The Prince of Bagram Prison (12 page)

“It's fifty dollars to buy in,” Susan said, smiling condescendingly, issuing the information as if it were a warning.

She was thin and impossibly pretty, with the kind of nose the girls in his Ridgewood, New Jersey, high school often paid large sums of money to acquire. Though it was not her looks Harry had fallen in love with at that moment but her obvious and concrete sense of herself, something that Harry had never seen in a woman before.

“So what are we supposed to be doing here in the meantime?” he asked, taking a sip of his Côtes du Rhône, ducking Susan's gaze.

“Standard wine and dine,” Steve Robinson said. “We've been focusing on the ICCS. The Poles, mainly. The Hungarians, as I'm sure you know, won't give us shit.”

“No defections!” Janson interjected. “We'd have the whole Polish delegation in a matter of days.”

The same old dance, Harry thought, only here instead of the consular staff it was the fruits of peace they were reaping, the very people the Paris Accords had sent in to make sure everyone got along.

The Vietnamese waiter appeared with their dinners. Harry, watching the man's calm face as he distributed the plates, thought naïvely, Well, he's not afraid.

“Nha Trang's not so bad, actually,” Robinson offered, tucking into his steaming coq au vin, seemingly oblivious to the tropical heat. “I was up there for a while this past winter. Your quarters come with a doll of a housekeeper. Pretty Vietnamese girl. Keep her in French chocolates and she'll do just about anything you ask. I'll get you the name of a good shop in Saigon before you leave.”

Harry felt himself flush. He glanced over at Susan, who seemed unfazed by Robinson's remarks.

“Harry's quite the amateur astronomer,” Morrow announced in a tone that verged on mockery. “Am I right?”

“Yes,” Harry answered. “That's right.”

“And what's your weapon of choice? Unitron? Zeiss?”

“I use a Celestron C-8, actually.”

Morrow nodded. “There will be plenty of stars in Nha Trang.”

Harry cut into his steak. He had ordered it medium-well, but it was still bloody, and the sight of the undercooked meat made him nauseous.

Susan leaned toward him. “You can send it back, you know.”

Harry shook his head. “It's fine.” He took a bite and chewed, washed the steak down with more red wine.

Susan watched him dubiously. “For chrissakes!” she said, waving to get the waiter's attention. “How did you want it cooked?”

“Really,” Harry told her, blushing again. “I guess I'm just not all that hungry. Must be the heat.”

But the waiter was already on his way over.

Susan pointed to Harry's plate. “Take it back,” she commanded in perfect French.

Harry smiled at the waiter. “It's fine,” he insisted. “It's really fine.”

The waiter looked down at him, and Harry could tell by the look on the man's face that even he thought the steak should go back. But the entire table was watching by now and Harry, for reasons entirely beyond his control, could not back down.

“It's fine,” he repeated, grinning crazily. “It's absolutely fine.”

Then another flash lit up the countryside, this one bigger than the last, capturing the attention of everyone at the table, and Harry was mercifully rescued from himself.

After dinner, as they all stood on the steps of the Caravelle waiting for their cars, Pete Janson had nudged Harry. “Don't even think about it.”

“Think about what?”

Janson snorted. “You think I'm some kind of asshole?”

Morrow's Mercedes pulled up, and Harry watched Susan climb into the passenger seat. “She have a thing with him?”

“She doesn't have ‘a thing’ with anyone. Believe me, we've all tried. Besides, Morrow's married.”

“So?”

“So, nothing. Just trying to save you some trouble.”

Harry nodded. He could see Susan through the car's window, her face dark, half hidden by the reflection of the hotel's façade. She turned to Morrow and said something, her bare shoulders curving intimately toward him. Then she reached over and rolled down her window.

“Welcome to Vietnam,” she called out, still laughing at whatever joke she and Morrow had just shared.

T
HE FIRST OF HOW MANY HUMILIATIONS
, Harry wondered as he rolled over in bed, dragging his insufficient allotment of covers with him. In the grainy, predawn light, he could just make out Char's shape beside him: hips and shoulders and shadowed face, mouth parted slightly like a child's in sleep. He should have seen everything coming that night at the Caravelle, he told himself, should have taken Janson's advice for the gift it was, but of course he hadn't. For a moment, the part of himself he dared not acknowledge was wretchedly gleeful at the thought of Susan's death.

Down in the pasture, the cattle were voicing their complaints. Life in paradise, Harry thought, and what more could they want? Another day of balmy sunshine? Yet more of that plush grass? If only they knew how bad most beasts had it.

Moving carefully so as not to disturb Char, Harry pushed the covers aside, swung his legs slowly off the bed, and reached for his worn copy of
Harmonies of the World
on the nightstand.
My Koran,
he could hear himself tell Jamal. It had been a foolish thing to say, as foolish as his final gesture had been. The torn page not just the sum of all his regrets but the worst of them as well. The final triumph of nostalgia over reason. Though even now Harry could think of no better vehicle for his failure than the work of Kepler, who had sacrificed so much in the futile service of longing, who had spent his entire life trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, who had believed he could somehow resolve science and God.

If you're ever in real trouble.
He winced now, remembering the words. And what he should have said:
If you're ever in real trouble, for God's sake, don't call me.

“Can't sleep?” Char reached out and touched Harry's back.

He shook his head, then turned to look at her. She had pulled the sheets aside, revealing her nakedness. Not Susan's body, he thought, looking at her, and not Irene's, but a body scarred by everything it had ever nurtured. Breasts and belly and thighs irrevocably changed.

She patted the bed in a gesture of invitation, not to sex but to sleep, and Harry thought, Yes, here is the sweet forgetting, absolution for the taking.

