Green on Blue (13 page)

–

The weather warmed and the sky was clear for days at a time. The resupply helicopters swarmed into Shkin and we spent long hours on the gravel landing zone, crawling over pallets and running up and down the helicopters’ ramps while Naseeb shouted confused directions and the rotors swept our faces with hot dust. The flights brought in food and ammunition, fresh vegetables and fruit, and pieces of the world beyond our firebase, including the occasional visitor.

Early on a Friday morning, I sat at a picnic table outside the mess hall and ate from a small bag of oranges flown in the night before. The previous afternoon we’d returned from checkpoint duty and had been given this day off. As I lazed, Taqbir walked past. I hadn’t seen him in months. He strolled by casually, heading to breakfast. His uniform rested crisply on his shoulders and his powerful torso filled it out with well-fed muscles. He looked no different from when I’d met him last winter, but I saw him differently.

Taqbir! I cried.

He continued to walk. I ran up alongside him and grabbed his elbow. He gazed down his hawkish face at me, pulled his arm away, and looked at his sleeve, concerned perhaps that my hands had stained his fresh uniform.

It is Aziz, yes? he asked.

Yes! I said, my voice brimming with joy. How is my brother?

Yes, Aziz, he said, slowing his speech as if he were thinking of something else. Of course, and your brother . . .

Ali, I said, too desperate to consider Taqbir had forgotten him.

Yes, Ali, said Taqbir. He stopped and pulled a stuffed envelope from his cargo pocket. He sifted through its many scraps of paper. He then pulled out a dog-eared photo, examined it quickly, and held it to his chest. Your brother is the one who lost a leg and has . . . other injuries, he replied, both asking and telling me this.

I stood silently and tried not to snatch the photo. Taqbir looked at me, awaiting my response. Yes, I said. He lost his leg in the bombing at the bazaar a few months ago.

Yes, Bombing at the Bazaar, said Taqbir, as if Bombing at the Bazaar were Ali’s new name.

He handed me the photo. I held it close to my face and devoured it with my eyes.

He is well and asks of you often, said Taqbir, his voice flat and rehearsed. I assure him you are fine. He knows you’re fighting to take badal and that you’re poised to deliver a great blow against Gazan and his thugs. I pray for the day when I can give him news of your victory.

I listened, but heard very little. All I could do was stare at the photo. In it, Ali lay on a bed with a half-empty sheet covering him. The blood at his waist was gone. The joints on his withered frame poked against his hospital gown. His sunken face was unshaven and turned away from the camera. He gazed across the room as if somewhere out of the picture a ghost lingered. What was the ghost my brother stared at?

You say he is well? I asked.

He is, said Taqbir. He thinks only of you and the peace he will know when badal is taken and his nang restored
.
Taqbir clasped my shoulder and raised his eyebrows. He tucked the envelope full of photographs and notes back into his pocket, except for Ali’s, which he offered me.
When you look at that, he said, think of your brother and what you will do to those who harmed him.

Taqbir continued to the mess hall.

I sat on the picnic table holding the photo. My mind felt like an emptiness waiting to be filled. Then, very clearly, I remembered the last time I spoke to Ali. In my panic, I’d told him about algebra and how the word meant to make whole from parts. And I thought it could be like this with my brother. Maybe badal
was a type of algebra. If I could stand over Ali and whisper that those who had taken everything from him now suffered as he did, maybe that could make some part of him whole, maybe that could kill the ghost. It would never be as it was before, but perhaps badal
could be enough to hold us together. I tucked the photograph into my cargo pocket and returned to the barracks.

The squad lay in rows of plywood beds, enjoying the day off, sleeping and talking. At a checkpoint the morning before, Tawas had snared a magpie with a wire noose and a piece of stale naan. He’d managed to fashion a cage of sapling branches for the black-and-white bird. He hung the cage above his bed on the nail where the rest of us hung our rifles. Tawas sat on his knees. He faced the cage and pleaded with the bird: Gul, Flower, sing for me. Chi-chi-charee, chi-chi-charee.

The magpie was silent but for the flapping of its few blue tailfeathers.

Come, Gul, said Tawas, tapping at his cage. Chi-chi-charee, chi-chi-charee.

Yar kissed his teeth. Your bird’s a mute, he said. Give him to me and I’ll have Naseeb prepare him for dinner.

