In the Light of What We Know: A Novel

by Zia Haider Rahman

  * * *

  Suleiman had one of the AfDARI cars drop me off at the UN compound. He didn’t ask me how I’d be getting back, and I think now that he must have assumed that before the curfew I’d be offered a ride back by my hosts or that I’d be staying with them overnight. For my part, I gave it no thought.

  I asked for Emily at the main gates, and one of the guards went inside. The sounds of the bar spilled out onto the road, everything starting a little earlier, everything moved forward in the day because of curfew or maybe because the morning light here is intensely bright. Seven in the evening and there are cars parked outside, not all with UN markings, and the drivers are gathered again, smoking cigarettes. A few minutes later Emily appeared, coming from across the courtyard, her image outlined by the floodlights behind her. As she drew closer, she came into clearer view, but as she passed the bar exit, just at that moment when she might have made eye contact with me, she looked back, as she would have done, I thought, if someone had called out from behind her. I heard nothing. Her half-turned figure stood motionless for all of a moment; she was wearing a fitted shirt, narrowing below her shoulders and cinching her waist. What disturbed me was a sarong she wore below that, tightly wrapped around her, so snug against her body. Its deep red and amber colors reminded me of a summer dress I had bought her, a flimsy thing that bared as much as a summer dress can do—like a good essay, I remember a teacher once explaining, large enough to cover the important areas but small enough to be interesting. How I imagined her in that dress, glancing back at me over her shoulder. Imagined, I say, because she could not have carried out‚ let alone carried off‚ that simple gesture, for there was no levity, no play, in her. A summer dress for the woman who otherwise dressed conservatively, who dressed to make her indistinguishable from the career-driven, besuited, independent modern woman.

  But that sarong in those circumstances, holding her body, in that country, at that time, it offended me as much as a summer dress had delighted me in Hyde Park and on the stairs to her bedroom. I was mortified. Once again, and not for the last time, I felt I wanted to apologize to someone, to the Afghanis here and there, the drivers waiting by the gates, the attendants, the cleaners and cooks, the staff, the servant class.

  But even as my indignation grew, my feelings pulled me in another direction. I felt the same sweeping tenderness for Emily that I’d felt the day she first wore the summer dress I’d bought for her, when we took a turn in the park in the glow of a warm evening in London.

  That perhaps is the sum of it all, so far as that woman went—goes—that I always felt besieged by inconsistencies, not in her but in me, in my feelings for her, that those feelings split me asunder to leave me partitioned into people who hated each other, and to side with one was to scorn the other. You ask if I loved her and I tell you that I did but that I hated her, too. Paul Auster quotes the Memoirs of Chateaubriand in The Book of Illusions—in fact, the protagonist, Zimmer (from A to Z, Zimmer’s an alter ego of Auster), translates the work—and in the passage that Auster himself translates, the French nobleman writes: Man has not one and the same life. He has many lives, placed end to end, and that is the cause of his misery. Does Auster mean that a man’s lives run consecutively or concurrently, that he is condemned to live again and again, or that he is many and that his sentences run concurrently, alongside each other, placed end to end? In which sense? In the sense that each life within him rises as the last one falls, or in the sense of a man going forward as many selves contained in the same, standing shoulder to shoulder? I have thought it was the latter. I thought, as I still do, like the long-forgotten rabbi, that it is the tension between half brute and half angel that is the cause of a man’s misery. I hated Emily for the same reasons I loved her; the two feelings sprang from one well, so that a dress brought forth love and a sarong hatred. I hated myself, too, for loving her, for loving her for that which I hated about her. It is because of this continuing state of civil war that every act of love by one part of you is an act of betrayal to another part, and so it was, it had to be, that I was destroying myself by simply being with her and therefore having to take sides against myself.

  * * *

  In the compound, there was no kiss, no gesture of affection. Why should there have been? After all, we’d broken up, hadn’t we? I’d gone to Bangladesh and she’d already gone to New York. And this was a place of work. A year ago in New York, at the UN, the same. Meeting me downstairs before the security checks, not so much as a peck. Nothing to undermine the professionalism. Or was it because her colleagues thought she was single, available? I hated suspecting and hated even more to see myself as someone even a little suspecting.

  The preservation of professionalism. Now that is something I could understand. Even to believe, as I am certain she did, that given the sexual politics of the workplace, an ambitious woman must appear unattached—even this I could understand, I could respect, even if I didn’t agree or disagree with it. It is a rare character, the kind Nicky Amory had, that is able to assert and mobilize her sexuality while deftly enforcing in that same professional space the clarity of her commitment to her husband or her lover, the light touch that moves in two ways. It is a character that instantly wins my undying loyalty. It is self-restraint that applies itself before there’s anything to restrain. Emily just did not have that character. One must not expect too much of others.

  Joanna and Philip will be there, as will Maurice, she said.

