The Opium Prince Read online

  The three men never went to sleep. They sat around the radio, where announcements came and went through whistling static. In the morning, the phones were still dead. President Daoud was dead now, too, along with his wife and children.

  By now, Rebecca would be sick with worry, and Daniel wondered how to reach her. The exiled clerics in Pakistan and Iran were broadcasting on shortwave, moving from frequency to frequency as the Communists jammed them. In calm, rhythmic paragraphs, a stark contrast to the Castro-esque agitprop of the Kalq, the clerics cursed the takeover, telling their countrymen to rise, to find the strength against the godless tyrants who’d seized power. Daniel and Peter spun the dial throughout the day, switching between the clerics, Radio Afghanistan, which was now owned by the Kalq, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe. Everyone called it a revolution, and it seemed this was all the world was talking about. The Kalq rattled off all of their planned next steps: Distribute land. Get the poor off the streets. Crack down on the drug trade. They didn’t explain how they would do these things.

  “You know you can stay here as long as you like,” Daniel said to Peter.

  “Thanks, Daniel. I’ll take you up on that. I think it’s better for Laila if she doesn’t have some American in her house right now.”

  It was almost nighttime when someone was inside the courtyard, ringing the doorbell. Few people had the key to the main gate. Through the window, Daniel saw Sherzai silhouetted by the rising moon. He went downstairs, and they stood before each other in the courtyard. Daniel couldn’t find the right words, because he couldn’t find the right thoughts. He only said: “Agha, you had no choice, right?”

  Sherzai’s eyes were tunnels of glinting light. “I don’t believe there was a real choice, no, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking me.” His town car was idling in the courtyard, the youthful voice of his driver drifting in from the road along with tobacco smoke. He was talking with a handful of guards who had evidently been sent to patrol the street. Sherzai told them to take a walk, and their voices faded slowly into the night.

  Daniel asked him how long he had known, whether he had been part of the planning. All Sherzai would say was that this day had been inevitable.

  “I have something to give you, and I’m very sorry to have to do it,” Sherzai said, producing an envelope from his coat. “But first, I’ve brought somebody with me.” He indicated the trunk of his town car.

  Daniel quietly pulled the latch. Elias was coiled inside, fists clenched and eyes pleading. Down the street, the men were laughing at a joke.

  “I thought he would be safe here. Elias is a good boy.”

  Climbing out, Elias soft-shoed his way to the house. Once Daniel was alone with Sherzai, the old man searched his face, his formidable brow furrowed. “They hurt you.” He gently reached up to touch Daniel’s bandaged cheek. “I wish you had listened to me. I told you to go.” He waited for Daniel to respond, but nothing came. “Take that flight to Los Angeles and don’t come back.” He held out the envelope. Arthritis twisted his aging hands, but his eyes were lit by a vigor Daniel had never seen before.

  From the envelope, Daniel withdrew a stack of papers bound by string. The top report was familiar. He had seen it just weeks ago. He tore off the string and leafed through the pages. When he understood, he let them fall from his hands. “This is impossible.” They studied each other as the papers fluttered in the wind. “You had me cede my father’s company over to the government? My company? I signed it away?”

  “I asked you to read these reports—”

  “You did this to punish me for not paying attention?”

  “Watch your tone with me,” Sherzai said, voice rising. “I asked you to read these reports over and over.”

  “So it’s my fault that I trusted you.”

  “That’s what you call it, never bothering at all with the gemstone firm your father built? That’s not trust. It’s privilege!” Sherzai was angry now. “You really believe it was better for that company to just keep enriching you? You, who couldn’t be bothered to so much as look at a report, instead of turning it over to a government that actually wants to help the people of this country?”

  Daniel’s throat had gone so dry he was struggling to swallow and speak. “I never thought I would say this, but I’m glad my father’s dead.”

  Sherzai grew calmer. “Listen to me, batche’m. For the past six months, I’ve made sure you would be as comfortable as possible.” He explained that he had altered the numbers in his reports to the government, downplaying profits, steering cash into American accounts he had opened in Daniel’s name. “It was all I could do to make this easier on you.”

  “This company was who my father was. It was his life’s work.”

  “The company was never who your father was.” Sherzai articulated every word as if revealing a great secret. “And you are in no position to talk to me about betrayal. You got your way with that ridiculous file. You lied to my face. I have protected you all your life, more than you know.”

  “I ran over a little girl,” Daniel said.

  “What?”

  The words tumbled out on their own. “I had to forge that file. Someone blackmailed me. He was going to murder people. Completely innocent people.”

  “What is it that you’re saying?”

  Daniel finally told him. After all this time keeping it secret, he was astonished at how simple and short a story it was. A horrible accident. A dead child. Blackmail by an opium khan. Capitulating because he’d thought it was the right thing to do.

  Sherzai listened quietly, holding his breath. “Why didn’t you come to me for help?”

  “I didn’t want to burden you. What was the point? There were only two choices.”

  Sherzai exhaled. “The Scale of Sages doesn’t leave any of us much choice, batche’m. This is how things are.”

