Page 170 of Whisper

Kris pressed a kiss to the cold glass. He pitched sideways, lying in David’s dirty clothes, David’s picture in his arms, and watched the commentators on TV recount the past decade, the War on Terror. He watched his life play over the screen, days and months and years of war and terrible, terrible decisions.

My love. Wherever you are, I hope you have found the peace that this world never was able to give you. I will always love you.

Pakistan Northwestern Frontier

Bajaur Province

Federally Administered Tribal Areas

“It is all right,” Dawood cooed. “No need for tears. This is only a little cut.” He wiped tears off the dirty face of Behroze, a young boy from the mountains. Behroze had a jagged slice from his elbow to his wrist, almost down to the bone. Somehow, he’d skirted the arteries. He and his brother had been playing, goofing off when they were supposed to be helping their father in the fields.

Behroze’s father held him in his lap. “You can help him? You can?”

“Yes, ’Bu Behroze.” Dawood cupped Behroze’s father’s cheek. “He will be just fine.”

“Allahu Akbar. Alhamdullilah, you are a gift from God.” The father kissed his boy’s hair and held him tight, offering prayers to Allah as Dawood washed his hands in a bucket of rainwater.

The mountain villagers, those who lived with Abu Adnan, stretched across the highest of the peaks in Bajaur Province, had banded together and built aqala, a central gathering fort, on a plateau on the slopes of the middle mountain. Every week, they met at theqala, joining as extended families within the safety of the mud walls. They traded food, stories, and companionship. Each week, they roasted a deer or an antelope, sometimes a hyena, and rarely, a tahr, after Friday prayers.

David had been introduced as Dawood, Abu Adnan’s adopted son. He was welcomed with open arms, a brother of the faith.

As the sun set, they lit fires in theqalaand gathered around the warmth. Children, boys and young girls, played in the shadows, running and hiding and drawing in the dust. The wives and mothers retreated to the women’s quarters, relaxing in the company of friends. The men stayed by the fire, watching the stars burn above.

They were so far removed from the world, so distant from any hint of civilization. The stars seemed close enough to touch, jagged diamonds hanging in the sky. They seemed to grow there, like seeds planted in the garden of time. The Milky Way stretched from one horizon to the other, bright enough to turn night into day. When the moon was full, it was as if the sun was still shining.

Dawood became the villagers’ medic. He helped a woman with pneumonia, having her sit over a pot of boiling water and inhaling the steam until she was able to expel the infection. He treated cuts and broken bones, cared for newborn babies, after the women helped the mother through childbirth.

There was no war in the mountains, and he never saw a gunshot wound, or the aftereffects of a bomb blast. He saw the best of life, in the face of a newborn baby, and eased the pain of life’s end, as the elderly laid down their burdens for their final rest. Children loved to run to him when he was in theqala, look at the mountain herbs and plants he’d collected. He had a small garden, and he grew Kava Kava and ginseng, carrots and barley. He collected bamboo and birch, aleppo oak and arjuna bark.

He traded for needles and thread, and was able to close wounds with stitches, perform small surgeries. He taught the children how to wash their hands, though they spent more time splashing in the plastic basin than actually washing.

More and more, he was chosen as the Friday prayer leader. Slowly, he became not just the medic, but the imam for the mountain.

His life was simple. Austere. He rose with the sun and prayed beside Abu Adnan. Every day he set out for theqala, and families in need came down to him and his small medical office, made of mudbrick walls with no door. He stopped to make his daily prayers under the sun, and then journeyed back to Abu Adnan. The families paid him in food, in eggs and flatbread and fruits, and he had something to bring home to the man who had become his father, ’Bu Adnan.

They ate together, lounging by the fire, and talked. Talked of Islam, of Allah. Of history, of faith. About the weather, and the crops, and the mountains. At night, they prayed together beneath the burning stars before going to sleep.

Occasionally, ’Bu Adnan wanted to know about Dawood’s past. Who was he, and why had his son brought him to the mountains? Dawood told him he had been working for the Americans. That they’d been trying to catch bad men, and he’d been captured in turn.

’Bu Adnan spoke of his son, how he’d been seduced by men with rifles down the mountain. How they’d shouted about jihad and every Muslim’s duty to defend the faith. ’Bu Adnan had tried to shield his son.

They were safe in the mountains. Only death came up from the valley.

His son, filled with the passion of youth, had wanted more. It was the duty of all Muslims, he had said, railing at his father. Adnan had disappeared, and only came back to throw Dawood at ’Bu Adnan’s feet.

“Perhaps he knew he was going to die, and he wanted me to have another son.”

“In shaa Allah. That would be good for a son to do. A father should never be left alone.”

“Neither should a son.”

One night, Dawood told ’Bu Adnan about his father. About the stadium and the basketball court, and his father’s prayers. They prayed together, and ’Bu Adnan held him as he cried.

“It is as the Prophet,salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam, said. The first three generations that followed him are blessed. And following that, the Muslims will lose their way. They will be confused, and take hold of evil things, and wickedness.” ’Bu Adnan sighed. “The Quran says,the human soul is prone to darkness in the absence of Allah. Man will lose his balance between the good of Allah and the darkness, if he is not focused on Allah.”

’Bu Adnan seemed to have all the wisdom in the world. The only book he’d ever read was the Quran, and his copy was a well-worn tome from the early 1900s, passed down through his family for generations. It had been handwritten in Pakistan, hand sewn in a leather binding. “Yallah, I have no son to give this to,” he lamented. “It will go to you,habibi.”

Was this what having a father was like? Was this what his father would have been like had he lived? Would they have spent their days and nights like this, talking of the world and Islam, of faith and the future? Some days, when he squinted, Dawood swore ’Bu Adnan looked just like his baba. The curve of his back in his loose kameez. The set of his shoulders.