Here he interrupts. “How? When did I ever pretend blindness?” But even in the dim lamplight she can see the worry in his eyes.

“You pretend not to see that Bahram Alakazai, whom you follow, is an unworthy leader. Where did he come from? What is his khel and tribe? When did the Pashtun ever follow such a man? Yet you follow him because he has money and weapons and promises you power, and at his command you make war on women and on the people of a Muslim nation.”

“You lie, woman!”

“See? I told you you would say that, but I am not lying. It is my honor to tell the truth about dreams, and you know I am honorable, for didn’t I endure the torture instead of falsely confessing to blasphemy? Now, do you want to hear the rest of the interpretation?”

He nods and makes a gesture with his hand and she continues. “A little girl shows you the secret of the sand, and this allows you to separate the black grains by touch. You could not have imagined such a thing, because no man can imagine God’s mercy. This dream also says you must use a different sense than you thought, not vision, but touch. This means that all you thought was true must be considered again, to tell the good from the bad. After you accomplished the task, you had a feeling of peace, which is but a pale ghost of the feeling you will have when God takes you to Him. It is a promise, but only if you turn from the path of murder and pride and do the work of the greater jihad. That is the end of the interpretation.”

He sits in silence, stroking his beard; she studies his face. For a moment the harsh Pashtun male mask he wears fades and a more contemplative person is revealed. They get that from the secret life they share with their mothers, she thinks. The poor women have only a single opportunity to acquire a fragment of power over their lives, and this is through their sons when they are small. But the women are stupid and beaten down, so they can rarely give their boys the spark of a strong opposite, the feminine introject that leads to individuation. And so the boys never grow up. They retain the brutality and carelessness of boys for their whole lives, living on boasts and the good opinion of their gang. And they have the short attention span of boys and the romantic wildness, building nothing, dumbfounded by the civilizations around them, knowing as little of how a political order or a modern economy is constructed as a six-year-old knows about what his father does at work. So they are doomed to poverty, the manipulations of others, and early death.

Idris utters something underneath his breath. She sees the mask drop into place and he rises with one swift motion. In a stiff, harsh voice he says, “But after all, it is only a dream and dreams are not real life. They are of no account in real life.”

“Nor is the world to come a part of real life, yet the Prophet, peace be with him, told us to value it above every other thing. You have been given a great gift, Idris Ghulam. God will not be pleased with you if you throw it away.”

The man’s fists clench and he seems about to say something, but instead he turns away and leaves the room. There are six more clients that night, including Rashida’s mother and several of the mujahideen. They relate the simple dreams of simple people, or so she decides to consider them. They want to know what will happen to them, should they sell a cow, will the child just started be a son? She answers as best she can in accordance with the ancient Sufi dream books. They seem satisfied and happy that there is no charge.

Mahmoud leads her back to prison. When they come to the door, Sonia turns and faces the guard. She says, “Mahmoud, wait! If I save your life now, will you promise me something?”

“What is it? And how will you save my life?”

“First swear by God and upon your head and the head of your son that you will do as I ask, if it does not soil your honor. I am an honest woman, as you know, and I swear by my honor that I am not trying to trick you. And recall your dream, that you would profit by helping a boy who was not a boy. This is the moment foretold, for that boy is me.”

He goggles at her. “How is this possible?”

“It is a long story, Mahmoud, well known to others, but I do not have time to recount it here. Swear now, in the name of God.”

The big man ruminates on this for some seconds and then nods. After the required oaths he asks, “So now, how will you save my life?”

She says, “Behind that door is a man with a club, and as soon as you step through it he will break your skull, take your clothes and weapons, and try to escape.”

Mahmoud growls and moves forward, but she stands in his way. “No, you will do nothing to this man; that is my request. Recall that you promised to obey! Don’t come through the door after me as you usually do. Let me slip in alone.”

He glares; she holds him with her eye and hopes he was frightened of his mother. He relents, opens the door, she slides in, and he locks it. The room is utterly dark except for the dim sliver of light from the guard’s lantern coming from under the door. She can see Ashton’s bare feet as he waits with his weighted sock. She ignores him and his muffled curse, and the black shape, crouching there, Annette in a burqa.

H ow I got back to the States. That’s an interesting story and one I usually leave out of my biography, especially when talking to women. I don’t mind telling Billy Olin, though. I had a couple of hours to kill before my flight, so I dropped in to say good-bye on my way to the airport. He was the same. People change, they say, but not Rowboat Billy. He told me once, how he got the name-we were both of us drunk in an NCO club at Fort Bragg-and I assured him it was no big thing, as I’m sure he would have said about my little secrets. It was in the early weeks of the Iraq war and him and a bunch of Rangers were set up on the river near Tikrit, looking for insurgents running down the water from there, and one night Billy spotted a rowboat and challenged it and when they kept right on going he smoked it with his SAW. And wouldn’t you know? It was a family with eight little kids. It happens. Pretty much everybody who’s been downrange has a story like that.

Mine was a little different. After I’d got blown up in my final moment as a heroic mujahid, I woke up after maybe two weeks out of it, and there was Wazir again to praise me, eyes full of love, and tell me what happened. He didn’t say that everyone else had thought I was dead and he’d carried me on his back for ten kilometers to the best doctor we had with us, Dr. Spin, and he’d fixed me up okay. I got that later from Gul Muhammed, because he was there too; we were in his home village of Barak Sharh, in Kunar Province, up near the Pakistani border.

Gul Muhammed told me that when I was fit to travel he was going to send me south with Wazir and a truckload of loot, guns, and equipment that we would sell in the bazaars of Peshawar and distribute the money to the families of the mujahideen in the camps. This trade was what had kept the resistance going. The CIA and the Saudis sent money and the Pakistanis provided support and took their cut, but it was up to the mujahideen themselves to support their families in the refugee camps, and they did it with Russian loot sold in the bazaars.

Peshawar was a different city from the one I had known in childhood, huge now, even filthier, loud with motor scooters and cars, grown rich off the blood of Afghanistan. The nations that wanted Rus sia to lose up there had poured billions through Peshawar, and a lot of it had stuck. One of those it had stuck to was our cousin Bacha Khan, who was even fatter than before and now had a big house in the Khyber Colony and a Toyota pickup. He gave us good hospitality and said he’d help us sell our stuff; he knew all the merchants and their tricky ways.