Green on Blue (22 page)

The man pumped his arm twice above his head, and nearly a dozen figures stepped silently from amid the trees. They formed a forest inside the forest and I stood among them.

There is someone I’m supposed to meet here, but you are not him, said the man, his tone friendly and yet sinister. He leaned closer to my face and considered it.

I work for Atal, I said.

The man nodded, looking at the cold steady figures that surrounded us. That is who I am supposed to meet, he said, but you are not him.

He sent me to find you, I answered.

And what were you to do when you found me? he asked.

I pulled the phone from my pocket. The man stepped back with a start, dipping his shoulder, unslinging his ancient rifle.

He told me to call when I found you! I spoke quickly.

The man pointed his rifle away from me, and to the ground. He grabbed a palmful of his beard and twirled its end around his index finger. Make your call, he said, but I wish to speak with him.

I slowly opened my phone and its screen glowed, blinding us and making the night darker. I punched in Atal’s number and got a prerecorded message from Roshan, the phone company, in what sounded like Urdu. I tried again with the same result. I felt the gunmen and the
forest close in on me as I struggled to complete the call. Had I forgotten the number? I could still hear myself reciting it back to Atal.

It’ll be morning at the rate you’re going, said the man. Your boss should be in there.

He tossed me his phone. I opened it, pushed the send key, and scanned the recent call list for Atal’s number,
09973284643
. It was on top. I’d been correct, the shopkeeper must have sold me a bad SIM card. Relief surged down my body and then I saw another number listed below,
09973285676
. My relief cut to numbness as sure as if my spine had been severed. It was Commander Sabir’s number, the one that should only be memorized, never saved to a phone, the one that was a secret. Why was it there? From the mobile’s screen, a deceit I didn’t yet understand shined back at me, its luminous halo beaming upward from my hands,
09973285676
.

With guns trained on me in the darkness, I called the first number. Atal answered immediately: Gazan, I sent a man to find you, has he? The second truth of the night—
Gazan
. I’d convinced myself the man I’d meet would be him, but Atal confirmed it. It was real. Badal confronted me. I knew I wanted to kill him, but I didn’t feel the want. I felt nothing, nothing but the little numbing. I willed myself to hate him. I thought of the photo Taqbir had given me, and Ali’s desperate look into a place I’d never seen and from which I could never recover him. Still, there was only the numbness. All I felt was
09973285676
. Those digits had once been a prayer of certainty and now, from them, everything fell into confusion.

No, this is Aziz, I answered quickly. I am with him now.

I handed the phone to Gazan, whose eyes sat wide, off-white, and satisfied above cheekbones that ran across his face sharp as knives. He enjoyed the power he held at our introduction. Gazan and Atal spoke in muted tones, and I looked away as though it were my eyes that heard.

First you insult me by sending your chai boy and now you ask that I walk into your home alone and with no assurances, said Gazan.

I strained to overhear Atal’s response but couldn’t.

And what is he to me? asked Gazan. We agreed to meet on the path.

Atal said something else I couldn’t understand.

That may be so, replied Gazan, but you’ve broken faith. Why should I trust you with something more, with my life no less?

Gazan sneered and looked at me from slitted eyes as he listened to Atal. He then relaxed and began to nod in agreement.

Yes, he said, if that is your offer, it is a fair assurance. With that I’ll come.

Gazan slid the phone into his pocket.

You’re staying here, he told me.

He waved two men over who had been hovering behind me. One of them stepped around my side. Set across his broad and worn face was a dark gray beard, hanging to his chest. He tipped his wide-panned Waziri pakol at me in a sort of apology that we should meet as captor and captive.

Watch him until I return, said Gazan. If I’m not back by sunrise, kill him.

He went casually down the footpath toward Atal’s home. I remained a hostage in a negotiation I didn’t understand.

As soon as Gazan was out of sight, the older man in the pakol nodded toward the forest. Follow him, please, he said.

