Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

I’ve heard it said that a sign a person is in shock is that he or she fixates on something trivial. The woman who’s just heard her husband was caught up in a fatal traffic accident becomes obsessed with the lack of milk in the house, even when the police officer has said he takes his coffee black. I cannot claim I was in shock: I was too possessed of my faculties of reason for that, too much already concerned with precisely when various things had happened. Besides, to claim shock would be too cheap and easy an excuse for what was to come. Certainly, if I had been a better man, I would have been thinking then of Crane, making more of an effort to find him, I would have looked upon the carnage and reflected on man’s inhumanity to man and all the rest of it. But instead, shock or no shock, my mind had fixed on a problem of timing. Could it really be that I had escaped certain death, perhaps by a matter of minutes, simply because I had waited for Emily, and Emily had been late? She knew I was already in Kabul. Flights in and out were infrequent, and when she left me in Islamabad, I was, as far as she knew, getting the next day’s flight. How did she know I was already here? And did she know more? Did she … did she know about the bomb? How could she? Or was it just her tardiness that had saved me? The very thing that I had detested, the quality of her character that caused me so much anguish, the plain disrespect in missing the appointed time, time and time again, and without a word of explanation let alone apology. I always hated myself for waiting, hated myself for not making something of having waited. Until then, it had left me feeling sullied, ashamed instead of being angry with her. And now I was not prepared to accept that she had dillydallied and therefore I had lived. Not prepared to accept that a combination of her lack of respect and my self-demeaning waiting could have saved my life. At that moment, I would sooner have accepted that she’d had some conscious hand in it all. And because my mind had fixed on her responsibility, it had grasped that timing, as in all things, was of the essence. What took place and when? Who knew what when? A chain of events leading back to what?

I approached a soldier to ask what time the bombing had happened, but he didn’t seem to understand.

Get back! he replied, an American. He added something in fragmentary Pashto before repeating the English slowly.

My friend is in there, I shouted.

I don’t care if your mother is in there. Get back! he yelled, this time gesturing with his assault rifle.

* * *

Back at AfDARI, I asked Suaif if anyone had asked for me or if anyone had left a message with him.

Miss Emily? asked Suaif.

Anyone.

No, replied Suaif.

She didn’t show up?

Please?

She didn’t come here?

No, he replied.

Suaif’s answer had me wondering if perhaps Emily had had no intention of showing up. Could it be that all she’d wanted by sending me the message was to delay my going to the café? And there, once more, I was making allowances for her. Even then.

Is there a phone in the office? I asked.

Maybe she called, he responded.

Is there a phone in the office?

Yes.

Is there another phone here in AfDARI?

No.

I crossed the courtyard and entered the AfDARI building. The door to Maurice’s office was shut. I knocked but there was no answer. I walked in to find Maurice and the woman he’d been screwing. She was putting on her coat.

Do you mind? snapped Maurice.

No, I don’t. Is this your handwriting? I asked him, showing him the note about Emily coming over.

I beg your pardon.

Is this your handwriting? I repeated. I was furious with this man, to a degree that cannot be explained by the little that I knew of him. What I was after was whether there was anything else in the exchange between him and Emily that wasn’t written down, anything that could help me figure out what had happened, and how it was that I’d managed to evade the bombing by minutes.

Get out, shouted the Frenchman, raising his hand and pointing to the door.

I gripped the man’s hand and pushed it back on the wrist. My fingers interlocked with his, and even in those circumstances, or because of them, it felt strangely intimate. Maurice let out a yelp and his knees buckled as I pushed his hand back past his shoulder and with my free hand pulled his elbow toward me. With his other hand he gripped the edge of the desk to stop himself from going over altogether.

I pulled open a drawer, rummaged about, took out a notebook, opened it, and held it at an angle to the light from the window. The message from Emily was written on the same notebook.

Who called? I asked Maurice.

The woman made to move for the door.

Did you expect me? I asked, turning to her.

I repeated, Did you expect me?

No, she replied meekly.

Are you expecting the man standing outside?

The woman shook her head but otherwise didn’t move. She wasn’t going anywhere now.

I asked Maurice: Who called you?

Emily, he replied.

On your own line?

We have only one line.

Cell phone?

The local network is disabled for everyone except UNAMA staff.

Satphone?

We don’t have one.

What did she say?

Exactly what I wrote.

Do I seem like someone who’s going to wait while you piss about? What did she say?

I pushed his hand. He let out a squeal of pain. Maurice, this feeble man, had become the object of my anger. Isn’t that the way — our emotions from one thing attach to the next? Think of those pop-science articles in magazines, where the journalist first tells you about the scientist as a child, the irresistibly endearing little boy or girl, so that a page later you find yourself first rooting for the adult and then, irrelevantly, his or her ideas. I was angry all right, but in the end perhaps Maurice’s only mistake was to be present. I was not prepared to accept that any part of everything that had happened was accident or without someone’s design. Remember that Maurice had sometimes taken receipt of parcels and envelopes meant for Crane. Or so Suleiman had told me. Remember, too, that there was only one phone at AfDARI, as Suaif had told me, and that it was in Maurice’s office. So what had Emily and he exchanged on the phone when she left her message? Something that might shed the smallest light on what had happened? Most important of all, I wanted to hear something that would confirm that it wasn’t Emily’s mere lateness, regular, predictable Emily tardiness, that had saved my life. It had to be something more than that, surely. Not the cause of the revulsion I felt toward myself for having endured all the disrespect.

I told you what she said, he replied.

When did you take the message?

I don’t know. Nine thirty, maybe a little later. I had the boy take it over to you right away.

How, I asked myself, did Emily know I was already in Kabul? As far as she knew, I thought, I wasn’t due until the afternoon, when the UN flight would come in. And why did she ask me to wait for her? Did she know I was going out, going somewhere in particular, even? Or was she asking me to wait there only in case I had plans to leave Kabul?

What do you know about the explosion this morning? I asked Maurice.

What do you mean?

What time did it happen?

I don’t know. Sometime this morning.

I picked up the picture of his wife and child and tossed it at his chest. I left, satisfied that Maurice was only an idiot ruled by his groin.

* * *

Back at the gate, I asked Suaif what time he’d heard about the explosion in the city center.

This morning.

Can you be more precise? I set off at ten forty-five. You told me about it then.

I’m not sure.