Imran had been a streetsweeper for eight months. He had learned to tell time last year and measure things like days and weeks, so he was sure it was eight months. Sweeping was a spiritual act for Imran. Every forty strokes, he imagined he was sweeping something away, making room for something new. Forty strokes: forget about the girl who had left him for the fourth time in ten years. She was getting fat anyway, and hairy, like a big sheep with too much wool. Forty more strokes: stop wanting to kill the landlord who had thrown him out again. The son of a goat wasn’t worth a prison term.
Dragging his broom along the pavement, Imran passed the national bank, Sajadi Enterprises, and the Ministry of Finance, with the fancy Khyber on the ground floor, a restaurant where Imran could never afford to eat. He made piles of cigarette stubs, candy wrappers, and greasy wax paper mixed with dust and leaves. There was more work than usual this morning. What chaos there had been yesterday—a man shot at 14:05, people shouting and waving flags. Men running around with one of only two ideologies: Communist or Muslim. Imran’s parents were Bahai. Sometimes God was prone to excess. Why three religions? If He wanted to see men fight, He only had to make two. Imran swept carefully around the tanks that lined the street like the bums lined the sidewalks. Soldiers peered out of round windows. One stuck his tongue out.
Mr. Sajadi appeared earlier than usual and arrived by bus. Usually, he arrived in a Mercedes. He usually smiled, and Imran smiled back, though he kept his lips together because showing your teeth to a man like Mr. Sajadi would not do.
The gentleman looked different today. Dark circles made his eyes look small. He was hunched over like he was walking through a strong wind. He did not smile. Mr. Sajadi looked like a man who needed to sweep something away.
In the early morning light, Daniel’s last name gleamed across the granite facade of the building that housed both Sajadi Gemstones and USADE. He had moved the agency office to his family’s building for one simple reason: it had air conditioning. Daniel began every day with the vague sense of having performed a great swindle. He was never sure who the impostor was—whether he was the owner of a great company and scion of a local legend posing as a US official, or the other way around.
His steps echoed on the marble floor. In his mind, they faded into echoes of bare running feet that made no sound when they landed. Gracing the lobby walls were the paintings he’d remembered at the police station. One commemorated the last war against the English. Men of every age were following their young leader, Sayed Sajadi. They rode horses, their scabbards against the animals’ flanks, guns angled across their chests. The warriors moved as one, creating a sense of wind-like speed as the eye traveled with the army from left to right. Daniel stepped into the elevator. When he pulled the iron grate over the sliding doors, it was like drawing drapes over blinds, creating the second layer of the solitude he craved.
He walked past the Sajadi office and remembered that Rebecca’s earrings would finally be ready, after delays caused by his own insistence on the perfect lapis lazuli. The anniversary had passed, but the jewels should still be hers.
At USADE, the work rose in tidy piles across his desk like a skyline, mocking the city’s contours outside. Mud houses climbed up the sides of mountains—Kabul had nowhere else to go. By the phone was a stack of messages, including several from Elias at the newspaper. Daniel spent the morning on mindless tasks—taking phone calls, asking his secretary to make appointments, signing invoices. Miss Soraya brewed tea between errands and brought him a tray. “You’re back early from your trip,” she said.
When she spoke, she showed deference by lowering her head. She didn’t ask about the gash on his brow. She looked different today, as did everyone. Daniel’s staff envied him for having the prettiest of the secretaries, but today, Miss Soraya’s most striking asset was not her beauty but the fact that she was alive.
When she came around his desk to refill his cup, he slipped his hands into his pockets like a thief hiding evidence. He leafed through the newspapers on his desk. Elvis Presley had died—that was the biggest story, accompanied by a comparison of him and Ahmad Zahir, the Afghan Elvis. Further down, a Communist member of the government had penned an article. He spoke of workers’ wages, the dangers of Islamism and the religious right, the sexual exploitation of children, equality of the sexes, and the need for land reform. The Communists weren’t wrong about everything. They were right enough to hold appeal, and Daniel sometimes wished their ideas were not so closely tied to one of the most brutal regimes in human history. Wherever there were Communists, there was Russia. And Russia had always pursued conquest, invasion, infiltration, oppression. But now they could pretend they were doing these things in the service of a glorious sisterhood and brotherhood and a better tomorrow that never came.
Below that, there was a short article by Elias. It talked about the scourge of the poppy fields and the need to distribute that land to honest farmers rather than let them fall into the hands of foreign interests.
