by John Wray
She nodded very slowly. —I won’t do it.
—I’ve asked nothing of you. Nothing. Only to stand at my side. He smiled at her strangely. —But if I said that you will shoot this boy, that you will take the rifle from my hands and shoot him through the neck, then you would do exactly as I say.
—I’ve heard you say all sorts of things, she told him in English. —You said I was an angel.
—Suleyman—
—You said that in the cave when you were taking off my clothes.
—Look around you, Suleyman. All our brothers are watching. You are fortunate that these men have no English.
—It doesn’t matter what you say to me. Not if all those other things were lies.
He drew back from her as if she’d been screaming. Perhaps she had been. He grinned a moment longer, an involuntary tic without significance, then took the boy by the collar and pulled him up onto his feet. The boy’s companions mumbled their servile thanks and led him off. The column began to move again and she stood in the parched brown grass below the trail and watched it go. Ziar himself was the last of them to pass.
—You asked me once what he had done, he said.
—Who?
—Your friend. The childish one. The one who died.
He watched her, gauging the effect of his words, and she returned his stare blankly. To deny him that pleasure. But she seemed to be falling back into herself.
—Ali, she said at last. —You mean Ali.
He nodded. —Now you have your answer.
She reached for him then but he was already gone, shouting orders down the line, so no one was there to catch her as she sank into the grass. She sank into the grass and stood unmoving in the dust. She stood motionless and gasping as the column passed away. She was following her brothers and she was falling smoothly backward. She followed them as the dead grass caught her and she closed her eyes in sleep.
* * *
—Listen to me, she said to him that same night. They were camped above the village where the fighting birds had been. —Listen to me, Ziar. I have an idea.
It was a cold night and windless and the lights of Jalalabad discolored the sky to the south. He’d been sleeping with his shearling coat draped over him at a distance from the others. When she spoke to him his breathing changed and he raised his head and asked her what she wanted.
—We’ll be in Jalalabad tomorrow. Is that right?
—By God’s will, he said, passing a hand over his face.
—What will happen to us then? To the company, I mean.
—There is no company anymore. Not enough men. Either more men will be found or we’ll be added to some other.
—They would do that?
He sighed. —He has influence, that Kabuli captain. It’s possible that I’ll lose my command.
—Because of me?
—For any number of reasons. He hesitated. —But you may have been right, Suleyman. It may have been better to have stayed among the dead.
—Run away with me, she said quickly. —As soon as we get to the city. I’ll go anywhere you want.
—Ah! Suleyman Al-Na’ama. You’re a child still. I’d almost forgotten.
—You wanted me to kill someone today. Would you have asked that of a child?
—Don’t mistake me for Nazir, Suleyman, or for the company he keeps. I would never ask that of you. He sat up heavily. —And you, for your part, must not ask this of me.
—Don’t talk to me that way, Ziar. I can’t stand it.
—What way?
—Like some wise old uncle. Like my father. It makes me want to die.
He sat mutely then for a very long time. He was looking past her, looking through her, exactly as he’d done back in the cave. She dug her nails into her calf to check her panic. She stared into his eyes and found no recognition there.
—I’ll tell them, she whispered. —If you don’t come with me I’ll tell them.
—Have you lost all reason, Suleyman? You have no—
—I’ll tell them as soon as we get to the city.
—Consider what you’re saying, idiot. Bear in mind the punishment you witnessed in the square. That woman was guilty of half what you’ve done.
—Not what I’ve done, Ziar. What we’ve done. The two of us together.
—Shut your mouth, he hissed. —Shut your mouth now, Suleyman. And move away from me.
—I told you once already. I won’t answer to that name.
* * *
She was woken the next morning by a calloused palm passed lightly down her cheek. She murmured to Ziar that she was sorry but the voice that answered was another’s and she sat up with a start. Sahar Gul sat crouched above her with a finger at his lips.
—Brother Sahar, she muttered. —Did I miss the morning prayer?
