her patriots and the grace of heaven, the land has been restored to its rightful rulers.
At least that’s the story.
Who’s quibbling?
Then he, Alexander, will take his army and depart Afghanistan.
In return for these pledges of peace, Oxyartes will use his influence to bring his confederates to the table of peace. Affairs will be so arranged, Alexander warrants, that no chieftain’s portion will suffer, and each, secure in his lands and station, will discover no cause for complaint.
“What we must accept about this theater of war,” Philip explains one night to me, Flag, Stephanos, and our fellows, “is that military victory is impossible. So long as even one man or woman of these Afghans draws breath, they will resist us. But what we have achieved, by the ungodly suffering we have inflicted upon them, is to drive them to the point where they’ll accept an accommodation, an alliance if you will, that they can call victory, or at least not defeat, and that we can live with.
“Then, between paying them off, severing them from their northern allies and sanctuaries, and keeping enough forces in garrison here, we may be able to stabilize the situation sufficiently so that we can move on to India without leaving our lines of supply and communication vulnerable to assault. That’s the best we can do. That’s enough. It will suffice.
“In the end,” Philip says, “the issue comes down to this: What is the minimum acceptable dispensation? Short of victory, what can we live with? We cannot slaughter every man, woman, and child in Afghanistan, however gratifying such an enterprise might be.”
Peace at last. The corps of Macedon exhales with relief. For me, only one impediment remains:
Shinar will not marry me. She refuses.
To celebrate his wedding to Roxane and the end of the war, Alexander has pledged rich dowries to every Mack who joins him in taking to wife his own Asiatic consort. The couples will take their vows at the same hour as Alexander and his princess and on the same site, the palace of Chorienes in Bactra City.
But Shinar won’t do it.
It is the old story of A’shaara.
“Don’t ask me! If you care for me, you will never mention this again.”
Will I ever understand this woman? My child grows in her belly. I can’t let her refusal stand. “What will you do then? Go away?”
I see she will. Her expression is despair. “Will you make me speak of this?”
“Yes! You must explain it to me now, once and for all, and make me understand.”
She has to sit. Her back groans under the weight she carries. “Can I have some water please?”
I get it for her. Cool, with a sliver of apricot, the way she likes it.
“ A’shaara means shame, this much you know, Matthias. But it means soul as well, and family or tribe. I have forfeited mine by permitting you, an alien and an invader, to rescue me. For this, I stand ad benghis, ‘outside,’ and can never be brought back in.”
I reject this. “You’re not ‘outside,’ with me. Your god cannot touch me, and when you join with me in marriage, he can’t touch you either.”
She smiles darkly. “God cannot, perhaps. But others.” She means her kin. Her brother.
My Afghan bride. She and this country are one and the same. I love and fear her and can grasp her secrets no more than I can these ocher mountains or this storm-riven sky.
In the end it is my brother who wins her over. The peace deal done, Philip’s unit is among the first to pack out for Bactra City, to make political preparations for Alexander’s wedding. He visits Shinar and me on his last evening, bringing baghee, a dish of lamb and lentils roasted in the beast’s own intestines, and a jar of plum wine.
Shinar’s belly has become taut as a drum. You can thump it with a finger; it rings like a melon. Philip dotes upon her like a bachelor uncle. She makes him set his ear and listen for the child’s kick. When it comes, they both giggle like innocents.
Later, Philip addresses Shinar in earnest. She will listen to him when she won’t to me. For the sake of the child, he says, she must make me her husband. For love of this infant, she must become my wife.
“You are no longer responsible only for yourself, Shinar. You have another life to consider. Your child cannot grow to adulthood in this land, with only you to protect it, and no Afghan male will accept you in wedlock, when you bring into his household the issue of the invader. But the babe can live in Macedon. It can flourish, embraced as the offspring of heroes, growing to man- or womanhood among numerous others just like him or her.”
He reads the woe on Shinar’s face.
“I know, dear child, that you believe heaven has turned its back on you. Perhaps that was so, once. But all things turn in their season. Not even as cruel a deity as that of this pitiless land can remain unmoved forever by his people’s affliction. The proof grows now in your belly. Your suffering has redeemed you, Shinar. God holds out his hand. Take it, I beg you. Can any act be more impious than to spurn the clemency of heaven?”
50
The wedding of Alexander and Roxane will be held at Bactra City, atop the great fortress, Bal Teghrib. The rites will be celebrated outdoors, in the Persian fashion. The captains of the corps-and half the princes of Afghanistan, it seems-will assemble in their finery at Koh-i-Waz, the palace of the warlord Chorienes.
Flag will take his discharge from the army. Going home. His salary and bonuses, counting premiums from five Silver Lions and a Gold, come to twenty-two years’ wages. He’s rich.
I’m filing my papers too. I’ve got the equivalent of six years’ pay coming.
Fourteen hundred couples-Macks and their foreign brides-will take their vows along with our king and his princess on this happy day. Half, we hear, have elected Afghan postings. They’ll settle with their brides in the various garrison Alexandrias-Artacoana, Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul, even Alexandria-the-Furthermost. Every trooper will receive at least a handsome farm; officers will be awarded estates. “They’ll never see Macedon again,” says Flag. “The witless bastards.”
No such folly for him or me. We’ll take our skip and never look back. Flag himself will not farm at home, he says. “The life of a country huntsman for me. I’ll sire a pack of brats and train them up in the hill chase. We’ll raise horses. You and Shinar will visit every summer. You’ll try to get me to put in a crop but, by Zeus, I won’t do it!”
I ask him seriously: Can he really put the army behind him?
“Fuck the army,” says he. “Who needs it?”
51
Shinar gives birth on the nineteenth of Artemisius. A healthy boy. We name him Elias. He weighs exactly the same as my pelta shield (about eight pounds) and fits handily inside its leather-and-bronze bowl. When I bathe him, he bawls like a trooper. He has ten fingers and ten toes and a tiny pink penis, with which, prone on his back, he spouts a stream like a marble fountain. I could not be more delighted. His birth has humbled me. Shinar, too, has changed. The boy has black hair like hers and hazel eyes like mine. A regular amalgam.
With the arrival of this little bundle, our life is altered forever. Vanished is my Narik ta? attitude toward death. To stay alive and be of use to this child has overnight become everything to me.
Flag and Stephanos visit to inspect this newest campaigner. He salutes their entrance with a stupendous defecation. My friends acclaim its volume and its manly stink. I could not be prouder if the child had produced a second Iliad.
I don’t want my boy to be a soldier. Let him teach music or practice the physician’s art. May he raise horses and cultivate the earth.
I am changed, yes. But Shinar is transformed. She is a mother now. I’m in awe of her. I fasten upon this
