Into the Sun Page 7

  In the bathroom, he rinsed the grime from his hands with rust-colored water that smelled faintly of sewage. The scum lines along the inside of the tub resembled the growth rings of trees.

  He explored downstairs: kitchen cabinets with plates, cups, mugs, and utensils, all laminated with a mixture of dust and the grease deposited from cooking fumes. The labels of spices were yellow and peeling, a bag of brown flour disintegrating, bouillon cubes melting through their wrappers. He felt like someone searching through the debris of a shipwreck to build a life.

  There was a door to what he thought must be a pantry, but it was locked. He went into the dining room. Idris was at the table with an open book, the room unlit but for a lamp.

  What are you working on?

  Idris touched the book as if he’d forgotten.

  Grammar. Mr. Frank told me that when my English is perfect, he will help me get a scholarship in America. But I have been through this book many times, and through two others.

  In the US, almost none of the foreign students speak as well as you do. You should read novels. Your ear will learn naturally.

  My ear, Idris repeated, testing the phrase. You must understand that Mr. Frank finds the girls jobs in NGOs and in his friends’ businesses while I change lightbulbs. He does nothing for the boys. The girls here know they are safe, and they get what they want. Every day this week, I have driven them to the mall.

  The mall?

  Yes, Idris said, his expression hard to read — either anger or determination. It’s very Western, very fancy. One of my jobs is driver. Mr. Frank tells me not to disturb him. If a girl wants to be driven, I should take her. He tells me that if American girls can go to the mall, why can’t Afghan girls? But you cannot imagine the traffic. People drive badly. I must pay attention. Then I wait while the girls are inside. I am too tired to read. I do grammar exercises to stay awake. And driving is not all. The circuit breakers go out often. Sometimes in the house. Sometimes in the street. I fix them. I replace everything that breaks. The boys used to live in the basement and the girls had their own dormitory down the street, but when Frank could no longer pay its rent, he kicked the boys out. Only rich boys come here now, and me. Frank does not bother the rich ones.

  So, where do you live?

  Sometimes here. There is a closet next to the kitchen. Frank calls it the pantry.

  Justin remembered the locked door. A dog barked in a nearby compound, the noise amplified within concrete walls like a shout through cupped hands. The silence of the neighborhood reinstated itself, not calming as in some natural setting, but full of apprehension.

  Other times, Idris went on, I stay at my uncle’s house. But the girls have never had to do an exchange for their education. Mr. Frank told me I have more opportunity because I am a boy. I do not see this opportunity. I think he wants a girls’ school. They are very popular for foreigners.

  Then why didn’t he make one?

  Because if Afghans learn that an American man sleeps alone in a house with Afghan girls, they will be angry. And he cannot run the school by himself. He does not have much money left. So he gives me promises. I am sure he will send Shafiq away, and I will be the guard.

  I’ll talk to him.

  Thank you, Mr. Justin.

  You don’t need to say Mister before my name. Justin is fine.

  Are you sure? I am not so comfortable with that.

  We do not say Mister before a first name in America. We rarely ever say Mister.

  I see. Thank you, Justin. Thank you for your honesty.

  Climbing the stairs, Justin paused. The school’s quiet was monastic, his shalwar kameez like the robes of a monk. With his fingertips on the chilly wall for balance, he envisioned himself as an ancient devotee habituated to deprivation. But his mission, his calling, was worldly. He’d read online that Americans sometimes abused their power overseas. He would need to curb Frank. Only prayer purified the mind so that one’s actions didn’t serve the self.

  In his unlit room, he knelt. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God. And, yes, of Muslims too.

  Faith had brought him here. After he’d lost his eye, he’d lived in a barrage of anxiety, a smudge of lost time, daylight barely reaching him. Fear stalked him for years, receding only as his faith grew. In his devotion to God, Justin had found his mission. As for the chance encounter with Clay’s mother on the street? It must be connected somehow, also divine. Clay had set him on this path unknowingly, his violence as random as a lightning strike.

