The Opium Prince Read online

  His bald colleague spoke. “Let me explain something to you, Mr. Abdullah Sajadi.” He wagged a finger inches from Daniel’s eyes. “If you do not go directly home—though you must stop at every checkpoint—and if you make any detours or disobey my orders, your immunity will be revoked.”

  Daniel promised to comply. He desperately wanted to gather some of the kids who were fleeing down the alley and get them into his car before they were caught. As he spoke, the earth shook again, a sudden, terrible tremor, and billows of smoke rose in the distance.

  “Go home now,” the man said. “And be careful. I cannot promise my comrades will take the same magnanimous view of you.” Before he walked off, he said one last thing. “You know how children play that game where you look at something with your left eye closed, then you switch, and it seems like the thing you’re looking at has moved? It’s an optical illusion. The object doesn’t actually move.” He tapped Daniel’s chest with his gun. “You are that object.” He closed his right eye, then his left. “If I look at you through my left eye, you are the worst of the old regime, the smug and complacent who deserve to die. But when I look at you through my right eye, I see a member of the American government, protected by diplomatic immunity, and maybe a man who deserves to live. I choose my right eye for now.” He walked away backward. “We are not savages, after all.”

  Daniel nosed the car down the street and pushed open the back door, calling to a knot of urchins who had taken refuge in a stairwell. There was nowhere else to go. Soldiers’ footsteps rang in the background, boots coming closer.

  “Get in,” Daniel said. “I’m a friend.”

  Most of the children scattered, but two jumped into the moving car, a girl and a boy who tried to pull the door shut. A soldier was upon them in seconds, and the boy tumbled to the pavement. It was too late for him. Daniel picked up speed and told the girl to duck. She curled herself into a ball on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said.

  “Just drive faster,” she replied.

  Daniel wanted to switch on the radio, wondering what the insurgents were broadcasting, but he didn’t want to frighten the girl. As he drove through the city, soldiers were everywhere, barricading roads, setting up checkpoints, ordering civilians to go this way or that. They pushed some into military jeeps.

  “Stay down low,” Daniel said. “Do you understand?”

  She made a face. “Just because I don’t have nice clothes doesn’t mean I’m stupid.” She wore a ragged ensemble of a mismatched top and bottom. The pants were too short, leaving her ankles bare.

  A whistling sound made him look up. Fighter jets were in formation. At a manned intersection, a soldier signaled for him to stop, leaned into the window, glanced at his ID, and waved him through. Laila’s apartment was close, and just now he wanted more than anything to see her. He parked out front. Like most houses, hers had no street-facing windows. He knocked quietly first, then louder. No one answered. As he came back to the car, he saw the little girl running away, vanishing into a maze of alleys no car could enter.

  He drove slowly. Soldiers were telling beggars to move. He passed the man without arms. A soldier barely out of his teens struck him with the butt of his rifle and told him to find another place to sit, but the old man cowered and shouted, “I am full of broken glass, I cannot move! I will cut you if you break me!” The soldier left him alone.

  Daniel made it home. His hands were hot, the wheel wet with his sweat. Footsteps rushed toward him in the foyer. He expected to see Firooz or Ahmad. It was Peter. His eyes looked like they hadn’t been shut in days. He was holding up a transistor radio. He’d found Voice of America on shortwave, a reporter breaking through the static. Daniel had never been so glad to see him. They embraced.

  “Where’s Laila?” Daniel said. “Are the phones working yet?”

  “I don’t know.” Peter fixed a bloodshot gaze on him. “And no, the phones aren’t working.”

  29

  “They knocked on Laila’s door around eight o’clock this morning,” Peter said as Firooz entered with tea. “Maybe a bit later.”

  “Who knocked on the door?”

  “Two soldiers. Laila had the same membership card as them. They called her ‘our sister’ and told her to move fast because the Party was going to need doctors today.”

  “And she went with them? Willingly?”

  “They promised she would be safe,” Peter said into his coffee cup. “That she would become a hero.”

