Jack Sutherland began his career in the foreign service at the age of twenty-six, a year after graduating from the Fletcher School of Diplomacy. Fighting on the beaches of France, he’d earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. Daniel had learned this from Leland Smythe. Sutherland always deflected questions about his service, preferring to highlight the bravery of the men he had fought with.
He was murdered in Kabul shortly before two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, six hours after he was abducted while entering the embassy to start his day. Elias ran downstairs and told Daniel after the news broke on the radio. Some blamed the murder on the regime, while the Communists swore a splinter group was behind it. Whoever had killed Sutherland, Washington’s wrath echoed around the world, and one by one nations closed their embassies and called back officials, civilians, and aid agencies. It wasn’t long before the Peace Corps was gone, USADE shuttered indefinitely. The UN closed several programs, recalling its staff. Even the Russians decried the attack, though they didn’t withdraw their ambassador.
Daniel couldn’t listen to the reports, not only because he wanted no details of his friend’s brutal death but because no greater gift had ever been given the new regime. The assassination was grounds for an intensified crackdown, stringent martial law, the consolidation of power into an even smaller group. Everywhere, paranoia rose and tolerance fell. Borders were tightened, strangling those inside. Foreigners had thirty-six hours to leave.
Evacuations began by nightfall. The UN landed three planes in quick succession. The nearest American plane, a Pan Am flight, was diverted from its layover in Istanbul to rescue personnel. On Voice of America and Radio Free Europe updates ran without break, directing people to terminals and runways, identifying pickup spots where hired cars and private shuttles would collect them. Anyone who stayed behind would be viewed as having abandoned their post and could not expect US support. Once the embassy was closed, there would be no more diplomatic immunity for Daniel. He was to meet with Taj tomorrow. Daniel was struck by the absurdity of his dilemma. It was like the gods were experimenting with different fates for him and his country, coming up with one scenario after another, casting people in roles they did not want.
The guard who patrolled Dollar Djinn Lane was gone, called away on more important duties. When Daniel heard a car idling outside, he looked out to see Sherzai coming toward the house. It seemed impossible. He’d been sure he would never see him again at all. Despite everything, the sight of the old man comforted him, and part of him wanted Sherzai to stay with him until he awoke from this bad dream.
“Change into your regular clothes and I’ll escort you to the airport,” Sherzai said. He told Daniel that Peter was leaving, as well as Ian and everyone else.
“What about Laila?” Daniel asked.
“She stays, of course. She would never want to leave, batche’m.”
As Daniel watched the flames crackle in the fireplace Firooz had set up for the cool spring night, Sherzai described the danger. “They have no reason not to come after you now,” he said. “Their government has nothing to lose—Washington is already as angry as they’re going to get.”
“What would they want with me?”
Elias appeared in the living room. “To make an example of you.”
But Daniel was preoccupied only with tomorrow and his meeting with Taj. He had come to believe that this was the moment he had been waiting for, not merely for days or weeks but his entire life. This is what it came down to. Not being kicked in the street by Kalq soldiers or reforming poppy fields. It was down to this—a deal with Taj Maleki, and if he left now, Daniel was sure a part of him would die. Tomorrow night, after the last plane left and the borders became prison fences, the Communists would check boarding lists to make sure foreign personnel were gone and discover that he hadn’t left. They might be glad Daniel was still here, preferring to have him in their own hands.
But he would find a way to escape. He was the son of Sayed Sajadi, no matter what Sherzai thought. He asked Sherzai to drive him hundreds of miles south, to Helmand. The request was received as a joke.
“If you want to do something for me, that’s all I ask.”
“It’s much too far,” Sherzai said.
“Then we need to leave now.” Daniel wrapped the old man’s hands in his. “I’m begging you. This is the last thing I will ever ask you for. The last thing. Do you understand, agha?”
Sherzai gave him a silent nod. Daniel packed a bag with water, food, a small shortwave radio, and essentials. Inside the town car, Sherzai said nothing, sighing heavily every few moments. On the open road, the driver accelerated. They fled the chaos of the capital, the desert still untouched by the turmoil made by men. They cruised through roadblocks under a sapphire sky.
“I keep meaning to tell you, the sandali is wonderful,” Sherzai said. “I warm myself with it every night. The table you made is perfect. Beautiful.”
For hours and hours they drove, either sitting in silence or talking about small things. The cherries were coming in, Sherzai’s garden fragrant with flowers. Los Angeles was nice this time of year, wasn’t it? Yes. Before the summer heat. Kabul and LA weren’t so different. They laughed a little. Daniel knew he would never see his old guardian again. After Sayed’s death, he had lain awake at night, terrified that Sherzai would disappear, too. He had never imagined it would happen like this.
The driver was going too fast, but the speed was exhilarating, and Daniel breathed deeply through the open window, the stars fleeing above. Telaya laughed and said, Drive faster. At first, his limbs tightened upon her return, and pain twisted through his still-recovering body, but then he thought, All right. If speed was what she wanted, he could oblige. Over Sherzai’s protests, the driver did as Daniel asked, and Telaya laughed as the car went faster. When they arrived, it was dawn. At the foot of a tall plateau that shielded the largest, bluest reservoir in Helmand Province.
“Take this,” Sherzai said, reaching forward to the glove compartment and giving Daniel a revolver. They got out of the car together and Daniel said farewell to his old guardian. By the water, they shared the final embrace of two people who had never known a world without each other. Sherzai wiped his eyes with a handkerchief.
Daniel slipped the gun into his bag. “Thank you.” He forced a tight smile. “Goodbye, agha.” They stood there as if with more to say, but there would never be enough time, so Sherzai turned away, and Daniel looked at the sloping outline of agha’s back until he was back inside the car. Daniel saw his shoulders rise and fall, his face buried in his hands.
