بخش 9

Farid eased the Land Cruiser up the driveway of a big house in Wazir Akbar Khan. He killed the engine and we sat for a minute, listening to the tink-tink of the engine cooling off, neither one of us saying anything.

“I guess I’ll wait in the car for you,” he said finally, his tone a little apologetic. He wouldn’t look at me. “This is your business now. I—”

I patted his arm. “You’ve done much more than I’ve paid you for. I don’t expect you to go with me.” But I wished I didn’t have to go in alone. Despite what I had learned about Baba, I wished he were standing alongside me now. But Baba was long dead, buried in the Afghan section of a little cemetery in Hayward. I was on my own.

I stepped out of the car and walked to the tall, wooden front gates of the house. I had to pound on the doors. A moment later, I heard terse voices from the other side and a pair of men toting Kalashnikovs answered the door.

The armed men frisked me head to toe, patted my legs, felt my crotch. One of them said something in Pashtu and they both chuckled. We stepped through the front gates. The two guards escorted me across a well-manicured lawn.

We climbed a few steps and entered a large, sparsely decorated house. We crossed the foyer—a large Afghan flag draped one of the walls—and the men took me upstairs to a room with twin mint green sofas and a big-screen TV in the far corner. A prayer rug showing a slightly oblong Mecca was nailed to one of the walls. The older of the two men motioned toward the sofa with the barrel of his weapon. I sat down. They left the room.

Thoughts were flying around in my head, but I didn’t want to think at all, because a sober part of me knew that what I had managed to get myself into was insanity. I was thousands of miles from my wife, sitting in a room that felt like a holding cell, waiting for a man I had seen murder two people that same day.

There was a coffee table by the sofa. The base was X-shaped, walnut-sized brass balls studding the ring where the metallic legs crossed. On the table sat a bowl of red grapes. I plucked one and tossed it in my mouth, unaware that it would be the last bit of solid food I would eat for a long time.

The door opened and the two armed men returned, between them the tall Talib in white, still wearing his dark John Lennon glasses, looking like some broad-shouldered, New Age mystic guru.

He took a seat across from me and lowered his hands on the armrests. For a long time, he said nothing. Just sat there, watching me, one hand drumming the upholstery, the other twirling turquoise blue prayer beads. He wore a black vest over the white shirt now, and a gold watch. I saw a splotch of dried blood on his left sleeve. I found it morbidly fascinating that he hadn’t changed clothes after the executions earlier that day.

His skin was much paler than the other two men’s, almost sallow, and a crop of tiny sweat beads gleamed on his forehead just below the edge of his black turban. His beard, chest-length like the others, was lighter in color too.

“Salaam alaykum,” he said.

“Salaam.”

“You can do away with that now, you know,” he said.

“Pardon?”

He turned his palm to one of the armed men and motioned. Rrrriiiip. Suddenly my cheeks were stinging and the guard was tossing my beard up and down in his hand, giggling. The Talib grinned. “One of the better ones I’ve seen in a while. But it really is so much better this way, I think. Don’t you?” He twirled his fingers, snapped them, fist opening and closing. “So, Inshallah, you enjoyed the show today?” “Was that what it was?” I said, hoping my voice didn’t betray the explosion of terror I felt inside.

“Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And, best of all, education en masse.” He snapped his fingers. The younger of the two guards lit him a cigarette. “But you want a real show, you should have been with me in Mazar. August 1998, that was.” “I’m sorry?”

“We left them out for the dogs, you know.”

I saw what he was getting at.

He spoke rapidly. “Door to door we went, calling for the men and the boys. We’d shoot them right there in front of their families. Let them see. Let them remember who they were, where they belonged.”

I had read about the Hazara massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif in the papers. It had happened just after the Taliban took over Mazar, one of the last cities to fall. I remembered Soraya handing me the article over breakfast, her face bloodless.

“We left the bodies in the streets, and if their families tried to sneak out to drag them back into their homes, we’d shoot them too. We left them in the streets for days. We left them for the dogs. Dog meat for dogs.” He crushed his cigarette. Rubbed his eyes with tremulous hands. “You come from America?” “Yes.”

