Secondhand Sorcery

Shevchenko was on the northeast corner of the Caspian Sea, nine hundred kilometers from the rebuilt Atyrau. It was on the way to Uzbekistan, which was on the way to Afghanistan, where Fatima insisted they could take up her father’s mantle and rebuild his little kingdom, safe from Russian or American bullying. After dragging them all the way to Guryev, Nadia didn’t feel like she had any right to refuse, even if she couldn’t see herself living that way.

But nine hundred kilometers was a long, long way, and by the time they got to Shevchenko Fatima was tired enough of life on the road to agree to a little break. They found a cheap motel, the kind that marketed itself to migrant workers, and paid the man at the front desk a little extra to not make a fuss over three unaccompanied minors in the same room. That would get them at least one night in actual beds, and a shower with tepid water.

They closed the blinds, and they counted up their money—a modest heap of rubles and Kazakh Tenge. Not enough to carry them all the way to Lashkargah, and they didn’t want to draw attention by breaking open another ATM. It wasn’t clear to Nadia why Yefimov had left them alone since his setback at Dagestan, but she didn’t believe he’d given up, and Shevchenko was well within his reach.

They knew how to take care of themselves, even without familiars. Knowing how to earn money was another matter; in the end, they realized they only had one real marketable skill to sell. Even then, Fatima took a lot of convincing—she didn’t want to risk any of their meager funds. But she couldn’t come up with a better plan.

So it was that Fatima dropped her sister off outside the city’s oil refinery—it seemed every city around the Caspian had to have one—the next morning. It had to be Nadia alone; the other two were too memorable, and didn’t speak the language. She set up their new propane stove, pulled the bags of ingredients out of the cooler, and started up a pot of makarony po-flotski, navy noodles. It was a quick and easy recipe, but filling, and before long she spotted men peeking out of windows.

A company security man came by, of course, but Nadia had budgeted for his modest bribe, and he refused it anyway. Maybe she looked particularly pathetic, or winsome; he walked away shaking his head and smiling. The army of mostly single men working the refinery were very interested in a hot meal; when Fatima swung by to pick her up, the pot was empty, and they’d earned back more than double what they spent on the pot and the stove.

“Hell of a hustle,” Fatima said, back at the motel. “Why weren’t there like five food trucks doing the same thing?”

“Because it’s illegal,” Nadia told her.

“Illegal? To sell lunch? What the hell is wrong with this country?”

“Oh, it’s not exactly illegal, but you’re supposed to get permits, and certificates, and every new business needs to bribe five different officials. It’s not worth it for little things like this. Only kids like us get involved in this kind of business.”

“We’re exempt from permits?”

Nadia rolled her eyes. “Fatima, this country is still basically communist. The Knyazya only knocked off the people at the top, put in a few military bases, and demanded tribute. The same awful bureaucrats are running things below. It’s a Kazakh tradition to have a children’s welfare ministry with less than a hundred employees for the whole country, and almost no budget. What budget they get, goes to the horse races.”

“… and that has what to do with selling noodles?”

“If they’d called the police on me, the police wouldn’t have come, because there would literally be nowhere to put me. It would be an enormous headache for them. So everyone ignores it when children do it. When I was growing up, the streets were swarming with shoe-shine boys and little girls knocking on doors for laundry. Didn’t you see them in Guryev?”

“I guess I wasn’t really looking. Handy for us, though.”

“It’s a sick kind of charity. You see this?” She held up a thousand-Tenge bill. “I probably didn’t give change for this. A lot of them refused it. Teenagers in our position who aren’t wanted terrorists live miserable and dangerous lives. A lot of these street children aren’t really orphans—their parents set them up and pocket their earnings at the end of the day, a day they usually spend drunk. Sometimes they wind up as orphans for real, when those parents get arrested.”

Fatima hoisted Ruslan to his feet to march him around the room. He could walk pretty well by himself now, but liked to do the exercises together. “So they felt sorry for you. Great. Extra cash for you, and they get in their good deed for the day. Win-win, babe.”

