The Opium Prince

by Jasmine Aimaq

  Late that night, Daniel woke to the sound of pebbles on his window. Laila was alone. They ran hand in hand through the night-soaked city. Clutching her father’s gun, she aimed the barrel at the snarling dog and pulled the trigger. Daniel wrapped his pinkie around hers, and they promised they would never tell. When they came to school the next day, they watched garbage collectors heave the dog onto a pile of trash.

  “Should we say a prayer for the dog’s soul?” Daniel said, before quickly correcting himself. “Sorry, that was dumb. I know dogs don’t have souls.”

  Laila disagreed. “Why shouldn’t they? People just want to pretend dogs don’t have souls so they can treat them badly.” She jutted her chin toward the other side of the street, where a trio of women walked together, hidden under their chaderi. “My father says it’s the same with girls. Some men want to hide them. When they’re hidden, you can pretend they’re not real. But we are real.”

  Stunned at the simple truth of Laila’s words, twelve-year-old Daniel remembered that girls were wonderful, this one especially, and that he loved her. He wanted to tell her, but then Laila said, “The French have another name for rabies. They call it la rage. Rage. I think that’s a better word for it.” Something in her voice silenced him.

  In the first months of her pregnancy, Rebecca was doing so well that she worked more instead of less, increasing her hours at the embassy. Laila wanted her to rest; it was hard not to think of her as breakable after the pain she had gone through last time. Almost six months had passed since that day. Maybe it no longer mattered, Rebecca’s body like new now, her scars healed.

  But by November, she seemed weak. She had grown pale. Her body ached. First it was just her back and hips, then her legs, her feet, her neck. She either slept too much or too little. Laila referred her to a specialist, a Frenchman who sounded very sure of everything he said. He told Rebecca things were normal and advised her to rest. Still, Rebecca and Daniel grew cautious in their excitement. Like the staff at USADE, they refrained from talking about the future. They scarcely referred to the child and stopped discussing names. Rebecca had said she liked Matthew because it meant gift.

  Daniel wondered which guest room to convert to the nursery and when the remodeling should start. When should he return to the abandoned crib in the shed? Every time he tried, he found that he couldn’t, and instead he worked on the table for Sherzai’s sandali. All of this he kept to himself. He read books he had always told himself he should read. Texts that were assigned at the Woodrow Wilson Academy or in college, or that Rebecca had told him about. She had left a stack on his nightstand, editions of Steinbeck and Austen, Nabokov, Fitzgerald, and, remarkably, Kafka. She wanted him to read an author who was haunted by wanting to get inside places that were forever closed to him.

  She stopped working. She played the piano in the mornings, because her sickness came in the afternoons, and after she played she would linger on the bench, her eyes fixed on some unseen spot below the floor, and he wondered if she was having the same thoughts he was and keeping them to herself.

  The Rat

  The man exhales a coil of smoke, his face to the sky, eyes closed. The only part of him that seems alive is his chest, rising and falling. Somehow his pipe stays rigid between his lips. Boy looks at him in the darkness, peering through bushes. Yes, this is the right man. His skin is gray and his clothes are gray and his hair is turning the color of ash. The Gray Man always sits there, crouched in a flower bed, his back against a tree.

  Boy approaches him. His steps are the only sound except for the bell on a donkey’s neck as it trots by. Everybody has gone home. There is not much to do near City Hall at night. The Gray Man sees him and hides his pipe behind his back. The smell of burning opium is like overripe fruit, and it always reminds Boy of the big garden and the mulberries in the summer before his mother died.

  He raises a finger to his lips and tells the Gray Man that he means him no harm, that he has a proposition for him. He doesn’t tell him he is the one who accompanies Nazook when the Gray Man buys opium every week. Boy always stands back like Nazook tells him to. It was years ago now that Nazook gave him the name Taj, but he still thinks of himself as Boy because he doesn’t feel he has earned his new name. Not yet. There are many men who do not deserve the names they are given.