“How is that whore these days?”

I had a sudden urge to urinate. I prayed it would pass. “I’m looking for a boy.”

“Isn’t everyone?” he said. The men with the Kalashnikovs laughed. Their teeth were stained green with naswar.

“I understand he is here, with you,” I said. “His name is Sohrab.”

“I’ll ask you something: What are you doing with that whore? Why aren’t you here, with your Muslim brothers, serving your country?”

“I’ve been away a long time,” was all I could think of saying. My head felt so hot. I pressed my knees together, held my bladder.

The Talib turned to the two men standing by the door. “There are those in my circle who believe that abandoning watan when it needs you the most is the same as treason. I could have you arrested for treason, have you shot for it even. Does that frighten you?”

“Yes.”

“It should,” he said. He leaned back in the sofa. Crushed the cigarette.

I thought about Soraya. It calmed me. I thought of her sickle-shaped birthmark, the elegant curve of her neck, her luminous eyes.

The Talib was saying something.

“Pardon?”

“I said would you like to see him? Would you like to see my boy?” His upper lip curled up in a sneer when he said those last two words.

“Yes.”

The guard left the room. I heard the creak of a door swinging open. Then, footfalls, and the jingle of bells with each step.

Then the door opened and the guard walked in. He carried a stereo—a boom box—on his shoulder. Behind him, a boy dressed in a loose, sapphire blue pirhan-tumban followed.

The resemblance was breathtaking. Disorienting. Rahim Khan’s Polaroid hadn’t done justice to it.

It was the Chinese doll face of my childhood. His head was shaved, his eyes darkened with mascara, and his cheeks glowed with an unnatural red. When he stopped in the middle of the room, the bells strapped around his anklets stopped jingling.

His eyes fell on me. Lingered. Then he looked away. Looked down at his naked feet.

One of the guards pressed a button and Pashtu music filled the room. Tabla, harmonium, the whine of a dil-roba. I guessed music wasn’t sinful as long as it played to Taliban ears. The three men began to clap.

“Wah wah! Mashallah!” they cheered.

Sohrab raised his arms and turned slowly. His little hands swiveled at the wrists, his fingers snapped, and his head swung side to side like a pendulum. His feet pounded the floor, the bells jingling in perfect harmony with the beat of the tabla. He kept his eyes closed. The Talib in white was tilting his head back and forth with the music, his mouth half-open in a leer.

Sohrab danced in a circle, eyes closed, danced until the music stopped. He froze in midspin.

“Bia, bia, my boy,” the Talib said, calling Sohrab to him. Sohrab went to him, head down, stood between his thighs. The Talib wrapped his arms around the boy. One of the guards elbowed the other and snickered. The Talib told them to leave us alone.

“Yes, Agha sahib,” they said as they exited.

The Talib spun the boy around so he faced me. He locked his arms around Sohrab’s belly, rested his chin on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ve been wondering, whatever happened to old Babalu, anyway?”

The question hit me like a hammer between the eyes. I felt the color drain from my face. My legs went cold. Numb.

He laughed. “What did you think? That you’d put on a fake beard and I wouldn’t recognize you?” Then he took off his sunglasses and locked his bloodshot blue eyes on mine.

I tried to take a breath and couldn’t. I tried to blink and couldn’t. His name escaped my lips: “Assef.” “Amir jan.”

“What are you doing here?” I said, knowing how utterly foolish the question sounded, yet unable to think of anything else to say.

“Me?” Assef arched an eyebrow. “I’m in my element. The question is what are you doing here?”

“I already told you,” I said. My voice was trembling. I wished it wouldn’t do that, wished my flesh wasn’t shrinking against my bones.

“The boy?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I’ll pay you for him,” I said. “I can have money wired.”

“Money?” Assef said. He tittered. “I didn’t fight the Shorawi for money. Didn’t join the Taliban for money either. Do you want to know why I joined them?” My lips had gone dry.

