The Opium Prince Page 2

  Slipping the gun into his holster as noisily as he could, Najib stroked the cover of his well-thumbed Koran, then cast a glance at his young underling. Najib liked to think that the boy was a dedicated servant. It was an accepted fact that Kochi nomads were up to all sorts of trickery, and soon he would catch one of them in the act of something expressly forbidden, like passing off tin as silver or riding mules loaded with the remains of harvested poppies in the hope of starting their own field.

  The grumble of a car interrupted his daydreams about glorious arrests and impending promotions. The constable shuffled out of his seat, turning to him for a cue. Najib might have walked to the station’s only window, a cutout in the wall split by three vertical bars, but he would see no car from there. What imbecile had placed the single lookout point facing the desert instead of the road? He stalked out of the station, the younger man on his heels. A sand-colored Mercedes was slowing down by the station. It dipped onto the shoulder of the road, kicking up dust before coming to a stop. Najib’s eyes fell on the hazy veil of blood on the grille, the red-streaked hood, the spiderwebbed windshield. Inside the car was the strangest mix of folk. A stunning yellow-haired woman caught his eye first, then an urban type at the wheel and a cluster of Kochis in the back. It occurred to him that these might be the outlaws he had been waiting for.

  He hooked his thumb into his holster and stood still. He would let them come to him. The driver stepped out. Above the man’s right eye was a swollen, bloody gash. His shirt was stained, too. The blonde woman emerged, moving with a determination that reminded Najib of one of his wives. The last time this many people had turned up at once was when some hoodlums had organized a pack-beast race and a luckless camel had tried to outrun a big rig instead of the other animals, an unanticipated yet exciting twist that ended with the parched beast collapsing in a heap on the highway, making the asphalt look like it had grown a hump, and the terrified driver swerving off the road, his eighteen-wheeler belly-up like a giant bug. Luckily, there had been no deaths. Except a woman who had worn a chaderi, a blue burka, whose name no one knew and whose age no one could guess because they made sure she remained covered as she died.

  Daniel had passed the solitary police outpost before, paying it little mind as he drove toward the fields of Fever Valley. As he stepped out of his car, the breeze rising from the desert was like a whisper from the poppies to the north. The policeman studied him with narrowed eyes, his hands behind his back. An airplane glided over them, leaving a feathery wake in the sky. The officer tilted his head and spoke.

  “Salaam, saheb. You have some business for the police?”

  “There’s been an accident.”

  The officer nodded at the Mercedes and called him sir again. “I see, saheb. Why are there Kochis in your car?”

  “A girl was run over. I brought her here.”

  “Alive?”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “Are you the one who killed her?”

  A psychedelically painted eighteen-wheeler downshifted as it passed, curious heads poking out of paneless windows, a dozen men sitting tailor-style on the tarp-covered cargo. It lumbered up the highway amid puffs of diesel. Daniel closed his eyes. A series of images surfaced in his mind like sepia photos in darkroom chemicals. He was driving. You never think of how it is for me, Rebecca had said. An accusation. She was wrong, he told her. She cried. Sometimes I wish we hadn’t come here. He tightened his grip on the wheel. More accusations. All the while, that wretched sonata played on. He fumbled in the glove compartment, looking for a tape. A stupid Neil Diamond tape, which would lighten the mood because she thought he was corny and it would make her laugh. He looked away from the road, only for an instant. He had wanted to make her laugh, and instead he’d made her scream. A thin scream, not more than a single note, yet so vast it could not be contained by the car, slamming against the windows and breaking right through the glass.

  “Daniel.” Rebecca sounded far away, and when he opened his eyes, he found that he had wandered into the road, where he stood wrapped in the lingering vapors of the vanished truck’s exhaust.

  “Come inside,” the sergeant said.

  Daniel shook his head. “We can’t leave the girl in the car.”