  He looks closely at the Gray Man, who isn’t as old as he thought even though his teeth are rotting and everything about him is skinny and long and ugly. Boy decides the Gray Man should be renamed the Rat.

  “How much do you pay for the opium?” he asks, even though he already knows. The Rat looks around with darting eyes. He is still hiding the pipe behind his back, but the smoke is visible as it rises. At last he tells Boy what he pays.

  Boy nods. “I will sell it to you for half the cost. Same quality.”

  “Why?” says the Rat.

  Boy asks him if it’s true he used to work for the government. The Rat points to the building behind him. “In there. I was a clerk. A very good position.” This memory emboldens the Rat enough to bring the pipe out of hiding and inhale in front of Boy while knitting his eyebrows in a way that makes him look insane. Boy sits down beside him in the flower bed, taking care not to crush the daisies. All flowers are related to poppies, which Boy has learned to respect. “I’ll give you the best deal in the city,” he says, “if you teach me how to read and write.”

  He takes a resin bead from his bag, slowly, like a jeweler producing a rare stone, and shows it to the Rat, who tries to claw it out of his hand. Boy pulls it back swiftly and says, “I’ll give you this for free if we can start now.”

  The Rat bites his dirty nails. Boy is disgusted; he makes sure his own nails are always clean. From his bag, he retrieves a nail file and a book. “Use this, please,” he tells the Rat, who gently snuffs out his pipe and complies.

  Boy shows him the book, which he stole a few weeks ago and has been hiding from Nazook. It’s for children, he can tell, full of colors and faces that don’t look like real people, because grown-ups think children can’t understand real faces. Boy tells the Rat they should find a place with more light. On the steps of City Hall, the Rat finishes filing and cleaning his nails. Before beginning the session, Boy tells his new teacher his name is Taj. The Rat’s name is Zalmay. Two hours later, their first lesson ends, and as Boy prepares to leave, he notices the Rat looking at City Hall with tears rolling down his sunken cheeks. Boy slips the resin into the Rat’s hand, and the man’s fingers tighten around the clump. They agree to meet again tomorrow at the same time. Boy hands him a watch he brought with him because he thought the Rat would not have one, and as his teacher straps on the cheap plastic wristband, Boy changes his mind about something. This man isn’t really the Rat, nor is he the Gray Man. But he cannot be Zalmay, because the rich man who owned the house and the garden Boy lived in when he was small was also named Zalmay. Boy chooses a name he has heard from Nazook’s father, a teacher at the university. “Good night, Socrates,” Boy says. But Socrates is already asleep against the wide trunk of a hundred-year-old tree, his sweet poison glowing in his pipe.

  Boy comes every night and learns things that seem impossible to him. The earth spins, according to Socrates. At first, Boy thinks he’s lying, but it’s right there in a book that Boy can read as long as Socrates helps him. There’s more—stories of the stars and the sky, the past, faraway places. Socrates is a demanding teacher. He makes Boy recite poetry verses, slaps him on the head if he pronounces words the wrong way, and tells him about famous men who were wise and other famous men who were stupid. One day, Boy turns in his math homework and gets upset when Socrates wants him to show how he came up with the answer.

  “Why does it matter, if the answer is right?”

  “It matters,” Socrates says. “Otherwise, I don’t know if you understand.”

  “I know how I got there,” Boy says. “I just can’t explain it.”

  24

/>   From their first-class seats on Pan Am flight 673, Daniel and Rebecca watched Los Angeles resolve in the smog. Lanky palm trees reached for the sky, their fronds swaying in the December breeze. In this city of perennial summer, everything grew. Orange trees grew in ordinary yards. The city grew, sprawling to the valleys and beyond. Gang membership grew with the drug trade, and boys grew up on street corners fighting turf wars while just ten miles away, rich men’s investments grew beyond their wildest dreams, and so did their egos, along with the piles of money they spent on hopeful actresses whose breasts grew overnight thanks to surgeons and silicone. It was a city where red was the color of carpets and gang emblems, where red could get you shot if you wore it on the wrong street just as easily as it could get you photographed if you made it to the premiere in your designer shoes.

