Article: The Pull of Hunger, Pt. IV
The Pull of Hunger, Pt. IV
Shaheen had found Mir Hamza Khan’s money in the saddlebag of Toor Jan’s motorcycle while he slept through the afternoon. She returned inside, put the brick of cash into her dress, and slung Toor Jan’s AK-47 over her shoulder just to know how the weight of that power felt. Abdul Hakim clapped as she strutted around, oblivious to her wincing from the fresh pain of child labor, startling baby Ibrahim into a drone that pulled Toor Jan from his deep sleep.
Toor Jan sat up, eyes darting over the dark room. The screaming baby lay swaddled in a makeshift crib. In the far corner, Mina crouched over a jet boil stove and a pan hissing with oil. Shaheen and Abdul Hakim had frozen in their places, rifle held in the air and cash fanned out in a silly display.
“Toor Jan, sister is a man now,” Abdul Hakim said and began clapping again.
Shaheen swatted at him to stop and dropped the rifle and money to the floor. The clatter of the stamped metal magazine in the dirt frenzied the baby’s cries. His rabbit lips opened and closed with each wail. “Shush,” Shaheen said and waddled to the crib.
Toor Jan jumped to collect the fluttering bills, Abdul Hakim tried to help, but he pushed him away. “Why did you steal from me, Shaheen? And why would you wear my rifle?”
Shaheen stood with Ibrahim pressed to her breast and looked at Toor Jan with anger, fierce even in her pale and wasting face. “Did you tell the Americans about The Big One?”
Abdul Hakim had gone over to her, patting the baby lightly on the back. Mina remained over the food—the smell of frying onions perfumed the room—but cocked her eyes toward the drama. Toor Jan wanted to hit his wife. For her presumption, of course—what woman ever needed to have a rifle?—but also to make her understand what it took to survive. And Toor Jan would have struck her, not hard but enough to smart, except when he growled through his beard, “if you ever do that again—” tears dripped down Shaheen's face and onto Ibrahim's eggshell forehead. Toor Jan didn’t have the meanness to make his point. Instead, he came over, put his arms around her, the baby, and his brother. “Don’t cry, Shaheen Jo. I didn’t tell them anything.”
“Then how?” She said. “How did you get that much money?”
“The General gave it to me because we’ve had a birth.” He kissed the white line where her hair parted. “That’s all.”
“You didn’t say anything to the Americans?” She pushed herself away to get a good look at him. “The Big One will kill you if you’re spying.”
Shaheen had her first blood only four years ago. She didn’t understand the risks a man must take. Toor Jan had never told her about any of his spying: for The Good American, the General, or Talibs. She thought he worked whatever odd labor he could find throughout the district. “Why would I ever spy for anyone? All I want is for us to survive.”
“When the winter is over, you can ask Muhammad Zai to end his feud,” she said, excitedly. Mina shook her head without looking up. “Then you can farm poppies again.”
Toor Jan’s compound sat on land owned by a man named Muhammad Zai. Muhammad Zai was in a long fight with a man named Islam about the borders of the property. Last year, as Toor Jan scored poppy pods, three of Islam’s sons drove their truck through his field and destroyed his plants. They pointed a gun at Toor Jan and said if he planted on their property again, they would kill him. Toor Jan had no hope that this would be resolved.
“Yes, when the winter is over, I’ll ask Muhammad Zai again.”
“Swear to me that you won’t spy for the Americans.”
Toor Jan loved his wife too much, a natural thing, but in Uruzgan, a booby trap. “I’ll never spy for the Americans, Shaheen,” he lied.
That night, Toor Jan crept through his house as quiet as death, avoiding the lumps in the blankets on the floor. He checked his pocket three times to make sure Mir Hamza Khan’s photograph of Haji Hyatullah remained there.
Careful to wait until Shaheen had fed Ibrahim, he chose the hour just before he was commanded to meet The Good American outside his village. And he’d have slipped away without notice, too, if Mina hadn’t been under the almond tree in his yard, stark against the moonlight.
