Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War Read Online Free

a messenger came to the Spin Ghar hotel. Zaman was inviting me back to his house for
iftar
, the sunset meal that broke each day’s fast through the holy month of Ramadan.
    Zaman was about to command the ground offensive in Tora Bora and was therefore the closest voice I could find to an American representative. I wanted the story badly enough to return to his turf, but I couldn’t go alone. I needed a foreign man, somebody Zaman would feel tribally compelled to respect. So I invited the AP reporter Chris Tomlinson. “Whatever happens,” I told him, “don’t leave me alone with him.”
    A flicker crossed Zaman’s face when he saw Chris. We settled onto velvet cushions, and Zaman’s servants heaped the floor with steaming flatbread, biryani, crisp vegetables, a shank of mutton. Chris and I had our notebooks at our sides, and we jotted away while Zaman held forth on the ground assault.
    Suddenly Zaman looked at Chris. “Would you excuse us, please?” he said icily. “We need to talk in private.”
    Chris stared at me, telegraphing:
What should I do?
    I glowered back:
Don’t leave.
    “Um, well,” Chris stammered, eyes flying around the room. He pointed at the door to the terrace. “I’m just going to step outside and smoke a cigarette. I’ll be
right outside
,” he added, looking at me.
    As soon as the door closed, Zaman announced, “You’re going back to Pakistan.”
    I laughed. “No, I’m not.”
    “Yes. My men will take you there.”
    “I’m sorry, but that’s a joke. I’m not leaving.”
    “You can’t stay here anymore. Every time I see you, I forget what I’m doing. You are making me distracted.”
    Through the windows, I watched the lone red ember of the cigarette float up and down the terrace.
    “I’m sure you can control yourself,” I said slowly, trying to prolong the conversation. He was sliding my way on the cushions, his body closing the distance between us. His eyes were fixed on me, long face like a sly old goat.
    “I’m in love with you,” he said. “I love you.”
    “You’re not in love with me!” I spat out. “You don’t even know me.”
    “I
do
know you,” he assured me.
    I looked at him, his gray, dirty hair smashed down from his Afghan cap, lanky limbs swathed in yards of
shalwar kameez
, crouched in slippers on the floor.
    “Look, I’m very flattered, but we are from completely different worlds. Where I come from, you can’t just—”
    He interrupted me.
    “I want to see your world,” he said. “I want to go there. With you. To know your family …”
    I imagined Haji Zaman, decked in tribal dress, sipping coffee on my mother’s front porch in Connecticut, faithful AK-47 casually propped against the rocking chair. Haji Zaman and I, holding hands, peering over the rim of the Grand Canyon.
    “It’s completely out of the question. And so’s Pakistan.”
    With a sheepish look in my direction, Chris returned.
    “Thank you very much for dinner,” my words tumbled out. “We have to get going now, to write our stories.”
    Zaman protested, but I was already on my feet, swaying unsteadily on the pillows, tugging at the ends of my head scarf. We scrambled down the stairs and burst out into the orchards and vegetable gardens hemming the house, but the driver was nowhere to be seen.
    “I can’t believe he left us!”
    “It’s not too far back to town,” Chris said. “We can make it walking.”
    “Do you remember the way?”
    “I think so.”
    The black night opened its mouth and swallowed us whole. Darkness quivered before us, taut as a stretched canvas, demanding to be filled. Our feet fumbled forward. I couldn’t remember the way; I hadn’t been paying enough attention. I’d been letting myself get carried along in days, flooded by experience, and now I was lost. Stars glittered overhead, brilliant scattershot. Beyond the road sprawled unseen fields, and land mines festered in the dirt. Figures moved in houses. A flush of light bruised the edges of