Akbar and Sajiv sit near the cowshed, cleaning their teeth with twigs. A battery-powered radio plays the Arabic version of Voice of America. At the news of a suicide bombing in Israel, ten dead, they stand and shout praises. Akbar turns to Burkett and Nick, as if suddenly offended by their presence, and orders them to say the words Allahu Akbar. With a shrug Burkett complies, but all Nick will say is, ‘God is great.’ Even after Akbar slaps him across the face, Nick utters the English version.
‘Why not say it?’ Burkett asks. ‘I thought you said your God and his had the same name in Arabic.’
‘They’ll take it as praise for theirs,’ Nick says. ‘Which in itself doesn’t matter, but they won’t see our faith – my faith – as having value unless I’m willing to suffer for it.’
It seems like pointless bravado, even a contradiction: Burkett remembers Hassad and Abu, how Nick approved of their Muslim rituals despite their Christian beliefs. Akbar seems prepared to strike him again, but a knock on the door stays his hand.
Someone outside, another human being: the first in the week since their arrival at this remote outpost. Burkett’s mind churns through the possibilities – a goatherd asking for directions, more journalists on a guided tour. He steels himself for the inevitable gunfire. Could this be the final raid, the incompetent rescue operation that will culminate in death for all of them? Would the raid begin with an innocent knock?
Sajiv slides back the shutter and peers through the slit in the door. He has to wait while Akbar digs a key from his shirt. Akbar makes a point of checking the aperture for himself before unbolting the door. Burkett wonders how it was decided that Akbar would keep the key, that source of authority, when he seems the less intelligent of the two. Perhaps it has something to do with the scar, a higher rank earned through combat.
A teenage boy carries in a large stainless steel pot by both handles. After lowering it to the ground, the boy stares curiously at the barefoot Americans sprawled against the wall. Behind him stands a figure in a burqa, perhaps his mother or sister. In silence she turns and disappears behind the doorframe. Only after the boy is gone does Burkett notice the lidded basket she left on the threshold.
The pot contains lamb stew, the basket flatbread and apples. Also in the basket is a handwritten note which Akbar and Sajiv burn after reading.
Sajiv hangs the pot from a gambrel over the fire, but before the stew has time enough to warm, they begin scooping it directly into their bowls. To Burkett it tastes bland, in need of salt, but after a week of nothing but MREs he savors the feel of the stringy meat and soft carrots on his tongue.
‘The boy and the woman live in the neighboring house,’ Nick says, listening to Sajiv. ‘It’s about a half mile to the north.’
‘How often will they bring us dinner?’
‘They’re supposed to come twice a week till the rainy season.’
‘The rainy season? When is that?’
‘Two months away. But he says we’ll be long gone by then.’
Burkett sets aside his bowl. He moves closer to the fire and prods the embers with a charred stick.
‘Can they not give us something to read?’ he asks. Nick directs the question to Sajiv.
‘He’ll send a message,’ Nick says.
‘Tell them I’d love to read the Qu’ran if they could get me an English translation.’
‘La!’ barks Akbar, who till now has remained silent.
‘Why not?’ Burkett asks.
‘It would be unsuitable for you to touch the Holy Qu’ran,’ Nick interprets.
‘But how am I to learn about Islam?’
Akbar and Sajiv discuss the question.
‘If you want to read the Qu’ran,’ Nick says, barely concealing his amusement, ‘you would have to wear gloves while touching it, or listen to an audio edition.’
‘No problem,’ Burkett says.
‘And your reading would have to be supervised, in case you had plans to desecrate the book by urinating on it or throwing it in the fire.’
The idea of such desecration causes Akbar to moan and beat his fist against his own chest. The others watch in silence.
‘Does he honestly think I’d do that?’ Burkett asks.
Akbar scowls at the fire, as if searching there for smoldering pages.
Sajiv tries to ease the tension by smiling and patting Akbar on the shoulder. He sloughs past the fire, stepping over the stack of dirty bowls. He delves into his rucksack and produces not a Qu’ran but a box of polished wood. He removes the lid and unfurls two strips of intricately embroidered fabric. On the fabric he sets out clusters of wooden pawns, each crafted in the shape of a different type of fish. The largest pieces, one black and one white, are cycloptic sharks – the god Samakersh in his dual forms of good and evil. Sajiv explains that the game pieces have been in his family for many generations. The game is called chaupar.
At first Akbar is reluctant to participate in a game with pagan tokens and a board in the shape of a cross. Formed by the intersection of the two embroidered strips, the cross seems to bother him far more than the draftsmen, but Sajiv convinces him that chaupar pre-dates Christianity.
Within minutes Akbar is staring at the pawns in deep concentration. Burkett and Nick watch while their captors play. The room is silent except for the crackle of the fire and the tap of the ivory dice against the stone floor. Toward the end of the game Nick gets up and lights the gas lamp.
It is Akbar who asks Burkett and Nick to join in, the game being better suited to four players than two. This was likely Sajiv’s intention all along, but Akbar needed to come to the realization on his own.
Nick picks up the game far more quickly than Burkett, as if remembering it rather than learning it. Burkett isn’t surprised to be a slower learner – he refuses to feel embarrassed. Having never been one for games, he would certainly avoid this one if there were any reasonable alternative.
As they play into the night, the others disappear into the game. Where is the appeal? It’s as if they see in it some mystery – a puzzle demanding to be solved. More likely, the difference lies in Burkett himself. As he’s known since boyhood, he lacks something of that competitive urge possessed by most men. He is in the minority here: the three of them bend so far over the board that their heads nearly touch.