Toor Jan froze. Stammered but managed to say, “I can’t sleep.”
Mina stared at him. He could see her eyes shine even in the dark. “When Shaheen wakes to feed the baby, what do you want me to tell her?”
“What do you mean? There’s nothing to tell her.”
“It doesn’t matter how a man makes his money, as long as his family eats.” Mina paused, searched Toor Jan’s face. “I can say that you went to meet your uncle, The Big One, under the cover of darkness. Shaheen will believe that.”
Toor Jan nodded to her with graciousness for keeping the secret and climbed over the wall to avoid the noise of the gate.
He found the wood line, just outside the village, where The Good American had told him to meet him. Invisible in the dark woods, Toor Jan laid belly down by an irrigation canal. His heart shrank with fear. The last lights of the compounds had been put out, the smoke had thinned, and a stony moon rose above his head. He tried to slow his ragged breath with no success. The world at night felt evil, like gates to all seven hells had been opened to release their fumes in this world. What demons slithered through the dirt toward him now? Toor Jan felt their ragged claws scuttle over his skin.
A noise startled Toor Jan from his mind’s workings. He squatted and scanned both directions. A wandering dog padded up. It held its muzzle at high port and worked its nose over the air. The dog stopped—Toor Jan didn’t move for fear that it would bark—then trotted down to the irrigation canal for a long drink. Toor Jan waited, listened. The dog splashed across the canal, up into the trees on the other side, and was gone.
Just then, a truck appeared in the distance, flashing its headlights across the field. Toor Jan crawled low toward the vehicle. A simple Toyota truck, The Good American and his tajiman, Qais, sat inside, blowing in their hands against the cold. They wore traditional Afghan clothes with rifles jammed between their seats and the gear shift. Toor Jan smiled and waved.
“Get the fuck in,” Qais said, translating for The Good American. “And shut the fuck up.”
Toor Jan recoiled at their rudeness but threw himself behind their seats. The space was only big enough for a child, but he folded his body into it. The car started, and they bumped out of his village and into the countryside. The headlights did little to make out the way. Finally, after a long while, Toor Jan said, “hello, Commander. How are you doing? How is your family?”
“Where’s the fucking picture, Toor Jan?”
Toor Jan fought to pluck the photograph from his twisted pocket. He passed it over to Qais, who turned on a red light to look at it. The Good American watched as he drove. After Qais nodded, The Good American punched the accelerator. “And my son? We can take him to your base for the doctor now?”
The countryside streamed by like a panorama of terror. The Good American fishtailed the vehicle as he continued to push the speed. “After, Toor Jan.”
Toor Jan didn’t understand and asked Qais to repeat the translation. “After what, Commander?”
“After we attack Haji Hyatullah’s compound, and you identify him. Then we go to the doctors.”
Toor Jan’s stomach rolled like he might vomit. He wasn’t prepared to go on the raid, not now. The General hadn’t given him any more instructions. Shaheen would discover him missing. He’d have jumped from the truck if it wasn’t for his son.
“And you’ve been in his house, right?” The Good American said. Ahead, outlines on the horizon sharpened into American trucks. “You saw weapons?”
The lies, every one Toor Jan had ever told, were necessary. They meant money, and food, and life. This close to Haji Hyatullah and a doctor for Ibrahim’s face, Toor Jan knew he needed to lie, but the weight grew too heavy at that moment. But he couldn’t turn back, so he convinced himself that if he only used his imagination to describe what he’d never seen, then it wasn’t a lie. “Oh, yes, PKMs, and RPG,” he said, admiring the green rockets he conjured in his mind. Then added, because the Americans hated bombs more than anything, “fuel too. For road bombs.”
The Good American nodded and stopped the truck. He told Toor Jan to get out. Qais unwedged him from the back and led him into the dark. Ahead, a line of blacked out American trucks rumbled. Silhouettes of armed men paced between the vehicles. Toor Jan pointed his feet toward them.
