Daniel cradled the radio in bed, listening to a staticky broadcast. Curfew was in effect. People would be allowed to go outside in the morning to buy groceries and run errands, but the new authorities gave a small window. Daniel made plans. He knew whom he wanted to see, and a few hours was enough, as long as he could leave the house without being hassled by the guards. Maybe it was a bad idea, but he had nowhere else to be. Voice of America had announced that US agencies were to remain closed for two weeks, and that personnel who were staying should remain inside and listen for updates. Kalq officials confirmed this on their own broadcasts. Telephones were being switched on at haphazard times, leaving desperate people checking the lines day and night.
Elias and Peter were in the guest rooms. Their lights were on when Daniel walked by at midnight, and he could hear Peter banging away on his typewriter. He tried to call Rebecca again from the study, but there was no dial tone. His remorse was tinged with relief, because he wasn’t sure what to say to her. She would be glad that he was safe and coming home in two days. He longed to hear her voice and to join her in California. At least, a part of him did, though the thought of Los Angeles, with its easy warmth and lively seas, felt more like a mirage than something real, seducing you if you allowed it and dissolving fast on arrival. Reality moved slowly, though never more slowly than now.
When he told Peter over breakfast that he wanted to go out for a few hours, Peter said, “Then let’s make you someone else.”
Twenty minutes later, Daniel stood in the servants’ quarters dressed in a piran tomban and brown cotton vest. Elias made a feeble joke. Peter used the makeup that Rebecca had left behind, dabbing thick foundation over Daniel’s bruises with clumsy movements. It helped, as long as you didn’t look too closely. They asked Firooz for his artificial beard, which he turned over without a word of protest. Daniel looked at himself in the mirror. Watching himself, he remembered a fantasy story he’d read as a boy in which there were a thousand parallel universes. It hurt to move. He took a tiny dose of opium.
“I feel useless,” Elias said, picking up Firooz’s copy of the Koran, which the cook kept on his nightstand but admitted he could not read. “It’s like I’ve lost a limb.”
“This isn’t about you,” Daniel replied, the words harsher than he’d meant. Elias wasn’t the first man to be taken by an idea that looked better on paper.
By the time Daniel was ready to leave, Elias was engrossed in the text, reading as intently as he’d once read Marx. Some men were attracted to anything that demanded devotion and sacrifice, the nature of the idea mattering less than its potential to turn things on their head.
“Come with me,” Daniel said. He asked Firooz to fetch the bicycles, which hadn’t been used in years.
“Where are we going?” Elias said.
“I want you to meet someone.”
Because victory had come quickly in the twenty-four-hour battle, the city seemed peaceful. There was no silence as loud as the one that followed war. Daniel and Elias cycled past the guards, who asked where they were going but didn’t ask for ID because most people had none, especially servants. They let them pass, reminding them of curfew. The day was damp and gray, the threat of rain heavy in the air. The new clothes felt cool, the breeze floating through the fabric, but they did little to relieve Daniel’s pain. His bruises throbbed, limbs protesting with every stroke.
He angled the bike onto the sidewalk, which was thick with crowds making the most of the remaining hours. No one so much as glanced at Daniel. He had joined the ranks of the invisible. Billboards shouted clever slogans at passersby about the value of all men. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style, Telaya whispered, quoting from the Nabokov book on Daniel’s nightstand.
The smell of smoke and gunpowder lingered; the blood on the sidewalks hadn’t yet dried. The facade of Sajadi Enterprises came into view, its granite flat and drab against the April sky. It was completely unscathed. The same could not be said of the ministry. A gaping hole exposed several ground-floor suites. Red flags rose from the roofs of both buildings. This was more than vandalism and violence, wrecked windows and walls. A kind of blasphemy had taken place.
A hundred customers were waiting outside the bank. Flags and bombed-out walls mattered less than the fate of their investments and accounts. A large sign was affixed to its glass doors, warning everyone they would not be giving out more than small sums because most of the accounts were frozen. The sun pushed through the clouds, casting a gentle light on the city. Daniel and Elias rolled down an alley where a tea shop was the only sign of life. It should have been spilling over with customers sitting at tables on the sidewalk, but was nearly deserted. As they stopped to let a shepherd by with his flock, Elias said, “I’m not afraid of them, you know. That’s not why I changed my mind. I’m not a coward.”
“I know. It’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No, Elias,” Daniel said. “I’m not making fun of you.”
It was true, and yet Daniel thought Elias didn’t understand that courage and cowardice weren’t fixed values. If you resisted a revolution that resulted in a better society, you were a narrow-minded bigot. If you resisted a revolution that resulted in a worse society, you were brave and enlightened. So much was in the eye of the beholder, and those who would judge Daniel and Elias in the future benefited from twenty-twenty hindsight. He thought of agha. Had it been hard for him to betray Sayed and Daniel? He tried to reconcile what had happened with the loyal guardian he’d known all his life, returning to one particular memory again and again.