“Good. I’ll tell you,” he said. “I spent some time in jail, at Poleh-Charkhi, just after Babrak Karmal took over in 1980. I ended up there one night, when a group of Parchami soldiers marched into our house and ordered my father and me at gunpoint to follow them. The bastards didn’t give a reason, not that it was a mystery. There were making their little point about the fall of the bourgeoisie: Round up the rich, throw them in jail, make an example for the comrades.

“Anyway, we were crammed in groups of six in these tiny cells each the size of a refrigerator. Every night the commandant, a half-Hazara, half-Uzbek thing who smelled like a rotting donkey, would have one of the prisoners dragged out of the cell and he’d beat him until sweat poured from his fat face. Then he’d light a cigarette, crack his joints, and leave. The next night, he’d pick someone else. One night, he picked me. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. I’d been peeing blood for three days. Kidney stones. And if you’ve never had one, believe me when I say it’s the worst imaginable pain. Anyway, what could I do? They dragged me out and he started kicking me. He had knee-high boots with steel toes that he wore every night for his little kicking game, and he used them on me. I was screaming and screaming and he kept kicking me and then, suddenly, he kicked me on the left kidney and the stone passed. Just like that! Oh, the relief!” Assef laughed. “And I yelled ‘Allah-u-akbar’ and he kicked me even harder and I started laughing. He got mad and hit me harder, and the harder he kicked me, the harder I laughed. They threw me back in the cell laughing. I kept laughing and laughing because suddenly I knew that had been a message from God: He was on my side. He wanted me to live for a reason.

I’ve been on a mission since.” “What mission is that?” I heard myself say. “Stoning adulterers? Raping children? Flogging women for wearing high heels? Massacring Hazaras? All in the name of Islam?” The words spilled suddenly and unexpectedly, came out before I could yank the leash.

A look of surprise passed across Assef’s face, briefly, and disappeared. “There are things traitors like you don’t understand.” “Like what?”

Assef’s brow twitched. “Like pride in your people, your customs, your language. Afghanistan is like a beautiful mansion littered with garbage, and someone has to take out the garbage.”

He pinched Sohrab’s earlobe between his teeth.

“I wonder why you’ve come all this way, Amir, come all this way for a Hazara?”

“I have my reasons,” I said.

“Very well then,” Assef said, sneering. He shoved Sohrab in the back, pushed him right into the table. Sohrab’s hips struck the table, knocking it upside down and spilling the grapes. He fell on them, face first, and stained his shirt purple with grape juice. The table’s legs, crossing through the ring of brass balls, were now pointing to the ceiling.

“Take him, then.” I helped Sohrab to his feet, swatted the bits of crushed grape that had stuck to his pants like barnacles to a pier.

“Go, take him,” Assef said, pointing to the door.

I took Sohrab’s hand. It was small, the skin dry and calloused. His fingers moved, laced themselves with mine. The bells jingled as we crossed the room.

We made it as far as the door.

“Of course,” Assef said behind us, “I didn’t say you could take him for free.”

I turned. “We have some unfinished business, you and I,” Assef said.

Assef called the guards back into the room. “I want you to listen to me,” he said to them. “In a moment, I’m going to close the door. Then he and I are going to finish an old bit of business. No matter what you hear, don’t come in! Do you hear me? Don’t come in!” The guards nodded. Looked from Assef to me. “Yes, Agha sahib.”

“When it’s all done, only one of us will walk out of this room alive,” Assef said. “If it’s him, then he’s earned his freedom and you let him pass, do you understand?” The older guard shifted on his feet. “But Agha sahib—”

“If it’s him, you let him pass!” Assef screamed. The two men flinched but nodded again.

The guards left. Assef put down his prayer beads. Reached in the breast pocket of his black vest. What he fished out of that pocket didn’t surprise me one bit: stainless-steel brass knuckles.

My memory of the fight with Assef is amazingly vivid in stretches: His brass knuckles flashing in the afternoon light. Sohrab screaming. Tabla, harmonium, a dil-roba. Getting hurled against the wall. The knuckles shattering my jaw. Choking on my own teeth, swallowing them, thinking about all the countless hours I’d spent flossing and brushing. Getting hurled against the wall. Sohrab screaming. The side of my face slamming against the corner of the television stand. That snapping sound again, this time just under my left eye. Biting down in pain, noticing how my teeth didn’t align like they used to. Getting kicked. Sohrab screaming.

