Ground Zero(63)

It was Taz’s turn to sit down and rest. He studied his dirty hands as he rubbed the rock dust from them.

“When the towers came down, everybody pulled together,” he said, as if deep in memory. “Not just Americans, but people all over the world. There was this feeling of unity. America invaded Afghanistan with a coalition of countries. But then we turned around and invaded Iraq when we still hadn’t captured bin Laden or stopped al Qaeda. By 2010, we still hadn’t caught the people who planned the World Trade Center attacks. That’s when I joined the army. I was eighteen, and I wanted revenge.”

Reshmina nodded. She understood revenge.

“We got bin Laden a year after that, but the mission wasn’t over,” Taz went on. “Now it was just this ‘War on Terror.’ I thought I was fighting the good fight. Making sure what happened to me and my dad all those years ago never happened to anybody else. But now I’m not so sure what I’m doing. Who are we fighting? How do we know we’ve won?”

Taz picked up a small rock and threw it.

“You know,” he said, “on 9/11, after everything happened, I remember wondering, Why does somebody hate us that bad? We’re the good guys, you know?”

Reshmina put down the rock she was picking up and looked at him through narrowed eyes. The good guys?

Taz put his hands up in surrender. “I know, I know. But that’s what I mean. After 9/11, everybody said al Qaeda attacked us because they hated our way of life, our freedom. But I’ve been over here ten years, and I’ve never heard one single person, Taliban or otherwise, talking about how much they hate America’s freedom, or Starbucks coffee, or free elections. You and your family didn’t even recognize a picture of New York.” Taz shook his head. “In America, we think everybody in the world cares about everything we say and do. But the only thing people here care about is what we say and do over here.” He looked out at what was left of her village. “My dad once told me a bully is somebody who does whatever they want and never gets in trouble for it. Maybe that’s what we are. Maybe we’re the bullies.”

Reshmina watched Taz for a long moment. “Your country may be,” she said at last. “But you are not.”

“Thanks,” said Taz. “Maybe it’s time for me to think about leaving the army.” He smiled. “I want to be able to help with both hands.”

Another soldier called up the hill. It was almost dark, and the Americans were heading back to their base.

Taz stood. “Listen, the army’s got this interpreter program. If you work for the US Army here in Afghanistan as a translator, you get special permission to come to America when you’re done. Go to an American university. Maybe become a US citizen. I don’t know all the details, but I could find out. Recommend you for the program when you’re old enough. Your English is great. You’d be a natural at it, like the lady you met this morning.”

“The lady who is dead,” said Reshmina.

“Yeah,” said Taz. He lowered his head, no doubt thinking about Mariam and everyone else who had died that morning.

“It’s not easy,” Taz told her. “But then, nothing really worth it ever is.”

Reshmina nodded. Just the thought of going to the United States to study at one of their schools gave her goose bumps. But to do it, Reshmina would have to ally herself with the people who had killed her sister. Destroyed her village.

“Thank you, but no,” Reshmina said. She would keep going to school, keep learning English. Perhaps move to Kabul when she was old enough. Maybe even find a way to go to the US or Canada or Australia to study. But it would be on her own terms.

“Well, if you change your mind, let me know,” Taz said. “No matter what, I’ll come back and help. I promise.”

“Thank you for the warning,” Reshmina told him.

Taz smiled at her joke. “I deserve that,” he admitted.

He unhooked the strange stuffed devil from his vest and gave it to Reshmina.

“Here,” Taz said. “This brought me luck once. Of a kind. Maybe it’ll bring luck to you too.”

Reshmina took the dusty, ratty thing. It wasn’t much to look at, and it wouldn’t serve her any real purpose, but she knew how important it was to Taz.

“Thank you,” Reshmina said. She bowed her head to Taz, then remembered how she’d been taught to say goodbye from her English lessons.

“I will friend you on Facebook,” she told him.

Taz laughed and said his thanks and goodbyes to Reshmina’s father.

When Taz was gone, Reshmina helped her father stand up. They’d done enough work for now, and it was time to join the rest of their family in the valley.

They started walking, but Baba was slow. The steps had always been hard for him, and now even those were gone—buried under a village’s worth of wood and stone.

“Is there any other way down?” Baba asked.

Reshmina scanned the hillside. The sun had almost set. On a ridge across the valley, silhouetted against the orange-yellow sky, Reshmina spotted the lone figure of a boy. He was so far away she could never see his face, but Reshmina knew instantly who it was: Pasoon. She would know her brother anywhere.

So he wasn’t dead! And he had come back to check on them. Why? To make sure they were all right? Or to gloat over firing another shot at the American hornet’s nest?