99 Nights in Logar Read online

  Dawood took a deep sniff, sighed, and nodded at Gulbuddin.

  “That’s where Budabash went,” Gul said, pointing at nothing in particular, pointing, it seemed, at the whole country. Then he started down the road.

  We hurried after him.

  While Dawood paced ahead, sniffing for Budabash’s scent of apples and gasoline, Gul stopped from time to time to ask a farmer or a day laborer if they’d seen a big black dog with a white scar running down its back.

  Zia hung back with me. He held my good hand and pointed out the sights.

  “That’s Haji Ahmad’s,” he said, pointing to an orchard, “and those fields belong to Mullah Imran. And that trench there is where little Zabi stepped on an old mine. Lost his foot.”

  “In the name of God, Zia,” Gul called back, and slowed down and wrapped his fingers around my right wrist, just above the gauze. “You got everything wrong. The orchard belongs to Mullah Imran’s dad, who’s still living, so Imran owns nothing yet, and the fields are Haji Ahmad’s, and little Nabi got his foot run over by an army truck, not little Zabi. Little Zabi is fine. We played stickball with him a month ago.”

  “We did?” Zia said.

  “Yes, bachem, go ask Dawood.”

  Dawood walked ahead by himself, sniffing at the wind, big black bag over his shoulder. He was fat for his age but also, I had to admit, pretty strong. No one liked to hold his hands because of his warts, so he always had them busy. Carrying or throwing or breaking anything that came near him. I tried to keep the fellahs from holding my hand too, but they were persistent. “This is what friends do here,” Gul kept trying to explain.

  “Zabi still got both feet,” Dawood shouted back.

  “See,” Gul said, and pointed to Zia, “all this guy knows are hadiths.”

  “And surahs,” Dawood added.

  “What more do you need?” Zia said, squeezing my hand.

  Gul shook his head. “You listen to me, Marwand. I’ll tell you what’s what.”

  And he did.

  He told me where we were and where we were going. He told me the names of the roads and where they would lead. He told me who died where and whose grave and flag and stick and stone belonged to who, and he told me the names of the trees and the fields and the plots of land. And as he held my hand, he pointed me one way and could tell me what way that way was and he could point the other and tell me what way that way was too.

  But, still, he couldn’t tell me—for sure, at least—where Budabash went or why he ran away in the first place, though I had an idea.

  Ah, but before I forget, here are a few more things I saw that day:

  A cobra

  Six kids, ages ranging from four to eleven, walking toward that cobra

  A cobra, its skin stripped, its flesh bared, pelted to death by six kids

  Laborers in the fields covered in mud

  Laborers in the orchards covered in mud

  Laborers, covered in mud, building a wall out of the mud that covered them

  A little girl, about nine, walking with her donkey

  The fields

  My cousin or uncle (both?) Malang, who stank of hash and couldn’t recall my name

  Two strays that looked like what Budabash would’ve if he’d actually been a dog

  Two American helicopters

  Four kids playing cards in the corner of a field, betting walnuts and marbles

  Four kids running from the stones we threw

  Fifty-two cards left behind in the corner of a field

  A man with a gun that might have been a T

  A drone (I think?)

  1,226 white lilies

  One true God

  No Budabash

  On the Fourth Day

  Three days after Budabash took the tip off my index finger, Ruhollah Maamaa (Moor’s little bro) came back from whatever base he worked at, welcomed my parents home, and, as soon as he saw my bandaged hand, swept me into his Corolla and drove me and my brothers out to the black markets in Kabul, where he told me to pick out any prize I wanted. No joke. No limits.

  “But no women!” He laughed too loud.

  I didn’t see many.

