When my job had been to read reports of genetic studies, I’d seen so much of what makes us human broken down to code: the impulse to love or hurt, the lust for dominance and conquest. As I read imagined lives crossing the American continent, I recognized the workings of our heritage, the ticking of destiny in hungers and needs, our insatiable quest to claim more territory and dominate others in every way possible, even if under the banner of civilization, or salvation.
Though I understood that we create fictions to transform the perpetual rising of animal desire into human stories of fulfillment, I struggled to give myself the authority to invent. And yet I’d reached the limits of journalism. Reading about Alexandra, Justin, and Clay, I had the sense that I’d come to a forgotten temple in a dusty, ruined America and, while trying to decipher the civilization portrayed there, had seen the same figures repeatedly etched upon a wall: characters like those I’d read about since I was a child, the bearers of a language, as if, in a myth, they’d met me at a river and taken me across, illuminating the dark country beyond with their bodies.
Among the copious Word files on Justin’s zip drive — most of them syllabi and curricula — was one entitled “Notes,” a record of his life in the form of — I didn’t see this right away — sermons. He revealed glimpses of his life behind biblical lessons: boarding a plane in Dubai, excited by the brightness of the sky. It seemed that he harbored ambitions as a preacher and thought his life might be a source of inspiration. The prose was so overwrought that reading it felt like spying on him through a dense jungle.
The story I found there was a personal fiction of omissions — guilt and obligation whose origins were not mentioned — and as I sat at my laptop, I hunted these blank spots in my mind. Though he had no impact on what happened in the safe room — made none of the memorable remarks — he was the least incidental of those who might have been in the car. Without him, Clay and Alexandra wouldn’t have met, nor Idris and Clay.
He remains clear to me from the safe room, handsomely indifferent despite the judgments on him or from him — he disapproved of almost everyone and was considered a pedant and zealot. He had short auburn hair, sun-bleached to red in places, and a beard as abundant as those of the men outside to kill us. Though the beard and square cut of his hair drew attention to his nose, making it appear long and vaguely prophetic, it wasn’t an unusual nose in itself, and faint rosy spots on his cheeks suggested that, shaved, he’d look like a boy.
He echoed this perception in his notes, wishing to see his reflection in the plane window as he neared Kabul, afraid he lacked poise, and at once knowing that his readiness depended only on his faith. This is how he comes back to me, peering into the window to see my evocation of a face shining as if lit in a niche, staring in thrall, craving what he saw.
JUSTIN
IN COUNTLESS CYCLES, a dream sequence that refused to finish, the plane turned, the horizon’s curve glowing the saturated blue of an LCD screen. Justin leaned close to the window. It must be time. He had a sense of floating, motionless above the gray field.
Over the intercom, the pilot explained they were circling high above Kabul, waiting for the cloud ceiling to lift. Every few minutes, the airliner tilted as it turned, windows on one side going dark as those across the aisle brightened, silhouetting turbaned heads and beards.
The discharge from Justin’s sinuses worsened. He blew his nose. The two men who’d begun the flight next to him had found seats farther up. Across the aisle, a bulky man with a mop of beard glared.
The blue vanished, dense clouds battered past the small passenger jet, and altitude losses jolted the wings. The landing gear dropped, the wind shear palpable as Justin’s seatbelt tightened against his hips. The plane vibrated through rough air like a car going over a rumble strip.
He checked his mind for fear. His arrival was only a waypoint. Death would be meaningless. If he trusted the knowledge that came to him in the seconds between waking and full consciousness, or in that confluence of daydream and vision, he would have the years he needed for everything he’d lived to have meaning.
At the front of the cabin, a cell bleeped: the text message alert of an early Nokia no longer used in America, a repeated double pinging that had become of another era within a decade. One by one, throughout the plane, other cells echoed — two, four, almost a dozen — so that, though clouds gusted and muscled at the window, he knew the ground was just below.
Brown lines of wet roads appeared in glimpses, framed by dirty snow. A white hill emerged then dissolved in mist. The city’s sprawl came into focus, two-dimensional at first, thousands of square rooftops in a maze of streets. The wheels thudded, the wing flaps went up, the plane rocked and then pushed hard against the tarmac.
Buckles clicked and men crowded the aisle to open overhead bins as the plane slowed, as if they were on a bus. They pulled out their bags, their beards angled upward. Some shouted into cells.
The edges of his nostrils burned. As the others were rushing out, he touched the drink napkin to his nose and stood. In the aisle, a black cloth lay in a heap. He stooped and lifted it, a headscarf maybe. The material felt smooth and synthetic between his fingers.
Just inside the airport, a woman stopped as the men hurried past, a few of them looking her over. Her back was to Justin, her brown hair cut below her shoulders. His sinuses ached, and he blew his nose.
He passed her and turned. He’d been told not to speak to Afghan women in public. She stared slightly up and beyond the ceiling, her black eyes unfocused. It took him a moment to realize that they seemed so dark only because her pupils were dilated. The thin rings of her irises were actually amber. One of her hands lingered at her shoulder, her fingers in her hair.
Did you drop this?
She focused on him, her pupils contracting. She was breathing fast.
Oui! Merci. Thank you. It is mine.
You’re French?
She took the scarf carefully, appearing at odds to control her fingers, and looped it over her head.
Québécoise. Thank you for finding this. I just realized.
As they walked together, Justin’s apprehension faded. He made himself confident to reassure her. Only his cold undermined his arrival.
What brought you to Afghanistan? she asked.
I’m volunteering at a school. A prep school, basically.
Side by side, like a couple, they approached the officer checking passports. They had their fingerprints scanned, headshots taken, and passports stamped. Her passport was Canadian. Why hadn’t she said that?
Outside the open doors of the baggage claim, the wet parking lot was threaded with melting snow. Men stood packed together at the inert conveyor belt. Justin asked what she did.
I’m a lawyer. I have a contract with an organization that defends women in prisons.
The conveyor began to chug and creak. His headache had worsened, and his back ached.
I’m finishing my doctorate in education, he told her. At the University of Houston. I was offered an academic director position here.
He didn’t want her to think he was just a volunteer, but he disliked how his words came out. He hadn’t meant to cut her off to state his superior credentials. The sense of the journey he’d lived through his prayers grew distant. He should be able to follow the truth without needing to tell another.
When they’d retrieved their bags, they walked out together, following the Afghans who pulled their suitcases across a road and through a gate into a parking lot where groups of people waited: families, women in headscarves, and taxi drivers, many of them in Western dress. Those in shalwar kameez had chosen tan or brown, a few blue. No one was in black, and none of the foreigners — except Justin — were dressed like locals.