Authors: Amber Green
They studied Oscar's face and withheld comment but pressed halwah and candied fruit into his hand.
They pieced together two cracked, scribbled-upon, stained, torn maps and argued over which roads to Pekhawar, other than the well-patrolled highway, were truckworthy. Then they traced out the horse trails that cut far more than half the distance of the truck's best routes. I explained the map to Oscar.
His eyes glittered in the flickering light. A little after that, when consensus had been reached but not everyone had tired of chewing the possibilities, Oscar pointedly yawned. I took the hint and said we must leave early to intercept the kafir traitor.
My grandfather stood, as did the uncles and older cousins. I realized they were going inside, to bed, and remembered the seeds. “Wait, please, Grandfather. I have a gift for the mothers.” I thought of round seeds getting dropped on the ground and trampled. “Could someone please bring some flat dishes or school slates with raised rims?"
They brought slates like I'd learned to write and do my math on. The men jostled about me, exclaiming as I poured the seeds from each twist of paper onto a schoolboy's slate and carefully caught any round one that tried to roll toward the edge. The sunflowers were admired. The okra, lentils, and beans were received with respect but not admired. The three packets that might be tomatoes or peppers were discussed with animation. I took it the crops hadn't been good in the last few years. The tiny black seeds were fingered and speculated over. Perhaps they were something-something, perhaps something else—the words were ones that brought no memory or image to my mind. Kam Ali cried aloud over the two groups of watermelon seeds and a dozen seeds that might be cucumber but inshallah might be cantaloupe. All their melons had been lost in two consecutive unlucky years, and none of their wives or children had tasted such luxuries since then.
Amid the pushing and exclamations, it occurred that I should have brought much larger quantities to avoid strife over the division of scarce supplies. How many hills could a dozen seeds plant, after all? Then, with relief, I remembered that this was specifically not my problem. My duty ended when I gave the seeds to my grandmother, the senior mother. She or whoever she designated would divide them as the women saw fit, according to rules no man had a right to ask about.
The seeds were rewrapped with a gratifying reverence and were taken inside. I wasn't invited to take them, but maybe that was because Oscar couldn't be allowed indoors. Seeing my grandmother again, after all these years, would have been nice. But asking to see her or asking why I couldn't would be insufferably rude.
Maybe there would be other visits, other chances.
Oscar and I were given a large string bed with thick, clean fleeces to go under us and blankets to go over. Shivering from our bath, we climbed in with Kam Ali—whose wife was pregnant yet again—snuggled between us.
I slept fitfully, waking here and there to hear Kam Ali talking about one of my childhood escapades. Or Hamid's. I was pretty sure the toad in Grandfather's bed was Hamid's trick.
I wondered a few times, irritably, why Oscar would want to lose sleep listening to such crap. Eventually, though, I realized Oscar was asleep. I tickled my cousin's eyelash, but it didn't so much as flutter. He'd been sleep-talking.
I smiled. No wonder his wife wanted him out here, sleeping in the hujra with the unmarried men. I rolled him over to point his voice toward the tree trunk and so I could take the middle spot, and slept wedged between his back and Oscar's.
Kam Ali and his oldest son, age twelve, went with us. So did my Uncle Abdallah, who told me he owed his right leg, if not his life, to my father's willingness to risk his own life and two fine horses carrying him to the big hospital in Jalalabad.
Abdallah brought his nephew Short Omar, whose father and older brothers had all been killed with Hamid. Short Omar plainly had Down syndrome. Oscar gave several hard looks, passing from Omar to me, as we packed our saddlebags in the lamplight. I shrugged. If he couldn't function, no one would have proposed including him.
We left well before dawn, leaving behind Oscar's prized rifle because without ammo it was an expensive and not particularly ergonomic club. We carried locally made Kalashnikovs instead and a hundred rounds each. We wore the local shalwar kamiz civilian uniform.
We rode hard in the moonlight, recklessly. Given the condition of the truck they'd taken, the diminished size of its often-repaired petrol tank, the condition of the roads, and the location of supplies along the way, my uncle was sure he could plot Tango's route and his schedule for arriving at each point along the way. He said there would be one last chance to catch the man. I believed him.