Another man stepped from behind me. Draped across his lean, rawboned shoulders was the smooth steel of a mortar tube and a green canvas rucksack that sank heavily down his back. A red vest with elaborate sequins added to his delicate features and did nothing to make him appear more fearsome. This was the youth I’d seen walking through the woods before the mortar attack weeks ago. The recognition of some
thing, even something sinisterly familiar, calmed me. Both of us were about the same age, for I was also just recently a man.

These two sandwiched me between them, leading me off the footpath, along the floor of soft needles, and deeper into a blanket of pine that rolled across the ridgeline. The forest grew cooler and cooler as we wandered to its depths. Like the bottom of a lake, the trees trapped a cold reminder that the sun struggles to touch all parts of the earth equally. As we walked, I felt that peculiar itch in my spine, which is the possibility of a bullet in the back. The rest of Gazan’s fighters traveled in a loose unseen ring about us. None spoke. With each step farther from the footpath, I wondered whether Gazan would manage to find his way back to us, and if he didn’t, whether I would receive a polite bullet at sunrise from my friend, the older man with the pakol.

Eventually the youth in the red vest stopped and sat. I had no idea where we were, but I felt grateful that we were no longer moving. I too sat and the forest was quiet. I strained to see in the night but couldn’t separate the fighters from the surrounding pines. In the altitude, my body cooled. Next to me metal scraped on metal. The youth worked at the base of his mortar. He raised his head. Come here! he shouted in a whisper.

I slid on my side toward him, cautiously, as though we sat on the roof of some great house. Hold this up, he demanded. Slowly, I came to my knees and helped him balance the mortar. He examined the bottom of the tube as though he were blowing against a dying fire. He twisted and tugged at the base and again metal scraped on metal. Whatever he did, he did by touch alone, never fouling the darkness with a light, and this discipline seemed contrary to his sequined red vest.

The older man stood above us. Did you put it in? he asked.

The youth sat up. He wiped his hands against his black shalwar kameez. It’s in, he said, but if we break another firing pin this mortar will be useless.

Does Gazan know that’s the last one? asked the older man.

He knows, said the youth. The question is, do his friends know, and will they give us more. In his voice I heard cynicism and weariness.

The older man squatted next to me. How did you come into the service of a man like Atal? he asked.

I used to be a soldier in the Special Lashkar, I said.

The older man tugged at his graying beard. Just like that? he asked.

Just like what? I replied.

You go from strangling Gomal and chasing us through the mountains to working for a man such as Atal, he said. Just like that, eh?

A man like Atal, I answered. What type of man do you mean?

Now the youth spoke: Atal is the type of fool who’d try to teach a dog to drink cream or a cat to chew a bone.

You ask why I work for Atal? It is my livelihood, I said. Commander Sabir provided my livelihood, now Atal does.

The old man spoke again: Yes, we all work in the same way. Atal will pay Gazan for meeting him tonight and Commander Sabir will give us money to continue our mortar attacks against Gomal. But I remember when there were other ways to have a livelihood. There were other things. How we did them, I can’t say, it was so long ago. I remember only that we did.

The youth took off his green rucksack. In the dark, he clumsily tugged against the buckles on the top flap, unfastening them. Next, he carefully reached into the main pouch as though he were taking a dish from the oven. He pulled out an antitank mine cased in green plastic and about the size of a hubcap. He rested it upside down on the rucksack. Then he twisted a plastic switch on its bottom until there was a noise like a pencil breaking. The corners of his lips crept into a grin. He put the mine back into his rucksack. For your old friends on the north road, the morning will come hard and early, he said.

His excitement unsettled me.

Must you enjoy it so? muttered the older man.

And why shouldn’t I? asked the youth.

No reason, he said.

The three of us sat in silence. The pine needles beneath me became soggy with dew. Soon the first seam of blue appeared along a distant ridgeline and with it the noise of Gazan’s footsteps shuffling tiredly toward us. The youth stood, his red vest a beacon for his commander. Gazan’s eyes fixed on us through the trees. He stopped and waved his arm back toward the footpath. The rest of his fighters followed. The older man and the youth picked up their weapons and left me sitting on the pine needles unguarded and alone. Nothing needed to be said. Gazan was back and I was free to go. Had he returned to his fighters an hour later, or not at all, they knew what to do with me. And had they done it, nothing would’ve been said either.

