Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

Whose side were they each on? The question only makes sense if there are sides to speak of. The West does not care to be reminded, over and over, that the Americans supported jihadis in the war against Soviet occupation. But if my enemy’s enemy is my friend, what is the quality of a friendship founded on common hatred? What have we each learned about the other, when all we need to know is that we share a hatred? Think of two people who don’t know each other very well, when their conversation chances upon a book, a rich and expansive book they both love. They become animated and bear a sudden goodwill toward each other, as if each is thinking, You see the world the way I do. Yet no two people ever feel the same way when stumbling on a book they both dislike. The conversation soon moves on.

In the mess of Central Asia there are as many sides as there are opportunities to steal a march. There are no sides to tell us who is doing what, for whom, and why. There are only exigencies, strategies, short-term objectives, at the level of governments, regions, clans, families, and individuals: fractals of interests, overlapping here, mutually exclusive there, and sometimes coinciding. No sides. Which should not surprise us. After all, we both know that good people do bad things, that friends will hurt you, and that everyone is from first to last on his own side.

By the end of the flight, a theory of what had happened had formed in my mind, but it was only after meeting the colonel again that its features would be confirmed.

* * *

It’s a pleasure to see you again, my boy. How are you?

Good afternoon, Colonel.

The colonel was there at Islamabad airport. During the flight, I’d plugged Suleiman’s flash drive into my laptop and discovered, as I expected, that it was blank.

I trust the flight was agreeable, he said.

Fine. Those envelopes. They didn’t contain money, did they? I asked him right away.

Correct.

Military plans?

Close.

Bogus plans intended to draw Taliban action somewhere specific. You’re going to set a trap, I said.

Well done, responded the colonel, as if awarding marks in an exam.

Suleiman works for the Taliban? I asked.

For the opposition.

How did you come to know Suleiman was working for this opposition ?

Suleiman worked for us. He believed we had no knowledge of where his true allegiances lay. The question is, how did you know Suleiman was working for the opposition?

The colonel hadn’t answered my question: too much information to share.

I didn’t know for sure, I replied. But because he would have sent me to Café Europa, I suspected he wasn’t everything he seemed. He also gave me what he wanted me to believe was a recording of Crane incriminating himself, but it was blank. And then there’s the fact that he didn’t show up this morning. In the wind, I imagine. What exactly did your message to Emily say?

The colonel did not bat an eyelid. On the flight, I had come to the suspicion that he had had a message sent to Emily, which in turn prompted her to contact me and tell me to wait for her. He seemed not the least surprised by my question, and I had the impression he was ready to say whatever he was able to say.

Simply that you were in Kabul, replied the colonel, and getting on a flight in one hour.

Why didn’t you just leave a message for me at AfDARI but in Emily’s name?

Because she might have learned by other means that you were already in Kabul and left you her own message. Then there would be two messages, potentially inconsistent ones.

What if she hadn’t contacted me right away? Or what if she had and I still decided not to wait for her but went to Café Europa instead?

There were other ways to keep you away. You received the message held for you at the gate, did you not?

That was from you?

From us.

Of course, I said. I remembered my exchange with the gatekeeper at AfDARI. Suaif had not actually said that the message was from Suleiman. I had been asking him about Suleiman and Suaif had been talking about a message that said my meeting was delayed. Between my agitation at having again to wait for Emily and Suaif’s erratic command of English, I had only assumed that the message had come from Suaif. Why didn’t you have the message sent to me right away? I asked. Why have it held at the gate?

The message from Emily was the wicketkeeper; the one at the gate was a long stop.

You left the long stop, as you call it, waiting at the gate because if you’d had the message brought directly to me, I might have contacted Crane to postpone or cancel, in which case Crane might not have gone to Café Europa. Is that right?

You would have been kept away in any event, replied the colonel.

I don’t know if I’m appalled or touched, I said. Tell me: Is Crane alive?

Regrettably not.

But you could have stopped that?

The colonel didn’t answer. There was an obvious question: Why had the colonel wanted Crane to go to Café Europa? It was obviously also a question the colonel would not answer.

Was Crane really a pedophile?

That’s what Suleiman told you?

In graphic detail.

Why do you doubt it?

Because when I suggested to Crane that someone had evidence of his pedophilia, he didn’t seem interested. He must have known that there couldn’t be any such evidence. Yet, curiously, he didn’t react to the very idea that he was being accused of pedophilia.

What does that tell you? asked the colonel.

The colonel’s Socratic method reinforced the idea that I already had much of the information in my possession and needed only to piece it together. Everything I knew about Crane’s venality I had learned from Suleiman. This is not mathematics, in which content stands and falls by itself, but the world, in which authority and motive matter. Yet some claims are so horrific, so unrelentingly repulsive, we seem unable to stop and think whether the claims are true. The merest suggestion can destroy a career, a life. And if we cannot think about whether they are true, how can we think about them at all, when they are?

Surely you know? I asked the colonel.

Old soldiers have a tendency toward arrogance, not omniscience. Tell me what you think, and, if I can, I’ll set you straight.

Crane actually did give Suleiman the impression that he was a pedophile. But it was just a fabrication to get Suleiman to hate him so that he would be only too eager to steal those documents that were being mysteriously sent to him. The ISAF jeep delivering them only enhanced the idea that the papers contained military plans. As for Maurice, he was unimportant, a bit player simply handing on parcels from time to time, without any knowledge.

So far so good.

What’s not clear is who this opposition is that Suleiman was working for. Aside from Suleiman’s role in Crane’s death, there’s no evidence that Suleiman was actually working for the insurgents rather than the Americans.

Why would the Americans want Crane dead? the colonel asked.

I’m not ruling out that there might be some reason I don’t know, I said.

Suleiman was working for the insurgents and Crane for the Americans, explained the colonel.

Why kill Crane, though? I don’t mean he didn’t have a motive; he thought Crane was a nasty piece of work. But it’s a lot of trouble to go to, mounting a bomb attack in Kabul with ISAF all over the city.

My belief is that he was most likely targeting you. He got Crane into the bargain for free.

Not the other way?

Possibly, but in the final analysis I do not think much turns on it.

Why would he want me dead?

Suleiman?

He didn’t stop me from going to Café Europa. You did.

It’s rather reassuring, in fact, that he wanted you dead. It confirms that he believes he has acquired valuable intelligence. Killing you would have prevented you from informing someone of what happened.