  Me and my brothers stuck close to Ruhollah as he led us through the crowds and the bazaars, past checkpoints, potholes, and open sewers, away from the armored bases where the Americans hid, and toward the inner valves of the city. He dismissed the beggars and sweet-talked the cops, and he roamed about the streets in his blue jeans and his Shah Rukh Khan haircut, pointing out the bombed-out buildings (this one by the Ts, this one Massoud, this one Sayyaf, this one Hekmatyar), and the whole time he was talking too fast, walking too slow, practicing his English, and asking us about America.

  Ruhollah Maamaa had big plans. He was studying part-time at a Kabuli technical school (when he wasn’t working at the base), and his dream was to get an American visa. Problem was he needed a sponsor to qualify. An upstanding American citizen willing to go to bat for him. So he asked me about Agha, fishing to see if my pops might help him. To be honest, I was pretty sure Agha didn’t like Ruhollah very much, especially since he started translating with the US Army, but I realized that the more I could make him feel that Agha might help him, the more fluid Ruhollah got with the cash flow—and I wasn’t above being bribed. Neither were my brothers.

  Mirwais, my youngest brother, just wanted a Big Mac. Out of the three of us, the food in Logar (shorwa and tomatoes almost every night) was messing him up the worst. Days and nights of diarrhea. Almost shit his pants a few times, the poor guy. I mean, me and Gwora had the runs too, but not as bad as Mirwais. He was aching hard for some factory-processed beef, and we figured that if there was any place in Afghanistan with a Mickey D’s, Kabul was going to be it. Sadly, though, we came to find that McDonald’s hadn’t infiltrated Kabul with the marines, so we had to settle for Ruhollah Maamaa’s favorite kabob shop, where they grilled the lamb out on the street and used fans to attract customers. Ruhollah told us the shop had been open for more than seventy years, that they’d served slaves and servants and hippies and Commies and spetsnaz and jihadists and marines and now three little Logarian from America.

  Gwora kept accidentally walking into bookshops. Never buying anything. Just looking around and sniffing the pages. Eventually, at some random stall near the Kabul River, Gwora picked out what he thought was a golden pocket watch that turned out to be a brass compass, which Ruhollah wanted to return, but which Gwora liked better than his original gift.

  I had a whole list prepared. First, me and Ruhollah and my brothers went out to the garment district, and he fitted us in a few Afghan outfits: kameez and partug and waskat. Then we went from shop to shop, finding my desired items: a silver Allah, a pocketknife, and a basketball, and the whole time I blended into the crowds so nicely that if I kept my mouth shut, it seemed nobody even took me for a foreigner.

  That was until near Asr, when we ran into this small pack of strays, nearly hairless and starving, and all of a sudden, I started breathing funny and my head got woozy and the stump of my lost finger started tingling. As the dogs got closer, the tingling got worse. To the point where a pain shot through me as though my finger were getting eaten all over again, and I let out a scream like I did in the orchard, which scared the strays and my brothers and Ruhollah and all the Kabulian surrounding us.

  For a while, my breathing didn’t steady and Ruhollah began to panic, offering me whatever came near us—juices, sodas, cigarettes, and tesbihs—until we got to the section of the black markets with the DVD vendors. He offered me a few movies, and suddenly, my breathing calmed.

  On our way back to Logar, I clutched my DVDs and watched the torn buildings fall off into mountains, into fields and trees and the occasional compound, until we got
to the checkpoint near Wagh Jan that was run by a local militia. In Kabul, Ruhollah got waved past each checkpoint as soon as he flashed his military ID, but these militiamen claimed that the Ts were disguising themselves as soldiers and forging government paperwork. They ignored me and my brothers and commanded Ruhollah to get down for a search. Afterward, Ruhollah drove us through Wagh Jan—past the small shops and stalls—crossed the Logar River, avoided the road workers, and entered the alleys of Naw’e Kaleh.

  When we got back to Moor’s compound that night, all my cousins rushed our Corolla as we crossed the big blue gate. There were maybe twenty of them—from toddlers to teenagers, dark faced and pale skinned, coming from as far as Jalalabad to as close as the Tangee. They crowded our car, fogged up the glass, and wrote our names on the windows.

