Godsend

by John Wray

  —He wants to be rid of you, of this much I’m certain. You make him uneasy.

  —Rid of me how?

  —Your best hope is to convince him you’re useless. Useless to him but of some modest use to me. Nazir is a cunning man, and an artful general, but he’s never even been to Kabul. You’re a mythical being to him, little brother, an unknown quantity, a complication in his mind. This is a man who loves simplicity and truth.

  —That’s not the sense I’ve got from him so far.

  His grip tightened. —Exactly this, he said. —Exactly this is the thing that you must disavow. Abdullah Nazir is your general, your lord and master, and you must abase yourself before him. He is a god whom you must beg for clemency. Do you hear?

  She waited for him to let her go before she answered. —There is no god but God, she said. —And Muhammad is His Messenger.

  * * *

  All the next morning she waited but no summons came. When at last her patience gave out she rose from her cot, her body heavy with foreboding, and walked back through the grove and across the parade ground, where even then a few recruits were trotting wretchedly in place. The stamped metal doors of the depot hung open and a colossus of a man with an Uzi tucked into his belt like a toy pistol stood between them with his huge arms loosely folded. He was well-known to her and she walked up to him and salaamed. The Uzi was roughly at the level of her shoulders and she imagined herself pulling it free before he could react, then jumping clear of his arms and disengaging its safety, but beyond that her imagination failed her. He smiled and returned her salaam.

  —God’s greetings, Ehsannullah Sattar. May you never tire.

  He nodded to her amicably, as if to thank her for her visit, then recrossed his great arms. —God’s greetings to you, Little Executioner.

  —I was told to come here, she said. —Here to you. At this hour.

  —Yes?

  —I was told to report to the general after second prayer.

  —To the general, he repeated.

  —That’s right.

  —And who gave you these instructions?

  She bit her lip a moment. —Ziar Khan.

  —Ah! Ziar Khan, said Sattar. —In that case, little brother, pass on.

  The bulk of the depot was burned out and roofless, a bomb-shattered ruin, and she followed the only passable corridor to a door inscribed with the names and deeds of long-dead mujahideen. Characters had been scratched into the wood with knives and bayonets and bullet casings, some carefully, some hurriedly, and blacked in with soot from the floor and the walls. She stared at the names, letting her vision go slack and out of focus, watching the letters curl and writhe together. No language on earth was more beautiful to look at, more beautiful to speak. The beauty of austerity. The beauty of no quarter. Tears stood in her eyes when she knocked on the door.

  It came open at once and the man she still knew only as the driver beckoned her in without interest, as though she’d long been expected, then shut the door firmly behind her. The room she had entered was stifling and dark. Pipe smoke curled in the half-light. She made out Nazir’s slumped silhouette behind a desk in the corner and asked him to pray for her. He made a queer chuckling sound and said nothing.

  —They said to come, she managed to mumble in her graceless Pashto. —To come to you and talk.

  —Is that so, he answered in Arabic. He hummed to himself. —Were you also told that you might choose the hour?

  Someone else was in the room. In an armchair behind her. She fought the urge to turn her head and look.

  Nazir leafed deliberately through the papers on his desk. She had never seen him without his crutches and it was apparent now that his entire left side was palsied. His left hand shook badly and as she watched him riffling with excruciating slowness through that loose heap of maps and documents the compulsion to dart forward and snatch them from his hands was all but irresistible. She was being punished, she was sure of it, but for what transgression she could only guess. For being undisciplined, perhaps, or for being insubordinate, or for being American. Perhaps simply for the general’s amusement. Perhaps for the amusement of the man she couldn’t see.

  —I’ve come about the Helpers, she said finally. —About the new company.

  —I see. He pulled a stack of passports toward him. —I thought you came because I wished to see you.

  —I want to fight with Pashtuns, she told him in Pashto. —Not with Arabs and Chechens. I want to fight with you.