  I didn’t know Joanna and Philip, I’d never heard of them, and as for Maurice, perhaps that was the same Maurice who headed AfDARI. Perhaps she thought I’d know the name from there. But if it was that same Maurice, I didn’t say what I guessed: Maurice was unlikely to show. In the UN bar the night before, Nicky had said that Maurice had cut short her meeting that day and that they’d rescheduled for the next. I’d expected Nicky to drop by when she came for her meeting and, if I wasn’t there, leave a message. She was obviously reliable, just that sort of person. But when I left AfDARI for the UN compound only half an hour earlier, there’d been no message from her. Her meeting with Maurice must have been scheduled for the evening.

  What’s for supper? I said instead.

  I don’t know, she replied.

  So who are they?

  Philip went to Winchester, she said.

  He’s not here?

  The school.

  I’m missing the point again, aren’t I?

  Maurice was at the Sorbonne.

  He’s over fifty?

  What makes you think that?

  Since 1968, other than an administrative entity, there has been no such thing as the Sorbonne.

  He’s our age.

  Anything else I should know about them, so I don’t put my foot in it?

  What do you mean?

  You know, Philip and Joanna are married. But not to each other.

  He’s divorced.

  Children?

  I think so.

  Good friends of yours, then? Not the children, I mean.

  Yes.

  Nice to have good friends possibly with children.

  Zafar, sometimes you say the funniest things.

  Well, I’m here all week and don’t forget to tip your waitress.

  * * *

  We were halfway across the courtyard when there was a shout from behind us: Emily!

  It was Crane. He was staggering out of the side exit from the lounge, propped up by someone else. It wasn’t even eight o’clock. He pressed his arms against a wall and crouched over. I heard him vomit. Beyond him, on the other side of the gates, the drivers stood silently, watching.

  He’s rather loud, said Emily.

  A loud American. Who would have thought? I said under my breath.

  Sorry?

  What do you want to do?

  Let’s get inside, she said.

  I hated this place. I hated it through and through. What was I really doing here? Hassan Kabir had asked me to come, but one day in and still I had no messag
e from him or from the staff at Bagram. What am I doing here? As I stepped forward against the contrary impulse within me, I wondered if I had asked the question aloud. Emily was giving me a puzzled look.

  From the direction of Crane, out of the darkness emerged the figure of a man, the one, I assumed, who’d struggled to bring Crane out. Crane was now gone, or at least his voice was.

  Hello, Emily.

  In the half-light, I could see him well enough. But he moved in the shadow cast by the floodlights behind me, my shadow, not Emily’s. When he came close enough, he strained to make out my face. My black hair, dark skin, and dark suit would have made it difficult for this man, I thought—and for Crane, for that matter—to see me. He was blond and handsome, his hair cut short, stubble roughening the edges of his youthful complexion. His khaki jacket was open and its collar was upturned. The pockets of the breast and waist were buttoned down, all four. There is method there, I thought. It was a jacket design with pedigree, tested and proven: Even the clothes have a colonial descent. His shirt collar was open, two, maybe even three buttons, so that a twist of jewelry in the nape of the neck, a gold chain perhaps, caught traces of light. He couldn’t have been more than thirty. Few expat men and women with families would do these development jobs, Hassan Kabir had explained to me back in Bangladesh. Marriages don’t survive the strain. What strain? Let’s be precise about this. The strain of infidelities within a band of danger junkies charged up every hour of the day with power, horny at the threat from dark alien powers, ancient and obscure, and aroused by the power they themselves command, which they could never wield back home in their established democracies.

  Zafar, this is Maurice.

  Emily introduced me.

  I noticed the order because the usual pattern in social situations is for the new arrival to be greeted and then introduced to present company: Hello, Maurice. This is Zafar. But I could make nothing of it. Sometimes, a phallic object is just a phallic object.

  Hello, Zafar. Pleased to meet you.

  We shook hands, his firm and decisive, mine its usual rather feeble thing. Though I cannot know, I think I have never felt present at the moment a male sizes me up. I am only observing. Which is not to say that it is an unimportant moment. Quite the reverse. When a handshake has a sure and steady grip, it’s filled with the significance of how someone wants to be read, how he wishes to be regarded, even if it comes in the form of ingrained habit.

  I’m sorry for the disturbance, he said in an accent that rolled the r into the beginning of a gargle at the back of the throat. Bloody Americans, he added.

  He motioned his head in the direction of the gates. Crane was no longer there. Maurice held a bottle of champagne by its neck. Had he just bought it at the UN bar or had he brought it from elsewhere, unbagged, unveiled? In New York, liquor sold off the premises has to be packaged in a brown paper bag, but not here, far from the puritans.

  I suppose that’s the price of having a bar, he added, referring to Crane’s behavior.

  But who pays? I asked under my breath.

  Pardon?

  Indeed.

  We continued toward one of the residential buildings.

  Where are you staying, Zafar?

  If Maurice had seen me at AfDARI, he certainly did not recognize me. If he’d been notified of my stay, perhaps he didn’t recognize the name.

  I’m staying at AfDARI, I said, in one of the guest rooms.

