cold breeze, Khan stepped onto the veranda and put on his shoes. The walk to the bazaar was long, but he would not use anything other than his feet.
In the roofed corridors of the old market, the decline and destruction caused by the famine assailed his eyes: many stands and stalls were left broken and deserted. The number of stores whose bankrupt owners could not afford to replace the smashed panes seemed to double with each step Khan took farther into that maze. In the small mosque, built deep within the labyrinth of narrow and winding corridors, he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and performed the ablutions. With cold water dripping from his face and arms, he joined the sparse rows of men standing behind the mulla, ready for noon prayer. It was his first prayer inside a mosque since his migration from Tajrish. He did not remember the last time he had stood not right behind the imam, but further back among the ordinary people with their old shoes—sole touching sole—in front of them on the rug, lest they get stolen. In unison with dozens of afflicted, Khan listened for God as he stood still with his arms hanging by his sides and his head bent down, as he bowed, dropped to his knees, and rested his forehead on the ground. With eyes and ears open, Khan waited for an answer from God. He listened to the mulla’s speech after the noon prayer and the one after the afternoon prayer. But God did not speak to him. Khan returned for the sunset prayer. He stood perfectly still and listened intently but to no avail.
“I’ll make you talk to me,” he held up his face and said to God as he left the mosque that night. On his way back, he stepped into several groceries before he found one that had forty dates to sell: dried and shriveled, five times the fair price. With each step he took toward home, the dates rattled against one another like rocks.
“I’ll start tomorrow,” he said to himself, blowing a white cloud into the night.
It was the first time Khan climbed down the four steps into the house’s basement. A rusty, broken padlock hung on the narrow metal door. Inside, light from the cloudy sky shone through the two high windows onto the junk: a big wooden table nicked around the edges and blanketed under a thick layer of dust; a broken spade and some wood in one corner; a ladder lying on the floor with three rungs missing. On a rugged ledge on the wall, a rusty mirror reflected almost nothing through black spots and its coat of dust. Khan blew at the ledge and set the bag of dates next to the mirror. He climbed up the four steps back into the yard, then the other three onto the veranda. In his room, he bent over and lifted a bag of money into his arms; it was lighter than a crate of apples. He walked back into the yard, stood at the edge of the drained hoez, and emptied the bag. Bills flew down circling and swaying like many leaves detaching themselves from trees in a wild wind. The second bag was slit open and shaken empty. Green, rectangular money twirled down and rested on the dark slime at the bottom. Water seeped through the precious fibers. When Khan threw aside the last bag, the hoez was half full.
Then he started his fasting.
On the first days he stared at the faded green walls and saw the faded green walls. During the day he recited the Quran and stood in prayer until he saw from his window an orange light in the sky and knew that somewhere behind the innumerable houses that sat between him and the horizon, the sun was going down. He broke his fast with a date after looking into the mirror at his face, then prayed at night until the first rays of the sun broke the darkness. The flesh melted off of his body. His bones jutted out from under his thin, cracked skin. But his head was light and his vision clear. He no longer felt the need to relieve himself. The bonds that had held him down for his whole life had vanished. Every date that came out of the bag reduced his dependence on the mundane. As his eyes began to sink back into their sockets, his vision became keener. His look