What Changes Everything Part 6

When it became clear that the airport was unreachable that night, I insisted that I was the UN"s responsibility, and must be taken to their compound and protected by them. They, after all, had written my resignation letter and made my exit part of the peace process. They had promised me safe pa.s.sage to Delhi. As your mother knows, the decision to resign had been a hard one; I"ve always preferred even the swift blow to the swift flight. But I had met their wishes; now they were responsible for me.

They didn"t want me, a weight around their necks, but what could they do? After some hesitation, they agreed, and we made the drive back into the capital far sooner than I had antic.i.p.ated. Arriving at the UN mission, I wanted to contact your dear mother first; I knew she would be worried. But as always, the responsibilities of state demanded attention. I telephoned my generals, insisting they take action to allow Benon off the airplane, and I called Yaqoubi, demanding an explanation for what had happened at the airport. He promised to investigate and get back to me within 24 hours.

I remained optimistic, but I could not sleep. As morning dawned, I listened to the music of Ahmad Zahir. Though he failed to find the wisdom to navigate Afghanistan"s politics, Zahir was our nightingale, a mixture of Rumi and Elvis. He was of my generation, one year older than I, and so I always felt as if he were mine. I had little time, even as a youth, for matters of play, but I remember attending one of his concerts in Kabul. And I remember the day he died, the schools closing, his songs on the radio: "My grave is lying unknown along the way." However, that night I didn"t want to think of another victim of Afghan politics; I played his love songs, like Sultan Qalbah.

The next morning, I gathered myself. I requested a cup of chai; I washed, and I prayed- yes, one can reach Allah without being an Islamist. But by the time I opened the door to my room, the setbacks had already begun. They had murdered Yaqoubi immediately, and named it a suicide. Anyone who knew Yaqoubi knew he would never kill himself. He was a brilliant head of the secret police; he beat back my opponents in 1990 when they attempted a coup, and he would have beaten them back again before he took his own life. Then Wakil, my closest aide, crumbled as easily as a khatai cookie, going on television to call me a "hated leader." If he thought this would save him, he was wrong. I spoke to him only once after that. "Though you swoop down on chickens, O Kite," I told him, "you have not thereby become a hawk." We never spoke again.

Still I was hopeful. How long could this go on? Days? Weeks? Perhaps a month or two at the outside. That was my thinking before Rabbani delivered the final blow. Rabbani, the same donkey but with a new saddle, informed the UN that, as interim president, he would not allow me to leave the country, nor would he allow me to leave the UN compound. Not ever. Those were his words. To arrest me would cause an international outcry, but he knew himself to be so weak that he thought to allow me freedom meant his own power would not be secure. A man is only gone when he"s under the sod; since Rabbani couldn"t get me there, he locked me up in the UN compound instead. The empty vessel makes much noise; better for both him and us if he"d stayed a harmless theology teacher.

Expediency. Those who betrayed me believed it suited their interests. But they failed to comprehend the future. This has always been one of my gifts, dear daughters. I have a longrange view. I even called Bush after the Wall fell to warn him that now that the Reds were finished, the problems would be with the Greens. By this, I explained, I meant those who fight under the green flag of the Islamists. I offered my partners.h.i.+p; together we could suppress the fundamentalists before they became too strong. I could strive for greater national unity, not divisions based on ethnicity or extremism. I thought a world leader such as he would understand, but Bush failed to act.

So here I sit. What is the pattern of my days? Too unchanging for my curious mind. Sometimes I feel like a caged lion with little to do except eat, sleep, welcome visitors and try, as always, to behave in a way that would make you proud. At least they supply me with treats and keep my cage gilded. My sleeping quarters are simple but my bed is softer than many I"ve known. I have a room for greeting visitors, a couch, a few chairs, a television set and a radio. The two UN policemen who "guard" me are pleasant enough. Young Amin takes care of my meager needs, bringing me tea and food, showing in my guests. At first I feared he was sent by one of those camel-dung spiders to kill me or at least spy on me, but no, he seems to truly believe I should still be president. "You are a large leader pinned in a small region," he tells me. By this time, I speak to him as though he were a son.

