Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

Joanna and Philip chuckled. Donald Rumsfeld was loathed in Kabul, and his comically philosophical maxims were the butt of many jokes, but still I had to admit that his distinctions between known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns were insightful and useful.

Hindsight makes it hard to see what was predictable and what wasn’t. What worries me is that there might be questions out there that I haven’t thought to ask. Isn’t that the history of international development and Western beneficence: unknown unknowns invoked to legitimize excuses for what comes to pass when their preponderance should be a restraint on intervention in the future? I’ll tell you this, I added. One question I don’t know the answer to is what the hell I’m doing here in Kabul.

Isn’t there a lot to be done? Afghanistan needs good people, said Philip.

I looked at Emily.

I’m flattered, but it’s not my war. It’s dreadful, I said.

The war itself is over. The Taliban are ousted.

The war has only started.

And the country should be left to rot?

The white man’s burden. How far will he go in the name of helping his inferiors? The country should be left alone.

Philip might have taken offense, but he had the self-restraint not to show it.

You’re in a better position to help than most.

How’s that?

Well, as a Bangladeshi and a Muslim you have a lot more credibility here, a lot more authority.

I don’t know where to begin with that one.

Begin where you like, he replied.

That — his tone — was, I thought, the first show of male aggression, the first display of antlers. He’d held out for quite some time (and much longer than me). This is why men of his class of Britisher make such fine diplomats.

Credibility with whom?

With the Afghans.

Because the new colonials care very deeply what the Afghanis think.

Philip didn’t seem to register my irony.

As for helping the people of Afghanistan, I’m not a missionary, I don’t have the faith in my own ability that you do in yours, faith to do good, faith in the rightness of your cause and the truth of your methods. Missionaries were at the vanguard of the British Empire, many of them genuinely believing they were doing God’s work and never questioning their role in sanctifying the exploitative project. You will know what Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: When the missionaries first came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.

We should get out, I added, and steer clear. I have no place here.

The room became silent. Joanna, sitting on the sofa, had parked her eyes on her knees. Emily was looking at Joanna, perhaps, I thought, to apologize. Philip, the thoroughgoing Englishman, pretended that nothing had happened, and for that I was grateful. I had become carried away. Even in my agitated state it was evident to me that anger was taking over my bearing, and it alarmed me. Something was gathering in me, as if armies had been summoned from all corners and the ground bore the first tremors of their approach. Now I might call them armies of injustice, humiliation, and defeat, but at the time I felt them as only the beginning of a kind of end.

I should be getting back to AfDARI, I said, glancing at my watch.

Good grief, said Philip. You’d better get going.

Take something for your driver — we should have sent him something to eat, said Joanna.

I don’t have a driver.

You haven’t come by car?

One of the AfDARI cars dropped me off.

I thought he’d go back with Maurice, said Emily.

Joanna and Philip looked at each other.

You won’t make curfew, said Joanna.

Really? asked Emily.

You’ll have to stay here, continued Joanna. We’ll make a bed of sorts.

I’m sorry, I said feebly. I rather thought I might get a lift back from one of the cars parked outside.

The drivers will be gone now, said Philip.

I am sorry.

Not to worry, piped Joanna cheerily, plenty of room here.

* * *

I stayed the night in that very room. Philip left for his quarters in another building on the compound. Made up for me was a bed of sofa cushions on the floor, next to Emily’s bed. Joanna had the other single bed. We all went about things quietly.

I prayed to fall asleep quickly. I couldn’t bear the thought of lying awake in this space, after an awkward conversation like that, and with Emily only an arm’s reach away. When Joanna pulled the sofa cushions onto the floor, had she been guided by some intuition to set them close to Emily’s bed? I was tired and sleep came quickly. It wasn’t a heavy sleep but a familiar shallow slumber, as if a reluctance held me from wading into the depths of unconscious life. Dreams came, vague forms, actions and actors, all with insufficient density to be remembered. And then the loneliness. That can easily be remembered in the dream state, a feeling of loneliness and a distance from everything I could ever hope to long for. You ask me if I loved her. And I tell you so many things but never answer the question because I cannot see how the category applies and still less because that word is — what is it Shelley said? — too often profaned. But this I can tell you: That night a purity of feeling came from time to time, the feeling that was there whenever a moment closed around us, a suspended moment in which I could sustain the belief that we were alone, that our attention was fully given to each other. I reached up to Emily in the darkness. This hand that is mine, that mediates so much of what goes on between me and the world, coiled under her blankets and, after first touching her back, came to rest on her waist, from where it moved along a short arc and when it reached her hips, it gently pulled at her.

She, whom I had known always to fall asleep quickly and deeply, was still there, still there with me, as if we two were standing on the shores of sleep, a long, wide beach of white sand. She turned to face me, bringing herself closer by rolling over, and raised her hand to my cheek.

There was no darkness. Flimsy sheets for drapes bled light from the floodlit compound and slivers of illumination formed geometric shapes on the walls and high ceiling of the room. The eyes needed no adjustment in order to see.

* * *

I have thought of Zafar as a generous human being, and though that opinion has not fundamentally changed, what I perceived then was another side to him. In his dealings with people in Kabul, on his own account, there was belligerence and willful obtuseness. I rather think, for instance, that this chap Philip had meant that Afghans would regard him as Bangladeshi and that this very fact would put Zafar at an advantage. Which had been suggested, after all, in Zafar’s own description of his exchanges with Suleiman. It seems to me that in Kabul he was spoiling for a fight. When Emily mentioned that Philip went to Winchester, Zafar’s willful misinterpretation— He’s not here? — is telling. It seems quite plausible to me that Emily had perceived Zafar’s interest in people’s backgrounds, which, again, is borne out by his own account. Did not the Pakistani general tell him to get over his infatuation with English public schools?

* * *

In the morning, when I arrived at AfDARI, I buttonholed Suaif at the gate.

Do you think you could ask Suleiman if he has a moment to speak to me in my room?

A few minutes later Suleiman appeared. I had packed my bag.

Can you get me on a flight out of here?

Suleiman glanced at my carry-on. He beckoned to me.

Where do you need to go?

Islamabad or U.A.E.

You’re ready to go now?

Yes. We can talk later.