I don’t know at what point I started laughing. And the harder I laughed, the harder he kicked me, punched me, scratched me.

“WHAT’S SO FUNNY?” Assef kept roaring with each blow. “WHAT’S SO FUNNY?” What was so funny was that, for the first time since the winter of 1975, I felt at peace. I laughed because I saw that, in some hidden nook in a corner of my mind, I’d even been looking forward to this. My body was broken—just how badly I wouldn’t find out until later—but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed.

Then the end. That, I’ll take to my grave:

I was on the ground laughing, Assef straddling my chest, his face a mask of lunacy. His free hand was locked around my throat. The other, the one with the brass knuckles, cocked above his shoulder. He raised his fist higher, raised it for another blow.

Then: “Bas.” A thin voice.

We both looked.

“Please, no more.”

I remembered something the orphanage director had said when he’d opened the door to me and Farid. What had been his name? Zaman? He’s inseparable from that thing, he had said. He tucks it in the waist of his pants everywhere he goes.

“No more.” Sohrab said.

His hand was cocked above his shoulder, holding the cup of the slingshot at the end of the elastic band which was pulled all the way back. There was something in the cup, something shiny and yellow. I blinked the blood from my eyes and saw it was one of the brass balls from the ring in the table base. Sohrab had the slingshot pointed to Assef’s face.

Fresh tears pooling in his green eyes, mixing with mascara.

“Put it down, Hazara,” Assef hissed. “Put it down or what I’m doing to him will be a gentle ear twisting compared to what I’ll do to you.”

The tears broke free. Sohrab shook his head. “Please, Agha, don’t hurt him anymore.”

“Put it down.”

“Bas.”

“PUT IT DOWN!” Assef let go of my throat. Lunged at Sohrab.

The slingshot made a thwiiiiit sound when Sohrab released the cup. Then Assef was screaming. He put his hand where his left eye had been just a moment ago. Blood oozed between his fingers.

“Let’s go!” Sohrab said. He took my hand. Helped me to my feet. Every inch of my battered body wailed with pain. Behind us, Assef kept shrieking.

“OUT! GET IT OUT!”

Teetering, I opened the door. The guards’ eyes widened when they saw me and I wondered what I looked like. My stomach hurt with each breath. One of the guards said something in Pashtu and then they blew past us, running into the room where Assef was still screaming. “OUT!” “Bia,” Sohrab said, pulling my hand. “Let’s go!”

I stumbled down the hallway, Sohrab’s hand in mine. I took a final look over my shoulder. The guards were huddled over Assef, doing something to his face. Then I understood: The brass ball was still stuck in his empty eye socket.

I hobbled down the steps, leaning on Sohrab. We made it outside, into daylight, my arm around Sohrab’s shoulder, and I saw Farid running toward us.

“Bismillah! Bismillah!” It was about then that I passed out.

Faces poke through the haze, linger, fade away. They peer down, ask me questions. They’re all wearing green hats. They talk rapidly, use words I don’t understand. I don’t remember any of them, except for the one with the Clark Gable mustache. Mister Soap Opera Star. That’s funny. I want to laugh now. But laughing hurts too.

I fade out.

She says her name is Aisha, “like the prophet’s wife.” Her graying hair is parted in the middle and tied in a ponytail, her nose pierced with a stud shaped like the sun. Something is jabbing at the side of my chest.

I fade out.

A man is standing at my bedside. I know him. He is dark and lanky, has a long beard. He drove me somewhere a few years ago. I know him. There is something wrong with my mouth. I hear a bubbling sound.

I fade out. I keep fading in and out.

The name of the man with the Clark Gable mustache turned out to be Dr. Faruqi. He wasn’t a soap opera star at all, but a head-and-neck surgeon, though I kept thinking of him as someone named Armand in some steamy soap set on a tropical island.