“No, this way,” Qais said. He grabbed Toor Jan roughly like he was captured. They veered toward the rear of the American convoy, where the road dropped off into an unturned field. Beyond, nearly 100 meters away, a fire sawed in a horseshoe of sandbags piled under a plywood watchtower. A police checkpoint. Even from this distance, Toor Jan could hear music playing from their radio. “There,” Qais said.
They crossed the field. Every time Toor Jan slowed, Qais pushed him from behind to press forward. He tried to come to a complete stop, turn and reason with the translator, when they both saw a boy—in eye makeup and shoes with tinkling bells—spring up from behind the sandbags and dart out only to be scooped up by a burly policeman and returned inside.
“They have chai boys,” Toor Jan said, making a pained face at Qais.
“You’re waiting here until I come back for you,” he said. Qais called to the cops, something in Farsi, and ran back toward the American trucks.
Underneath the checkpoint’s awning, police officers, wrapped in brown blankets, squatted around the fire. Their naked heads bobbed in the flickering light. Alone, Toor Jan refused to approach.
“You!” A voice boomed in the tower. “From the bridge.”
Toor Jan looked up and recognized the fat police officer from earlier in the day. The big man scrambled down a crooked ladder and put his arm around Toor Jan. He whispered, “is he here?”
“Who?” Toor Jan said.
The fat man lowered his voice even more. “The CIA man.”
The General had everything under control. That power frightened Toor Jan, the invisible strength like the force of gravity, and he began to shake. There would be no escape tonight. Toor Jan pointed across the field at the American trucks. Even in the dark, they could see the Americans surrounding a compound just a little beyond. Their weapons and gear chinked loudly in the quiet night.
“Then let’s go,” the fat police officer said. He whistled, and the vultures under their blankets followed.
They marched over broken earth, tripping and grunting as they hit the ground and returned to their feet. Their line streamed through the American trucks, drivers watching them with suspicious looks. Toor Jan tried to find a way to get out of there. He couldn’t run. The fat police officer kept his arm around his shoulder, more lock than an embrace. Ahead was Haji Hyatullah’s compound, a place Toor Jan had never been but had claimed was full of weapons only to save his baby, filled with angry Americans. Inescapable, Toor Jan tried to imagine something pleasant at that moment: maybe a peacock prancing in blue brilliance or the heat of a glass of fresh tea, but something about the night snuffed any delightful imaginations.
A muffled shot followed by screams issued across the field. Towering racks of cannabis screened the police officer’s advance. A squad of Americans waited near an orange Toyota Corolla left in the field and watched their murderous line slip past.
Toor Jan and the police came out of the pungent plants and found a long mudbrick wall with a green door ripped from it. Several Americans stood there. Flashlights darted around a body at their feet. The man’s dead eyes drooped. Two small holes had been drilled above his left eyebrow. His beard, shining in the strong white light, filled with blood that had ejected from his mouth. The blood was thick and bright. Toor Jan tried to look away, but the fat officer grabbed him by the chin.
“Which one is he?”
Toor Jan searched the crowd of Americans. He could see The Good American, shorter than the rest, moving in the group with Qais and talking. “I don’t see him.”
The fat officer squeezed his face with more force. “Look harder.”
The pain didn’t drive Toor Jan to lift his finger to The Good American. Only the desire that all of this should be over. “That one. With the beard and headband.”
The fat officer squinted. The Americans had seen the police officers, but their presence wasn’t an issue. He stepped forward; his minions followed. “The one with the traitor interpreter?”
“Yes,” Toor Jan said, quiet and ashamed.
The fat officer broke off from the group and went toward the Americans. His pistol swung from his hip. Toor Jan had to close his eyes. An interval passed. Nothing happened, no scream of Allah-u-Akbar, no ringing shot. Toor Jan opened his eyes again, and The Good American and fat officer talked to each other through Qais and looked at his phone. Their faces glowed weirdly in the screen’s light.
