Still Come Home - Katey Schultz

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leaves his brick-making tools in the road and follows Badria to a narrow slit tucked at the base of the surrounding slopes. The two men paw at the dirt, sand loosening at their fingertips. Rahim finds the burlap sack first, feeling the weight of the AKs beneath the cloth. He tugs. They divvy the weapons, load the magazines, and almost immediately, a white van comes into view about one kilometer in the distance. Badria hustles toward the two-track, nearly tripping as he hides their digging tools behind a cluster of shrubs. Rahim darts across the road, taking his weapon off safety, then leans his side against the embankment from shoulder to ankle, blending into the land as seamlessly as a scattering of dirt. The desert is amazing like that, the way it stretches and folds across the country like the broad, sloping belly of a giant. The way it holds almost everything a man could ever need, including his shape, until they’re practically one.

      Rahim fishes a pair of binoculars from the burlap sack. “The driver is white, and the van is marked, but I can’t make out the logo,” he shouts to Badria across the road.

      “White is marked enough for me,” Badria says. “How far is he now?”

      “Five hundred meters. He’s got security. An SUV behind him.”

      Most of the drivers aren’t really white, of course. More like pink. Or a patchy blend of ivory and lavender. Some are even brown-skinned like Rahim.

      “Is there anyone else in the van?”

      “I can’t tell.”

      Engines rumble, and the sound wafts through the valley in slow waves, as if sluggish from the heat. Rahim loves these moments for their suspended power, those few seconds when he’s in the know, and the target isn’t. He presses his face sideways into the sand, and a slight breeze moves air through his thin linen clothing. The target comes into focus, easily in range now.

      Right here. If Rahim could just hold his breath and never exhale, perhaps this moment would freeze before the complicated threads of his life knot back together.

      He hears Badria’s first shot in front of the van’s tires. Rahim follows up with a few quick bursts parallel to the passenger-side door. Their efforts send the drivers into a flurry—brakes slamming, dust kicking up, the gritting teeth of gears working nervously into reverse. He’s seen it before. He’ll see it again, his country a revolving door.

      With the vehicles out of sight, Rahim joins Badria across the road. They retrieve their shovels and supplies from behind the shrubs. The scent of gunpowder lingers in the air as they traipse to the creek bed and feign their search for water to make bricks. At least it passes the time between ambushes. Occasionally, Rahim scans the horizon. The line where sand meets sky always wavering, never suggesting certainty. The distant, dust-covered shrubs bursting like tiny explosions from the ground. The persistent thickness of the air, the sunlight, the sand between his toes—everything infused with a heat that feels like home. When a second vehicle pops into sight later that morning, it’s easy work.

      A few weeks ago, it wasn’t the Taliban fighters’ movements that caught Rahim’s attention but their laughter, little jabs of sound punching through the packed heat. Rahim looked up and saw them traversing the slopes above the road. They moved as easily as mountain goats along the edge of distant boulders, and very quickly, they were upon him, demanding that Rahim and Badria climb out of the creek bed.

      It’s not as if the fighters held them at gunpoint. No one threatened or fired. No one suggested Rahim couldn’t back out. The desert simply offered the fighters and their money, pairing them with this sideline opportunity to ambush deliveries and suspicious non-residents. Rahim had wanted to ask about the Americans. They were non-residents, but their firepower wasn’t anything two men could take on. Didn’t they still patrol here once or twice a year? But he stayed quiet, shocked by the currency the Taliban promised next. The Taliban’s instructions were clearly given: deter vehicles just enough to get them to turn around, and prevent them from entering the valley. Five American dollars paid to each man per deterred vehicle—more than a month’s income for Rahim and Badria combined. One of the fighters had even waved a bill in the air like candy, chuckling as he incanted, “In God we trust,” more laughter. “In God we trust.”

      All totaled, Rahim and Badria deter four vehicles for today’s work—the van and SUV, one sedan, and a rusty delivery truck bearing an unfamiliar logo. French? German? Such foreign lettering, as haphazard as insect trails in the sand. By the day’s end, Rahim is more than ready for a break. Soft shade. Warm tea. The ease of letting his eyelids close. With shovels and buckets in tow, he and Badria part ways along the loop road, and Rahim walks the remaining blocks back home.

      As he nears his apartment, Shanaz shouts and waves, insistent on a visit. He avoided her yesterday. Today, he relents. She never cares to listen. Rather, to report. It annoys Rahim, if for no other reason than the energy it takes to pay mild attention to her when he’d just as soon be in his own home. Between bursts of pious proclamations, she informs him that Aaseya has been going to the bazaar by herself again. Did he avoid his sister’s gaze? Did she even notice? He is so utterly fatigued—by the day, the circumstances, the endless, endless rope of it all. Even years ago, working in the Mirabad Valley, as beautiful and free as it had felt, it still came at a cost. Some sense of fatigue and falling behind Rahim can’t seem to shake.

      Finally home, he sets his supplies in the alley near the defunct tap stand, its dusty pipe a mockery. Such uselessness. Such waste. He can recall a few years of his forty in this life when Afghanistan wasn’t being invaded. But those times are mostly lost to the fog of childhood or delegated to the realm of family lore. Mostly, when Rahim thinks about his life, he thinks about a spiral—always circling toward the same black hole, always seeing what’s trying to pull him down, helpless against gravity.

      He thuds up the mud steps to his apartment and rests for a moment at the top of the stairs. He fills the entryway from top to bottom, his long, gray dishdasha caked in sweat and dust. Linen pants of the same color balloon from his legs. Aaseya glances up from her work slicing cucumbers. Here’s the moment he could tell her he’s not making bricks anymore. That he’s working for the Taliban but not with them. That in fact, right in their bedroom—pressed into a small wooden box—is a hidden stack of US bills, which may very soon be of use. Whether the Taliban pay in rupees or afghanis or dollars isn’t for Rahim to worry about, though if he dwells on it, he knows it means his situation is unsustainable. The money will either run out or bring something bigger to a head. He’s seen enough of war to know one of those outcomes is inevitable. For now, he does his job, earns his pay. That’s got to be enough.

      “Salaam,” Aaseya says.

      A dignified man would probably shove her into the wall. Might even ask his brother-in-law to help plot her execution. But even this thought comes with a wash of fatigue. What can be said of dignity for a man who’s had the unforgivable forced on him? Rahim’s heart pounds in his throat, and he remembers nights with General Khohistani as a boy. Aaseya nears to kiss his cheeks in greeting, but Rahim feels frozen. He studies the thin, downy hair along her upper lip. A silk forest of grace, perhaps how forgiveness would feel if it were a place. More, the easy curve of flesh above her mouth, the naive hope her youthful body suggests. The general falls from his thoughts and he leans forward, accepting Aaseya’s welcome.

      “Salaam,” he replies.

      He crosses the room and reaches for a cup on the counter, then sees the water pail is empty. “What’s this?” he frowns. “Shanaz said you’ve been out again, and still not even any water?”

      Aaseya looks at her feet. Her restraint in his presence reassures him of his power, perhaps the only thing that remains his own in a country torn to bits. But in truth, he’s never been good at punishment, his thoughts often pulled into poetic frenzy, encouraged by his studies in music and culture as a young boy. All things good and true. All things close to heaven, echoing the divine. He’d just as soon forget the rest and go take a nap. More powerful than any weapon he fires, it’s the tiny salvations that keep him from splitting in two. Like a poem finds its form, he too will find his role.

      “I’m sorry,” Aaseya says. “We were only given a small portion.”

      Rahim

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