He watched the city as a chequered board of light and dark, illumination sweeping over black squares, shifting, changing, leaving behind the burned-out shell of a car, a crater where a house had been, a fallen doll, somewhere in a street a window, standing upright in the dust, its wooden shutters clanging.

He heard gunshots. Rockets whistled as they flew up into the sky. He watched the lighted lines of tracer bullets racing each other, saw a second sun erupt over Kabul as a desert-coloured helicopter erupted into bright and unexpectedly beautiful flame. He heard screaming, and cursing, and a baby wailing endlessly until it was suddenly silenced, as if the needle of a turntable had been abruptly jerked away. He smelled smoke and urine and roasting flesh and acrid chemical smells he couldn’t put a name to. Down below the city faded and re-emerged, engulfed in smoke that cleared, every now and then, to give him glimpses of another world beyond it. He didn’t know how long he stood there, high above the city of Kabul, looking down.

strands

——

He shook his head, trying to clear it. The drone of the lone plane was long gone, and it was quiet. The city below slept in the sun. There was no sound. Wood smoke rose from chimneys, and a single bird swooped overhead, once, and dove for shelter in the shade. Joe turned away.

The path led him through the low-lying houses. The sky was a bright cloudless expanse, its colour the startling blue of a far-away ocean. As he walked he peeled away the layers of himself, like a man worrying at a loose tooth. He felt very alone there on the mountain-side. What held him together was little more than a name, an occupation. There was a man named Joe and he was a detective. What led him on, what kept him bound into the strands of that identity, was a question. Up there he felt the closest to the skies as he had ever been. Up there the spirits of the dead wafted in the clean and hallowed air. Up there was heaven.

The house lay at the end of a road. The mud-coloured bricks had been given a lick of white paint that was already peeling in places. A low wall surrounded the courtyard of the house, and a wrought-iron gate was set into the wall like a dash. No smoke rose from the chimney. A lone bird twittered somewhere nearby, out of sight. Joe tried the gate and it was unlocked. It creaked when he pushed it open.

There was grass growing around the house in clumps, separated by patches of dry ground. A tap on the left dripped water, very slowly, two turrets of untidy mint plants growing underneath. A bicycle was leaning against one wall, its tires empty.

Sleep lay over that house like an enchantment.

There was a veranda, empty. Past the veranda was a door. The door was made of wood, unvarnished. Joe walked towards the house and, with each step, the land seemed to expand and contrast simultaneously around him, as if he had encountered a strange region of space and time, a naked singularity. There was a pain behind his eyes that wasn’t physical. It was as if all the things that made him up, the threads of his being, were coming unravelled.

The question, for the moment, held him bound. When he reached the veranda he stood very still, listening. There was no sound. Even the lone bird had stopped singing. The house was hushed, its silence not echoing but mute, the silence of forgotten things, the quiet of abandoned lives. A teddy-bear with missing eyes was slumped with its back to the wall, its fur a patchwork of dye and mould. Joe knocked on the door. There was no answer.

He pushed the door, and it opened.

time

——

Light fell softly through the window on the worn Afghan rug. The room was cooler than the outside. A whisper of wind breezed through the air. There was a ceiling fan above, unmoving. There was a familiar smell in the room though it didn’t immediately register. There were two large, comfortable-looking armchairs with the stuffing poking out through holes in the fabric. There was a low coffee table, the wood lacquered, holding an ashtray with three cigarette stubs, and intersecting dark rings where hot glasses had been placed and removed. At the far end a doorway led into a kitchen. The left wall was covered in a tall bookcase. A large desk sat against the right wall, opposite the window. There were books strewn on the desk, half-opened. Also on the desk were envelopes, papers, pens, coins, seashells, elastic bands, a broken stapler, small round stones, two feathers, a pencil sharpener, a closed bottle of ink: a fantastical treasure map with mountains and valleys, chasms and springs. In the middle of the desk, rising like a mountain, was a typewriter. There was a sheet of paper inserted into the machine. The chair had been pushed back from the desk, as if its inhabitant had momentarily departed and would soon return to occupy it.

Joe stood in the middle of the room and took a deep breath. The smell, lingering, sweet, cloying, familiar. He began to touch things. The armchairs, the coffee table, the bookcase, the walls. They felt solid and real, strangely reassuring. He ran his finger against one level of the bookcase and returned with dust. The books looked like they had been sitting there for an age, unmoving. They were lined up in no particular order he could discern. Letters of the alphabet crowded next to each other in a festive jumble. Tall books sat next to short ones. Fat books squatted next to slim, elegant volumes. Where there was not enough room books had been piled on top of other books or shoved sideways into available gaps.

Joe let his hands fall to his sides. He turned, half a circle, fingers outstretched. He tried to find a sense of the inhabitant of that room, that house. Was anyone still living there? In one corner of the room, he noticed, a long-necked flower vase stood on a platform, but there were no flowers in it. He turned again, completing a circle, and something caught his eye. On the wall beside the bookcase was what appeared to be a framed photograph. He approached it slowly. On the top, just below the frame, it said TIME and, at the bottom end: MAN OF THE YEAR. He approached it, cautious for reasons he couldn’t articulate. A face slowly resolved itself inside the frame and he took a deep shuddery breath and looked…

The face that stared back at him, framed within, was his own.

afternoon dreams

——

After a moment he laughed, though without much humour. It was not a photograph at all. It was a mirror, the text painted on to the reflecting surface. What did he expect to see there? Longshott, he thought. Or a man with a long beard and clear, penetrating eyes, the hero of pulp thrillers and suicide killers. Instead all he got was himself. He stared at his own face staring back at him. Did he even know that face? There was a name that went with it, an occupation, but were they themselves real, or were they, too, mere fabriques, as fake as a passport could be faked? He shook his head, and the face in the mirror mimicked the movement.

He turned away. Went to the desk. Again, he felt the urge to touch, to feel. He picked up each object in turn, examined it, replaced it on the desk. Pens, blue and black and red. A child’s pencil sharpener. He lifted it to his nose and smelled it, but there was no sign of recent wood shavings, no sign of recent use. Stones, pebbles made smooth by water. Seashells that must have come from somewhere else, from a far and distant sea. Their colours were the hues of sunset. He smoothed a feather with his finger. He weighed coins in his hand. Faces etched into the metal regarded him back with haughty expressions, kings and queens and emperors and presidents. He pulled open the drawers, one by one. They were mostly empty. In the second of three drawers he found a single item. A thin, unadorned gold ring, a woman’s size. It felt heavy in his hand and he put it back, carefully, and closed the drawer. As he did so, a sheet of paper fluttered down to the ground. He picked it up. A few lines, scribbled – hastily, it seemed – in blue ink that had somewhat smudged on the page. The handwriting was untidy. It took him a while to untangle it. It said: