The Opium Prince

by Jasmine Aimaq

  “No, Elias,” Daniel said. “I’m not making fun of you.”

  It was true, and yet Daniel thought Elias didn’t understand that courage and cowardice weren’t fixed values. If you resisted a revolution that resulted in a better society, you were a narrow-minded bigot. If you resisted a revolution that resulted in a worse society, you were brave and enlightened. So much was in the eye of the beholder, and those who would judge Daniel and Elias in the future benefited from twenty-twenty hindsight. He thought of agha. Had it been hard for him to betray Sayed and Daniel? He tried to reconcile what had happened with the loyal guardian he’d known all his life, returning to one particular memory again and again.

  In the months before Sayed was taken to prison, Sherzai started coming to the house more often to help Daniel with his homework or play chess with him. One night, after they thought Daniel had gone to bed, Daniel snuck over and listened to them in the living room. He heard ice cubes tumbling and liquid splashing into a glass. Someone set a bottle down on the table.

  Sherzai asked Sayed, “What do you think of the new man next door?”

  “Do you mean the new naan shop or Mr. Khrushchev?”

  “I’m surprised you can still make jokes, knowing what awaits you.”

  “Prison’s the biggest joke of all when a jester is your jailer. I have no respect for this fool king of ours.”

  “Your son probably doesn’t think it’s funny. But I don’t suppose you have given that much thought.”

  “I’m not a young man and I have a finite number of thoughts left, so I must allot them carefully.” More ice was dropped into tumblers, more liquid poured. “To answer your question about Khrushchev,” Sayed continued, “I would prefer the Russians not invade while I’m in jail. It would be a shame to have prepared for so many wars only to have this happen when I can’t be of use.”

  “And if they do? It won’t be like the English decades ago. This enemy has fighter jets.”

  “And I have you.” Sayed chuckled wistfully. “I wish I’d had you back in 1919, but you were only nine.”

  “You shouldn’t be so sure you have me now, either.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Which part confused you?”

  There was a long silence.

  “How’s your leg?” Sayed asked. He spoke slowly, and only later did Daniel understand that his father’s relationship with Sherzai was summed up in that simple question.

  “I’m glad I have it,” Sherzai said. “But in some ways, it is getting worse.”

  “How so?”

  “The older I get, the worse it seems that the only reason I am alive is that your father thought I deserved to be. The virus struck thousands. Every time I pick up my cane, I am reminded.”

  “You would prefer to be dead just because thousands of others are? That’s a teenager’s notion of justice.”

  “Your interpretation of right and wrong is more questionable than mine.”

  “That isn’t fair,” Sayed said.

  “What isn’t fair? That I should challenge you? Who else is going to do it? Look at the mess you’ve made.”

  “You call it a mess, I call it destiny. This is inevitable.”

  The men’s voices were growing louder. Daniel heard Sayed rise. He could tell it was Sayed because when Sherzai walked, his walking stick struck the floor.

  “Every decision I’ve made is the right one, because it was the only one I could make,” Sayed said. His footsteps stopped. “Choosing between two things is easy as long as you can compare like with like: hate with hate, and love with love. If someone asks me, ‘Whom do you hate more, the English or the Russians,’ I would say the English, because they attacked us so relentlessly. But if you ask me to compare two different feelings, how much I love something compared to how much I hate something else, that’s a conundrum. Apples against oranges. So if I ask myself, what weighs more, my hatred of the invaders or my love for my country? How to answer this when the two categories are distinct?”

  “Not every decision is easy even when you compare like with like, Sayed. Are you proud?”

  “Of what?”

  “When you think about going to prison. Is it worth it? Leaving your son like this?”

  “I weighed the options before me. The Scale of Sages is unambiguous.”

  Sherzai’s cane struck the floor with great force. “Don’t blame your imaginary scale. You made the decisions. You. The boy is paying the price.”

  “I have you to take care of the child. Or what was it you said earlier? That I couldn’t be sure I had you?”