—God knows full well who the wicked are, he said.
Fear took hold of her then and she struggled to stand. He held her by the arms and fixed his eyes on something just beyond her line of sight. In a stand of poplars twenty paces distant Ziar stood conferring with three men in whispers. The men wore black robes and headscarves and daggers with silver pommels tucked through their belts. Sahar Gul clucked and shook his head and held her down until the men had gone. Then he stood and walked away without a word.
They marched all that day, halting only for prayers, through the last low foothills leading down to the valley. The country ahead was as green as it had been when they’d crossed it heading north the month before. Cradle of Peace, she said under her breath. Forever Spring. The words no longer heartened her. The men could barely keep upright. It seemed to her that she could make out impact craters to the east, in the direction of the border, but her sight was oddly clouded. She asked Ziar but he seemed not to hear. He stayed with the column now, haranguing the men with ritual abuses, driving them forward through their hunger and exhaustion. He kept his distance and refused to meet her eye.
After fourth prayers the men were slower than ever to take up their packs. Ziar took his place at the end of the line, shifting from foot to foot in his impatience. When she spoke he had no option but to answer.
—Those men this morning, she said.
He narrowed his eyes, as though the question itself were a betrayal of his trust. —Which men?
—The men from the Kabuli company. I saw them, Ziar. I was awake.
—Of course you were awake. I sent Brother Gul to rouse you.
—What did they want?
—They were coming from Jalalabad with intelligence for their captain. They asked how large the strike had been and how many men were lost. He smiled crookedly. —How many of their own men, of course. No one else’s. They were quite surprised to hear I couldn’t say.
She watched him. —What I saw looked more like an argument.
—An argument? Not at all. A disagreement perhaps.
She waited for him to go on. He was shading his eyes and looking back over his shoulder.
—What was the disagreement about?
—The information they were taking. I wanted them to share it. He cleared his throat. —It appears that I have fallen out of grace.
She moved nearer to him. She could smell his sweat and the oil from his freshly cleaned rifle and the sourness of his tattered unwashed clothes. The back of his neck was as wrinkled and age-spotted as the neck of an old man. How strange not to have noticed that before.
—I apologize, she said.
—What for?
—For what I said last night. For making threats.
He made a gesture of annoyance, still looking back the way they’d come.
—I won’t tell, she said, her voice plaintive and weak. —Have you seen me today? I know that you have. I’ve been quiet. I’ve been good.
—Step away from me, he said. —The men will see.
She felt herself flinch. —What do you care, Ziar? Are you afraid of your men?
He turned and touched two fingers to the hollow of her chest. —I am afraid, he
said. —I counsel you to be afraid as well.
The tips of his fingers seemed to pierce her as she closed a hand around them. She spoke his name again, disgusted at the quaver in her voice. The capitulation it expressed. The cowardice. God knows full well who the wicked are. You will find them, out of all mankind, those most attached to life.
—Sahar Gul quoted from the Recitation, she said. —When he woke me this morning.
—Is that so?
—Did you tell him what to say?
He shook his head and pulled his hand away. —You’ve left the binding from your breasts, he said, stepping past her. —Don’t become careless.
—I’m sorry, she murmured. —I didn’t—
—Mind yourself, Suleyman. Attend well to your conduct. I say this to you now for the last time.
* * *
They pitched camp that night in a field within sight of the river. The city was perhaps an hour distant and a rumbling reached them faintly from the Kabul-Torkham road. She lay on her back in the rushes at the edge of the field and stared into the vacant sky and cringed and wept and cursed herself for weeping. She’d been prepared for any suffering but loneliness. She was a foreigner in a remote and hostile nation. She was a sinner and an apostate. She was neither Suleyman nor Aden Grace.