  I hardly knew any of theirs.

  Ruhollah Maamaa hopped out of the car first and almost smacked a few of them before Mirwais waddled in front of him, grabbed his hands, and asked him to give him a horseback ride, which he did, because no one said no to Mirwais. Meanwhile, me and Gwora and my cousins and my little uncles snuck back toward the den—a little room of clay, hidden in the corner of the living quarters closest to the orchard.

  Inside the den, all of my cousins and half-cousins and little uncles surrounded me and my brothers, talking to us in Farsi and Pakhto and a little English: being friendly in a way they weren’t allowed the first few days of my arrival because immediately after Budabash bit my index finger, Abo and Baba and Rahmutallah Maamaa hauled me into a guest room and made me spend almost two days in there with just them and my parents.

  They wrapped and rewrapped my bandages, ran an IV, fed me home remedies (sarsar and kappa and osh) until they deemed me fit enough for visitors. Gul was the first of the guys to approach me, sneaking into my room with a request.

  “Listen,” he said, “my big brother is going to come today and he is going to offer you Budabash’s head. But listen, Marwand; you have to have mercy on him because God would want that and because we need Budabash. You understand? I mean he’s the best guard dog in the village. Maybe the country. He’s fearless and ruthless. His teeth are like razors. I mean you know that firsthand, but listen, Marwand; he only bit you because he doesn’t know you, because . . . he was protecting us. Wallah, Marwand, he’s a good dog, a little rough, but good, and we need him. You understand, Marwand?”

  I told him I did, but my wound ached so bad, and it looked like such a mess of rot and pus, and I was so worried that losing the tip of my finger might have irreparably ruined my jump shot, that I stewed in my heart for vengeance. And yet I also didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with the guys, especially Gul, who seemed to love Budabash more than anyone.

  As Gul predicted, later in the day, Rahmutallah Maamaa came into my chamber, by himself, and offered me a juice box, a slice of watermelon, and Budabash’s life.

  I declined all three.

  After that, Gul introduced me to Dawood and Zia and the rest of the guys. Zia kissed me on both cheeks and sputtered a dua directly into my mouth. Dawood pinched my sides in a terrible crab hug until I pushed him away. The rest of my cousins took turns holding my hand or my pinkie. For a few minutes, I didn’t have the heart to stop them.

  When the guys weren’t at school or doing farm chores, we played futball or stickball or rockwar or we waded through the canal in front of our house (I couldn’t actually swim) or we just talked. Most of the time, they asked me questions about America, about the schools, and especially about the kids.

  I explained to them that kids in America were mostly all right, except when they couldn’t pronounce your name, and so they changed it for you, calling you Moe instead of Marwand, Joe instead of Jawed, Bell instead of Belqeesa, and when they mixed up your race with other races and ignored it when you tried to correct them, or when they thought Bin Laden was your grandpa.

  That last one threw them for a loop.

  “Wallah,” I said, “they’ll ask me where my grandpa’s hiding so that they can go and kill him, thinking that’s supposed to make me mad that they want to kill Bin Laden, and sometimes they’ll act like they’re joking, or like I’m in on the joke with them, but, sometimes, after they’re done laughing, it’s like they’re standing there, looking at me, not saying anything, like they’re actually waiting for me to tell them where Bin Laden is. So that they can go and kill him.”

  My cousins and little uncles burst out laughing.

  They loved to hear stories like that. All of them gathered around me, some of them shouting, some of them quiet, but all of them, I knew, listening and waiting. And when I got back from Kabul that night and snuck into the den, every single one of them was waiting then too, ready to see what I got from the shops.

  At first, I showed them only the silver Allah, the basketball (which they dribbled with their feet), and the pocketknife I bought at the bazaars, but as soon as the generator came on, I laid out the real goods.

  “Bootleg DVDs!” I shouted.

