The day before he sells the last of his opium and helps Daniel Sajadi raise money to fight the Communists, Taj looks into the sun in hopes it will blind him, because he no longer wants to see the dead girl in the mirrored dress. She is everywhere. He wishes his ears would fail him, too, because she is never silent. It’s all because of that whorehouse, that place that everybody knows about but nobody mentions. The place that made Taj do something he never, ever should have.
Taj hates the disgusting place and its disgusting owner, a man with sausage arms who wears an earring, and yet the place is useful. Taj gave one of the urchins a camera and told him to take pictures of the customers, because important men come to the forbidden house and Taj wants power over these men who have no power over themselves. Taj gives the children chocolates and blankets, and to one who likes music he gives a guitar.
In the city one night, a rich man who buys opium from Taj tells him about something else he wants to buy. Something that sells for an even better price than drugs. He asks Taj if he can find a special girl, one not yet used up by the men in that whorehouse near Shor Bazaar. He will pay more money than Taj can imagine. But Taj recoils. He is a businessman, but he cannot sell those desperate urchins.
It comes to him late one night. There is a way to sell the man what he wants: a child of those who don’t live like people should. The kind that aren’t really human, preferring to live without walls, trekking around deserts and towns, never settling. Even in a whorehouse, at least these creatures would have walls. But they wouldn’t care, because they aren’t really people. Not to Taj.
As he drives to the desert, the sun peers at him like a glass eye, and he is glad he does not believe in God, or it would seem like God was watching him. He walks among the Kochis, giving them jewels, medicine, rifles, and business advice, helping them with their affairs.
Then he sees the girl in the mirrored red dress playing with her doll. She is twirling, carefree and wild, singing a song she has made up, and her brothers laugh at her until she chases them away. The sun catches on her dress, the little mirrors like spinning rainbows. Taj laughs, too, because she amuses him. He finds out her name is Telaya. The transaction is easy. Her father, Baseer, agrees without much discussion, when Taj says it will be a better life for her and he will pay well. The mother tries to protest, but she is only a woman and she loses.
Telaya smiles when she sees Taj and wraps her arms around him and calls him Uncle. He has brought her a necklace today, the first truly nice gift in his haul. Incredibly, she shrugs and says, “Give it to my parents so they can sell it.” Most girls like jewelry, Taj tells her. “I like my mirrors,” she says, pointing to her dress and giving him a theatrical bow. “I don’t need anything else.”
Something in his heart stops. He never thought a girl would say such a thing. When Telaya hugs him, the empty place in him is replaced by a voice that says, this one is special. She is not like her kind. She is not like the urchins, either. And most importantly, she is not like Ashura or the girl who exchanged herself for opium. Maybe she dreams of walls, and if she doesn’t, she will discover their beauty. If Taj shows her what they mean. If, within walls, she finds peace and the wonders of keeping the good things in and the bad things out.
He decides there and then. He will not give Telaya to the rich man in the city. And he will not touch her, not in that way, not until she is older. He would never do such a thing. It is as if destiny has brought her to him, because Tela means gold, so together their names could form the phrase Golden Crown of the King. She is nine or ten, her parents think. Taj does not know how old he is either. He likes that they have this in common. His heart swells when he realizes that he can teach her to read, just as Socrates taught him.
As Taj and Baseer finalize the details, Telaya hears them. She makes a sound of terrible shock before backing away, shaking her head, clutching at her doll. She starts to cry, hiccupping through sobs. Her parents promise life will be better for her and also for them, although the mother weeps. Her father says this is a chance at something other girls have when they grow up, better clothes and better shoes, and he says this is how things are and that he loves her enough to give her away. But he didn’t give her away. He sold her. Telaya knows this, and she hates her father for it and she shouts at him as she runs away. “You can’t make me,” she screams. They try to catch her, telling her she will go with Taj, and to stop making a scene. But they cannot catch her. “Let her go for now,” says Baseer. “She’ll come back.” He goes into his tent to polish silver and asks his wife to return to her tasks.
