I THOUGHT WE’D END UP DRIVING around the city until night fell. I saw myself calling the police, describing Sohrab to them under Fayyaz’s reproachful glare. I heard the officer, his voice tired and uninterested, asking his obligatory questions. And beneath the official questions, an unofficial one: Who the hell cared about another dead Afghan kid?
But we found him about a hundred yards from the mosque, sitting in the half-full parking lot, on an island of grass. Fayyaz pulled up to the island and let me out. “I have to get back,” he said.
“That’s fine. We’ll walk back,” I said. “Thank you, Mr. Fayyaz. Really.”He leaned across the front seat when I got out. “Can I say something to you?”
“Sure.”
In the dark of twilight, his face was just a pair of eyeglasses reflecting the fading light. “The thing about you Afghanis is that... well, you people are a little reckless.”
I was tired and in pain. My jaws throbbed. And those damn wounds on my chest and stomach felt like barbed wire under my skin. But I started to laugh anyway.
“What... what did I...” Fayyaz was saying, but I was cackling by then, full-throated bursts of laughter spilling through my wired mouth.
“Crazy people,” he said. His tires screeched when he peeled away, his tail-lights blinking red in the dimming light.“You GAVE ME A GOOD SCARE,” I said. I sat beside him, wincing with pain as I bent.He was looking at the mosque. Shah Faisal Mosque was shaped like a giant tent. Cars came and went; worshipers dressed in white streamed in and out. We sat in silence, me leaning against the tree, Sohrab next to me, knees to his chest. We listened to the call to prayer, watched the building’s hundreds of lights come on as daylight faded. The mosque sparkled like a diamond in the dark. It lit up the sky, Sohrab’s face. “Have you ever been to Mazar-i-Sharif?” Sohrab said, his chin resting on his kneecaps.
“A long time ago. I don’t remember it much.”
“Father took me there when I was little. Mother and Sasa came along too. Father bought me a monkey from the bazaar. Not a real one but the kind you have to blow up. It was brown and had a bow tie.”
“I might have had one of those when I was a kid.”