The Ageless

Afghan says calmly.

  “Very good.”

  The Afghan smiles. “I see it.” He points. “Your eyes. I see it that it is good.”

  One of the men nearby says something to the Afghan. His voice is unhurried and casual. The Afghan nods and takes up the two dice from the table and places them in a small cup wrapped in animal hide and tosses them on to the board. Without turning, he asks the American, “You know this game? How it is called in America?”

  One of the men answers, “Backa-gammon.”

  The American says, “Yes, backgammon. But I have never played.”

  “Watch me and learn then and play.”

  They take turns rolling and moving the pieces and after one or two moves, the Afghans says, “You move pieces as many as number on both dices.” His turn comes and he rolls and shows the American that he has a six and a two. “So I move one six and one two, no? I move this one here and this one like this.”

  The American understands how it works. He has seen backgammon boards on super market shelves but has never played but now he understands it and that feels good. There’s something important to understanding it, he tells himself. Once you understand it, it no longer sits on the shelf. Then you get it for nine-ninety-nine and take it home. And in the understanding, there’s a joy because you found something new.

  The Afghan says something quickly to his opponent. The man says something back and then the Afghan speaks and everyone laughs. The angry one across from the American is dour and says nothing.

  “And now I am winning.” The Afghan smiles, the curved scar stretching taut over the wind-blown, tight skin of his cheek.

  The American sips the tea. It’s bitter under the smoky taste of the shisha but seems appropriate. One of the men speaks to the Afghan, who translates. “He says, do you like Afghanistan?”

  “It’s very nice.”

  “He says, how long you have been here?”

  “Not long. Three months.”

  “He says, then how you know it is very nice?”

  “Well, I just think it’s nice so far.”

  “It is nice. But hard to make it nice.”

  “Hard?”

  “Hard. Many have died to make it nice. And to keep it nice.” The Afghan pokes his chest with his thumb. “My father.”

  The Afghan and his opponent continue on rolling and moving and playing and the Afghan keeps winning. It is quiet for a long while as they play and the American continues to watch and smoke and pass the shisha along and he feels he understands the game, understands the theory. To get the pieces out you must roll the corresponding number of the file on which the piece sets. Therefore it’s better to fill up the files evenly so when it’s your turn to remove them, you can do so quickly. Also, he notices that when a piece is sent to the center, it cannot reenter the game if the only available files are occupied with at least two pieces. So there is a distinct advantage to filling these up early. It seems similar to Monopoly, where you’re at an advantage to buy up properties sooner and collect rent as other players land. And then, he thought, as you get money, you can build and that’s when you get them. That’s when you win. When you always win. He had always been good at Monopoly.

  The Afghan smiles triumphantly and shakes the hand of his opponent. “And you see? This is how you win.”

  The other man then puts out a hand to catch the American’s attention and, smiling at him, says, “Lucky! Lucky!” He wags a finger at the Afghan. “No. Lucky.” The men laugh.

  The one across speaks to the Afghan suddenly.

  “He says, you should play this game.”

  The American nods. “Sure, okay, I’ll play.”

  The Afghan rotates the board and the American sees that he is playing the one who seems angry and while this strikes him as unfair, he plays anyway.

  They roll to see who goes first and the American wins so he moves his pieces as he remembers to do. The other one tosses his dice onto the board and he rolls double twos. He grunts and moves the pieces appropriately. When the American rolls, he moves and feels that he’s taking a risk by leaving a piece exposed and when the other rolls, he knocks the American’s piece back to the center and smiles inwardly at himself. The American glances at him. The man wears a lungee and occasionally scratches his head through the cloth as he thinks. Of course he’s going to win, the American thought. He’s been playing all of his life. How could I possibly expect to beat a man like this? And how is it some victory for him, to beat me? So he’ll win. Fine. Let him win. Let him win and then let me leave. I shouldn’t have come out here anyway. And now, in the winning, he’ll look better and I’ll look worse. The American feels suddenly frustrated though he’s not sure leaving is the answer.