  The man shrugged and went inside. Taj and Baseer lifted Telaya’s body out, her toes dragging against the metal doorframe. Her dress bunched up around her knees, and Taj covered them back up as if they betrayed a lack of modesty. Daniel watched through the haze of the brightly lit day, his eyes falling on the child’s mangled arm.

  Many years ago, in the back of his father’s car, Daniel saw a Kochi boy running along the edge of the desert, flashing a brilliant smile as he waved. Daniel waved back, mesmerized by the boy’s bare feet, the way they kicked up no dust and seemed never to land at all. A rabid dog was running toward the boy, and Daniel tried to warn him, banging on the window and pointing. But the boy only kept on, chasing the car and laughing, until the dog was upon him, and at the very last second, the boy hopped to the side and produced a blade, lodging it in the animal’s neck.

  Daniel begged the chauffeur to stop, but his father forbade it, warning him that Kochis did not make good playmates. Later, he asked his father if everybody’s feet were made the same, and Sayed answered, Their feet yes, their heads no. That night, Daniel dreamed of heads that floated up from bodies and small, battered heels that split open to reveal pockets of shattered glass. As he walked now, he felt that shattered glass push up through his feet and move through his body.

  Something in the car drew his eye. A mirror had come loose from Telaya’s dress, gleaming in the empty backseat. It was small and solitary, sending the sun’s rays back to the sky as if to say, No, I have no more use for your light. Daniel picked up the mirror and put it in his pocket. He wanted something of hers to remain with him.

  The group filed into the station, Daniel the last to enter. Flies descended on the dead girl, nesting in her blood-matted hair, her ears, her drying wounds. Her mother waved them away, but they returned as if attached by springs.

  Sergeant Najib introduced himself curtly and presented his constable as Mir. The younger man twisted his mouth into a smile that suggested both surprise and apprehension. Taj was asked to surrender his gun, which he did without quarrel. The Kochis sank to the floor against a wall, Telaya across their laps, the mother smoothing the child’s dress, polishing its mirrors with her tears and a finger. The sounds of her grief played awkwardly in concert with the one-note drone of the flies and the hiss of the damaged fan doing its best from a corner. Daniel felt a quiver of nausea. The station was powered by a diesel generator that gave off a noxious odor, which blended with that of the remains of fried food peeking out from wax paper in an overflowing bin. Afraid he would buckle, Daniel leaned against a wall. Beside him was a three-legged table where a chess match stood abandoned, marble pieces darkened by a veil of dust. Najib offered Rebecca the only chair besides his own. The rusty metal screeched as he dragged it to where she stood. She lowered herself carefully and mouthed a thank-you. Daniel watched her, wishing he could wrap her in his arms and tell her that everything would be okay.

  On the wall near Mir’s stool hung a calendar made for Westerners and Western-minded locals. Miss August reigned over the station with a sultry eye and an outstretched hand. Daniel recognized her as someone who had once modeled jewels made from the gemstones in his father’s mines. Daniel still called those mines his father’s, even though they were his now. His father had made the mines famous, raised armies of villagers and nomads throughout the country, and used his fortune to pay for weapons of war: bribes and the most modern guns in the world. Anything to help expel the English and keep the Russians at bay. Sayed Sajadi had outshone the king’s own armies with his troops of Kochis. Now one of their children had died at Daniel’s hands. Najib asked for his name. When he replied, the sergeant lowered his pen. “Related?”

  Dani
el nodded, and the sergeant’s body relaxed. With a broad smile, he insisted on shaking Daniel’s hand before asking Mir to bring Coca-Colas for everyone.

  “We’re going to drink Cokes now?” Rebecca held her arms out, palms open as if the answer to her question might trickle down from the ceiling. “Shouldn’t we take this girl to a hospital?”

  Najib scoffed. “For what? She’s obviously dead.”

  “So they can make a record. Write down the cause of death.”