Foreign interests. Daniel wondered what his own interests were. When he heard the voice of a youngster, he thought his mind was playing tricks on him again. Miss Soraya came slinking through the door after a gentle knock, a letter in her hand and amusement on her face. “An urchin just came by and left this for you,” she said. “He insisted I deliver it personally.”
The envelope was addressed to Daniel, not USADE. Daniel strode to the window, pushing aside the sheers. A boy in ragged clothes was running from the building as fast as his feet could take him, threading through the cars and crowds.
Before returning to her desk, Miss Soraya said, “Sir, the others are wondering about a staff meeting.”
When he paused, she added, “It’s just that . . . well, there hasn’t been one. In seven months. Since you got here.”
“Who’s asking for one?”
“Everyone. Mr. Epstein, Mr. Romano.”
“I see.”
When she lingered, he asked if there was anything else.
“Mr. Kauffman held meetings every week, sir.”
“Mr. Kauffman is no longer directing this office.” He regretted his tone as soon as the words escaped his mouth. “But you’re right. Let’s set one up soon.”
She left him alone. Staff meetings. Hadn’t they been the undoing of his predecessor? Too many opinions, too much compromise, and not enough work. If Philip Kauffman had stopped taking advice from everyone, he might have stayed in his position and been able to achieve more than he did. Under his tenure, only one poppy field had been reformed, and the results were disastrous. Irrigating the land without proper planning, they had only drawn the salt up to the surface and ruined the soil. Since Daniel’s arrival, three plots of land had been reformed. It was true that they were small, their khans poor and willing to work with USADE. But the Yassaman field wasn’t small, and it would be the fourth. Daniel had planned to take it over since he’d first read the file back in January. The true Reform would start there.
He was still holding the letter. He slid the letter opener along the crease. The churning feeling in his gut had returned. As he read, he could sense what each next word would be, as if the author’s intention could travel faster than light.
To Daniel Abdullah Sajadi, my esteemed new friend and compatriot:
I trust that God is keeping you well, and that you have recovered from your recent injury. While I am saddened by that unfortunate day, I am grateful that God has chosen to place a man such as yourself in my path, and I believe you will agree that God's reasons are evident. I would not dare suggest that I, a simple son of the land, am in any way your equal. But I was humbled to find that I share with you a great love of country and an abiding sense of duty. And I was overjoyed to learn you worked for the American government, for I believe I understand your agency’s mission better than most.
I hope you forgive me for taking the liberty of writing, but I must ask for your indulgence in a request. I should like to present you with a proposal, from one patriot to another.
I shall call upon you soon and hope this missive prepares you for my visit, so that my appearance will seem neither impudent nor sudden.
My humility prevents me from writing my name in a letter that contains yours.
Your faithful servant
Balling up the paper, Daniel controlled the tremor in his hands. He was grateful when someone knocked. Iggy Romano and Seth Epstein stood in the doorway, a huddle of farmers behind them.
“Just back from a workshop at the university,” Seth said. He had a jacket on despite the heat, his hair carefully styled to cover his encroaching baldness. It was difficult to imagine him digging ditches in Kenya and Bangladesh, where he’d overseen the construction of complex irrigation systems, dams, and canals. Daniel could smell urine and hay and the warm, earthy scent of an animal, and noticed a mass of fur moving in the hallway.
“One of the trainees brings his mule everywhere,” Iggy said. “His last one was stolen, so he won’t leave it outside.” His young face was shiny, and his belly swelled against his shirt.
“We’re going to take these guys to lunch and get Miss Soraya’s birthday present while we’re at it. We still don’t have your share.” Seth held out his hand, and Daniel retrieved his wallet.
“Did you read my memo?” Seth continued, again making his case for more workshops and equipment.
What Seth and Iggy talked about would have bored most people. But Daniel admired them, because engineers understood that great civilizations were built on boring things like trenches and pipes. He gave them enough cash for a nice gift, apologizing for forgetting Miss Soraya’s birthday.
“Kauffman never forgot things like that,” Seth said, counting the bills. “I guess he was used to having staff, seeing as he’d been around a long time.”
“I’ve got a lot on my desk right now,” Daniel said, gesturing to the door. He was in no mood to be reminded that some people resented his arrival and blamed him for Kauffman’s ousting. No one needed to tell him that an analyst did not become a regional director overnight at age thirty-one without connections.
