Still Come Home. Katey Schultz

      

      Advance Praise

      Still Come Home, is a stunning and deeply lyrical tour de force. The tension and interplay between three alternating voices—an Afghan woman, an American soldier, and a reluctant Taliban recruit—allow us to understand the characters’ struggles in a way that no single perspective could, and Schultz’s ability to enter into their radically different lives is nothing short of breathtaking. There is tragedy here, but also humor, moral blindness along with deep courage, and the desert holds it all. The sand and dust and changing sky of this novel are, like the prose itself, like the story Schultz gives us, at once devastating and gorgeous and utterly mesmerizing.

      —Abigail DeWitt, author of News of Our Loved Ones

      Katey Schultz’s debut novel Still Come Home is a remarkable book, impressive in its breadth and depth of story, engaging with its finely-drawn characters, and breath-taking in its pace. I know of few authors writing about war these days who can so skillfully balance both sides of the conflict with equal grace. Katey Schultz gives true heart and dignity to both the so-called ‘enemy’ and the ‘friendly’ forces of the American troops. Still Come Home made me think long and deep about how we humans all too often lose sight of our humanity during war. The characters in these pages remind us how complicated and anguishing decisions can be on both sides of the battle-lines.

      —David Abrams, author of Brave Deeds and Fobbit

      Still Come Home

      Still Come Home

      Katey Schultz

      Copyright © 2019 by Katey Schultz

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher (except by reviewers who may quote brief passages).

      First Edition

      Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-62720-230-5

      Paperback ISBN: 978-1-62720-231-2

      Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62720-232-9

      Printed in the United States of America

      Design editor: Lillian Lane

      Acquisitions editor: Keelin Ferdinandsen

      Copy editor: Dani Williams

      Promotion editor: Kelly Lyons

      Cover art by Marianne Dages and Amze Emmons, “June,” letterpress on paper, 2013. https://www.mariannedages.com/

      Published by Apprentice House Press

      Apprentice House Press

      Loyola University Maryland

      4501 N. Charles Street

      Baltimore, MD 21210

      410.617.5265 • 410.617.2198 (fax)

      www.ApprenticeHouse.com

      [email protected]

      This book is dedicated to my Number One,

      Brad Quillen,

      and to the quiet beauty of Mercy Me Hill

      where many of these pages were written.

      Excerpt from

      “A Dialogue of Self and Soul”

      by William Butler Yeats

      A living man is blind and drinks his drop.

      What matter if the ditches are impure?

      What matter if I live it all once more?

      Endure that toil of growing up;

      The ignominy of boyhood; the distress

      Of boyhood changing into man;

      The unfinished man and his pain

      Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;

      The finished man among his enemies? --

      How in the name of Heaven can he escape

      That defiling and disfigured shape

      The mirror of malicious eyes

      Casts upon his eyes until at last

      He thinks that shape must be his shape?

      And what’s the good of an escape

      If honour find him in the wintry blast?

      I am content to live it all again

      And yet again, if it be life to pitch

      Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch,

      A blind man battering blind men…

      I am content to follow to its source

      Every event in action or in thought;

      Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!

      Day One

      1

      Taking Flight

      It’s market day, and the streets of Imar beckon. There may be nuts, fresh bread, produce—an apricot—and there it is, a craving for fruit seeping from Aaseya’s mind to her mouth, her taste buds springing to life. It would taste like candied moisture, a wet slice of sunlight in the mouth. But imagining is hardly enough, and what is a life if not lived fully? She wants the fruit. She wants her freedom. She wants to do everything she shouldn’t. She shoves back her purple headscarf and walks to the open window of her small, second-story apartment. She sticks her torso out and leans, hanging her head upside down. Her hair dangles like a black flag in the breeze. Positioned like this, she won’t have to look up the street at the remains of her family compound. She won’t have to wish she’d died in there three years ago either.

      She hoists herself upright and sees sun splotches. A molten feeling fills her skull as blood drains downward and rights itself throughout her body. She leans against the windowsill and looks toward the sky.

      The taste is still there.

      An apricot.

      Sweet and earthy.

      Warm.

      Amazing how a single thought can bloom like a saffron crocus, infusing the body. Her body. Seventeen years old and no one would have guessed this life for her. Not her father, not her mother or her siblings. All of them gone, leaving only an obstinate Afghan girl in a rushed marriage to Rahim, a desire for fruit, and a village the size of a flea.

      “Silly woman!” a child’s voice taunts from below.

      A different child giggles. “She’s the dishonorable one. The one who’s shameful.”

      Aaseya rights her headscarf and studies the two boys standing across the narrow street, their brown eyes as wide as grapes. Behind them, a smaller boy with a dense crop of hair crouches against the corner of a building, examining the dirt. The sun throws light across their bodies in a wash of pale yellow, illuminating their black-topped heads into little, golden orbs, somewhat like desert flowers. But there’s nothing lovely about these boys and their accusations.

      Ba haya.

      Shameful.

      “Go home to your mothers!” Aaseya shouts. “You’re useless to me!”

      The two bigger boys cackle and run quickly out of sight. The small boy remains, engrossed in digging. “If you think you’ve got something to say to me, you might as well get out of here too,” Aaseya shouts. “I won’t hear any of it.”

      The boy stands, his face soft and thin. A desert flower, after all. His eyelids blink slowly open and closed. He looks about six years old and sickly,