In the Light of What We Know: A Novel

by Zia Haider Rahman

  You spoke to her?

  Just before you came in.

  We’ll all see her grandmother tomorrow. I’ll arrange it now.

  Penelope had no need to hear anything more and left the room. I heard her climb the stairs. She preferred to make telephone calls from the study.

  Late in the evening, Penelope and I drove out to RAF Brize Norton. Emily was apparently hitching a ride on a military transport plane. It was already late and we were both tired, so we did not talk much on the drive.

  I felt a familiar anxiety about seeing Emily again, the fear of seeing her disposition changed, the fear that she would do or say something that would make me question her sincerity. I want to be able to say that there was another source of anxiety, something more noble for its concern with matters outside myself, but that would be a lie on every front. When I sat in the car in silence, my mind did indeed wander in a way that on its face had little to do with the thing between Emily and me, but only on its face. Love and politics had been some time in the convergence.

  Emily was not an instrument of the military intervention, not a stated one, that is, not there in the service of the military aims of the invading forces. So what then to think of her hopping a ride on an RAF plane? Yet what is military intervention without the promise of reconstruction? What do we make of taking with one hand if there’s a promise that the other is readying to give? And then who is in the service of whom?

  When we arrived at Brize Norton, a soldier at the gate directed us to the Control of Entry building. There I explained to another soldier that I did not have my passport or my driver’s license with me, hoping to avoid the ignominies of security checking that I imagined attended going beyond this point. He said I could remain on the air base and wait in that room but I would have to undergo a search first. I was led away into another room, where an official in civilian clothes searched me, more methodically than I’ve been searched at civilian airports, I might add. I returned to the waiting room, where Penelope was still in her seat. I didn’t ask if she’d been searched, too.

  Emily walked in, smiling at us both. Her shoulders rose as she raised her arms and wrapped them around my neck.

  * * *

  The following day, the Sunday, we visited her grandmother.

  We should tell her about the engagement before she hears from someone else, said Penelope.

  Of course, Mother.

  We’ll go now.

  Shouldn’t we arrange a time? Not appear unannounced, I mean.

  She’s your grandmother, dear, not the Lord Chancellor.

  Will she not be at church?

  Evidently Penelope had not told her that she’d already shared the news with her grandmother. I felt a little uncomfortable about being conscripted into the pretense, however benign Penelope might think it was.

  She’s not going to church today, darling. Now let’s get a move on.

  Emily was silent on the drive and again I felt a gulf opening up.

  * * *

  Congratulations. I’m delighted to hear the wonderful news, said the good baroness, not letting on that she already knew.

  If she had a formidable reputation as a stalwart of Conservative politicians, if she had merited the sobriquet “the Dragon,” then all that was for a persona outside her home, as far as I could tell. With me she was the model of a charming grandmother, pleased by the news of her granddaughter’s engagement. There was nothing in her bearing toward me but good manners and apparent friendliness. What more can we ask for? It was a damn sight more, I thought, than my parents would show to Emily.

  Her husband, Emily’s grandfather, sat in an armchair, staring at us with a broad smile. I’d met him once before, soon after Emily and I started seeing other. He’d dropped in on Penelope on his own. Then he had been lucid, if a little bit the image of an old man most comfortable in the memories of his youth. But in a few years, he had deteriorated sharply, dementia plundering his brain, leaving him in this state of passive marvel. He said nothing other than to ask if I’d come by car. When he asked the third time, I smiled and I suppose everyone else took my smile for a sign of sympathy. I confess that I was smiling because the thought crossed my mind of giving him a different answer.

  I don’t suppose you’ve set a date yet, the baroness asked, looking at Emily and me.

  There are a few obstacles still, I replied.

  The moment I said it, I thought it a rather churlish thing to say and wanted to take it back.

  Obstacles are meant to be overcome, she said cheerfully. She offered tea.

  * * *

  That evening, as I lay in bed with Emily, in those few moments of stillness before we fall asleep, when a double bed might widen and the sudden loneliness accommodate our private thoughts, I remembered that Robin had never congratulated me. He had mentioned trust and respect, but had he meant to share an observation? Did he intend to mean something specific, that I did not trust Emily and that Emily did not respect me? I looked at Emily next to me, already fast asleep.

  She wanted to go back to Kabul in two days, and she wanted me to come with her, to show off her new fiancé, she’d said. And again, there was something about her of the girl who’d looked forward to engagement and wedding and all the ritual. Yet even as I regarded her, with infinite tenderness—my fiancée, my wife-to-be—part of me suspected I would have to wait some time for her to make it down the length of the aisle. I had waited for Emily so many times, waited for her to show up, waited for an explanation of why she was late, waited and waited. The easy analysis is that all of it had really been waiting to get married, but I think now that what I had been waiting for was for Emily to change. Does respect require us to take our lovers as they are? Take them or leave them?

  Might Robin have been right after all, not in the thesis that what Emily as a person needed was someone to rein her in—a Scottish laird—but that if she was to have a successful marriage, it would have to be with someone who did so rein her in? It seems, though, that for many of our age a successful marriage is not the highest priority. Don’t you think?