Where am I? I wanted to ask. But my mouth wouldn’t open. I frowned. Grunted. Armand smiled; his teeth were blinding white.

“Not yet, Amir,” he said, “but soon. When the wires are out.” He spoke English with a thick, rolling Urdu accent.

Wires?

Armand crossed his arms; he had hairy forearms and wore a gold wedding band. “You must be wondering where you are, what happened to you. That’s perfectly normal, the postsurgical state is always disorienting. So I’ll tell you what I know.” Armand frowned, cocked one eyebrow in a slightly self-important way. “You are in a hospital in Peshawar. You’ve been here two days. You have suffered some very significant injuries, Amir, I should tell you. I would say you’re very lucky to be alive, my friend.” He swayed his index finger back and forth like a pendulum when he said this. “Your spleen had ruptured, probably—and fortunately for you—a delayed rupture, because you had signs of early hemorrhage into your abdominal cavity. My colleagues from the general surgery unit had to perform an emergency splenectomy. If it had ruptured earlier, you would have bled to death.” He patted me on the arm, the one with the IV, and smiled. “You also suffered seven broken ribs. One of them caused a pneumothorax.” I frowned. Tried to open my mouth. Remembered about the wires.

“That means a punctured lung,” Armand explained. He tugged at a clear plastic tubing on my left side. “We sealed the leak with this chest tube. You had also suffered various lacerations. The worst laceration was on your upper lip,” Armand said. “The impact had cut your upper lip in two, clean down the middle. But not to worry, the plastics guys sewed it back together and they think you will have an excellent result, though there will be a scar. That is unavoidable.

“There was also an orbital fracture on the left side; that’s the eye socket bone, and we had to fix that too. The wires in your jaws will come out in about six weeks,” Armand said. “Until then it’s liquids and shakes. But you have a job to do today. Do you know what it is?” I shook my head.

“Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food.” He laughed.

Later, I kept thinking of something else Armand/Dr. Faruqi had said: The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.

Farid and Sohrab came to visit the next day. “Do you know who we are today? Do you remember?” Farid said, only half-jokingly. I nodded.

“Al hamdullellah!” he said, beaming. “No more talking nonsense.”

“Thank you, Farid,” I said through jaws wired shut. “For everything.” He waved a hand, blushed a little. “Bas, it’s not worthy of thanks,” he said. I turned to Sohrab. He was wearing a new outfit, light brown pirhan-tumban that looked a bit big for him, and a black skullcap. He was looking down at his feet, toying with the IV line coiled on the bed.

“We were never properly introduced,” I said. I offered him my hand. “I am Amir.”

He looked at my hand, then to me. “You are the Amir agha Father told me about?” he said.

“Yes. I owe you thanks too, Sohrab jan,” I said. “You saved my life.” He didn’t say anything. I dropped my hand when he didn’t take it. “I like your new clothes,” I mumbled.

“They’re my son’s,” Farid said. “He has outgrown them. They fit Sohrab pretty well, I would say.” Sohrab could stay with him, he said, until we found a place for him. It occurred to me that somewhere between the time we had left Peshawar for Afghanistan and now, we had become friends. “Farid” I said a little hesitantely. “What?”, he repplied.

I didn’t want to ask. I was afraid of the answer. “Rahim Khan,” I said.

“He’s gone.”

My heart skipped. “Is he—”

“No, just . . . gone.” He handed me a folded piece of paper and a small key. “The landlord said Rahim Khan left the letter and the key for you.” He checked his watch. “I’d better go. Bia, Sohrab.” “Could you leave him here for a while?” I said. “Pick him up later?” I turned to Sohrab. “Do you want to stay here with me for a little while?”

He shrugged and said nothing.

“Of course,” Farid said. “I’ll pick him up just before evening namaz.”

“How are you?” I asked Sohrab. He shrugged, looked at his hands.

“Are you hungry?” He shook his head.

“Do you want to talk?”

He shook his head again.

We sat there like that for a while, silent. I fell asleep at some point, and, when I woke up, daylight had dimmed a bit, the shadows had stretched, and Sohrab was still sitting next to me. He was still looking down at his hands.

