“What’s your father doing?” Pooran whispered as she approached the edge of the crowd.
“He’s shooting flying Russians,” Ahmad answered, squeezing his mother’s chador in his fist.
“What?” she turned her eyes to the crowd as if, not believing Ahmad, she was looking to see what was really happening.
“I got up and I was going to feed the chickens and come help you. But Salman knocked and we ran here. Father is up there at the top of the minaret. He’s hunting the Russians, and Nemat said we are crazy. Father is fine, right?”
“God willing, son, God willing.”
“Nosser Khan,” shouted Salman’s father, “your wife is here, too. Come down. Nosser, can you hear me?” But no human sound seemed able to descend from the invisible top. The sparrows had become silent too and now Ahmad could even hear the wheezy breathing of Mohammad the Carpenter, who had tilted his large head back and looked up into the fog with an open mouth. Sweat slid from his temple down his round, fleshy cheek. Time had stopped. The villagers had turned into stone figures in a hushed apocalypse. Then Nosser’s voice blasted from the heart of the fog:
“Send the boy up.”
Faces turned to Ahmad. He looked at his mother.
“God bless your father, Mr. Nosser,” shouted Mulla Ali toward the minaret. “May your family live long. He’s coming right up to you now. Just put the pickax down and don’t throw any more bricks, Nosser Khan. All right? We don’t want the boy hurt, do we?” Ahmad’s mother gave him a soft tap on the back meaning, Go to your father. Everything is going to be all right. Mulla Ali accompanied him through the crowd. “He is at the foot of the stairs, Mr. Nosser.” The door was open wide. It was a small, old, wooden door leading to a dark and narrow spiral stairwell that went up as if to a white hell in the sky. A broken lock lay on the floor. “Go, go.” Mulla Ali pushed Ahmad in.
The jagged triangular steps curled around the inside of the minaret toward the crown. Ahmad wanted to hurry, but he had to place each foot carefully, avoiding the fallen chunks of brick. He ran, a groping hand on the wall, but the blackened plaster provided nothing to hold on to. Small openings in the wall allowed the softened morning light to penetrate the darkness. If the openings had been lower, Ahmad could at least peek down at the people, but all he could see now was the fog.
“Who is that?” his father barked from above. “Who’s coming up? I have bricks. I’ll throw. Who is there?”
“It’s me.”
“Ahmad?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Come on up here, son,” he snapped. “Quick.”
As Ahmad hurried up, each step more covered by dust and pieces of brick, he began to hear his father’s hoarse breathing. A few more steps and there he was, sitting on the stairs. Behind him on higher steps lay his leather boots and the pickax he had used to pry out bricks. Ahmad looked at the pockmarked wall, then at his father’s rifle sticking out of the opening in the wall. The stock rested in his strong arms like a baby. The soft light from the opening lit the left side of his face. Deep wrinkles burrowed his dusty, sweaty forehead. He looked more like Grandfather. But Khan was old. Nosser was not.
“There you are,” he said, his voice rasping, his eyes fixed on Ahmad with an unwavering intensity. “Where have you been?”
“I was down there,” Ahmad replied, “with the others.”
“Are you afraid?”
Ahmad was not sure what to answer.
“I said are you afraid?”
Ahmad shook his head.
“Then hold up your head and let me hear your voice. Are you afraid?”
“No, Father, no.”
Nosser rolled over to look out the opening and a button popped off his shirt, bounced off the step where Ahmad was standing, and landed on the one below it. Ahmad fished the button from dust and debris. In the palm of his hand, it reflected the subdued white of the fog outside, as if it were pearl. Ahmad looked at his father’s shirt. The dark-brown pinstripes cascaded and surged like waves. “Is your mother there, too?” Nosser asked, squinting down into the fog.
“Yes.”
Nosser placed his cheek on the rifle and tilted it up. “They’re there,” he said with an eye closed. “Are you listening to me?”