Be punctual. Work hard. Memorize the Quran. Don't forget your Dari. Never boast: it is the small mouth that speaks big words.
Do not believe the stories you hear about me, my daughters. At least, not wholly. You are still so young— Muski only eight years old— but I know grim murmurs make their way to your ears already; your mother tells me. If I was a puppet, how did I manage to hold on to power for three years after the Soviets scuttled away? If I drew blood, it was only in self-defense or for Afghanistan. If it was I who was the roadblock to peace, then why has our city been ravaged by warfare in the months and years since I left office? Do you remember Kharabat Street, its musicians flinging open their doors to compete for the chance to perform at the palace, their heart- thumping music expanding and floating into the mountains? Massoud's single- note rockets left the Street of the Musicians in rubble. Districts where you three and your mother used to walk are now impassable, proof enough that I preserved peace, not obstructed it.
And now your uncle is at my door. I will write you again soon— not a diary, since when the days are filled with events that might make an interesting diary there is not a spare moment to record them, and those are not my circumstances now. Instead, my enemies have given me the gift of time. As a satellite phone is available too infrequently for my wishes, I will make for you a written record of the state of your father's mind during this fifth year living as "Honored Guest" while our fractious country and its devious leaders struggle forward without my firm hand. I will ask the boy Amin to send these off discreetly, since I want no UN censor marring my pages.
Soon, inshallah, I will rejoin you. Until then, with love for you, and a country of kisses for your mother, my dearest Fati,
Najib
Amin
September 3rd
Amin spread his rug on the ground behind the office and then parted his lips to inhale fully. A crippled sparrow stood in stingy bush-shade and watched. Smoke and exhaust threaded through Kabul's air, and the city's tensions pressed against the compound walls; nevertheless, nothing matched performing salat under an open sky, even if sometimes the closeness to Allah made him feel that much more ashamed. He raised his hands next to his ears, crossed his arms, paused, and then bent at the waist; he straightened, he bowed, he lowered his forehead to the earth in a dance of sacred ritual by now burrowed deep in muscle memory. He had first prayed as a child beside his father, mimicking the traditional movements in time to words of supplication. These days his own son often stood next to him, and so at its best, prayer connected him not only to his God but to his past, his future, his people.
At its best. When he wasn't preoccupied, that is. September was his month of regret, the month when his mind willfully wandered.
As the sparrow hopped closer, he took measure of his regret; he found it
hadn't shrunk over the last year, even though he'd been a good man, or tried. Goodness wasn't simply a matter of intention; life conspired to sidetrack the well-meaning, and somehow doing right by those you loved most always proved far more complicated than being kind to strangers— as if the two, love and complications, had to be ingested in equal measure. He had long ago realized that the unintended sins of the virtuous caused the worst damage: sins committed when one should have known better, or tried harder, or spoken up or stayed silent.
"They will never know how fiercely I wish I could stand before them—before you— and ask forgiveness." Amin could have said those words, though they belonged to Najib. Even in the middle of it, Amin had known it as an exceptional moment in his life. What he couldn't see then was what it would cost him. He'd been so young. He'd do it differently now, of course. Another chance was not to be had.
Nor another chance at this day's noon prayers. Najib could be considered later. Lowering his forehead again to the prayer rug, he wordlessly asked Allah's forgiveness for his break in attention, cleared his mind, and offered praise for the Master of the Judgment Day, the Powerful One of ninety-nine names.
Clarissa
September 3rd
Clarissa pressed the "end" button on the phone's receiver. Its quiet click made her think of everyday conclusions: a door closing, a bridge rising, the halting of a heart. She saw out the window that night had choked off the Brooklyn sky while she'd been talking to her husband half a world away. Her new husband, as she still thought of him— though they'd been married almost three years, "husband" was not a word that fell easily from her lips.
She didn't want to feel irritated with him. She dropped her tensed shoulders and shook her hands as if to release the memory of long miles, missed connections, censored language. She never liked to argue long-distance— not with a friend, not with her brother, certainly not with this man she'd married. Robbed of touch or expression, words became easily knotted.
Besides, life should not be disrupted so near to sleep. Leave it for another day. She was forty-two; she knew how to compartmentalize by this time, didn't she?
Urban gray lay beyond the window, with shadows and sirens and complicated nighttime intentions. She turned back toward the humdrum solidity of the lit kitchen: a table messy with notes for her study on the urban history of Detroit; yogurt, cranberry juice, and spinach in the fridge; a bottle of calcium pills on the counter next to a scrawled note from her stepdaughter to her husband, weeks old now. A coffee machine still partly filled with day-old brew, a radio quietly broadcasting unalarming news. She welcomed these particulars that were the bones of her current life, but she did not pause to treasure them. There it is, then, the human tragedy: failure to celebrate the plain pillow that catches one's head each night.
Mandy
September 4th
Kabul from above was a panoramic movie— sensual sand rivers, thirsty cracks diving into the earth, a disembodied pilot's voice reciting Allahu Akbar three times on final approach, a prayer that the flight attendant failed to translate into English. But once Mandy had landed and had entered the airport's squat and tawdry buildings, the city abruptly seemed less romantic, emitting the scent of the dangerously foreign: dark and masculine musk. Mandy fought off a knife-like wave of fear. What was she? A middle-aged woman with a pale face and secret hopes, unnaturally adjusting her headscarf: she didn't belong. She had a sudden vision of high school dances— those petri dishes of adolescent insecurities, still mildly painful three decades later. Even though she'd been considered "popular," she'd known it to be a disguise that couldn't provide permanent cover-up, a mask in constant danger of slipping. Each time she'd entered that dolled-up lunchroom with its streamers and strobe lights and a band playing piercingly in a corner, she'd imagined everyone would finally notice the "Outsider" tattooed on her forehead.
Here, however, no one seemed to pay attention to her at all. On the airplane, men had watched her through slitted eyes at once deferential and bold, and other women had smiled shyly. Now everyone was far too involved in the business of pushing their way into the terminal or fighting their way to the exit. The lights appeared to have burned out, or maybe the electricity had shut off: the terminal was in shadows, and Mandy saw, as they inched forward, that the baggage carousel stood silent and still. A half-dozen men hustled in, pulling luggage on flat carts, shouting out unknown words and gesturing for everyone to clear a path, clear a path, and then dumping bags onto the stranded carousel as if they expected it to involuntarily leap to life. Passengers of both genders pushed their way toward the heap, the women gaining momentum whenever a man leapt back to avoid physical contact.
In this adamant rush of activity, Mandy hesitated. What to do now? She imagined she looked like some stunned whale washed onto an unknown shore. On the flight over, she'd asked for the window seat. She'd let the ticket agent imagine it was so she could see Kabul on approach. The real reason was less logical. Sitting by the window gave her the false sense that