The fat officer returned. His men leaned forward, expecting to kill. “Wrong American,” he said and showed his phone to Toor Jan. The picture The Good American had given him of the blonde man, the one he had passed to the General, shined so bright in the night that it forced Toor Jan to squint. “We were looking for this one.” The fat officer and his men stalked back toward their checkpoint.
Toor Jan prayed right then that his heart would explode before what would come next.
The tajiman appeared before him, wrestled him to the ground. He straddled his body, arms pinned down. “There are no weapons, Toor Jan. Just women.”
Toor Jan fought as hard as he could. But Toor Jan had become too skinny. Willing, but too weak. He gave up and flattened out. Qais dragged him over to the body of the man the Americans had killed. Inside the compound walls, women had begun to wail. The Americans surrounded Toor Jan and tied his hands to his feet. “But, please commander, my son,” Toor Jan said to The Good American.
“Ask Mir Hamza Khan to help,” he said and spat on the ground. “Tell him I said hello.”
Qais grabbed Toor Jan’s face and wrote something across his forehead in grease pencil. The Good American watched, and when Qais was done, he told The Good American what he had written, as loud as the call to prayer: Spy. The Americans returned to their trucks.
Toor Jan refused to cry in the waning hours of the night. Even when the women, sure the Americans had gone, came out to drag the body inside their walls and gave him kicks so hard that he fell over, Toor Jan didn’t release. Instead, he used his imagination to lead him through.
Good thoughts were easy now that the sun gilded the far mountains, warm liquid light that could only come from The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful. He imagined that Qais hadn’t written spy across his head but shahid—martyr. Because, honestly, Toor Jan had always been a martyr. All martyrs go to paradise, just like Toor Jan did in his mind.
Mist rose from the fields, and he imagined the pure waters of a heavenly oasis rising to meet him. The sun warming his face could only be the pure light of paradise where nothing hurt; no family went hungry. The place where all eyes would dry and faces mended. Where families had food and safety. No Americans, no warlords, no Talibs. No government.
The place where the low had power and the powerful were low.
Written By Matt Cricchio
10/7/21
Toor Jan sat up, eyes darting over the dark room. The screaming baby lay swaddled in a makeshift crib. In the far corner, Mina crouched over a jet boil stove and a pan hissing with oil. Shaheen and Abdul Hakim had frozen in their places, rifle held in the air and cash fanned out in a silly display.
“Toor Jan, sister is a man now,” Abdul Hakim said and began clapping again.
Shaheen swatted at him to stop and dropped the rifle and money to the floor. The clatter of the stamped metal magazine in the dirt frenzied the baby’s cries. His rabbit lips opened and closed with each wail. “Shush,” Shaheen said and waddled to the crib.
Toor Jan jumped to collect the fluttering bills, Abdul Hakim tried to help, but he pushed him away. “Why did you steal from me, Shaheen? And why would you wear my rifle?”
Shaheen stood with Ibrahim pressed to her breast and looked at Toor Jan with anger, fierce even in her pale and wasting face. “Did you tell the Americans about The Big One?”
Abdul Hakim had gone over to her, patting the baby lightly on the back. Mina remained over the food—the smell of frying onions perfumed the room—but cocked her eyes toward the drama. Toor Jan wanted to hit his wife. For her presumption, of course—what woman ever needed to have a rifle?—but also to make her understand what it took to survive. And Toor Jan would have struck her, not hard but enough to smart, except when he growled through his beard, “if you ever do that again—” tears dripped down Shaheen's face and onto Ibrahim's eggshell forehead. Toor Jan didn’t have the meanness to make his point. Instead, he came over, put his arms around her, the baby, and his brother. “Don’t cry, Shaheen Jo. I didn’t tell them anything.”
“Then how?” She said. “How did you get that much money?”