Daniel entered the fading darkness alone. It was a long while before he heard the car leave. He climbed down an embankment, the water before him like an extension of the desert, here meandering and there wide, grazing the distant sky. He took his clothes off and washed, the contusions on his skin softened by the pearly light of the rising day, the rush of water the only noise. Daniel took a fresh piran tomban from his bag, wondering if his now-former housekeeper Ahmad had taken any clothes with him at all or assumed his new Communist brothers would give him what he needed. He walked barefoot across the tickling sand, climbing a low hill, letting the breeze stroke his skin and feeling like he was part of the nothingness. The length of his turban floated behind him as he went, and the longer he walked the more of the nothing there was, until it was everything and he was completely at peace.
Finding shelter in a cavern in one of the hills beyond, he covered himself with a blanket. He found a weak radio signal that came through intermittently. They were talking about Sutherland and the exodus of foreigners. Everyone had gone to the airport. Daniel had gone much farther. The signal vanished. He switched off the radio and read by the halo of a flashlight. If he made it out of this alive, he would tell Rebecca he’d finally finished The Grapes of Wrath. He would also tell her Steinbeck had no idea what a dust bowl really looked like.
Daniel slept like he hadn’t in many months. He spent the hours after that hidden in his nook, buried in his novel, or tearing off pieces of naan that had never tasted so good, rationing his water, and slipping in and out of sleep as he waited for twilight, when he was to meet Taj and the other Manticores near the crest of the dam. They weren’t there when he arrived. He waited.
When Daniel finally heard footsteps, Taj was alone. He had been hurt. On his face was a bruise. His right cheek was swollen and he moved stiffly.
“You look great,” Daniel said.
“I can only hope I look as good as you.” Taj told Daniel to walk with him.
When they skirted the bend of a hill Taj pulled him into a cave. A small lantern was on the floor. Daniel took a step back when he saw them, six pairs of eyes gleaming in the near-darkness. They wore rigid expressions, chapans across their shoulders and guns across their laps. Before Daniel could speak, one of the men rose and struck him across the head with the butt of his gun. The world went dark.
Daniel woke with his hands and feet bound. He laid his chin on his chest, too weak to raise his head.
“Why?” he said.
Taj sat cross-legged beside him. “I do apologize, Daniel Sajadi. As I said, there is nothing about you that inspires trust. I, for one, overcame my misgivings, given your noble blood and name and, shall we say, business acumen. But my friends are less easily impressed.”
In pickup trucks they flew down the highway, Daniel in the back between two of the khans, one of whom was almost too tall for the cab and who handled his gun like it was just another thing he carried. They watched Daniel with neither fear nor hate. There were no roadblocks this far south, at least not yet, but Taj told him the Communists had gone to Fever Valley and set a fire that swept over the entire Yassaman field. Daniel pictured it engulfing Taj’s flowers, burning the mud shack where he had seen Taj shoot a boy.
They untied Daniel when he signaled that they’d arrived at the destination. The men trekked against the whistling wind. His belongings were in the second truck, and he wondered if they had taken the money he had brought, that he’d hoped would be enough to take him to Pakistan. The Manticores had already taken the gun Sherzai had given him.
They walked in a straight line, Daniel in front. He felt the muzzle of a gun against his back as he trudged through the sand, hoping his memory was correct. His feet found the trail easily. He moved northeast, heading toward a crevice in the mountain. It was too small for a heavyset man to get through, but there were no heavyset people among them. The Manticores told him to stop as he prepared to squeeze through. Taj raised his gun and released the safety.
“What game are you playing, Daniel Sajadi? I must warn you that these men have no sense of humor.”
“It’s through here.”
Taj proposed going in alone with Daniel and returning if all was safe. Together the two pierced through the mountain and found themselves on a craggy downhill path, a makeshift walkway of sharp boulders and rocks, moguls of sand, and steep drop-offs. Nothing had changed here in decades, maybe even since the beginning of time. Taj went back and fetched the others, who followed.
Daniel led them down the path, catching himself when he almost fell. The Manticores never slipped, their vision as honed as their balance. One of them shouted “Water!” before Daniel saw it. It was only a thin trickle fed by the distant Helmand River, but it was indeed water. After forty minutes of twisting and winding down between the mountains, they took the final turn, and Daniel was stunned by the beauty before him. This was the valley he remembered, acres of land shielded by a ring of mountains that rose like great kings. The khans did not smile, but Taj opened his arms and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply.
Patches of grass grew here and there, and a few bushes and thin trees protruded from the earth. Weeds were everywhere, no one here to stop them. Daniel wondered if one day the southern edge of Helmand would be a sea of red, violet, and white, the poppies like dissidents standing up proudly to the many regimes that tried to crush them. He couldn’t help but smile at the sight of rampant weeds, because they were testaments to the fertility of the valley and the tenacity of life. He remembered his gardener’s valiant efforts against the weeds in their garden. So often, the thing you did not want growing was the one thing that did.
More than twenty years ago, Daniel had watched his father burn down a poppy field here. Today, he struck a deal on that same land. Of the seven Manticores, five accepted Daniel’s bargain—Taj and four of the six who had come. The other two refused, eyeing him with suspicion. They preferred to face the Communists, who were already destroying their land, but their fields would be destroyed here, too, they were sure, and the land was too remote. Daniel couldn’t convince them. It didn’t matter. The other khans had enough opium to sell. They would be paid in diamonds, they told him.
So Khaiyam and his religious opposition would receive diamonds. More wealth than he had ever seen. It would go a long way in recruiting men, bribing less-than-scrupulous officials, procuring weapons. Daniel felt a twinge of regret that he wouldn’t be here to see the result of what he was helping to create.