along the dark street.
I didn’t expect it to be like this, she said.
Like what?
For everyone to be so self-satisfied. These people are all so proud of themselves.
Shouldn’t they be?
Not like this. They’ve already decided what this experience means to them. They might as well stay home and lie about it.
She found a path along the heaped earth beneath the walls. She lifted her hands for balance but never reached for him. The street made him think of an exitless corridor. He considered asking if she was afraid. Anyone driving by could shoot them.
Are you afraid? she asked, as if reading his mind.
Justin didn’t reply, aware of a car behind them. It had slowed on a cross street and veered in their direction, thousands of tiny airborne particles glinting against the headlights.
I think you’re afraid, she said.
I’m not. Where’s your house?
Three streets over. There’s a shortcut through the alleyway we can take.
Their shadows lengthened as the car crept up behind them. He squinted into its light.
The car wobbled and jerked to a stop, the driver only now seeming to realize they were in the way. It revved its engine and swerved around them, into the middle of the street, and plunged through a puddle three times its length, a chunk of ice banging against its fender.
They cut into the alleyway, where silhouettes of concertina wire spooled above them. He asked Alexandra why she wanted to walk like this, and she said that she didn’t come to Kabul to live in a box — that there must be expats who led normal lives, eating in places without guards, speaking the language and doing good work.
You don’t say much, she told him.
I’m thinking, he said. She’d described how he wanted to live in Kabul.
I’m sorry. I must be doing what I see others here do. This place makes people anxious. They talk too much or laugh too hard, or get so angry.
Suddenly, she whispered in French — a breathy, urgent sound, like a curse.
Look. She pointed ahead. Do you see them?
Where the alley joined the next street, the darkness shifted and rippled.
His heart was racing. He made himself step past her.
There was faint rustling, the sound of padding through mud, followed by a low growl. She backed against the wall and into a doorway, and Justin joined her. His fear emptied him of everything but faith. He squatted and felt around for a rock.
Three dogs appeared, followed by more than a dozen rangy mongrels, their heads down as they sniffed at the ground. Alexandra turned on her cellphone’s flashlight. The dogs jerked their heads, wincing like old men. Their eyes glowed green or blue, their lids red and crusted. Their coats had bald spots and tufts, piebald from filth or injuries, from scabs, mange, and scars. An occasional growl came from the pack. There were at least twenty dogs now, some as broadly built as rottweilers. Others were painfully thin.
Two slowed, one with strips of muddy fur hanging from its flank. Alexandra shone her light in its eyes, and it drew its lips back from its teeth before filing past.
It’s as if they know better, she said. They’re afraid of people.
As they began walking again, Justin wanted to touch her and feel the warmth of her skin. He knew nothing about Quebec. He saw Canada as a great northern backwater, freeloading off America’s hard-earned liberty. Louisiana had French history too, though Cajuns had never seemed very different from normal Americans.
As a muddy UN Land Cruiser passed, Alexandra knocked on a gate so softly he didn’t think anyone would hear. But the peephole slid open on two eyes. The bolt snapped back, and a small man in a leather jacket let them in.
Thank you, Fahim, she said. This is Justin.
They shook hands. Fahim smiled and retreated to his guardhouse.
Two dogs ran up and pushed their muzzles into Justin’s fingers to be petted. They resembled those in the street, yellow with squarish heads, but friendly and clean.
When I was a girl, she said, I spied on neighbors. I hid in their yards. I liked watching people who were alone best. I could see them relax. It made me wonder how the world would be if we lived alongside each other the way we are when we’re alone.
It would still be messy, he said.
But peaceful. That’s how you looked in the bar. You were aware of yourself, but then you’d forget. It was more honest than in the airport.
Justin never felt alone. He always sensed others beyond his wedge of sight, and an invisible eye mapping his life. He thought of the car in the street, the dogs, and her calm. He was certain Alexandra must be profoundly spiritual.
God protected us this evening, he said, and she shook her head, seeming to come to.
Do you want me to call you a taxi? she asked.
No, I’ll call my driver. When he took out his cell, a furrow appeared between her eyebrows, giving the impression she regretted speaking so quickly.
Justin asked her for the address, repeated it to Idris, and hung up. She said they should exchange numbers. The car soon approached outside. The speed of Idris’s arrival made Justin realize how short a distance they’d walked.
As she let him out of the gate, her lips were pursed, disappointed. In the light, she called to mind a lean tribe on a Breton coast. She thanked him for his company and said good night.
Idris asked if they should go back and wait for Frank at the bar, but Justin was too tired. He angled the heat vents toward himself. Relaxing into his seat, he recalled how, as a doctoral student, he’d gone through a period when he would wake up in a sweat, unable to control his desire except through prayer. He was haunted by the bodies of young women who attended his classes in yoga clothes or skirts, or those on the covers of fashion and men’s magazines, or the conversations he overheard — two TAs talking about sleeping with undergraduates, how, in bed, one had referred to her implants as sweet-sixteen breasts, propping them in her hands for him to admire. Justin had visited the university chapel where the boyish pastor asked if he’d given any thought to marriage. Justin told him he preferred the greater battle: devotion and resistance to the oceanic darkness against which he could measure his faith.
TWO DAYS BEFORE Tam left for her embed, her emotions were still oscillating. She alternated between her usual boasting and wondering about the car bomb. She reminisced about Alexandra — how confident she’d seemed, like someone who’d been here before or who’d read every Kabul expat blog — and the first time we’d seen her with Justin, in L’Atmos, the place packed, people turning as she crossed the room to go to the big bearded stranger, as if he belonged to her. And then Tam cried and admitted she would find our time apart difficult, and I held her.
When she went to take a shower, I said I’d join her in a moment. The water hissed as I sat next to the bukhari in my underwear. I hadn’t told her I was going to America. I didn’t feel guilt, just an unwillingness to share. I didn’t yet know how to spell out what was driving me to investigate the lives of those who’d died in the bombing.
The knobs squeaked, and water splashed the floor rhythmically as Tam wrung out her hair. I pictured her skimming water from her body, the way she usually did, moving her hands rapidly over her skin before reaching for a towel.
“You didn’t join me.” She stood naked in the bathroom door, a cut below her knee, the watery blood glossy and thin — a dramatic flourish, like her scarves.
Wicker blinds hung in the bottom two-thirds of the windows, exposing segments of fading sky. The final call to prayer had begun,