  Traces of the city’s ambient glow sketched the room’s contours. Justin plugged the heater in and its elements lit up, the warmth as palpable as a hand on his cheek. Beyond his window came a cracking, like a stick breaking, and the heater shut off.

  He knelt a moment longer, contemplating the space between faith and life, the discipline required to diminish it, and whether the cold could be endured in the spirit of abnegation. He stood to call Idris, but outside, the metal compound door was already clanging.

  All that week, Justin taught, struggling not to blow his nose and wondering if Afghans viewed this privation as a small cost for dignity. He read an article suggesting that such offences might be behind some green-on-blue attacks, Afghan soldiers simply unable to bear the endless insults from the crass Americans they worked with. Though he asked Idris to buy him heavier blankets and a better jacket, his infection worsened, inflaming his throat and vocal cords.

  Despite being ill, he got to know the girls. They were a varied group from across the country, all from poor families, some with excellent English, like Zahra and Sediqa, and others shy, struggling to patch sentences together. A few were beauties and knew it. Sediqa was one, and she pried his gaze away from others with her own, asking about his life or for help with grammar.

  There were only four young men on the attendance sheets, compared to nearly forty girls. Justin was curious to see if Frank treated the boys differently, as Idris had told him. But Frank spent his days in his office, writing emails to potential donors while the girls who lived in the basement sat around him with their laptops, chatting on Facebook.

  When Justin finished teaching for the day, he retreated to his room, intent on adapting his curriculum to address the various levels of the students. But before he could begin, the door pushed open, and Frank’s cadaverous hand gripped its frame. He invited Justin to come out to L’Atmos — L’Atmosphère, he explained — his favorite bar. Friday was the Muslim holy day, he explained, so expats partied on Thursdays. Justin insisted he had too much work, but Frank asked if he was afraid and expounded on the safety of Kabul — that one should never do the same thing at the same time every day, but other than that, everyone was free.

  Throw your shoes on. Spending time around people your own age will pick you up.

  Idris already had the Corolla running, the inside so warm that Justin became sleepy almost immediately.

  As Idris drove, Frank talked about how Afghanistan was changing, how seeds planted now would shape generations. Oncoming headlights flashed through the windshield like a series of snapshots: Idris rigid, clutching the wheel; Frank’s glasses glowing, his hand lifted in a gesture that appeared historic. Justin dozed, opening his eyes only once, when the car braked sharply. A dog was lit up, its rangy form clipped from the night: long back legs, a narrow waist, a bulging rib cage.

  When Justin woke, the car was next to a concrete building, where a man with a Kalashnikov was talking to the driver of a green police truck. Frank and Justin got out, and the guard pounded on a metal door. A peephole opened. They were let into a room with only a metal-frame cot. Another guard had been sitting on it in a rumpled gray uniform, his rifle next to him on the mattress. He frisked them and banged on a second door. They were let into a courtyard
and followed the path to a bar with misted windows.

  Frank plunged into the crowd. Justin went to stand by the bukhari. He overheard a man say, The Americans keep making Karzai dance like a puppet. He was bound to turn on us.

  The crowd was mostly young: men in their twenties and thirties with spruced-up hair, fashionably short beards, or none at all — and others, grittier, in drab pea coats or khaki jackets, standing hunched, holding whiskeys or beers. The young women had more presence, points of stillness among gesticulating hands, bobbing heads. They’d hung their headscarves with their jackets or wore them around their necks. The pulsing music was loud and impersonal.

  Frank was in the corner, holding a beer, his listeners offering up resigned nods. To live here for so long, Justin thought, with so few means, maybe Frank needed an audience to convince himself daily of his purpose.

