or war, at the very least politics, but instead he’d already had two conversations about bodybuilding.
Shafiq greeted Justin, squinting like a man reading a distant street sign. Weightlifting calluses scratched Justin’s palm as they shook hands. Shafiq’s forearms bulged, and swollen veins thinned at his wrists before spreading out again like roots.
I know the place doesn’t seem like much, Frank said from the doorway, waving him in, but if you put away your preconceptions and remember this isn’t America, I’ll give you the tour.
The school’s leanness — its sparse furnishings and undecorated spaces — seemed an expression of Frank: tall, even compared to Justin, but so fleshless he appeared a relic.
On the first floor, the dining and living rooms doubled as classrooms. There were mismatched chairs, dry-erase boards on easels, a shelf of espionage best-sellers, and a few mauled classics, Twain and Defoe. The kitchen held a blackened gas stove and some upside-down pots and pans. A low basement had been turned into the girls’ dormitory, rickety bunk beds lining the walls, their tops only about a foot from the ceiling. The girls were out, but a woodstove was going strong, and the air retained a hint of perfume.
You teach these kids, Frank told him, and they’ll make a difference. Today, we all read about changing our lives, but self-help doesn’t come close to what the military has been doing for years. You tell someone he’s a leader, he becomes a leader. You give him a role, that’s who he’ll be. I built this school because we need to empower young people to change their country.
Frank’s smile was gone, replaced with a sudden theatrical earnestness, like that of a pastor who speaks cheerfully from the pulpit only to become stern and deliver a moral.
I don’t need to be explaining this, do I? You’re the first volunteer who’s treated the job like a paid position. If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Everyone’s heard that. Just working for a paycheck is biding time. The real pay is personal satisfaction.
Justin’s department administrator had forwarded the email about the school and, even though the position was voluntary and applicants had to pay their own way, Justin had given the cover letter more care than his PhD applications. The school wasn’t what he’d expected, but he reminded himself that learning should take place in the most meager buildings.
Frank showed him the top floor — a few couches in the wide hallway, two bedrooms, two offices, and a bathroom. The concrete walls exuded cold, the basement’s heat imperceptible.
Your room has a view and lots of light. There’s not a day I’ve woken up wanting to be somewhere else. A few weeks getting used to this air, and you’ll be unstoppable.
Before leaving him to unpack, Frank patted him on the back, his hand so bony Justin felt like he was being reassured with a cooking utensil.
Justin’s bags were already near the bed, and he began to close the door. Idris was leaning against the wall near the stairs, his arms crossed. Justin nodded, and Idris tipped his head before walking away.
Justin unzipped his roller bag. The narrow room held an electric heater, a closet with a shelf and row of hangers, a particleboard desk, two ladder-back chairs, and a narrow bed with a foam mattress whose center had been compressed to the plywood. Outside, the backyard was yellow. It contained a few brambly trees and leafless bushes, and Shafiq’s guardhouse.
Justin sat at the desk and took a notepad from his pocket. It held a phone number he’d transferred from a gum wrapper. For a moment, he wished it were Alexandra’s. He pictured her haloed pupils and then deprived his desire of thought until it receded. He’d come here for the school and was impatient for his new life in Kabul to begin.
And yet he’d brought this number. He studied the foreign assemblage of digits: three zeroes, a nine, a one . . . It had been written while he stood on a quiet Lake Charles street during his favorite season: when gulf winds blew the humidity away and pecans ripened and fell against rooftops, when the crisp shadows of branches draped the pavement and children rode bicycles from school, and a few lanes over black boys tossed footballs. A woman he hadn’t seen in a decade had given him the phone number. Elle was no longer pretty in the way she’d seemed when he was a teenager — but trashy, with her tattoos and jean shorts.
Justin, she’d called out, recognizing him despite his beard. She asked how he’d been, and he said he was finishing his PhD and leaving soon to be the academic director of a prep school in Kabul called the Academy of the Future. She’d written down Clay’s number and said, Make peace. It would be good for both of you. He never intended to hurt you.
Encountering Clay’s mother after so many years had felt like a mistake, and yet the synchronicity, before his departure, now seemed fated. Clay was here, as if, all along, destiny had been carrying them in a similar direction. Justin had spent years with a sense that something had to be done, but now he wondered if there were things back then he hadn’t understood.
He took his toiletry kit and opened it on the desk. He pressed his thumb beneath his right eye, against the ridge of bone, and pushed down his lower lid. With his index finger, he pinched the front of the eye and pulled it from the socket.
THREE DAYS AFTER my first visit to the school, I returned. When I rang the bell, the muscular guard answered, and we exchanged a few easy words in Dari before he showed me inside.
“I’m trying to learn more about Idris,” I told Frank. I had yet to call Steve. Once I contacted him and divulged that I knew four people had gone missing and left only three bodies, I’d enter an entirely new realm of ambition and danger.
“Idris,” Frank said, holding his chin in a big hand webbed with sinew and veins. “He knew how to manipulate. Americans are innocent. The bell rings, and we salivate and run to the dish and eat to our satisfaction. The Afghans have never had that. They know the value of a meal. They hear the seconds ticking until the next war, the next foreign invasion. If America fell apart, we’d sit in our living rooms and wait for the lights to come back on.”
He hesitated, and I did too, wanting to redirect the conversation but fascinated to see two impulses at odds in him: condemnation of Idris and proof of his empathy for the Afghans. Or maybe by establishing himself as an authority, he thought he had the right to judge.
“Who was Idris manipulating?” I asked.
“Idris?” he said, his voice trailing off. I nodded, no longer trying to act demure. His interest in strong women had made me rethink my initial ruse, although it had seemed to open him up. He moved his mouth a bit, appearing to feel the rhythm of what he wanted to say so he could convey it with his voice.
“Everybody comes here with a mission, even if they aren’t aware of it, and Idris knew how to manipulate people to make them think he was the one they should save.”
“What is your mission?”
“What was my mission?” he replied, as if he’d already accomplished all he’d intended. He kept moving his jaw with that faint ruminating motion.
“These young people come from America thinking they’re going to change everything. They complain about the food or the lack of heat or the power outages. When I came here ten years ago, this neighborhood was a wasteland. It had been shelled to rubble by the mujahedeen after the Soviets pulled out, and the Taliban hadn’t rebuilt it. The American invasion had left craters all over the city. Outside the