  Five films to a disc. Sometimes six. Sometimes the movies still in theaters or unreleased.

  “Bootleg DVDs!” I shouted again because they didn’t seem to understand.

  “Yeah,” Dawood said, “we understand, but what the hell movies are these?”

  “Aww,” I said, “these are werewolf films.”

  First, we watched Van Helsing. The next night: An American Werewolf in London. And by the third night, when we watched Dog Soldiers, I had my cousins seeing werewolves everywhere they went: in the trees and in the shrubs, in the kamoot at night and in the shadows of the chinar, in the fields where they cut wheat, and, of course, in Budabash’s cold dead eyes.

  Except for Gulbuddin, of course. While everyone else in the compound felt at least a little bit uneasy about the fact that their loyal guard dog, who’d never bitten any other human in his life, had so viciously torn at my finger, Gul loved Budabash so much, he didn’t think much of it.

  “He’s just a dog,” he used to say, “and dogs got teeth.”

  Well, I thought to myself, I got teeth too. And that was true.

  I did.

  On the Thirteenth Day

  When the guys went to school those first few weeks, me and my brothers spent the day reading or writing. The last time I came to Logar in ’99, my Pakhto got so good I ended up forgetting most of my English, went into second grade not knowing my alphabet—almost flunked that year. So on this trip Agha had us on a strict schedule: at least one page of writing and one chapter of reading every day. The three of us brothers groaned about it, though me and Mirwais knew Gwora was secretly thrilled. Kid was only in the fifth grade but reading at a high school level. Came to Logar prepared too. Backpack full of stolen library books and composite notepads. I ended up having to settle for some of Zia’s old UNICEF notebooks and a Tom Clancy novel I found in a cupboard, one morning, in Ruhollah’s room.

  We read lying on red toshaks in opposite corners of the den. I read Clancy and Gwora read Twain. Mirwais napped in between us, with a beginner’s Quran on his face. By the time I got through two chapters of my Tom Clancy novel, Gwora was already halfway done with Huckleberry Finn and well into his journal.

  At some point while he was writing, Gwora asked me about Budabash.

  “Marwand,” he said, “why do you think he hates us?”

  When we were alone, me and my brothers spoke in English. We were most comfortable that way. In fact, since our last trip to Logar, we hardly spoke any Pakhto at all. Our speech got so bad, we started to forget simple things. Like how a maamaa is your mom’s brother and a kaakaa is your dad’s. Once, during a dua, I asked Allah to have mercy on my Watak Maamaa instead of Kaakaa. Agha almost smacked me in the mosque. With Moor, it wasn’t so bad. She’d correct me if I used the wrong word or ruined the structure of a sentence (the object went before the subject or maybe the verb?). But when Agha bit his lip and stared me down
, saying without saying that our tongue is our life is our soul is our blood, I’d forget that Pakhto even existed.

  “Because he’s a lunatic,” I said, and went back to my novel: South American terrorists were trying to figure out Agent X’s true allegiance (he’s CIA). They shocked his balls with a car battery and dunked him in water till he couldn’t breathe.

  “You know what Dawood said?”

  I didn’t reply. I kept reading: the terrorists shocked Agent X again and beat him and pulled out some of his teeth and his fingernails, demanding to know who he was, but by that point, the spy had made up so many different aliases and his mind was so messed up from the torture, he couldn’t even remember which alias was the one he should give up.

  “He said it’s because of our stink.”

  “Dawood?” I said, looking up. “Dawood is the shittiest-smelling kid I ever met. He makes Kabul smell like Paris.”

  “You’ve never been to Paris.”

  “Listen,” I said, closing my book and switching to Pakhto like Agha might’ve done, “we don’t stink any worse than anyone else. Budabash doesn’t like us because we know what he is. That’s all. He’s got everyone else fooled. That’s all it is. You understand?”

  “I don’t know,” Gwora said.