LITMIR.BIZ

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got nothing to do with what I’m talking about. Nothing.

      —Tell me the name again, Decker.

      —You know it yourself, he said. —Bacha posh. But that’s something parents decide for their children. Fathers decide it. It won’t do a thing for you if you get caught. He gripped her arm. —Why the fuck are you smiling?

      —Just about what you said.

      —What I said?

      —The six weeks.

      —Listen to me, he hissed. —I plan to make it back to Santa Rosa with all my parts in mint condition. I plan to come home with my head on my neck and my dick in my shorts.

      She smiled in the dark. —I can’t blame you for that.

      —Then why are you so goddamn happy?

      —I’m not sure I’ll be going back at all.

      The next time she awoke it was morning and the sun was high and pale above the Indus. She looked out at the water, faster and deeper and blacker. A true northern river. The road ran hard by the bank and followed every cut and furrow of the hillside. The tribal zone was perhaps fifty miles to the west and she told herself that she could feel its closeness. Then she told herself that she felt no such thing.

      Dust filled the air even at that early hour and wraithlike men and oxen staggered through it. The bus overtook flatbed trucks hauling propane and rock salt and chickens in blue wicker cages. Three boys on a moped passed them on an incline and threw fistfuls of sand at her window. They stuck out their tongues at her and she salaamed.

      —We’ll be there in an hour, said Decker.

      —Who says so?

      —My best buddy Khalid, he said, pointing across the aisle. He lowered his voice. —He’s been trying to sell me hashish.

      —An hour, she said, sitting forward. —That’s soon.

      She reached up sleepily to arrange her bangs and was surprised for a moment to find her head shorn. She turned back to the window to hide her confusion. The bedlam outside was so all-encompassing that it put her in mind of a mass exodus, or some great northward pilgrimage, or the aftermath of an enormous wedding.

      —This is what you wanted, Sawyer. Decker reached past her and rapped on the glass. —Seven thousand miles from where you’re from.

      She felt herself nodding. —This is what I wanted.

      A group of women stood balanced on the highway’s shoulder, indifferent to the chaos, holding firmly to each other through the rumpled blue silk of their burqas. She imagined their eyes staring out through the lacework. She imagined them sightless, then faceless. A tremor ran through her.

      —I’ve been picturing you in one of those things, said Decker. —With nothing on underneath. What do you think?

      —Shut up.

      —We could pick one up for you in Peshawar. It sure would make things simpler.

      —What the hell would it make simpler, Decker? What part of our plan? Our coming here? My studying with you at the madrasa? She waited for him to answer. —Or is there something you’re not telling me?

      He shrugged. —I was thinking you could hide me up in there sometimes when things got scary. Would you deny a brother in his time of need?

      She pushed his hand away and turned back to the window. An even gaudier bus was passing in a rippling haze of diesel.

      —When did you stop laughing at my jokes?

      —Just stop talking.

      —You didn’t use to be this pissed off, Sawyer.

      —You’re wrong. I always was. Just not at you.

      Peshawar was no less abject than Karachi had been but this time she was not to be deceived. She saw through or past the stained concrete and armed checkpoints and sewage troughs and red-lipped unveiled women leering down at her from billboards. She saw it for the holy fortress it had been. The bus passed a mud lot so crowded with tents that there looked to be no open ground between them. Sun-bleached tarps and kilim scraps and siding weighted down with broken bricks. Limping mange-marked dogs and creeks of yellow filth and ravaged faces. The man across the aisle let out a sudden angry laugh.

      —Those were Afghans, she murmured to Decker.

      —Who was?

      —Back there in the tents. Those refugees.

      —That’s not what my boy here called them.

      —What did he call them?

      —You don’t want to know.

      At a bazaar near the station they bought water and biscuits and Decker grudgingly put on his shalwar kameez. The few women she saw were in burqas and the men wore brown homespun headcloths or pleated hats of heavy beaten felt. Here and there she saw young men in the pillbox-like skullcaps of students of scripture and she wondered whether any might be from the madrasa where she and Decker meant to study. So far away, she said under her breath, too quietly for anyone to hear. So far away. So far away. So far. Again a wave of triumph seemed to lift her off her feet. Decker whispered to her to stop laughing but no one in the jostling crowd around them seemed to notice. She wanted them to notice. All of them. She wanted everyone to see how far she’d come.

      The university was nearby and as they made their way there she tried to interpret the slogans spelled out in chalk or in housepaint wherever she looked. Some were obscene, at least in Decker’s rendering, and some were advertisements for auto parts or rice or gasoline, but most were exhortations to jihad. Many invoked the name of the Prophet himself or of those blessed enough to have fought and died beside him. The letters were familiar but the words they formed meant nothing to her. Some were followed by quotes from the Recitation or by columns of precisely stenciled numbers.

      —What are those numerals for? Do they mark the citation?

      —Phone numbers, Decker said, making a dialing motion with his finger. —Join the caravan, pilgrims. One call does it all.

      They had arranged to meet Decker’s cousin Yaqub at the east gate to the university but though they waited there in plain view, standing on their duffels and scanning the crowd, by afternoon no one had come. In his downy beard and brown kameez Decker looked no different from the locals but the locals seemed to keep their distance from him. His hesitancy marked him as a stranger, she decided. His uncertainty made him someone to steer clear of.

      —Maybe we should change some more money. How much have you got left?

      —I gave you all my money, Decker. You know that.

      —All of it?

      He picked up his duffel without waiting for an answer and cut headlong into the crowd. Between a tobacconist’s and a bakery they found a window across whose shutters the symbols of various currencies had been neatly scrawled in pink and yellow chalk. A man with teeth stained red from betel nut took the money Decker handed him and passed back a fistful of tattered rupees. She’d never seen so fat a wad of bills. Decker counted the money, then counted it again, then said one word sharply in Urdu. The man broke into a wide grin, disclosing his blood-colored gums. He reached into his shirtfront and brought out a small stack of sweat-blackened coins.

      —Take them, Decker said, gesturing with the rupees. A group of boys had gathered while she stood at the window and now they closed ranks, pushing between the two of them, blessing her softly and begging for coins. Suffer the children, O believers, for theirs is the greater need. Their blessings grew shriller as the ring of bodies tightened.

      —What are you doing, Sawyer?

      —We don’t need all this money.

      —Like hell we don’t. What are you—

      —They’re little kids, Decker. We can’t just ignore them. What kind of Muslim are you?

      There

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