  Sherzai sighed. “I will be there for the boy, always.”

  Sayed changed the subject. They argued about politics like they always did, and the debate was about power—who should have it, and how much. Sherzai insisted that the way forward was with a strong ruler.

  “You mean like our king?” It was not mainly kings who had fought back the Russians and the English, Sayed reminded him, but ordinary people from every desert, village, and field, and they had fought not for the king but for their kin. The tribes had gotten the job done. And now poppy growers were farming right under His Majesty’s nose. Only a few arrests had been made. Sayed laughed contemptuously when he said, “I’ve destroyed more poppy fields than the whole damned government. I’m tired.”

  “Then stop. Make a new life when you get out of prison.”

  “There’s no such thing as a new life. Everybody’s life is just a recycled version of something from the past. We are not a creative species. How do you like your job at the Ministry of Planning?” Sayed said in the tone he’d used when he’d asked about Sherzai’s leg.

  “I’m content.”

  “Nothing more than that? I worked hard for you to get it.”

  “Goodbye, Sayed.” Sherzai’s awkward gait grew louder. Daniel retreated to the living room. When the housekeeper came walking by, Daniel asked him, “What is a tribe, exactly?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Am I part of one?”

  The housekeeper looked at the armoire at the end of the hall, its shelves ablaze with crystal and gold and diamonds, malachite, silver, and gems, and at the walls adorned with antique weapons and paintings.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think you are.”

  32

  The building Daniel was looking for wasn’t far from the Zoroaster, wedged between a beauty salon and a grocery. Both were closed. Paint was peeling from the walls, and a geranium struggled bravely on a balcony. Daniel carefully removed the fake beard. The glass pane in the door was cracked and covered by black fabric. He knocked, wondering if the person he’d come to see still lived here. He heard someone shambling down the stairs.

  The fabric parted. A stranger in dark glasses peered out at Daniel. Expecting to be turned away, Daniel quietly gave his name and Elias’s through the crack. The man didn’t have a chance to reply. A second figure was already coming down the staircase, his laughter filling the air. It was a sound that Daniel had never forgotten, because when mullahs laughed, they usually did not sound like boisterous uncles.

  Khaiyam opened the door and bowed with his hand on his heart. “Come in, my brother, come in.” He kissed Daniel on both cheeks, adjusted his glasses, and tightened his skullcap, which had shifted during their embrace. He was as thin as ever.

  “Who is this?” he asked before letting Elias in. Daniel promised that Elias posed no danger. They exchanged a warm, polite greeting.

  “We haven’t talked in so long,” Khaiyam said to Daniel. “Fifteen years?”

  “More. I was a child the last time.”

  “You were never a child.”

  After Khaiyam brewed tea, he gestured to cushions on the floor. To Daniel’s aching body, the journey down to his seat seemed endless, but Khaiyam would not sit before his guests did.

  Khaiyam
wanted to know everything about Daniel’s life and work. Each time Daniel answered a question, he clapped or opened his arms in a display of grand approval. It was as if nothing had happened, yesterday a day like any other. When he quietly asked about the Feverdrops Slaughter, Daniel disclosed nothing about his role in Yassaman.

  “An evil weed, the poppy,” Khaiyam said.

  Daniel refrained from saying the poppy wasn’t a weed—weeds were plants no one wanted. After talking about family, friends, and work, they paused, sipping in silence. Elias hadn’t said a word, looking around the apartment with suspicion.

  After his third cigarette, Daniel finally said, “So, Khaiyam. What do you think?”

  “I think they’re monsters,” the mullah said without hesitation.

  “They’ll come for you. They’re already going after the imams. It’s on the foreign news.”

  “I’m lucky to have good friends who insist on protecting me.”

  “It won’t be enough. Everyone knows who you are.”

  “No one knows who anyone is. Judging by your clothes, you’re hardly immutable yourself.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Perhaps. But what do they really know? They know I oppose injustice. They know the last president did not like me. The king before him also didn’t like me.” Khaiyam smiled, a wisp of pride blushing his face.

