Michael Gruber - The Good Son

They all look at Sonia for an instant, like a literal flock when a predator steps into the fold, and then drop their eyes. Amin says, with exhaustion now showing in his voice, “Harold, really, you can dismiss that idea from your mind. I have known Sonia for years. She is the last one to sympathize with the Taliban, and I cannot for a moment believe that she, as you say, betrayed you.”

“But I did,” says Sonia; all eyes are on her again, their expressions range from puzzlement, through shocked amazement, to hatred on the part of both Ashton and the widow Cosgrove. “And I must disagree with Harold. If I’d let you go on with your plan, you would not now be either safe or even approaching safety. Harold would be dead, and probably not in a way anywhere near as quick as decapitation, Annette would be pegged out on the ground with her legs spread apart in a place with a very long line of men outside it, and the rest of us would have spent the remainder of our lives tied up with wires and lying in our own piss.”

“It was our risk!” cries Annette. “You had no right to make that decision for us.”

“I had every right, and a responsibility also, simply because I understand our situation and you don’t. This area is completely controlled by the Taliban. That’s why they brought us here, and that’s why there’s an important weapons factory next door. It obviously has reasonable cell-phone service, because as you might have seen during our last outing every third man is talking into a cell phone. As far as vehicles go, you must know that in this country they pull the distributor rotors at night the way they used to hobble their horses, so you would not have been able to steal a truck. And even if you had, the region for a hundred square miles would have been raised against you, every track would’ve been blocked and guarded, and as far as leaving the roads and going cross-country, do you honestly believe that a slightly pudgy English academic and an American woman could escape across these mountains from a thousand armed Pashtuns? A pair of SAS commandos in peak training might have a ghost of a chance, but not you.”

Ashton, red-faced, begins to object-he is making braying noises in the English manner-but Schildkraut places a restraining hand on his shoulder and says, “Enough, Harold! Sonia is perfectly correct. Her method stands a better chance of success than yours does.”

“What method?” Ashton demands. “What are you talking about?”

“I am talking about where Sonia goes every night and what she does there. Are none of you curious?”

Ashton says, “On present evidence, she’s telling tales about all our little doings-”

But Annette says, “She’s interpreting dreams. She must’ve done half the village by now.”

“Marvelous!” says Ashton. “Even more mumbo-jumbo. I don’t see where that’s to our advantage, unless you’re telling them that their dreams mean they should let us all go. Are you?”

“No,” says Sonia. “I give them as honest an interpretation as I can.”

“Then what good is it?” says Ashton.

“I don’t know,” says Sonia, “but I’m certainly not going to try to manipulate them. They’d sniff that out in a minute. They’re suspicious enough as it is.”

Shea asks, “Then what did Karl-Heinz mean by success? What did you mean?”

Schildkraut answers, “You know, I have asked myself the same question many times in these empty hours we all have. And being Germanic, of course I have arrived at a theory. Would you like to hear it? Very well.

“We all had a discussion some little time ago about the psychological state of the people in this part of the world, in which it was argued that therapy here must consist of adjustments in external relationships, since the psyche in traditional Muslims is not a struggle among interior drives, as it has long been held to be in the West, but something much simpler. Here an individual’s main drive is to fit in, to achieve harmony and satisfaction as a member of a family or larger group. True enough as far as it goes. But we must also remember that these people are believers. The unseen world is very real to them.” He picks up a fragment of chapati. “It is as real as bread. And that is something that is difficult if not impossible for us unbelievers to comprehend.”

“I beg your pardon,” says Father Shea. “I am certainly not an unbeliever, nor is Amin. Nor Sonia.”

“Ah, yes, but I meant we come from the unbelieving world. To be a believer in the West, one must continually swim upstream, as it were. The society around us has essentially returned to paganism, and we are quite content in it.”

“Surely not in America,” Shea objects. “It’s one of the most religious societies on earth.”

“Not at all. Sentimental churchgoing is not what I mean by belief. What America believes in is progress, money, sex, fame, and military strength, with a national philosophy based on pragmatism. This is a good thing, you know. You don’t want a nation as powerful as the U.S. to be actually religious. But here we are still in the original state of religious intoxication; here we are still literally in the fifteenth century, as they reckon time, and arguments based on rationality are of no use. Appeals to our liberal icons-democracy, the rule of law, the open society, civil liberties-fall on deaf ears. So Sonia works at the other end of things. She inserts herself into their consciousness, she accepts their religious beliefs, their ideas about the nature of the world and their various roles in it, and so she exerts her influence. Am I correct in this, Sonia?”

All eyes turn now to Sonia. All the faces except Ashton’s wear a distressingly hopeful look. She says, “To an extent. It’s the case that our hosts are not susceptible to ordinary argument, and that they are in a psychic state where the unseen world is real, as Dr. Schildkraut pointed out. But I am not seeking to influence them. I’m trying to help them. It’s what I do. It may turn out that by helping them I help us, but that’s not my purpose. It’s also true that I have entered, to the extent I can, into their psychic space. All real therapists do that as a matter of course. And what is this psychic state?

“At some level they must be deeply conflicted, because they are making war and murdering innocents in the name of a merciful and compassionate God. At some level they know that they are not engaged in a real jihad. No one is preventing them from the full practice of their religion and they are fighting the forces of a Muslim nation. Besides that, they are Pashtuns, and the sort of religion practiced by the Taliban is not congenial to them and never has been; this region is thick with the shrines of Sufi saints. In Afghanistan the people only accepted Taliban rule because the alternative was a naked and brutal anarchy. And their dreams reflect this. This morning Rashida told me that they are already arguing about me, but what effect this will have on our situation I can’t say. It may get us killed faster, for all I know.”

“Then for God’s sake why don’t you stop it!” Ashton snaps.

“I told you already. It’s what I do. If these days are the final ones of my life, what else should I be doing? I’ve always tried to live my life so that if death arrived on a particular day it would find me doing nothing but what God had made me for. I sincerely hope all of you feel the same way.”

There is an embarrassed silence. Amin breaks it. “You are right, of course. As the head of a charitable trust I hereby pledge one of my chapatis to be distributed to the poor. Annette is a nurse, and she has already started to comfort Karl-Heinz, who is ill. I’m sure he is contemplating ethical issues all the while. Father Shea, I observe, prays often. Manjit, I insist that you dispense me a powerful tranquilizer.”