Ground Zero(37)

And they were right in Reshmina’s path.

Reshmina carefully climbed down the ridge and stood at the edge of the poppy field. How strange to see such brilliant color here, among all the brown of the mountains. The flowers were so thin, so delicate, and they moved back and forth as though they were people mingling at a party. Like they were dancing.

Reshmina wished she could just sit and watch them. She was tired—pushed to the edge of exhaustion. She’d been running since she left her brother behind, taking shortcuts up and down rocky, desolate hills. She was desperate to get back to her village. If her father hadn’t returned from the ANA camp yet, she had to hide Taz so the Taliban wouldn’t find him. If Baba had returned, and Taz was already gone, Reshmina still had to alert the villagers that the Taliban were coming.

No matter what, the Taliban weren’t going to be happy the villagers had given Taz refuge. And it was all Reshmina’s fault, just like Pasoon said.

Reshmina walked out among the poppies. The flowers were so tall they came up to her nose. The effect of standing among them, of almost being swallowed up by them, was magical. She wished the whole of Afghanistan were covered with the beautiful flowers.

But Reshmina knew it couldn’t be. People didn’t grow poppies for their pretty pink colors. Poppy seeds had a gummy substance that was the raw material for heroin. Heroin was a drug that took away people’s pain. For many Afghans hurt by decades of war, it was the only kind of medicine they could find to erase that suffering—and their awful memories. Afghan parents had long given the drug to their babies to ease earaches, or in place of food to soothe their hunger pains.

But Reshmina knew that heroin wasn’t medicine. It was an addictive, destructive drug that eventually killed everyone who couldn’t stop using it. And addicts would do anything for their next fix—lie, steal, even sell their own children.

Poppies loved the rocky, dry soil of the mountains, and it was easy to hide fields like this one high up in the mountains. You could get rich growing poppies for heroin, but you could get in trouble too. The Taliban made a lot of money that way to pay for more guns and bombs, so the United States destroyed any poppy fields they could find and arrested the farmers who had planted them.

Reshmina put her hands out, brushing the stalks of the poppies as she walked, pretending for just a moment that they were nothing but beautiful flowers, not the source of so much agony and heartbreak.

Reshmina’s father refused to grow poppies, even though their family was very poor. And with Afghanistan getting hotter and drier, it was harder for Baba to grow real crops, like wheat and melons. Pasoon had fought with Baba about it, of course. Pasoon had argued that they only had to grow poppies for one, perhaps two seasons, and they would make more money than they would see in a lifetime of growing food. It would be easier too—every year there was less water, less usable land, and more chance the food crops would fail and they would earn nothing. Reshmina knew Pasoon was right about that part, at least. But Baba had said growing heroin was a bad business, and against Islam, and that had been that.

Reshmina put a hand to the side of her face, where her brother had hit her. Tears came to her eyes again, and her heart ached at his betrayal. But it was too late for that now. Pasoon had made his choice, and so had she.

Reshmina remembered her prayer in the Kochi camp, for God to show Pasoon a different path. Her request was a du’a. A special request in a time of need. According to their imam, the prayer leader in their mosque, God promised to answer a du’a in one of three ways. The first and best answer was when God gave you what you asked for, right when you asked for it. The second was to give you what you prayed for, but at some later date. The third was to not give you what you asked for at all, but instead to prevent some other hardship or injury from happening to you.

God certainly hadn’t answered Reshmina’s request by changing Pasoon’s path. Did that mean that at some later time, God would forgive Pasoon and change her brother’s heart? Reshmina hoped so. But she wasn’t sure she could ever forgive her brother.

Something red flashed against all that pink, and Reshmina froze.

Patrolling the far edge of the poppy field was a man wearing a green tunic, a white turban, and a red scarf. It was the red scarf that had caught Reshmina’s attention, but now all she could see was what the man carried over his shoulder: an old Soviet-era AK-47 rifle.

Reshmina ducked low in the poppies and held her breath. Had the soldier seen her? She waited for long seconds. Minutes. But no one came.

Reshmina looked around, trying to figure out how she could escape. All she saw were poppies everywhere she looked. She could go back the way she had come, but that would take too long. But if this soldier caught her, there was no telling what he would do. She had discovered his hidden, illegal poppy field.

Sweat ran down Reshmina’s back, and her heart thumped hard in her chest. She could not get caught. Slowly, carefully, as quietly as she could, Reshmina chanced another peek over the tops of the poppies.

The red-scarf soldier leaned against a rock. He was turned away from her, smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t paying particular attention to the poppy field. Or anything, really. That’s why he hadn’t noticed Reshmina as she came down through the pass. He was just a guard, and it must have been terribly boring to have to sit and watch a poppy field all day long, high up in the mountains where no one else could see you or talk to you. If she waited long enough, he would probably go to sleep.