Page 37 of Whisper

Haddad stepped up to Kris’s back, like he could protect Kris with his muscles, shield Kris from an artillery strike with his presence alone.

Khan led them down the front lines, following a well-worn trail behind his men and their fighting positions. Dug-in foxholes and sandbag-reinforced berms shielded Shura Nazar fighters. “Everything in the Shomali, the Taliban have destroyed. Farms, houses, villages. All gone. They took over the villages outside Kabul. Everyone who used to live there is gone.” He mimed shooting a gun as if he were executing someone. “They use these villages as bases, bunkers. Artillery can hurt them, but to truly fight the Taliban there, you need either close fighting, village by village, or—” He smiled. “Or, your American bombs must fall on them.”

Haddad peered across the plains. “What about al-Qaeda?”

“The Arab fighters are embedded in the Taliban. They keep to their own units. They fight better than the Taliban. They can aim. They are fierce fighters, especially those from Chechnya and Central Asia. They want to die fighting. They love death. The Taliban keep the Arabs out of range of our artillery, in a line that circles Kabul, beyond the outer villages.”

“You can show us where they are?”

“Come. We will begin plotting.” Khan waved them both toward a bunker built into the hillside, behind the fighting positions and beneath the artillery. It was a concrete box with slits for windows, built to withstand Taliban artillery fire. Inside the dark, musty, frigid room, wooden beams, cut from thick trees, propped up the concrete ceiling. Lanterns burned on a central table laid with maps of Afghanistan in Russian and Persian. Khan spread his hands wide. “Let us begin.”

Haddad dropped their pack and Kris pulled out their maps, marked with rough information about the front lines. As Khan read off the positions of his own forces, Kris translated those to their map, marking exactly where Khan’s forces were placed. All three maps were in different scales: American, Persian, and Russian geographic scales all using different measurement systems. After Kris jumped through the conversions and marked Khan’s positions on their map, Haddad input the coordinates into the GPS system, saving each entry as “friendly forces.”

Khan checked each coordinate, approved each input into the GPS.

Every few hours, they moved down the line to the next bunker. In the afternoon, Khan radioed for lunch, and they sat with Shura Nazar fighters, sharing mystery meat roasted over a fire, and apples, rice, and tea. Haddad was drenched in sweat, even though the temperature hovered in the upper thirties. Kris offered to carry something, anything, to lighten the load. Haddad refused.

At the end of the day, they had half of the Shomali Plain mapped. Khan called for them to quit as the sun began to descend, and a hoarse Shura Nazar soldier started crying theazan, the call to prayer. Kris and Haddad stood to the side as Khan joined his soldiers, everyone kneeling and facing southwest to pray.

“Are you a believer?” Kris leaned into Haddad’s side, whispering in his ear. Haddad wasn’t praying with the Shura Nazar.

Haddad hesitated. “I was raised Muslim.”

Kris frowned. “With a name like David, I thought…”

“It’s actually Dawood. I changed it when we moved to America. And I stopped going to the mosque then, too.” He smiled, but it seemed strained, almost forced. “There were too many other things to do, especially in high school.”

Kris chuckled. His own high school years had been a blur of hormones and hot boys, pimples and his gangly body growing in too fast. He’d wanted to inject New York City straight into his veins, live the fast life, but he’d been all mouth and legs and pimply sass. It had taken college to blunt those edges, and then a few years of government grind to force him down even further. A few years of stares and glares and socialization, being ostracized from the herd when he was too loud, too gay, being welcomed when he was conforming just enough. Psychology 101, Pavlovian responses, building a life.

And one attack to shatter his soul.

“So you don’t still believe? Or pray?”

Haddad shrugged. “Feels like a lifetime ago. A different person. You?”

His mamá had dragged him to Catholic mass when he was a boy, licking his hair into place and forcing him to wear those awful shiny shoes that pinched his feet. He tagged along until he was old enough to stay out Saturday nights, just late enough that he could whine and bitch about not wanting to get up early to go to Mass. Mamá had soured at him, her lips pursed like she’d sucked on a lemon, but after three months straight of that act, she never asked him to go with her again. At the time, it had felt like a weight had been pulled from him, like Atlas had set down the world. Not having to pretend, to endure the stares, the whispers, the questions about when he’d bring a sweet girl to Mass with him and Mamá.

He hadn’t had to think too deeply about things like eternal guilt, hellfire, and damnation. He’d flat-out refused to believe he’d burn in hell for liking dick. That was ridiculous.

But murder? Three thousand souls hung from his soul. Their screams shredded his bones, the sobs of families ripped apart drowned him in his nightmares.I’m getting revenge, he’d whisper.I’m avenging you.

It’s not good enough. It will never be good enough. Like a constant refrain, the words echoed up from the nothingness, the pit within him that had opened at 8:46 AM, Tuesday, September 11.

“No. I don’t believe.” Kris crossed his arms. Shook his head. Looked away.

Haddad stared at him. Said nothing.

After prayers and another meal of mystery meat, fruit, rice, and tea, Khan led them to the soldiers’ sleeping quarters, caves chipped into the hills behind and above the bunker. Some of the Shura Nazar had been living in the caves for years. The sleeping nests looked permanent, and lanterns hung on the rock face. Fire pits dug deep holes into the dirt, dark smoke blackening the cave walls and ceiling.

Kris and Haddad received their own cave, next to the others, but for their private use. Two cushions lay next to a fire pit.

“We will meet again after morning prayers.” Khan, as gregarious as he had been that morning, shook their hands and bade them good night, disappearing to his own cave to rest. Echoes of soldiers’ conversations in soft Dari floated on the twilight.

Haddad dropped their pack with a heavy sigh. He closed his eyes and rolled his neck, groaning.

“Sit down. I’ll unpack.”

For once, Haddad didn’t fight him. He slid down the rock face to the dirt as Kris pulled out their sleeping bags, extra sweaters, and water bottles.