Green on Blue (17 page)

I trotted heavily up the slope and my feet slipped in the mud. Twice I fell. Yar pointed wildly for me to break off and find the madrassa’s back entrance. I advanced a bit more with the raiding party and then crossed the face of the hill, alone, toward its farthest and darkest side. I ran with the moonlight behind me. It cast a long shadow against my path. The contrast of light and shadow made seeing more of a challenge than in the pure night. After only a few steps, I rolled my ankle. I glanced over my shoulder. Behind me the rest of the raid force made good progress toward the madrassa. I ran atop my shadow and slowly the cordon of lights in the mountains dissolved. I fell heavily into the mud. I pushed myself up and looked over my shoulder once more. A figure—Tawas or Mortaza?—stood on the scaling ladder’s highest rung and leapt over the madrassa’s outer wall. Then the front gate crashed open and the assault force streamed inside. The warm wind mixed with their muted shouts, becoming like a single noise. Flashlights blinked on and off in the compound, shining against the rain. I still hadn’t reached the back door. Ignoring the uneven ground, I ran faster. Just ahead the mountain blocked the moonlight. I crossed into that farthest and darkest shadow. Here my footing became more assured. The moonlight no longer con
spired against me. The twinkling cordon of the surrounding mountaintops disappeared. I knew I should be able to see the back door. And then I saw it, barely. It swung open, a darker piece of darkness blown by the wind. Someone ran out of it. I glimpsed the figure, sprinting in a crouch and then dipping over the hilltop, gone. I was too late. Had I missed Gazan? I heard the door slam hard, twice, but looking at it, it hadn’t moved. Then I realized the slams were not the door but gunshots. I threw myself on my stomach and strained to see the door. Whatever came from it next, I would not miss. My fingers slid up my Kalashnikov toward my flashlight, but touched nothing. I squinted through my goggles, seeing very little through the rain. Suddenly a darkened blur pushed open the door. Three times I fired at it. I took the first two shots quickly, without aiming. I paused, calmed myself, and aimed for the third. Then I squinted again, and there was just the door and the wind in the rain.

I breathed, my stomach against the mud. Small rocks pushed at my legs. I waited. I didn’t know if I’d killed the man, but I’d done something. How long I lay there was difficult to say, but I remained long enough to think that perhaps I’d killed someone I would be proud to kill. A light flashed from inside the compound and out the back door. It flashed off almost immediately. There was a long moment of indecision. The light did nothing more. Then came a shout: Aziz, are you out there!

It was Yar.

I am here! I yelled back.

Come and help me! Something was wrong. His voice was frightened. I ran up the hill. The dark side of the compound and the tops of the ridgelines were deep blue in the not-quite-morning light. I could now see the door I’d been watching. It was made of tin and covered in a peeling mural—a rich and festive mountain range with green valleys and a blue stream running through its heart. The door creaked on its hinges in the wind, banging against the tan suede boot of the man I’d killed,
and the sound seemed like a slow steady knocking on the door of all the unhappiness I would ever know.

I took off my helmet and threw it and the attached night-vision goggles into the abundant pool around Tawas’s head. The canvas on his body armor was torn open at the chest and the steel plate inside was darkly singed and twice dented. His helmet was gone and underneath his right eye was a small hole, no bigger than a pebble. Sandy-brown curls ringed from beneath his black do-rag that matched the one worn by Yar, who stood over him. The curls lay cleanly across his ashen, almost green, forehead, which was furrowed and frozen with the surprised look that bound the moment between my first two shots hitting his body armor and the third hitting his cheek.

Yar tugged under Tawas’s arms and tried to drag him out of the rain and into the compound. But when Yar dragged him, he came apart. The back of his head leaked everywhere. Still, Yar pulled. A chewed piece of bubblegum fell from Tawas’s mouth and mixed with what spilled from his head. And now everything blended with the mud and all parts were lost in it. Seeing this, Yar couldn’t stand the pulling any longer. Across the doorway’s skirt, he set Tawas down. He then ran into the compound. While he did, I stood next to my friend as the wind tried to close the tin door against his body.

Yar returned with a thick fleece blanket he’d taken from one of the small mud-walled rooms that lined the madrassa’s courtyard. He draped it across the top half of Tawas, leaving his legs and boots sticking horribly in the air. Now that the head had been covered, Yar wiped his face with a tired hand. What happened? he asked, and I think I was crying.

