1
Harry loved his hometown, except on nights like these. The streets of Blackwater Falls were deep indigo, the darkness blotting out the foothills and cloaking the houses at the bottom of the hills. He couldn’t see much; he could only hear the footsteps he was chasing, young voices calling out to each other. He took a terrible moment to decide whether to call for backup or continue on by himself. Budgets were tight; he wasn’t supposed to waste resources. And he was only on the trail of a couple of kids, young hoodlums who’d been marking up the town with graffiti. Street art, some said. What the young did for entertainment these days.
He turned a corner, feeling a twinge in his chest. He raised a hand to massage the twinge, and at the same time switched on his body cam. Best not to make mistakes, like getting out of his car when he should have radioed in. But the suspects he was chasing had disappeared down a lane where the car couldn’t follow. He was a middle-of-the-road cop, never amounting to much, but he was good at keeping the streets safe at night, and was liked by the people he met.
Not by these hoodlums, though. They were shouting insults at him like “pig” and “fuck the police.” It gave him a sense of who he was dealing with. There weren’t many Black kids in town, except for the kids of workers at the local meatpacking plant. The ones he was chasing might not be local; graffiti artscapes had popped up all over the greater Denver area. Blackwater’s gazebo had been hit, as well as the concrete wall behind the falls. Both had been cleaned up, but now a quiet residential neighborhood was at risk of being defaced.
Harry didn’t like it.
“Stop! Police!” he shouted, hearing the strain in his voice that echoed the pumping of his lungs. He was definitely getting past this. It was time to talk to Sheriff Grant about retirement. The sheriff took good care of his boys—he’d often told Harry he was a credit to the department. Be nice to go out on a high note. One final collar, all violence avoided.
Harry stopped for half a second, fumbling for his flashlight. Where was it? There. His thumb switched it on, flooding the dark crosswalk.
One of the runners had sprinted away, vaulting a fence, something Harry couldn’t hope to do. The other was straight ahead, heading into a cul-de-sac. The vandals had already been here, garbage bins lined up in a row, the lurid sprawl of graffiti on the cans.
“Stop!” Harry shouted again. “There’s nowhere to run, son.”
He gave chase, the flashlight veering wildly. He was closing in on his suspect, who was trapped between the fenced-in dead end of a cul-de-sac and the bins Harry had just passed.
The runner stumbled. Harry didn’t get a good look at his face, but the runner had something solid in his hand, he saw it in the beam of his flashlight.
Gun!
“Don’t do it, son,” he cried. “I don’t want to shoot you.”
His hand sweating, and his heart thumping wildly in his chest, he slicked his own gun free, dropping the flashlight to the road. He was supposed to hold them both, he thought, but somehow he couldn’t manage it. If he fired—God, if he fired, he didn’t want to cause any harm.
The runner darted at Harry, his raised arm menacing. He loomed above Harry, his build disguised by the baggy hoodie he wore.
Harry fired a warning shot, a sharp crack through the silence.
“Stop now, kid! Please!” His voice shook.
The runner charged as Harry fell back, his hand raised squarely in front of his face.
Harry couldn’t see a thing. He gave the runner one more warning, saw him raise his hand.
Harry’s gun went off.
The runner’s hand opened and the object in his hand rolled away down the street.
Then he dropped like a stone.
Harry’s sweat-slicked hand gripped his radio. He fumbled through a call for backup.
A sharp voice on the other end snapped him out of his daze. An ambulance was en route.
He fell to his knees. Blood flowed over his hand, and Harry’s whole body trembled.
He found the wound below the neck and applied pressure. The pulpy mass of blood beneath his fingers made him want to pass out, as doors opened, flooding the street with light. He saw the runner’s face. He was far too young to die, and Harry began to sob.
People gathered around him, some with their cell phones out.
He had just enough presence of mind to order them back into their houses. They couldn’t be allowed to touch anything. Not the flashlight he’d lost track of, not his gun, and not the object that had rolled away when the runner had let it fall.
Not a gun, no, not a gun.
It was a can of spray paint.
2
Inaya studied the photograph that had pride of place in their family home, the blue and gold mystique of Afghanistan, the lonely gate in the desert with its spiraled columns and interwoven hazarbaf decoration, patterns laid in brick. A pair of turquoise doors between twin minarets and beneath a high sandstone arch was the photograph’s one note of light; the rest suggested abandonment either by God or man, and the bone-deep weariness of war. The print hung in the hallway that opened onto the Rahmans’ elegantly furnished living room, where Inaya and her father were lingering over elaichi chai.
Inaya’s father, Haseeb Rahman, had told his family that the photograph had been taken by a friend from his youth. One of many friends her father had left behind on his journey as a refugee from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Chicago, to settle ultimately in Denver, Colorado, each migration adding a new flavor to his life yet subtracting something also. Her father carried within him a profound sense of loss. Inaya considered the print with fresh eyes and asked her father, as she often did, to tell her about its history, to name the place it was taken.
Like the detective she was, Inaya surmised that if he spoke the name of the place with the derelict gate, she would be able to search out its history—a war story, most likely, the vestiges of a past her father rarely spoke of, secrets he kept to himself.
There had been a history before Peshawar, she knew. A life lived under Taliban rule in a land that her father loved. She wanted him to speak of it so the wounds could heal. She knew there was something he wasn’t telling her, something that had made a profound impact on how he viewed the successive invaders of his country. He denied that it was about the Soviet occupation that had lasted a decade, but if it was about the more recent American presence, she wondered why he didn’t speak. Her partner in policing, Catalina Hernandez, often shared her thoughts on harm done by traumas left untreated, a veil of shadows cast over minds in deep distress. Let the light in, and the mind could heal. Yet her father continued to deflect her questions. Some memories were better left buried, he believed. To resurrect them would be to invite a form of nazar, the evil eye creeping into the light with its foreshadowing of harm.
“Tell me about the picture, Baba. One day I might be able to visit the ruins of the house with the gate, and you could come with me.”
“I will never set foot in Afghanistan again. I have seen too much.”
His quiet certainty unnerved her.
“You can’t know that, Baba.”
“A flame when it starts to blaze can burn down a whole town. Don’t ask me to dig up old graves, to wash my wounds with blood.”
She wondered if the poetic phrase was a quotation. Her father was fond of the poetry of Maulana, or Rumi as he was known in the West, but even more so of the great Pashto-language poet Khushal Khan Khattak, whom her irreverent younger sisters had nicknamed Triple K. The verse could be one of Khattak’s. She didn’t have the chance to ask.
Freshening his voice, her father said, “If the Taliban should fall, then I will tell you about the country on the other side of this gate. The gate that stood between two worlds.”
“Let it be soon, Baba.” She pressed his hand.
He poured her another cup of tea. “You are more persistent than your mother and sisters, I suppose this is what comes of having a police detective for a daughter.”
The doorbell rang, piercing the quiet moment. Inaya made a wry face.
“You jinxed us,” she teased. “That’s probably for me.”
Inaya’s younger sister Noor came down the stairs as Inaya went into the hall. Dressed all in pinks, Noor looked as fresh and lovely as a tulip.
“Wow.” Inaya made big eyes at her sister. “Has someone come to pick you up?”
Noor bumped Inaya with her hip.
“I was doing a clip for my social media channels—how to judge the right shade of pink for your skin tone.”
Inaya flicked on the outside lights and peered through the peephole. No one was standing on the porch. Kubo, the family cat, twined through her legs with an affectionate murmur, nearly causing her to trip. Kubo believed it was his sworn duty to be the first one to greet visitors.
“Catch the little rebel, Noor.”
“Come here, darling,” Noor coaxed. Inaya opened the door, stationing herself between the open door and her sister out of habit.
The heady scent of gardenias drifted in from the porch. She cast a glance around, not seeing anyone. A frisson trickled down her spine.
As she made to close the door, she heard Noor gasp. Kubo had slipped from her hold and streaked through the open door.
Someone moved in the shadows at the foot of the drive. Noor made a move to chase Kubo down. With a face like stone, Inaya shoved her back with one arm. She pulled the door closed behind her, keeping it shut with one hand.
A man emerged from the shadows, freezing Inaya in place.
Kubo was caught in his grip, huge hands clasped around his neck.
The man advanced on Inaya, who stood frozen, her hand gripping the doorknob.
“Detective Rahman?”
The man’s name was John Broda. His voice rose up from her nightmares.
3
In the short time since Inaya had left the Chicago Police due to John Broda’s attack on her, Broda had aged ten years. He had been a fit and muscular police officer, topping six feet, with a military haircut and blue eyes that seared. Their color was faded now, dark rings beneath his eyes, his once-chiseled face gaunt, his fit frame almost wasted.
He set the cat down on the porch, and stood face-to-face with Inaya.
She dredged up every ounce of courage she possessed. With a group of others, this man had violently assaulted her, tearing the headscarf from her hair. He’d threatened to disappear her sisters. He’d vandalized her family home, and chased her off an important case involving police accountability. She had left Chicago in disgrace, and she no longer wore a headscarf. Broda and his friends had broken her, but she wasn’t broken now. She had a team she trusted, and a boss she knew would back her in her work at Community Response.
Maybe Denver wasn’t all that different from Chicago, but it felt like it was, and Blackwater Falls, south of the metro area, was beginning to feel like home. She wouldn’t back away from Broda again, though fear had leapt into her breast.
Her ribs had cracked beneath his boots.
She wasn’t wearing her police radio or her gun, and her cell phone was inside. Nonetheless, she kept her hand firm on the doorknob, relieved that Noor’s efforts to join her had desisted. She heard her father’s voice in the hall, and knew he wouldn’t leave her by herself. She had to act, and now.
“Get off my property, Broda.”
Those faded eyes sharpened, taking Inaya’s measure. He held up both hands in the classic gesture of surrender.
Copyright © 2023 by Ausma Zehanat Khan
