Page 6 of What Remains (John Worthy #3)

Everyone goes to the stoning. The villagers know to obey. Best not to attract the wrong kind of attention.

Poya walks ahead of Mami . He is his mother’s mahram now.

He leads the way by several paces, not looking at his own feet but staring straight ahead, shoulders back, his face a studied neutral.

He takes care not to check over a shoulder to see if Mami, hidden away in the billowing folds of a dusty blue chaadar, follows.

Every escort knows he will be obeyed, even if that escort is a boy whose ears this very same mother boxed only that morning.

In matters such as this, a woman—wife or mother or sister—is a bit like a dog, although no one truly keeps dogs. A dog is najis , unclean and impure.

So, too, a woman’s face is awrah , not unclean but a temptation, just as the sight of a woman’s entire juyubihinna is meant only for a husband. Different label, same idea.

Touch a dog, though, and not only can you wash your hands, you get to keep them.

But touch someone else’s wife? If the man is unmarried, he gets off with only twenty strokes from the branch of a date palm and a suggestion that heading into the wilderness is in everyone’s best interest. All a man has to do is leave and keep it zipped.

But for the woman? No such luck. Her lush breasts and smooth belly, her supple skin, that throb along the side of her neck as her heart bounds with desire, her groans and sighs of pleasure, her juyoobihinna?

Every part of a woman, especially a young one, is forbidden flesh after which a man might lust.

So, everyone knows. For certain women, only death will do.

The pit is outside the village. When Poya and his mother arrive, the girl, Chandra, is already in the ground. Bare-headed and clothed only in a simple shift, Chandra is still a beauty with a slender neck, high cheekbones, and wide, dark eyes.

The pit in which Chandra stands is narrow and comes only to her shoulders.

An agile person would have trouble scrambling out, so a girl like Chandra doesn’t stand a chance.

Despite this, her hands are tied behind her back.

No point in her being able shield herself or, worse yet, grab a rock and fling it right back.

Six men ring the pit. Four are witnesses, the number required to make such a serious charge stick. The two remaining men are volunteers. Her father is one of these.

Each man selects a stone from a large pile next to the pit.

All the stones are relatively uniform, as big around as a man’s fist. Size is important.

Too small, and a stone does nothing but bruise and sting or maybe put out an eye.

Death would take forever. On the other hand, a stone shouldn’t be so large that one good smack, and Chandra’s skull caves in.

The point of stoning is for the guilty to suffer and die slowly—but also to die so slowly and in such agony that any woman tempted to give herself to a man other than her husband thinks twice.

The first two witnesses throw badly. Their wind-ups are slow, their throws so tentative the girl has time to twist and offer her back and shoulders. Still, Chandra lets out small mewls as the rocks strike. But there is no blood and that will never do.

The third witness is younger. He is also the man Chandra was supposed to marry.

His arm is much better, too. When he throws, his stone flies fast and sure and parts the air with a low whistle.

His form is so expert, Poya wonders if he practiced.

Given the fury and hurt on the young man’s face, the way his upper lip peels from his teeth in a snarl, Poya bets he has.

His stone strikes Chandra’s right cheek.

This time, there is an audible crack of bone and a jump of bright red blood.

Her skin parts and gapes open as if a hidden seam has been undone.

Crying out, Chandra begins to jabber and plead for forgiveness.

She is sorry, she wails, she is so very sorry, she loves the man, she has always loved him, and she is sorry, sorry, so sorry.

The words stream from her mouth on a gush of bloody drool that drizzles over her lips and chin.

At the sound of her voice, the fourth man—her father—lets go of a strangled cry of rage and hurls his stone with such force that Chandra’s pleas abruptly stop because now she’s choking and coughing blood through broken teeth and split gums.

This only seems to make her father angrier. Together, he and the jilted bridegroom hurl stone after stone, their missiles coming faster and harder, the impacts growing more sodden and duller.

Stop. An odd buzz sounds in Poya’s right ear.

Maybe he’s even blacked out because the view shifts, like a jump cut in one of the movies his father likes.

Now, Chandra’s body slumps against one side of the pit.

Her face is a ruin, her head a spongy mess of sodden hair and pink clots where her skull has shattered, and her brains leaked out.

Chandra is silent and unmoving until someone empties a jerry can of gasoline over her head.

Pulling in a strangled, gargling breath, Chandra moans and twitches and then her eyes bulge with horror as her father and the boy she would’ve married hold lit torches just above her head—and then there is a hollow whup .

The gasoline’s vapors ignite and Chandra shrieks…

The sound of her scream merges with that odd buzz in Poya’s right ear.

He wants to turn away from the sight of Chandra in flames, but for some reason, he can’t move.

Meanwhile, the brrr in his ear grows louder and stronger as black smoke, stinking of gasoline and burnt kebabs, boils into a merciless blue sky.

And then, the scene shifts and now the buzz is the faint roar of an enormous plane rising into a blue sky and then?—

They are in a large, lush garden. Pink damask roses sweeten the air.

Honeybees from Mami’s hive flit from one pillowy blossom to the next.

Poya’s bibi had fussed over these bushes for twenty hot Kabul summers and snowy winters by the time Mami dressed all in white, crossed the threshold of her mother-in-law’s house in Wazir Akbar Khan.

The neighborhood is a wealthy one with tall trees and nice houses.

Not far from their house, there are embassies and the Presidential Palace, and they are only a stone’s throw from the hospital where Baba is a doctor.

A botanist at the university, Mami grew up in Herat, a garden city well west of Kabul where Alexander the Great built a great citadel.

When she first walked into the house’s backyard, Mami almost cried with relief to find flowers and trees instead of dusty chickens.

