That night, the sounds of battle ran like a soundtrack. The booming bass of cannons, the wheezing of fighter jets slicing through the air—a crescendo, followed by the cratering echo of rocket fire—the staccato clip of helicopters rising in the sky, noses dipping toward a target illuminated by a bright half-moon. Now and then there was a lull, and the house would fall silent, only to be rattled again by a battery of attacks.
Daniel’s body hurt more than he’d ever imagined it could. Aspirin did nothing to soothe the pain. When Firooz changed the bandage around his ribs, he said, “Saheb, you need something more for the pain.” He disappeared and came back within minutes with a tiny smudge of brown resin. “This will work.” Daniel refused at first, but as the pain wore on, Peter urging him to take the illicit medication, he relented. The relief was near immediate and profound. The pain still existed but seemed to have drifted far away, something he was considering from a distance rather than feeling. There was nothing he would have described as a high. Only relief. He wondered how much people had to take to feel what they longed for, whether that was bliss or nothing at all.
The three men never went to sleep. They sat around the radio, where announcements came and went through whistling static. In the morning, the phones were still dead. President Daoud was dead now, too, along with his wife and children.
By now, Rebecca would be sick with worry, and Daniel wondered how to reach her. The exiled clerics in Pakistan and Iran were broadcasting on shortwave, moving from frequency to frequency as the Communists jammed them. In calm, rhythmic paragraphs, a stark contrast to the Castro-esque agitprop of the Kalq, the clerics cursed the takeover, telling their countrymen to rise, to find the strength against the godless tyrants who’d seized power. Daniel and Peter spun the dial throughout the day, switching between the clerics, Radio Afghanistan, which was now owned by the Kalq, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe. Everyone called it a revolution, and it seemed this was all the world was talking about. The Kalq rattled off all of their planned next steps: Distribute land. Get the poor off the streets. Crack down on the drug trade. They didn’t explain how they would do these things.
“You know you can stay here as long as you like,” Daniel said to Peter.
“Thanks, Daniel. I’ll take you up on that. I think it’s better for Laila if she doesn’t have some American in her house right now.”
It was almost nighttime when someone was inside the courtyard, ringing the doorbell. Few people had the key to the main gate. Through the window, Daniel saw Sherzai silhouetted by the rising moon. He went downstairs, and they stood before each other in the courtyard. Daniel couldn’t find the right words, because he couldn’t find the right thoughts. He only said: “Agha, you had no choice, right?”
Sherzai’s eyes were tunnels of glinting light. “I don’t believe there was a real choice, no, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking me.” His town car was idling in the courtyard, the youthful voice of his driver drifting in from the road along with tobacco smoke. He was talking with a handful of guards who had evidently been sent to patrol the street. Sherzai told them to take a walk, and their voices faded slowly into the night.
Daniel asked him how long he had known, whether he had been part of the planning. All Sherzai would say was that this day had been inevitable.
“I have something to give you, and I’m very sorry to have to do it,” Sherzai said, producing an envelope from his coat. “But first, I’ve brought somebody with me.” He indicated the trunk of his town car.
Daniel quietly pulled the latch. Elias was coiled inside, fists clenched and eyes pleading. Down the street, the men were laughing at a joke.
“I thought he would be safe here. Elias is a good boy.”
Climbing out, Elias soft-shoed his way to the house. Once Daniel was alone with Sherzai, the old man searched his face, his formidable brow furrowed. “They hurt you.” He gently reached up to touch Daniel’s bandaged cheek. “I wish you had listened to me. I told you to go.” He waited for Daniel to respond, but nothing came. “Take that flight to Los Angeles and don’t come back.” He held out the envelope. Arthritis twisted his aging hands, but his eyes were lit by a vigor Daniel had never seen before.
From the envelope, Daniel withdrew a stack of papers bound by string. The top report was familiar. He had seen it just weeks ago. He tore off the string and leafed through the pages. When he understood, he let them fall from his hands. “This is impossible.” They studied each other as the papers fluttered in the wind. “You had me cede my father’s company over to the government? My company? I signed it away?”
“I asked you to read these reports—”
“You did this to punish me for not paying attention?”