He’ll sing, said Tawas. Come, Gul. Chi-chi-charee, chi-chi-charee.

Then Mortaza said, as if he knew: Tawas, the bird will only sing caw-caw-catoo, caw-caw-catoo.

But the magpie canted his head and gave Mortaza a silent look. Yar
pulled a bullet out of one of his magazines. Strike at the bird’s cage, he said. That’s the best way to make it sing!

Yar threw the bullet at the cage. It bounced from its ribs and fell to the floor. The magpie flapped its wings, but stared back at us silently. Yar grunted. You call him Gul? he said. You should call him Puskie,
Silent Fart.

We all laughed and agreed, even Tawas. We’d call the magpie Puskie.

–

As conversation fell away, I stretched out on my bed. Across from me, Tawas napped on his side. Above his head Puskie
sang low: chi-chi-charee, chi-chi-charee. His song worked as a reverse alarm clock, taking me to sleep instead of waking me from it. My legs and back loosened with the tune: chi-chi-charee, chi-chi-charee. Soon Puskie’s
black feathers, white body, and blue tail flashed and then fluttered across my mind: chi-chi-charee, chi-chi-charee.

I drifted.

Angry shouts came. A metal gate shook. SABIR! SABIR! These words fell on me, as quick and blurred as the bird’s feathers. I couldn’t tell if the sounds were pulling me into my dream or back awake.

SABIRSABIRSABIR! The name quickened, blending into itself, no longer a word but a song of absolute suffering.

All around me was shuffling.

I was awake.

Issaq rushed from our barracks. Tawas and Mortaza followed him. I rose quickly from my bed and stepped outside. The late-morning air was cool and the clouds hung gray and low. In the courtyard of the firebase, a crowd was forming. I joined them.

Across the firebase two white binjos were stuck at the entrance. The drivers leaned on their horns while a bearded man heaved up the gate’s
large red-and-white arm. In his eyes there was a madness. A bib of blood smeared his shirtfront, and again came his song: SABIRSABIRSABIR!

Stop! We will shoot! The guards shouted from their towers.

Commander Sabir ran from his quarters in stocking feet, crossing the courtyard. Kharh, donkeys! he shouted back. No one’s shooting anyone!

I walked closer. The man at the entrance was Atal. He looked savage, on edge, all reserve and elegance having slipped from his grip like a shroud held loosely to the wind.

Commander Sabir waved for the guards to come down and lift the gate. They did and the two binjos kicked up a cloud of dust, speeding into the motor pool, their open doors flapping as broken wings do. Atal was left stranded at the gate. The dust from the binjos stuck to him like batter. He stumbled slowly onto the firebase, his wild black hair caked upward and his chest thrust toward any soldier who’d approach him. Two streams branched from his eyes, rutting canals in his dirty cheeks, pouring tears into his full beard.

By now the barracks had emptied. Soldiers surrounded the pair of binjos. Make way! Make way! shouted Issaq. And he cleared a path for a medic. The driver of the second binjo opened its trunk. This made an overhang against the sun. The medic approached and stood next to the driver in the shadow beneath it. They both looked inside. The medic reached into the binjo and raised Haji Jan up in his arms, carrying him like a sleeping child. In this moment, I glimpsed the face of the ancient spingari. His skin had lost much color, and drying blood spattered his cheeks as freckles do the cheeks of those with fair skin. He was alive, though. I could see his lips move all the while, whispering something not meant to be heard, not by me and not by the medic who carried him.

The few villagers who’d driven up from Gomal circled around Haji Jan, so too did many of us soldiers. Haji Jan quickly disappeared into
the crowd. Once at the double doors of the clinic, Issaq shouted at the onlookers: Outside! Outside! And from the mass came the medic and Haji Jan. Issaq held the doors open and followed them through.

Commander Sabir returned to his quarters, where he stood in the doorway. He didn’t watch the drama at the clinic. He watched Atal, who inched toward him with purpose, his pale green eyes sharp compared to his dust-covered face and bloodstained clothes. Hanging beneath Atal’s beard was the opal on the chain of braided silver. He clutched the stone as he walked.

I considered Atal for a moment longer. The dust that covered him was not just from the road and the binjos, it had been made by something more destructive, something that shredded clothing, broke skin, and wove shards of concrete and glass into his hair and beard. Whatever had made the dust had also made the blood that stained his shalwar kameez. And this blood was not entirely Haji Jan’s. Around the ribs the stain came up from beneath, pasting Atal’s shirt to his body.