The sun rose. We stopped at a hujra where Abdallah was known and traded out horses with no more than ten words of conversation. Badal is a potent word. Nobody wanted to delay a lascar for blood vengeance. They'd hear the story later, inshallah.
We traded horses again at noon and again an hour later. Lunch was the same as breakfast, jerky and gobs of mutton tallow chewed in the saddle. That fourth set of horses had to last us until late afternoon when we finally stopped to eat and rest, alhamdulillah.
Trying to dismount, I fell out of the saddle. Oscar caught me. “Ass numb?"
"Totally. And I am not the least bit sarcastic.” I grinned wryly at Abdallah and Ali, who looked concerned. “I have not ridden so before. You might have to beat me with a thorn branch to keep me moving at this pace."
"Badal,” Kam Ali reminded me, his tone worried.
I nodded. “Nothing else matters until it is khallas."
At dusk, we reached a highway. There Abdallah whipped out three cell phones and checked one. “Three bars. This is enough."
He passed me a cell phone and passed Kam Ali another. “We two will hide here and call if they come. Kam Ali, cut across. Find a lookout over the intersection by the hawk's shadow's shrine. Zarak, you must ride two kilometers north on this road, to where it merges with two others. If I call you to say he is on the high road, he will come there. If Ali calls you to say he is on the low road, hurry along the northernmost track to the bomb crater deep enough to swallow two horses, and then cut due east to a bridge by a shrine. He must come by there."
I checked my phone, which unsurprisingly had three bars as well. “What's your number?"
He pointed to the speed dial interface. “I have number one. Ali has number two. You have number three. Hurry to find a good place before full dark. Sleep well. They will probably come soon after dawn."
I caught another hard look from Oscar.
Yes, Oscar. The fact he's snapping out orders instead of spending two hours building a consensus probably does mean my Uncle Abdallah has military training, which probably does mean he's hard-core Taliban. But for this mission he's my uncle. Ben's uncle. We ride for badal.
Oscar found a shelf cave and used his vest to sweep debris and unfriendly crawlers out of the wind-sheltered part. We didn't build a fire, just got naked together with sheepskins piled over and under us and the horses tethered between us and the mountainside. The moon rose slowly.
Oscar wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me closer, nudging me with his hard cock. “I have some tallow. Body heat should turn it into the slickest stuff you'd want. Unless you'd rather concentrate on the job at hand."
That self-containment was not Pakhtun. We had, centuries ago, named ourselves Afghani, which roughly translates as the Rowdy Bunch. That name didn't suit either me or Oscar. Yet—Afghan or not—he had led me back to my Pakhtun core, and I had found its echo in him.
We are the Desert People
, he'd said.
Warriors
. And, for the night, this warrior was mine.
I leaned briefly against him, then looked out over the shelf of rock, over the road below. Far in the distance, possibly on the other side of the river, I saw a tiny fire. If we could see through stone, we would be able to look in the opposite direction through our mountain to the broad Swat Valley, where there were too many roads, too many people, and too few mountainsides from which to spring an ambush. Tango could go to Pekhawar or past it to the military base at Abbottabad. Or he could stop short at too many potential places to even guess at. Too many options. “We have to stop him here."
"Inshallah."
We laughed together. It wasn't funny. It was just good to have someone understand me. “I'd love to use that tallow on you, Oscar, but I'm so tired I don't even know if I could get it up."
He nuzzled my ear. “All you have to do is spread out and let me play."
I thought of wrestling him for it. But he'd win. Unless, of course, I injured him. But what fun would that be? Though the thought of wrestling had sure warmed up my crotch. My dick wasn't exactly standing up, but it wasn't just lying there either.
He rolled something between his hands. “Be glad I've been softening it."
I pried apart his hands and the lanolin smell of mutton tallow hit me. “Do you know how long that smell will stay in your skin?"
"I'll deal with it.” He brushed his chin, still not whiskery, against my bristle. “Roll over."
"You ever do it face to face?"
"Why would I want to do that?"