Sometimes I have foreign visitors, and sometimes they dare to ask me if I regret, if my conscience bothers me regarding acts against my enemies. Regret! It is hard for me to take them seriously when they ask this. These naive children do not understand that this is a clash of values. How long will it take them to learn the fundamentalists will destroy their way of life if unstopped? Have these outsiders or the Afghans themselves forgotten so soon the benefits I brought? Freedom of speech, the multiparty system, an independent judiciary. I"ve allowed for political differences of opinion and given women full rights. Yes, I had to strong-arm the past at times to prepare it to meet the future. But it was a healthy future I aimed to create.

I say to those who would condemn me: look not only at what I accomplished, which should be enough. Look at who I am. I studied for ten years to be a doctor, in between a prison sentence for my political convictions. Ten years. Why would I spend nearly one fifth of my life on these studies? Because I dreamed of bringing health to our country. Only when I realized I could achieve more toward that goal as a leader did I abandon my plans to be a medical doctor. And I retain those goals still. How I laughed, dear Heelo, when you urged me to publicly announce I was forsaking politics to set up a medical clinic abroad. You hoped that would mean I could finally leave Afghanistan and join you all in Delhi. Do you remember what I said? First I joked that I could not leave just as I was regaining popularity among my countrymen. Then I told you that, to a football player in the middle of a game, his fans" support is very important. "I am still in the game," I said. "Do not give up on your player." And you haven"t, none of you.

When I am not with visitors, my project now is to translate The Great Game into Pashto, and I am adding a chapter from my times to update the book, since it ends with the fall of Tsarist Russia in 1917. I also work out almost daily in my small gym. I will send you my exact body measurements in my next letter-I will be strong and fit when I"m reunited with you all. I hope you are keeping yourselves in shape and will be the same! I only wish I could swim in Lake Qargha as I once did, battling the swells, then stopping to drink chai and eat goat roasted over small gas cookers. Those fond days. But then I remind myself this is better than when we had to run up and down the stairs for our exercise, so sharp were security concerns. I"ve achieved much; Allah willing, I will achieve more. But I will not speak further in my own self-defense. Others will do so in time, I am sure. Our people, and the world, will understand eventually what repression and civil war really means. Allah forgive and save them.

I miss you, my girls, and your precious mother. I can sometimes almost taste the sweet cakes that dear Heelo would bake for me; your cakes, Heelo jan, were becoming better and better and I can only imagine that you are by now a master. Onie, I miss our Ping-Pong matches, and dear Muski, I miss when we would sing together "Sta de stergo bala wakhlom." I miss our geography lessons, the dinner-table discussions about your dreams and goals, and everything about my dear Fati, your mother.

But we will endure. Inshallah, I will soon be with you; this poor government that has refused me exile doesn"t have long to last. So we will see each other again, maybe even within weeks, and then I shall challenge you to a game of carrom and I will share the Hindi movies that have become my favorites while here and we will eat gulab jamun and laugh until the tears come.

Only a little bit longer, my three girls. But every day until then, I am sending love to you and, as always, to your astounding and wonderful mother, -- Najib Todd, September 7th Waking.

Exhale.

Waking.

Long inhale.

Waking, translucent dreams trailing behind like crumbs left over from a feast.

Awake.

Awake now in the dark. And knowing right away where he lay: on a mat on the floor in a two-bedroom house with the spit of a front yard in an unfamiliar province. Not alone. Two other men slept in the next room and a third stood outside, the overnight sentinel. Three men among those who had kidnapped him.

And then thinking how wonderful it would be to wake and feel disoriented and not immediately know. To wonder for at least a moment if he was stretched next to Clarissa, or at the guesthouse in Islamabad, or running late for a meeting in Kabul, instead of wondering only if this would be his life"s last bed. To forget for a few more heartbeats. To let the oblivion of sleep extend into waking, even briefly.

To his right in the dark, about four feet above the ground, he knew a small window graced the room, maybe 14 inches square. He glanced that direction but couldn"t make out the opening. The color of tar encircled him, and eyes opened were the same as eyes closed. He wondered on which end of midnight he"d awakened. He was-had been-a man of Skype and Internet, of multiple time zones and hotel wake-up calls, room service for breakfast: coffee, a toasted English m.u.f.fin and one egg scrambled, please. Now he was caught within a village with neither streetlights nor headlights, adjusting to a rhythm of life that lacked connection to the world beyond. Frozen in far simpler, crueler times.

As soon as he"d seen that window, he"d imagined crawling out, and he"d forced himself not to stare so the guards wouldn"t follow his gaze and decipher his thoughts. But it would be difficult to avoid awakening the men in the next room, and what of the one in the courtyard? The compound was encircled by a tall wall topped with barbed wire. And even if Todd somehow, magically, got beyond that, where would he go? He knew the landmarks of Kabul, but here? Upon arriving, during the brief trip between the car and the residence, he"d seen that this compound was separated from all others by a field of green that stretched at least a mile; he didn"t know what was grown there or, more importantly, who lived in those other houses, what kind of people. He didn"t even know the name of the village. He"d asked, but the question had floated in the air until it finally sank to the ground, unheeded.

Through the thin walls, Todd heard a guard in the next room give a quiet snore. He put the fingers of his left hand to the socket of his closed left eye and then ran the tips up to his eyebrow, around to his outer eye and down to his cheekbone. His body felt warm under the scratchy wool blanket but his cheeks were cold from the air. He turned his hips to the right and then to the left as if trying to free them. This body in captivity was all he had left now; he needed to keep it healthy and limber and strong if he could. They"d taken his watch, his wallet, even his Western clothes. Each morning since the kidnapping, he"d awakened feeling disconnected from himself, and not only in a physical sense. Out of touch with his own ident.i.ty. He"d become unimaginable to himself. The captive, the victim. The infidel.

Todd had always been proud of being logical, even if logic was, as someone once said, the art of going wrong with confidence. But now, his ability to reason functioned oddly. In the hours and days since the kidnapping, his mind seemed to be working overtime, running up and down as if through the labyrinth of Tora Bora caves. Yet his thoughts were rebellious and disjointed, refusing to flow together easily.

He"d thought of Clarissa and Ruby and what their days must be like now, and how hard this must be for them. He thought of that often. He"d remembered a recent conversation with Clari. "Youth and entertainment. Those are the kings in our culture," he"d said. "So there"s builtin obsolescence, simply in the act of aging. That"s not true over there. You can be over 40 and still be accomplis.h.i.+ng something with your life." He cringed, thinking of it. How ridiculous had he sounded? How much more obsolete could he be than now, kidnapped, powerless and helpless?

He"d thought, in an endless loop, what an idiot he"d been to have gotten nabbed in the first place. He should have been paying closer attention. There had to have been signs-there were always signs. No kids at the ice cream stand, the look in the eyes of the man in front of him: had it been significant? How often had he counseled newcomers to stay alert? "Attention is your best form of protection," he"d said. "Don"t become complacent." And yet he"d allowed himself to be preoccupied.

He"d thought of Amin, who had to feel worried but also, on some level, p.i.s.sed off with this American who refused to listen and insisted on solo ice cream runs. He wished he could have Amin"s advice now. His own thoughts were scrambled. He concentrated, trying to envision Amin.

Should I risk it? Should I try to escape?

Not now. You don"t want to get caught and anger these men, or end up in worse hands. Just stay alert.

Only one of his captors spoke more than a dozen words of English, and that one, who called himself Sher Agha, appeared infrequently. He"d told Todd negotiations for his release were underway. He"d told Todd the negotiations were going badly. Todd asked if he could send a message to his family. Sher Agha said he"d consider it.

Todd removed his arms from under the blanket, stretched them into the dark around him, reaching high, and then made a couple half-hearted punches into the air. He swung his arms in circles, feeling the movement all the way to his shoulders. After a few minutes, he slipped them back under the blanket. He crossed them over his chest and imagined holding Clari. But he didn"t want to think too much about what he missed. He wouldn"t have been home yet anyway. Maybe he"d get lucky, and a deal would be reached so he would be home in a couple weeks as he"d originally planned.

