Leza Lowitz, Shogo Oketani, Meredith Dees, Tristan Malavoy-Racine, Linda Pruessen, John Sweet, Emily Mockler, Alysia Shewchuk, Liz Sherman, Donna Brodie, Greg Foster, Dominique Fortier, Antoine Tanguay, Alim Remtulla, Ziaullhaq Maliky, Rauf Meraj, Emma Graham-Harrison, David Gill, and Shannon Galpin. I would like to thank my mother, Bonnie Ellis, for believing in the work I do, despite the risks.

  Thank you to the MacDowell Colony for a two-month residency during a crucial writing period and to the Writers Room in Manhattan for a quiet working space. I am also grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for financial support over the past decade.

  In the novel, I quote, in slightly altered form, the Twitter feeds of ISAF and a Taliban spokesman. On page 234, I quote Richard Slotkin’s Regeneration Through Violence. On page 392, Frank attempts to quote a line from Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing and largely fails.

  It would be difficult if not impossible to name all of the journalists whose writing helped inform my own research in Afghanistan. Among them are Jason Burke, Dexter Filkins, Emma Graham-Harrison, Nathan Hodge, May Jeong, and Graeme Smith.

  I am especially grateful to the many Afghans who shared their stories with me between 2009 and 2014, or who helped me during my stays there.

  At Milkweed Editions, I would like to thank Daniel Slager for his editorial support and for taking the risk to finance an unwritten book on the basis of several long conversations. At House of Anansi Press, I would like to thank Sarah MacLachlan and Janice Zawerbny, for her editorial guidance and patience in discussing the minutiae of the novel’s language.

  Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of the novel Vandal Love, winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book; Cures for Hunger, a memoir about growing up with his father who robbed banks; The Last Bonobo, winner of the 2015 Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism; and Kuei, je te salue, a book co-written in French about racism against First Nations people in Canada. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the LA Times, Salon, Le Devoir, The Walrus, National Post, and Foreign Policy. He has reported from India, Iraq, Colombia, Rwanda, the Congo, and Afghanistan.

  House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”