  “I thought you’d find these new men much worse,” Daniel said. “They’re godless.”

  “And what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Are you not godless? You told me you didn’t believe in the divine when you were twelve years old. As I said, you were never a child.”

  “I’m not godless. I’m an atheist.”

  “I’ll ponder the difference later.” Khaiyam lay a gentle hand on Daniel’s leg. “Are you going to tell me what happened? Are they the ones who hurt you?”

  Daniel told Khaiyam everything. That he’d been in his office when the coup began. How the uniforms had taken his neighbors and beaten him when he’d tried to stop them. About the one girl he’d managed to save, though he wondered how many had been hauled away. How he’d crossed the city looking for Laila, whom Khaiyam remembered as one of the brightest children he had ever met. Elias smiled.

  When Daniel finished, a silence settled over the apartment, which was unchanged from many years ago, with its stone floors and crooked stairs.

  “I have to do something, Khaiyam. I can’t sit here and watch them win.”

  “You have some idea of how to fight this?” Khaiyam said.

  “I want to know what your people are planning.”

  “My people?”

  “There’s no one else who can confront them. You are the only ones with enough strength in numbers.”

  “There were always many of us. But we don’t have much money, and what you’re talking about takes a lot of it. Dollars or diamonds or gold.”

  Daniel knew all about idealistic organizations with small budgets. “What if I could arrange for the money to come through?” he said.

  Elias stared at Daniel, excitement building in his eyes.

  The mullah set down his glass. “I would be most grateful, of course. But Daniel, may I trouble you with something that has burdened me for some time?”

  “Of course. I’m surprised you’re asking for permission.”

  “I fear your father found me a great disappointment for failing to instill in you any reverence for the divine.”

  Perplexed at this change in topic, Daniel said, “My father didn’t believe in a god. The way he insisted that I learn about religion was hypocrisy.”

  “It’s easy to mistake love for hypocrisy. All fathers want their children to have the things they didn’t. Sayed did not have the gift of faith.”

  “My father had faith in some things. Like power.”

  “He failed to understand that there is great power in faith. There are none so powerful as those who believe. When the world ends, the radically faithful may well be the ones who end it.” After a pause, he added, “Why exactly are you here?”

  “To help you. I loathe these men and what they’ve done. I want to give you money for everything that fuels a good resistance. Bribes, weapons.”

  Khaiyam shifted on his pillow, repositioning himself tailor-style. “Yes, but what are you fighting for? What do you love? If you don’t know that, your devotion will fade. Hate makes you a good killer; love makes you a good fighter.”

  “Do you trust me?” Daniel said.

  “My father trusted yours.”

  Daniel tried to answer, but Khaiyam said, “Unfortunately, you’ve made yourself useless.”

  “What?”

  The mullah turned his eyes to the kitchen table. Newspapers were spread across the surface. “I assume they threatened you, but how can you come here and tell me you want to fight when you’ve capitulated at the first sign of peril?”

  Daniel asked himself what was worse: that Khaiyam should think him a coward who had caved to threats, or an arrogant scion who had signed on the dotted line without looking. He told him the truth. Khaiyam watched him inscrutably. As Daniel explained why he had never glanced at the quarterly reports, the mullah went completely still. It was like talking not so much to a wall as a shadow. Elias, however, had surprise painted plainly on his face.

  “What does it matter now?” Daniel said. “The company’s gone.”

  “It’s not the only one.” Khaiyam fetched the newspaper and dropped it at Daniel’s feet.

  The front page chronicled the seizure of fifty businesses, his neighbors’ companies among them. The worst was a paragraph describing Daniel’s voluntary forfeiture of his firm. After thanking him for his cooperation, the article took a different path. It described Daniel Abdullah Sajadi as a counterrevolutionary by nature, a scion of the old elite, with an estate and servants and a cache of treasures stolen from the people. Though he had given Sajadi Enterprises to the regime, he would not be able to stand living without its riches. He would soon plot for the return of his undeserved wealth. Daniel looked at his own face staring out from the page.

