scuffed. The entries — some only a line, others pages long — were in French, the dates going back eight years. The printed letters were squarish, tight and determined. I put it on the highest shelf, behind a row of towels. I dropped the wipe in the toilet, flushed it, and turned on the faucet. I was still wearing the blocky ruby-colored ring. I hid it as well and washed my hands. I studied myself in the mirror.
A young Afghan woman once told me, at a party, that even with oppression, sexuality found paths, not because of individual will but because of the laws of nature, like the insistent flow of water or seeds sprouting beneath stones. These were her metaphors. The last few years of my life, negated passions had been rising within me. Until now, I’d never attempted an investigation this big. Though my actions felt urgent — all that stood between me and an imminent, unknown violence — they were also a release from stasis, from waiting for my life to have an objective that mattered.
Tam fit against me as soon as I was back in bed. As with an infidelity, in a few decisions, I’d locked a part of myself away.
THE SCHOOL WAS two stories of rain-streaked concrete. The other buildings on the street hid behind walls, but the school’s upper windows were exposed, close enough to throw a stone through, or a grenade. It had been built during the hopeful years I’d heard about, just after the American invasion, and not amended for the hard reality that followed. Despite its modesty, there was arrogance in those two panes of glass — righteous provocation.
Frank looked well past seventy, not just rawboned but meatless, his liver-spotted skin like parchment on an angular skull that might have been handsome encased in flesh. And yet he had the glow and gravity of a man facing terrible odds, the authority of one who has been the target of America’s enemies. He smiled as I came in the door, his hand wrapping mine, transmitting by touch an anatomical sense of bone and tendon.
When I’d called and told him I was doing a feature on the personal missions of expats who’d lost their lives, I’d expected him to be wary, but he’d appeared eager to talk, less about Justin and Alexandra than about his school — to make it sound worthy of their deaths.
He walked, gesturing into rooms, tapping his steel-frame glasses into place with the knuckle of his index finger as he told me about the free classes offered and how he was creating a future for Afghanistan. His violet shirt betrayed few suggestions of the body beneath and, if not for the belt cinching his slacks, might have flapped like a sail. His gaze was direct, appraising, unapologetic; he had the smile of one accustomed to sales and elections.
“This is the office. Just a sec.”
Seven teenage girls sat, glancing from beneath headscarves to determine whether I was Hazara. Frank checked his laptop, on a desk right in the middle of theirs, and I tried to make sense of this aging American man surrounded by Afghan girls. From speaking with Alexandra, I knew the place was a prep school of sorts, where Frank handpicked high school– and college-age girls and the occasional boy for his program. He led me next door to another office and motioned to a folding metal chair.
From the way he looked at me, I could tell he was seeing a demure Japanese, not a bijin — I am far from that — but maybe a hint of the ojoosama, the naiveté of the hakoiri musume, and above all the patient ryosai kenbo, the part of our tradition that, in step and posture, evokes the values of service, embodied, as we believed for centuries and still largely believe, in a woman. I let my headscarf slip. The skin around my eyes relaxed. I didn’t employ this skill often, but I’d seen it used daily in Tokyo.
“I don’t know what to tell you about Justin,” Frank said, though his demeanor called to mind a sprinter at the starting line. “When I interviewed him for the job, I played skeptic. If someone can’t convince you he should be doing something, he has no business doing it. But he was too convincing, the kind of kid who should have had his own school and been playing by his own rules. I said yes only because this place needs classes morning to night. We need to be a factory in the best sense of the word.”
Frank faltered, his hand hanging between us like a pale spider. The moment increased in focus as if a faint incandescence gathered in the room. What I’d sensed — the story — it was here. Frank wasn’t searching for words. He was trying to restrain himself. I nodded, my headscarf slipping a little more.
“‘America,’ Justin told me, ‘is asleep. We have no clue where we’re going or why we’re doing what we’re doing. Half of us say we need to reclaim what we lost, and the other half say we need to forget about it and move on, but neither of those options are any good. I can’t use a gun, so I figure I might as well educate as many kids as possible.’
“‘That’s the way to do it,’ I placated him, and he said he’d read that every insurgent we shoot inspires five more, and every one we educate will make five less. I agreed it was a plausible theory. I suspected he was a kid who’d done well but had reached the point where whatever had driven him still anchored him. He’d come to the end of his chain like a dog running across a yard. It had to hurt. I saw this in people. I’d felt it myself. Why else does a man come back from Vietnam, spend decades building businesses and selling them, marry a good woman and have four daughters, and then, when he’s supposed to retire, pick up and head back to a war zone? After that first war I’d seen so much destruction I was hungry to go home and build, and after thirty-some years I’d evened things out and there wasn’t enough destruction left in my memory to keep me building. So I came to Afghanistan. My wife remarried. She did so four years ago. It took her five to realize I wasn’t coming back. My daughters have all exceeded my expectations, and I have another decade of raising girls here.”
Frank adjusted his glasses.
“For the first few years,” he said, “I helped run the American University of Afghanistan, but the vision was buried in the details. There’s nothing wrong with grammar and math, and I know it takes time to nail all that down, but a country needs more than translators and accountants. I kept thinking about a school built on a vision. Who wouldn’t be changed just by sitting and talking to a man who’d been through war and who’d invested in society? An entrepreneur who’d played a hand in his country’s local politics? I remember one day asking myself: What’s the worst that can happen? And having the thought: some talented young people will get to learn from me.
“So I rented this place from two expats who went home. That’s when expats were beginning to leave. The golden days of the occupation were ending. Everyone was ready to drop what they were doing and run. The nice thing about being seventy-five is you get gunned down in the streets of Kabul and you die happy. I’ve had a fuller life than anyone I know.
“Since then, I’ve brought in more than two dozen volunteers, most of them just staying the three months of their visas and teaching what they could, when it suited them. But Justin was sending me syllabi and curricula before he even arrived.”
Frank chuckled — a dry, mirthless sound in his throat.
“I remember his look when he walked in here. ‘If it were an ivory tower,’ I told him, ‘we wouldn’t need you.’ He just asked where his room was and who was responsible for what, and we’ve all had headaches ever since. Until a few days ago, I guess. Well, no, the car bomb, that’s been the biggest headache of all.”
Frank hesitated, guilt obscuring his glow of pride. He no longer seemed so primed to voice his conflicts with a recently dead man.
“Would you like to see his room?” he asked.
“Yes, please.”
He led me to the door and opened it for me. I stepped in and turned.
“Can I have
