by M F Sullivan
XI
Welcome to Kabul
After all they’d endured, Dominia had not expected getting a taxi to be simple, but they were soon well away from the train thanks to a driver who didn’t look twice at the disheveled, suitcaseless women and their dog. He had seen weirder tourists—probably ones more criminal, too, since he didn’t bat an eye as Miki guided him, in brisk Arabic, to her choice pawnshop. Dominia, still buzzing with adrenaline, barely registered the city outside; yet, even to her distracted eye, how it resembled San Valentino as it was when she was young! The San Valentino with which she’d fallen in love, before she’d fallen in love with Cassandra. All the tight-clustered shops: so many shops that even the DIOX-I could not comprehend the many passing signs. There was the market district, disrupting like a cock’s crow the sleepy morn with vendors shouting a chant to hypnotize listeners into purchase. (This, perhaps, was the meaning of “enchantment.” No wonder she didn’t trust Mass anymore!) There were the glittering spires and massive towers and all-over busyness of construction, of doing, of being and seeing. Kabul had stolen the achievement once held by San Valentino, and did so in a manner somehow more glorious. The sunlit mirage of a megacity glittered its defiance against the martyrs in a collective cry of humankind: We are still here, we will never leave, we will never die.
Something soft rested on her hand; the dog had lowered his chin.
“You are such a good boy,” she said. Though the animal’s tail wagged, the praise felt condescending for a creature so intelligent. This wasn’t like shaking hands or rolling over. How did you thank a dog for stopping a train? How did a dog know to stop a train, and with such precision? Was Basil even a dog?
Now, that was a weird thought. She recalled the game show aboard the ship: its well-trained Shiba Inu, conditioned to press a random button. Basic Pavlov. But Basil seemed a mite more advanced. Her head hurt as she considered it, and she stoked memories of cell phones thrown at her skull, the hisses of the angry people, and the horrible thought that, if Miki was right, she was, in a way, having that experience eternally. Not that she didn’t deserve it. Dominia glanced at the human, who had lapsed into silence with the driver to count the cash and coins in their bag.
Dominia licked her lips. “What he said about the Black Night—”
“I don’t want to talk about it here.” Soto didn’t look up from her count.
“Does he speak English?”
“I don’t think so, but, to be honest, I don’t want to talk about it anywhere. ‘Garbage Day’?”
The General could only bear to face the city. “It was a different time, I was a different person. When I believed—”
“That humans are trash? That Asian people don’t deserve to live in the United Front?”
“That my Father was right,” said Dominia helplessly. “That my Father was right, that he was close to God, and that if I did something like this, I could finally get his real approval. Maybe for five seconds of my life I would feel like I was better than my brothers and that I hadn’t been martyred to be the black sheep of a dysfunctional Family.”
Miki paused her counting with a sigh and a look not lacking in sympathy.
“Look”—the human folded the cash over and tucked it into her blouse—“all kids believe stupid things because of their parents. That’s part of growing up: realizing half of what they taught you is flat-out contrary to the person you are. I already told you my old beliefs on sex. That was my mother’s doing. She implanted those beliefs in me. The wronger and harsher our parents, the more powerful and pure we’ll be when we overcome the beliefs they’ve ground into our souls. But that doesn’t mean people around us now have to accept the people we were then.”
That didn’t make her feel any better. “What does the Lady teach about forgiveness?”
“Depends. Usually, that it comes from within. Have you forgiven yourself?”
“Not entirely.”
“Then you can’t expect me to forgive you, right?” At Dominia’s frown, Miki patted her hand. “But I’ll tell you: I had a great-great-great-uncle or something who was exterminated in the Black Night, and my mother talked about it like she’d been there to watch him die. She said that we could never forgive the martyrs for what they did to our family—so, based on her track record, I’m bound to forgive you, right?”
The General smiled as much as she allowed herself, though it was true. She hadn’t forgiven herself for what she had come to view in recent years as crimes against humanity—no more than she forgave herself for her crimes against Cassandra. That, however, was a dangerous line of thought. After all, she couldn’t see how she could ever forgive herself for Cassandra—but that was because grief for Cassandra provided a focus for the otherwise free-floating grief over her own existence, having killed so many.