He felt a momentary lifting of his spirits-was that possible? There"d been a number of previous kidnappings in Afghanistan, so there existed a pattern, he suspected, and he wished he knew it. He imagined a manual, a numbered to-do list for kidnap victims, highlighted and with exclamation points for emphasis. Keep up your spirits. Wait with grace. Continue eating! Don"t imagine the worst!

He suspected prayer would be advised but he didn"t know how to pray in a way that meant anything to him. He did know, however, how to feel grateful. If he listed the reasons for grat.i.tude, like a Muslim recited the ninety-nine names of Allah, it might suffice.

Inhale. Grateful he wasn"t hurt, or in pain.

Inhale. Grateful that his fear had been paralyzing only at the beginning, the explosion, the smoke, men with hidden faces grabbing his shoulders, shoving him into a waiting car, the sense of forced birth into something unwanted.

Inhale. Grateful the worst kidnapper had vanished to Somewhere Else, the tall one who spit at his feet and hissed a few mangled sentences, the words "Amrikaee" and "kafir" breaking free.

Inhale. Grateful that the rest of them-so young they would be college students in his country-seemed to regard him primarily with curiosity instead of rage. This led him to feel more empathy for zoo animals than he ever had before, and he was once tempted to scratch his privates and stuff food in his mouth with one hand as the guards sat furtively watching him. But even that thought served a purpose, bringing him brief amus.e.m.e.nt. They didn"t know what to make of him, these young Islamists. They seemed more fearful of him than he was of them. As if he might contaminate them.

Contaminate. Something he was not so grateful for: the food. They shared the same food they were eating, but it had left his stomach in tatters, necessitating urgent runs to the outhouse, the use of quick, elaborate hand gestures and then a dash across the courtyard, hoping they wouldn"t misunderstand, wouldn"t misconstrue this as a hamhanded escape attempt and shoot him.

But okay, grateful again. Inhale. Grateful that they didn"t misunderstand; that they didn"t shoot him.

Inhale. Grateful the weather was not too cold.

Inhale. Grateful his kidnappers regarded him as precious cargo that they didn"t want other kidnappers to pirate. One of them called him "the Honored Guest"-though in a tone that held sarcasm-and in fact they hid him like treasure as they traveled from one "safe house" to another. Though he wished he could look out the window, instead of being rolled into a carpet or shoved on the floor beneath a blanket, it was a price he could pay.

Inhale. Grateful that, though they sometimes poked his ribs with the end of their guns instead of using words to tell him to move, or stand, or stay still, they hadn"t, after those first few hours, held a weapon to his head. Exhale.

Inhale. Grateful no one had forced him to make a videotape.

Inhale. Grateful that he was in good health when taken.

Inhale. And that his vision was fine. He"d heard about hostages, robbed of needed gla.s.ses, who suffered as both their inner and outer worlds blurred.

He didn"t have a plan yet, and he wasn"t grateful for that, but he hoped one would come to him, eventually. And then, there would be cause for more grat.i.tude.

He tried to let thankfulness flow through him, even as his stomach argued against it. He tried to focus on the sound of his breath, proof that he still existed, and to rest while he could. But just as he reached the edge of blessed sleep-the ultimate grat.i.tude right now-the call to prayer resonated through the room from a nearby mosque, followed within minutes by the stirring of his kidnappers pulling themselves sluggishly to their feet, rising into a fresh day, another day of his captivity, to pray.

Clarissa, September 7th She arrived early. She wore sungla.s.ses, the cla.s.sic incognito look, and walked directly to the side of the office, out of sight of the windows. In the days before Todd, and even afterwards, with him gone so much, she"d become surprisingly connected to the staff at Green-Wood-even more than to her colleagues at Columbia, in some ways. Gla.s.ses of wine, evening events, all that. But this crisis had left her lurking at the edges of her own life, hiding from the people she normally embraced. She stood waiting, trying to let herself be soothed by the high wind in the trees and the chatter of the monk parakeets that nested in the Gothic Revival front gates.