Sometime long after midnight she gave up on sleep and set out in her bare feet across the field. She passed within arm’s reach of where Ziar lay sleeping and felt sick with desire to lie down beside him. To feel the warmth of his gaunt body and the cadence of his breathing. To abase herself and beg for clemency. She gave thanks then for the closeness and the power of the river, for the murmuring that drew her onward, for the cool wet air that roused her and the mud that felt so good against the soles of her sore feet. Her arms and back were spasming strangely, as though electric wires ran through them, but there wasn’t any pain. She began to make out the headlights of trucks bound for the Khyber Pass and Peshawar. She imagined her past life waiting on the far side of the border, the camp and the madrasa and the town where she’d been born, her school friends and her family, the girl she’d been and long since put to death. Abu Imam and Hayat Khan and Ibrahim Shah and her mother and her father. She pictured Decker waiting for her, impatient as always, his shattered body whole again and lovely. She raised her arms and stepped into the current.
The river was stronger by far than she’d imagined. She sank to her knees in the soft mealy bottom and would have been carried off but for the heavy silt that closed around her calves. She lurched forward, somehow keeping upright, until she reached a ledge of sunken granite. The water was up to her waist and the shock of it thundered through her bones like a command. Like the trucks with their headlights the river was bound for the border with all possible speed and she needed only to surrender to be carried there as well. Already the current was numbing her body. She stood on the ledge with her legs braced apart, wheezing and shuddering, and watched with cool detachment as her last misgivings left her. She could do Ziar no greater good than to pass out of his protection. He’d told her time and time again to reduce herself to one desire only. She would do as he asked now. The river would take her. She took a small step and stumbled and sank to her ribs, still sheltered from the main arm of the current. She was nothing now but numbness and the urge to disappear.
Had We wished We could have created you as angels, to take your place on earth.
A flickering sprang up at the limit of her vision. She looked back and saw the brake lights of a line of covered trucks. They stopped at the encampment and in the pale uncertain darkness she seemed to see her brothers swiftly rise and take up arms. Through the booming of the current she heard a muffled pop pop pop as she fought her way frantically back to the bank. She caught hold of a willow branch and hauled her body upward. The cold in her legs made them leaden and stiff, as though she were balanced on stilts, and by the time she reached the company her calves were black with mud. She saw now that the trucks were transports with canvas-covered flatbeds and that the men were being loaded on in pairs. She laughed with relief to recognize one driver as a man she’d drilled alongside at the Orchard. She waved to him and he nodded in return. The shots she’d heard might well have been the backfiring of engines. They would drive to the Orchard now, or to Jalalabad, or perhaps across the border to the Mountain. Reconvene and start over. Petition Heaven for patience.
Merciful to all, she told herself. Compassionate to each.
She made out Ehsannullah Sattar’s huge and unmistakable silhouette in the gap between the first and second trucks and she went to him with as much grace as she could muster, salaaming with her mud-encrusted hands. He smiled and returned her salaam.
—God’s greetings, Ehsannullah Sattar. May you never tire.
—God’s greetings, Little Executioner. I would wish the same for you, but my wishes would appear to come too late.
—You’re right, Brother Sattar. I’m more tired than I’ve been in my whole life.
—Time to climb in, little brother. Time to go. He gestured upward with his rifle. —Planes will come.
—Of course, she said. She hesitated. —In which truck is Brother Ziar?
He smiled again behind his dense black beard, as though they shared some private joke between them. —A place has been saved for you in the last.
The foremost of the trucks was beginning to roll as she scrambled back along the ditch. Sahar Gul called something to her from the second truck as it pitched forward but before he could repeat it someone pulled him down amid a peal of laughter. She could hardly believe that the long march was over. She ran the last few steps and hailed the fifth truck and its driver flashed his lights. A fair-skinned man she didn’t recognize hopped down from the cab and took her by the hand. She asked after Ziar and he smiled and touched a finger to his lips. She felt the blood rush to her face. —Ziar, she repeated. He jerked the gate open. The flatbed held nothing but a kilim and a length of copper pipe. She said there had been a mistake and he said very likely. She was shouting Ziar’s name as his hand closed over her mouth.