No one was supposed to come out the back door, I said.

How could you have mistaken him? he demanded.

Again I said: No one was supposed to come out the back door.

My voice had become broken and angry, my response unsatisfying
but true. It was not my fault.
No one was supposed to come out the back door.
Inside, lights flashed wildly against the compound walls. Silhouettes wove among each other, full of purpose, as the search for Gazan continued. Then one of the silhouettes stood over Yar and me.

Commander Sabir looked down at the pile under the blanket. He considered it for a moment and volleyed his gaze between us. The trucks will pull up here in a few minutes, he mumbled dryly. Load it in the back with you, Aziz. He shook his head at me and spoke to Yar firmly: Keep your eyes on him. All will be dealt with when we return.

A rush of blood rose from my stomach to my face and the permanence of my mistake settled warmly in my cheeks.

Commander Sabir turned from us and supervised the rest of the search. Two blank-eyed men with wide unbalanced faces, brothers, it seemed, stood in the middle of the madrassa’s courtyard. The one man’s blue and the other man’s white shalwar kameez were mud-stained from where they’d been pushed to the ground and searched. A cluster of children clung to their legs. Parked next to the children and these two teachers was a white binjo, dented and old. Across from it was a white HiLux with a silver lightning bolt across the side. I recognized the HiLux immediately—Atal’s. Issaq recognized it too. He stuck his finger, dyed with henna, in the faces of the two strange-looking teachers as he spat questions at them.

What time did these trucks get here?

The men stared dumbly at each other, and the swarm of children tucked themselves tighter and tighter against their legs.

Issaq asked again.

They came after we were asleep, said the man in blue, his words tangling.

Sometimes they come at night. Who are we to ask the reason? added the man in white, his voice equally twisted against some defect of his birth.

Issaq threw open the binjo’s trunk.

Mortaza stepped from one of the rooms on the far side of the madrassa. He helped Issaq empty the contents of the binjo into the courtyard. Blankets, pans, a change of clothes, and even a machine gun landed on the ground. Then Mortaza and Issaq hoisted out two large bags of rice with the familiar
USAID
stenciling. The heaps fell flatly in the mud and pushed each of us into our own thoughts and suspicions. Commander Sabir walked over, glanced down, and considered the bags of rice.

Bring our trucks around, he said with a snarl, his eyes meeting no one’s. It is time to go.

What about the HiLux and the binjo? asked Issaq.

We don’t have enough drivers to take them, said Commander Sabir as he walked off. He then stopped, turned back at us, and said: But take the rice, Issaq. Have your men load those bags.

Mortaza ran to the base of the hill where our HiLux was parked. Yar and I pulled the bags out of the binjo. We heaved them across the madrassa’s courtyard and set them next to the blanketed heap that was Tawas. We pondered the bags and the heap. They were like a jigsaw puzzle we’d have to fit into the bed of our truck.

We’ll need to get his body armor off, said Yar, rubbing the back of his neck.

I nodded and Yar kept rubbing at his neck, staring at the pieces and wondering how they might all fit.

We could roll him tightly in the blanket and load him into the bed, I said. Without the armor he’ll be lighter, and in the blanket less mess.

Yar scowled at me. My suggestions weren’t welcome.

He breathed heavily toward the sky, and then in the same manner toward his feet. Still, he rubbed his neck and stared at the heap on the ground. Get him out of his body armor, he said. Roll him up in the blanket and load him in that way.