The engineers left. Trying to concentrate on Seth’s memo, which he found in the middle of a pile, Daniel couldn’t stop his mind from drifting back to the letter. When the phone rang, he almost expected to hear Taj’s voice, but Miss Soraya connected Laila, who had called to say Rebecca had been in bed at home all day. She just needed to rest, Laila explained.
“Is she okay? Did you figure out what was wrong? She was really in pain yesterday, even though she kept saying it wasn’t bad. You know how she is.”
“She’s fine. She was almost five months in, Daniel. It’s going to take some time.”
Daniel could hear the bustle of the clinic in the background. A baby’s cries escalated to screams. Before disconnecting, Laila added that she was looking forward to the party Saturday night.
He threw the khan’s letter into the trash bin and was suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue, as if the sun had pierced his skin and shot a sleep serum into his veins. He pulled off his jacket. Something fell from the pocket. It was the mirror from the girl’s dress, winking in the light. He held it in his palm and stared. Long ago, he’d asked his father why people sewed mirrors on their clothes. Sayed said, Because sometimes they wonder if they are invisible, and this reminds them that they are not. The telephone rang for the twentieth time.
“It’s Leland.” There were no pleasantries when Daniel’s supervisor called him from Washington, DC. “I tried you at that goddamn hotel in Herat, but they said you weren’t there. Now I find you here.” Daniel could hear Leland Smythe puffing on a cigarillo. “Good news. It’s going to be filmed.”
“What’s going to be filmed, sir?”
“It’s Leland. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“What’s going to be filmed, Leland?”
“What do you think? The whole Reform. From the time you pull those poppies out by the head to the moment the wheat grows in nice and tall. They’ll try to put it on the air next year with Cronkite. We need to see a lot of happy locals. Is that clear?”
Daniel squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re going to let them film the Reform?”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m not sure the Ministry of Planning will be on board with that.”
“They already are. It’s going to be broadcast there, too, for whoever’s got a TV, although I guess that’s about the same number of people as a curling team in Cuba.”
“Sir, if we needed to postpone the Reform, how would we go about that?”
After a prolonged silence, it seemed like a different man was on the phone. A measured, somber voice sliced through the receiver. “Was that supposed to be a joke?”
“It’s just that—”
“Tell me I wasn’t wrong when I convinced everybody you knew what you were doing. A lot of them were pushing for smaller fields. Telling me you weren’t ready. That you were too green, and that having a last name the locals could pronounce wasn’t a qualification.”
“I remember.”
“Changing course is not an option.”
Daniel apologized. “I was just thinking out loud.”
“Well, don’t. If you’re thinking stupid, think silent. That’s a basic rule of politics. Hell, it’s a basic rule of life.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whatever’s going on over there, take care of it and see your project through. That’s how it works. If you can’t, pack your suitcase and stop wasting the government’s time and dime. You’ve got Greenwood to help you.”
“Who?”
“Dannaco-Hastings’s new boy, Bob Greenwood. Christ, haven’t you met him yet?”
Daniel had never heard of him.
“You’ve got a consultant coming your way,” Smythe said, exasperated. “Dannaco insisted, after the whole bit with Kauffman. And all this filming means there’s a lot at stake for them. Get to it. He’s already there. How did you miss that in the report?”
“We don’t need a consultant from Dannaco. They provide the equipment, that’s it.”
Another pause. “They need to know what’s going on. They have a lot of money riding on this. Are you with me?” Smythe went on to say the new consultant would be easy to manage, since he lacked experience. He’d worked in Latin America in far lesser posts. “Besides, it’s mostly about Agent Ruby for Dannaco. They don’t care too much about the rest.”
“Sir?”
Across the line, Daniel heard Leland chew. “This donut’s dry. Fuck it. Anyway, don’t you read any of the stuff I keep telexing? I’m not writing these reports for my personal enjoyment.”
Daniel retrieved the Yassaman file from his desk. Flipping through the pages, he found the telex. It was dated yesterday. “I’m just getting caught up, Mr. Smythe.”
“It’s Leland.” He made a slurping sound. “Damn, this coffee’s weak. But what else is new. Okay, catch up quick and let me know. Agent Ruby’s a great thing. The committee likes it. Get those godforsaken poppies out, plant something else, and feed those folks. I’ll tell you something, Daniel. A good piece of land is like a young woman: with the right touch, it can really be turned into something.” Before abruptly ending the call, he added, “Follow your orders.”