  Despite a flight full of Americans, the Buicks and El Caminos that circled LAX, and the smog that greeted him upon landing, Daniel wasn’t truly back in LA until he slipped into Walter Menlow’s wood-paneled station wagon. As they drove toward the Palisades, Daniel was unbothered when traffic came to a standstill on the 405. There were too many people on the freeway, that was all. There was no camel blocking the road, no rabid dog foaming its way around the cars. None of the drivers leaned on their horn, and all of them stayed in their lanes. Rays of sun glanced off a thousand metallic hoods.

  At the Menlow house, a stucco ranch with plush carpeting and parking for two cars and an RV, they ate barbecue ribs on the patio and retired early, exhausted. In the days before Christmas, Daniel and Rebecca saw friends and visited favorite restaurants. She seemed to find a second wind. He accompanied her to expensive maternity stores, telling her she looked good in everything. It was true. One morning, he did what he’d longed to do since arriving. At the Santa Monica airport, he reserved a small plane. He had never been confident enough to have a passenger with him, and Rebecca had never asked to go. Alone, he raised the Cessna into the sky, and as he rose the world sank softly into the sea. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that the ocean was neither blue nor green. The sparkle ran no more than forty feet deep. Below that, it was darkness. The sky was deceptive, too, with its illusory thin blue veneer.

  Christmas Eve was a subdued affair. Friends and neighbors gathered in the living room around the lightless tree, which graced the room like a somber but beloved relative. Everyone talked to Rebecca’s belly in a high-pitched voice, as if the baby had already said something cute. They all told Daniel he would make a great father. People said all sorts of things they had not the slightest basis for believing. He eventually fled to the garden with his cigarettes, taking refuge on a bench by the orange tree.

  Well past midnight, when everyone else was asleep, he rose out of bed to watch television, as he had every night since arriving. Twenty channels broadcasting day and night was a diversion he had missed. He flipped through the channels, spending no more than two minutes on any one show. Hours later, he was nearly asleep on the couch when he was jarred by the sound of Farsi being spoken alongside English. The screen displayed a map, showing the audience where Afghanistan was. An invisible voice rattled off a list of American agencies and organizations that were there.

  A few miles from downtown Kabul, the broadcaster said, three men on horseback had laid siege to a Russian auto parts factory. They’d ridden into the compound, drawn their swords, and killed eight men who were unlucky enough to be standing outside, beheading two of them. The foreman managed to slam the gates shut before they could do any more damage, locking himself and the others inside. Cursing the infidels, the horsemen displayed the heads on spears and rode downtown as cars and people stopped, incredulous.

  Witnesses spoke of crying men, fainting women, and screaming children. Cars stopped and beggars watched, paralyzed. Wild dogs appeared from the alleys, drawn by the smell of flesh. Soldiers arrived. As if made crazy by shock, one of them cocked his weapon and shot the first horse, which collapsed on the boulevard. The horsemen shouted, calling the soldiers atheists and Communists, and the soldiers fired more shots, killing all three horsemen.

  Religious militants reacted. The clothing shop that secretly sold liquor, which Ian had mentioned at the party, was ransacked. Clothes were dumped on the sidewalk, doused with alcohol, and burned, every bottle smashed. Places Communists gathered were sprayed with graffiti, their windows broken. Clerics decried the mayhem committed in the name of their religion, but the vandalism continued into the evening.

  One incident was unlike any of the others. The whorehouse Daniel had wandered into, where he’d tried to help the teenage girl, had been brought down with a very different tactic. A masked assailant had killed the owners and two customers inside, setting the women and children free before fleeing as silently as a cat. In Los Angeles, the anchorman read off a list of names. Among the bodies was an American identified as Robert Jeffrey Greenwood.