That night, after Farid picked up Sohrab, I unfolded Rahim Khan’s letter. I had delayed reading it as long as possible. It read:

Amir jan,

Inshallah, you have reached this letter safely. I pray that I have not put you in harm’s way and that Afghanistan has not been too unkind to you. You have been in my prayers since the day you left.

You were right all those years to suspect that I knew. I did know. Hassan told me shortly after it happened. What you did was wrong, Amir jan, but do not forget that you were a boy when it happened. A troubled little boy. But I hope you will heed this: A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer. I hope your suffering comes to an end with this journey to Afghanistan.

Amir jan, I am ashamed for the lies we told you all those years. You were right to be angry in Peshawar. You had a right to know. So did Hassan. I know it doesn’t absolve anyone of anything, but the Kabul we lived in in those days was a strange world, one in which some things mattered more than the truth.

Amir jan, I know how hard your father was on you when you were growing up. I saw how you suffered and yearned for his affections, and my heart bled for you. But your father was a man torn between two halves, Amir jan: you and Hassan. He loved you both, but he could not love Hassan the way he longed to, openly, and as a father. So he took it out on you instead—Amir, the socially legitimate half, the half that represented the riches he had inherited and the sin-with-impunity privileges that came with them. Your father, like you, was a tortured soul, Amir jan.

I cannot describe to you the depth and blackness of the sorrow that came over me when I learned of his passing. I loved him because he was my friend, but also because he was a good man, maybe even a great man. And this is what I want you to understand, that good, real good, was born out of your father’s remorse. Sometimes, I think everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself. I know that in the end, God will forgive. He will forgive your father, me, and you too. I hope you can do the same.

I have left you some money, most of what I have left, in fact. There is a bank in Peshawar; Farid knows the location. The money is in a safe-deposit box. I have given you the key.

As for me, it is time to go. I have little time left and I wish to spend it alone. I leave you in the hands of God.

Your friend alwaysو Rahim

I dragged the hospital gown sleeve across my eyes. I folded the letter and put it under my mattress.

Your father, like you, was a tortured soul, Rahim Khan had written. Maybe so. We had both sinned and betrayed. But Baba had found a way to create good out of his remorse. What had I ever done to right things?

When the nurse—not Aisha but a red-haired woman whose name escapes me—walked in with a syringe in hand and asked me if I needed a morphine injection, I said yes.

They removed the chest tube early the next morning, and Armand gave the staff the go-ahead to let me sip apple juice. I asked Aisha for a mirror when she placed the cup of juice on the dresser next to my bed. “Remember, now,” she said over her shoulder, “it will look better in a few days.” Despite her reassurances, looking in the mirror and seeing the thing that insisted it was my face left me a little breathless. It looked like someone had stuck an air pump nozzle under my skin and had pumped away. My eyes were puffy and blue. The worst of it was my mouth, a grotesque blob of purple and red, all bruise and stitches.

Farid and Sohrab came in just as I put the mirror away. Sohrab took his seat on the stool, rested his head on the bed’s side rail.

“You know, the sooner we get you out of here the better,” Farid said.

“Dr. Faruqi says—”

“I don’t mean the hospital. I mean Peshawar.”

“Why?”

He lowered his voice. “The Taliban have friends here. They will start looking for you.”

Farid leaned in. “As soon as you can walk, I’ll take you to Islamabad. Not entirely safe there either, no place in Pakistan is, but it’s better than here. At least it will buy you some time.” “Farid jan, this can’t be safe for you either. Maybe you shouldn’t be seen with me. You have a family to take care of.”

Farid made a waving gesture. “My boys are young, but they are very shrewd. They know how to take care of their mothers and sisters.” He smiled. “Besides, I didn’t say I’d do it for free.” “I wouldn’t let you if you offered,” I said.

“Can I ask you for one more favor?”

“For you a thousand times over,” Farid said.

And, just like that, I was crying. I hitched gusts of air, tears gushing down my cheeks, stinging the raw flesh of my lips.

