All That's Left to Tell(3)

“No children,” he said.

He heard her stand up then; her garments rustled, as if she were resettling them, and then she took a quiet step or two, and he felt her shadow as she stood over him; he heard her exhale in his ear.

“Marc,” she said. “Your only daughter was murdered a month ago. She was nineteen. You know this. And you didn’t even go home for the funeral.”

She breathed again in his ear and then pulled away, dragged her chair back over to the far wall, opened the door, and closed it behind her.





2

When Azhar came in with the plate that evening, his gun slung over his shoulder, for the first time there was a serving of meat cut into small pieces. After Azhar handed him the plate, Marc lifted a bite with his spoon and looked up to where Azhar stood by the door.

“Lamb,” Azhar said. “For muscle.”

He flexed his arm and showed his lean biceps.

“Strength for the long haul?” Marc asked, though he knew Azhar wouldn’t understand. Azhar smiled at him. His eyes were large and wet, almost pretty. He had a beard that he occasionally stroked thoughtfully, and when he was sitting watching over Marc for long stretches of time, he tended to stare up and out the window, as if something other than dust or a few feet of the nearest building might become visible. It occurred to Marc that sitting and guarding someone who posed no threat and with whom you shared no language must lead to almost depthless boredom.

Azhar stood and watched him eat. Marc had developed the habit through the days of his capture of separating out each spoonful of grain in order to extend the meal.

“You should bring a plate of your own next time. I don’t much like eating alone.” He lifted his fork toward him.

“Lamb,” Azhar said, and then a sentence in Urdu.

The room where Marc was kept had a crude toilet that sometimes managed to flush. A bucket in which to wash that either Azhar or Saabir emptied each morning. The room was part of a small house or building, and he occasionally heard muffled thumps or a muted voice at night when he was sleeping on his thin mat. Whichever man had the night shift slept in front of the threshold of the door.

When Marc finished eating, Azhar took his plate and set it on the empty chair. “Walk,” he said. He readied his gun in an almost desultory way that had deepened with each passing day, and he opened the door for Marc and followed him out into the late-evening sun. Even its waning brightness was for a moment too much, and Marc shielded his eyes, the sky seemingly saturated with pigment. There was the same smell of dampness in the air mingled with the nearly constant odor of something burning, and more distantly something foul, perhaps sewage. Azhar never led him around the perimeter of the building where he was being kept, but rather the neighboring one that had two or three windows that were often covered, but today Marc could peer through a pane where there were chairs and a table with three cups. He stopped to look in, surprised that he found himself missing even the anonymous faces of others, but Azhar said no and pushed him along with the hand that wasn’t holding the gun.

Two times around the perimeter, after Marc felt the muscles in his legs start to stretch and warm with the movement, Azhar stopped him, put his hand on his shoulder, and turned him around. The gun was at his side, and he was reaching into his pocket. Azhar pulled from it a photograph and handed it to him. The picture was of a girl, maybe ten years old, in a plain dress and a bright blue scarf. She was smiling slightly, her mouth closed. Azhar said something in Urdu and then tapped his chest. “Daughter,” he said with difficulty. Marc handed the photograph back to him, but Azhar didn’t take it immediately, and when Marc looked at his face, Azhar’s eyes were narrowed slightly, the lines near them deepened with sadness. “I”—he struggled to find the word—“sorry.” Then something in Urdu again, and then he gestured with his gun and took Marc one more time around the perimeter.

The sun between the low buildings was nearly at the horizon, a red orb hung over collections of one-story buildings and the gently rolling hills. Marc could have been outside the Midwestern town where he grew up, as far as the sun and hills were concerned, but they were pretty nonetheless, the dusty deep and pale greens tinted orange before the coming twilight, and he felt his eyes fill. Remarkable that these glimpses of beauty under a darkening sky opened the gates of emotion more than the photograph of Azhar’s daughter.

When they walked back into the room, Azhar picked up the plate, lifted it toward him, and smiled.

“Thank you for the lamb,” Marc said, and Azhar nodded and then backed out of the door and was gone for half a minute before Saabir came in with the blindfold and, without speaking, wrapped it around Marc’s eyes and tied his hands. For the first time, he was to get an evening visit from the woman.

When she came in, he heard Saabir walk out and close the door, and the woman once again pulled her chair across the floor of the room so she could sit close to him.

“It’s a beautiful evening,” she said first. “Soon they’ll be calling for the sunset prayer.”

“I wouldn’t know what kind of evening it is,” he said.

“That’s not true, Marc. I saw Azhar walking you outside. I saw the way you looked at the sky.”

“You can’t be Muslim,” he said.

“The call to prayer is moving even if I’m not. The way its rhythms bring your attention in equal parts to your devotion and your mortality.”