  21

  On Formally Undecidable Propositions or Waiting

  Rape of woman or man.

  (1) It is an offence for a man to rape a woman or another man.

  (2) A man commits rape if—

  (a) he has sexual intercourse with a person (whether vaginal or anal) who at the time of the intercourse does not consent to it; and

  (b) at the time he knows that the person does not consent to the intercourse or is reckless as to whether that person consents to it.

  —Section 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956, England

  I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times …

  In life after life, in age after age forever.

  —Rabindranath Tagore, “Unending Love,” translated by William Radice

  To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. It is one of the hardest to define.

  —Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, translated by Arthur Wills

  The story of Bangladesh was unique in one respect. For the first time in history the rape of women in war, and the complex aftermath of mass assault, received serious international attention. The desperate need of Sheik Mujibur Rahman’s government for international sympathy and financial aid was part of the reason; a new feminist consciousness that encompassed rape as a political issue and a growing, practical acceptance of abortion as a solution to unwanted pregnancy were contributing factors of critical importance. And so an obscure war in an obscure corner of the globe, to Western eyes, provided the setting for an examination of the “unspeakable” crime. For once, the particular terror of unarmed women facing armed men had a full hearing.

  —Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape

  If I now regard much of Zafar’s story as a kind of defense, this understanding came only after I’d heard him through, and, even then, only after I turned it all over in my mind. Un
like the courtroom trial, where a charge is laid out in the beginning, it seems to me that Zafar held off for as long as he could what exactly this defense was for. But of course the moment had to come eventually.

  As for judging the effectiveness of his case, I do not feel equal to the task, not because we all live in glass houses, but because I am implicated. Indeed, it may be that the reason I view our conversations as a search for absolution, an invitation to a reckoning, is that I have a hand in it all, and I find myself asking: How far into the consequences of an act can one be held responsible? How much do other causes relieve one of one’s part? Or am I, as Zafar might say, the cellist who tries to hide his error behind the violinist’s?

  * * *

  The news reports of Crane’s death were not as extensive as those coming two years later, in 2004, of the death of Pat Tillman, who, after 9/11, left a career in professional football to join the U.S. Army.

  According to the army’s official version in the immediate aftermath, Tillman was killed in an ambush outside of the village of Sperah about twenty-five miles southwest of Khost, near the Pakistan border. It later emerged that Tillman had actually been killed by so-called friendly fire, a fact that U.S. officials had knowingly suppressed.

  Some time before his own death, Crane had left the Marines—that much I’d gathered from the reports. But what the newspapers did not explain was what he was doing in Afghanistan. It turns out that Crane, by his own word, as reported by Zafar, had joined a private military contractor and was even working toward starting his own outfit. The Crane I knew certainly had the character for that sort of business, but what Zafar has told me about the circumstances leading to Crane’s death leaves me unsure of what Crane was actually doing. Moreover, even after taking in the whole of Zafar’s story, I still have doubts about what Zafar’s role had been.

  Before returning to Kabul, Zafar first flew to Islamabad with Emily. When they emerged from customs, he explained, Emily went off to talk to a UN official stationed inside the airport about UN flights to Kabul. In the few minutes she stepped away, said Zafar, Mohsin Khalid, the colonel’s nephew and K2 mountaineer, appeared by my side, as if materializing from nowhere.

  Should you need to stay in Islamabad, explained Khalid, the colonel would be delighted to host you again. Otherwise, if you wish, we can arrange for you to take a seat on one of the daily military flights to Kabul. There’s one in two hours. You’ll be in Kabul by one p.m.

  Before I could thank him for the offer of help, Khalid had turned and left.

  When Emily returned, she told me that there was only one seat on the UN flight and that the next scheduled flight was for the following day. Our plan—which was Emily’s plan, since she had insisted on it—was to arrive in Kabul together and for her to introduce me to the people she worked with as her fiancé. But at Islamabad airport, after taking a few calls, she evidently resolved to get to Kabul quickly and so take the only seat. She suggested I take the following day’s plane.

  At Bagram air base,* I was met on the tarmac by an American soldier who said he had orders to take me to AfDARI.

  From whom? I asked.

  Pardon me, sir?

  Who gave you the orders?

  My superior, sir.

  Do you take orders from anyone else?

  I’m sorry, sir?

  Do you know who I am?

  No, sir.

  Let’s go.

  It was just as well the soldier and I passed the journey without exchanging another word. The soldier needed all the focus he could get his hands on: Military personnel had orders to avoid slowing at road junctions and never to stop. The driving was crazy.

  At AfDARI, the soldier barely let me step out before speeding off.

  Inside I was greeted by Suaif. I asked after his family, in particular his boy, before being pointed toward the old room in the guesthouse.

  Suleiman was already there.

  How have you been? I asked.

  I’m fine. I have the camera. You have a plan, don’t you?

  I’m fine, too, I said, picking the edge of the curtain to look out the window. Let’s go for a walk, I added. I like walking.