A swinging pendulum of violence and shame, her thoughts. She shielded her face against the atomic dawn growing across the city and longed for shelter. Above the traffic noises sang birds who met the sun with greater cheer. There were ravens in Kabul, just like home. Just like everywhere she traveled in the world. Always ravens, and tidy onyx crows. A few sat upon a lamppost, flew off with that dawn. The skipping record of her mind produced the final lines of a poem she once loved, read a hundred thousand times, memorized with an eagerness surpassing even that for the Bard. The lines—to a little girl, so intriguing and beautiful—were, to Dominia, harrowing reminders of loss represented, for the ancient poem’s protagonist, by its eponymous black bird.
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
The last time she’d heard that poem, during Cicero’s annual Walpurgisnacht recitation, Cassandra had burst into tears well before the end, and Dominia had been forced to pursue her. The next night, she was dead. The silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain that had once thrilled Dominia was now forever linked with Cassandra’s pain, and her own. Well now did she understand that deep crest of loss attached to the word “nevermore.” Behind her hand, she closed her eyes, and Cassandra’s face, beautiful and pale, emerged: pale as the walls of the hospital room in those early nights of their romance. Cassandra had been in-patient since month five because her body fed itself to her baby too quickly to maintain her health without constant nutrients and supervision. She had to be given drips for fluids and for pain, but nothing stopped her nausea. In response to this, she was given blood transfusions from healthy martyrs—largely, her wife—and put on a steady diet of bland soups.
Her room, meanwhile, overflowed with Dominia’s flowers as though it were a garden: a place of life and life’s beginnings, rather than a place where most healed from illness or died trying. The hospital was in the mystical city of Venezia, the star of Mephitoli that had once been drowned by man-made climate change and that, resuscitated by the Hierophant’s bottomless bank account, was a territory under control of the woman not yet promoted to Governess. Until giving up her Mephitolian territory on her promotion, she had an exquisite palazzo there: a paradisiacal Roman villa. She had not once visited it since coming into town. Instead, she would sit and talk to Cassandra, hold her hand, and droop to sleep in her chair while her lover watched some benign sitcom whose formulaic nature was designed to inspire maximum comfort (and, consequently, limitless boredom). Themes focused on family; Dominia always winced at that, because if she were in Cassandra’s position, that subject would be the least desirable locus of thought. But Cassandra wanted to dream, and often Dominia awoke to find her wife still glued to the old television, shadowed eyes bright with better humor than the General could have felt. With one hand, she would hold Dominia’s right, while her other c
lutched one of the many stuffed animals that littered the room, supposedly for the baby.
Then, one morning, something small but beautiful happened. Dozing Dominia, who had gotten a chance to slip off for a moment, awoke to Cassandra pulling on her arm with those eyes big and beautiful and wide and wet while her mouth cried the words, “She’s alive, she’s kicking, she really is alive!”
The General’s hand leapt upon the ballooned stomach Cassandra couldn’t have hidden had her pregnancy gone well enough for her to remain home. Yes, there she was. The kick of tiny feet, like someone thudding the opposite side of a great drum. Dominia was more awake then than she’d been for any battle. She stood with wild-eyed laughter: first, to listen to the sound with an ear to that soft stomach; then, to kiss her weeping wife. Her sobs indistinguishable from hiccupping laughs, Cassandra shut her eyes, leaned her head against Dominia’s breast, and listened to the sound of her heart.
Then, as now, the General’s eyes welled in silent tears. Then, she had been able to weep into Cassandra’s hair. Now, she had nobody. She had a dog, who gazed at her with melancholy eyes. As if he knew her every thought. Basil wagged his tail at that silent supposition, or seemed to.
Let that be coincidence!