  The Afghan doesn’t move but says, “Here. I will help.”

  The dice fall and the Afghan says, without indicating, “Move two together. Always together. Those, where there are two. Move together.”

  His opponent mutters something but the Afghan doesn’t answer. The other men watch silently.

  “And these here?” the American asks.

  “Leave those. They will stay there. They are fine there. They are happy there.”

  The American is wary because he sees how many ways there are to play. You can be aggressive or you can be defensive. You can test the opponent and see how he responds or you can operate without regard for the opponent and believe that you are that much guaranteed in the winning of the game. He doesn’t know which is best and believes he may never know. The game is so foreign. It is not Monopoly.

  “And those ones. Should be moving them but slowly. Ah, see? You have now two fours. So you move now four fours. Each one is four, you see? And these, move them and leave that one by himself.”

  “Alone? Can’t he get sent back?”

  “Sure, why not? But you offer him as a sacrifice and these here go forward, see? Be ready for the sacrifice.”

  The opponent mutters again and the American imagines they are curses. Still, the man seems hesitant to offend the Afghan. The Afghan turns slightly without looking and speaks under his breath. No one knows what he says except for the man.

  “So how long has he been playing backgammon?”

  The Afghan finishes his own cup of tea and sets it on the tray. “Many years. Many, many years. But I have been playing these many years, too. More than he.”

  Just then, two other Americans appear from the darkness. The flickering lamp light makes their faces soft like oil. One claps the American on the shoulder. He says, “Holy Christ, John, where the hell were you? You had the RSO shitting himself, thinking you were blindfolded with a fast-food knife against your neck. You can’t walk off like that, man. Guys bound to get shot up. Or worse.”

  The American is suddenly embarrassed but stands. “I’m sorry, I have to go. I’m very sorry. Thanks for the tea. It’s very good.”

  The men nod gently. His opponent’s eyes stay on the game. The Afghan says, “Yes, yes. Go. Tomorrow.”

  “Sure.”

  From behind, the kerosene lamps flicker on as the men continue their game around the table, smoking the shisha.

  The American returned to Kabul a week later. The embassy was busy behind its walls and when he entered that morning he thought there they are, behind the walls. Here we all are, behind our walls. We’re protected and separate. Can you run a country behind walls? But then you know that’s not true. We’re not running it completely. You’re certainly not running it. There are others doing the running. They tell you were to go and what to do and you do it because it’s your job and not doing your job is a quick way to get sent home. Here they only want people who do their job. And his job, as he knew, was to find the weak parts of Afghan society. He went to the distant country and asked questions to see the chances that they could have a stable police force or a decent school or a court.

  It was a late summer morning. The air was dry and cool. There was no breeze now, within the compound, only a dim sun overhead that was ver
y remote to the American. It was comfortable weather and the skin on his cheeks and hands felt smooth and clear. He wore the boots this time with his khaki travel pants. The rock and sand was thin on the dirt earth and shifted dryly under his feet as he walked.

  In the embassy compound he found his section, located in the lower hallways towards the interior courtyard. The offices were crowded and windowless. The cubicles lined both sides of the walkway, short, fabric-covered walls with computers and phones and printers and fax machines and no person turned as he walked, their faces intent and unmoving, their fingers running over the keyboard, to the phone, and the air was stiff and acrid with coffee and body sweat and the fabric was pinned with maps or lists of ministry personnel or flow charts showing command structure for a distant warlord and the electo-organic buzz of the data, the systolic pressure of power that coursed through every person’s movements, was off-set by the metallic surfaces, the eco-friendly lighting, the plastic chairs and false carpet like some gangly, horrid combination and he found his desk and turned on the light and joined them at his computer.

  There were e-mails and diplomatic cables. One addressed the growing insurgency in his own region, the southwest, near Helmand Province. The rise of opium crops had provided money for local insurgent leaders. He had known it would happen. They all did. And when you know something will happen and yet you continue on your course anyway and you don’t do something about it? Or maybe