Green on Blue (28 page)

I opened the passenger side door and the overhead light came on,
pasting its glare across the sweat, mucus, tears, and blood of a violent death. I pulled Gazan upright in his seat. Small wet flecks shined on his ashen face. His palms had fallen flat and upturned at his side. Only one thing surprised me, his eyes were closed. In that moment before his death, he seemed to decide that it was over, not me, and he shut his eyes. This robbed me of the idea that I took his life.

I reached across Gazan’s body and pulled Atal on top of him so I could drive. As I tugged at Atal, I noticed his silver chain with the opal had been split in two. I’d always admired the stone. Like so much of Atal, he’d bared this necklace to the world with a certain defiance, as if a precious stone, or even expensive clothes and a beautiful house, were talismans enough to protect his life from the dirt and need around it. I took the stone, tucking it in the pocket of my shalwar kameez. I could use a talisman.

My phone vibrated. A reply from Commander Sabir: RETURN.

Mr. Jack’s night-vision goggles had fallen between his legs. I picked them up and drove toward his black HiLux under their green glow. I parked Atal’s truck next to Mr. Jack’s and pulled Atal’s body back into the driver’s seat. With the driver’s door open, the overhead light gave me a last look at the scene and offered me confidence that whoever found this would draw a simple conclusion—a meeting between a militant commander, corrupt village elder, and overconfident American gone sour with deceit. The near truth of it would’ve left me satisfied, but for one thing, Fareeda.

She’d soon learn of her uncle and imagine my role. I needed her to see the truth, as I knew it. There was time, I thought. If I hurried, I could make it to her and then travel to Shkin before daylight. I left the bodies and climbed into Mr. Jack’s HiLux. I began to drive. As I did, I stared across the valley, into the darkness where Fareeda’s home was.

–

A light was on in the house. It flickered through the broken parts of the wall. It was a small light, but in the night there was none besides it. I parked the black HiLux by the red gate. I left the engine running. Outside, I slung the Kalashnikov on my shoulder. Its muzzle faced the ground. As I walked, my leg brushed against its warm barrel. I stepped through the wall and went toward the house.

The door was open. In the breeze its hinges creaked. Just past it was the bare flame of an oil lamp. I stood in the darkness of the doorway and saw Fareeda. She sat on the sofa in the living room, waiting, it seemed. I thought of the story Atal had told me, about how he’d found her in this same room when she was a girl. This was the second time she’d been abandoned here. But I knew it was worse than this. If she waited for him tonight, it meant she waited for him always. And each time he left she was abandoned.

I stepped inside, to where she could see me. Her eyes found mine but quickly left them, instead finding the rifle on my shoulder. Only when I rested it by the door did her eyes return to mine. But still she said nothing. Instead she stood, took the lamp, and walked to the back of the house. I sat. In the darkness, I waited for her. Soon she returned. In her left hand, high above her head, she carried a tray. On it was a pot of tea with a single glass and the oil lamp. She placed the tray on the table and served me, pouring out the one glass. The lamp sat between us. I drank and, as we were close together in the light, she found the few dark stains of gore on my hands and clothes. This was what I’d come to tell her. There seemed no sense in hiding it, but before I could speak, she did.

You will stay now?

I shook my head, no.

Then you’ve killed me along with him, she said, looking toward the
door. There, in the distant light of the lamp, dark and warm shadows cast strangely on the rifle. Use your rifle, she said. Come, do to me what it is you’ve already done.

I wish for something else, I answered. I looked away from her and into the lamp. I could be to you as he was, I said, if you let me find a way.

That way has taken my uncle from me, and before that my father, she replied.

I’ll find the medicine you need.

After I spoke these words, her eyes rested on me hatefully. But it wasn’t for Atal or for all that had been taken from her village. The hate was in the need. She was a prisoner of her needs, and I’d become the master of them. I loved her and so I’d find a way to care for her, but to care for her was to make her hate me. And looking at Fareeda, and all the beautiful and brutal parts of her body, I realized she’d hated Atal as well.

You’ll return then? she asked.

