I didn’t get to live, the girl hissed. The man who took my life should die, too.
Daniel tightened his grip and engaged the gears too hard, heaving the car onto the road. The Kochi camp fled behind them, the desert stretched taut like a colorless canvas, and in the side mirror, Daniel could still see that small boy from long ago with his wild smile and flying feet and sunshine that caught his mirrored cap like a halo. He drove faster.
In Fever Valley, poppies bloomed red, purple, and white, a Technicolor maze inviting you to lose yourself. These were not the cheerful blossoms of California. To Daniel, these flowers signaled death. But for others, they signaled life. Since childhood, he had heard about the rhythm of the opium harvest. Every fall, the poor came to collect on the hopes of a year. Their wages were so small, they counted them in fractions. A destitute man could proudly call himself a farmer because he helped reap a field. In the spring, he would help sow seeds. His wives, his daughters and sons, everyone came with a small blade, same as last year, working alongside the professionals. The old uncle who never found a wife, who aged alone in something that looked like a town but had no name, he came, too, though he moved slower than the others. He might earn enough to buy a box of potatoes, a jug of oil, and save a little money to someday buy a goat of his own. Every summer, those who knew him asked, Did you buy the goat? Not this year, he replied. Next year, inshallah. God willing.
Daniel grew up on these stories, told to him by his father and Sherzai, the man who had become his guardian after Sayed died and the Iranian woman Sayed was married to decamped to Tehran with her relatives. Even today, Sherzai would tell Daniel stories about a time he recalled only vaguely. The days when there was no Fever Valley, just vast fields in the northeastern corners of the country and lesser-known plots hundreds of miles south of here in Helmand Province. Tucked away in the south were hidden swaths few people could find, beyond the flat deserts where only camel thorn grew.
He wondered how much Taj knew about Sayed Sajadi. He spoke like someone who wanted others to think he’d had an education, but something in his inflection, the way he seemed to strain to articulate longer words instead of swallowing the middle syllable, told Daniel that the khan had been born someone else. His name sounded impossible, too, chosen by a person who had come into the world without one.
That the Sajadis were rich was no secret. Schoolchildren learned about Sayed the war hero, but depending on the teacher’s leanings, Sayed either became the republican who bravely challenged the king or the traitor who insulted the monarchy. He had gained followers after helping to drive out the English and eventually challenged the king’s candidate for the governorship of Helmand, promising he would rid the province of the small but growing opium farms. Daniel was only eight when the royal army arrested his father. Sherzai explained that no king could abide a man who was more popular than he was.
Maybe Taj only planned to extort money, demanding cash in return for not broadcasting the accident within the better circles of Kabul. Drug lords understood money, never content with what they had, spending their lives like magpies hoarding shiny things. Daniel wondered if they also understood the shame that decent people felt when they harmed the less fortunate.
“Turn here,” Taj said after more than an hour on the desolate road.
Daniel found himself on an unpaved path, surrounded by a night so black he never knew what was ahead. And yet he knew Taj was leading him to the Yassaman field. He had been here four times in six months. How different it was at night, empty of USADE’s crews, who came and went each day with their notebooks, shovels, and bright, shining hopes. How much more alive it seemed in this darkness with the wind and the flowers in a whispered dialogue.
The car lurched along like a skiff on stormy waters. Daniel skirted a curve in the road, his headlights gilding over stunted trees dying of thirst on the margins of a great opium field, the well-watered poppies a cruel taunt.
“I know who you are,” Daniel said at last.
“You know what I am. You do not know who I am.”
“Why did you tell me we were going back to the elders?”
“I wanted to talk to you, man to man. I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Forgive me. It was presumptuous to think a man of your lineage should be frightened by anything a humble servant like me might come up with.” Taj signaled for Daniel to stop in a clearing and follow him into the field, gesturing again with his gun. They passed the equipment that stood along the edge, the power plows that USADE had brought to the field. A cloud slipped away from the moon, and the Dannaco-Hastings logo was briefly visible on the machines, which looked like reconstructed dinosaurs in a museum. Daniel’s crew had already begun digging channels that would bring water from the thin river nearby. Though they would not be used for several more weeks, Daniel had made sure tillers and cultivators were brought to the field, too, warning the khans of what was to come. Pressuring them to abandon these poppies, this life. Judging by the man beside him, Daniel had failed.
They walked into the night, crossing what should have been a stream but was a dry ditch. The poppies rose up before them, a fragile truce between beauty and poison. They rustled, protesting Daniel’s clumsy advance, while Taj nipped forward with ease and purpose. A small breeze lifted, scattering lost petals and leaves. Along the eastern margin of the field were boulders and shrubs Daniel had never noticed before. The rest was familiar.
“Every year, I need more workers,” Taj said. “The nomads are good. They’re used to sleeping outside, and they’ll take scraps of food as payment. They are not so different from animals.”
Something violent bloomed in Daniel’s mind, and it was the color of Telaya’s dress. “There are animals that compare favorably to you,” he said.
“I did once know a cat who displayed an enviable talent for strategic planning. And I’ll admit to a fondness for llamas.”
“Llamas?”
“They command a certain respect. It takes great insight and spirit to spit at human beings.”
“They rarely spit at human beings. They spit to remind lower-ranking llamas of their place.”
The khan stopped and faced him. “Is that so?”
Not far ahead, a flicker of white light danced above the poppies, the moon reflected in a window. It was the shack Daniel had entered a few months ago, hoping to find a place to leave his jacket and briefcase. He’d turned back around at the sight of rats gnawing on an old mattress. They were heading straight toward it now.
“How long have you had this field?” Daniel said.
“I don’t know. I don’t like time.”
“That’s understandable. Time isn’t working in your favor. Your days here are numbered.”
“Everybody’s days are numbered.”