4
Imran had been a streetsweeper for eight months. He had learned to tell time last year and measure things like days and weeks, so he was sure it was eight months. Sweeping was a spiritual act for Imran. Every forty strokes, he imagined he was sweeping something away, making room for something new. Forty strokes: forget about the girl who had left him for the fourth time in ten years. She was getting fat anyway, and hairy, like a big sheep with too much wool. Forty more strokes: stop wanting to kill the landlord who had thrown him out again. The son of a goat wasn’t worth a prison term.
Dragging his broom along the pavement, Imran passed the national bank, Sajadi Enterprises, and the Ministry of Finance, with the fancy Khyber on the ground floor, a restaurant where Imran could never afford to eat. He made piles of cigarette stubs, candy wrappers, and greasy wax paper mixed with dust and leaves. There was more work than usual this morning. What chaos there had been yesterday—a man shot at 14:05, people shouting and waving flags. Men running around with one of only two ideologies: Communist or Muslim. Imran’s parents were Bahai. Sometimes God was prone to excess. Why three religions? If He wanted to see men fight, He only had to make two. Imran swept carefully around the tanks that lined the street like the bums lined the sidewalks. Soldiers peered out of round windows. One stuck his tongue out.
Mr. Sajadi appeared earlier than usual and arrived by bus. Usually, he arrived in a Mercedes. He usually smiled, and Imran smiled back, though he kept his lips together because showing your teeth to a man like Mr. Sajadi would not do.
The gentleman looked different today. Dark circles made his eyes look small. He was hunched over like he was walking through a strong wind. He did not smile. Mr. Sajadi looked like a man who needed to sweep something away.
In the early morning light, Daniel’s last name gleamed across the granite facade of the building that housed both Sajadi Gemstones and USADE. He had moved the agency office to his family’s building for one simple reason: it had air conditioning. Daniel began every day with the vague sense of having performed a great swindle. He was never sure who the impostor was—whether he was the owner of a great company and scion of a local legend posing as a US official, or the other way around.
His steps echoed on the marble floor. In his mind, they faded into echoes of bare running feet that made no sound when they landed. Gracing the lobby walls were the paintings he’d remembered at the police station. One commemorated the last war against the English. Men of every age were following their young leader, Sayed Sajadi. They rode horses, their scabbards against the animals’ flanks, guns angled across their chests. The warriors moved as one, creating a sense of wind-like speed as the eye traveled with the army from left to right. Daniel stepped into the elevator. When he pulled the iron grate over the sliding doors, it was like drawing drapes over blinds, creating the second layer of the solitude he craved.
He walked past the Sajadi office and remembered that Rebecca’s earrings would finally be ready, after delays caused by his own insistence on the perfect lapis lazuli. The anniversary had passed, but the jewels should still be hers.
At USADE, the work rose in tidy piles across his desk like a skyline, mocking the city’s contours outside. Mud houses climbed up the sides of mountains—Kabul had nowhere else to go. By the phone was a stack of messages, including several from Elias at the newspaper. Daniel spent the morning on mindless tasks—taking phone calls, asking his secretary to make appointments, signing invoices. Miss Soraya brewed tea between errands and brought him a tray. “You’re back early from your trip,” she said.
When she spoke, she showed deference by lowering her head. She didn’t ask about the gash on his brow. She looked different today, as did everyone. Daniel’s staff envied him for having the prettiest of the secretaries, but today, Miss Soraya’s most striking asset was not her beauty but the fact that she was alive.
When she came around his desk to refill his cup, he slipped his hands into his pockets like a thief hiding evidence. He leafed through the newspapers on his desk. Elvis Presley had died—that was the biggest story, accompanied by a comparison of him and Ahmad Zahir, the Afghan Elvis. Further down, a Communist member of the government had penned an article. He spoke of workers’ wages, the dangers of Islamism and the religious right, the sexual exploitation of children, equality of the sexes, and the need for land reform. The Communists weren’t wrong about everything. They were right enough to hold appeal, and Daniel sometimes wished their ideas were not so closely tied to one of the most brutal regimes in human history. Wherever there were Communists, there was Russia. And Russia had always pursued conquest, invasion, infiltration, oppression. But now they could pretend they were doing these things in the service of a glorious sisterhood and brotherhood and a better tomorrow that never came.
Below that, there was a short article by Elias. It talked about the scourge of the poppy fields and the need to distribute that land to honest farmers rather than let them fall into the hands of foreign interests.
Foreign interests. Daniel wondered what his own interests were. When he heard the voice of a youngster, he thought his mind was playing tricks on him again. Miss Soraya came slinking through the door after a gentle knock, a letter in her hand and amusement on her face. “An urchin just came by and left this for you,” she said. “He insisted I deliver it personally.”
The envelope was addressed to Daniel, not USADE. Daniel strode to the window, pushing aside the sheers. A boy in ragged clothes was running from the building as fast as his feet could take him, threading through the cars and crowds.
Before returning to her desk, Miss Soraya said, “Sir, the others are wondering about a staff meeting.”
When he paused, she added, “It’s just that . . . well, there hasn’t been one. In seven months. Since you got here.”
“Who’s asking for one?”
“Everyone. Mr. Epstein, Mr. Romano.”
“I see.”
When she lingered, he asked if there was anything else.
“Mr. Kauffman held meetings every week, sir.”
“Mr. Kauffman is no longer directing this office.” He regretted his tone as soon as the words escaped his mouth. “But you’re right. Let’s set one up soon.”
She left him alone. Staff meetings. Hadn’t they been the undoing of his predecessor? Too many opinions, too much compromise, and not enough work. If Philip Kauffman had stopped taking advice from everyone, he might have stayed in his position and been able to achieve more than he did. Under his tenure, only one poppy field had been reformed, and the results were disastrous. Irrigating the land without proper planning, they had only drawn the salt up to the surface and ruined the soil. Since Daniel’s arrival, three plots of land had been reformed. It was true that they were small, their khans poor and willing to work with USADE. But the Yassaman field wasn’t small, and it would be the fourth. Daniel had planned to take it over since he’d first read the file back in January. The true Reform would start there.