In the months before Sayed was taken to prison, Sherzai started coming to the house more often to help Daniel with his homework or play chess with him. One night, after they thought Daniel had gone to bed, Daniel snuck over and listened to them in the living room. He heard ice cubes tumbling and liquid splashing into a glass. Someone set a bottle down on the table.
Sherzai asked Sayed, “What do you think of the new man next door?”
“Do you mean the new naan shop or Mr. Khrushchev?”
“I’m surprised you can still make jokes, knowing what awaits you.”
“Prison’s the biggest joke of all when a jester is your jailer. I have no respect for this fool king of ours.”
“Your son probably doesn’t think it’s funny. But I don’t suppose you have given that much thought.”
“I’m not a young man and I have a finite number of thoughts left, so I must allot them carefully.” More ice was dropped into tumblers, more liquid poured. “To answer your question about Khrushchev,” Sayed continued, “I would prefer the Russians not invade while I’m in jail. It would be a shame to have prepared for so many wars only to have this happen when I can’t be of use.”
“And if they do? It won’t be like the English decades ago. This enemy has fighter jets.”
“And I have you.” Sayed chuckled wistfully. “I wish I’d had you back in 1919, but you were only nine.”
“You shouldn’t be so sure you have me now, either.”
“What does that mean?”
“Which part confused you?”
There was a long silence.
“How’s your leg?” Sayed asked. He spoke slowly, and only later did Daniel understand that his father’s relationship with Sherzai was summed up in that simple question.
“I’m glad I have it,” Sherzai said. “But in some ways, it is getting worse.”
“How so?”
“The older I get, the worse it seems that the only reason I am alive is that your father thought I deserved to be. The virus struck thousands. Every time I pick up my cane, I am reminded.”
“You would prefer to be dead just because thousands of others are? That’s a teenager’s notion of justice.”
“Your interpretation of right and wrong is more questionable than mine.”
“That isn’t fair,” Sayed said.
“What isn’t fair? That I should challenge you? Who else is going to do it? Look at the mess you’ve made.”
“You call it a mess, I call it destiny. This is inevitable.”
The men’s voices were growing louder. Daniel heard Sayed rise. He could tell it was Sayed because when Sherzai walked, his walking stick struck the floor.
“Every decision I’ve made is the right one, because it was the only one I could make,” Sayed said. His footsteps stopped. “Choosing between two things is easy as long as you can compare like with like: hate with hate, and love with love. If someone asks me, ‘Whom do you hate more, the English or the Russians,’ I would say the English, because they attacked us so relentlessly. But if you ask me to compare two different feelings, how much I love something compared to how much I hate something else, that’s a conundrum. Apples against oranges. So if I ask myself, what weighs more, my hatred of the invaders or my love for my country? How to answer this when the two categories are distinct?”
“Not every decision is easy even when you compare like with like, Sayed. Are you proud?”
“Of what?”
“When you think about going to prison. Is it worth it? Leaving your son like this?”
“I weighed the options before me. The Scale of Sages is unambiguous.”
Sherzai’s cane struck the floor with great force. “Don’t blame your imaginary scale. You made the decisions. You. The boy is paying the price.”
“I have you to take care of the child. Or what was it you said earlier? That I couldn’t be sure I had you?”
Sherzai sighed. “I will be there for the boy, always.”
Sayed changed the subject. They argued about politics like they always did, and the debate was about power—who should have it, and how much. Sherzai insisted that the way forward was with a strong ruler.
“You mean like our king?” It was not mainly kings who had fought back the Russians and the English, Sayed reminded him, but ordinary people from every desert, village, and field, and they had fought not for the king but for their kin. The tribes had gotten the job done. And now poppy growers were farming right under His Majesty’s nose. Only a few arrests had been made. Sayed laughed contemptuously when he said, “I’ve destroyed more poppy fields than the whole damned government. I’m tired.”
“Then stop. Make a new life when you get out of prison.”
“There’s no such thing as a new life. Everybody’s life is just a recycled version of something from the past. We are not a creative species. How do you like your job at the Ministry of Planning?” Sayed said in the tone he’d used when he’d asked about Sherzai’s leg.
“I’m content.”
“Nothing more than that? I worked hard for you to get it.”
“Goodbye, Sayed.” Sherzai’s awkward gait grew louder. Daniel retreated to the living room. When the housekeeper came walking by, Daniel asked him, “What is a tribe, exactly?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Am I part of one?”
The housekeeper looked at the armoire at the end of the hall, its shelves ablaze with crystal and gold and diamonds, malachite, silver, and gems, and at the walls adorned with antique weapons and paintings.
“Yes,” he said. “I think you are.”