In the report, Agent Ruby was described in two pages authored by Robert Greenwood, whose photo was stapled at the top. Peering out was a frat boy with antiseptic eyes and a formaldehyde smile. Daniel read over the appraisal. It was typed on paper so bright, it was an affront to his mood. He had managed to silence the dead girl’s voice, so she resorted to trickeries of sight. On one page, the word Telex blurred and became Telaya. The p in prove flipped itself, transforming the word into drove. Danger dropped its d, the word anger blooming in his vision instead.
Her game was not the only sinister thing in his files. It seemed everything had to do with Vietnam, and Agent Ruby was no exception. The war had given the DEA an idea for how to choke the growing supply of heroin coming into America, and the stakes were higher than ever because thousands of GIs had come home with more than missing limbs. Heroin had been cheap in Saigon, flowing through the city and soldiers’ veins. Demand soon soared in Los Angeles, New York, and everywhere in between. In Mexico, growers stepped in to fill the void, quickly turning out what everyone called Mexican Mud, less pure than the China White of the Asian refineries. At first, Mexican Mud trickled into California. Then it poured.
Daniel had heard a lot about Mexican Mud, less because of his job and more because Rebecca’s sister was mired in its murky depths, as addicted as any GI. No one had heard from Sandy in months, and the family worried night and day. Some absences made the heart grow fonder; others just made it break.
If the report was right, Sandy would soon run out of Mexican Mud. The effectiveness of Agent Orange in Vietnam had led the DEA to spray it over Mexico’s poppies. The report described the operation in detail. Washington had declared a drug victory only days ago, after the Mexican fields were drenched with the defoliant. The heroin supply was about to fall dramatically. Demand might not, but the report left that out. Nor did it state that for farmers big and small in Fever Valley, for Manticores and hungry villagers and nomads, the existence of eight hundred thousand American heroin users looking for a fix was a gold mine.
Agent Orange was quickly making a bad name for itself. In Vietnam, the report said, children were being born with eyes missing and lungs that were too small. Young women developed rare cancers. Nothing would grow where Orange had been sprayed. Not soy, not beans, not even rice. Agent Ruby was Dannaco-Hastings’s alternative. It had been tested in controlled environments but had yet to be used on a real field. The corporation promised its defoliant was safer, sparing human life and leaving the soil ready for new seeds within months.
This was the first time Daniel had read about Agent Ruby. On any other day, he would immediately have asked his staff to gather information, make calls, and set up appointments. Instead, he focused on the last few sentences of the report: Kochis are cheap labor. Too cheap. Need farmers to hire local villagers, or land reform will fail.
At least this was something the State Department had in common with both the Communists and the rising National Islamic Movement that had been quarreling for years. The Communists talked of settling the nomads in cities and towns, calling it a “civilizing mission.” But everyone knew they wanted to register and settle them because they drove down wages, weakening the swelling working class, and because many would never belong to a state. The clerics didn’t like them because they practiced religion the wrong way, Islam mixed with superstition. Daniel told his secretary to call the Ministry of Planning. “Ask Mr. Sherzai to come see me. Please tell him I’m sorry for the short notice, but it’s urgent.”
Twenty minutes later, Kabir Sherzai walked through the door. He’d been given an office in the Ministry of Finance nearby, specifically because it was convenient to USADE, and the agency now took up most of his time.
“Agha,” Daniel said, addressing him with the honorific he’d used since childhood. They embraced, but Daniel let go more quickly than usual. Sherzai fell heavily into the chair across from Daniel, leaning his satchel and cane against the desk. His sleeves were too short and his trousers a little too long, accentuating his bad leg. Daniel felt the old man’s eyes bore through him, and he was sure Sherzai knew about the accident, Telaya, about Taj, all the things Daniel didn’t say.
“You’re back early,” Sherzai said.
“Something came up.”
“You call me like this without explanation and expect me to drop everything?” The Vice-Minister of Planning folded his arms over his ill-fitting belt. His caterpillar brows looked like they wanted to crawl off his face. He tucked his chin and narrowed his eyes, which betrayed his ancestry. They were his mother’s eyes, the same Hazara eyes Daniel saw on the faces of housekeepers, gardeners, and cooks all over Kabul. His gaze made him look serious even when he wasn’t, which was seldom.
