They had sat in the living room, Baba jan, his men, and her parents. She was in the kitchen making tea while they talked. There was a problem, she said, because her sister Nargis was already engaged, promised to a cousin who lived in Amsterdam and was studying engineering. How were they supposed to break off the engagement? her parents were asking.
And then I come in, carrying a platter of tea and sweets. I fill their cups and put the food on the table, and your father sees me, and, as I turn to go, your father, he says, “Maybe you’re right, sir. It’s not fair to break off an engagement. But if you tell me this one is taken too, then I’m afraid I may have no choice but to think you don’t care for me.” Then he laughs. And that was how we got married.
She lifted a tube of glue.
Did you like him?
She shrugged a little. Truth be told, I was more frightened than anything else.
But you like him now, right? You love him.
Of course I do, Adel’s mother said. What a question.
You don’t regret marrying him.
She put down the glue and waited a few seconds before answering. Look at our lives, Adel, she said slowly. Look around you. What’s to regret? She smiled and pulled gently on the lobe of his ear. Besides, then I wouldn’t have had you.
Adel’s mother turned off the TV now and sat on the floor, panting, drying sweat off her neck with a towel.
“Why don’t you do something on your own this morning,” she said, stretching her back. “I’m going to shower and eat. And I was thinking of calling your grandparents. Haven’t spoken to them for a couple of days.”
Adel sighed and rose to his feet.
In his room, on a lower floor and in a different wing of the house, he fetched his soccer ball and put on the Zidane jersey Baba jan had given him for his last birthday, his twelfth. When he made his way downstairs, he found Kabir napping, a newspaper spread on his chest like a quilt. He grabbed a can of apple juice from the fridge and let himself out.
Adel walked on the gravel path toward the main entrance to the compound. The stall where the armed guard stood watch was empty. Adel knew the timing of the guard’s rounds. He carefully opened the gate and stepped out, closed the gate behind him. Almost immediately, he had the impression that he could breathe better on this side of the wall. Some days, the compound felt far too much like a prison.
He walked in the wide shadow of the wall toward the back of the compound, away from the main road. Back there, behind the compound, were Baba jan’s orchards, of which he was very proud. Several acres of long parallel rows of pear trees and apple trees, apricots, cherries, figs, and loquats too. When Adel took long walks with his father in these orchards, Baba jan would lift him high up on his shoulders and Adel would pluck them a ripe pair of apples. Between the compound and the orchards was a clearing, mostly empty save for a shed where the gardeners stored their tools. The only other thing there was the flat stump of what had once been, by the looks of it, a giant old tree. Baba jan had once counted its rings with Adel and concluded that the tree had likely seen Genghis Khan’s army march past. He said, with a rueful shake of his head, that whoever had cut it down had been nothing but a fool.
It was a hot day, the sun glaring in a sky as unblemished blue as the skies in the crayon pictures Adel used to draw when he was little. He put down the can of apple juice on the tree stump and practiced juggling his ball. His personal best was sixty-eight touches without the ball hitting the ground. He had set that record in the spring, and now it was midsummer and he was still trying to best it. Adel had reached twenty-eight when he became aware that someone was watching him. It was the boy, the one with the old man who had tried to approach Baba jan at the school’s opening ceremony. He was squatting now in the shade of the brick shed.
“What are you doing here?” Adel said, trying to bark the words like Kabir did when he spoke to strangers.
“Getting some shade,” the boy said. “Don’t report me.”
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Neither are you.”
“What?”
The boy chuckled. “Never mind.” He stretched his arms wide and rose to his feet. Adel tried to see if his pockets were full. Maybe he had come to steal fruit. The boy walked over to Adel and flipped up the ball with one foot, gave it a pair of quick juggles, and kicked it with his heel to Adel. Adel caught the ball and cradled it under his arm.
“Where your goon had us wait, over by the road, me and my father? There’s no shade. And not a damn cloud in the sky.”
Adel felt a need to rise to Kabir’s defense. “He is not a goon.”
“Well, he made sure we got an eyeful of his Kalashnikov, I can tell you that.” He looked at Adel, a lazy, amused grin on his lips. He dropped a wad of spit at his feet. “So I see you’re a fan of the head-butter.”
It took Adel a moment to realize who he was referring to. “You can’t judge him by one mistake,” he said. “He was the best. He was a wizard in the midfield.”
“I’ve seen better.”
“Yeah? Like who?”
“Like Maradona.”
“Maradona?” Adel said, outraged. He’d had this debate before with one of his half brothers in Jalalabad. “Maradona was a cheater! ‘Hand of God,’ remember?”
“Everyone cheats and everyone lies.”
The boy yawned and started to go. He was about the same height as Adel, maybe a hair taller, and probably just around his age too, Adel thought. But somehow he walked like he was older, without hurry and with a kind of air, as if he had seen everything there was to see and nothing surprised him.
“My name is Adel.”
“Gholam.” They shook hands. Gholam’s grip was strong, his palm dry and callused.
“How old are you anyway?”
Gholam gave a shrug. “Thirteen, I guess. Could be fourteen by now.”
“You don’t know your own birthday?”
Gholam grinned. “I bet you know yours. I bet you count down.”
“I do not,” Adel said defensively. “I mean, I don’t count down.”
“I should go. My father’s waiting alone.”
“I thought that was your grandfather.”
“You thought wrong.”
“Do you want to play a shoot-out?” Adel asked.
“You mean like a penalty shoot-out?”
“Five each … best of.”
Gholam spat again, squinted toward the road and back at Adel. Adel noticed that his chin was a bit small for his face and that he had overlapping extra canines in the front, one of them chipped badly and rotting. His left eyebrow was split in half by a short, narrow scar. Also, he smelled. But Adel hadn’t had a conversation—let alone played a game—with a boy his age in nearly two years, discounting the monthly visits to Jalalabad. Adel prepared himself for disappointment, but Gholam shrugged and said, “Shit, why not? But I get first dibs on shooting.”