The absurdity of a telepathic—certainly sapient—dog distracted her enough that she lifted herself from out that shadow. Fine timing, too, for the cab driver pulled in front of a pawnshop. The district in which it was located seemed…less than kosher, given its general uncleanliness, multiplied by the density of wig shops and adult arcades to actual businesses. Her guess was this was spurred by the presence of the corner theater. Everybody who attended the Elsinore Theater Festival knew theaters attracted a strange group: in testament to this, the distant lampposts marking entry to the borough were enlivened by red flags, each dotted by a black lotus.
“Isn’t that the Red Market symbol?” asked Dominia.
Miki, with reluctance, removed the cash wad from her bosom and slipped a few bills free for the cabbie. He doffed his hat while his passengers piled out and the prostitute said, “I guess it would seem pretty remarkable to you, that we have locations friendly to us. You—your Family is so stuck-up.” They both had to dance around the word “martyrs” in public. Some English words were universal.
With a grimace for the slow-rising sting beneath the growing light of dawn, Dominia took shelter within the entrance of the shop. Miki made sure the cab door had shut itself and hurried to the store’s security gate while the cabbie squealed off for his next mark. Though the prostitute’s hand dipped into her purse, she stopped with a furious gasp of displeasure.
“That’s right! Since you insisted on leaving my stuff there, I’m missing my key. God dammit.” On instinct, Miki lifted her hand to lay a slap on the back of Dominia’s head, but the General had been getting enough of that action and caught the human’s wrist. Though startled, Miki whipped up a lascivious grin. “Learn to pick a better moment. People are going to start filling this street!”
“I’m not messing around.” Dominia released the human, who slipped with a laugh down the alley on the building’s west side.
“Neither am I. Come on!”
As the geisha mounted the shadowed fire escape with annoyance, Dominia and the dog followed along. The martyr asked, “Are you allowed to operate here?”
“Here? Technically, no, but the Market…exists, at least, as an entity. There are some Middle States even worse than your Father when it comes to prostitution; I’ve never even visited New Persia, which is too bad, since it looks like a beautiful country and I’d love to see Mecca. But we’re fortunate that Kabul has gotten even to this point—like, Red Market girls can go to doctors and stuff and legally can’t be turned away because of their profession.”
“What a privilege,” said the General, her tone dry as the air. Miki snorted.
“Right? Even toleration here isn’t like where we’ll be going.”
“Which is?”
“Cairo—the real Babylon. At least, where the Lady’s center of operations moved after Babylon’s fall.”
More words that would have made Lavinia wince but gave Dominia a twinge of naughty pleasure to remember murmuring to Cassandra that she was a hot little Babylonian harlot, which was some pretty filthy talk by martyr standards. To hide her flush, or at least reroute it, she gave a huff as though from exertion. “So it’s still a real place? I thought it was just a legend that the Lady had a city.”
“Of course it’s a legend”—Miki glanced west as they emerged atop the roof—“as much as Jerusalem. But that’s the difference between legends and myths. Legends have historical basis. The Lady has to live somewhere, man. She’s real. And She keeps Her city a lot nicer than the Abrahamians’ deadbeat dad.”
Dominia always had a weird time with references to God, because the Triune was still so tied to her Father’s mythos that she barely separated the original intentions of the deity from his corrupted variant. She compromised in her conversation with something nonconfrontational: “That’s nice. I don’t care how great whose city is, unless we’ll find Lazarus there. Cairo, Jerusalem. Doesn’t matter.”
“You wouldn’t find him anywhere near that garbage dump. It’s controlled by the Hunters—they’re its skeleton, at any rate, and the skeleton can’t help but pollute the whole body when it’s full of poison.” Miki frowned at the shabby padlock sealing the rooftop door. After a glance at the martyr, the human stepped away and let the General’s foot shatter the rusted knob. Miki sighed and shook her head.
“Why Kahlil spends as much as he does on girlfriends like me without paying a lick for security…”
They descended down the grimy stairs, the flat, unwashed oil smell that came with stores dealing in used goods so plaguing Dominia’s sensitive martyr nose that she bumped into Miki when the human stopped at the first landing to rap upon the door. The reason for the lack of security was that Kahlil thought he had enough in the form of the assault rifle that he thrust in their faces on answering; but the tremble to the gun’s barrel and the softness to the face behind his glasses, which somehow escaped the masculinity beards afforded other men, indicated the General had nothing to fear. Indeed, on recognizing Miki’s scornful face, Kahlil lowered his gun with an exhalation of surprise, relief, and mild humiliation.
