Page 42 of What Remains (John Worthy #3)

“Let’s play a game,” the man said. “We’ve got a long drive. It’ll help pass the time until we get to Herat.”

“Okay,” Poya said. That reply seemed the safest. Baba had introduced the man as Mr. White.

That, Poya knew, was not the man’s real name because this man was the same American Poya had seen when he’d hidden on the landing and spied on his father.

At that time, his father had called this American by a different name, too.

Today, the American had a new name: Mr. White.

The name didn’t suit him at all. White was bland.

White was the absence of color. This Mr. White seemed to have stepped out of one of Baba’s movies.

Something made by Taratino… Dog -something.

Or was it Dogs Something? Or Something Dogs ? Poya couldn’t recall.

Even if this man wasn’t as dangerous as Harvey Keitel, this Mr. White still felt dangerous.

Although Mami and Baba would never have allowed Mr. White to be alone with Poya if the man was dangerous, right?

Or let Mr. White drive a truck with five of Mami’s girls hidden in the back.

? Or tell Mr. White why all of Mami’s students were dressed like Poya in trousers, salwar kameezes, and shemaghs pulled up over their noses to hide their faces and bulky pakools into which they tucked long coils of hair?

The students had little choice, though. None of them were allowed to go anywhere without a mahram .

Driving five hours out to a farm owned and operated by a farmer who also had to hide that she was a woman… well, that was inviting trouble.

So, if these students want to see the farm, the only option was for all ten to be like Poya.

Well, all except for his eyes, which he kept hidden behind tinted glasses in a style that his mother said John Lennon used to wear.

Which was flattering, in a way; Poya liked Lennon’s music.

But he thought it might be bad luck to look a little like a dead man.

“What kind of game?” Poya asked.

“Well, not math. I’m not good at it, though I hear you are,” Mr. White said. “I hear you’re good at many things. Languages, for example. Your father said you’re fluent in four? Or was it five?”

Poya hedged. “Most people know Dari and Pashto.”

“True. Although the same can’t be said for Persian Farsi or Arabic or English.”

“Uh-huh.” His father always reminded him to be careful. No one should know how much you know, how smart you are. Intelligent people become targets. So, why had Baba said anything? Again, he prevaricated. “Farsi isn’t that different from Dari.”

“True, but English and Arabic are a stretch. What other languages do you know? Your father mentioned a few.”

There didn’t seem to be any way around this. “German.” No point in, as the saying went, showing one’s entire hand. “And French.”

“Persian?”

“Yes.”

“Spanish?”

“Mmm.” Mr. White seemed to know the answers already, so Poya let the information go in drips. That was, Baba said, always best, mostly because nearly everyone who asked about you didn’t really care because most people was much more interested in themselves.

“I see.” Mr. White was silent a moment. “I think you left out Russian. And what is it?” The man thought a moment. “Right, Greek. Latin, too, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Oh. Well.” What had Baba told this man? “Yes.”

“I hear you can read them, too.”

Since this wasn’t a question, Poya said nothing.

“That’s actually quite amazing,” Mr. White said.

Again, not a question. Poya stayed mum. The silence lengthened, filled only with the hum of tires on asphalt and the rise and fall of girls’ voices drifting up from the back cargo bay.

Mr. White flicked a quick sidelong glance. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you learn all those languages?”

“I like to read. Baba has many movies.”

“And television shows from other countries, I’ll bet.”

Another non-question. Poya waited.

“And this is how you learned? From movies and television? Books?”

“Yes.” Poya waited, but Mr. White didn’t ask another question, which was a relief.

This Mr. White was quite the puzzle. He was American, that much was clear, although with a hint of some other accent.

Not Downton Abbey - British, but close. He didn’t quite dress like an American either, at least not the tourists and journalists who’d come to Kabul in the Before Times.

Instead of jeans and a tee, Mr. White wore traditional men’s dress: a salwar kameez, as well as a beige and black shemagh looped around his neck.

A lumpy dark brown pakool perched atop his head, though the cap was flattened, stained, and a little threadbare as if he’d used it for a pillow or to cushion his bottom on a rock.

There was dirt in the creases of his neck.

He and his clothes were dusty and stained with sweat, as if he had gone a long time in the high desert without a bath.

In a way…Poya could feel his brain inching up to the realization… didn’t Baba’s clothes sometimes smell exactly like this after he came back from one of his trips?

If that’s true, maybe Mr. White and Baba spend a lot of time together in the same place .

That could explain how they knew one another. But why were they friends?

“What game did you want to play?” Poya asked. Although he wondered if, perhaps, they were already playing at some game whose rules he’d yet to discover.

“A thinking game,” Mr. White said. “If you were stranded on a desert island, what three books would you bring?”

For a split second, Poya wondered if Mr. White had read A Thousand Splendid Suns.

The book had never been translated into Pashto or Farsi.

This was odd considering that the book was all about what happened to two Afghan women during the civil war after the Communists left.

On the other hand, maybe that was exactly why an Afghan couldn’t read the book if he or she didn’t know English.

No point in dissing men or giving women uppity ideas, after all.

Anyway, the father in Suns had a very large library, just like Baba.