  “As I said,” Khaiyam began, “you aren’t of much use to us. Any accounts you have here are already frozen. If you try to send anything from America, they’ll seize it.”

  Daniel might have guessed this, given his feature in the paper. He thought of an old saying: Anything that isn’t in the hands of God is in the hands of the English. Now it was all in the hands of the Communists—even the man who had cared for Daniel as a son. “I have some money hidden away,” he said.

  “In afghanis? What good will that do? Real war takes real money.”

  It was nine o’clock when a motorcycle rumbled to a stop. A man pounded on the door. Khaiyam quickly uncoiled his body and pulled back a rug to reveal a trapdoor. He slid it aside and dropped into a crawl space, pulling his guests with him as his bouncer made his way down the stairs. The visitor had evidently brought a photo, because the guard denied recognizing someone. He insisted that he had lived here for four years alone, but the man stomped into the apartment, his boots passing over their heads. Before he left, he warned he would be back.

  As he lumbered up the stairs, Khaiyam’s watchman said, “It’s only a matter of time, my brother.”

  When the men had pulled themselves up from their hiding place, Daniel said to Khaiyam, “You have to move.”

  Khaiyam’s eyes were twin pieces of coal. “As with every skill, dissent takes practice. I’ve been doing this a long time, though I appreciate your concern.”

  The meeting had come to a close. He wrapped Daniel’s hands in his own and held them tightly. “Thank you,” he said. “I wish upon you every blessing, Daniel Sajadi.”

  His words were not unkind, but Daniel was cut to the bone by the mullah’s real message: without money, Daniel had nothin
g to give. Their host embraced Daniel and Elias and walked both his guests to the door.

  They cycled toward home, and in the heart of the city found themselves caught behind a clash of bicycles and cars waiting at a checkpoint. He tried to navigate around them, but the uniform guarding the booth held up a hand. Daniel waited. When his turn came, the guard asked questions about where he lived and worked, and Daniel answered easily. When he said he worked for Daniel Sajadi, an American diplomat, the guard raised a quizzical brow. “I know the name,” he said. He lifted a thick book and began thumbing through pages, taking his time. The guard flipped the book toward him and jabbed his finger at one of two photos of Daniel.

  “This man?” he said. “This is who you work for?”

  Daniel nodded, hoping Elias would stay quiet. The makeup on his bruises grew warm and soft, and he began to pull away, hoping the guard was finished with him, but he wasn’t.

  “How long have you worked for him?” the man said.

  “I’m not good with telling time.”

  “Why are you working for a man like this? Do you like being in servitude?” The guard pointed to the bandage on his cheek. “Did he do that to you?”

  Daniel said no, that he’d fallen on a sharp stone. The uniform let them both go. As he cycled away, Daniel’s legs were heavy. In the second photo the guard had shown him, Daniel had been standing outside his house on a sunny day, leaning into the passenger seat of his car. His hand was on the door, bearing the star-sapphire ring Rebecca had given him. The ring he was still wearing. He took it off as he rode, tucking it in his pocket, feeling that it was, at that moment, the most precious thing he owned.

  A pitiful scene was unfolding just outside the record store. A woman in a chaderi was standing so still that she seemed to be posing with the cardboard cutout of Elvis, who watched from behind glass doors. A soldier held a bayonet to her chest. “Don’t move,” he said. He raised her entire chaderi with the blade of his weapon and made a great show of dropping the garment on the ground, where the blue fabric spread like an ink stain. People gathered, but no one dared move close. The woman held her eyes half-shut, gazing far away. She was hugging herself, trying to hide what was now exposed: a long skirt and a high-collared blouse embroidered with flowers. Elvis glittered in white sequins, offering up his microphone. Daniel felt anger rise inside him at how the woman was being treated and his own impotence in the face of it.