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He couldn’t stop shivering. Haddad’s hand on his thigh was the one warm point of contact in his whole body. He wasn’t going to make it to Afghanistan. He was just going to freeze on this flight. Haddad felt his shivers, he was certain. At 17,200 feet, Haddad pulled out his own poncho liner and a second jacket from his ruck and laid them both on top of Kris. Kris hid his face in his fleece and burrowed into Haddad. Fuck his pride. He needed the warmth. Haddad wrapped one arm around him and pulled him closer.
the operations staff had spoken in cold, clinical terms, briefing
he didn’t move, didn’t change, nothing would happen. Nothing would move on from that moment. As a man, he charged ahead. The only way through was forward. The way back was lost, gone forever. Answers, if there were any, belonged to someone else. But now a man had walked into his life, a slender young man, barbed and pointed and fighting tooth and nail. In Kris’s life,
“How can you even look at me?” “Because I see what you don’t. I see the smartest man I’ve ever met. A man dedicated to the fight. To stopping the Taliban, to capturing Bin Laden. I see a man focused on doing the right thing. On being the best he can be. I see a hero, Kris.”
“Uh, the market is open. We’re in the old Taliban guesthouse overlooking one of the bazaars in the main square. Kids are outside. Women are out, talking together. Men are cheering.
“Bin Laden came to Afghanistan in 1980.” Kris felt his stomach turn, felt it knot. “All this—” He nodded to the photo, the time capsule of the embassy, perfectly preserving 1979. “—was part of why he set off down this path. He was so enraged by the Soviet invasion of Muslim lands, and the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. He was furious, lashing out. He wanted to fight the enemies of Islam, and we helped him. And then we dropped Bin Laden once the Soviets pulled out. And we became the enemies. It’s all a vicious cycle, isn’t it?”
Finally, David let him see, when Kris looked into his eyes, everything. Desperate hunger, aching need, a raw, almost painful yank toward each other. Days and nights by each other’s side, David’s constant attention, his physical touch, the way their souls had curled into the other. “I’m coming back to you,” David whispered, his voice shaking. “If you want that.”
Kris grabbed him, both hands wrapping around David’s face, his head, and pulled him the last inch until their lips met. Their lips were chapped, dry skin catching, and David tasted like bad coffee and Afghanistan’s dust, dust that clung to his mouth and his beard and his skin. But Kris didn’t care. He kissed David like he was trying to bring him back to life, trying to resuscitate his soul. Trying to merge, in some way give David a part of Kris to carry, bury a part of David inside of him. David’s arms wrapped round him, all the way around, encircling him and drawing Kris against David’s
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David smiled, and it was like watching the sunrise over the Hudson River in March, when the light struck the first buds of spring and the last snow melted into a dizzying spray of rainbows, and the air was bursting with potential, with everything that could ever happen in that one golden ray of perfect light. Forget that they were freezing, standing in dust and rock and dry snow, with wind whistling through the shattered mudbricks of their camp at the base of Bin Laden’s last stand in the mountains. Kris would remember this moment, this smile, this kiss, this feeling, for the rest of his days.
“Allahu Akbar, the Sheikh is fine. Bismillah.”
God is good....... In the name of Allah.
At the end of the road, waiting outside of their shattered base camp, was Kris. For David, the world finally began to spin again.
The doors to the embassy had barely shut behind them when David first pressed Kris against the wall.
David’s body surrounded him, covered him completely, devoured him.
No one had ever kissed him with the tenderness of David’s touch, the intensity of his desire. Kris shivered, shook. His knees went limp.
“You’re like a part of me I didn’t know was missing. Part of my mind, or my soul. Like you have the thoughts I haven’t thought yet, feelings I haven’t felt yet, waiting for me. Inside you. You feel like a part of me I’ve been craving.” David’s voice was a whisper, a breath.
‘When you see the black banners coming from Khorasan, join that army, even if you have to crawl over ice’.” David spoke the last half of the hadith with him. “‘For no power will be able to stop them, and they will reach Jerusalem, where they will erect their flags’.”
David exhaled. “There’s too much pain. Too much Muslim pain.” He
Kris watched David take to the mission like a fish to water, seamlessly blending into the passionate Islamic fundamentalism.