The mirrors on Telaya’s dress sparkle as she runs through the desert. Taj watches her as she shouts, “No! I would rather die.” She runs faster. He does not chase her. Her father is right. She will return soon, and one day she will be grateful and she will care for him.
In the distance, a big beige car is coming closer. Suddenly, Telaya turns to Taj with a strange and terrible grin he never thought he would see on a child. She dips down into the ditch, sliding on her heels. He turns away and walks back into the sea of nomads and tents, leaving her for now to play. Alone, she cannot go far. He tries to erase that hideous smile from his memory.
Then, carried on the wind like the cry of a thousand birds, comes a terrible screeching sound. Something slams into Taj, nearly knocking him off his feet, and he hears her voice as if she were standing inches away. I win, she whispers. She is inside him now.
At the beginning, Telaya says very little, hissing small cruelties to him at night. Then she awakens, terrible and strong. It happens as Taj is walking away from a bistro one night, after Taj tells Daniel Sajadi that he will kill Telaya’s kin if Daniel destroys his poppies. After that, Telaya never goes back to sleep, haunting him even though Taj never believed in ghosts.
Sometimes she whispers and other times she screams, but she always tells him she knows what he is, and at night Taj lies awake, tortured by her voice. One night, he steals a bottle of wine and drinks until her voice grows dim. But eventually the wine wears off. She comes back louder. He drinks again. She tells him she hates him for making it so she had to die, had to had to had to.
Then she proposes a bargain, late one night when Taj is walking in Paghman Gardens after meeting with Daniel Sajadi, who has decided to become an opium prince now that the red pigeons have taken Kabul. As Taj begs the girl to leave him in peace, Telaya makes him an offer. She will leave him alone if he saves Daniel Sajadi.
“You must do this,” she says, and she sounds like she did on the day the horsemen cut the heads off foreigners at a Russian factory in the city and ended up shot by soldiers. Religious men went smashing windows and bottles that night, and Telaya told Taj to avenge the children used by evil men. He went to that disgusting house and killed its owners and customers, including that American named Greenwood, whose picture he already had, and whose hand he’d unknowingly shaken at the Sajadi house.
Driving toward the border zone with Daniel Sajadi, Taj knows that at last he will be free, because he will do what Telaya wants. He will save the man. Beside him Daniel is quiet, and in his silences he is more frightening than in his furors, with eyes ablaze and jaw set tightly. But Taj knows the man will not kill him. There was a time when Taj wasn’t sure of this, and he believes Daniel wasn’t sure either.
Close to the border, he counts the moments until he is free of Telaya. The bullets fly between the pigeons and the horsemen as Taj leads Daniel to the border, and as he shakes his hand, Taj says, “Until next time, Daniel Sajadi.” And the man is saved, vanishing into the sands of Pakistan. He will fly to America, and Taj is sure the man will forget all about him and become someone who was never on the same side as Taj. Not even during the days when bombs blew holes in buildings and people, and flags were replaced, and blood fell like rain.
As the pickup truck carrying Daniel Sajadi rolls out of sight, a great force crashes into Taj, tearing open his chest, and suddenly he feels lighter than ever, as if something has finally escaped through the wound. Before Telaya dissolves in a shimmer of splintering mirrors and crimson mist, she whispers, I forgive you, Boy.
Taj cannot walk. The sudden weightlessness leaves him so dizzy he drops to his knees, and men take him by the arms and lay him down in a tent. Someone dabs his forehead with water while a man tries to pick something out of Taj’s chest, and a boy squats beside him, fanning him with peacock feathers. Taj feels blood drain from him as he falls asleep, and in the darkness he sees his new garden in Helmand, acre upon acre of flowers that will be shielded by proud mountains all around. His new garden has tall, towering walls. Like the garden he was born in. Like the garden he has dreamed of since he was Boy.