Fareeda ran out of the parked binjo to help him. Her steps were quick and short. Blood had also blotched lightly against the white linen of her hijab, so lightly it appeared pink. She tucked her head underneath Atal’s arm. He leaned heavily on her left shoulder, and from her right shoulder the large deformed limb hung lifeless.

Commander Sabir spotted me watching. What’s wrong with you! he shouted. Help our guests.

I ran to Atal, but after a few steps he stopped me with a raised palm. He shook his head and said: Your help is not necessary. Then he stumbled forward as he leaned against Fareeda, who noted me with a glance.

Commander Sabir dismissed the pair’s defiance with a flick of his wrist, but I walked alongside them in case I was needed. Atal continued, grunting and shuffling, his elbow covering his side. Soon he presented himself in front of Commander Sabir, wincing with pain as he stood straight.

It looks like you have some broken ribs, my friend, said Commander Sabir. We can speak once you’ve been seen in the clinic and checked on Haji Jan.

Atal took short and careful breaths. I can be seen later, he said. As for Haji Jan, what’s best for him is for you and me to attend to our business.

Commander Sabir shrugged and waved them inside. Being the only soldier nearby, he ordered me to bring some tea, so I ran to the mess hall, crossing the open courtyard where others still crowded around the windows of the clinic. Quickly, I gathered a tray and returned to Commander Sabir’s quarters. I stood in the small entryway, listening to the muffled but rising voices inside the bedroom. I knocked on the paint-chipped door. Commander Sabir pushed it open. He and Atal sat cross-legged, facing each other on a red-and-black rug of Persian design. Fareeda sat behind Atal and off to his side. Apart from the rug, the room was empty but for Commander Sabir’s unmade bed with its swirl of sheets—Naseeb had put aside the complete
Masters of the Universe
set for him—and the end table by his pillow, where Omar swam circles, trapped in his bowl.

As I served tea, Commander Sabir shook his can of fish food over the bowl. Flakes of dried insect and worm parts snowed down on the water’s surface and then sank beneath it. Omar paddled through this storm. He was huge, almost as big as a rat. He was all mouth and thick tail, lapping at the food. His one eye sat on the side of his black head, large as a pea. The rest of him was black too, except in direct light, where he shone gold. Atal spoke, Commander Sabir listened, but kept his eyes on the circling fish.

You and Gazan have gone too far.

Gazan has gone too far, replied Commander Sabir, tapping his fingernail against the glass bowl, slurping tea over his broken lower lip.

Don’t speak to me as a fool who doesn’t understand the way of
things. You two are the same and have gone too far, said Atal. Against his cracked ribs, he strained to sit upright. The smell of his perfume lingered in the air, its sharpness mixing with the scents of blood and earth.

I have done nothing to harm Gomal, quite the opposite, said Commander Sabir, moving his stare from the fishbowl to Atal. I promised you an outpost to keep off Gazan’s fighters. You and Haji Jan refused my generosity. This violence is the result. Are you surprised?

What if you’d built your outpost? asked Atal. Already Gazan’s men mortar us relentlessly because he fears we may support you. His rounds landed on my house, MY HOUSE! And did this. He pointed to his bloodstained clothes and continued: And an honored spingari
such as Haji Jan lies bleeding in your clinic. This attack, this attack could’ve killed her! he said, reaching behind him and grabbing Fareeda’s good arm.

Emotion choked off his words. He tilted his head back and paused to keep the tears in his full eyes from flooding down his face again. With his gaze upturned, he didn’t notice that Commander Sabir fought against a desire to smile, but I did. He hadn’t forgotten Haji Jan’s insults at the shura. Commander Sabir turned his attention to Fareeda.

Thanks to God you were not hurt, child.

Fareeda cast her eyes toward the ground, as though staring at the disfigurement in Commander Sabir’s face was too much a reminder of her own. I am fine, she answered. Thank you.

Your well-being is something we can be grateful for on such a black day, said Commander Sabir. And your arm, does it trouble you?

He moved to touch it.

Atal cuffed his wrist, pushing it away. The arm is fine, he said.

I am glad to hear that, replied Commander Sabir, and now he was smiling. The medicine you get from the American is working, then? It must be very expensive to fight such a horrible disease.