  The guards ambled back into the courtyard and asked Sherzai, “Saheb, how many people live here besides Mr. Sajadi? How many servants are in this house?”

  “Three.” Daniel turned at the sound of Peter’s voice. He was standing at the front door. “There are three servants in this house,” Peter repeated. “Their names are Firooz, Elias, and Abdullah.”

  Sherzai eyed him with a hint of understanding on his face. “That’s correct.” He vouched for Peter as well, and then left without saying anything more. Daniel stood in the courtyard for a long while before collecting the papers on the ground. When he returned to the house, Peter was waiting in the hall. Daniel told him what Sherzai had done; over the past year, Daniel had been signing over his father’s gemstone firm to the government piece by piece. It belonged to the new Communist regime now. Daniel felt as if he had lost a family member he’d taken for granted, never thinking they would die. He looked down at the papers. What had once been Sajadi Gemstones and Mines was part of the newly minted National Corporation of Precious Stones and Metals, which also owned the nation’s principal foundry.

  “I’m sorry,” Peter said for the third time that day. “Come, let’s go see Elias. He’s in the servants’ quarters.”

  Elias had already changed into Ahmad’s abandoned clothes. Gone were the peace sign and swagger. His thick hair was flattened under a skullcap, though he was still wearing his Birkenstocks. His face was pale and his eyes wet, and something in his countenance was more genuine than when he wore his tie-dyes.

  “Did you know?” Daniel said.

  Elias stared at the floor. He had counted the hours, but when the time came, he hadn’t gotten his revolution, only a prewritten story and a set of orders.

  “They came to my place yesterday and told me what I’d be writing tonight. They said that on Saturday, I was to write that any reports that they’d killed ordinary people were lies. They hugged me.” Elias told Daniel they’d seemed sincere, which was the strangest part. “I almost believed they really did know the future, an
d things I’d seen happen personally were lies.” They had told Elias to proclaim that they would never shoot anyone who didn’t shoot first. “Sherzai’s a good man,” Elias said. He raised his arms, looking at the loose cotton sleeves. “Wearing this feels like theft. Like I’m making fun of someone. But I suppose they’re just clothes.”

  “They’re not just clothes,” Daniel said.

  “Next time you leave the house, you’ll have to dress like that, too, and make yourself unrecognizable,” Peter told Daniel. “You go by your middle name now. You’re Abdullah, the third servant. I hope you’re not too proud—pride can get a man killed in times like this.”

  Slaughter

  Tonight is an important night, because Ashura is coming. Taj is in his house, watching the maid polish the floor. When the house was built, he had men lay lapis lazuli tiles because it made the floor look like the evening sky, and he liked the thought of walking on the sky at night. This is his home. These are the first walls that belong completely to him.

  The maid is working hard, beads of sweat glowing on her forehead. The house smells of scouring powder and ammonia. She says to bring cut flowers that smell good, but Taj won’t do this because flowers are not to be cut and thrown in vases where they die a pointless death.

  There is a knock, and he sends the maid away. Taj and Ashura play cards while she drinks cognac, and it makes her giggle and move her limbs in a languid way that he likes. She was one of Nazook’s girlfriends, and long ago she looked at Taj like he was a child. She called him Boy, because that was what he was. Ashura is the daughter of a bookseller, and she is prettier than girls who take their clothes off in foreign magazines. There was a time those pictures excited him, but now they do not because girls who are paid are not worthy of a king. He is tired of them. He has not paid a girl in four months. He has been saving himself for Ashura, crossing off each day on the calendar. He read in a wise man’s book that he who has power over his body has power over his mind. And Taj knows the happiest kings are those who exercise absolute power.

  Ashura looks into his eyes and runs her hand through her hair, letting her fingers glide down her neck as she returns to the cards. Taj takes something from his pocket and leans across the table to give it to her. She gasps when she opens the box and discovers the emerald earrings. He tells her they sparkle like her eyes, and she laughs when she puts them on, slapping his hand away when he tries to help. She tosses her head so the earrings dangle, and she asks: “How do I look?”

  She undoes a button and smiles when she slips out of the blouse. He pulls her close, but something is wrong. Taj does not feel what he should feel. Nothing stirs except a dark, churning thought in his brain: that all she wants are the jewels, that he is nothing, nothing without the poppies, that he is a man made of brown sticky resin inside.

  He bundles the blouse into her arms and tells her to get dressed and go. Before slamming the door, she tells him he has no class, even though he pretends to. When she is gone, Taj slips into Nazook’s old Opel, which is his now. He could drive something fancy, but if everyone knows you are a king, many will want your crown. Outside, his house is modest, too, a plain place without a garden, and no one knows that he walks on a lapis lazuli sky-floor.

  His heart is pounding fast. He goes where he often goes when he feels like this. Soon he pulls up in front of the big house with the big garden. The girls no longer live there, and the lady with the henna hair and the tiny waist has grown large, while her husband has turned gray. Tonight Taj scales the wall while the people sleep. The flowers and the grass are not asleep. They rustle quietly, welcoming him home. There is no tent anymore. No one living in the yard. But his mother is still there: he thinks they buried her in the tiny plot surrounded by white stones, and he has come here many times late at night.