“Even you need a good reason for this.” He reached for Daniel’s Marlboros, tapped out a cigarette, and snatched a solid-gold lighter from the desk. “I always forget how much this weighs,” he said, turning the Davidoff over in his palm. His words were tinged with admiration. Long ago, someone had told Daniel that admiration was just a manifestation of resentment. It was hard to assign such a petty trait to Sherzai, but treating him as a colleague felt unnatural, too. To say Sherzai had raised Daniel wouldn’t be entirely true, because Daniel had been fourteen when his father died. But Sherzai had been his guardian, and old patterns did not die easily.
“I wanted to know what you thought of this report, agha,” Daniel said. “Who is Bob Greenwood, and why does he get to poison our fields?”
“This couldn’t have waited?” Sherzai tapped the report. “It seems self-explanatory to me. We’ll find out more about Greenwood on Saturday.” Sherzai must have sensed Daniel’s confusion, because he added, “At your party.”
“Of course.”
“You’ve invited Elias, too, yes? He’s a good boy.” On another day, it might have been funny to hear Sherzai refer to his Communist half-nephew as a “good boy,” but laughing seemed indecent.
“Mr. Greenwood will be my personal guest,” Sherzai continued.
“Does he have to be?”
“Do you want to call him yourself to rescind the invitation? Or do you want Smythe to tell him he can’t come? He wants you to make the man feel welcome.”
“Then I suppose I will.”
“What’s wrong with you today?”
“I just have a lot of work to do.” Daniel was on his feet.
“Are you throwing me out, after summoning me here like a servant?” Sherzai rose as well, so they stood face-to-face with the desk between them. His face was a mask of creases, and Daniel felt, as he often did when Sherzai was before him, that he was shorter than the man, though he was taller by two inches. They had been enough like father and son to maintain affection and tension at once, but not enough to know what they really were to each other. The question always hung there, unasked.
“What’s the matter with you, batche’m?”
“The trip didn’t go as we planned.” Daniel had spoken so quietly that Sherzai, who had just addressed him as a son, asked him to repeat himself.
“I keep thinking about Kauffman,” Daniel said, louder.
“The old director?”
“They fired him because he did what everybody told him to, even when he knew they were wrong. I don’t want to make the same mistake. That’s all.”
“That’s what you’re worried about? Kauffman did his best and was loyal to his government.”
“Sometimes, laziness can look like loyalty. Being obedient can just mean you’re a coward.”
The vice-minister looked at the ceiling and opened his arms as if releasing a bushel of balloons. “No one would mistake you for a lazy coward. What has one day of vacation done to you?” He leaned in closer and studied Daniel’s face. “Whatever hit you on the head has affected your mind.”
Daniel remembered the gash, which had swollen overnight. “An accident in the tool shed.”
“Given the state of your last woodworking project,” Sherzai said gently, “I wasn’t sure you were spending much time in the shed these days.” He placed a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “What happened?”
“I think I wasn’t paying attention, and I bumped into something.” Daniel pulled away and dropped into his chair, the leather squishing under his body, wheels chattering along the floor. He pushed aside the thought of that last woodworking project, a half-finished crib meant as a surprise for Rebecca.
By the window stood a caddy stacked with bottles, most of them full. Sherzai limped to the makeshift bar, leaving behind his cane, which fell to the floor. His damaged leg rejected his attempts to walk faster. He poured whiskey, the neck of the bottle rattling against the edge of the glass. He steadied his hand and brought Daniel the drink, repeating his usual mantra. “Just medicinal. Never more than one. And never for fun.”
The whiskey slowed Daniel’s racing mind. Sherzai stood across from him again. “If they want to use this Agent Ruby”—he made a twirling gesture with his wrist—“you will have little say in the matter. And why be against it? Perhaps it will work.” In his eyes was concern, perhaps even love, but Daniel could bear neither right now.
“Work for who?”
“Do you remember the Scale of Sages?”
It had been years since Daniel had thought of his father’s illusory device. As a boy, Daniel would sit on his bed and mimic Sayed using the invisible scale, calibrating nonexistent pieces in his hands. He was in no mood for deciphering one of his father’s many opaque notions, so he said, “Vaguely.” He gestured to the piles on his desk. “I really should get back to all this.”
Sherzai raised his eyebrows, which seemed closer than ever to managing their escape. “I am not finished,” he said, and Daniel fell quiet. “Your father thought everyone was born with a sacred scale, a gift they didn’t bother to use. If you had to choose between two principles, all you had to do was determine how much each one weighed.” Sherzai made a scale with his hands. “The heavier one won out. Your father said it was easy, like riding a bicycle.” Sherzai shook his head at the carpet. “But he was wrong. It’s never easy.”