“Come back to bed,” she said impatiently, reaching out for him, pulling him down beside her, until there was nothing left for Harry to do but acquiesce.

T
WO HOURS
, Manar thought as she climbed down from the back of the bus and watched the housekeeper cross the street. That's how long it had taken to get from her mother's house in the leafy northern suburbs to this rambling slum on the southern edge of the city. Two hours each way and another eight scrubbing shit from their toilets. And for what? Manar didn't know exactly what her mother paid these women, but she was certain it wasn't enough.

She paused and glanced over her shoulder before trailing Asiya down into the sewer of the bidonville. The chances of her having been followed were slim; she'd been careful leaving the house. But still, the last thing she wanted was for anyone to know she had come. She had not yet invented a story to explain her disappearance, but there would be time for that on the ride home. For now, all her energy was focused on keeping track of Asiya's saffron-colored djellaba and matching scarf.

The sun had just set, turning the smog-choked sky a wild magenta. From the crest of the hill there was an unearthly beauty to the slum, the tin roofs flashing like pink sails across the hillside.

Two decades earlier, during her student days, Manar had frequented the city's bidonvilles, working with Yusuf and the others to organize strikes and protests, spreading the gospel of revolution, and she was struck now by just how little had changed. Except for the satellite dishes, which rose like so many alien moons from the tops of the more prosperous shanties, the slum was exactly as Manar remembered all slums to be.

Down in the narrow alleyways it was night already, the sun long since vanished behind the quarter's shanty walls, the sky, where it was visible, crisscrossed by a chaotic web of pirated electrical wires. Cooking smells wafted from makeshift kitchens, the odors of rancid oil and spices mingling with those of the open sewer. And, here and there, the unmistakable stench of death. The smell of poverty, Manar thought, stumbling after Asiya, and of prison.

It's not your fight,
she could hear her father say that last afternoon before her arrest. She had sneaked out then as well, after he had forbidden her to go to the strike. And the last thing she'd said to him, the last thing she would ever say to him:
It's everybody's fight.

Such arrogance, she thought now, such utter naïveté. She was embarrassed by who she had been, by the shamefulness with which she had forced herself into these people's homes, the hubris with which she had assumed their suffering.

A group of pale figures appeared out of the darkness, four boys huddled hungrily around a can of butane, eyes wide from the fumes. Manar paused briefly to examine their faces, half hoping for a glimpse of the familiar and half dreading the possibility.

One of the first things Manar had learned in prison was that the least of her hopes—for her child, for a blanket in the winter, for a cell in which she could stand without crouching or a voice on the other side of the wall—were her worst enemies. If she was to continue to live, she had realized early on, she would have to do so entirely without expectation. To live, in essence, as if she were dead, and as if the child were dead as well. Anything else was too painful to bear.

This was the first time in many years that Manar had allowed herself such thoughts, that she had even dared to imagine that the boy might be alive, and she felt oddly fearless, even determined.

Asiya stopped at the door to one of the shanties and turned to look back at Manar. Waiting for her, Manar thought. And how long had the housekeeper known that she was being followed? Or had she guessed from the beginning, from their exchange in the hall that morning, that Manar would come?

“My home,” she said, swinging the door open and gesturing for Manar to enter.

Manar moved forward and peered hesitantly inside. The house was just one small room. Dirt floor, four walls, and a roof. A curtain, for privacy, hung in one corner, and a few scavenged furnishings. An old woman squatted over a gas burner, stirring a large pot of stewed peas, her attention fixed on a small television.

“Come.” Asiya nodded her encouragement, and Manar stepped slowly across the threshold.

“My mother,” the housekeeper said, pointing to the old woman. “You have come to ask her about Ain Chock, yes?”

“Yes.” There was an Egyptian soap opera on the television, the same one Manar's mother followed; she would be watching it now. Like most soap operas, it was the story of two families, one rich and one poor, and the intersections of their lives over the course of many years.

“You will eat with us,” Asiya informed Manar. “And then she will tell you what you want to know.”

The old woman ladled a helping of stew into a dish, and Manar squatted to receive it, offering her thanks. But when she lifted the bowl to her lips she felt suddenly sick. It wasn't the food; there were many years when she would have been grateful for such a feast. It was shame that stopped her.

She choked the meal down, forcing herself to finish, then accepted a second helping and finished that as well. The women would likely go hungry the next day because of their generosity. Manar knew this, but she also knew that to deny their hospitality would have been the worst insult; that they would rather starve than have their visitor leave with an empty stomach.

When they had finished eating, Asiya cleared their plates and put a kettle of water on the gas, then set out three chipped glasses for mint tea.

Yet another ritual, Manar thought, impatiently watching the housekeeper spoon dried mint and precious sugar into a pot.

Asiya finished serving the tea, then turned to her mother. “This is the one I told you about,” she said, speaking loudly. “She has come to ask you about the child.”

The old crone turned from the television and looked at Manar. “A boy or a girl?” she asked, revealing a mouthful of black teeth.

“A boy,” Manar answered. “He would be nineteen now.” She did a quick calculation in her mind. Yes, nineteen was right.

A cockroach crawled across the lip of the stew pot and the old woman flicked it away. Her fingernails were cracked and yellow. “There were boys like this at Ain Chock. I could have known him. What was his name?”

Manar opened her mouth to answer, then stopped herself. Yusuf, she thought, had always thought, for this was what they had agreed on—that if the child was a boy it would have his fa-ther's name. “I don't know,” she admitted.

The old woman nodded, then reached out and took Manar's hand in her own. “It is for the best, sister, I assure you,” she said. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her bony fingers clutching Manar's. “If your son was at Ain Chock, it is better not to know.”