  The smile he gave her then was almost shy. —With me? he said in Arabic. —With me, Suleyman? Not with another?

  —Let me stay with my company, General. I may be worthless to you but Brother Khan will have me.

  —Will he? Why?

  —I don’t know. She took a breath. —He seems to think I bring him luck.

  —I see. You are a luck-bringer to him. Taveez.

  —Taveez? she said. —I haven’t learned that word.

  —A fetish, the man behind her said in English.

  She would have known him by his cultured voice alone. He sat wrapped in a shawl in the room’s dimmest corner and his white beard streaked with henna seemed to draw and trap the light. He looked younger than he had in that echoing white room in Peshawar and he sat with his legs folded beneath him and his amber cat’s eyes shining and expectant.

  —If you are a luck-bringer to our brother Ziar Khan, said Nazir, —you might be one for us as well. Perhaps I’ll take you with me to Kunduz.

  She willed herself to turn back to Nazir. —Only God brings victory, General. I know that very well. I’m not sure what Brother Khan sees in me.

  —You brought no luck to the man who guided you across the mountains, Suleyman Al-Na’ama. None at all. You brought the opposite.

  She bowed her head. —Yes, General.

  —Or to the other American. The one in Mansehra. The one who is dead.

  She opened her mouth and closed it.

  —What was that, Suleyman?

  —It’s true, General. I’ve brought no one else luck.

  —What is the nature of the luck you bring to Ziar Khan, precisely? said the man in the corner. —You have not yet fought together, I believe.

  She shook her head.

  —I thought not. What then?

  —You would have to ask him, mu’allim.

  —The boy calls me mu’allim, the man said to Nazir. —I’ve told him I’m not any mullah. But he persists in his error. A most stubborn boy.

  Nazir’s drooping eyes seemed to brighten. —No doubt he means it as a gesture of respect.

  The henna-bearded man sat forward, resting his delicate hands on the arms of the chair. —Do you remember what I told you, boy, when we last spoke together? About certain men in the city of my birth? In Kandahar?

  —I remember.

  —This luck that you bring Ziar Khan. He nodded to her. —Is it luck of that kind?

  —No, mu’allim.

  —Swear it, boy, said Nazir.

  —I swear before God and all His angels it is not luck of that kind.

  Silence fell. The old man stroked his beard and studied her. She could hear the sound his nails made as he passed them through his hair.

  —I still can’t put a name to it, he said at last. —This quality you have.

  —What quality? Nazir said before she could speak.

  The man shook his head and said nothing. He wound the red tip of his beard around his thumb.

  —Come forward, Nazir said. —Come here to this desk.

  She crossed the floor in three small steps. A wedge of light fell from a soot-coated window and the desk had been turned sideways to receive it. Nazir squinted up at her briefly, as though she had only now come into focus. Then he coughed into his fist and unrolled the largest of the maps and weighted it with a passport at each corner.

  —You can read?

  She nodded.

  —Read in English, he means, said the man in the corner.

  —I can, General.
<
br />   Nazir jerked his chin at the map. —And this?

  —How may I serve you, General?

  —This, he said again, more sharply. —This is English?

  She bent carefully over the desk while Nazir moved his palsied hand from point to point, name to name, and waited haughtily for each translation. A map of the city of Kunduz and its environs by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. They went through it in detail, from the upper left-hand corner to the lower right, and she took great pains to answer him precisely. When they’d finished Nazir pushed away from the desk with a sigh.

  —There now, little brother, said the man in the corner. —And to think you told the general you were of no use to him.

  She flinched as if he’d slapped her. He’d outplayed her so quickly. In her tent and on her way to the depot she’d run through her argument time and again, rehearsing her tone of voice, even her posture, and none of it had made the slightest difference.

  —Perhaps it is well that you interrupted us, Suleyman the Graceful. Perhaps it is auspicious. The old man made a gesture to the driver. —We were about to have our tea. Will you partake?

  She hesitated only for an instant. —I’d be grateful.