I was dreaming yesterday with my eyes open but asleep. After everything that’s happened I don’t sleep anymore Teacher. I don’t know what to call it. I dream right through all the marching and the stopping and the waiting. All of us do. Someone said it’s like praying but I don’t believe it. It feels better than praying to me.
Last night a dog or a jackal was sitting next to me staring down into a pool. This was happening in the desert or in the hills above our house. Those dirty hills past Hidden Valley Drive where people dump their trash. Do you remember?
The sand was wet and I was thirsty and the sun was going down. I could feel the heat off the jackal’s body so I slid a little closer. It was like one of Mom’s old ridgebacks that you hated but its eyes were blue and tired. It just stared into the pool. There was something down there Teacher. A giant dark something. When it moved I could see it. The sunlight cut into the water and I thought if I waited long enough I’d know what that thing was.
The jackal turned and looked at me and then it started talking. I tried to answer but I couldn’t speak its language. It needed help Teacher. It was something important. Tears were running down its long sad yellow face into the water. I said I had a father who could help but he was busy. He was a professor with a big desk on the far side of the world.
I said your name a hundred times and hoped to God you’d answer. It got colder and colder. I was frightened and everything was strange and I was maybe five years old. It was getting dark Teacher. I wanted you with me. You were far away and busy but you might have understood.
4
Her eyes came open on a white room bare of any decoration. Light fell coldly from vents in the high vaulted ceiling and a woman in a brown hijab lay huddled on the floor. For a moment in her nausea and bewilderment she imagined that the woman was her own self reflected but when she raised her head the woman did not stir. She tried to speak and her mouth refused to open. Her tongue
was somehow fastened to the back side of her teeth.
The woman lay with her face to the wall and her right arm folded winglike underneath her. Half-smoked cigarettes and empty cans of Coca-Cola and foam rubber cushions surrounded her, haphazard and filthy, as though she’d overstayed her welcome at a party. Behind her sat a galvanized tin bucket and a broom.
In time Aden was able to force her jaws open. She freed her tongue and licked her lips and took in breath to speak. Her sight fell on a wrought-iron door a few feet past the bucket. She saw no knob or handle. The top half of the doorframe had been mortared shut with crushed brick and cement.
—Hello, she said.
The sound had no more substance than a voice heard through a wall. She repeated the greeting in Arabic, then in Pashto. At her third attempt the woman’s body stirred.
—Please, little mother, she whimpered. She tried to rise and a bolt of pain shot upward from her wristbones to her skull. Her arms were trussed behind her back with insulated wire. Her headcloth was gone and her ankles were bound and her kameez had been cut open at the neck. She felt the prickling of sweat along her hairline. The air smelled of stale smoke and mildew.
—Please, little mother. Little mother, I’m thirsty.
Haltingly the woman shifted. The rustling of her clothing seemed to thunder like a river. Aden closed her eyes and clenched her jaw and felt the building shaking. When she looked again the woman lay exactly as before.
When next she lifted her head the room was the same but the ceiling seemed higher and the woman in the brown hijab was gone without a trace. Sweat ran into her eyes and a cushion lay beneath her where no cushion had been and her clenched teeth were buzzing at a frequency too high for her to hear. The bucket lay overturned where the woman had been. Had there ever been a woman. Again her mouth refused to open and she understood now that her lips had been sewn shut. Her lips had been sewn shut and silver wires had been threaded through her body. She could feel the wires humming. The little door stood open and beyond it she saw flower beds and scintillating fountains. It pained her to see them. Her body was too vast ever to pass into that garden. Too vast and too polluted. There was someone behind her. A rustling sounded in the distance and a manicured hand came down over her forehead and her eyes. She gave a helpless sigh of pleasure. She asked for water and received it. The hand was slowly lifted and that endless room went dark.