In the Light of What We Know: A Novel

by Zia Haider Rahman

  Men are social animals, we are told, the evidence all around us. I went to Glyndebourne once with Emily and her mother, all of us dressed to the nines. The music was good enough, some or other opera, but it seemed to me that Glyndebourne was as much as anything else a social occasion: picnic hampers bulging with booty from Fortnum & Mason and Harrods, jams, Gentleman’s Relish, and strawberries. Champagne bubbled over the sound of corks popping. A scene from what? An impressionist painting perhaps? Yet what do I know about their art? It was a beautiful summer’s day. Penelope said hello to friends and acquaintances—the brush of cheek against cheek—and so did Emily. I saw two other South Asian faces and wondered if, after years of passing off, I now looked even half as much at ease as they did.

  If Glyndebourne was a harmless social venue, which is no small if, the UN bar in Kabul was the antithesis. What the people in the bar were doing wasn’t just getting together for a few drinks in a familiar setting. It wasn’t just hip-hop in the background, the press of bodies, the lingering stares, the offers to buy a drink disguising and disclosing other intentions; it wasn’t even what I overheard in every snatch of conversation, that human drive to seek out agreement, to approve and concur, that craving for the fellow feeling of a shared view of the world that might actually come from nothing more than wanting to be liked.

  A beautiful young woman—and I mean beautiful—stood with a drink in hand. In the clouds of smoke, her lips seemed to tremble. She had poise and grace and legs all the way to Tuesday or Christ Almighty or the ground, whichever is the longest. You could have taken this woman, this almost imaginary creature, for one of the models gliding about Union Square in New York, a lingerie model, not the brittle-boned, concave clothes hangers of catwalks. Such women frightened me off: Imagined women can satisfy only the imagination. Behind her was a man talking to another woman, though he kept glancing her way. As for the man actually talking to the model, who might or might not have had her attention, he looked uneasy in the company he was keeping, as if his jacket was a size too small. The model, I thought, was the kind of woman Emily would be careful not to be seen beside, a woman who could reduce her.

  I looked for the group I came with. Nicky was on the other side of the room, curled into a sofa, talking to Sandra, a middle-aged Korean American woman I’d been introduced to in the Land Cruiser.

  Zafar! We thought we’d lost you. Sandra had you pegged as the disappearing sort, without so much as a goodbye, but I said you were a proper gentleman.

  Putting on a cockney accent, I said: A proper gentleman.

  Nicky had a wonderful smile, bursting with true pleasure, a bright, uncomplicated smile, a smile that sang affection, as any fool could tell. Emily never smiled at me like that. Yes, I think there was genuine tenderness in Nicky’s smile. And yes, she flirted with me, but it was bounded flirtation. She had told me not long after we met—forty-eight hours in Kabul contained so much time—about her wonderful husband, a jazz musician, and her two little boys, a house ruled by wild men.

  I think few women can pull it off. It requires a particular skill. Of course, there’s no skill in laying down a boundary; on the contrary, I would have thought a married woman with two children would have to work hard if she wants to avoid mentioning family in response to any question that so much as touches on the personal. But Nicky had the skill to build the wall true and strong without putting the flirting in the shade.

  Sandra’s leaving the U.S. because of Bush.

  Canada? I said, turning to Sandra.

  Vietnam. Our youngest is adopted—he’s Vietnamese—and we’re thinking we might take him back there, you know, his roots and so on.

  She knocked back the last of her drink.

  How the Star-Spangled Banner did George come between you and Uncle Sam?

  Sandra grinned at me and got up.

  What are you drinking? she asked. Evidently, she thought my question was rhetorical.

  No, no. Let me, I said.

  Stop that! What are you having?

  I think the drinks are subsidized, said Nicky.

  They are when I’m paying, said Sandra.

  Whisky, I said.

  Nicky?

  I’m okay, replied Nicky. She was holding a glass of white wine, still half full.

  Sandra disappeared into the thicket of people. Nicky lowered her voice.

  What did you find?

  What do you mean? I asked.

  Oh, come on. You disappeared.

  I smiled at her.