  —Tea if you please, Abu Farq.

  The driver stepped out into the hall and returned with a silver tea service balanced on a crimped metal lid labeled R C FIRST AID. Nazir and his guest sat smiling at her blandly. No one will believe this, she found herself thinking. Not even Ziar.

  —We were discussing the Helpers division when you knocked, said the man in the corner. —But we were discussing it in the broad sense of the term.

  —I’m not sure what you mean, mu’allim.

  —Of course not. He blew on his tea. —The new fighting division is to be comprised exclusively of outsiders sympathetic to the cause. You know this much already, I think?

  —I wasn’t sure how much fighting they’d be doing, she said tentatively. —I thought they might be kept back from the front.

  —Oh! There’ll be no shortage of fighting, said the man. —The Helper units currently in existence have won great respect in these mountains, by virtue of their preparedness for martyrdom. They are most … impatient for it. He turned to Nazir. —Is this not so, my general?

  —They fight well, Nazir answered. —Especially among their own kind.

  —They certainly do. They fight without inhibition, with righteous abandon, having one foot in the World to Come already. He was quiet a moment. —But the Orchard is not a place of training for the Afghan conflict only. Ours is a jihad on many fronts. Arms and resources flow into this camp from all over the world, Suleyman, and we, in consequence, are beholden to the world. You of all young men must grasp this principle.

  —Why?

  —Because you are its embodiment.

  She gave a slight nod.

  —Do you appreciate this principle? This duty?

  —I do, mu’allim.

  —The boy still doesn’t understand, Nazir said cheerfully.

  The old man leaned forward. —General Nazir has been requested, by a great benefactor to the Orchard, to ask whether any young mujahid under his command has an interest in pursuing jihad in the shadow countries.

  She looked from one of them to the other. —The shadow countries?

  Nazir set down his cup. —Countries not illuminated by the teachings of the Prophet. Russia, for example. Or China.

  —I’m sorry, General. I’ve been trained to fight here, in these mountains. For these people. I have no experience of China at all.

  The old man pursed his lips. —The boy is right, of course. He has little knowledge even of this country.

  —There is only one country the boy has knowledge of, said Nazir.

  —Yes, my general. Such would seem to be the case.

  Again an airless silence fell. No sound carried in from the hallway or the devastated yard. A question had been asked of her, she was certain, but she hadn’t heard a question. She had no idea what the men in that dark room were waiting to hear. Then all at once, without warning or apparent cause, it came to her.

  —You want me to go to the States, she said. —You want me to go back to California.

  —Not to California, Nazir said, frowning down at his desktop. —I’ve heard no talk of that.

  The old man made a fluttering motion with his fingers, as if urging her to pay no mind to idle chatter. —Is this something you would have an interest in, Suleyman? To seek your martyrdom in the place where you were born?

  —You would be of value, Nazir said. —Much more so than here.

  The light began to flicker and when she shut her eyes the flickering grew stronger. A vision or a fever dream of herself come home in retribution to the place where she had suffered was projected against her closed eyes like a newsreel in a theater. A faint groan escaped her. She saw herself suspended in the air above those grassy hills and suburbs, supported and exalted by the warm Pacific light. No one in all those tract developments and cakelike Victorians and strip malls and carports could possibly know what was coming. She alone and God could see it. She was arcing toward them like a comet with her clothes and hair on fire.

  —Our young mujahid is flushed with desire, said the man. —Do you see it, my general? How the color rushes to his face?

  —He has sense after all, Nazir answered. —A sense of proportion.

  —No, she said.

  Nazir cocked his head. —What does he say now, our Little Executioner?

  —My jihad is here, General. I didn’t come all this way just to be sent back home. She pressed her hands together. —Please don’t ask this of me.

  Nazir made a sound in his throat, low and harsh and abrupt, that might almost have been taken for a laugh. The armchair creaked behind her as the bearded man rose.

