Page 7 of What Remains (John Worthy #3)

Now.

Poya was on his right side, in darkness, his head on a crude pillow made of a cloth sack stuffed with lumpy clots of wool.

Humid from his breath, the darkness stank of sweat, singed grass, and the fusty odor of pee.

One thing he’d learned since coming to live in this place was that sheep’s wool, when damp, smelled of urine.

For several long moments, he lay still, swallowing back salt from the tears he’d shed in his sleep. Weirdly, the sound, which Poya’s sleep-addled brain turned into a bee, was still there: that buzz, muffled brrr .

Quiet. Lifting himself on an elbow, he slipped a hand beneath his pillow and fished out Mami’s still-vibrating cellphone.

Killing the alarm with a tap, Poya lay back and cradled the cell against a chest that was no longer quite so flat, a fact which often worried him because of what that would mean here.

Don’t think about now. Remember who you are. You are Poya Durrani. You are the son of Benyamin and Soraya. You are Poya.

This was a mantra he recited upon awakening every morning, his own and very private fadj as devout and fervent as any prayer.

His parents, neither of them religious, insisted he learn as a matter of course.

You need to blend in , they’d said. How they justified the many lies he had to tell and live back in Kabul, they never said, but they made him study with a mullah who marveled at his memory and easy facility with languages.

How quickly he has picked up the Fusha! the mullah once said to his parents.

Not a slip, not a mistake! Far faster than any of my other students and quite a few of the adults.

He switches so well between Pashto and Dari, even English…

have you ever given thought to his becoming an imam?

Sending him to study at a private madrasa?

No? The mullah had worked his arthritic fingers through the tangles of his long, henna-stained beard.

Give it thought, give it thought. He is too quick, too bright and he would languish at a state school.

A private madrasa will expose him to studies he will never receive anywhere else. How else to counter impiety?

His parents knew better than to send him anywhere and, regardless, Poya certainly didn’t need religion to blend in with these people.

In this place, so far removed from any true town or even small village, there was no adhan , no one to announce when prayers were to be said.

The family he lived with weren’t sticklers either.

The closest Amu Alazar came to a prayer was a perfunctory Omin delivered before a meal and offered more out of superstition than actual gratitude.

Anything Amu ate or wore came from sweat, hard work, and a cool head when bartering for supplies.

No one studied Quran either. Poya had an idea this was because none of them could read.

Amu and his fellow clansmen had televisions and DVD players and cell phones, but there were no schools, and no one had books.

Well, almost no one.

Poya was a boy with secrets. Look at it a certain way, and he was a secret.

But you’re smart. You can do this. You’ll figure a way to escape before Amu finds out.

How he might do this would require more than book-smarts. More than supplies and luck.

The challenge was also trying to figure out where he could possibly go.