“What’s the matter?” Farid said, alarmed.

I buried my face in one hand and held up the other. “I’m sorry,” I said. Sohrab was looking at me with a frown creasing his brow. When I could talk again, I told Farid what I needed. “Rahim Khan said they live here in Peshawar.”

I scribbled their names on a scrap of paper towel. “John and Betty Caldwell.” Farid pocketed the folded piece of paper. “I will look for them as soon as I can,” he said. He turned to Sohrab. “As for you, I’ll pick you up this evening. Don’t tire Amir agha too much.” But Sohrab had wandered to the window, where a half-dozen pigeons strutted back and forth on the sill, pecking at wood and scraps of old bread.

In the middle drawer of the dresser beside my bed, I had found an old deck of cards. I had counted them earlier and, surprisingly, found the deck complete. I asked Sohrab if he wanted to play. I didn’t expect him to answer, let alone play. But he turned from the window and said, “The only game I know is panjpar.”

“I feel sorry for you already, because I am a grand master at panjpar. World renowned.”

He took his seat on the stool next to me. I dealt him his five cards. I stole looks at him as he pondered his cards. He was his father in so many ways: the way he fanned out his cards with both hands, the way he squinted while reading them, the way he rarely looked a person in the eye.

We played in silence. I won the first game, let him win the next one, and lost the next five fair and square. “You’re as good as your father, maybe even better,” I said, after my last loss. “I used to beat him sometimes, but I think he let me win.” I paused before saying, “Your father and I were nursed by the same woman.” “I know.”

“What . . . what did he tell you about us?”

“That you were the best friend he ever had,” he said.

I twirled the jack of diamonds in my fingers, flipped it back and forth. “I wasn’t such a good friend, I’m afraid,” I said. “But I’d like to be your friend. I think I could be a good friend to you. Would that be all right? Would you like that?” I put my hand on his arm, gingerly, but he flinched. He dropped his cards and pushed away on the stool. He walked back to the window.

Aisha had a male assistant help me take my first steps that night. It took me ten minutes to make it back to bed, and, by then, the incision on my stomach throbbed and I’d broken out in a drenching sweat. I lay in bed, gasping, my heart hammering in my ears, thinking how much I missed my wife.

Sohrab and I played panjpar most of the next day, again in silence. And the day after that. We hardly spoke, just played panjpar, me propped in bed, he on the three-legged stool, our routine broken only by my taking a walk around the room, or going to the bathroom down the hall. I told Armand early that next day that I was leaving.

“It’s still early for discharge,” “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. But I have to leave.”

“You can hardly walk.”

“I can walk to the end of the hall and back,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” The plan was this: Leave the hospital. Get the money from the safe-deposit box and pay my medical bills. Drive to the orphanage and drop Sohrab off with John and Betty Caldwell. Then get a ride to Islamabad and change travel plans. Give myself a few more days to get better. Fly home.

That was the plan, anyway. Until Farid and Sohrab arrived that morning. “Your friends, this John and Betty Caldwell, they aren’t in Peshawar,” Farid said.

It had taken me ten minutes just to slip into my pirhantumban. I was drawing ragged breaths just from the effort of packing a few of my belongings into a brown paper bag. But I’d managed to get ready and was sitting on the edge of the bed when Farid came in with the news. Sohrab sat on the bed next to me.

“Where did they go?” I asked.

Farid shook his head. “You don’t understand—”

“I went to the U.S. consulate,” Farid said, picking up my bag. “There never was a John and Betty Caldwell in Peshawar. According to the people at the consulate, they never existed.

We got the money from the bank. “What do we do with him?” Farid said, walking me slowly from the hospital accounting office back to the car. Sohrab was in the backseat of the Land Cruiser, looking at traffic through the rolled-down window, chin resting on his palms.

“He can’t stay in Peshawar,” I said, panting.

“Nay, Amir agha, he can’t,” Farid said. He’d read the question in my words. “I’m sorry. I wish I—”

“That’s all right, Farid,” I said. I managed a tired smile. “You have mouths to feed.” “I guess he goes to Islamabad for now,” I said.