“The General gave it to me because we’ve had a birth.” He kissed the white line where her hair parted. “That’s all.”
“You didn’t say anything to the Americans?” She pushed herself away to get a good look at him. “The Big One will kill you if you’re spying.”
Shaheen had her first blood only four years ago. She didn’t understand the risks a man must take. Toor Jan had never told her about any of his spying: for The Good American, the General, or Talibs. She thought he worked whatever odd labor he could find throughout the district. “Why would I ever spy for anyone? All I want is for us to survive.”
“When the winter is over, you can ask Muhammad Zai to end his feud,” she said, excitedly. Mina shook her head without looking up. “Then you can farm poppies again.”
Toor Jan’s compound sat on land owned by a man named Muhammad Zai. Muhammad Zai was in a long fight with a man named Islam about the borders of the property. Last year, as Toor Jan scored poppy pods, three of Islam’s sons drove their truck through his field and destroyed his plants. They pointed a gun at Toor Jan and said if he planted on their property again, they would kill him. Toor Jan had no hope that this would be resolved.
“Yes, when the winter is over, I’ll ask Muhammad Zai again.”
“Swear to me that you won’t spy for the Americans.”
Toor Jan loved his wife too much, a natural thing, but in Uruzgan, a booby trap. “I’ll never spy for the Americans, Shaheen,” he lied.
That night, Toor Jan crept through his house as quiet as death, avoiding the lumps in the blankets on the floor. He checked his pocket three times to make sure Mir Hamza Khan’s photograph of Haji Hyatullah remained there.
Careful to wait until Shaheen had fed Ibrahim, he chose the hour just before he was commanded to meet The Good American outside his village. And he’d have slipped away without notice, too, if Mina hadn’t been under the almond tree in his yard, stark against the moonlight.
Toor Jan froze. Stammered but managed to say, “I can’t sleep.”
Mina stared at him. He could see her eyes shine even in the dark. “When Shaheen wakes to feed the baby, what do you want me to tell her?”
“What do you mean? There’s nothing to tell her.”
“It doesn’t matter how a man makes his money, as long as his family eats.” Mina paused, searched Toor Jan’s face. “I can say that you went to meet your uncle, The Big One, under the cover of darkness. Shaheen will believe that.”
Toor Jan nodded to her with graciousness for keeping the secret and climbed over the wall to avoid the noise of the gate.
He found the wood line, just outside the village, where The Good American had told him to meet him. Invisible in the dark woods, Toor Jan laid belly down by an irrigation canal. His heart shrank with fear. The last lights of the compounds had been put out, the smoke had thinned, and a stony moon rose above his head. He tried to slow his ragged breath with no success. The world at night felt evil, like gates to all seven hells had been opened to release their fumes in this world. What demons slithered through the dirt toward him now? Toor Jan felt their ragged claws scuttle over his skin.
A noise startled Toor Jan from his mind’s workings. He squatted and scanned both directions. A wandering dog padded up. It held its muzzle at high port and worked its nose over the air. The dog stopped—Toor Jan didn’t move for fear that it would bark—then trotted down to the irrigation canal for a long drink. Toor Jan waited, listened. The dog splashed across the canal, up into the trees on the other side, and was gone.
Just then, a truck appeared in the distance, flashing its headlights across the field. Toor Jan crawled low toward the vehicle. A simple Toyota truck, The Good American and his tajiman, Qais, sat inside, blowing in their hands against the cold. They wore traditional Afghan clothes with rifles jammed between their seats and the gear shift. Toor Jan smiled and waved.
“Get the fuck in,” Qais said, translating for The Good American. “And shut the fuck up.”
Toor Jan recoiled at their rudeness but threw himself behind their seats. The space was only big enough for a child, but he folded his body into it. The car started, and they bumped out of his village and into the countryside. The headlights did little to make out the way. Finally, after a long while, Toor Jan said, “hello, Commander. How are you doing? How is your family?”