“You planned this entire takedown. The coordination, the operation, everything. You did that.” Pride shone from David’s gaze. “I think George is starting to believe in you.” “The CIA way is to ride competent people until they break.” “I thought that was what you did to me.” David winked.
“In shaa Allah,”
If God wills or God willing
David’s lips found a home on his neck, spent hours lingering at his jaw and below his ear. His breath branded Kris, exhales matching the tides of their bodies. “Kris,” David breathed, chanting his name. “Kris… I love you. I love you.” His buried his face in Kris’s neck, pressed his lips to Kris’s collarbone. “Ya hayati, ya habib alby.” My life, love of my heart. He gasped. “Ashokrulillah, Kris...” Praise Allah for you.
“Habib albi,” Kris breathed. “Enta habibi.” Love of my heart. You are my love. David pulled back. Their eyes met. “Ya rouhi,” David whispered. My soul.
“As-salaam-alaikum.”
Peace be unto you.
“Wa alaikum as-salaam,”
And unto you peace.
To be American, and to be Arab.
To be viewed, by everyone, as something other than what he was. A thousand and one stares. A thousand and one ways to be perceived. The kaleidoscope of his soul shifted, twisted. Who he was changed again.
He was a puzzle that the world constantly played with. His soul twisted and turned a hundred times throughout the day.
Every night, he returned to Kris’s arms. Kris was the one person in the world who didn’t demand something from him, didn’t judge him for the way he listened to the azan with his eyes closed. Who never asked him to choose, American or Arab, gay or Muslim, him or them. Kris let him exist, in all his mismatched parts, ev...
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Whispers from the desert scratched at his soul.
Words from the Quran came whispering back to him, out of nowhere, in the quiet moments he shared with Kris. And of everything, We created pairs. Heaven and Earth. Night and day. Sun and moon. Sea and Shore. Light and darkness. David gazed at Kris. You, for me. Subhanallah, he loved Kris so much. Loved him for loving him, and never demanding. Loved him for knowing parts and pieces were broken or missing, tarnished or destroyed.
“I wasn’t going to say it. My plan was to do a tap number on the center of the table, belt out, ‘I fucking told you so’ at the top of my lungs, and end in the splits in front of the VP. So he could suck my dick.”
Every night, Kris
spent the next twelve hours perusing everything, combining it with intercepts and drone overheads and human intelligence from on the ground. By afternoon, Kris had another list of targets, another night of work for David and the strike team.
David wondered if the end times were upon the world. If the Apocalypse had truly come.
Evil, the truth of it, was a weight that a soul could barely carry. They’d already shouldered so much together. When would they break? When would the world, and all of its evil, shatter them? Kris’s jaw dropped. He reached for David, stumbling, falling himself, as if they were now together in freefall, in the vortex of evil destroying the world. His lips moved soundlessly as he tried to find words, find something to say. “David…” “I want—” Tears choked him. David grabbed Kris, tried to hold on. Tried to stop falling. “I want my father’s faith—”
From the moment we met, it’s been like I’ve known you for forever. Like everything in me is supposed to belong to everything in you.”
“Ana bahibak,
I love you
Seven years after Kris had left Afghanistan, the country looked worse than it had before the invasion of 2001.
It was awe-inspiring, how much power they wielded.
Alhamdulillah.”
Praise be to God
“Deep faith, hardened faith, is thicker than that. It doesn’t break, not that easily,” David said.
Hamid had appeared like a gift from above.
“I’m not sure this guy is everything you want him to be,” David cautioned. “I think he’s pulling back because he can’t
“What if this is a trap?”
“I don’t trust this guy’s change of heart. I don’t.”
Their whispers turned to making love, languid and serene, until Kris came with a shout, practically crying as he trembled apart in David’s arms. David tumbled after him, trying to combine their souls, trying to crawl inside Kris’s body and fuse together, never to be parted.
“Shukran, habibi,”
Thanks my love
A void in the shape of David’s smile hovered in the center of Kris.
“To those poor bastards at SAD. They don’t know what they’re getting.” Dan clinked his glass with Kris’s for the fifth time. And, for the fifth time, Kris downed his champagne like it was a shot. “They have no fucking idea what I’m capable of. Not now. Not yet.”
“Astaghfirullah,
Allah forgive me