I nodded and tried not to show any unwelcome emotion as I pulled back the blanket. The blood, which still had enough life in it to clot, stuck against the fleece’s fur. It peeled from the head and body as if it were glue that had yet to dry. Smelling the blood, a pair of black-and-white-feathered magpies landed in the mud next to Tawas. Their jutting heads considered him for a moment. They came no farther. As I looked at the two birds, they looked at me, stomping their fine talons into the earth. I wondered if they’d sing for me. Chi-chi-charee, chi-chi-charee. They were silent. Perhaps not all birds sing like Puskie. Who would care for him now? My throat thickened, thinking of all I’d taken from my friend. Such ideas were useless. Silly as birds. I grabbed the blanket’s sopping corners and whipped it in the air. The magpies spooked, their blue wingtips fluttering against the slate sky. I smoothed the blanket’s ends with my hands and turned back to the body. Pinned beneath two heavy dead legs was Tawas’s rifle. I picked up the slick barrel between my fingers and tossed it aside. Mud stuck to it like batter to meat. I tugged at the Velcro flaps that ran under each arm, unfastening the body armor. The first flap opened with a dry scraping hiss and the second separated with a silent, easy wetness. I unfolded the vest like a door with hinges set at the shoulders. Underneath the armor, the uniform was soaked in sweat that was still warm. I stood by the pulpy head and reached my arms under its back, where the soil mixed wet and doughy between my fingers. I heaved with my legs and the body flopped face-first onto the outspread blanket. I rolled the whole mess up and looked at Yar. He averted his eyes, focusing instead on Mortaza and his progress toward our HiLux at the bottom of the hill. Yar must have felt my gaze on him because he glanced at the blanket and nodded his approval. I crouched to the ground and washed my sticky hands in the mud.

It had stopped raining by the time Mortaza pulled up in our HiLux. Issaq’s and Commander Sabir’s trucks had also arrived. The hilltop
filled with the noise of many idling engines. Tired soldiers collapsed into their seats. Sets of clear little eyes peeked at us from cracks in the wood shutters that lined the madrassa. The children and their two teachers waited for our departure. Looking at them, I imagined a different life, one where Ali and I attended a madrassa like this, where I still had a mother and father, where a day like Ashura would remind me of visits home from school instead of a destroyed home.

Mortaza grabbed my shoulder. Silently, he thumbed toward the bed of our truck.

Body first? I asked.

Mortaza nodded back.

We crammed the blanketed heap into the bed, but it was too tall to fit. We pushed against it. Stiffly, it folded, knees to chest, into the position of a sleeping infant. We loaded the bags of rice around the body. When we slammed the tailgate shut there was no room in the bed for anything else, so I opened the door to the cab, to where Tawas used to sit. As I did, Yar and Mortaza both watched me. I stopped, thought better of it, and climbed into the back, to where the body rested, my usual space.

Lying there, its knees tucked into its chest, the blanket looked human, like Tawas. I leaned my rifle against the cab, near where his arms were. I thought he might reach through the blanket, grab the rifle, and make things even between us. I still hadn’t made a space for myself when Yar shifted into gear and we started toward Shkin. As we pulled away from the madrassa, the children and their teachers walked into the courtyard and stood stupidly next to the white HiLux and binjo we’d left behind. Their confused faces struggled to understand what had happened, just like mine. I sat down and made a seat of Tawas’s hips.

III

I
felt numb. On the journey back I waited for a rush of emotion that never came. When we returned from the raid, Commander Sabir took my rifle and confined me to Naseeb’s quarters. He was worried about my safety, or at least the mess Qiam would make if he took badal.

Commander Sabir slammed the door behind me, leaving poor Naseeb out in the dirt wearing only shower shoes, underpants, and a T-shirt. I felt very bad for him, much more so than for Qiam or Tawas. Toward the brothers I once called friends I felt a strange emptiness. What I’d done to Tawas, and what Qiam might do to me, was the source of all my troubles. Should I feel pity for Qiam, even though his badal now threatened my life? Had I lost all compassion? I fought to avenge my brother, but I’d just killed the brother of another man, a friend. I’d taken from him just what Gazan had taken from me. Had I become the very thing I despised, that which I wished to destroy?

The door locked from the outside. I had nowhere to go so I climbed onto Naseeb’s mattress and sank into the large rut he’d worn in the weak foam. The wood bed frame pushed against my back. My legs went numb, all pins and needles. I wanted to hold on to the sensation. I didn’t want to feel anything. Then I fell asleep.

In the dark morning, I heard the lock turn and awoke with a start. The lights flipped on and Commander Sabir stood in front of me, silhouetted by the hut’s open door. Quickly, he closed it.

Relax, he said. You have nothing to fear from me.

I propped myself on my elbows and leaned against the headboard. Commander Sabir sat at the foot of my mattress like a father putting his child down to sleep. He looked at the ceiling and tapped his silver ring on the bed frame a few times.