  Outside the gates, Suleiman walked briskly. He led the way. We crossed the road, reached the end of the block, and turned the corner before speaking again.

  Suleiman was agitated. He spoke about his country, his beloved country, how it was being ruined and there was no way forward for people like him. He spoke with such animation and energy, and with such apparent disregard for maintaining a continuity of exposition, that I even asked myself if his mental faculties had not somehow been bent. When I recalled the Suleiman I had left scarcely one week earlier, the voice of the young man before me seemed to belong to another. Yet even so, I believed I had the impression of catching a glance—if that is the right way to describe the fleeting detection of certain sounds and gestures—of how that young man might have been transformed. I did not follow everything he said, but I had the sense of someone who was in the throes of seeing the world in a new way, one who might once have made observations, drily, without emotion, with cold disregard for meaning, but who having now surveyed the amassed data was forced into certain conclusions, raging conclusions that could not be ignored, discounted, or minimized.

  Was an envelope delivered today? I interjected.

  You mean for Crane?

  I do.

  No.

  The jeep didn’t come?

  No.

  Are you sure you didn’t miss it?

  It didn’t come—or it hasn’t come yet. It’s two hours overdue.

  That’s unusual, right?

  Right.

  And Crane?

  He’s not been here.

  Tell me something. Does the jeep come from the same direction?

  I don’t know where it comes from.

  Does it come from the east or the west? When it stops outside the gate, which way does it point?

  It points in the direction away from Suaif’s sentry box.

  Always?

  Always.

  And Crane’s car?

  Land Cruiser.

  Where does he park?

  By the gate.

  Right outside?

  A little farther on.

  Even farther away from the sentry box?

  Yes.

  Always?

  Yes.

  Pointing away from Suaif’s sentry box?

  Yes.

  Always?

  Yes.

  Good.

  Why do you always ask this question? You did it last time also.

  What question?

  Always?

  Always what?

  Why do you always ask always?

  I’m trying to figure out what can we rely on.

  I see, he said.

  But Suleiman didn’t look like he’d understood.

  Epistemology without whisky is like a fish without a bicycle, I added.

  Excuse me?

  Is Maurice here?

  You mean right now?

  I nodded.

  He’s out but he’ll be back later this afternoon.

  Good. Where’s the driver?

  Mr. Maurice’s driver, he’s with Mr. Maurice.

  But I saw a car in the courtyard?

  AfDARI has three.

  Is there anyone else who drives?

  There’s another driver.

  He’s here?

  Yes.

  Good.

  Suleiman listened carefully as I explained how we would get him a few minutes to see and, if possible, photograph the documents in the next delivery for Crane. Suleiman had mentioned that sometimes the men in the jeep handed him the parcel but only when they saw that Crane was already there at AfDARI. The plan involved getting the men to see Crane but preventing Crane from seeing the jeep, and then counting on the men handing the documents to Suleiman. The gate was central to all this, and Suleiman would have to get a driver to move toward it at a critical moment
in order to force the jeep to move aside and out of view of Crane. If the jeep moved forward, however, the driver would still be able to see Crane side on, provided I managed to get Crane to come with me to the guesthouse. Crane, however, wouldn’t be able to see them without turning around. Timing was everything.

  When I finished, so as to confirm we were on the same page, I had Suleiman explain everything back to me.

  * * *

  I waited for Crane on the veranda outside the AfDARI office. The plan might not work if Maurice arrived before Crane; it wouldn’t work if Crane arrived at the same time as the jeep; in fact, there were umpteen ways it wouldn’t work and only one way it would. I looked at my watch before opening the copy of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American I had brought with me and settled in for the wait.

  Fourteen minutes later, Crane’s voice—Let me in, old man!—came booming across the courtyard over the sound of traffic behind him. The gate gave out a screech as it was opened and shut.

  From the steps of the veranda, I beckoned Crane to come over.

  Hello, big Z. How are you? Crane looked genuinely pleased to see me.

  Just fine. And you?

  His handshake nearly ripped my arm off.

  Spiffing. Isn’t that what you Brits say? Hey, Sully buddy!

  Crane gave Suleiman a thumping pat on the back.

  Do you think we could get some tea? I asked Suleiman, who’d appeared on cue.

  And, turning to Crane, Unless you want a beer?

  You guys have beer? Crane asked Suleiman.

  We don’t, replied Suleiman.

  Forgive my faux pas, I said to Suleiman. Tea’s fine.

  Suleiman left.

  We Brits, I added for Crane, are known to drink a cup of tea from time to time.

  There’s that British humor again. You guys kill me.

  Crane, there’s a rather serious matter I need to discuss with you.

  Oh, yes?

  Why don’t we sit down? I suggested.

  Tell me what you know about Bagram, I said to him.

  Why? What are you hearing?

  I’m supposed to meet up with the UN rapporteur in a couple of days, and I still haven’t got any word from them about when I can visit.

  What I didn’t tell Crane was that since the last time I was in Kabul I hadn’t made any further effort to contact them. I needed to keep Crane waiting.