Khyber Run by Amber Green Read Free Book Online Page B

the cliff they so obviously faced.
    The boys stirred uneasily, and the crowd reassembled with studied nonchalance just inside eavesdropping distance. I'd been silent too long, and they were staring at me.
    I moved closer to their father, but not close enough to challenge him. Personal space was different here; men can get closer than can Americans, but only when the niceties are observed. After my disastrous visit before, I didn't trust my command of the niceties.
    I murmured quietly, in English, that I was shopping for a partridge in a pear tree and hoped he could help me.
    He shrugged elaborately and begged my forgiveness for his ignorance.
    A boy in bright pink plastic shoes shuffled toward me and offered, in Bronx-accented English, to take me on a tour of the bazaar.
    I shook my head and smiled at him. The crowd drew closer behind him.
    But here came Oscar. Peculiarly enough, he knew better than to lead the donkey. He walked beside it instead, giving it a quick jab in the kidney when it lagged.
    He handed me the donkey's halter strap, and I passed it to the thin man, dropping my voice to an intimate level. “Call your son Ismail, for he has been sacrificed and yet returned to you, fi Sabillallah ."
    For a moment he didn't understand. Then he did, and his joy tore at me. He shrieked blessings on me, on my fathers and sons for a hundred generations.
    My face burned. I turned away.
    Echo blocked my path. “What was that about, Zu? You can't feed all the beggars, you know. There's always more."
    He wasn't begging . I felt a tiny tug at my belt and grabbed a little boy's hand before he'd fully unsheathed my choora. I straightened my arm over my head, dangling him for anyone to see.
    He was maybe five, too young to be out alone, and had horrible scabbing on his face. Leishmaniasis. From sand flies, accidentally imported in the last few years from Iraq.
    The little thief should have fought and screamed, but he just hung there by one arm, his eyes closed, waiting in misery. Which meant he'd already gone through more horror than I could stand to visit upon him.
    I set him down. “That's one family less."
    Echo wanted to find a true Kashmir ring scarf for his girlfriend. Mike said this was the bazaar for it. I took the sudden notion that if I did find my family, I didn't want to come to them empty-handed. I needed to bring something, and by now it needed to be extremely cheap and extremely portable. “Mike, I want to buy garden seeds."
    He turned his covered face toward me and nodded. “They don't take up a lot of room. Have at it. Keep close watch on his ass, Oscar."
    "Roger that,” Oscar promised.
    My grandmother had grown flowers and herbs in glazed pots all around the house. She'd particularly loved blue flowers. Echoes of heaven, she called them. Even if she'd died in my absence, some of the aunts and cousins would appreciate a present of flower seed. Maybe some herbs and vegetables, too.
    I scanned up and down the block, looking for stalls without the overflow of cheap electronics.
    About a block ahead, a little girl in brightly embroidered skirts and orange plastic shoes played furtively in one doorway. She hid her toy in her vest when men passed the doorway, but glancing back, I caught a glimpse of a straw doll and solemn, frightened eyes. She ducked inside.
    I'd heard of hard-nosed students beating little girls for playing with dolls. How could a man do that?
    To save her soul, maybe. When a people feels itself sliding into death and hell, it will reach for the strongest available lifeline. Around here, the mullahs and their students had been the only lifeline for a while. They were still the only ones who seemed untainted by foreign condescension, foreign maneuvering, foreign values.
    I'd seen American kids her age on TV, their faces glowing with fervor a talib would aspire to, in the God-hates-you demonstrations at military burials. They claimed a moral purity that would be very at home here. Was it worse to beat a