  When Najib indicated that no such thing was needed, Rebecca breathed out slowly. Daniel could hear an emotion in her exhale, though it was unclear what kind. He would tell her later that no record could be made about people who never officially existed in the first place. In America, his friends sometimes used the phrase “becoming a statistic” like it was something to be avoided. They complained about the government turning them into a number. What a luxury that would have been for Telaya, to find her name on a ledger. To be a statistic.

  The now-unctuous sergeant asked excited questions about Daniel’s father and other things that had nothing to do with the accident, which he seemed to have forgotten for a moment. Then he returned to the subject, checking off boxes and filling in blanks. “What is your job?”

  “My husband works for USADE,” Rebecca said. “He’s the director here.”

  “The United States Against the Drug Economy?” It was not Najib who had spoken, but Taj. With a thin smile, he added, “And what do you do there, exactly?”

  “I ask the questions,” Najib said. A sheen of sweat was visible above his lip, and Daniel heard the tremor in his voice. Mir stood in a corner, jerking his head toward whoever spoke.

  “What do you do there, exactly?” Taj repeated.

  “We help farmers stop growing poppies and teach them how to plant other things. Like food.”

  “Does that work?” Najib said.

  Daniel told him four fields had already been reformed. He did not say that only a few small-scale growers had agreed to the change, nor that of the seven important fields of Fever Valley, just one would be reformed—and by force—in the hope that the great opium khans, invisible like gods, would capitulate. He did not say that a farmer had approached his agency with a message from these poppy overlords, quietly offering money in return for being left alone. USADE had, under Daniel’s direction, refused the bribe.

  “And you are the director? You are young for such a post,” the sergeant said. “I suppose a man like you rises quickly through the ranks.”

  Daniel had no intention of explaining how he had come into the position he’d only held for seven months. He had even managed to avoid explaining it to his staff.

  Najib asked how fast Daniel had been driving, where he’d been heading, and where the accident happened. He sounded bored. With every answer, Daniel replayed another part of the accident in his mind, wondering what would have changed if he’d looked up just a moment sooner. Or if they had left Kabul a few minutes earlier. Or if he hadn’t forgotten the suitcase and gone back to the house.

  “Enough!” Taj said as if hearing his thoughts. He pointed to Baseer, who was weeping softly. “Look at the state my friend is in!”

  “I’m not sure she knew what a car was,” Daniel said. Sometimes, Kochi children didn’t. They would watch from the side of the road, laughing, dropping whatever they held, and run dangerously toward the giant metal animals. Baseer shook his head, eyeing Daniel with contempt.

  “She knew what a car was,” Taj said. He was the only thing in motion in the room except for the blades of the fan and Najib’s fast-moving fingers.

  Daniel fought the nausea that twisted in his gut. It came not only from the stench of diesel and stale smoke, but from the crash and from Taj and his gun and a memory he was still struggling to conjure.

  Through the window bars, long afternoon shadows leaned into the room. The day was slowly cooling, but Daniel only grew warmer, as if his body absorbed each degree the dead girl lost, her corpse growing rigid and cold as he burned. He slid down the wall to the floor, looking here and there, anywhere but at her. Above him, Miss August sparkled with empty promises of magic flight. He drew the back of his hand across his brow. Only when he saw the smudge on his cuff did he realize there was a cut above his eye. The insignificance of the injury struck him as obscene.

  Najib tore the wrapper off a packet of Winstons, tapping the bottom and sliding out a cigarette. When Daniel had been in college, Winston had sponsored The Flintstones. On the rare days Rebecca took a break from the piano and before she’d sworn off substances that dulled her senses, they’d spent afternoons smoking cigarettes and weed in her apartment and giggling at the Stone Age family.

  “She is an unregistered person, so the compensation to the parents will be low.” The sergeant spoke as if the words left a bad taste in his mouth, not because he objected to Telaya being described as unregistered, but because he objected to her being described as a person. He wrote something on the form, taking his time before bringing it to Daniel with a pen.