“It’s not a ‘good deed.’ They’re only bribing their own consciences. They looked at me, and said, ‘that girl is going to be turning tricks in a few years, or on drugs, or both.’ I could see it in their eyes. The right thing to do would have been to intervene, to get me off the streets. All of those men had money to spare. But it would have been a lot of bother. So they generously gave me a tip, so that they could feel like they were doing something. How noble.”

“Well, it’s a damn good thing, isn’t it? We don’t want them asking those questions, because you’re not actually a street beggar. You’re a wanted criminal, fool, and we could use the cash.”

“Yes, of course—”

“So what’s eating you about all this? Sounds like this country’s been shitty to kids for a looooong time. Is it just bothering you now because it’s up-close and personal, or is there something else going on here?”

“Oh, I suppose it’s a lot of things,” she said as she stuffed the money away in their bag. “I don’t know how to put it in words.”

“So think it over. I’m listening. It’s not like I’ve got anywhere to go.” As if to emphasize the point, she eased Ruslan down into a chair, kissing his cheek to thank him for his exertions.

Nadia lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling, marshaling her thoughts. “We won’t be able to keep selling food like this, you know. Not for long. If it were that simple, there would be four orphans already selling lunch there, like you said, and their owners would have tried to chase us away for intruding on their turf. If we go again tomorrow to cook another meal, we might get more business, and the maybe the day after that as well. But eventually I’d be seen as a nuisance, and chased away by security.”

Fatima set to work on Ruslan’s arms now, stretching them out. “Even if all you did was sell food?”

“Yes. First because everyone knows kids like me are trouble, and second because all those bills were bribes, and it’s rude to take a bribe and not go away. No nice, upstanding, productive citizen wants to think about how sick his society is every day on his lunch break. Visiting once, I was a novelty. As a regular feature, I’d be a burden. They’d worry about the precedent, about me attracting other, less-well-behaved kids who would steal or fight or vandalize, or sell drugs on the side.”

“Okay. That’s fair enough.”

“Fair enough, that when they see a sign that their country is heartless to children, their first instinct is to chase it away somewhere else?”

“They’re an oil company. That doesn’t have a damn thing to do with them.”

“And the people who it does have to do with are irresponsible and corrupt, and nobody cares, so the problem never gets fixed. I hate that. I really do.”

“Can’t blame you there, either. But you do know that’s why I want to go back to Lashkargah, right? Afghanistan’s different, but it’s got its own fucked-up shit going on, and without Russians or Americans trying to run the place or get in our way, we really could make a difference.”

“I can accept that you want to take up your father’s legacy. I have no idea what I would do there, or anywhere else, except be a burden. I can’t help anyone, anywhere.”

Fatima let Ruslan’s arms drop, and stood up. “You know, you’ve been my sister for four years now. You had that nasty whore in your brain for less than six months, and I never liked her in the first place. I’ll be glad to have you around, even if you’re just plain Nadia. That ain’t going to change.”

“Thank you. But … “

“But?”

Nadia bit her lip. “I don’t know if I believe in God anymore. But I still want Him to be there. I know you think I was a crazy person sometimes, and very tiresome—and maybe I was. But it was important to me, and it still is, to at least try to make the world better. But I can’t do that anymore, not in any significant way, and it bothers me, it really does. If there is no God, then all things are permitted, and Yefimov wins. I don’t want to run away from him. I don’t want to give up the fight. He doesn’t deserve victory.”

“If it’s any comfort, I’m pretty sure Yefimov’s first in line to go to Hell, Nadia.”

“I don’t care about that. I care about the Hell he is making right here on Earth!”

Fatima came over and sat down next to her. “I don’t like running away from the son of a bitch either. But if it means I can go home again, and get shit done for real, I’d rather do that than sit around flailing my arms until the Knyazya squish me like a bug.”

“I know. That makes sense. I’m sure there are people in Afghanistan who could use our help. All the same … I can’t help the way I feel, Fatima.”