  —You are misunderstanding General Nazir. He is not the person asking this of you.

  Helplessly she turned and met his gaze. —Who is it, then? Who is asking?

  —The benefactor we have mentioned.

  —Is he a Pashtun?

  —Saudi, Nazir seemed to mutter.

  —He is a Helper, said the man. —A well-wisher from abroad. Like you yourself.

  She nodded for a moment. —What’s his name?

  —You will learn that, little brother, when you meet him.

  —Is he here?

  —His present location is not your concern. In a month’s time, God willing, he will be in Kunduz.

  She bit down on her tongue and tried to focus. After what seemed a great while she heard the sound of tea being poured and the clacking of a cup against a saucer. Nazir shifted on his stool. He opened his mouth to speak but she spoke first.

  —I’ll go, she said. —I’ll meet the benefactor.

  Suddenly both men were smiling. —That is very well, Suleyman Al-Na’ama. That is excellent. You will find this the most sensible—

  —But I want to go to Kunduz with the company I came with. I ask this as a kindness. I want to travel there with Ziar Khan.

  * * *

  Ten days passed before the first ragged constellations of men set out for the northwestern ranges and a dozen more before Ziar came to her tent, ignoring the Yemeni boy sleeping beside her, and whispered that the time had come to go. She rolled her few possessions into her kilim and tied it loosely closed and that was all. She never saw the boy or the Orchard or the Arabs she’d trained with again.

  After so many weeks of presenting arms in formation and saluting a makeshift podium and marching in place she’d expected to be sent off with a speech, or at least some perfunctory blessing, but Nazir and his lieutenants seemed already to have left. There were forty men in Ziar’s company and they fell in groggily behind him as he threaded his way through the tamarisk grove with the cliffs and hilltops blazing to the west. In time she would come to see the genius in so large a body of men moving in small groups through enemy territory but on that first day it simply seemed undignified. Ziar himself joked that the
company looked like a ragpickers’ guild, or a stray herd of goats, or a congregation of drunks who’d misplaced their last bottle. But he said it with an air of satisfaction.

  For two days they followed the river, fording and refording it times without number, picking their way across it daintily where stones broke the surface, stumbling like mules through the current where circumstance left them no choice. The gorge grew wider and greener as the river descended and she passed the hours looking for songbirds along its banks, stopping and peering into the rushes whenever any movement caught her eye. She counted sixty magpies between the Orchard and the plain of Nangarhar and countless smaller passerines besides. She often found herself wishing for her father’s clothbound U.S. field guide, though she knew it would have been no help to her: no creature they encountered on all that long march to the front could have been found within its glossy, dog-eared pages.

  The ancient terraced valley through which the Kabul River ran sedately eastward was so verdant and well-tended as to seem a vestige of some lost and temperate age. They kept well clear of Jalalabad but she could make out its walled gardens and the minarets of its mosques and she thought of the old Pashtun merchant she’d met on the flight to Dubai, the dealer in fabrics, and of the pride with which he’d told her of that valley. It shamed her now to think of that kindly pious man sitting across from her in the dimly lit cabin, listening to her self-important talk about the war that still raged in the land of his birth. Nangarhar, she recited as they marched in single file across the floodplain. Cradle of Peace. Forever Spring.

  An hour into the foothills they came to a scattering of mud-and-wattle cottages in front of which a crowd stood four men deep around a ring of beaten earth. Thus far in each village heads had appeared in doors and window frames to watch them, emerging smoothly and spectrally out of the dark, but in that place not a single head was turned. Scattered about in the grass were wicker domes half the size of a man, covered in patterned blue cloth, like field tents for a host of tiny soldiers. She could no more imagine what purpose they served than she could guess what the villagers stood watching so intently. Ziar gave them a wide berth and so did the others. It had just struck her that certain of the domes looked like castaway burqas when the cover was lifted from one of the baskets and she caught sight of an oblong silver body and a blood-colored bill.