  Do you wonder what we’re doing here? I asked.

  I know what the Americans are doing here. They want blood. Somebody has to pay.

  I mean all this development and reconstruction. What’s it really about?

  I met you only this afternoon and I know this about you: You think people never say what they mean. The truth is, nine times out of ten what they say is all they mean.

  What’s it really about?

  It’s about development and reconstruction.

  Nicky was on a fact-finding mission with a women’s microfinance NGO, lending small amounts to women who want to organize themselves into small enterprises.

  We can do some good here, she continued. This is a miserable country, Zafar. I don’t need to explain that to you. It needs help. Isn’t it that simple?

  Is anything that simple?

  I sat down beside her on the arm of the sofa. She seemed absorbed, and I wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking, if she was going back over her own words and considering them again, their meagerness, their vagueness, and that the exculpation was always that the country needs the help that people like her were ready to provide.

  It was then that I noticed Emily approaching us. What did Emily see? She saw me with an attractive woman.

  Nicky greeted her with that boundless smile.

  I’m Nicky, and this is Zafar.

  Emily extended her hand to offer that limp handshake I had seen before, and I could now feel Nicky’s confident grip closing around it.

  Emily turned to me and I think we both said hello at the same time. If Nicky was observant, she would have noticed that Emily didn’t extend her hand to me. But when I thought about it later, it occurred to me that even if Nicky had noticed, she might have assumed Emily didn’t want to embarrass this South Asian man, a pious Muslim for all anyone knew, who might not shake hands with women.

  I still don’t know what to make of that bizarre moment, what possessed us to pretend we had never met before, what thought or calculation had passed through her head or through mine, which would have had to have been unconscious in me, for I did what seemed to be ordained, without premeditation, reflection, or design, as if here in Kabul, Afghanistan, I was in a new world, one far away, and we had all taken on new clothes, in order to become unrecognizable, in order to discard our former selves and reinvent the people we were, in a land where people were not people, not even actors, but pieces on a game board.

  You know, Richard Feynman likened research in physics to watching a curious game unfold on an eight-by-eight board of alternating black and white squares, trying to figure out its rules—but watching it, he explained, under odd constraints so that you can only view one corner of the board, and there notice things and try to discover the rules behind them. You might notice, for example, that a bishop—a tall wooden piece that evokes the image of a bishop—only stays on the same-colored squares, but then later suddenly grasp that the bishop can move along diagonals only, which is a deeper rule and one that explains the earlier observation, too—and so it goes on, this scratching away at the corner, unearthing rule after rule, trying to discern the patterns and rules of the game.

  Afghanistan, too, had become a game, but it wasn’t chess, not as we know it, not even the game of chess that is played in Asia, with its differences that confound you (the king, or rajah, that does more than stupidly wait) and similarities that deceive you, but an altogether different game in which the players fight to set down the very rules. It
is possible that in that moment, when Emily looked at me and said hello, when her hand remained hanging limply from her arm, having shaken or been shaken by Nicky’s hand, when the smile I wore was as much for myself as it was for her—it is quite possible that in those moments I had some premonition of violence, of the only thing that could disturb the polite games, of what I was capable of doing. Before I looked it up, I thought the origins of the phrase turning the tables lay in Christ’s fit of rage in the Temple, at the house of prayer being made into a den of thieves. But apparently it owes more to board games. Either way, it would be apt.

  What do you do here? asked Nicky.

  I’m with the Assistance Mission, replied Emily. She didn’t give her name.

  You must work with AfDARI, said Nicky with an intonation that sought confirmation.

  When I first met Emily, I thought it charming the way she didn’t respond or engage in conversation in the way everyone else did. Most people would have said, Yes, I work with AfDARI from time to time. Perhaps even, Do you know Maurice Touvier? Most people would move the conversation along, but Emily did not. Sometimes, when talking to her, just for the fun of it, I used to hold back from saying something to keep the conversation going, just to see what would happen. Silence entered and the whole world stopped turning on its axis, and the conversation would not move along, and when the moon yanked the earth back into motion she might introduce another subject altogether or go and do something else. She rarely asked me anything. And there was seldom any idle banter, as if there’s anything idle in the banter between lovers.

