The Night Letter

Chapter 42

Chapter 42

Raham first went to the river bank where he had spent the afternoon with Sultana the last time he had seen her. He didn't expect to see her there; he hoped he didn't have to see anybody else. He didn't know yet how he would ever find her but this seemed like a good place to start, if only just to help him remember her face, her voice her habits. The place was as unchanged as he hoped it would be. In one direction, Kandahar, in the other, the bridge where the users hid from society. Both held attractions for him but that would be later. For now he just wanted to touch the earth. He lay face down and smelled the soil. He stretched out his hands and felt the grass and little stalks of vegetation, intwining his fingers in it like the hair of a lover. He knew a moment of peace before the voice of the imam Amair al Bashir came, unwelcome, into his thoughts: "Do not cling to the dunya; it is a test. If you fail, you continue on your way to hell. If you let go of the world and all its evil, then paradise." He felt the sprouts and stalks of grass between his fingers and squeezed harder until the voice was quiet in his head. He sat up and looked at the water. It was flowing fast and looked unusually deep for the time of year. It was unmistakably green but also clear; how could that be? It was darker in the middle where the current seemed to swell like a belly. In places the steep bank flattened out like a downturned lip forming tiny little beaches and strands where the water became shallow and transparent, clear enough to drink, and he could see rocks and pebbles through it, some of them glinting in the sunlight. The interrogative sounds of the water inflecting against the rocks and driftwood were still there, more articulate, more insistent than ever. The ripples on the surface caught the light, too, just like on that day long ago. He had instructions to meet one of the local captains as soon as he got to Kandahar. The captain would give him further orders and then lead him to Mullah Jan. But no one yet knew he was in the city and he had other matters that weighed on him.

He had to find his way to his old village and he wasn't sure he could even find the way. He could have stayed at a safe house but they were all full. It was going to be a big attack. Many of the things he remembered of the city had disappeared or changed. Buildings were now unrecognizable ruins as if war were simply a condition of the climate. Landmarks upon which he had once depended like stars for navigation had been claimed by desert, ever hungry and spreading and the people in their disarray were unable to stop it and they even helped it; not satisfied in transforming their developments to dust, they blasted craters and holes in the ground as if attempting a complete revolution of the natural direction of growth and progress.

There was the white mosque on the purlieus of the city that Raham did not remember as being quite so white. An act of Arab charity accounted for the concealing coat of wash but the bullet holes, cracks, and scars still plainly showed as deep shadows in the facade. "That must be it. That's the place," he thought. But today was not his appointed day. That was tomorrow. There was the school that seemed continually out of session like a holiday that overstays its welcome. Further in the distance, well away from any other building, was what people called the women's hospital, although it was as likely to serve that purpose as the school to provide an education. It was used instead as an asylum. It backed defensively up against a low hill and seemed continually cast in shadow there. It was an ugly building but the structure was relatively sound. Not even war dared approach it, like a discarded member of an untouchable caste.

As he walked along he looked at mens' faces for any sign there of familiarity or remnant of something he might have known. He did not expect that anyone would see it in his own, not yet; there was no one here who would have remembered his face with the beard he now wore and he held his shemagh over his nose and mouth to keep out the dust. He walked stooped over now with back pain like a much older man. He was far from his village and looked like just another itinerant laborer. As he passed some of the villages the stares he got became prolonged. The smaller villages, even as close as they were to Kandahar, got few visitors..

He was not sure how he would be received in his father's house and he had to be ready for that. Hospitality was for strangers. He didn't try to send news of his arrival to his father but he might have heard, anyway. He started to see people he was sure he knew, he only had to add the intervening years to complete the match. It was uncanny. Every blue chadri he saw he compared to the outline of Sultana he had been holding onto for years. "She will not be a girl anymore," he thought. What an exquisite torture to him that the one woman he sought was dressed the same as every other woman. It was possible he could have passed right by her and not even known it. He looked at the accompanying male for any associations he might have with Sultana's male relatives. With every failure to find a match he lost hope, as if he thought this would be easy, as if they had had an unspoken, agreed upon assignation for which he was disappointed.

"Salam. I have not seen you before and I know everyone who ever leaves this village and most people who come into it. I don't think you have ever done either. ," said an old man holding prayer beads and sitting on a bench in front of his hut. It was Gulrez, his father's sometime gardener, still surviving. The man laughed. "Are you lost? I hope you are lost, it would explain that look on your face." Raham was glad to be noticed. He didn't want to approach his father alone.

"My name is Raham Abdali. My father is Safiq Mohammed Abdali. I have been to this village and I left it. It is my village and you do know me, you just don't remember. But I remember you, Gulrez," Raham said. It was funny to watch the changing expressions of the man's face; confusion, recognition, then almost joy..

"Raham Abdali! I remember you trailing after your mother's chadri like a calf after its cow," he said and got up and started walking toward Safiq's house as if he had just been waiting there for Raham to pass. Raham followed. "And then when your stride got too long you were trailing after that girl, the truck driver's daughter." Raham stopped at the sound of her name. He was going to wait to say anything but he could not pass up this opportunity.

"Sultana? What do you know about Sultana and where is she now?" Raham asked and just like that the old man's smile faded as he spun around.

"What? Oh, I don't know anything. She disappeared from around here. Ask your father," he said. The old man led Raham, who half wanted to stop the process that had inexorably begun, to Safiq's presence. Raham could hardly believe that the meeting the possibility of which he often doubted was actually taking place.