A woman sitting on the sand points a bony finger, not looking up from her lap. Two women polishing copper plates notice as I make my way toward them. One of them begins to rise, then sees what is in my arms and falls back to her knees with a stifled cry. Leaning against a younger woman, Telaya’s mother sobs, terror and sorrow melding together on her face. I am not a parent, though only a few months ago, I thought I would be. When I see her fear, I think I know. I want to embrace her. I hear myself utter worthless apologies, dwarfed by the enormity of her pain and of what I have done.
“Baseer!” Telaya’s mother cries out.
I turn around. The girl’s father is only a few feet behind me, staring. His hands start to shake. His eyes widen. “Telaya?” He takes her in his arms, and all I had planned to say is replaced by all I do not. I am a fraud, the quixotic wizard behind the curtain who can’t make anything right. I hear Baseer’s fractured breath, a whispered word to his dead child. On his face, I see that same fear. Telaya’s mother is crying freely now.
Then the crowd ebbs, parting for three tall men with silver beards. Word has spread to the elders, who have left their work, their tea, their wives, and come here to deliberate my crime. I meet their gaze as they approach, hoping Rebecca is still inside the car and will drive off without me if she must.
I hear one of the elders say, “Go find Taj.”
There is some commotion as young boys spin this way and that, nodding and shouting, “Where’s Taj Maleki? Get Taj!”
A man with thick sideburns cuts through the now-silent crowd. He reaches me and stops. One finger gleams with gold, an onyx adorns the front of his turban, and his piran tomban tunic and trousers are finer than the other men’s, made of silk. A revolver sits in his holster, a Colt with a delicate pattern engraved on its grip. I stand before this strange man whose eyes are bereft of light, as if even the sun conceded defeat long ago.
“Who are you?” Taj asks in Farsi. I am relieved I speak the language, and that no one here could guess that I spoke more English than Farsi as a child.
“Daniel Abdullah Sajadi.”
The man takes a step forward, but his face betrays nothing. The Kochis will not recognize the name Sajadi like people in the city do. Maybe this man knows who I am, maybe not. He watches me silently.
“Did you not see her?” His voice is as flat as his gaze.
“She ran straight into the road.”
“And now she is dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
Taj nods. “Who do you work for?” he says. From his dialect, I hear that he isn’t a Kochi. He’s from the city.
“The American government.”
A thousand eyes are on me. The only two people not looking at me are Telaya’s parents, who are standing behind Taj.
It seems indecent to watch a mother and father in their grief. I stare instead at the horizon. An outsider would not know that this arid land is a great fraud of nature. Just behind these deserts are acres of vibrant opium poppies with emerald-green leaves, thriving under the sun. The great Yassaman field, with its rich bounty of flowers, is not far. Nature has surrounded these fields with the most fallow land on earth, giving the poppies better camouflage than it has given me. It is these flowers that I have dreamed of killing since I was a boy, not the children who help harvest them, the descendants of those who followed my father into war against the British empire.
These thoughts speed through my head, but her voice slices through all of them. Look at me, says the dead girl. The desert has flung me at the feet of its dwellers. I am that most vulnerable of creatures: a man out of context.
I can almost smell the poppies on the wind. They seem so trivial now, when just hours ago, they weighed more than anything else in my life. I fought for months at the office to convince my colleagues to begin the Reform with Fever Valley’s largest field.
Taj looks at Telaya’s corpse. Paper-white bone protrudes from her arm. Something glimmers in the sun: a shard of glass, lodged above her eyebrow, nearly invisible in the curve of her hair. I feel a throbbing pain above my own eye.
Baseer sobs, his words tumbling over each other in despair. “God, why have you done this to us? I have no other daughters.” His wife squeezes his hand.
“He killed her,” Baseer says to Taj, pointing at me as if sentencing me to join his daughter in death. Between cries, he whispers, “She was the only thing of value in my life.”
The crowd is still silent, watching them. Taj places a hand on Baseer’s shoulder and says, “What a terrible day for you.”
His words are compassionate, but I wonder if the others can tell that the man is not. He is probably one of the callous merchants from the city who trick nomads into parting with their wares for less than they are worth, who travel with them for days at a time, choosing the best rugs and jewels and bartering them for a little food, money, perhaps medicine. Kochis are sophisticated tradesmen, too sharp to fall for such tricks, and yet there are exceptions. Some earn enough to become members of the country’s sliver of a middle class, but Taj Maleki must be one of the tricksters taking advantage of those who do not with his expensive clothes and his cheap sympathy.
He goes on. “Your loss is a great one. She can never be replaced.” He assures the parents that they must not worry. There will be restitution. The word is an escalating sequence of four notes, the final syllable a battle cry. When he moves, his gun gleams in a familiar way I cannot place. The Colt is an ordinary weapon—my father taught me to fire one when I was six—but there is something else about it that is familiar. The memory is there, but I cannot connect past and present.
The girl’s mother trembles, her face contorted as she spears me with her gaze. I take a step back, walking into the person behind me. I turn around and tell the young man I’m sorry. He stares at me, unmoving. All around me, I see menace painted on men’s faces. Their knives and guns fill my vision; I fight back the stories I grew up with.
“Where were you traveling to?” Taj says.
“Herat.”
“From Kabul?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
“I’m so sorry.” A voice inside me says I should not have come into the desert among these men. I know I don’t want to die here. But there is another kind of knowing, one that rests deep in my bones like fossils in shale. My father used to tell me, The rich world has rules and regulations. The poor world has rituals and traditions. These worlds weigh the same.
Taj raises his hand and stops me before returning to the elders. They whisper things I am not meant to hear, shaking their heads as they speak, gesturing in turn to the road and the desert and the tents. “Yes,” one of the elders says loudly. “That’s fine.”