Khyber Run by Amber Green Read Free Book Online Page A

lakh, he said. I knew a lakh was a thousand rupees, and that most of my remaining money was in the crimson hundred-rupee notes, but I had no idea what the conversion rate would be.
    Before I could ask, Oscar showed me an iPad screen with conversion tables on it. The starting prices for what I wanted ranged from forty to forty-five bucks. Steep, but having a good knife was worth doing without other things. Besides, I could probably get the shortest-bladed one for less than thirty.
    I picked up a midlength choora. “Two lakh."
    "You are mad!"
    I looked at the blade, shrugged, set it down, and moved to the next booth's machetes and chrome-plated kukris.
    He called me back. The dickering began in earnest. When it ended, I had a choora with a seven-inch blade, along with a plaid cloth that would serve either as a sash or a secondary shemagh, for twenty-nine bucks in rupees.
    In a warm section out of the wind, a thin man in a gray turban and a much-mended kamiz wept as he stood two boys on stones—ancient blocks Alexander the Great might have sat on to drink his tea. The younger boy wore a green Notre Dame baseball cap while the older—aged fourteen or so—wore a too-small embroidered cap. Their shoes had been mended with duct tape.
    Both boys were trembling hard, despite their pullovers, and the older one curved his right hand protectively over the younger one's eyes. A crowd was forming, as if expecting high entertainment.
    I moved with some trepidation to see the boys’ faces. Instead of terrible disfiguration, I saw beauty. The older boy looked a little like Elijah Wood, but formed in the image of a darker, blunter God. My skin tightened. He was up for sale.
    Or lease, I guess, since payment for a son's services normally comes due twice a year.
    A woman in burqa murmured “Zarr,” and another low voice agreed. “Zarra zarr."
    As the Cat in the Hat would say, What a shame, what a shame, what a shame!
    One stout man, with a fleece vest and a beard so red it might have been dyed with cherry Kool-Aid, waded to the front of the crowd. He rudely fingered the beautiful boy's shoulder and neck and asked how well he could dance.
    The thin man pulled his beard with hooked fingers and cried out a prayer for guidance.
    What, had he thought to sell such a beauty as a shepherd or a shopboy? Idiot. Even if he only asked the price of a shepherd, the kid would be naked and sprawled under Red-beard or someone like him in the half hour it would take to get him stripped, scoured, and oiled.
    I shoved my new wallet with the rest of the rupees at Oscar. “Buy me a donkey, a good one, now. Right fucking now. Demand a full load of whatever grain the man has, too. If it costs more than I've got, I'll owe you. Go!"
    He looked down at me, his shades mirroring my face. “Chill, Zu. You want packed ass, you get packed ass."
    It's not funny ! “Do it. Now!"
    I elbowed my way to the front of the crowd and asked the thin man in English what he thought of this fine, brilliantly sunny day. Though I spoke English, my voice automatically took on the ingrained courtesy of a culture where every man is, or might be, armed to the teeth.
    Which, actually, I now was.
    Red-beard eyed me sideways and faded back into the rapidly scattering crowd, leaving the thin man to explain to me the extraordinary depths of his regret that he spoke not a word of my language. His voice was scratchy, tired, defeated. Yet still it held the pride and the courtesy I had so missed in softer lands.
    I studied his turban as he spoke, but the folds and turns of cloth weren't the way I'd been taught to build a lungee. His accent didn't match mine either. Not the soft southern Pashto, but the in-between sound of the far north. He wasn't my kin. He was my people, though, and so were his sons. I couldn't save every kid in this land, but if Oscar got back quickly enough I could buy an extra year for two of them.
    Bismillah, that grace period might bring their family back from the brink of