The fighters spread blankets on the dirt of the courtyard. This was no mosque with a proper qibla, but they knew in which direction Mecca lay- They bent, shoulder to shoulder, and went through morning prayers together.
After praying, Satar ate unleavened bread and drank tea thick with sugar and fragrant with mint. He had never been a fat man; he'd grown thinner since joining the mujahideen. The godless infidels and their puppets held the richest parts of the countryside. But villagers were generous in sharing what they had—and some of what was grown and made in occupied parts of the country reached the fighters in the holy war through one irregular channel or another.
A couple of boys of about six strutted by, both of them carrying crude wooden toy Kalashnikovs. One dived behind some rubble. The other stalked him as carefully as if their assault rifles were real. When the time came for them to take up such weapons, they would be ready. Another boy, perhaps thirteen, had a real Kalashnikov on his back. He'd been playing with toy firearms when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. Now he was old enough to fight for God on his own. Boys like that were useful, especially as scouts—the Shuravi weren't always so wary of them as they were with grown men.
Something glinted in the early-morning sun: a boy of perhaps eight carried what looked like a plastic pen even more proudly than the other children bore their Kalashnikovs, pretend and real. Assault rifles were commonplace, pens something out of the ordinary, something special.
"Hey, sonny," Satar called through lips all at once numb with fear. The boy looked at him. He nodded encouragingly. "Yes, you—that's right. Put your pen on the ground and walk away from it."
"What?" Plainly, the youngster thought he was crazy. "Why should I?" If he'd had a rifle, Satar would have had to look to his life.
"I'll tell you why: because I think it's a Russian mine. If you fiddle with it, it will blow off your hand."
The boy very visibly thought that over. Satar could read his mind. Is this mujahid trying to steal my wonderful toy? Maybe the worry on Satar's face got through to him, because he did set the pen in the dirt. But when he walked away, he kept looking back over his shoulder at it.
With a sigh of relief, Satar murmured, "Truly there is no God but God."
"Truly," someone behind him agreed. He turned. There stood Sayid Jaglan. The commander went on, "That is a mine—I am sure of it. Pens are bad. I was afraid he would take off the cap and detonate it. Pens are bad, but the ones that look like butterflies are worse. Any child, no matter how small, will play with those."
"And then be blown to pieces," Satar said bitterly.
"Oh, no, not to pieces." Sayid Jaglan shook his head. He was about forty, not very tall, his pointed beard just beginning to show frost. He had a scar on his forehead that stopped a centimeter or so above his right eye. "They're made to maim, not to kill. The Russians calculate we have to work harder to care for the wounded than to bury the dead."
Satar pondered that. "A calculation straight from the heart of Shai-tan," he said at last.
"Yes, but sound doctrine even so." Sometimes the officer Sayid Jaglan had been showed through under the chieftain of mujahideen he was. "You did well to persuade the boy to get rid of that one." "Taking off the cap activates it?" Satar asked. Sayid Jaglan nodded. Satar went over and picked up the pen and set it on top of a battered wall, out of reach of children. If he was afraid of doing it, he didn't show his fear, or even acknowledge it to himself. All he said was, "We should be able to salvage the explosive from it."
"Yes." Sayid Jaglan nodded again. "You were a little soft when you joined us, Satar—who would have expected anything different from a druggist's son? You never followed the herds or tried to scratch a living from the fields. But you've done well. You have more wit than God gave most men, and your heart was always strong. Now your body matches your spirit's strength."
Satar didn't show how much the compliment pleased him, either. That was not the Afghan way. Gruffly, he replied, "If it is God's will, it will be accomplished."
"Yes." Sayid Jaglan looked down the valley, in the direction of Bulola. "And I think it is God's will that we soon reclaim your home village from the atheist Shuravi."
"May it be so," Satar said. "I have not sat beside my father for far too long."
Sergei strode up the main street, such as it was, of Bulola. Dirt and dust flew up from under his boots at every stride. In Kabul, even in Bamian, he probably would have felt safe enough to wear his Kalashnikov slung on his back. Here, he carried it, his right forefinger ready to leap to the trigger in an instant. The change lever was on single shots. He could still empty the magazine in seconds, and he could aim better that way.
Beside him, Vladimir carried his weapon ready to use, too. Staying alive in Afghan meant staying alert every second of every minute of every day. Vladimir glanced over at a handful of gray-bearded men sitting around drinking tea and passing the mouthpiece of a water pipe back and forth. Laughing, he said, "Ah, they love us."
"Don't they just!" Sergei laughed, too, nervously. The Afghans' eyes followed Vladimir and him. They were hard and black and glittering as obsidian. "If the looks they gave us came out of Kalashnikovs, we'd be Weeding in the dust."
'Fuck "em," Vladimir said cheerfully. "No, fuck their wives—these assholes aren't worth it."
He could make it sound funny. He could make it sound obscene. But he couldn't take away one brute fact. "They all hate us," Sergei said. "They don't even bother hiding it. Every single one of them hates us."
"There's a hot headline!" Vladimir exclaimed. "What did you expect? That they'd welcome us with open arms—the women with open legs? That they'd all give us fraternal socialist greetings? Not fucking likely!" He spat.
"I did think that when I first got here. Didn't you?" Sergei said. "Before they put me on the plane for Kabul, they told me I was coming here to save the popular revolution. They told me we were internationalists, and the peace-loving Afghan government had asked us for help."
"They haven't changed their song a bit. They told my gang the same thing," Vladimir said. "I already knew it was a crock, though."
"How?"
"How? I'll tell you how. Because my older brother's best friend came back from here in a black tulip, inside one of those zinc coffins they make in Kabul. It didn't have a window in it, and this officer stuck to it like a leech to make sure Sasha's mother and dad wouldn't open it up and see what happened to him before they planted him in the ground. That's how."
"Oh." Sergei didn't know how to answer that. After a few more steps, he said, "They told me the Americans started the war."
Vladimir pointed out to the mountains, to the gray and brown and red rock. "You see Rambo out there? I sure don't."
"We've got our own Ramboviki here," Sergei said slyly. "Bastards. Fucking bastards." Vladimir started to spit once more, but seemed too disgusted to go through with it this time. "I hate our fucking gung-ho paratroopers, you know that? They want to go out and kick ass, and they get everybody else in trouble when they do."