  25

  Daniel returned alone to Kabul in early January, along with thirty passengers on a plane made for many more. He would rejoin Rebecca in California at the end of April, a few weeks before the baby was due. She’d wanted to stay, and he was grateful for it. He had never thought of his homeland as a dangerous place before. Not even the coup of 1973 had brought fear to ordinary people. Something was changing. If he was meant to play a role in it, so be it. But he couldn’t bear bringing Rebecca and their unborn child to a place where no one knew who was in power from day to day.

  In the arrival hall, President Daoud’s portrait loomed larger than ever. Footsteps echoed. Armed personnel vehicles monopolized the space reserved for cars at the curb, the sour smell of urban slush and snow in the air. Shivering in his jacket, Daniel looked for his driver. Instead he found Ian, who wore a heavy coat and a scowl.

  “Ian? Didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I ain’t interested in staying, either. Let’s go.”

  As the Citroën sputtered away from Arrivals, the Departures hall came into view. It was full. Downtown, the bustle of ordinary life went on. The army was more visible than ever, its presence twisting through the city like a vine.

  “There’s been talk at the Corps,” Ian said. “I heard some stuff. Thought I should tell you so you don’t get a shock on Monday, in case you don’t already know.”

  Daniel said he’d spoken to Smythe two days after the horsemen attack, and USADE was going to stay open, at least for the time being. Washington had already sent private security to bolster the soldiers guarding USADE’s staff.

  “It’s not that. There’s some rumors about Greenwood. Not to speak ill of the dead, but that guy was a sick son of a bitch.”

  It was inevitable that the Corps should hear about Greenwood’s predilections after his very public death. Every American in the city must know. According to Ian, Greenwood’s files were sent back to Dannaco-Hastings a week after the murder. Among them were notes found in his home, scribbled sheets of personal brainstorming sessions.

  “I never bought Greenwood’s Casanova act. Shouldn’t be a surprise he was a closet disco queen, and I got no problem with that. Ain’t my business. But this shit he was into? Kids? Fucked up.”

  A stone moved through Daniel’s heart. There was no use dancing around the question. “What was in Greenwood’s notes?”

  “That’s the thing. He thought the Gulzar field was no good. He wrote a bunch of stuff about the soil, info he got from your staff and some locals. He was dead-set against the change. Couldn’t make sense of it.”

  Daniel agreed that it was strange and changed the topic. “What are people saying about the horsemen and everything else?”

  “I never thought of the religious guys as violent. Commies are like that everywhere, but if this is the opposition, what side are people supposed to pick? Anywho, I guess most people don’t care enough to bother with sides.”

  “These aren’t the religious guys,” Daniel said. “It’s a lunatic fringe.”

  “Ye
ah. Maybe there’s no real difference between radical Communist and radical religious. Fanatics are fanatics, kind of like M&M’s. Red or green, they’re the same inside.”

  As Daniel reflected on this, Ian added, “Pammy thought about buying a chaderi. Said it could be interesting and a good story someday. But they’re saying it might be banned soon.” When he asked Daniel about Christmas, they fell easily into talk of California, which Ian found endless ways to make fun of. He and Pamela had gone home to New York for two weeks, and Pamela had stayed. The men talked superficially about their wives, Christmas gifts, and the weather, and more fervently about what might happen in baseball when spring training started. Dollar Djinn Lane drew near. The broken traffic light flashed. Ian downshifted, the car protesting.

  “So it looks like it’s just you and me now. A couple of bachelors with jobs that don’t make sense no more, if they ever did.” Ian laughed. “The Peace Corps can’t bring peace to a place that won’t admit it’s at war.”

  At home, Daniel brought his suitcase in, and Firooz greeted him and told him Laila had called and invited him to come for dinner and a game of cards with friends the next evening. He had no desire to go. Within minutes, there was a knock on the front door. Keshmesh was there, shivering in short sleeves and faded jeans, a dusting of snow on his hair. He said he’d been waiting for Daniel’s return. In his arms was a shoebox full of cassettes that he wanted to listen to together.