She only had a moment before Penny came out of the office. "Can you believe this weather? Wonderful day for grave rubbings, isn"t it?"

Clarissa"s stomach spasmed as she summoned a smile. They had no idea what was happening, not Penny nor anyone else here, which was fine in the sense that it hadn"t-not yet, at least-impacted her occasional work at Green-Wood. Still, it felt like lying.

She put in ten hours a month for a minimal salary making tracings of the gravestones and writing reports on how they should be preserved. Grants were applied for, and sometimes the restorations were made. She loved the work, a nice companion job to teaching, research and writing. It seemed to her natural to love both the urban environments that daily rubbed history away and the fragments within the city that held some permanence, hints of old stories. She"d been working at Green-Wood so long, and so successfully, that they pretty much let her set her own hours. No one felt surprised to see her show up at any moment. Normally, she set aside time for a cup of coffee with whoever was in the office. But she couldn"t bear small talk these days. She couldn"t bear to hear someone ask "What"s new?" and to try to offer some ba.n.a.l answer.

"No work today," she said. "I"m going for a pleasure walk."

"Even better. This place is so lively in the fall, isn"t it?" Penny said. "There"s a wedding in the chapel today-the third this month. Once the chic place to be buried, now the chic place to be married. Doesn"t that sound like good PR?"

"Put it on Twitter." Clarissa managed a small smile.

"Exactly. Oh, and there"s a memorial service not too far from Lola Montez. You might want to head in the Bernstein direction to avoid the crowds."

The roads and walkways of the cemetery all had names like Dawn Path or Arbor Avenue. But Green-Wood employees and regulars gave each other directions using the grave sites of favorite or betterknown "permanent residents."

"Thanks for the tip," Clarissa said. "And here"s Ruby," she added, hoping her relief was not too apparent. She gave Ruby a short embrace, introduced her to Penny-"meet my stepdaughter Ruby,"-and then waved goodbye. Clarissa and Ruby headed up the steps on the other side of the entrance road, and along the path that pa.s.sed "Our Little Emily." Emily"s spot on a rolling lot was marked by a tiny stone and circled by larger headstones, as though she were being watched over by the grownups. Made of marble, Emily"s small stone, from 1874, was deteriorating badly; though most of the restoration funds were earmarked for well-known residents or Civil War gravesites, Clarissa had developed a fondness for "our little Emily" and the family who surrounded her. For a couple of years, she"d been playing with the idea of paying personally to restore Emily"s tiny monument.

Ruby wore jeans and a sleeveless s.h.i.+rt. Her hair was pulled back. The weather was fine but Clarissa, in a light jacket and scarf, had been running cold for days. Once they got away from the office, they had privacy, as she knew they would-even more than in Prospect Park. In the cemetery, pa.s.sersby avoided one another, walking out of their way to sidestep someone sitting near a grave or strolling along a shadowed path. She and Todd had their most critical talks in Green-Wood. This was the first time she"d been here with Ruby-in fact, she realized, the first time she and Ruby had gone anywhere alone together. Clarissa wondered why she hadn"t suggested something before, a play or lunch.

"Sorry I didn"t want to talk at the house," Clarissa said. "The house has begun to feel ... hard. You know?"

Ruby nodded without conviction, her lips a compressed and colorless line above her chin. She leaned toward Clarissa in a confiding way. "Clarissa?"

Clarissa took Ruby"s arm. "Yes?"

"I hope you don"t mind me mentioning something."

"You can say anything."

"We never talked about this before but..." Ruby looked out at the horizon for a beat, "well, you know, I don"t think of you as my mother, of course. And not even really my stepmother. I mean, I was already fully an adult by the time you met my dad, so I think of you as my dad"s wife. And he"s happy and I think it"s great, really. It"s just that it doesn"t have much to do with me, if you know what I mean."

"Oh," Clarissa said. "Well. Of course."

