panicked voice was swallowed by their flattery and pleading. Not all of them were children and they came from all directions and she felt herself pulled backward toward the window and the wall. The money she’d offered had long since been taken and still the crowd around her clutched and pressed and clamored. They hung from her shoulders and worked their fingertips into her belly and her armpits and the gaps between her ribs. They were pulling at her collar and her shalwar’s linen drawstring. She shouted at them in Arabic and they answered her in English. She seemed to hear the words bacha posh whispered behind her but she couldn’t be sure. They were laughing at her openly and parroting her speech. The voices grew dim and the light seemed to fade and she saw herself as they must surely see her. Blood rushed to her head and her body went light and she heard a small voice asking God’s forgiveness. She saw herself stripped naked. A shutter clattered open and she felt herself wrenched back into the dark.
The rupee merchant kept her in his shop until the mob dispersed and Decker came to claim her. The merchant seemed embarrassed by her gratitude, or by his broken English, or simply by her presence in those spare and unlit rooms. She sat with her arms around her knees in the corner, painfully aware of her girlish body in its sheath of rumpled linen. When Decker came she asked him to thank the man in Urdu and to offer him some form of payment and he shook his head and told her to shut up.
She followed Decker mutely back to the university gate and made no objection when he left her there and wandered off alone. He came back with a packet of chips and two lukewarm cans of Farsee Kola and they took turns standing up so Decker’s cousin wouldn’t miss them. As the hours passed she felt her courage dwindling. She began to feel hollow. She took care to speak softly, to give no offense. She knew nothing and understood nothing. Even on that paved and cobbled street there was dust in the air and she found herself longing to shelter behind it. A woman in a burqa passed them, gliding measuredly across the pitted ground, and she watched her move with something close to envy.
—I’m tempted to try one of those on myself, Decker said, watching her watch the woman. —If you won’t then I will.
She drank the last of her cola. —I don’t see anybody stopping you.
—Maybe my cousin got the date wrong. Maybe he thought we were on the Islamic calendar.
—Very funny. She frowned at him. —That’s not possible, is it?
—Everybody else’s damn number is tagged around here. I bet the madrasa doesn’t even have a phone. We should probably sign up with one of these militias.
—I’m not ready to get blown up yet.
—I was born ready, brother.
—I’d like to take a shower first.
—Martyrdom Is Your Desire and Ours, he said, squinting at a slogan on the wall across the street. —That’s a pretty good description of our day.
—You don’t even have an address? Just the last name of the mullah?
—I’ve got what town he’s in. He took out a folded scrap of yellow paper. —Half an hour’s drive west. That’s what Yaqub told me. Feeling up for a hike?
They waited one more hour at the gate. She fell asleep for a time with her back to the wall and her legs gripping her duffel like a saddle. She had a dream that drops of blood were running down her calves into her shoes. There was no pain, only embarrassment. When she awoke Decker was holding the scrap of paper up to the light, like a shopkeeper checking a counterfeit bill.
—Rise and shine, Sawyer.
She blinked up at him. —How much money did you change back there?
—Enough for a hotel room. The kind where you shit in a bucket.
She nodded and got to her feet. —Let’s get going.
—You have somewhere in mind?
—If it’s enough for a room it’s enough for a car.
The driver they hired had heard of the village but looked doubtful when they asked about the school. He seemed to speak neither English nor Urdu and shook his head regretfully when Decker showed him the name on the paper. They drove for an hour on a paved road and as long again on none at all and he deposited them at sundown at a cistern between crumbling sandstone bluffs. Not a house was in sight. He refused their rupees with a shake of his head, letting them fall through his hands to the ground. They offered him an American five-dollar bill and he bobbed his bald head and allowed them to take their duffels out of the trunk and drove slowly away after calling down God’s blessing on their studies.
It was dark enough to make out a weak wash of light up the slope and they followed it stumbling and cursing to what looked like a child’s or an idiot’s rendering of a town: high mud-walled compounds, bowing outward and cracked at the corners, with pale blue gates of corrugated steel. A dog in the deserted square barked halfheartedly at them without getting to its feet. From somewhere nearby came the smell of boiling dhal. They went from building to building in search of a bell, too exhausted and timid to knock or call out. Eventually a gate swung inward and a man appeared and beckoned Decker closer.
She watched the two of them converse in cautious murmurs, guarded and formal, keeping their arms at their sides. After what seemed a great while the man pulled the gate shut behind him and led Decker hastily around the corner. Instantly she felt as helpless as a toddler. She followed their voices to a stucco-walled compound abutting the first, lit at its entrance by the headlights of a truck. Only then did she notice how completely night had fallen. She had no option but to make her way across that floodlit ground.
She closed her eyes for a moment and felt someone touch her. She was trembling and her steps were unsteady and her body felt outside of her control. A small hand found her arm and pulled her forward. A boy no more than six years old was leading her into the compound by the wrist.
The man who shook her awake the next morning spoke both English and Arabic in a voice almost too decorous to hear. He carried a cup of green tea in one hand and a plate of flatbread in the other and he watched her raptly as she ate and drank. He did not ask why she had crossed half the world to study at his dirt-floored madrasa, or whether she had found the room comfortable, or why she had slept in her clothes.
—The bread is to your liking? said the mullah in English.
—Thank you, mu’allim. It’s wonderful.
The room was bare and windowless and the sound of voices joined in recitation carried faintly through the wall. She had a memory of Decker sleeping beside her but Decker was nowhere in sight. The mullah wore bifocals and a yellow homespun shawl and a wine-colored birthmark ran from his left ear to the collar of his shirt. His lips moved as he watched her, as though in sympathy with the disembodied voices. A second pair of glasses hung from his neck by a loop of plastic fishing line. It occurred to her now that Decker had told her almost nothing about the man before her or about the school itself. She had trusted him blindly. She’d been told the mullah’s name and nothing more.
—I’ve allowed you to sleep through the first prayer, said the mullah. —For travelers an exception can be made.
She sipped her tea and gave a tight-lipped nod. Her voice seemed to have failed her.
—My name is Mufti Khizar Hayat Khan. You and your friend are welcome to this house. While you remain I am father and mother to you. He pointed at her. —Now you tell me your name.
She set her cup down circumspectly on the floor between her feet. —Aden Sawyer, she said.
—Yes. This is what I have been told. Is it your full and only name?
She shook her head. —My middle name is Grace.
—Ah! said the mullah. —And what does it mean?
Again her voice failed her. Her feet were bare and she was suddenly afraid that they might attract the mullah’s notice. They were slender and delicate, her most girlish feature, not yet ready to be seen. She felt herself flinch.
—You needn’t be afraid