Beyond the Point(76)

Shaking the thought from her mind, she changed into a pair of black shorts and a gray T-shirt, and pulled her hair into a ponytail. Being in an engineering platoon had its perks—one of which was that they could build just about anything if they had the right materials.

A week earlier, she’d joined a group of soldiers in building a makeshift basketball court on the tarmac. Since then, they had an unspoken standing pickup game every night at seven P.M. Even the translator, Ebrahim, had started playing, though admittedly, he wasn’t very good. Hannah always picked him for her team, just as a show of good faith.

When she arrived at the court, the interpreter was already there, stretching. He wore a pair of white Air Jordans that Private Murphy had given him.

“Hydration is the key to longevity,” he said philosophically. He offered Hannah a plastic water bottle and she took it.

“I swear, Ebrahim, your English is better than mine,” Hannah said, taking a sip of the cold water.

In the months since she’d arrived at FOB Sharana, he’d become the closest thing Hannah had to a friend. His English was impeccable, his sense of humor approachable, and his addiction to outdated American romantic comedies common knowledge. He’d told Hannah that he’d learned most of his English by watching Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding. He would often stop and shout “Kimmi!” for no reason, as though he had Tourette’s syndrome. It always made Hannah laugh.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” she said.

He nodded. “Shoot.” He put his hands up. “Don’t shoot!” They laughed at his silly joke, and then he said, “Of course. Ask me anything.”

“The other day. That guy with the cow. What are the chances he was telling the truth?”

After a pause, Ebrahim shrugged. “Who’s to say?”

Shaking her head, Hannah sat on the tarmac to tighten her shoelaces. “How can you be so calm about it?” she asked. “Doesn’t that kind of thing keep you up at night?”

“I don’t lose sleep over things I can’t control.”

Hannah focused on the sky while her mind reeled. Her interpreter worked with her nearly every day, having conversations, not offended that her hair was uncovered or that she spoke to him without first being addressed. But she was well aware that his wife at home wasn’t allowed to speak out of turn, or leave the house without his permission.

“For the life of me I don’t understand,” Hannah said, finally letting her arms drop to her sides.

“Don’t understand what?”

“With any other woman, you wouldn’t dare sit and have a conversation like this. Out in the open.”

“No.”

“So what’s the difference?”

“You’re American.”

Hannah sighed. “But what about your wife? Your daughter? Don’t you want them to have an education? Don’t you want them to have opportunities?”

“And what has your education gotten you? A trip to a war zone?” Ebrahim laughed, still trying to keep the tone light. “I imagine your father wishes you were at home.”

Hannah raised her eyebrows. He had a point.

“Sometimes I just wonder if being here is really going to make any difference,” she said. “It just seems impossible.”

Ebrahim let Hannah’s question linger between them. Then he cleared his throat.

“When I was a boy, my father would get up every morning and call around to his brothers, to see who was still alive after the bombing through the night.

“The bombing was constant. After the Russians left, this area was controlled by warlords that constantly fought for territory. Then the Taliban came in and kicked out all of the warlords. And the rules they put in place—they were crazy, sure. It seemed a small price to pay for safety. To sleep and know that you would wake up in the morning.

“I was fifteen when things changed. First, they said that women couldn’t go to school, which wasn’t hard because my family was too poor to send my sisters to school anyway. Then they destroyed the cinemas. We couldn’t listen to music. There was no art. No industry. No festivals or feasts, like there had been when I was a boy. My wedding day was one of the bitterest days of my life. I went to pick up my wife from the salon—there were salons then, if you can imagine that. We drove together to my parents’ home for the celebration. But on the way, they stopped us. Pulled me out of the car. Beat me. Cut my hair. They said I shouldn’t have been with her, like that, alone, because we were unmarried.

“And things just kept getting worse. They killed people and hung them from streetlights. They’d leave the bodies there for weeks, until they rotted and fell to the ground for the dogs to eat.”

He paused, although Hannah couldn’t be sure if it was to collect his thoughts or contain his emotion.

“We can never go back to that. Never,” he said, looking straight at her. “We were dead under the Taliban. There was no life. No reason to live. No traditions. No beauty.

“But now, we feel again. We hope again. I can listen to music and dance.” He snapped his fingers, wiggled his hips. “I’m here, playing basketball with my American friends. That’s something. Right? That’s a . . . what did you say? Lasting change? Yes.”

He unscrewed the cap of his water bottle, took a long sip, then twisted the cap back in place and wiped his mouth.