  Justin moved closer to the bukhari. He had the cell Idris had bought him and was debating whether to call and ask him for a ride home. He rubbed his hands in the heat and scanned the room perfunctorily. In the uneven radiance of dim lights — the lamps at tables and the bulbs near the bar — the fine bones of Alexandra’s face gained definition. She interrupted her conversation, placing her hand on the arm of a sturdy redhead, and walked toward Justin.

  I didn’t expect to see you here, she said.

  I didn’t expect to be here.

  You didn’t cross the planet to join a club of people who’ve spent their lives searching for a club that’s worthy of them?

  She smiled so faintly her skin hardly creased. She was different than at the airport, but then again, he’d met her only briefly, in a stressful moment.

  I was about to leave, she said. Be a gentleman and walk me. I’ll call you a taxi from my place.

  People in the bar watched them go. Justin followed her through the courtyard, grateful to be out of the bar even if he regretted being back in the cold and was wary of the pleasure he felt in her company.

  She looped her scarf over her head and turned right along the dark street.

  I didn’t expect it to be like this, she said.

  Like what?

  For everyone to be so self-satisfied. These people are all so proud of themselves.

  Shouldn’t they be?

  Not like this. They’ve already decided what this experience means to them. They might as well stay home and lie about it.

  She found a path along the heaped earth beneath the walls. She lifted her hands for balance but never reached for him. The street made him think of an exitless corridor. He considered asking if she was afraid. Anyone driving by could shoot them.

  Are you afraid? she asked, as if reading his mind.

  Justin didn’t reply, aware of a car behind them. It had slowed on a cross street and veered in their direction, thousands of tiny airborne particles glinting against the headlights.

  I think you’re afraid, she said.

  I’m not. Where’s your house?

  Three streets over. There’s a shortcut through the alleyway we can take.

  Their shadows lengthened as the car crept up behind them. He squinted into its light.

  The car wobbled and jerked to a stop, the driver only now seeming to realize they were in the way. It revved its engine and swerved around them, into the middle of the street, and plunged through a puddle three times its length, a chunk of ice banging against its fender.

  They cut into the alleyway, where silhouettes of concertina wire spooled above them. He asked Alexandra why she wanted to walk like this, and she said that she didn’t come to Kabul to live in a box — that there must be expats who led normal lives, eating in places without guards, speaking the language and doing good work.

  You don’t say much, she told him.

  I’m thinking, he said. She’d described how he wanted to live in Kabul.

  I’m sorry. I must be doing what I see others here do. This place makes people anxious. They talk too much or laugh too hard, or get so angry.

  Suddenly, she whispered in French — a breathy, urgent sound, like a curse.

  Look. She pointed ahead. Do you see them?

  Where the alley joined the next street, the darkness shifted and rippled.

  His heart was racing. He made himself step past her.

  There was faint rustling, the sound of padding through mud, followed by a low growl. She backed against the wall and into a doorway, and Justin joined her. His fear emptied him of everything but faith. He squatted and felt around for a rock.

  Three dogs appeared, followed by more than a dozen rangy mongrels, their heads down as they sniffed at the ground. Alexandra turned on her cellphone’s flashlight. The dogs jerked their heads, wincing like old men. Their eyes glowed green or blue, their lids red and crusted. Their coats had bald spots and tufts, piebald from filth or injuries, from scabs, mange, and scars. An occasional growl came from the pack. There were at least twenty dogs now, some as broadly built as rottweilers. Others were painfully thin.

  Two slowed, one with strips of muddy fur hanging from its flank. Alexandra shone her light in its eyes, and it drew its lips back from its teeth before filing past.

  It’s as if they know better, she said. They’re afraid of people.

  As they began walking again, Justin wanted to touch her and feel the warmth of her skin. He knew nothing about Quebec. He saw Canada as a great northern backwater, freeloading off America’s hard-earned liberty. Louisiana had French history too, though Cajuns had never seemed very different from normal Americans.

