They strut like pigeons on the sidewalk, puffing their chests out. They call themselves Communist but care nothing about the communal. Like Taj, they are salesmen, but they are the lowest kind, peddling things made by other people. They make nothing themselves. They grow nothing. Socrates taught Taj a little about their ideas, which are well known and sold in many countries, but seemed to be made in Russia and, like their cars, not built to last.
The difference between a good and bad salesman is how well he sells the commodity that all salesmen carry: lies. One might think lies are easy to sell, because people pay dearly to hear the ones they like. But in fact, they are the hardest to sell because there is so much competition.
The urchins are glued together these days like they’re a single organism. Taj watches from an abandoned bakery whose owner disappeared last week, the day the red pigeons came. The bakery isn’t far from that terrible place that used to exist, where urchins were sold, although everyone pretends it was never there. At least it is gone now, its owners and customers dead. They died like the cowards they were, trying to escape, begging for their lives.
The children squat against buildings, and without seeing their hands Taj knows how dirty their nails are, how blistered their hands are from helping people scrub floors or clean windows with chemicals too harsh for their skin. For their efforts, they will get a little food. He looks at one of them, a boy with mischief in his eyes and a smile that says, “I know something.” Taj can tell he is the thief of the group, which means he can run. He has a chance to escape this wretchedness, because the trick in life is to be someone other people cannot catch.
The Communist soldiers are patrolling the sidewalks. A sergeant struts over to a man who sells fruit and jabs him in the stomach with his rifle. “You’re in the way,” the sergeant shouts.
The old man picks up his wheelbarrow and teeters off to another corner, but the sergeant keeps shouting. His comrades laugh, and the old man wheels his apples and pomegranates farther away until he is out of sight. Taj realizes these men will do the same thing to him: they will chase him from Fever Valley, force him to move his fields farther and farther until it is like they never existed—unless he finds a way to stop them. Taj recognizes the sergeant. He is a client, as are some of the others who weren’t revolutionaries before but are now.
The children are holding hands, forming a chain, when the soldiers come toward them. Taj walks out of the bakery. It happens fast, a camouflage van leaving the curb and chasing after the children. The soldiers round them up and promise a better life awaits them. But Taj knows that once they get in that van, they might end up with no life at all. The children know, too. A few of them are crying, and a few look like they have never cried. Ordinary men and women pass by, one or two trying to interfere, but these are only street children, and the soldiers are dangerous. A mother in slacks rushes past the scene, squeezing through the crowd with her two children, afraid the soldiers will take them, too. But they will not take her daughter and son. They target the weak ones—the unwanted, the invisible. Pigeons only go after crumbs.
Taj pushes the sergeant in the chest. The man looks at him like he’s a dog who gotten into his house and aims the gun at him.
Taj doesn’t move. “Leave them alone.”
“You’d best go back to where you came from.”
This is where I came from, Taj thinks but doesn’t say. He pushes the gun away and shoves the sergeant again. Here they come, the rest of the pigeons. Some of the urchins flee. Some are held in iron grips and look pleadingly at him. Taj hits the sergeant in the face, and suddenly there is some whistling and even laughter in the gathering crowd. But everyone disperses when the soldiers fire into the air. Two soldiers take Taj by the arms as others beat him, landing blow after blow. Taj tells the children to run. A little boy tries to save him, pulling the soldiers by their legs, but they kick him away and Taj says, “Run, child.”
When it’s all over, Taj is alone, facedown in the street. The soldiers disperse, telling everybody to remember what happens to people who don’t know their place. Passersby either stare at him or pretend he doesn’t exist. One woman asks if he needs help. No. Boy has never needed help. He will never be caught, not only because of his speed. The trick is to let those who are chasing you believe they have caught you. Sometimes, to survive, you have to act like you’re already beaten.
That night, he dreams he’s standing alone in an orchard, walking among mulberries and cherries and figs, and he plucks the fruit and hands them to urchins and all of them say thank you. All except one. The girl in the red dress with mirrors. She only curses him. He shouts in the dark that she doesn’t belong here. She grows louder, and he begs her to be quiet. He says he is sorry, and he thinks he has gone mad.
Trapped inside him, she rattles him like a prisoner rattling her cage, but Taj is the one who is imprisoned. When it first started, he tried to drown her voice in wine, the vile red liquid Nazook used to drink. What a revelation alcohol was. Boy had always been afraid to drown, ever since his mother washed clothes in the river and warned him that nobody could swim so he couldn’t be saved if he drifted too far. But water couldn’t drown you unless you were in it, while alcohol worked the other way around: you drowned when it was in you. It was upside down, just like having someone stuck inside of you and being the one who is trapped.
Taj wakes up. He reaches for the bottle. It brings warmth, and he falls back on the bed. For a moment he is Boy again, running away from the tent and the garden. Again he begs the girl inside him to be quiet, and he calls her by her name, Telaya. He holds his head and squeezes his temples to crush her, but Telaya’s voice only becomes louder. She begins to run, sparkling in the sunlight, running like he used to run when he was Boy. A car glimmers on the horizon, speeding closer. Telaya says, He doesn’t see me. I can do it. And then she is dead.
Every night, Taj dreams that he turns and runs after Telaya, faster and faster but still unable to catch her, and then the car is there. Now, in the darkness, he clutches his sweat-drenched sheets. “Please leave me alone,” he cries. But the girl in the red dress never leaves him alone. It is as if she slammed into him the moment the car slammed into her.