not just Claire and myself. Are you listening to me? You need to take its fear and its prejudice into account. You need to consider other people’s ignorance, Aden. He let out a breath. —You need to consider your own.
—I’ll leave that to the experts. I’ll leave that to you.
—You’re still not hearing me, apparently. I’m endeavoring to explain—
—If they want to pass judgment they can go right ahead. They do it all the time anyway. At school and everywhere else. Even in my own house. But you wouldn’t know about that.
—Aden—
—Try and stop me if that’s what you want.
—I don’t want to stop you, her father said tightly. —That’s not my position at all.
—Don’t talk down to me, then. It doesn’t suit you.
Before he could answer she took up her pack. An army surplus model, sun-bleached and tattered, with squares of darker cloth where the insignia had been. She’d found it in the attic of her father’s house the day before Thanksgiving, the day she’d decided to take up her jihad. She sat up and cleared her throat and raised the pack so he could see it, thinking even now to ask his blessing. But her father’s eyes were dull and flat and blind.
—The religion I’ve spent my life studying teaches deference to one’s elders, he said slowly. —It teaches the child to venerate the teachings of the father.
—Not if the father is an apostate.
—Aden, do you fully understand what that word means?
She got to her feet. He shook his head at that, regretfully and stiffly, as though forbidding her to take another step.
—I’m sure you’re aware that I could put a stop to this adventure with a phone call. And the more I hear you talk, sweetheart, the more inclined I am to do so.
—You did this yourself when you were my age. You’ve been talking about it my whole life. It’s the only thing you’ve ever talked about.
—I’d just turned twenty-two when I went to Kandahar. Twenty-two, Aden, not barely eighteen. And there’s a more significant issue than your age.
—I don’t know what you mean.
—You’re being childish again. The possibilities for a woman in that part of the world are limited, as you know very well. You have disappointments in store, I’m afraid.
—Well Teacher you’re wrong about that.
—We’re fighting again. Let’s both just take a moment—
—I’m going to get to places that you’ve never been. All kinds of places. I’m going to see things that you couldn’t even dream of.
She met Decker on the airport bus at noon. He was dressed in a tracksuit and a Giants cap and his sneakers sat beside him on the seat across the aisle. His duffel was black and his high-tops were the same acidic orange as his tracksuit. An unlit Camel dangled from his downturned boyish mouth. When he saw Aden coming he picked up a book.
—You don’t smoke, she said.
—I’m an international man of mystery, Sawyer. There’s things you didn’t know about me yet.
She nodded. —Like that you can read.
—I’m just reviewing this here list of conjugations. He puffed out his chest. —I happen to be traveling to Pakistan today.
She glanced across the aisle at his high-tops. —I thought you might be traveling to a kickball game in Oakland.
—This look is like American Express, he said, adjusting his cap. —It’s accepted worldwide.
—There’s a lot of places don’t take American Express. She passed him the high-tops and sat where they’d been. —La Tapatía, for example.
—La Tapatía? Decker said, raising his eyebrows. —That taco place back of the Costco?
—Lots of places don’t take it.
—They’ll take it in Karachi, he said as the bus began rolling. —What did you think people wear over there, Sawyer? Turbans and pointy slippers?
—I couldn’t care less.
He frowned at her. —Why’s that?
—Because Karachi’s not the place I want to be.
It was hot on the bus and Decker nodded off quickly, his forehead propped against the greasy glass. She looked past him at outlets and drive-throughs and strip malls and cloverleaf ramps. The light on the hills was the light she knew best, the embalming golden light of California, and it lay thickly over everything she saw. Already looking out at that landscape was like watching footage of some half-forgotten life.
Decker started awake just as they reached the airport. —What time is it?
—We’re all right.
—Did we miss our one o’clocks?
—It’s okay. We can pray when we get out.
The terminal was the last part of America she’d see and she made a point of paying close attention. The guideways, the acoustic tile, the sterility, the equivalence of every point and feature. She’d loved it as a child, seeing her father off to Islamabad or Ankara or Mazar-i-Sharif, and the child that survived in her loved it there still. The most American of places. A luminous blank.
A flight crew hurried past—the genteel blue-eyed pilots, the coquettish attendants—and an usher with a bindi waved them forward with a bow. The scene might have been choreographed for her express instruction: the quick servile gesture, the noblesse oblige. She felt the old childish thrill and did nothing to curb it. It posed no danger anymore. Her eyes were open.
—What are you smiling at, Sawyer?
—I used to come here sometimes.
Decker stopped and adjusted his sneakers. —Tell you what. I’ve never even been inside a plane.
—You’ll like it.
—What does Swiss food even taste like?
—Swiss food?
—We’re taking Swiss Air, right? It’s a sixteen-hour flight. They’ve got to feed us something.
She took his hand. —Let’s go, man of mystery. We’re late for prayers.
They found a small bluish room labeled INTERFAITH CHAPEL past the food court and set their bags in a neat row beside its entrance. A family of Mennonites rose to leave as soon as they came in. A limping old man and his wife and two toddlers. Decker held the door for them. Their dark formal clothing rasped and whispered as they moved. The wife seemed barely older than he was and she smiled at him sweetly as she sauntered out. Decker watched her until she was out of sight.
—I’m
