AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Shaytandokht," which is set in Afghanistan, was written and accepted before the recent terrible events unfolding in that part of the world. It is not a commentary on the current crisis, and I don't pretend to have any insight into it. It's merely a coincidence.

       
       The bitter wind plummets down the Vakhan mountains of Afghanistan and tears into the clothing of two men. One man wears muddied jeans and a coat of dull, synthetic, western fabrics. The other, wrapped in layers of threadbare wool jackets, leans close to the doorway of a large clay mound that serves as a house. Respectfully, he does not pull aside the ram skin there, but yells toward it, louder than the wind.
       An aged man's face emerges, squinting against the cold, his white beard already catching the few flakes of snow. He is angry at being disturbed. His family is cold inside. The westerner watches as the two Afghan men argue above the howl. The old man seems dismissive, makes moves to turn away.
       "Shaytandokht!" shouts the younger Afghan, and the old man halts. The younger man motions to the westerner, who is hunched against the wind with arms wrapped tightly around himself, face mostly hidden beneath a hat and ragged black beard. The old man turns to him for the first time, a look of disgust pressed into his hard skin, like figs into crusting dough. He spits through broken teeth, shouts at the younger man, and disappears behind the ram skin, tightening its slack.
       Shaytandokht. The devil's daughter.

       The two men return the next morning, before the afternoon onset of the Vakhan wind. The old Afghan is tending his goats. His two young sons walk on the far sides of the herd. The old man's back is to the two strangers, but their approach over the brittle ground is loud. His breath trails away into the still, frigid air.
       "Tell him I will pay him enough for one hundred new goats if he will take me to her," says the westerner. He is an olive-skinned man with tight eyes and cracked lips.
       The young Afghan guide relays the message. The old man leans his body against a tall walking stick. He responds without turning around.
       "He says he does not know of such a girl," says the guide. "I do not believe him."
       "Tell him a thousand."
       The guide says one word. For a long moment, only the wisps of breath show life in the old man. He turns around, still leaning against his stick, and stares at the westerner for a long time. He says a few words.
       "What is your pain?" relays the guide.
       The westerner, breathing heavily through his mouth, wipes at his nose and looks from one Afghan to the other. He clears his throat. "I have lost someone."
       The old man's response is short.
       "She will not help you. Your pain will not lift," says the guide.
       No one speaks for several moments. Bleats from the distant goats seem disembodied in the vast expanse between the white Vakhan peaks.
       The westerner unbuttons his coat and reaches inside. He pulls out a worn billfold and grabs the contents in a numb fist. "Here," he says, walking to the old man, hand out and open, a stack of crumpled liras and dollars unmoving in the still air. The old man glances at the bills and looks away. The westerner stands motionless, then follows the man's gaze off to the small herd. One of the boys limps. When the old man turns back, the westerner pushes the bills toward him with new confidence.
       The old man mutters, takes the bills in hand, and walks toward the clay house.
       "He says again your pain will not lift," says the young man. "You will only hurt a new way."

       At the next dawn, the temperature across the high valley is well below freezing. The cloudless sky is bright, though the sun still lies behind the mountains. There is little snow to hold footprints behind the three men as they walk.
       "When did you see her?" asks the westerner after several hours. The sunlight seems unwilling to move down the mountainside to warm the valley. The old man's forearms are bare.
       The young guide translates as the old man talks, stopping at odd intervals to listen.
       "He says, I was a boy. A woman came... with a husband. She wished to see Shaytandokht. She was Saudi. She had lost a mother and a sister. A death from violence. She had much... had much money. Many servants. My father led them to the girl, and I walked with him. They carried the woman in a" --the guide makes motions with his hands-- "a coach without wheels. I saw the girl then."
       "What did she... the girl, look like?"
       "Shamefully unclothed. And she shivered, but the day was very hot. She sat, only."
       The guide finishes, and there is no sound in the vast valley but the crunch of frozen dirt beneath their shoes. The old man speaks again, and the guide translates.
       "The woman sat alone with the girl for... an hour and looked into her eyes. Then the woman cried much. Then she said, 'Kill the girl.' The men beat and cut the child, but she would not die. She made... sounds, like a choking ram. My father and I led the Saudi woman back."
       The guide seems to suddenly hear his own words. He watches the ground as he walks. The old man speaks again, but the three take many steps before the young man notices and translates.
       "I thought the Saudi a cruel woman. I do not think so now. She came to see pain beyond her" --again the guide uses gestures as he fumbles for words-- "more pain than can be understood. To make one's own pain, little. I say now the Saudi woman was not cruel. She wished to end Shaytandokht's pain."
       An edge of cold sunlight seeps over the craggy eastern ridge. The old man nods before continuing.
       "Her pain can not be taken away. She holds hell within her."

