Ground Zero(25)

Reshmina spied Pasoon’s toy airplane sticking out of his pocket, and she snatched it and tucked it away under her tunic while he had his eyes closed in prayer. She still hoped God would answer her prayers, but it didn’t hurt to have a backup plan.

When they were finished praying, an old Kochi woman stood and came over to Reshmina and Pasoon. “Come,” she said, and held out a hand.

Reshmina glanced at her brother. His scowl was back. Reshmina knew her brother wanted to be on his way to the Taliban, not playing nice with nomads. But they could still hear the tung-tung-tung of Taliban rifles over the ridge. She and her brother weren’t going anywhere. Not yet.

Reshmina accepted the old woman’s invitation, and she and Pasoon crouched low as they followed her to a small blanket, where a mother and father sat with their two children. The old woman was their grandmother, Reshmina guessed. Chickens clucked quietly in wooden cages all around them, and a baby camel in a tightly bundled blanket twisted its long neck to sniff them. Three baby goats bleated and butted their heads against Reshmina and Pasoon as they sat down.

Naan, rice, cooked chicken, and pistachios were already laid out on the blanket in bowls, and the old woman offered the food to her guests. Pasoon dug in greedily, and Reshmina gave him a swift elbow to the ribs. They had to accept the act of hospitality—to refuse would be a grave insult—but they shouldn’t eat too much either. The Kochi were clearly poor, and the rice alone must be very precious to a tribe with no land of their own.

Reshmina took a small piece of naan and a pinch of rice, and nodded her thanks. Pasoon frowned, but he did the same.

Reshmina looked around at the Kochi as she ate. What would happen if the battle between the Americans and the Taliban spilled over the ridge? What would all these people do? There was nowhere for them go, nowhere else for them to hide.

Reshmina seemed to be the only one worried about it. The two little children giggled as the baby goats butted Pasoon for his food. The grandmother worked at weaving a carpet on a small, portable loom, and the father looped and knotted cloth into some kind of satchel. The mother cradled something under her shawl, and Reshmina was surprised to see a tiny baby, wrapped up so tightly in swaddling clothes that it couldn’t move anything but its little mouth. Its eyes fluttered closed as it drifted off to sleep.

What must it be like to live this way? Reshmina wondered. To be born under the sky. To be raised on the move, and sleep around a softly crackling fire. There was a charming simplicity to it. The Kochi owned only what their camels could carry, did only what was necessary to survive. There was no walking three kilometers every day to go to school, no fitting in homework around housework. Reshmina doubted any of them could read, let alone do long division. They certainly didn’t know what a computer was, and didn’t care.

Pasoon appeared to be just as charmed, laughing with the children as a baby goat tried to climb their father’s back. Reshmina wished for a moment that she and her brother were both Kochi. It seemed like the nomads existed in their own world, one completely separate from the conflict between the Taliban and the Americans. She knew it couldn’t be that simple—that the Kochi had to have been drawn into the war and affected by it just like everyone else. But she loved the idea of climbing on a camel and leaving all of this behind.

The explosions on the other side of the mountain moved away down the valley, and Pasoon stood. “I have to go,” he said, and the spell was broken.

Reshmina bowed their thanks again to the old woman and her family, stood, and hurried to follow her brother. She caught up to him just outside the old logging camp and grabbed him by the arm.

“Oh no you don’t,” Reshmina said. “You’re not going to the Taliban, Pasoon!”

Pasoon pulled free. “Watch me,” he said, and he kept moving.

Reshmina seethed. Her brother could be so stupid sometimes. “You grew up in a jam bottle!” she told him, following on his heels.

“You’re the daughter of a sheep,” Pasoon fired back.

“May you be eaten by termites,” Reshmina told him. She could trade insults with her brother all day.

“Go home,” Pasoon told her. “You’re not even supposed to be out without a male chaperone.”

Reshmina caught up again and matched her brother step for step. “Well, I have one now,” she told him.

“You’re not coming with me,” Pasoon told her.

“Watch me,” Reshmina said.

Pasoon stopped and turned on Reshmina. “There is nothing you can say or do to stop me from going to the Taliban,” he told her.

“Oh yeah?” Reshmina said. She pulled the toy airplane from inside her tunic and waggled it just out of his reach. “Then I suppose you don’t mind leaving without this.”





Brandon and Richard came out of the stairwell cautiously, tentatively, scanning the 91st floor. They had seen fire through the walls just above them, but there was no fire here. Not yet.

There were no people either. They went through every office they could get to through the rubble and debris: a shipping company, two banks, two investment companies, a Manhattan cultural council. There were lots of cubicles, lots of desks, but each of them was empty.

Brandon was searching one of the offices when he saw something fall past the window outside.

Was that—was that a person?

Brandon shook his head to clear it. It couldn’t have been a person. Nobody in their right mind would jump from the Twin Towers this high up.