“Miki, what the fuck!” It came out in English; the boy glanced toward the martyr with one hand atop his taqiyah as if surprise’s aftermath might blow it off. “I thought you said you’d call me. And come in through the front.”
“It’s a long story. And, I’m going to need money. Real, digital currency: none of this useless paper shit. What a pain it is to convert it to Redcoins! You do it for me. It’ll make me look like I’m the saleswoman of the month when you transfer it all into my account.”
As she spoke, she dumped the contents of the bag on the undusted coffee table askew in the center of the room. In an instant, Kahlil looked torn between blocking the martyr’s way and attending to the wealth of objects awaiting his attention. After a careful glance past the man’s head for the dusty bookshelves within, Dominia studied the nervous fellow and tried to make him comfortable. “Kahlil? Like Kahlil Gibran, right? Are you Lebanese?”
“No.” His frown deepened as he was forced to make an intellectual connection with the martyr. “My mom liked his poetry. Come in, I guess, but if I see you move funny—”
“Why are you so hostile?” Miki collapsed into the couch and kicked off her business flats in a way that made both Dominia and their host give a tsk. “You knew I was bringing her! I told you. You probably saved the chat, even though it’s supposed to self-destruct.”
“I save everything you send me.” The chestnut of his face further colored as he stooped to collect her shoes; Dominia’s brow knit to see telltale signs of some poor schmo in love with a working girl, then smoothed it over when he righted himself. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable hosting her after what they’ve reported!”
“You’r
e the last person who should be listening to rumors.” Miki rubbed her palm over her left eye and snuggled in against the couch cushions, yawning as she spoke, worn out by her dance recital. “What are they saying she did? Because what she did was save a whole train of people, and possibly all of Kabul. That’s pretty great, no matter what she did before.” It was gratifying, that glance from Miki.
Outside the room, Basil politely wagged his tail. Kahlil, annoyed, said, “Well! Come on, bring him in. Look at the place, it’s haram as it is. A prostitute and a martyr, what am I doing to myself…”
As he spoke, Dominia shut the door behind Basil, and Kahlil lowered his voice with a shifty look around. “I’ve got a couple of tenants downstairs, so keep quiet. They heard on the news that she massacred an entire car of people and were already up here talking about it— I haven’t even had breakfast.”
Miki, bless her, did the talking. “Car A? Cicero did that. I saw—well, I didn’t see him do it, but Dominia couldn’t have done it. Mostly because she was with me the whole time, and I was occupied.”
“They said Cicero was sent by Iblis,” said Kahlil, who spat in the corner at his use of the Hierophant’s epithet. (Small wonder about his bachelorhood, if that was his custom.) “That he was to retrieve ad-Dajjal”—this was a new term to her, but it made Miki roll her eyes as he went on—“and was defeated by her sheer strength.”
While deigning to stand, Miki crossed her arms and exclaimed, “Really, ‘ad-Dajjal’? I thought that was what they called the Lamb.”
Now Dominia spoke up, curiosity piqued. “What does it mean?”
“It’s the anti-Christ in some branches of Abrahamian faith.” Miki rubbed the bridge of her nose while triumphant Kahlil declared, “Everybody is saying it’s her. The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said ad-Dajjal would be blind in his right eye.”
But that amplified Miki to full blast, the girl being versed enough in this particular branch of Abrahamianism to correct on her fingers, “‘His’ right eye, and it’s a metaphor, and didn’t your Prophet (peacebeuponhim) also say something about eyes that bulged like grapes? And all kinds of stuff about miracles, and whatever ridiculous nonsense? I haven’t seen her do a miracle. As far as I’ve been able to tell, her greatest power is poetry recitation—and running Family therapy sessions, based on her conversation with Lavinia.”