“Watch your tone with me,” Sherzai said, voice rising. “I asked you to read these reports over and over.”
“So it’s my fault that I trusted you.”
“That’s what you call it, never bothering at all with the gemstone firm your father built? That’s not trust. It’s privilege!” Sherzai was angry now. “You really believe it was better for that company to just keep enriching you? You, who couldn’t be bothered to so much as look at a report, instead of turning it over to a government that actually wants to help the people of this country?”
Daniel’s throat had gone so dry he was struggling to swallow and speak. “I never thought I would say this, but I’m glad my father’s dead.”
Sherzai grew calmer. “Listen to me, batche’m. For the past six months, I’ve made sure you would be as comfortable as possible.” He explained that he had altered the numbers in his reports to the government, downplaying profits, steering cash into American accounts he had opened in Daniel’s name. “It was all I could do to make this easier on you.”
“This company was who my father was. It was his life’s work.”
“The company was never who your father was.” Sherzai articulated every word as if revealing a great secret. “And you are in no position to talk to me about betrayal. You got your way with that ridiculous file. You lied to my face. I have protected you all your life, more than you know.”
“I ran over a little girl,” Daniel said.
“What?”
The words tumbled out on their own. “I had to forge that file. Someone blackmailed me. He was going to murder people. Completely innocent people.”
“What is it that you’re saying?”
Daniel finally told him. After all this time keeping it secret, he was astonished at how simple and short a story it was. A horrible accident. A dead child. Blackmail by an opium khan. Capitulating because he’d thought it was the right thing to do.
Sherzai listened quietly, holding his breath. “Why didn’t you come to me for help?”
“I didn’t want to burden you. What was the point? There were only two choices.”
Sherzai exhaled. “The Scale of Sages doesn’t leave any of us much choice, batche’m. This is how things are.”
The guards ambled back into the courtyard and asked Sherzai, “Saheb, how many people live here besides Mr. Sajadi? How many servants are in this house?”
“Three.” Daniel turned at the sound of Peter’s voice. He was standing at the front door. “There are three servants in this house,” Peter repeated. “Their names are Firooz, Elias, and Abdullah.”
Sherzai eyed him with a hint of understanding on his face. “That’s correct.” He vouched for Peter as well, and then left without saying anything more. Daniel stood in the courtyard for a long while before collecting the papers on the ground. When he returned to the house, Peter was waiting in the hall. Daniel told him what Sherzai had done; over the past year, Daniel had been signing over his father’s gemstone firm to the government piece by piece. It belonged to the new Communist regime now. Daniel felt as if he had lost a family member he’d taken for granted, never thinking they would die. He looked down at the papers. What had once been Sajadi Gemstones and Mines was part of the newly minted National Corporation of Precious Stones and Metals, which also owned the nation’s principal foundry.
“I’m sorry,” Peter said for the third time that day. “Come, let’s go see Elias. He’s in the servants’ quarters.”
Elias had already changed into Ahmad’s abandoned clothes. Gone were the peace sign and swagger. His thick hair was flattened under a skullcap, though he was still wearing his Birkenstocks. His face was pale and his eyes wet, and something in his countenance was more genuine than when he wore his tie-dyes.
“Did you know?” Daniel said.
Elias stared at the floor. He had counted the hours, but when the time came, he hadn’t gotten his revolution, only a prewritten story and a set of orders.
“They came to my place yesterday and told me what I’d be writing tonight. They said that on Saturday, I was to write that any reports that they’d killed ordinary people were lies. They hugged me.” Elias told Daniel they’d seemed sincere, which was the strangest part. “I almost believed they really did know the future, and things I’d seen happen personally were lies.” They had told Elias to proclaim that they would never shoot anyone who didn’t shoot first. “Sherzai’s a good man,” Elias said. He raised his arms, looking at the loose cotton sleeves. “Wearing this feels like theft. Like I’m making fun of someone. But I suppose they’re just clothes.”
“They’re not just clothes,” Daniel said.
“Next time you leave the house, you’ll have to dress like that, too, and make yourself unrecognizable,” Peter told Daniel. “You go by your middle name now. You’re Abdullah, the third servant. I hope you’re not too proud—pride can get a man killed in times like this.”