“Sure.” Fatima sat there awkwardly for several seconds, then grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. It was just the weather. There were only ten channels, and she cycled through awful soap operas until she got the state-run news network. “Might as well get some intel, right?”

Having grown up in this country, Nadia was already sure there would be no useful information, but it gave her something to pay attention to besides her own thoughts. She shuffled back on the bed so that she was sitting up against a pillow, and watched the anchors parrot the day’s announcements.

“Anything good?” Fatima asked. She knew five languages already, but she only had a couple of words of Kazakh and wouldn’t get a chance to learn more.

“Parliament is getting together in a special session to rubber-stamp some more presidential decrees. And … that looks like some ethnic festival, maybe?” She saw two men wrestling in bright outfits. “They do a lot of that, to celebrate heritage. This country is mostly empty land for sheep to graze. News is sparse.”

“But they have a twenty-four-hour news channel?”

“Yes. In the old days, they did a lot of human-interest stories on the president’s family. Propaganda nonsense.”

“Huh.” They watched in silence as it segued to a trade agreement with Kyrgyzstan, then a schoolboy who had won a prize for a poem about patriotism. “Okay, you’re right, this country sucks ass.”

“No, the government is terrible. There’s a difference.”

“Oh yeah? What did Kazakhstan ever give the world?”

“Apples. Delicious apples. What did we get from Afghanistan, besides dust?”

“Girl, do not get me started on … what? What’s going on now?” The image on the TV had changed; now they were showing an office building on fire, smoke pouring out of its windows.

“The caption says ‘Atyrau.’ Hush a moment.” She listened closely to the anchors. “This happened two days ago, it says. While we were still on the road.”

“Right after we left, huh? And who did it?” As if it heard her question, the image shifted to a still picture, a colored-pencil depiction of an elderly, dark-skinned woman with pure white eyes, naked except for a cloth wrapped around her bony body. “Oh, you have got to be shitting me. What’s she doing there?”

“Shh!” It was an artist’s sketch, they said, based on several eyewitnesses’ accounts. The local oprichnik had intervened promptly each time she attacked, limiting the damage, and they were confident that she would be captured, killed, or driven away in short order. The president had ordered the mobilization of two thousand soldiers to restore order, and gave a speech this morning condemning American hypocrisy and imperialism. Nadia tuned out most of it; she was already standing up, and starting to shake. “Pack up. We’re leaving. Now.” Her voice shook too, a little.

“What, to go back? That’s six hundred miles!”

“Yes. I know. I don’t like it either. But we have to go.”

Fatima groaned. “Just hold up. We need to discuss this. By the time we get there, she could be—“

“By the time we get there, they could order their oprichnik to abandon all restraint, and Guryev will be leveled to the ground for the second time in five years. That is not acceptable. Move!”

“Don’t you try to rush me! I’m the driver, and the one who can actually fight when we get there, so sit your ass back down on that bed so we can talk this over. The timing can’t be a coincidence. There was nothing in that city worth risking an emissor over, so this must be about us. If you ask me, homegirl’s either trying to lure you back, or distracting them so we can get away. Either way, we don’t need to go back there.”

“Yes, we do!”

“Really. Why?”

“Fatima. Suppose you heard that Pugachev had moved to Lashkargah ahead of us, and was openly mocking your father’s memory, and teaching the people there to despise Islam, like he did in Dagestan. You would want to go back and stop him, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s not even the same—“

“And if I said, ‘wait, we don’t know what Pugachev wants,’ would that convince you at all? No. All I would be doing was wasting your time and mine. Some things are sacred, Fatima, even now. Keisha should know better. She said she loved me, that she wanted the best for me. Now she is deliberately trampling on my the grave of my childhood. I am going back there to make her explain herself, if I have to walk the whole way alone. Do you understand me?”

Fatima studied her face for a moment, then shook her head. “Shit. I guess we can talk it over in the car. For the record though, I still think it’s a stupid move.”