The crack of a gunshot blew apart the air. Daniel sprung to his feet and he thought he was shouting but could barely hear his own voice. He’d instinctively covered his ears, the room ringing with the aftermath of the shot. His movements were a series of reflexes. He seized Taj’s shoulders, surprised at their slightness. He lost count of how many times he yelled the word no. He was shaking Taj as if trying to force loose a response. None came. Daniel let go and leaned against a wall, overcome by heat and the sense that he was unable to breathe. The boy’s blood was on his skin and his clothes. Taj headed for the door, and Daniel followed. Outside, he shoved Taj hard from behind. The man stumbled but recovered, turning to face him, and dug the gun into his ribs.
“Don’t do that,” Taj said, cocking the barrel.
Daniel heard Telaya say, Men who hurt little girls deserve to die. He scrambled backward and lost his footing. The Manticore grabbed his arm, breaking his fall. He returned the weapon to its holster and walked away, an ordinary man on an evening stroll. “You are not useful to me dead.”
“Stop!”
“If I stop, how am I supposed to lead you to the car?”
The wind tickled the flowers. Daniel’s breath, thoughts, and vision were trapped inside his thirst for righteous violence.
“You’re not going to kill me,” Taj continued. “You know how I know? A man like you doesn’t kill two people in one day.”
For a moment, Daniel’s desire to harm the man became as blisteringly alive as he was, and he could not distinguish between his life and his desire to end Taj’s. What purpose did this man serve? What did he bring to the world that was not better destroyed? Was killing a man like him not right and honorable?
Traces of reason returned. It was true; he wouldn’t kill the man, and maybe Taj was right about why. Daniel was no murderer. But there was also the Reform. A man found dead in the Yassaman field, revealed to be an opium khan, might derail everything. Daniel imagined the State Department shutting down the project and maybe even the agency, the Reform set aside amid talk of rising violence in the drug trade. Mere rumors had wrecked initiatives bigger than this.
Taj pulled away and melded with the night. Alone, Daniel felt something in his body churn. He became violently sick. Again and again, every muscle and organ in his body wrenched involuntarily. Every heave was like reliving the moment of impact, those impossible seconds between his old life and what it was now. He fell onto his hands and knees, and eventually, it stopped.
The darkness was breathtaking. It was as if the universe had simply switched off the lights above this place. Daniel slowly made his way back to the car, exploiting rare glimpses of moonlight. Taj was waiting in the passenger seat.
“Good, I was afraid you were lost. City people lack a sense of space. It has to do with perspective.” Taj clicked the seat belt into place, flicked down the visor, and examined his wounds in the mirror, complaining about the blood on his piran. Daniel sat in the driver’s seat doorframe, feet on the ground and back to the khan. He used his shirt to wipe his mouth and the blood from his skin. In his suitcase in the trunk, he’d found clean clothes.
“I had to kill the boy’s brother a few months ago for the same reason,” Taj said. “Now his mother has no children, unless you count the girls.”
“Get out of my car.”
“Really? All by myself here? It’s not a safe area, as you can see.”
“Get out.” Daniel reached across Taj and shoved open the passenger door.
The opium khan glanced toward the shed in the field. “That’s what happens to those who don’t understand the rules.”
“You might as well kill me, too, because I’m not driving you anywhere. I’m sure you would have no qualms about killing twice in one day.”
“What makes you think it would only be twice? By the time we met, it was late in the day for a humble working man like me. Nevertheless, as you wish. I wouldn’t want us getting off on the wrong foot.” Taj climbed out of the car and raised his hand in farewell. “Until next time, Daniel Sajadi.”
The tires whined as Daniel spun the car around. The air inside was dense with sweat, sour breath, and the copper-penny smell of blood. He wanted to leave this place far behind and return to the city, to Rebecca. To the normalcy of a room, a shower, and a bed. A bed that had not been the scene of a killing. Daniel looked in the rearview mirror and saw Taj standing alone in the clearing, flooded by the car’s taillights. His robes floated on the gentle wind. As Daniel drove away, the khan called out a warning. “Watch your speed. That’s how you ran over the girl in the first place.”
I’m fast, Telaya said, clutching her doll. I can do it.
“No, you can’t,” Daniel said. “You should’ve stayed out of the road.” He slammed his fist into the dash, and his hand and his head throbbed as the car lurched over the rugged roads that led from the poppies to what passed for civilization around here.
Snowman
When the children come outside, it isn’t to play, at least not with Boy. It’s cold, but they have coats that are fat like sheep. Boy has a good coat, too, but it’s his only one and Mother doesn’t want him to get holes in it, so he doesn’t wear it all the time. He hears her say it is the worst winter she can remember. He knows she is telling the gardener or the housekeeper or the lady of the house or the man who comes and goes in his big car. Sometimes those people come to the little tent in the garden to see Boy and Mother. She says thank you, God bless you for your kindness, when they give her a pair of shoes, toothpaste, soap, a towel. Warmer socks. The good oil that burns a little longer. The cook comes by in the evenings and gives them a pot of soup, naan, rice and meat, and chocolate. Boy likes the chocolate and dreams of it.
His mother tells him the story at night when he cannot sleep. He loves the story. She says that long before this house was built, she used to be very poor, begging from people on this street. This was before Boy existed. He nods when Mother says this, although he does not understand how there could have been such a time. Mother says she lived in the shadows of the big houses then, sleeping beside a tall hedge. On a cold night with quiet snow and a loud wind, a rich man came out of his house and gave her a tent, a mattress, and two blankets.
That tent changed her life, because she could light a fire and cook, even when it was raining or snowing. But mostly, it changed her life because it’s where Boy was made. A man with a donkey cart used to come to the street every afternoon to sell vegetables to the rich. When the evening came and the light faded, he would stop at her tent and give her what he had left. Onions, lettuce heads, radishes. He told her he’d sold vegetables all over the country, moving from city to city, and told her about the red tulips of Jalalabad, the shimmering mosque in Herat, and the great statues in Bamyan. He had seen so much. One day, she invited him inside and he stayed late. He left her with a wondrous gift: the seed that would become Boy. Then the man stopped coming by, disappearing like a djinn, a magical spirit. When Mother tells this part of the story, she makes a whooshing sound and opens her arms toward the sky.