I reached toward her. By instinct she moved away but stopped herself, letting me take. A shawl hung from her shoulders. The pads of my fingers skirted its hem, finding their way beneath. I touched the skin of her good arm. I wove my fingers through hers. Then, with my other hand, I pulled back the shawl. I clasped our palms together. I lifted her smooth hand up and kissed it as I’d seen Atal do before. I raised my head, searching for Fareeda’s eyes, but she looked away. Her gaze rested coldly on the lamp between us. I reached over to the table and turned down its flame. In the darkness, she again shifted away from me. She was frightened of what I could and might do. I dropped her good hand from mine. With one arm, I pulled her toward me. Our bodies pressed against each other. Then hers became limp, as if she’d departed it, sacrificing herself to all the meanness she imagined in me. With my other hand, I reached across her and grasped the knotted flesh of her deformed arm. I held it up, as if I might kiss it too. But I couldn’t.

Gently, I laid the arm across her lap. I pulled the hem of her shawl over it. From the pocket of my shalwar kameez, I took out the opal. I reached my arms around her neck. Behind her, I tied off the chain’s two broken ends. The opal rested against her chest in the darkness. As I left, I turned up the flame on the lamp. And when I passed the door, I took the rifle.

–

With what was left of the night, I drove back to Shkin. Inside the cab of Mr. Jack’s HiLux, an artificial sweetness hung heavily in the air. From the rearview mirror, a bushel of cardboard air fresheners dangled, each one cut in the shape of a pine. To me they didn’t smell like pine, but perhaps they had to Mr. Jack. Also in the cab of his HiLux were the seat belts Atal didn’t have in his truck. I buckled mine. At first it seemed a foolish precaution, but belted to my seat, breathing the sweet chemical smell of freshened air, I felt protected from the familiar world outside. There was power in such a feeling. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding the night-vision goggles, I found the north road, climbing and descending its many switchbacks. And from the clean cab, it seemed nothing could harm me, and with this feeling, it seemed the entire mountain range became like a knot untangled.

I passed over the worn lip of Qiam’s crater. Gently, it crumbled beneath me. I continued and then, in the green distance of my night vision, I saw the outline of one of the Special Lashkar’s trucks, a checkpoint. It was fixed to the mountainside like an ancient boulder, its power in its stillness. The truck’s machine gunner slumped in the bed. As I drove toward him, he stirred and picked up his goggles, looking toward me. Then he slumped back into the bed. He had no intention of stopping Mr. Jack’s HiLux.

I rushed along the road, exhausted by the night’s events. A great
tiredness stirred in the back of my legs, running up my spine, blanketing my shoulders. I leaned over the steering wheel, pressed the goggles to my face, and willed myself to drive. I continued parallel to a stream that ran through the ravine toward Shkin. The water rolled out before me like a black ribbon, but soon it swam with morning light. Sunlit reds, greens from the pines, and the dark browns of everything else became increasingly clear. I dropped my goggles and stared straight ahead, toward the mountains that now shouldered the day’s early glow.

As my HiLux heaved itself up a final climb, the firebase revealed itself—grubby, brown, and spread low. As I traveled this last stretch of road, a man leaned casually on a small motorbike several hundred yards outside the gate. He was handsomely dressed, conspicuous. A dark blue shalwar kameez hung to his knees with baggy trousers to match. On his head a gray, almost silver, turban was stacked in a neat bundle and its tail draped lazily over his shoulder and down his chest. He played with its end.

The man stepped into my path with his arm outstretched, demanding I stop. I pressed firmly on the brakes and as the weight of my HiLux shifted forward, I saw it was Commander Sabir. He strolled toward my door with the unhurried elegance of all great predators.

The American’s truck? he asked, sticking his head into my window.

He was at the meeting, I said. It was unplanned.

Commander Sabir nodded, licked his exposed lower gums with the underside of his tongue, absorbing what such a thing meant. And it is done? he asked.

Yes, Atal, Gazan, and Mr. Jack, I said.

Mr. Jack, he spoke the name, letting go of something once familiar. And you are certain about Atal?

Not wanting to speak his name again, I nodded.

Good, he said. Things will be different now, Aziz.

There will be no peace, I answered.