“Where’s the fucking picture, Toor Jan?”
Toor Jan fought to pluck the photograph from his twisted pocket. He passed it over to Qais, who turned on a red light to look at it. The Good American watched as he drove. After Qais nodded, The Good American punched the accelerator. “And my son? We can take him to your base for the doctor now?”
The countryside streamed by like a panorama of terror. The Good American fishtailed the vehicle as he continued to push the speed. “After, Toor Jan.”
Toor Jan didn’t understand and asked Qais to repeat the translation. “After what, Commander?”
“After we attack Haji Hyatullah’s compound, and you identify him. Then we go to the doctors.”
Toor Jan’s stomach rolled like he might vomit. He wasn’t prepared to go on the raid, not now. The General hadn’t given him any more instructions. Shaheen would discover him missing. He’d have jumped from the truck if it wasn’t for his son.
“And you’ve been in his house, right?” The Good American said. Ahead, outlines on the horizon sharpened into American trucks. “You saw weapons?”
The lies, every one Toor Jan had ever told, were necessary. They meant money, and food, and life. This close to Haji Hyatullah and a doctor for Ibrahim’s face, Toor Jan knew he needed to lie, but the weight grew too heavy at that moment. But he couldn’t turn back, so he convinced himself that if he only used his imagination to describe what he’d never seen, then it wasn’t a lie. “Oh, yes, PKMs, and RPG,” he said, admiring the green rockets he conjured in his mind. Then added, because the Americans hated bombs more than anything, “fuel too. For road bombs.”
The Good American nodded and stopped the truck. He told Toor Jan to get out. Qais unwedged him from the back and led him into the dark. Ahead, a line of blacked out American trucks rumbled. Silhouettes of armed men paced between the vehicles. Toor Jan pointed his feet toward them.
“No, this way,” Qais said. He grabbed Toor Jan roughly like he was captured. They veered toward the rear of the American convoy, where the road dropped off into an unturned field. Beyond, nearly 100 meters away, a fire sawed in a horseshoe of sandbags piled under a plywood watchtower. A police checkpoint. Even from this distance, Toor Jan could hear music playing from their radio. “There,” Qais said.
They crossed the field. Every time Toor Jan slowed, Qais pushed him from behind to press forward. He tried to come to a complete stop, turn and reason with the translator, when they both saw a boy—in eye makeup and shoes with tinkling bells—spring up from behind the sandbags and dart out only to be scooped up by a burly policeman and returned inside.
“They have chai boys,” Toor Jan said, making a pained face at Qais.
“You’re waiting here until I come back for you,” he said. Qais called to the cops, something in Farsi, and ran back toward the American trucks.
Underneath the checkpoint’s awning, police officers, wrapped in brown blankets, squatted around the fire. Their naked heads bobbed in the flickering light. Alone, Toor Jan refused to approach.
“You!” A voice boomed in the tower. “From the bridge.”
Toor Jan looked up and recognized the fat police officer from earlier in the day. The big man scrambled down a crooked ladder and put his arm around Toor Jan. He whispered, “is he here?”
“Who?” Toor Jan said.
The fat man lowered his voice even more. “The CIA man.”
The General had everything under control. That power frightened Toor Jan, the invisible strength like the force of gravity, and he began to shake. There would be no escape tonight. Toor Jan pointed across the field at the American trucks. Even in the dark, they could see the Americans surrounding a compound just a little beyond. Their weapons and gear chinked loudly in the quiet night.
“Then let’s go,” the fat police officer said. He whistled, and the vultures under their blankets followed.
They marched over broken earth, tripping and grunting as they hit the ground and returned to their feet. Their line streamed through the American trucks, drivers watching them with suspicious looks. Toor Jan tried to find a way to get out of there. He couldn’t run. The fat police officer kept his arm around his shoulder, more lock than an embrace. Ahead was Haji Hyatullah’s compound, a place Toor Jan had never been but had claimed was full of weapons only to save his baby, filled with angry Americans. Inescapable, Toor Jan tried to imagine something pleasant at that moment: maybe a peacock prancing in blue brilliance or the heat of a glass of fresh tea, but something about the night snuffed any delightful imaginations.
