Michael Gruber - The Good Son

“So the clan will turn against the Taliban now?”

“We will have our revenge, surely, but you know what we say: the right side is good but the winning side is better. No one thinks attacking America is a real jihad, not like the Russians, when they were using mosques as latrines. If the Americans have a blood feud with the Taliban, that’s none of our affair. Let them kill each other!”

“I too have a blood feud with them, Father.”

He nodded and looked at me, not with his regular sharp and challenging stare but almost tenderly. He said, “Yes, I know. It’s what I would do and you are like me, although I didn’t raise you. I have had few regrets in my life. I lived as a Pashtun and kept my honor and my land, and that is sufficient, but I regretted not having my sons by my side. Yet you are like her too, and that’s not nothing. I have sworn an oath not to tell this, sworn it on naked steel, but I think it now touches the honor of my house, which comes before any oath, and when I swore it I did not think I would ever see you again, or that you would come with such a purpose, or that you would have saved my life, mine and these others of my kinsmen. So I will tell you, and let God judge me. They are holding these hostages in a village called Paidara, in the northern end of the Swat Valley. Until you told me, I did not know your mother was among them. But, son, let no one hear where you learned this. I would not have the Barakzai know that Gul Muhammed Khan has not kept his word.”

I said I would keep this to myself at any cost, and then he closed his eyes and said, “Good. I hope you save her. God willing I will see you again, but if not, farewell. Come here so I can bless you.”

So I leaned over and he took my head in his two hands and said a verse from the Qur’an,

“Surely those who say, ‘Our Lord is God,’ and then live righteously, no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow. Those dwell in Paradise, dwelling forever as a recompense for their deeds.”

Then he blessed me and I kissed him and said, “O my Lord, dispose me that I may be thankful for Thy blessing wherewith Thou hast blessed me and my father and mother, and that I may do righteousness well-pleasing to Thee, and am among those that surrender.”

Sura 46, the Sand Dunes. Until the words came out of my mouth I had no idea I could recall them from when they had first been beaten into me in that dusty madrasa outside Peshawar long ago, when Gul Muhammed had been a mighty warrior and me a boy. I stayed with him until he fell asleep, and then got my gear and left the house, where I was mobbed by the clan notables wanting to know what was happening and whether I was going to make a claim for Gul Muhammed’s land and status, and they were clearly relieved when I said it could all go to cousins and uncles for all I cared. That made me more pop u lar immediately, and when I said I wanted to go back to Kabul, they arranged for a truck and a driver and six heavily armed clansmen.

To get around the roadblocks we went by tracks through the hills, some of which I recalled from the jihad. It took us about ten hours to reach Chaharbagh, and from there I took a bus for the rest of the trip, about seventy miles. It only took five hours and we weren’t stopped once, perhaps by prior arrangement with the Afghan army. It’s how the suicide bombers get in but it worked for me too.

I called my Uncle Nisar from Chaharbagh on his special cell phone and told him where I was, and he said he’d have a plane waiting for me when I got to Kabul, and he did, a neat little Bombardier turboprop, so by dawn the next day I was landing in Lahore, and there was a company car to meet me. The driver was holding a sign that said MR. T. LAGHARI so I walked up and told him who I was, but he ignored me and made a shooing motion with his hands, because people who looked and smelled like me were literally beneath the notice of N. B. Laghari’s driver. But I was tired and pissed off so I used my command voice and called him a rude name in Panjabi, after which he looked at me again, with terror on his face this time, and almost tripped over himself ushering me into the Mercedes. A man unfamiliar with Kim and the Great Game, obviously.

Javed, my uncle Nisar’s valet, didn’t show by his expression that I was anything but an honored guest and a son of the house as he led me to the library. Javed was famous for not displaying any astonishment whatever, but Nisar was nearly as surprised as his driver when I walked through the door. He looked up from some papers on his desk and I could see his face change: first the contemptuous snarl, with which he was about to dismiss the ignorant sweeper who had stumbled into his room, and then the dawning surprise, tinged a little with fear, and finally the usual smiling mask snapped into place.

He rose to greet me-he even hugged me, which I considered pretty classy considering what I probably smelled like-and said, “My God, Theo, you gave me a shock. I thought I was being assaulted by terrorists from the Frontier. I would never have believed it. You look just like a Pashtun warrior-not just the fancy dress, mind you, but the stance, the expression… however do you do it?”

“The same way you manage to look like a Punjabi mogul. I am a Pashtun warrior.”

He laughed, a little nervously, I thought, and said, “Yes, of course. Your famous adventure. Well, you have safely returned to civilization in any case. I suppose you’d like a bath and a change of clothes.”

“Food first, if you don’t mind, Uncle. I haven’t eaten anything solid since I left Gul Muhammed in Kunar.”

“Oh, of course, how stupid of me! Sit down at once, and I’ll ring for a tray.” He did, Javed entered, received his orders, and floated out. My uncle resumed his place behind what I kept thinking of as B.B.’s desk, and I recalled the last time I’d sat in front of it, when he’d chewed me out for that stupid thing with the pistol, just before he was murdered. Shit happens, as we say in the army, and I thought of that, and I also thought of what Rahman Baba has to say on the subject, which is:

How long will the horse of the sky keep galloping,

How long will it race across the roof peak?

The business of the world is like a shadow,

Which has no value to the sun.

Nisar got a phone call just then, and he picked it up and looked at me apologetically and said he had to take it, and I volunteered to leave and he motioned me to keep my seat; it was just some fools in Karachi who had to bother him about every little thing. It was something to do with export licenses for rayon, and although the word bribery was not mentioned I got the impression from his half of the conversation that someone paid to expedite these licenses had gotten greedy; Nisar closed the conversation by saying he would deal directly with the ministry involved. By the time he’d sorted this out, a servant had rolled in a tray laden with tea and steaming parathas and a covered dish of kedgeree and hot buttered chapatis.

I ate gratefully, and while I ate I told Nisar what I had learned in Kunar Province, without mentioning Gul Muhammed.

When I had finished, he said, “Well, that is an achievement. You know where your mother is being held. What will you do now?”

“Obviously, the first thing is to associate the village of Paidara with the nuclear theft we’ve concocted. I can do that with some cell calls, I think, and it’d be better if one of the calling parties was in Kahuta.”

“You’re thinking of going yourself?”

“I was thinking of sending Iqbal. My face is probably pinned up in every ISI office in the country, and it’d be annoying to get picked up and maybe disappeared. They tried once and they’ll try again.”

“Yes, very wise. In fact, I think you should stay here for the time being. I’ll have someone go to Rukhsana’s and get your things. If Iqbal is to go to Kahuta I can make a plane available to him. And the same for you. I don’t want you flying commercial back to the States, it’s too easy to be picked up out of an airport line, they ask you to step into a little room and you’re never seen again. And, of course, any other way that I can be of service-”