  “She was already a hero. But maybe not anymore.”

  Just as Peter told him he was being too hard on her, Daniel noticed he had brought his typewriter, which was in its case on top of the Steinway. Daniel asked how long he had been at the house, and Peter told him he’d come right after Laila had left. That had been hours ago.

  “It didn’t seem like a good time for either of us to be on our own,” he said.

  Daniel went up to the bedroom and retrieved his gun from the nightstand, wondering if it would do any good. Downstairs, Firooz had finished pouring tea and turned to leave. Daniel told him to stay. He didn’t want the man to be alone in the kitchen or his quarters while things fell apart. “Tell Ahmad to come in as well,” he said.

  Firooz stared at the floor.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think Ahmad was tired of being a servant, saheb.”

  “I see. And you?”

  “I am no servant to anyone but God. Here, I clean things and cook a little. I do this because I am skilled.” Firooz gave a tight nod. “When I go into my house at night, I pray. It is only then that I am truly a servant.” He left the room.

  Daniel sat with the gun on his lap. On the radio, news trickled in. Several ministers had been killed. Daoud and those loyal to him were in a firefight with the insurgents at the presidential palace.

  “You’ll be fine,” Peter said. “You’ve got immunity, but I’d still keep my head down. US agencies have arranged the first planes home for their people in three days. Any of their employees who want to leave can just show up at the airport.”

  “I can’t just leave now, Peter.”

  “You should. The world is about to change, especially for you.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re about to be a father,” said Peter, sounding incredulous.

  Daniel looked at his old professor, whose intelligent eyes held a shadow of contempt. Voice of America played a recording from the insurgency that was clearly a piece of propaganda. The Communist president’s name was Taraki, and he talked about a grand future, the patriotic Left, the nobility of his trusted Russian friends. All lies, thought Daniel. Truth had no place in the minds of men who wanted to reshape the world to their liking. The broadcast went on. Taraki quoted Lenin and used the words brotherhood, equality, and rights like exclamation points.

  “Does a revolution really count as a revolution if there’s nothing new in it?” Daniel said. With their tired slogans and borrowed logos, these insurgents were the opposite of revolutionaries. They were the kinds of people Peter used to warn against at the start of every class: plagiarists. They were the worst kind, too, because they were repeating things that had already been proven wrong. Taraki said he’d soon announce the cabinet members of the new regime. As they waited, Peter said, “I’m sorry, Daniel.”

  Before Daniel could ask why, the announcements began. It started with a list of officials who had lost their lives. Daniel waited. Agha was not on the list. Thank God, he thought. Thank God.

  Fighter jets flew over the house; the walls shuddered as the new government was introduced. Many were from the old order, while others were names Daniel had never heard. Then came a name he had known his whole life. At first, he thought it was a mistake. But then the appointees came forward one by one to share a few enthusiastic progressive words. As the new Minister of Plann
ing, Sherzai made promises to many people, including those who had long been sidelined. Daniel thought of agha’s eyes. True power had been kept away from men with those eyes. Maybe that was changing, which would be a good thing. But was this really the only way? Daniel felt like he did when he stayed underwater for too long, wondering how much more pain his lungs could take. Eventually, he had to come back up. Everybody did.

  “As I said, I’m sorry.” Peter’s voice was gentle.

  Daniel felt the urge to shoot something, but instead, he wiped his forehead with his sleeve, fragments of his past flashing through his mind in no particular order. The Sajadis’ old driver telling Daniel funny stories about his wife’s family, including her three brothers, who he said were three different kinds of crazy: Scrambled Egg, Fried Egg, and Soft-Boiled. The first time he’d rolled around in a tub full of raw gemstones in his father’s warehouse, wondering what the ugly brown ones were called and how they could become glossy and fine. The day he’d reached for Laila’s fingers after school, so they could hold hands like they always did, and she pulled away and told him he didn’t believe in the same things she did. It was her fourteenth birthday. The time he called Sherzai baba, father, by mistake, months after Sayed’s arrest. The first time he saw Rebecca. The day USADE told him he’d gotten the job because Peter and Sherzai had assured them not only that he could do it but that his surname would mean people trusted him. The crash. The gunshot in the shack. He didn’t want these memories now, when there was no room for the past, only the corroded, impossible present.