War is a mother to men such as us, he replied. It is a mother whose generosity brought you badal and will bring me my outpost. Men who forget about her generosity wind up like the three you just left.

What remains for me? I asked.

Plenty, if you choose. But you can’t come to Shkin anymore. You are completely outside us now. But with this, you are valuable. Gazan is gone, but someone must lead his fighters. You.

I am not Gazan, I spit back.

No, you’re not, he replied. You’re not a fool as he was, and we will be better for it. He settled his stare on mine, and his logic trickled neatly down to an unquestionable conclusion that chilled the space between us.

And my brother?

He’ll be cared for just as he’s always been, said Commander Sabir.

No, I told him. I want to see my brother.

Very well, see him, he offered, waving his hand limply, as if he were giving me a trifle. Drive on to Orgun. I’ll make the arrangements.

I pressed him: And after?

Return to Atal’s home and wait. Gazan’s fighters will find you soon enough. I will see to it.

I understood, but I wanted to hear him say what I understood and asked: What will I do with them then?

You’ll lead them and they’ll follow, he answered. They’ll follow whoever clothes them, feeds them, and arms them. I do all of this and you will do all this through me.

And what of us, you and me?

We’ll serve the war, he replied. And we’ll prosper.

Give me time to consider this. First, I will go to Orgun to see my brother, and if I accept, I’ll send you a message from Atal’s home.

Of course, said Commander Sabir. Only if you accept.

–

I set out toward Orgun, and the north road ran flat and straight across the high desert plain. I began my journey without sleep and felt like a trespasser from yesterday.

I drove for hours. My only interruption was the sun, bearing down on the horizon. It set and the road became crowded in the darkness. Truck drivers, their workday finished, squatted along the shoulder fixing dinner. I thought of the young Mumtaz, with his father, doing the same. I wondered if tonight he prepared dinner for me in case I decided to return. I knew he wondered about what choices I’d made since leaving. At some point he’d learn of those choices. This made me want never to see him again.

A smattering of lights lined the horizon. Orgun. Soon the dust of the plain yielded to farmers’ fields that were rutted and hard, waiting for crops. Among the fields were clusters of mud huts that made up the outskirts of the city. I continued to drive and Orgun rose up and swallowed me. Green, red, and blue shopfronts lined the streets. Small cooking fires glowed from within. Out front, merchants sat in circles, speaking beneath painted signs with scripts twisted into calligraphy, advertising the products in their stores. But sitting in this way was no longer for me. I was now a passerby to the evening’s rituals and their civility.

I pulled up next to the shabby two-story hospital. An ambulance was parked on the street outside. I left the black HiLux beside it. Exhausted and stiff, I approached the front entrance’s light blue double doors, where a red sickle moon had been added since I’d left last winter—soon it’d be fall. The fresh paint had seeped into the chipped bottom layers, leaving the sickle moon with an uneven coat. I paused before entering and gathered a bit of strength for this final part of my journey. I didn’t
know what I’d feel when I found my brother, but this last day had left me numb and I wasn’t sure I’d feel anything.

I entered the hospital and its wide linoleum corridor was empty. I remembered the surgeons rushing down it after the bombing, and my desperation, and my brother, gazing up at me, slipping. Halfway down the corridor was the operating room where he’d first been taken. I swung open its double doors, wondering if a similar scene would greet me. Inside were ten beds in two rows of five, each with crisp sheets, and next to them surgical tools laid on small-wheeled stands, clean, and ready for the cutting. A freshly shaven man in blue scrubs, a doctor perhaps, fiddled over one of the beds.

Is there someone you’re looking for? he asked without glancing up.

No, I said. I’m just waiting.

Well, you can’t wait in here, he replied. Wait outside.

That’s what I’d done before, waited outside. I lacked the energy to find my brother with what remained of the night. I stepped into the corridor and sat on the freshly buffed floor, my back to the wall. I tucked my legs into my chest, the sharp smell of bleach and other chemicals rising to my nose. The floor’s smooth hardness was uncomfortable, but its cleanness was a luxury. I laid my head between my arms and fell asleep.

–

There was a soft tapping at my foot. I looked up and rails of white burning bulbs ran down the ceiling. A lean, hard silhouette broke up the light.