Bad things predictably happened to the family because this was, after all, about Afghanistan.

Literally the hour before the Taliban swept into Kabul in 1996, the father in the story told his daughter about a game where a person listed the five books he would most want to take.

Poya didn’t quite recall if this was for a desert island or whether the girl ever picked any books.

He thought not because, a few pages later, a rocket hit the house reducing it to rubble and the library to cinders and made the girl an orphan.

Oh, and pregnant, too, though the girl didn’t know that yet.

Poya asked, “Do the books have to be in English?”

“For simplicity’s sake, yes. Unlike you, I’m not a polyglot.”

That made the choice a little easier, but only because German used so many words to describe what English could in one or two. “If the books are short, can I bring four instead of three?”

“You drive a hard bargain.” He thought about it and nodded. “Deal. But they must all be relatively short. Say, less than two hundred pages.”

It was the best he could hope for. “ Fahrenheit 451, Anne Frank.” He thought. “ A Wrinkle in Time. ” Sifting through his remaining options he said, “The first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. ”

To his credit, Mr. White didn’t laugh. “First edition, eh? That was specific. I thought those Harry Potter books are enormous.”

“Not all. The first edition is only twenty pages over the limit.”

“Okay, brownie points for knowing that. Now,” he said, “tell me why you chose those particular books.”

“I like 451 ,” Poya said, “because I sometimes do the same thing.”

“Do what?”

“Memorize books.”

“Why?”

“Because here, in Afghanistan, everything good has to be secret. Like this.” Poya stirred the air with a hand.

“Like going to Herat. Like Mami when she teaches.” All Mami’s botany classes were held in secret and, literally, below ground in a bomb shelter next to the beehive in their backyard.

“In Afghanistan, you never know when someone will say, oh, you can’t read that, that’s forbidden. ”

“Interesting. Did you know that 451 has been banned in the United States at times and for different reasons? Still is banned today in some states.”

“Really?” He blinked in shock. Didn’t Americans know how lucky they were to have the freedom to read what they chose? “Why?”

“Various reasons. Some people don’t like the cursing or want kids to read that scene in 451 where the Christian Bible’s burned. I would say,” Mr. White added, dryly, “the people promoting the bans fail to see the irony.”

“Well, if someone burns a Qur’an in Afghanistan, they’re lucky if they only go to prison.”

“Do you think that’s a good thing?”

He had to be careful here. Just because Baba knew this man didn’t mean Mr. White knew that Poya’s parents were unbelievers. “A book’s only words on paper. It’s people who decide how to act or what they believe.”

“Well put.” Mr. White slid Poya a side-eye. “How old are you again? Thirteen?”

“Twelve.” He folded his arms over his chest, realizing only a second or two later how automatically defensive he’d become. Suspicious-looking to an observer, too. Just like 451 , the Thought Police were everywhere. He settled for clasping his hands between his thighs. “Why?”

“Because you think like an older person. I suppose that’s because of all the reading you’ve done.”

Poya didn’t know what to say to that. Best to be quiet. Another of Baba’s mantras: When you are quiet, the other person rushes to fill the gap. People do not tolerate silence well.

The silence stretched, and Mr. White finally said, “What about Anne Frank?”

“She lived through what sometimes happens in Afghanistan. She had to hide, the way women here do. I know it’s not the same.

Women aren’t loaded into trains and taken away to be killed.

But women are imprisoned in Afghanistan all the time.

That is what a burqa is. They say it is to prevent men from becoming excited, but it is really to keep women hidden away so men can think they’re in charge and no one hears what wuh…

they, ” he said, recovering quickly, “have to say. Like my mother’s students. Like my mother.”

“But?”

“But Anne is brave. She has hope. That is what my parents say we have to hold onto.”

Mr. White was nodding. “And Harry Potter?”

This was easy. “Because Harry Potter only looks ordinary. It’s why I also like Wrinkle. ”

“You mean, because Harry and Meg are special under the skin.” Mr. White’s mouth quirked in a half-grin. “I detect a theme there.”

“Except they’re still different stories. Meg knows she can’t fit in, but she has her family. Harry has to always pretend when he’s around regular people.”

“I see,” Mr. White said. “Why do you think he has to hide in plain sight like that?”

“People are afraid when you’re not like them. You can be a little bit different, but not too much.”

“You have an idea why not?”

To this day, he didn’t know why he thought Mr. White was an adult one could trust. True, Baba trusted Mr. White, but that wasn’t the reason. This man talked to Poya as if he had a brain and things to say.

“Because if you’re too different, people squash you. If you do not obey the rules everyone thinks you should follow, they will kill you,” Poya said, “one way or another.”

Only much later would Poya realize something very strange.

He hadn’t noticed at the time because he was so used to Baba’s games.

The way his father would switch a movie from one language to another, for example, or insist he learn how to read subtitles in various languages.

This was, his father said, to speed up his brain so he would never have to truly think about how to say something.

The words would just be there—the way they had been once he and Mr. White got talking about books.

The shift had been automatic and, like a child in a multilingual household, he’d automatically switched languages without noticing.

For the last ten or fifteen minutes of their conversation, they’d spoken…in Russian.