Well, if we had light, so I could see your face as you came
. I shook my head. We didn't have a lot of moonlight, and moonlight isn't a whole lot by itself.
He kissed my shoulder. I flinched. He held me. “Zu?"
"I'm not used to being kissed."
"You got an objection to it?"
No. It was just strange. I shook my head.
He kissed my neck, gently but with lots of tongue, biting the edges of my beard. “I love the way you smell."
He was crazy. I'd been riding all day since my last bath, and I hadn't worn deodorant since a couple of baths ago.
He kissed the base of my throat, then used his head to push me over on my back and kissed the base of my sternum. I knotted my hand in his hair. “Wait."
"What?"
"You don't have to blow me to get me to spread my cheeks for you."
"Good.” He turned his head and kissed my cock, which bounced against his cheek. “Because I'm not sure I'll be any good at this, and I'd hate for my chances to ride on it."
I'd never heard of a bad blowjob except in a joke. Oscar's wasn't a joke. He was surprisingly gentle, and careful with his teeth. It took a long time, given how tired I was, but he was patient. And, by the time I came, the tallow bar in my ass had melted to liquid.
I rolled over sluggishly, inviting him with a spread.
"I hope you don't expect this to last long,” he muttered.
I didn't expect anything. I was still floating warmly, free of thought or calculation of any sort.
He prodded, prodded harder, stretching me right out of my warm floatiness, and slid in with a burn-inducing abruptness.
It seemed to surprise him too. “Whoa!"
"Whoa,” I whispered into the fleece.
"What?"
"Go, man. Go."
He did, short-stroking as if the blowjob had tuned his nerves and gotten him halfway there, more like fucking than foreplay. In just a few moments he went rigid, then convulsed against me. “Bravo!"
I lay there, blinking in the dark, my brother's name echoing off the rocks in my head. No wonder he didn't want to do it face-to-face. Not where he might catch any glimpse of my hawk face instead of Ben's smooth, handsome features.
It served me right. Thinking like a romantic. Not like a warrior.
I turned over, shoving him off me, and climbed to another rock. I knelt for a moment and then stood. Just me and the biting wind and the ice-crystal stars. I let the wind blow through me, scour me out, make me a warrior. Only a warrior.
"Zu?"
I looked down at him, his worried face. Did he even know what he'd said?
It didn't matter. I would use his warmth to get through the night well rested. I would use his strength and his warrior's prowess tomorrow. Badal. Only badal.
And if I didn't have to worry about hiding Oscar's face from Tango, I'd wipe my ass with his shemagh.
I stood before the TV and watched, mashallah, as the Shuravi left my home. I wept with the mujahidin on the screen and with them cried aloud my gratitude. Mashallah, mashallah!
Then I turned to practicalities. “Now we can go home."
"Use your English, Ricky,” my mother's father chided, holding his finger in place on his magazine page. He looked expectantly over the rims of his glasses.
"My name is Zarak!"
Omar clutched his new Game Boy against his chest and looked from one of us to the other. “What is wrong?"
"English!"
I took a deep breath, trying to think of English words for planting barley, moving flocks to summer pasture. After the massacre, my khel would need every man's hand. In the end, I could only shrug and use the child's English I knew. “It's time to go home."
"You
are
home, Ricky. Get used to it."
I turned back to the television. “My name is Zarak."
Omar tugged my sleeve. “We must obey him, Ricky."
I punched him hard. “He is a kafir! We must go
home
."
My mother's father stood, roaring. “
Time out
! Time out for you, you little punk! See if I let you watch any more TV for a
week
!"
Showing respect to my mother's father took a struggle in the best of times. He smoked tobacco without shame, and ate pork without being driven by hunger to the unclean meat. He drank wine with dinner once or twice a week. He played piano in mixed company. He
taught
piano, to male and female alike. And he had allowed his oldest daughter to leave his home to seek her own husband.
But the point remained that I would need airplane tickets to get us all home. So I dedicated myself to earning the money for those tickets.
The cell phone woke me up. Abdallah's voice. “Bismillah, he comes! Expect him in three or four minutes. Our truck is being pulled by another truck."