A muffled shot followed by screams issued across the field. Towering racks of cannabis screened the police officer’s advance. A squad of Americans waited near an orange Toyota Corolla left in the field and watched their murderous line slip past.
Toor Jan and the police came out of the pungent plants and found a long mudbrick wall with a green door ripped from it. Several Americans stood there. Flashlights darted around a body at their feet. The man’s dead eyes drooped. Two small holes had been drilled above his left eyebrow. His beard, shining in the strong white light, filled with blood that had ejected from his mouth. The blood was thick and bright. Toor Jan tried to look away, but the fat officer grabbed him by the chin.
“Which one is he?”
Toor Jan searched the crowd of Americans. He could see The Good American, shorter than the rest, moving in the group with Qais and talking. “I don’t see him.”
The fat officer squeezed his face with more force. “Look harder.”
The pain didn’t drive Toor Jan to lift his finger to The Good American. Only the desire that all of this should be over. “That one. With the beard and headband.”
The fat officer squinted. The Americans had seen the police officers, but their presence wasn’t an issue. He stepped forward; his minions followed. “The one with the traitor interpreter?”
“Yes,” Toor Jan said, quiet and ashamed.
The fat officer broke off from the group and went toward the Americans. His pistol swung from his hip. Toor Jan had to close his eyes. An interval passed. Nothing happened, no scream of Allah-u-Akbar, no ringing shot. Toor Jan opened his eyes again, and The Good American and fat officer talked to each other through Qais and looked at his phone. Their faces glowed weirdly in the screen’s light.
The fat officer returned. His men leaned forward, expecting to kill. “Wrong American,” he said and showed his phone to Toor Jan. The picture The Good American had given him of the blonde man, the one he had passed to the General, shined so bright in the night that it forced Toor Jan to squint. “We were looking for this one.” The fat officer and his men stalked back toward their checkpoint.
Toor Jan prayed right then that his heart would explode before what would come next.
The tajiman appeared before him, wrestled him to the ground. He straddled his body, arms pinned down. “There are no weapons, Toor Jan. Just women.”
Toor Jan fought as hard as he could. But Toor Jan had become too skinny. Willing, but too weak. He gave up and flattened out. Qais dragged him over to the body of the man the Americans had killed. Inside the compound walls, women had begun to wail. The Americans surrounded Toor Jan and tied his hands to his feet. “But, please commander, my son,” Toor Jan said to The Good American.
“Ask Mir Hamza Khan to help,” he said and spat on the ground. “Tell him I said hello.”
Qais grabbed Toor Jan’s face and wrote something across his forehead in grease pencil. The Good American watched, and when Qais was done, he told The Good American what he had written, as loud as the call to prayer: Spy. The Americans returned to their trucks.
Toor Jan refused to cry in the waning hours of the night. Even when the women, sure the Americans had gone, came out to drag the body inside their walls and gave him kicks so hard that he fell over, Toor Jan didn’t release. Instead, he used his imagination to lead him through.
Good thoughts were easy now that the sun gilded the far mountains, warm liquid light that could only come from The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful. He imagined that Qais hadn’t written spy across his head but shahid—martyr. Because, honestly, Toor Jan had always been a martyr. All martyrs go to paradise, just like Toor Jan did in his mind.
Mist rose from the fields, and he imagined the pure waters of a heavenly oasis rising to meet him. The sun warming his face could only be the pure light of paradise where nothing hurt; no family went hungry. The place where all eyes would dry and faces mended. Where families had food and safety. No Americans, no warlords, no Talibs. No government.
The place where the low had power and the powerful were low.
Written By Matt Cricchio
10/7/21