  He lies down on the grass and gets lost in the dark sky, and soon it starts to rain. He lets the rain soak him as he falls half-asleep for hours. When it is almost light, he looks around and sees that the garden isn’t the same as it used to be. They’ve made new flower beds, and the hedges aren’t cut the same. It isn’t his garden anymore. Taj decides he will never come back.

  Lying awake on his toshak pillow at home, he thinks of Ashura. He will always remember how pretty she was, and how much he had wanted her once. Most of all, he will remember that the last thing she did before slamming the door was touch her ears to make sure the earrings were still there.

  When he falls asleep, he dreams that he is wandering in the old garden with the high walls, and that he knows that outside them he will never be safe.

  31

  Daniel cradled the radio in bed, listening to a staticky broadcast. Curfew was in effect. People would be allowed to go outside in the morning to buy groceries and run errands, but the new authorities gave a small window. Daniel made plans. He knew whom he wanted to see, and a few hours was enough, as long as he could leave the house without being hassled by the guards. Maybe it was a bad idea, but he had nowhere else to be. Voice of America had announced that US agencies were to remain closed for two weeks, and that personnel who were staying should remain inside and listen for updates. Kalq officials confirmed this on their own broadcasts. Telephones were being switched on at haphazard times, leaving desperate people checking the lines day and night.

  Elias and Peter were in the guest rooms. Their lights were on when Daniel walked by at midnight, and he could hear Peter banging away on his typewriter. He tried to call Rebecca again from the study, but there was no dial tone. His remorse was tinged with relief, because he wasn’t sure what to say to her. She would be glad that he was safe and coming home in two days. He longed to hear her voice and to join her in California. At least, a part of him did, though the thought of Los Angeles, with its easy warmth and lively seas, felt more like a mirage than something real, seducing you if you allowed it and dissolving fast on arrival. Reality moved slowly, though never more slowly than now.

  When he told Peter over breakfast that he wanted to go out for a few hours, Peter said, “Then let’s make you someone else.”

  Twenty minutes later, Daniel stood in the servants’ quarters dressed in a piran tomban and brown cotton vest. Elias made a feeble joke. Peter used the makeup that Rebecca had left behind, dabbing thick foundation over Daniel’s bruises with clumsy movements. It helped, as long as you didn’t look too closely. They asked Firooz for his artificial beard, which he turned over without a word of protest. Daniel looked at himself in the mirror. Watching himself, he remembered a fantasy story he’d read as a boy in which there were a thousand parallel universes. It hurt to move. He took a tiny dose of opium.

  “I feel useless,” Elias said, picking up Firooz’s copy of the Koran, which the cook kept on his nightstand but admitted he could not read. “It’s like I’ve lost a limb.”

  “This isn’t about you,” Daniel replied, the words harsher than he’d meant. Elias wasn’t the first man to be taken by an idea that looked better on paper.

  By the time Daniel was ready to leave, Elias was engrossed in the text, reading as intently as he’d once read Marx. Some men were attracted to anything that demanded devotion and sacrifice, the nature of the idea mattering less than its potential to turn things on their head.

  “Come with me,” Daniel said. He asked Firooz to fetch the bicycles, which hadn’t been used in years.

  “Where are we going?” Elias said.

  “I want you to meet someone.”

  Because victory had come quickly in the twenty-four-hour battle, the city seemed peaceful. There was no silence as loud as the one that followed war. Daniel and Elias cycled past the guards, who asked where they were going but didn’t ask for ID because most people had none, especially servants. They let them pass, reminding them of curfew. The day was damp and gray, the threat of rain heavy in the air. The new clothes felt cool, the breeze floating through the fabric, but they did little to relieve Daniel’s pain. His bruises thro
bbed, limbs protesting with every stroke.

  He angled the bike onto the sidewalk, which was thick with crowds making the most of the remaining hours. No one so much as glanced at Daniel. He had joined the ranks of the invisible. Billboards shouted clever slogans at passersby about the value of all men. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style, Telaya whispered, quoting from the Nabokov book on Daniel’s nightstand.

  The smell of smoke and gunpowder lingered; the blood on the sidewalks hadn’t yet dried. The facade of Sajadi Enterprises came into view, its granite flat and drab against the April sky. It was completely unscathed. The same could not be said of the ministry. A gaping hole exposed several ground-floor suites. Red flags rose from the roofs of both buildings. This was more than vandalism and violence, wrecked windows and walls. A kind of blasphemy had taken place.

  A hundred customers were waiting outside the bank. Flags and bombed-out walls mattered less than the fate of their investments and accounts. A large sign was affixed to its glass doors, warning everyone they would not be giving out more than small sums because most of the accounts were frozen. The sun pushed through the clouds, casting a gentle light on the city. Daniel and Elias rolled down an alley where a tea shop was the only sign of life. It should have been spilling over with customers sitting at tables on the sidewalk, but was nearly deserted. As they stopped to let a shepherd by with his flock, Elias said, “I’m not afraid of them, you know. That’s not why I changed my mind. I’m not a coward.”

  “I know. It’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”