  The page was sparse, a few vacant rectangles with captions in Farsi and English, and in bold print across the top Daniel read the English version: confession of persons making accidents by animal or auto. Underneath was the option to check off with dead or without dead. At the bottom was a space for the sergeant’s comments. Najib had described the event in Farsi, and closed with his version in English: With car, Daniel Sajadi killed the girl. Moneys are 10,000 afghanis.

  So that was it. Telaya’s parents were due just over one hundred dollars. Daniel’s gaze dissolved into the word that spelled his deed: killed. He felt the sharpness of the k, one of its arms angling diagonally toward the sky, the other downward toward hell. K for kid, Kochi, Kabul, and Keystone Cop. Between the two l’s, he saw the road.

  The Kochis couldn’t write, so it fell to Daniel to provide details about the victim. What was Telaya’s last name? Her family had none. Her age? She had said ten, or maybe nine. Her parents weren’t sure either.

  “Where do we send the money?” Rebecca said, her voice quiet and hoarse.

  “You pay before you go,” Najib replied, tightening his lips as if suppressing a chuckle before adding, “Kochis do not keep postal boxes, madam.”

  She fetched her handbag from the car and gave Baseer a clip of bills. There had been more than ten thousand afghanis in the wallet, and Daniel wondered if she had offered it all, too embarrassed to count. He hoped she had. Baseer studied the money like it posed a problem to which he had no solution. It occurred to Daniel that if the Kochis could not read or write, maybe they could not count, either. Baseer passed the money to Taj, who leafed through the bills, counting out loud as he went. He nodded. Telaya’s parents thanked Taj for his kindness, tears trickling down their faces. Safeguarding the bills in his holster, Taj gathered Telaya in his arms, leading the parents to the door.

  “You can’t bury the girl near my station.” Sergeant Najib waved dismissively at the corpse. “Take her back where she belongs.”

  Daniel wished he could bury her on a gentle green hill. Instead, her time on earth would end with terse last rites in a desert with no shade and no name, an unmarked grave no one would visit, and kin who would return incidentally, if at all. In the world of cities, buildings, and streets, people’s memories of those they loved were framed by places and times. When no place was different from any other, only deserts and fields that looked alike, and there was no measure of time other than sunup and sundown, what frame preserved the dimming faces of the dead? Nomads did not have photos to remember them by, nor a home to return to and say, This is where she walked, this is where she played. But Daniel would always know exactly where she’d died, and he thought the burden of honoring her memory would fall partly on him, her killer.

  Outside, Mir was walking back to the station with a bucket of water in his hand. A wet rag was flung over his arm as pink droplets v
anished into the earth. The blood was gone from the car. Baseer and his wife climbed in the back. Taj loaded the girl onto their laps.

  Rebecca stood by the car, bracing herself for a second ride in a confined space with a corpse, grieving parents, and a man whose flat eyes she’d avoided all afternoon. The bills bulged awkwardly in Taj’s holster, drawing Daniel’s attention again to the gun. It was familiar, like a song that Daniel knew the words to when all that mattered was its name.

  “Do you know what happens next, Daniel Sajadi?” Taj said.

  Daniel heard an echo in his mind, something from long ago.

  What do you see?

  It was a line from a game he used to play after his mother walked out. He would sit behind his father’s desk after Sayed had gone to bed and pick an object: a jewel, a glove, or a comb. He made himself guess if it belonged to his mother or to the woman his father was married to now. With a flashlight and magnifying glass, he would examine the piece, turn it over, weigh it in his palm like he’d seen antique dealers do. Then he would render his verdict, declaring if the object was “Mother” or “Other.” He would make it his mission to find out without asking his father, checking instead with the housekeeper. When he was right, it was like remembering something he wasn’t sure he had ever really known, a haze of memory hardening into fact.

  Taj had retrieved his gun and began polishing it with a handkerchief.

  What do you see?

  And now Daniel saw. The flower carved into the Colt was a poppy. The corpse and the accident and the station receded, and the flowers grew until they filled his vision. Daniel wondered why he had not seen it before. It was the second time today his sight had failed him. Taj Maleki was an opium khan.