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Authors: Anthony Marra
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his knife and recognized his face. He must have known that what he was to do was of such significance it had already become who he was, and so he offered both his son and himself to the kinzhal ’s edge.”
Hunched over, Khassan pressed his bare hands into the snow. He sank them to his forearms and left them there in what a stranger mighttake to be a demonstration of endurance, but what was, Akhmed knew, a private ritual of contrition. His face was broken in a way Akhmed couldn’t look at, let alone understand, let alone mend. “Walk on both sides of the service road so my footprints can’t be followed,” Akhmed said. “I’ll be gone all day. Make sure no one knows where I’m going. Do that.”
Khassan’s head bobbed. He scooped two palmfuls of snow and pressed them to his eyes. Melting rivulets circled his wrists. “Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son isn’t hard to believe. His son was an innocent. It’s so much harder when you know what your son would do to you if he survived. When you know just what would happen if an angel was to grab the knife from your hand.”
Distal phalange, proximal phalange, metatarsus, medial cuneiform, navicular, talus, calcaneus . Akhmed recited the bones composing the big toe and followed the Latin north to the ankle as he walked to the hospital. Before leaving that morning he had torn a half dozen diagrams from his old anatomy textbook and he studied them as he hiked, glancing up every few seconds to check for land mines. He’d be ready for any more of Sonja’s quizzes. The sun had fully risen when he entered the hospital and the guard, whose left arm ended at the elbow, stopped him.
“Here?” he asked, exasperated. “I’ve walked nearly to Turkey avoiding checkpoints.”
The cuff of the guard’s left jacket sleeve was sewn to his shoulder. The slender beard descending from his chin looked like the tail of a squirrel hibernating in his mouth. “You need to pull the glass shards from your boots,” the guard instructed.
“Don’t worry,” Akhmed said. “I’m the doctor.”
“No, Sonja is the doctor,” the one-armed guard corrected. “You are the idiot with glass shards in his boot soles. Now have a seat on thatbench and take those pliers and pull out the glass if you want to enter the hospital.”
No one could walk through the city without lodging a full pane of glass shards in his shoe soles, and the guard, who had for eighteen arduous months fought with the rebels and had witnessed and participated in all manner of horrors, was afraid of Sonja and what she would do if she found glass shards tracked into the hospital. He watched Akhmed pry out fourteen shards and deposit them in an ashtray.
Akhmed sighed, crestfallen. His first day as a hospital doctor wasn’t beginning well. “Tell me,” he asked, nodding to the guard’s missing arm. “Do they pay you half rate?”
The guard, thirty-one years old, had never received a paycheck, and wouldn’t have known what to do with one if he had; in three years, when the hospital issued paychecks again, beginning with a whopping nine years of back pay, the guard would frame his in glass and hang it on his wall without ever depositing it. For the rest of his life, he wouldn’t trust the numbers people put on paper. “They should pay me more than they pay you,” the guard said, smiling. “Even I know better than to give an unresponsive patient a questionnaire.”
Akhmed’s flush hadn’t faded when he pushed open the double doors. The cannonball of Havaa’s head crashed into his stomach.
“You came back!” she exclaimed, breathless from her sprint across the room. He raked his fingers through her almond-brown hair, a shade shared by the back of his hand. He had been so concerned with Latin nomenclature he’d forgotten about her, and as her arms formed a tourniquet around his waist, the tight press slowed his breaths. She hadn’t forgotten him for a moment.
“Of course I came back. Where else
Hunched over, Khassan pressed his bare hands into the snow. He sank them to his forearms and left them there in what a stranger mighttake to be a demonstration of endurance, but what was, Akhmed knew, a private ritual of contrition. His face was broken in a way Akhmed couldn’t look at, let alone understand, let alone mend. “Walk on both sides of the service road so my footprints can’t be followed,” Akhmed said. “I’ll be gone all day. Make sure no one knows where I’m going. Do that.”
Khassan’s head bobbed. He scooped two palmfuls of snow and pressed them to his eyes. Melting rivulets circled his wrists. “Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son isn’t hard to believe. His son was an innocent. It’s so much harder when you know what your son would do to you if he survived. When you know just what would happen if an angel was to grab the knife from your hand.”
Distal phalange, proximal phalange, metatarsus, medial cuneiform, navicular, talus, calcaneus . Akhmed recited the bones composing the big toe and followed the Latin north to the ankle as he walked to the hospital. Before leaving that morning he had torn a half dozen diagrams from his old anatomy textbook and he studied them as he hiked, glancing up every few seconds to check for land mines. He’d be ready for any more of Sonja’s quizzes. The sun had fully risen when he entered the hospital and the guard, whose left arm ended at the elbow, stopped him.
“Here?” he asked, exasperated. “I’ve walked nearly to Turkey avoiding checkpoints.”
The cuff of the guard’s left jacket sleeve was sewn to his shoulder. The slender beard descending from his chin looked like the tail of a squirrel hibernating in his mouth. “You need to pull the glass shards from your boots,” the guard instructed.
“Don’t worry,” Akhmed said. “I’m the doctor.”
“No, Sonja is the doctor,” the one-armed guard corrected. “You are the idiot with glass shards in his boot soles. Now have a seat on thatbench and take those pliers and pull out the glass if you want to enter the hospital.”
No one could walk through the city without lodging a full pane of glass shards in his shoe soles, and the guard, who had for eighteen arduous months fought with the rebels and had witnessed and participated in all manner of horrors, was afraid of Sonja and what she would do if she found glass shards tracked into the hospital. He watched Akhmed pry out fourteen shards and deposit them in an ashtray.
Akhmed sighed, crestfallen. His first day as a hospital doctor wasn’t beginning well. “Tell me,” he asked, nodding to the guard’s missing arm. “Do they pay you half rate?”
The guard, thirty-one years old, had never received a paycheck, and wouldn’t have known what to do with one if he had; in three years, when the hospital issued paychecks again, beginning with a whopping nine years of back pay, the guard would frame his in glass and hang it on his wall without ever depositing it. For the rest of his life, he wouldn’t trust the numbers people put on paper. “They should pay me more than they pay you,” the guard said, smiling. “Even I know better than to give an unresponsive patient a questionnaire.”
Akhmed’s flush hadn’t faded when he pushed open the double doors. The cannonball of Havaa’s head crashed into his stomach.
“You came back!” she exclaimed, breathless from her sprint across the room. He raked his fingers through her almond-brown hair, a shade shared by the back of his hand. He had been so concerned with Latin nomenclature he’d forgotten about her, and as her arms formed a tourniquet around his waist, the tight press slowed his breaths. She hadn’t forgotten him for a moment.
“Of course I came back. Where else
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