  Those eyes, they just stared. They used to baffle me. How, I asked myself, could she not break eye contact like the rest of us? Until, that is, you think about it differently, until you begin to see that the experience of looking someone in the eye isn’t the same for everyone, and that maybe for Emily locking eye contact and staring just didn’t give rise to the compulsive demand from a denuded self to look away, to break it off—she wasn’t overcoming anything by staring. She interacted differently. There wasn’t, I began to suspect, the same engagement, the same experience of wave after wave of information and meaning hitting her retina, when she stared at you. Like the mountaineers we think of as courageous. That they may be. But if their amygdalae—parts of the brain central to the operation of the flight instinct—are smaller than those of the rest of us, as research suggests—as Mohsin Khalid mentioned!—then their experience of threats and dangers is different. There’s a popular notion that liars can’t look you in the eyes. But it’s not true. They actually do the opposite even if they might not know they’re doing it. They stare at the person they’re lying to because they need to know if the lies they’re telling are working, if they’re being believed, so that they can better tailor their lies or augment them, even as they speak. So why do we fall for eye contact and take it to confirm honesty, when in fact it could be evidence of duplicity? Does Mother Nature think that a lie believed is a secret kept and that thereby is social harmony preserved?

  I have a meeting at AfDARI tomorrow, said Nicky. With Maurice Touvier.

  Why? asked Emily.

  I’m with Microfinance for Women.

  Emily did not acknowledge recognition—which meant nothing.

  On a fact finder, continued Nicky, just scoping out what’s going on and how we can do something positive.

  Emily held that expression, the air of not being entirely present, even as she looked you in the eyes, and with the suggestion of a smile, faint enough to confuse you and thereby hold you off from asking her if she was listening. It is, I’m inclined to think, the look unskilled diplomats give when they talk to someone they regard as inconsequential.

  Where are you staying? asked Nicky.

  I’m here on the compound.

  That sounds nice.

  When did you arrive? asked Emily, turning to me.

  About half an hour ago.

  When did you arrive in Afghanistan?

  Yesterday.

  Her smile disappeared.

  Where are you staying?

  At AfDARI, I answered.

  And what brings you here? she asked.

  Same thing as Nicky. Fact-finding. Apparently, Afghanistan’s the land of lost facts.

  You’re so cagey, said Nicky to me.

  I think he’s a spy, she added for Emily.

  Yes, I’m with the BS.

  What’s that? asked Nicky.

  The Bangladeshi Secret Service.

  Shouldn’t that be BSS? asked Nicky.

  If I say BS, I mean BS!

  Emily grinned.

  It was nice to meet you, she said to Nicky.

  She turned to me, maintained her smile, and left.

  Sandra returned with the whisky.

  Wasn’t that Emily Hampton-Wyvern? asked Sandra.

  I thought her name was Melissa, said Nicky.

  Emily, said Sandra.

  Are you sure? asked Nicky.

  Maybe it’s just Melissa’s rumor, I said.

  There’s that public school wit, said Nicky.

  Remember what Ermintrude said?

  Sandra was speaking to Nicky.

  Is anyone really called Ermintrude? I asked.

  Why not? replied Sandra.

  I mean apart from cartoon cows.

  Are you calling my friend a cow?

  Are you calling her Ermintrude?

  Fair enough. Our friend at Reuters—Ermintrude—says she gets around.

  Who?

  Emily, replied Sandra.

  Didn’t waste any time hitting on you, added Nicky.

  Thanks, Sandra, I said, raising the glass she’d just handed me.

  Apparently, she’s a spy, said Sandra.

  For whom? I asked.

  For whom? Where’s your smoking jacket? asked Sandra.

  British intelligence, said Nicky.

  I heard CIA, replied Sandra.

  How do you know? I asked.

  Everyone says so, replied Nicky.

  So then what does that mean? I asked.

  It means she can’t be, said Nicky, sounding uncertain, as if she were expecting me to mark her answer.

  It means, said Sandra, she can’t be the kind of spy who relies on people not suspecting she’s a spy.

  Or, I said, the kind of spy who relies on no one thinking that others suspect her of being a spy.

  What kind of spy is that? asked Sandra.

  I don’t know. Maybe there’s no such kind.

  Nicky, you do pick up the strangest men, said Sandra.

  The Queen, I said, raising my glass again.

  We stayed a little longer before Nicky reminded us of the curfew. There wasn’t enough time to drop me off first, so I went back with Nicky, Sandra, and the group.

  The women were staying in a house maintained by Bernice Miller, a vivacious human rights campaigner. Bernice had a beacon of long blond hair and, by all accounts, an irrepressible passion for throwing parties. She’d parachuted into Afghanistan, quite possibly literally, right after the Americans liberated it, and having barely hit the ground she set about publicizing the plight of civilian victims of American aerial bombardment.

  She was hosting the group of women in a large house, but for some reason—perhaps to do with security—all of them, upward of twenty by my reckoning, were to sleep in two large adjoining rooms on a tessellation of mattresses and makeshift cots. I was shown a corner, and a middle-aged Afghani man brought me a couple of blankets. The generator was going to be turned off soon, but everyone looked like they’d had a long day behind them and were ready for bed. I didn’t undress.

  In the morning, I got up and picked my way across the slumbering bodies. As I pulled the door shut behind me, a woman emerged from the bathroom across the landing. She was wearing a bathrobe. Before I could look away, she gave me a wink, as if I’d just been caught in the act. I pulled the door shut.

  Downstairs, there was coffee. Through the windows lay a vast open space where there might once hav
e been buildings but that now lay flattened without trees or brush and on whose far side the new day’s sun was simmering in the cold air. The previous night, we’d driven past the fortress of the American consulate and come to a stop not far from it. I supposed neighboring areas had been cleared, perhaps for expansion, perhaps as a buffer.

  I finished the coffee, pulled out my notebook, tore out a page, and left a note by the coffee machine addressed to Nicky, mischievously thanking her for a memorable night. I stepped out into the courtyard and asked a guard if somebody could arrange a ride to AfDARI.

  When I arrived half an hour later, Suaif, the gatekeeper, let me in.

  Miss Emily, he explained, she came to find you. We told her we did not know where you are.

  From the courtyard, I could see that a window to my room had been broken.

  Is she here?

  She has paid for the window to be fixed.

  Suleiman appeared across the courtyard.

  I heard you were out on the town last night, he said.

  I went to the UN bar.

  Which one?

  What do you mean which one?

  Kabul now proudly boasts dozens of bars.

  Already?

  At least two run by the UN.

  How do locals feel about that?

  The rich love it; the poor are disgusted.

  Inside my room, we stood side by side looking at the broken window.

  I’d kept the curtains drawn on the east side of the room facing onto the courtyard, in order to keep my luggage out of sight. The window on the south side had no curtains. Anyone could have looked in from there. If Emily had asked the gatekeeper to look for me, the man would have known to go around the side of the building and, standing by the black tree, look in through that window.

  I hear there was some drama this morning, said Suleiman.

  Sorry about the window.

  Why did she break it?

  I don’t know. I can’t call her. My cell doesn’t work here, I replied.

  That’s the private sector for you. The UN brought in a multinational and it hasn’t set up roaming, so you have to get a dedicated phone to work on its local network. There’s a phone in the office.

  Had she really come in, I asked myself, knocked on the door and, failing to get a response, smashed a window before asking anyone? Had she really left a roll of Afs to cover the costs? I thought of Suaif, this middle-aged engineering professor reduced to guarding a gate; this proud man who slept in a corner of a room in the AfDARI compound set aside for menial staff; this man in his home away from home, who watches helplessly as a Western woman enters and, by the power vested in her by the UN, ISAF, NATO, the West, and her white skin, smashes in a window without even asking him if there was some other way to get in or look in; this man who then stands stripped of his own authority, what feeble authority it ever was, as she hands him cash—did she bother to count?—to cover the costs and keep him sweet.