Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

In my possession there is only what I have learned. This fact alone constrains the story I can tell, the sense of a life, the forces that made it. Besides, I have to say, I do not set great store in the hydraulic conception of the human psyche that psychoanalysis presents, that a push here and a yank here, and out, over there, comes the consequence, or that holding in anger is like holding in a sneeze. Lacking authority here, I know I am speculating, but it seems to me that in the appropriate context, the psychoanalyst might say: You can see why the man doesn’t get close to women; the boy was never close to his mother. But equally, the psychoanalyst might say of another man: You can see why he is always too eager and quick to get close to women; the boy was never close to his mother.

I don’t know what story I would write to account for Zafar, to provide the buttresses of causes and effects that support the structure of a human life, as it could be described, as it might be understood. The job is not made easier by all the vacancies, the questions left unanswered and others thought of only later, like the witty riposte that arrives halfway up the staircase, too late to be of any use. Zafar spoke abundantly, as never before, but in the end all I can include is whatever I can draw from what he said or wrote. How then to span the piers?

My father is too generous a man to actually roll his eyes when he’s invariably asked at dinner parties what his work is about. Give a sense, a flavor of what it’s about, is what they ask him to do. Being a civil and courteous man, perhaps believing that it probably doesn’t matter, a flavor is what he supplies — or at least what his dinner guests believe they’ve been given. And he will listen as well, smiling warmly, as a guest invokes — as a theoretical physicist’s guest will do — Einstein’s theory of relativity as metaphor for some proposition in the social sciences. Relativity, my father will hear, demonstrates such and such (in some field as far removed from science as everything but science). My father will remember but will never mention what Einstein came to wish after long suffering to hear the abuses to which the mere heading of his theory had been put, as if to invoke the name of the theory was to import all the authority of the ancient and timeless lambdas, epsilons, and deltas of a beautiful mathematical argument. Einstein wished to hell that he’d called it the theory of invariance, which is to say, he wished he’d given it a name whose meaning was exactly the opposite of relativity and which, he said, would have been just as accurate.

But our private conversations, between father and son, are free of the disingenuous concessions of dinner parties. Metaphors have their place, he says, but never as explanations, never as substitute for the thing itself, which is the only thing that can turn on the lights or leave us in the dark. His suspicion of metaphors recognizes that our proclivity toward them probably springs from our very nature, which is given to analogize, to link one thing with another, and to make whole the disparate. But exercising this instinct is not the same as giving an explanation.

His respect for my mother would keep him from saying so explicitly, but psychoanalysis is only a grand metaphor, he says. It is not even a work in progress but a stopgap until work has progressed on the real thing.

I see that I have gone far enough down one road and now I want to return. In the result, I cannot tell the story that is not a metaphor, the only story that is true. Perhaps it’s as simple as this: I don’t have it in me.

* * *

Zafar returned to his account. He had explained how Emily had come to be in Afghanistan, and on another occasion he had talked about a telephone call from her, asking him to join her. This raised the question of if and when he would meet her. But his narrative first picked up where he had left off. Suleiman had given him a tour of Kabul, taking in the view from a hill overlooking the city, after which they returned to AfDARI.

He and I, said Zafar, had not been standing long in the courtyard of AfDARI, under the dappled shade of a mature mulberry bush, before a young woman arrived at the main entrance. The gatekeeper drew open the iron gate, its hinges resisting with a shrill. I noticed that he did not acknowledge her, no smile, not even a nod. I put that down to deference toward her sex and perhaps her station. She was a white woman, a pasty, unhealthy white, and wore a pale gray shalwar kameez with a dark blue hijab on her head, curls of mousy hair peeking from underneath. From one shoulder hung a tan leather satchel unbuckled and stuffed with papers. The Afghans are racially diverse and even include men and women with eyes as blue as a Norwegian fjord, but the manner in which this woman carried herself, her confident stride, her unhesitating eye contact, instantly marked her as a Westerner.

Someone waved at her, and I tendered a perfunctory smile as she strode past toward the main building and climbed the steps before disappearing inside.

The director of AfDARI, explained Suleiman, is a married man. In France, he has a wife and two children, and in Afghanistan he keeps a photograph of them on the desk in his office. We can count our blessings that we are standing in the courtyard and not in the office adjoining his.

Why’s that? I asked.

Because they do not have the shame even to hide the sound of what they are doing.

Suleiman drew his breath.

AfDARI needs new leadership, he said. The current director is a holdover. He was appointed by donors during the Taliban days and AfDARI was a token gesture. This man is corrupt through and through. Forget his sexual morals; he’s creaming off huge sums, and of course it will only get worse with all the money now pouring in. What can we expect? He’s an outsider fitting out a nice second home on the French Riviera. The question is: Do you want the job?

Me?

Yes.

Suleiman, I’m flattered. But how do you know I’d be any better?

You would be better. You’d be much better.

It’s very nice of you to say so, but I’m not sure it’s my cup of tea. I’m not sure, for that matter, what it is I’d be better at. Besides, you only just met me, and I can no more take his job, my friend, than you can, if I may say so, offer it.

I’d been in Kabul not even forty-eight hours. I knew already that this was a time and a place where things could happen very quickly, where bureaucratic decisions were being taken in an instant by youngsters unencumbered with history, where government departments were being run by foreign administrators barely old enough to run their own bath. Decision making here was unimpeded by the demand to consider and reflect on experience. Even so, what exactly was the basis of Suleiman’s choice? He obviously took a liking to me. But was there more? Does Suleiman have his own career prospects in mind? Has he hit a glass ceiling for Afghans that might first be cracked by someone like me, halfway between insider and outsider?

Your reputation precedes you.

Your flattery is flattering, I replied.

I had no reputation, I thought — which, I suppose, is a reputation of a sort. Without any reason, I wondered if Suleiman was hinting at knowing the colonel.

I spoke to some of our elders this morning, he said. They are Afghans who are nominally consulted on major decisions taken by the executive director, a sort of advisory board. Of course they haven’t met you, but what I said convinced them very quickly.

And what did you tell them? I asked.

I told them you’re smart. I told them that you’re a very intelligent man who is not an outsider.

Suleiman, do you think I’m one of you?

You are from a poor country like mine. You are a Muslim. And you’ve lived among them so you know them, you know how to press their buttons.