"Our age difference, what is it? A dozen years? It just feels jarring to me when you introduce me that way."

"But of course that"s not-" Clarissa broke off, releasing Ruby"s arm. This hadn"t been what she"d been expecting Ruby to say. But at least it was honest, she told herself, knowing that she was looking for the silver lining.

"I"m sorry," Ruby said. "Everything is just so intense ...."

"I understand. I"m glad you told me," Clarissa said, recovering her composure. "Frankly, step-daughter" never felt quite right to me either. But Todd"s daughter" seems wrong too."

"Then just Ruby is fine."

They walked in silence for a moment. "You feel like walking, or sitting?" Clarissa asked.

"Sitting, I guess," Ruby said. "I"ve never taken a meeting in a cemetery."

Clarissa smiled. "Let"s go over here." She led the way to the John Anderson family mausoleum, 1864. The steps were a pleasant resting place on nice days. The East River stretched in front of them; New Jersey could be glimpsed to the right through the trees. She inhaled the air, and pulled a thermos and two Styrofoam cups out of her bag. "Warm tea," she said, pouring for both of them.

Ruby took hers without meeting Clarissa"s eyes.

"I like cemeteries. It"s probably weird. But I spent some quality time in them when I was younger."

Ruby nodded. "Your parents. The car accident."

"Yeah. I kind of fell apart and it lasted for a few years. I used to go talk to them whenever things got rough. Sometimes I"d leave them notes. Anyway." She took a sip of tea. "How"s Angie?"

"Fine."

"You"re still going to work?"

Ruby nodded.

"Good. Are you sleeping okay?"

"Clarissa," Ruby said. "I think I should go see my grandmother and tell her what"s happening."

Todd"s mother lived in a home for the elderly and recently had been diagnosed with Alzheimer"s. She spent hours playing cat"s cradle with a string, her fingers" flawless muscle memory of a childhood pastime surviving the loss of short-term recall. Watching her fingers move beneath her calm face, Clarissa found her beautiful. Even with the fading of her mind, she seemed to remember who Clarissa was, at least in general terms, although sometimes she called her "Mariana," the name of Todd"s first wife.

"I telephoned the home yesterday," Clarissa said. "I wanted to check in on her."

Ruby looked surprised, then caught herself. "I think Grandma would want to know what"s going on," she said.

"I talked to Maggie, her primary caretaker," Clarissa said. "I told her about Todd; I felt I had to be honest with her. Maggie believes we have to weigh telling your grandmother against the anguish it"s going to cause, even if she forgets a few hours later."

"I don"t know about that," Ruby said firmly.

"Everything is so uncertain," Clarissa said, "Maggie thinks we should wait. I think it"s what Todd would want, too."

"Well." Ruby took a sip of tea as if to gather herself. "Let me think about that," she said.

"Okay."

"And then, something else," Ruby said then. "If there"s a chance to get him out, we need to do it."

"Of course."

"There are three ways, as far as I can tell. He escapes, he"s released, or he"s rescued. So I need to understand your reasoning on refusing the rescue."

Clarissa took a sip of tea, hoping to slow down, defuse, the conversation. "The permission they want is so open-ended, Ruby. Soldiers with guns going in somewhere in the middle of the night would put Todd"s life in danger, and maybe unnecessarily."

"Most of the time, aren"t they pretty accurate?"

"Bill says innocents are killed all the time-usually Afghans. I don"t want to risk it, not yet while we still have a chance for negotiations to succeed."

"Negotiations with whom? We aren"t sure even who"s got him or how sincere they are about wanting to talk. What bargaining chips do we have in our pockets anyway? We have no serious money to offer."

"Ruby, your father has always trusted Amin, and Amin says he thinks he can pull this off, get Todd out. He says we should wait."

"So let Amin talk. But we have to let them rescue Dad if they think they can."

Clarissa reached to touch Ruby"s fingers, which were wrapped around her cup. She felt Ruby tighten, so she withdrew. "I keep asking myself, what would Todd want? I believe he would want this resolved without the military involved."