  “I know things aren’t going your way right now,” Peter said.

  “Not going my way?” Peter must have misspoken, his mind made clumsy by the unfolding drama. “It’s a bit worse than that.” Daniel leaned toward the coffee table and shoved the radio. It shifted a few inches, balancing precariously near the corner. “Are you not hearing what I am?”

  “I doubt I ever do. I’m not sure how well you listen in general.”

  From the kitchen came the warming fragrance of freshly baked naan and the sound of Firooz moving frantically about.

  “I listen just fine,” Daniel said. “And I see just fine, too. You just showed up here last year—”

  “You want to talk about that now? Really?”

  “Yes. You showed up using some pretext—”

  “What pretext? And maybe you should put the gun away, Daniel.”

  “You made up some nonsense about a conference. You wrote letters to my wife, arranging everything behind my back.” This should have been unimportant now, but the words pushed forth as if they were the most urgent concern in Daniel’s world, as if his mind was trying to make small issues big again, just to give the world back its ordinary dimensions.

  “Isn’t that normally how one arranges a visit? By letter or phone?” Peter was leaning back into the sofa, but his voice was more controlled than calm, his words frosted with ice. “Yes, I mentioned my plans in a letter.”

  “Not your actual plans.”

  “Becca flung me at Laila from the moment I got here. That was how I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “The same thing that you should know without my having to tell you. If you can’t see it, your marriage is in trouble.”

  Daniel rested his head on his knees. The kitchen door creaked, and he looked up to see Firooz entering with naan, butter, honey, and more tea.

  “For having been a bright student, you’re pretty slow on the uptake,” Peter said. “Being smart isn’t worth anything if you only use it to understand what you want to understand. Get your priorities straight. Go home.”

  Firooz quietly returned to the kitchen. Somewhere in the reaches of Daniel’s mind, he knew what Peter meant, and he had that feeling again, the one that had come and gone since the day of the accident. That something wanted in and another thing wanted out.

  The sound of approaching engines filled his ears. Men’s voices rang out in the street, and a woman screamed. Daniel tucked the gun in his back waistband and went outside despite Peter’s protests. On Dollar Djinn Lane, Communists were taking away the Yusafzai and Nesbar families. Maybe selling carpets was illegal now. Certainly, a family could no longer own a bank. The Kherzadas were in France, but that had not stopped the Kalq from entering their home. A half dozen men came out with documents, boxes, and bags.

  “Move!” a uniform shouted as he shoved his rifle into Mrs. Yusafzai’s ribs. Her husband yelled for him to stop.

  “I’m moving,” she said through tears.

  Their six-year-old twin boys clinging to them, the Yusafzais walked to the van. They were saying soothing things to their children, but in their eyes was a terror Daniel had only seen in the Kochis’ eyes the day he’d killed Telaya. “No, no!” Daniel shouted. “You can’t do this.”

  A colonel emerged from a Jeep. Telling his men to stand still, he stalked toward Daniel and ordered him back into the house.

  “Have you lost your minds?” Daniel said. “Stop this.”

  “Go inside, saheb.”

  “I’m an official with the United States government.”

  “We know.” Coming closer, the colonel added, “That’s why you’re allowed to go back in the house. Do it.”

  Daniel watched his helpless neighbors, who avoided looking at him. The boys trembled like small statues about to crumble. Above, the blue spring sky was marred by heavy swirls of smoke rising from the city, the color of endings and ruins and history being rewritten by people with tanks. The sound of cannon fire filled the air and rattled the earth.

  “Daniel,” Peter said. “Come inside. There’s nothing we can do.”

  But Daniel didn’t want to go inside. “Who ordered this?” he asked the colonel.