His aversion to games is yet another difference between him and his brother, who in college could spend hours playing cards. It dawns on him that beyond the superficial resemblance Owen had more in common with Nick than with his own twin. Did Owen and Nick think of themselves as brothers, in a religious sense? Perhaps ‘brethren’ would be the more appropriate word.
How could such close companions in youth become so distant as adults? Owen might have begun the process of estrangement – by winning the greater share of their father’s love, or by being the better wrestler, or even by turning to Christianity, but Burkett has greater cause for guilt. Sleeping with Amanda Grey created a chasm between him and his brother that could never be bridged.
He should have put a stop to it that weekend at the lake house – not when he got up and went to her room, but earlier that same day, before the not quite accidental encounter in the hallway that led to their kissing. Better yet he should have stopped himself months or years earlier, at whatever point they began to joke, even affectionately, about Owen behind his back – laughing at his moral rigidity, his seemingly obsessive-compulsive work ethic. Burkett should have seen the different paths laid out before him. He was the spitting image of the man she loved, but without that exhausting expectation of holiness, without that unique gift Owen had for making the people around him feel inadequate. Long before that perfidious consummation they forged a bond under Owen’s very nose, convincing themselves all the while that they weren’t morally deficient after all, that in fact they had advantages over Owen – advantages of insight and wit and world experience. And Owen’s obliviousness to their developing attraction was yet another example of that naïveté they found at once so endearing and so annoying.
Burkett slept with her even when he knew his brother truly loved her. It was all so long ago, yet he had half expected to find among his brother’s belongings some memento of the woman who came between them.
During the game, Burkett’s eyes keep drifting to the single wall decoration, a photograph pinned up where Akbar sleeps: a masked Islamic militant pointing a rocket-propelled grenade toward the sky. He’s studying the hand-drawn decorative border when he realizes the others are waiting for him to roll the dice.
‘One of his friends?’ he asks, nodding to the photograph.
Nick’s interpretation obviously does away with the sarcasm. He speaks of the photograph in an admiring, even fearful tone. Akbar nods, clearly pleased with his photograph, but it is Sajiv, impatient to go on with the game, who has to tell them that the masked warrior is Akbar himself.
The following week, when the boy and the woman return, Burkett and Nick are sifting the tiny stones from a bag of rice. An old newspaper keeps the rice out of the dirt. Akbar, who is out hunting, has meticulously blotted all human faces from the advertisements and pictures.
The boy has a new pot of stew, the woman another basket. Burkett glimpses an edge of the burqa just as Sajiv shuts the door.
From the basket Sajiv takes a scrap of paper with a few handwritten lines. This method of communication seems remarkably primitive given the Heroes’ reputation for clever cyber attacks. Locked in a metal box in the cowshed is a satellite phone – Burkett saw it when they unpacked the car – but for now the jihadists seem to prefer passing notes, any of which could mean death: Kill the Americans. Photograph their heads.
But Sajiv refuses to share the contents of the latest missive. He folds it into his pocket, dismissing their pleas with a shake of his head and a half smile. Nick presses him with questions. Any news on the ransom negotiations? What about their request for books? When will they be released? Sajiv shrugs. He knows nothing. All he can do is promise to tell them immediately if they’re to be killed or set free.
Burkett takes little comfort in this. If the death order comes, he’ll fight his way out of this place. He tells himself it is better to die fighting. Besides, Sajiv would expect him to fight. It seems to Burkett that Sajiv would either refrain from telling him or kill him at the very moment of receiving the order. So what good is the promise?
For now, Sajiv assures them, negotiations are in progress. The ransom must be agreed upon. But with whom are the jihadists negotiating – IMO? How much would IMO be willing to pay? To afford the ransom, no doubt exorbitant, would they have to lay off workers? Shut down some medical clinic? Burkett regrets his lack of connections, a wealthy donor to make a contribution on his behalf. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for IMO to stall: they’d gain time for raising money, time for the ransom to drop. Two men cost more than one: surely IMO would prioritize Nick over Burkett. Would they purchase freedom for one and not the other? Would they hold out for an execution?
Akbar announces his arrival by tossing a gutted marmot on the floor near the fire. It seems he expects Sajiv to prepare the animal for cooking, but since their neighbors have provided stew, there’s no point in taking the trouble, at least not tonight. Akbar only recognizes this after setting aside his rifle and dousing his face from a bucket of water. They have no freezer, no salt for preserving meat. He glares at the pot of stew, and for a moment seems ready to kick it over. Instead he takes the unappreciated marmot and hurls it over the wall of the compound.
Burkett and Nick have formed sketchy portraits of their captors: Sajiv, who worked as a bricklayer on an American-funded project but turned to jihad when the government in the north humiliated his family by filming his younger sister with drones. Sajiv on the whole seems less interested in wielding a gun than simply studying the Qu’ran. His hardbound volume, given to him by his father, is adorned with intricate tessellations of gold on a background of dark blue. He hopes one day to teach in a madrassa, which doesn’t strike Burkett as much of an aspiration, since Akbar seems to have graduated from one without knowing how to read. At least that’s what they gather from his audio version of the Qu’ran, and his request for Sajiv to read aloud when the player runs out of batteries.
Akbar’s surly detachment falls away when he’s given a chance to boast of singlehandedly killing over a hundred members of the Khandari special forces in six different battles. Burkett and Nick are skeptical, even if the facial scar adds an element of authenticity. It seems odd for such a great warrior to be relegated to guarding prisoners. On the other hand, the guarding of prisoners might not be such a menial assignment if he were expected to torture and murder them as well.