I heard so many stories, Mami says as she and Poya work in the garden, pulling weeds, taking cuttings, carefully planting tender seedlings begun in small pots along a high shelf in the gardening shed.

All the gossip about how Kabul is so dirty and crowded.

This is before I went to university where I met your baba, you understand, but school…

Mami clucks her tongue. When you are a student surrounded by other students, when you are in a place where your only job is to learn…

you forget that the real world is cruel. The real world is broken ? —

And the scene shifts again.

Now, it is high summer. The air is hot, the light so bright that it cut tears and bleaches the houses and streets to the color of old bone.

The drone is also there, as insistent as before.

He and Mami are in the garden near the hive.

Perched on a low stool, Mami faces north toward the airport.

High above, the many planes are like needles threaded with fluffy white cotton which they stitch into brilliant blue cloth.

But the effect is chaotic and with no pattern and soon the fine threads shred and disperse on a westering wind.

Soon, there will be no more planes. Today is Thursday, the 26 th of August. By Sunday, the Americans will be gone and the Taliban, who seethe through the streets like an army of ants invading a weaker nest, will take over for good.

They need to run. They need to get away. Baba has a plan. He’s gone to the airport to meet with an American. His contact as he told Mami that morning when both parents thought Poya was still sleeping instead of huddling on the stairs to listen to what his parents don’t want him to hear.

Are you sure he is there? Mami’s voice was tremulous, strained. Are you certain he will keep his word? All those people at Abbey Gate, we’ll never get in.

Hush, hush now. Poya could imagine his father gathering Mami into his arms and stroking her hair as if she were a little girl frightened awake by a nightmare.

He will help us. There is another way into the airport the Taliban don’t patrol.

He will give me all the papers we need to get through, so you must be ready to go when he says.

They never say this man’s name. Although Poya knows who they mean because he has seen this American twice before.

The first time happened very late one night this past winter when Poya wakened to the murmur of men’s voices.

The clock by Poya’s bed said it was after two in the morning.

Curious, he’d slipped from his bed and slid into the hall.

Here, the voices were louder and, judging from a lemon-colored sliver of light leaking from beneath the door the men were in Baba’s study.

Poya couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Their voices were too muffled, though from the occasional word he picked up, he knew they were speaking in English.

So, he had slithered into an inky corner where he huddled and waited.

He wanted to see just who his father’s visitor was.

Why?

Because his father was a liar. A liar with a false face. Oh, the one he showed to Poya and Mami was real enough. The one he wore with his students or university colleagues or friends or guests was the truth.

But Baba also had another face. In fact, he had many. Poya had even seen them, hidden away in a secret room at the back of Baba’s study. Like his father’s other faces, from his hair to his nose to his eyes of different colors, Poya kept what he now knew a secret, too, because you never could tell.

He waited a long time in the shadows. The men finally ceased speaking just the near side of dawn as the faraway calls for fadj had begun.

As his father’s study door swung open and the men stepped out, Poya pressed back in his shadowed corner.

The men paused on the landing to shake hands.

The American had aimed a glance in Poya’s general direction—and never saw him.

People were like that. They missed what was right in front of their nose all the time simply because they didn’t expect to see anything. But Poya had an excellent view of the American as the two men paused to shake hands.

“How will he know you?” the American asked Baba.

“Easy.” Baba grinned. “Tell him I’ll be the man with blonde hair and black glasses and who looks like he needs to work out.”

They had laughed, and that made Poya wonder about Baba—and that study.

Poya would see the American again the very next spring. That was when he went on a secret mission with Mami and her students. The American drove one of the trucks and Poya sat next to him all the way to Herat.

That time, the American’s look was different. Not by much, but enough to call what he wore a disguise. Baba said the American’s name was Mr. White. But Poya thought that was a lie because he had seen the American’s true face the night his father shook the man’s hand.

And Poya never forgets a face.

Now, it is August, and his father has gone in search of his American, who will spirit them out of Kabul ahead of the Taliban.

“What will happen when we go to America?” Poya’s tongue skims salty pearls of sweat from his upper lip. “What will happen to the bees?”

“Nothing.” Mami’s voice is curiously hollow as if she’s fallen into a pit much deeper and darker than one for a stoning.

“There was a terrible drought twenty years ago, and the hive lived through that. So long as there is no disease or some bandit steals all their honey, the hive will survive indefinitely.”

“So, when we come back, they will still be here?”

“B-back?” The word wobbles as if suddenly so slippery, his mother’s tongue has lost control. Closing her eyes, she says, “We will not be back. We will never see this house again?—”

There is a sudden, odd crump . The sound isn’t that of a rocket hitting a building, which Poya has heard before. This is a much duller and distant explosion. They both flinch and then Mami lurches to her feet, her stool toppling to the hard earth, as they turn to look north.

“Oh!” Mami clasps both hands to her heart. “Oh, your father!”

A distant pillar of black boils into a clear, cloudless sky though, weirdly, Poya’s nostrils fill with the scent of a burning girl and roast meat and crackling fat laced with the fainter tang of gasoline and hot metal and scorched rubber.

No, that’s not right. How can he smell ruined machines or people blasted to bits? Something’s wrong, this isn’t right. The sky above Kabul is a surreal blue: as intense as the center of a nazar , an evil eye, which has grown swollen and fat with men’s evil.

“That was the airport !” Mami wails. Her keening is the shrill scream of a rabbit in a wolf’s jaws, a stray dog being bludgeoned to death by a crowd of men taking bets on when the creature will finally have the good grace to die—or a young girl, stoned by her father because she has had the great misfortune to fall in love with a man he would never choose.

“Oh, my husband!” Mami beats her breast and tears at her hair. “My husband, my husband ?—”

“Baba!” Poya gasped?—

And startled awake to a different nightmare.