  As a muddy UN Land Cruiser passed, Alexandra knocked on a gate so softly he didn’t think anyone would hear. But the peephole slid open on two eyes. The bolt snapped back, and a small man in a leather jacket let them in.

  Thank you, Fahim, she said. This is Justin.

  They shook hands. Fahim smiled and retreated to his guardhouse.

  Two dogs ran up and pushed their muzzles into Justin’s fingers to be petted. They resembled those in the street, yellow with squarish heads, but friendly and clean.

  When I was a girl, she said, I spied on neighbors. I hid in their yards. I liked watching people who were alone best. I could see them relax. It made me wonder how the world would be if we lived alongside each other the way we are when we’re alone.

  It would still be messy, he said.

  But peaceful. That’s how you looked in the bar. You were aware of yourself, but then you’d forget. It was more honest than in the airport.

  Justin never felt alone. He always sensed others beyond his wedge of sight, and an invisible eye mapping his life. He thought of the car in the street, the dogs, and her calm. He was certain Alexandra must be profoundly spiritual.

  God protected us this evening, he said, and she shook her head, seeming to come to.

  Do you want me to call you a taxi? she asked.

  No, I’ll call my driver. When he took out his cell, a furrow appeared between her eyebrows, giving the impression she regretted speaking so quickly.

  Justin asked her for the address, repeated it to Idris, and hung up. She said they should exchange numbers. The car soon approached outside. The speed of Idris’s arrival made Justin realize how short a distance they’d walked.

  As she let him out of the gate, her lips were pursed, disappointed. In the light, she called to mind a lean tribe on a Breton coast. She thanked him for his company and said good night.

  Idris asked if they should go back and wait for Frank at the bar, but Justin was too tired. He angled the heat vents toward himself. Relaxing into his seat, he recalled how, as a doctoral student, he’d gone through a period when he would wake up in a sweat, unable to control his desire except through prayer. He was haunted by the bodies of young women who attended his classes in yoga clothes or skirts, or those on the covers of fashion and men’s magazines, or the conversations he overheard — two TAs talking ab
out sleeping with undergraduates, how, in bed, one had referred to her implants as sweet-sixteen breasts, propping them in her hands for him to admire. Justin had visited the university chapel where the boyish pastor asked if he’d given any thought to marriage. Justin told him he preferred the greater battle: devotion and resistance to the oceanic darkness against which he could measure his faith.

  美智子

  Two days before Tam left for her embed, her emotions were still oscillating. She alternated between her usual boasting and wondering about the car bomb. She reminisced about Alexandra — how confident she’d seemed, like someone who’d been here before or who’d read every Kabul expat blog — and the first time we’d seen her with Justin, in L’Atmos, the place packed, people turning as she crossed the room to go to the big bearded stranger, as if he belonged to her. And then Tam cried and admitted she would find our time apart difficult, and I held her.

  When she went to take a shower, I said I’d join her in a moment. The water hissed as I sat next to the bukhari in my underwear. I hadn’t told her I was going to America. I didn’t feel guilt, just an unwillingness to share. I didn’t yet know how to spell out what was driving me to investigate the lives of those who’d died in the bombing.

  The knobs squeaked, and water splashed the floor rhythmically as Tam wrung out her hair. I pictured her skimming water from her body, the way she usually did, moving her hands rapidly over her skin before reaching for a towel.

  “You didn’t join me.” She stood naked in the bathroom door, a cut below her knee, the watery blood glossy and thin — a dramatic flourish, like her scarves.

  Wicker blinds hung in the bottom two-thirds of the windows, exposing segments of fading sky. The final call to prayer had begun, the muezzin’s reedy voice resonating in the walls.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been different.”

  “I’m just tired,” I told her. “Kabul. You know how it is.”

  “The winter’s hard.” She knelt and put her arms around me. In the fire’s heat, she was already dry, just a faint humidity where the top of her chest pressed into my ribs. I ran my fingers through her hair to soothe her. It felt like frayed wet rope.