“Enough!” Taj said as if hearing his thoughts. He pointed to Baseer, who was weeping softly. “Look at the state my friend is in!”
“I’m not sure she knew what a car was,” Daniel said. Sometimes, Kochi children didn’t. They would watch from the side of the road, laughing, dropping whatever they held, and run dangerously toward the giant metal animals. Baseer shook his head, eyeing Daniel with contempt.
“She knew what a car was,” Taj said. He was the only thing in motion in the room except for the blades of the fan and Najib’s fast-moving fingers.
Daniel fought the nausea that twisted in his gut. It came not only from the stench of diesel and stale smoke, but from the crash and from Taj and his gun and a memory he was still struggling to conjure.
Through the window bars, long afternoon shadows leaned into the room. The day was slowly cooling, but Daniel only grew warmer, as if his body absorbed each degree the dead girl lost, her corpse growing rigid and cold as he burned. He slid down the wall to the floor, looking here and there, anywhere but at her. Above him, Miss August sparkled with empty promises of magic flight. He drew the back of his hand across his brow. Only when he saw the smudge on his cuff did he realize there was a cut above his eye. The insignificance of the injury struck him as obscene.
Najib tore the wrapper off a packet of Winstons, tapping the bottom and sliding out a cigarette. When Daniel had been in college, Winston had sponsored The Flintstones. On the rare days Rebecca took a break from the piano and before she’d sworn off substances that dulled her senses, they’d spent afternoons smoking cigarettes and weed in her apartment and giggling at the Stone Age family.
“She is an unregistered person, so the compensation to the parents will be low.” The sergeant spoke as if the words left a bad taste in his mouth, not because he objected to Telaya being described as unregistered, but because he objected to her being described as a person. He wrote something on the form, taking his time before bringing it to Daniel with a pen.
The page was sparse, a few vacant rectangles with captions in Farsi and English, and in bold print across the top Daniel read the English version: confession of persons making accidents by animal or auto. Underneath was the option to check off with dead or without dead. At the bottom was a space for the sergeant’s comments. Najib had described the event in Farsi, and closed with his version in English: With car, Daniel Sajadi killed the girl. Moneys are 10,000 afghanis.
So that was it. Telaya’s parents were due just over one hundred dollars. Daniel’s gaze dissolved into the word that spelled his deed: killed. He felt the sharpness of the k, one of its arms angling diagonally toward the sky, the other downward toward hell. K for kid, Kochi, Kabul, and Keystone Cop. Between the two l’s, he saw the road.
The Kochis couldn’t write, so it fell to Daniel to provide details about the victim. What was Telaya’s last name? Her family had none. Her age? She had said ten, or maybe nine. Her parents weren’t sure either.
“Where do we send the money?” Rebecca said, her voice quiet and hoarse.
“You pay before you go,” Najib replied, tightening his lips as if suppressing a chuckle before adding, “Kochis do not keep postal boxes, madam.”
She fetched her handbag from the car and gave Baseer a clip of bills. There had been more than ten thousand afghanis in the wallet, and Daniel wondered if she had offered it all, too embarrassed to count. He hoped she had. Baseer studied the money like it posed a problem to which he had no solution. It occurred to Daniel that if the Kochis could not read or write, maybe they could not count, either. Baseer passed the money to Taj, who leafed through the bills, counting out loud as he went. He nodded. Telaya’s parents thanked Taj for his kindness, tears trickling down their faces. Safeguarding the bills in his holster, Taj gathered Telaya in his arms, leading the parents to the door.
“You can’t bury the girl near my station.” Sergeant Najib waved dismissively at the corpse. “Take her back where she belongs.”
Daniel wished he could bury her on a gentle green hill. Instead, her time on earth would end with terse last rites in a desert with no shade and no name, an unmarked grave no one would visit, and kin who would return incidentally, if at all. In the world of cities, buildings, and streets, people’s memories of those they loved were framed by places and times. When no place was different from any other, only deserts and fields that looked alike, and there was no measure of time other than sunup and sundown, what frame preserved the dimming faces of the dead? Nomads did not have photos to remember them by, nor a home to return to and say, This is where she walked, this is where she played. But Daniel would always know exactly where she’d died, and he thought the burden of honoring her memory would fall partly on him, her killer.
Outside, Mir was walking back to the station with a bucket of water in his hand. A wet rag was flung over his arm as pink droplets vanished into the earth. The blood was gone from the car. Baseer and his wife climbed in the back. Taj loaded the girl onto their laps.
Rebecca stood by the car, bracing herself for a second ride in a confined space with a corpse, grieving parents, and a man whose flat eyes she’d avoided all afternoon. The bills bulged awkwardly in Taj’s holster, drawing Daniel’s attention again to the gun. It was familiar, like a song that Daniel knew the words to when all that mattered was its name.
“Do you know what happens next, Daniel Sajadi?” Taj said.
Daniel heard an echo in his mind, something from long ago.
What do you see?
It was a line from a game he used to play after his mother walked out. He would sit behind his father’s desk after Sayed had gone to bed and pick an object: a jewel, a glove, or a comb. He made himself guess if it belonged to his mother or to the woman his father was married to now. With a flashlight and magnifying glass, he would examine the piece, turn it over, weigh it in his palm like he’d seen antique dealers do. Then he would render his verdict, declaring if the object was “Mother” or “Other.” He would make it his mission to find out without asking his father, checking instead with the housekeeper. When he was right, it was like remembering something he wasn’t sure he had ever really known, a haze of memory hardening into fact.
Taj had retrieved his gun and began polishing it with a handkerchief.
What do you see?
And now Daniel saw. The flower carved into the Colt was a poppy. The corpse and the accident and the station receded, and the flowers grew until they filled his vision. Daniel wondered why he had not seen it before. It was the second time today his sight had failed him. Taj Maleki was an opium khan.
2
Daniel rubbed his aching brow and opened the wound, blood dripping onto his lashes. Offering his handkerchief, Taj said, “You must return to the camp with me and the parents.” He could have been issuing an invitation to lunch.
“Then why did you bring me to the police?” Daniel said, wondering what kind of trick the man was playing. He refused the handkerchief, blotting the blood with his sleeve. “There’s nothing more I can do. I’m not going anywhere with you.”