“Daniel.” Rebecca sounded far away, and when he opened his eyes, he found that he had wandered into the road, where he stood wrapped in the lingering vapors of the vanished truck’s exhaust.
“Come inside,” the sergeant said.
Daniel shook his head. “We can’t leave the girl in the car.”
The man shrugged and went inside. Taj and Baseer lifted Telaya’s body out, her toes dragging against the metal doorframe. Her dress bunched up around her knees, and Taj covered them back up as if they betrayed a lack of modesty. Daniel watched through the haze of the brightly lit day, his eyes falling on the child’s mangled arm.
Many years ago, in the back of his father’s car, Daniel saw a Kochi boy running along the edge of the desert, flashing a brilliant smile as he waved. Daniel waved back, mesmerized by the boy’s bare feet, the way they kicked up no dust and seemed never to land at all. A rabid dog was running toward the boy, and Daniel tried to warn him, banging on the window and pointing. But the boy only kept on, chasing the car and laughing, until the dog was upon him, and at the very last second, the boy hopped to the side and produced a blade, lodging it in the animal’s neck.
Daniel begged the chauffeur to stop, but his father forbade it, warning him that Kochis did not make good playmates. Later, he asked his father if everybody’s feet were made the same, and Sayed answered, Their feet yes, their heads no. That night, Daniel dreamed of heads that floated up from bodies and small, battered heels that split open to reveal pockets of shattered glass. As he walked now, he felt that shattered glass push up through his feet and move through his body.
Something in the car drew his eye. A mirror had come loose from Telaya’s dress, gleaming in the empty backseat. It was small and solitary, sending the sun’s rays back to the sky as if to say, No, I have no more use for your light. Daniel picked up the mirror and put it in his pocket. He wanted something of hers to remain with him.
The group filed into the station, Daniel the last to enter. Flies descended on the dead girl, nesting in her blood-matted hair, her ears, her drying wounds. Her mother waved them away, but they returned as if attached by springs.
Sergeant Najib introduced himself curtly and presented his constable as Mir. The younger man twisted his mouth into a smile that suggested both surprise and apprehension. Taj was asked to surrender his gun, which he did without quarrel. The Kochis sank to the floor against a wall, Telaya across their laps, the mother smoothing the child’s dress, polishing its mirrors with her tears and a finger. The sounds of her grief played awkwardly in concert with the one-note drone of the flies and the hiss of the damaged fan doing its best from a corner. Daniel felt a quiver of nausea. The station was powered by a diesel generator that gave off a noxious odor, which blended with that of the remains of fried food peeking out from wax paper in an overflowing bin. Afraid he would buckle, Daniel leaned against a wall. Beside him was a three-legged table where a chess match stood abandoned, marble pieces darkened by a veil of dust. Najib offered Rebecca the only chair besides his own. The rusty metal screeched as he dragged it to where she stood. She lowered herself carefully and mouthed a thank-you. Daniel watched her, wishing he could wrap her in his arms and tell her that everything would be okay.
On the wall near Mir’s stool hung a calendar made for Westerners and Western-minded locals. Miss August reigned over the station with a sultry eye and an outstretched hand. Daniel recognized her as someone who had once modeled jewels made from the gemstones in his father’s mines. Daniel still called those mines his father’s, even though they were his now. His father had made the mines famous, raised armies of villagers and nomads throughout the country, and used his fortune to pay for weapons of war: bribes and the most modern guns in the world. Anything to help expel the English and keep the Russians at bay. Sayed Sajadi had outshone the king’s own armies with his troops of Kochis. Now one of their children had died at Daniel’s hands. Najib asked for his name. When he replied, the sergeant lowered his pen. “Related?”
Daniel nodded, and the sergeant’s body relaxed. With a broad smile, he insisted on shaking Daniel’s hand before asking Mir to bring Coca-Colas for everyone.
“We’re going to drink Cokes now?” Rebecca held her arms out, palms open as if the answer to her question might trickle down from the ceiling. “Shouldn’t we take this girl to a hospital?”
Najib scoffed. “For what? She’s obviously dead.”
“So they can make a record. Write down the cause of death.”
When Najib indicated that no such thing was needed, Rebecca breathed out slowly. Daniel could hear an emotion in her exhale, though it was unclear what kind. He would tell her later that no record could be made about people who never officially existed in the first place. In America, his friends sometimes used the phrase “becoming a statistic” like it was something to be avoided. They complained about the government turning them into a number. What a luxury that would have been for Telaya, to find her name on a ledger. To be a statistic.
The now-unctuous sergeant asked excited questions about Daniel’s father and other things that had nothing to do with the accident, which he seemed to have forgotten for a moment. Then he returned to the subject, checking off boxes and filling in blanks. “What is your job?”
“My husband works for USADE,” Rebecca said. “He’s the director here.”
“The United States Against the Drug Economy?” It was not Najib who had spoken, but Taj. With a thin smile, he added, “And what do you do there, exactly?”
“I ask the questions,” Najib said. A sheen of sweat was visible above his lip, and Daniel heard the tremor in his voice. Mir stood in a corner, jerking his head toward whoever spoke.
“What do you do there, exactly?” Taj repeated.
“We help farmers stop growing poppies and teach them how to plant other things. Like food.”
“Does that work?” Najib said.
Daniel told him four fields had already been reformed. He did not say that only a few small-scale growers had agreed to the change, nor that of the seven important fields of Fever Valley, just one would be reformed—and by force—in the hope that the great opium khans, invisible like gods, would capitulate. He did not say that a farmer had approached his agency with a message from these poppy overlords, quietly offering money in return for being left alone. USADE had, under Daniel’s direction, refused the bribe.
“And you are the director? You are young for such a post,” the sergeant said. “I suppose a man like you rises quickly through the ranks.”
Daniel had no intention of explaining how he had come into the position he’d only held for seven months. He had even managed to avoid explaining it to his staff.
Najib asked how fast Daniel had been driving, where he’d been heading, and where the accident happened. He sounded bored. With every answer, Daniel replayed another part of the accident in his mind, wondering what would have changed if he’d looked up just a moment sooner. Or if they had left Kabul a few minutes earlier. Or if he hadn’t forgotten the suitcase and gone back to the house.