  “We have work to do, and it doesn’t involve you. Why are you still standing here?”

  “I have the same question for you.”

  “Smart-mouth. Get inside.”

  “Do you know who I am?” Daniel gave him his full name.

  The colonel shoved him, nearly sending him to the ground. He narrowed his eyes as two soldiers joined him, prepared to help their superior deliver his message more decisively. “You tell me your name, which I already know, and you think what, exactly? That I’ll change my mind and let your friends go so you can all have breakfast?”

  “This is a crime.”

  The colonel came closer. “Under whose laws?” He waved over one of his young helpers. The blow was sudden. As Peter shouted his protests, Daniel fell. The young soldier produced a switchblade, and with a single movement raked the knife along Daniel’s right cheek. He flinched and let out a sound of pain, reflexively pressing his hand against the wound. The blood seeped through his fingers. The Yusafzais and Nesbars held each other.

  The soldiers surrounded him, knocking him back down. They took the gun from his waistband. He curled up reflexively, protecting his skull from a barrage of arms and legs. As someone kicked him in the ribs, Daniel thought, I will die here, and he was overcome by the futility of everything he’d ever done. How he had hurt his wife and shamed his father’s name, and it had all come to a close with him lying on the street he’d grown up on, being kicked to death by foolish men whose lives would be just as futile. He felt tears gather in his eyes. Firooz was at the courtyard gates, pleading with them to stop. With Peter, he tried to pull the men off Daniel, but the soldiers barely noticed. A second fleet of fighter jets came, lean metal hissing through the sky. Peter’s voice boomed as he threatened to report all this to the American embassy.

  “Sounds good,” the colonel said as if agreeing to a date. He ordered the soldiers to stop. “Until then, you’d better stay inside, Mr. Sajadi. You never know what might happen.”

  He was holding Daniel's gun in his hand. He raised it slowly and aimed it at Peter, who did not flinch. When Daniel heard the gun go off, the wheezing of the fighter jets merged wit
h a sharp ringing in his ears and he could hear Peter and Firooz yell, and Daniel heard that he was yelling, too. And then it was over. The colonel had fired into the air. The smoke lingered as Daniel struggled to his feet. The colonel sent his men to search the house to take away any weapons, since Daniel had what he called “a bad attitude.” They rummaged through the home that his father had built, turning drawers upside down, pushing their hands into closets and cupboards. When the men were gone, silence fell on Dollar Djinn Lane. Only Keshmesh’s home had been left alone, and Daniel was grateful the boy was safe, even if it was because his father was one of them. Inside, Firooz and Peter cleaned and dressed his wounds and bandaged his face.

  “Saheb?” Firooz stood by the sofa, his hands and clothes covered with flour and scraps of dough. He wanted to apologize, he explained. The naan was going to be too salty.

  “It’s never too salty,” Daniel said.

  “Today it will be too salty.” Firooz’s voice broke. “My tears, they fell in the dough.” Daniel struggled to his feet, and employer and servant embraced like the brothers the Communists wanted them to be.

  30

  That night, the sounds of battle ran like a soundtrack. The booming bass of cannons, the wheezing of fighter jets slicing through the air—a crescendo, followed by the cratering echo of rocket fire—the staccato clip of helicopters rising in the sky, noses dipping toward a target illuminated by a bright half-moon. Now and then there was a lull, and the house would fall silent, only to be rattled again by a battery of attacks.

  Daniel’s body hurt more than he’d ever imagined it could. Aspirin did nothing to soothe the pain. When Firooz changed the bandage around his ribs, he said, “Saheb, you need something more for the pain.” He disappeared and came back within minutes with a tiny smudge of brown resin. “This will work.” Daniel refused at first, but as the pain wore on, Peter urging him to take the illicit medication, he relented. The relief was near immediate and profound. The pain still existed but seemed to have drifted far away, something he was considering from a distance rather than feeling. There was nothing he would have described as a high. Only relief. He wondered how much people had to take to feel what they longed for, whether that was bliss or nothing at all.