“What happens when you put Agent Ruby on the Scale of Sages?” Daniel said.
“I hate the poppies, and that hatred outweighs my love of almost anything else. Let our friends at Dannaco bring their poison.”
Over the years, after Daniel had gone to America and tried to put his childhood behind him, he’d sometimes wondered if those who criticized Sherzai had been right: maybe the vice-minister’s war against the poppies was driven not by loyalty to his old friend Sayed, but by the desire to outshine him. But the people who whispered such things—neighbors, cousins, even classmates who thought everyone who looked like Sherzai had to be jealous—did not know the man. They did not know that Sherzai sat on the floor despite his aching body as he played with Daniel’s electric train and told him his father would be back from prison before he knew it. They had never seen Sherzai wearing an apron, covered in flour and sweat, his sausage fingers doing their best with the sticky dough so he could make Daniel fresh naan when the cook left to tend to his sick brother. There were so many things they had never seen.
Daniel thought about the poison the government wanted to spray indiscriminately on the poppies, armed with studies and hopes and, most of all, the power that came from not caring too much what happened afterward. “There must be a better way to deal with the poppies,” he said.
“Better ways don’t matter when this is what Dannaco-Hastings wants. And the State Department. Mr. Smythe has made his decision.”
“He’s only one man.”
“Some men’s words weigh more than others.”
Daniel had heard that phrase before, too. Sherzai had said it when the king’s men came to arrest Sayed twenty years ago. Daniel had tried to free himself from Sherzai’s grip, desperate to chase the car that was taking his father away. He’d insisted it was unfair, but Sherzai had reminded him that the king’s words weighed more than fairness, more than anyone else’s words.
“What do you think my father would have done about Agent Ruby?” Daniel asked.
“Your father would have done what was necessary to defeat an enemy.”
As the silence between them grew, Sherzai gathered a sheath of bound papers from his satchel. “Since I’m here,” he said, handing it to Daniel. “Read this, please.”
“Where do I sign?”
“You should at least look at it. It’s your company, after all.”
“I didn’t earn it.”
“And yet it’s yours.” A quiet bitterness stained the vice-minister’s words. Daniel had to stop himself from reminding Sherzai of the thing neither of them ever brought up. Sherzai had almost bankrupted the gemstone company after Sayed’s death, righting the ship only by violating Sayed’s wish that the firm conduct business only in local currencies and not take payment in pounds or dollars. To Sayed, the English were the enemy and the Americans their allies, Europe as a whole was too fickle to trust with its shifting alliances, and the Russians were worse than anyone with their false ideologies and true brutalities.
As Daniel signed his name where Sherzai indicated, he wondered if the anger he felt showed on his face. How could Sherzai make remarks about the Sajadis’ wealth? If it wasn’t for Daniel’s father, Sherzai would have died at the age of three, the year he was struck by a nameless virus. The elder Sajadi brought in the best doctors from abroad to save little Sherzai, his gardener’s son, because Sajadi’s own child, Sayed, loved the boy despite a ten-year age gap and a much larger gap of a different kind. Sherzai was left with only a limp, which he cursed as a malediction and his family praised as a miracle. He had been lucky, but Daniel would never dare tell him so.
Perhaps he was being unfair. Sherzai’s decision to finally let the gemstone company accept foreign currency had not only saved it, but brought its profits to new heights. There were no diamonds or fine rubies in the country, no stones that could make a nation wealthy, but there were enough semiprecious gems to make a few men rich. The only trouble was that being rich in afghanis was not like being rich in dollars. Not even close, as Daniel had found when he moved to Los Angeles for university, where he was suddenly nothing more than “comfortable” rather than rich. By his senior year, that had changed, thanks to Sherzai. Daniel had been lucky, too, but Sherzai never told him so.
Wedging the company report back in his satchel, the old man gripped his cane and stood. “I have work to do.” He moved deftly, his walking stick like an extra limb that granted him a new physical power. “Take care of your wound.” Sherzai gestured to his own brow. “You don’t want it getting infected.”
They shared polite goodbyes. Daniel closed the door. Slowly, the rhythms of the day began to feel normal. He could imagine a time when the accident would seem long past. Whatever Taj wanted, he would not get, and he would eventually recede into the background just like the opium trade. Rebecca would recover from this, too. She would recover from everything. She and Daniel would try again, and this time they would be luckier.