  His brow furrowed and there passed over him a look that lacked a precise definition. It contained puzzlement but also included recognition, a troubled element, identification, and even deduction. Something to do with me being at AfDARI? Was the crux of the anxiety to do with Crane or with Emily or with something else altogether? And in the midst of those fusing facial expressions, I wondered if I had perceived in him a question, too, What did I know?, though nothing of what I perceived could be relied upon, so complete was the confusion, his perhaps but mine certainly.

  Barely had we entered the apartment and Emily completed the introductions to Joanna and Philip, when Maurice excused himself.

  I’m afraid I cannot stay. The French ambassador, he has called me away and … well … you know. But I wanted to make you a small gesture.

  He handed over the bottle.

  There was the expression of regrets all round, and he took his leave. When he shook my hand, he made no eye contact.

  The room was large enough for two beds, a small sofa, two chairs, and a table to one side, covered in files and papers. A naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling, and a large Afghani rug lay in the center. There isn’t anything remotely interesting to say about Joanna and Philip. I’m sure they are nice enough people, but I found myself in no mood to chat, no mood for conversation, either honest or polite. Philip was an earnest man in his late forties with the squat physique of a wrestler. He was thinning on top, and on his face lay a moist sheen that didn’t quite coalesce into sweat. He tried his civil best to get the conversation going, but I’m afraid to say I didn’t help. Technically, it was a dinner party, for there was dinner.

  I asked them both what their work involved and how they’d got into the development business, and if I don’t go into that now, it’s because it bored me then to hear it. Joanna and Philip didn’t ask me what had brought me to Kabul. Had they detected my lack of interest? Or did they not ask because Emily had given them an explanation—did she represent me as her ex-boyfriend or her boyfriend?—or was it because she’d told them that she’d asked me to come—were they that close to her?—or was it because she’d told them that the UN rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan had asked me to come—but how would she know that?—or was it because there were already numberless new arrivals in Kabul, would-be development wonks, skulking about the city waiting for a Western development agency to throw some meat their way, and they, like all hyenas, needed no explanation when the smell was in the air? In those days, where else could anyone want to be?

  Joanna wanted to know more about what I was doing in Bangladesh. That I was living there, Emily must have told her. I said that I was working on reforming the Bureau of NGO Affairs.

  That can’t win you any friends, said Joanna.

  Luckily, I’m rather antisocial, I replied.

  I probably should have been more gracious. Probably I should have smiled.

  What does the Bureau of NGO Affairs do? asked Philip.

  NGOs have to be registered with the bureau, and foreign donors can only send money to NGOs in Bangladesh with the bureau’s blessing. So bureau officials hold up the process and demand bribes. There are activists in Bangladesh trying to push through reforms that would change the processes and eliminate some of the opportunities for corruption.

  Who are you talking to?

  Quite a lot of people in government and in Parliament want to see change, but they can’t speak out easily—they’d be fired of course, and then they’d have no influence whatsoever. The Bangladeshi constitution actually entitles a party leader to expel her own MPs from Parliament without cause, something you don’t see in most parliamentary democracies.

  Is that true?

  I don’t know. It’s what I’ve been told over and over and what I’ve read in the constitution. There’s a curious provision originally put there at a time when coalition governments were hugely unstable because of the large number of political parties. A single MP could cause havoc simply by threatening to switch to another party. The point of the constitutional provision was to stop self-serving, wayward MPs before they destabilized government and forced elections every ten days. When the provision was adopted, I don’t imagine anyone had given thought to perverse consequences down the road.

  Why don’t they change it now?

  It’s a constitutional provision, which means it’s hard to change, and for obvious reasons party leaders love it.

  But you say some of these people will talk to you?

  Yes. Some civil servants and politicians, braver than most, though not in publi
c yet.

  And what kind of changes are you talking about?

  Nothing that hasn’t been thought of before.

  Such as?

  I’m sure this can’t be all that interesting to you.

  No, it is. Go on, said Joanna.

  Emily said nothing but just stared at me. She always fixed her stare on me if I was party to the conversation. I used to feel rather flattered by it, at the beginning taking it for admiration, as a man might do, but I soon began to wonder if she stared at me out of a curiosity, even a variety of perverse delight. Emily never said a controversial thing in her life, always the voice of moderation and good temper, politic and circumspect to perfection, and it occurred to me that her staring was evidence of some lascivious pleasure in the ever-present threat, whenever I was talking, that I’d drive a bulldozer over social norms.

  If a donor wants to send a hundred thousand dollars to a Bangladeshi NGO, they have to submit paperwork to the bureau before they can do so. The bureau then goes through a rather mechanical process to make sure everything’s in order, ostensibly, for example, to make sure the money’s not going to fund some terrorist outfit and so on. What happens in practice is that some or other official holds up everything. The donors or NGOs know that a bribe smoothes things out. A simple piece of legislation could make quite a change, a bill introducing a deeming provision in the statute books, to be precise. If the bureau doesn’t inform the donor in, say, three months of any concerns it has, then the relevant paperwork would be deemed by law, the new law, to have been processed and the donor can go ahead and send the money in the safe knowledge that they’re in compliance.