The fighters withdrew like a mist and I strained to see their movements as they sifted through the trees. Quickly! Gazan called after them. I’ve made assurances that the north road will be ready.

–

Early light etched hard edges into the shadows made by the pines. Through the forest I stared after Gazan and his men but saw and heard nothing. The silence unsettled me. I sprang to my feet and ran down the mountainside, toward Atal’s home, dodging the trees.

Commander Sabir supported Gazan’s attacks?

Why did Atal meet with Gazan?

Why was I sent to report on Atal?

How could I prevent the attack against my friends on the north road?

This last question stopped me. I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Commander Sabir: MINE PLANTED – NORTH ROAD. It
felt useless as a smoke signal, but there was nothing else I could do. I was wrapped in something artificial, something not understood. I was unsure to what end my message would come. I pressed Send, satisfying my duty to warn.

I continued to run, my sense of speed increasing as the sun rose. The steam from my sweating body lifted into the crisp air as I came from the woods and stood on the outskirts of the village. Smoke also lifted from Atal’s chimney. The cooking fire inside had likely burned all through the night. I walked toward his home and what I hoped would be answers.

The front door was cracked open, either in expectation of my arrival or because of a careless guest’s departure. I shut it behind me. Atal sat rigidly on the edge of his plush leather sofa. His stare was fixed on the wall, as though he were solving a math problem. Across from him, along the glass table, sat a half-eaten piece of naan and an empty cup of tea. I perched myself on the opposite sofa, interrupting his thoughts, but saying nothing. I waited for him to speak.

It is a careful thing I’ve enlisted you to do with me.

Tonight it felt reckless, I said.

Yes, but you must understand why I couldn’t risk going up there. You are reliable. Those men are not.

Is this the work I’m to do? To play hostage for your meetings?

Tonight was necessary, forgive me, he said. But as I go further, I need a man who can help with my security.

What are we going further into?

Atal held his gaze on mine, affirming a decision in me that he’d already made. I am helping Gazan broker a peace with the Americans, he said.

He wants peace? I replied, my voice thick with doubt.

He swears it.

Why? And if you’re concerned about dealing with him, why don’t you get the Americans to help with your security?

Before I could say anything else, Atal raised his palm.

I think you misunderstand, he said. The threat to my security isn’t Gazan. He is manageable. It is Sabir. Sabir keeps Gazan’s fighters equipped. Sabir pays them to mortar Gomal so the spingaris
might bend to his will. And Sabir makes sure that a steady stream of youths, like you, join his ranks searching for badal against men who did them harm in a war that he fuels. The threat is Sabir.

My mind raced. Commander Sabir’s number had been in Gazan’s cell phone, suggesting what Atal divulged. His revelations confirmed my worst fears. It is more difficult to unlearn than to learn, but Atal challenged me to understand this war’s true nature, that it had no sides. Each was the same as another.

Gazan’s men are as full of hate as any, I said. Why does he want peace?

Some of them are, he answered. But most are tired. They fight only for the livelihood the war provides. Gazan is tired. The only ones who are powerful enough to pluck him from his arrangement with Sabir are the Americans.

I leaned close to Atal and for the first time spoke to him as an equal might: Just like that, you would forgive Gazan? He dropped mortars on your home. He killed Haji Jan. He nearly killed you. You would let that go?

Atal’s jaw clenched. He stroked the running end of his turban, starting at his shoulder. His tendons ran taut as steel wires beneath his olive skin, but by the time his hand traveled to the hem’s bottom, it had relaxed. I’ve let nothing go, he said softly. Gazan and Sabir have taken more from me than this.

He stood. On the table in front of us sat a dented steel pot filled with now cold tea. He crossed the room and placed the pot atop his squat tin
stove, much like the one in Mumtaz’s home but newer. He opened its front and filled its belly with dry branches, just skinny enough for him to break in two. He cracked the wood between his hands and looked over his shoulder at me.