       The abatement of the Vakhan wind the next morning wakes all three men. The young Afghan pulls from his jacket thin rolls of dough filled with boiled sheep fat. He and the westerner eat in the abrupt silence, looking out over the brown and glinting valley rocks. The old man waves away the roll.
       "The Saudi woman," says the young man to the westerner. "You knew her?" He dips his head slightly, as if to coax out a confirmation.
       "I know of her," says the man. The guide squints slightly. He cannot understand the difference. "I read about her. And of others before her. I found scattered words about her journey to find Shaytandokht."
       "And she found happiness?"
       The westerner takes a small bite of his roll. The three had slept against a small outcropping near one side of the valley. It gave good protection against the Vakhan winds, but each of the men longed to walk again, to bring feeling back to their feet. "She worked for the poor afterward. She gave away most of her money. Many remember her well."
       The old man grunts and nudges the young guide. The young man speaks quickly with many hand motions. The old man shakes his head with the same dismissal he gave the sheep fat, and speaks again.
       "He says, you are a fool. He says you do not know who Shaytandokht is. She is the true deev's daughter. Her padar is the Evil One. He says, many, many years ago, Allah punished the deev mightily. With a great sweep..." --the young man's hands move-- "Allah gathered much of the hardship and evil of the world, and thrust it into the deev's only daughter. Allah hid her away and said to her, hold this evil inside you, always, or you will be no more. She was young... is young... a young girl, not a woman, so she did as Allah told her. She holds in enough pain that the world became kinder for man. Man rose from the dark age and could forget much about real hardship. She holds it though it is the pain of a thousand-thousand men. And it will not let her die. She can not starve. She can not bleed. She does not grow. She sits, only, and holds in pain."
       The old man spits and wipes his mouth with the back of a coarse hand. He shakes a finger at the westerner and talks quickly through his few teeth while the guide rushes to translate.
       "He says you are like the Saudi woman. All of you from the Europe and the America. You have so much easy in the life that you no longer know the life. You have lost someone. You are sad. I have lost someone. My wife is dead. I am sad. But you and me, our sadness is not equal. You cry when you can not buy bigger cars. You cry when you have one hundred bedrooms and want two hundred. Each day I walk with starvation and cold, and when I avoid them for another day, I sleep with happiness. But you no longer think of such things, and does it make you happy? No. You are less happy. And that is why you come. That is why you look into the eyes of Shaytandokht. You come to see true pain and hardship, to understand your woes are petty."
       The old man stands, slaps the morning's frost from his clothes, and mumbles a few words to the guide.
       "He says we will reach her today, before the wind."
       The westerner eats the last of the sheep fat, and he and the young Afghan walk stiffly out into the frozen valley behind the old man.

       "Do you believe him?" asks the young man. "Do you believe there is really such a girl? That she is really the deev's daughter?"
       They walk for a while in silence before the westerner speaks. "I believe what I have read. I believe people found someone out here who changed them."
       "Like the Saudi woman? You hope you will give kindnesses to others?"
       "I do hope to do service for others."
       "Will that make you happy?"
       The man walks quietly for several steps. He shakes his head. "No."
       "You are angry, as well as mournful. That is the greatest pain. Perhaps it will be enough for you, if Shaytandokht can make right your understanding of hardship." He nods heartily to himself. "It is not good for a man to lose that."
       Ahead of them, the old man has stopped. As they reach him, he gestures with his chin toward a shallow depression near the edge of the valley half a mile away. He does not look at the western man, but stands with his arms folded. The man looks at both Afghans for a moment, then continues toward the depression alone.
       The sun is high as he reaches the wind-carved dent in the valley floor, strewn with jagged rocks and boulders. He stumbles once, searching ahead instead of attending his stride. And then he sees her.
       Her back is to him. It is dark but smooth. Small bones of her spine push against her skin. Her hair is black and matted, hanging in front of her shoulders. It nearly touches the ground where she sits, bent and shivering.
       He stops when he sees her, breath drifting away from his face. He moves again, touching feet to rough earth carefully. Footsteps crackling against the frozen sand, he makes a wide circle until he stands nearly before her. Her shivering is a steady vibration of her tiny frame. Her hands are clasped between her thighs, the veins raised and stark. She stares ahead. She is nine. Perhaps eight.
       He takes the last steps between them, hesitates, and sits cross-legged only a foot before her. He breathes through his mouth.
       Her eyes are green, glazed, and watery. She stares through him.
       He pulls away his hat, lowering his head to catch her eyes. His own gleam with water. He lifts a hand slowly, moving it toward the girl. The backs of his fingers push aside her ragged hair, and he gently rests his fingertips against her shaking cheek.
       "Shaytandokht," he whispers.
       In a single twitch, the girl's eyes look directly at him. He smiles, lips trembling, a tear rushing down a cheek. He puts both hands to her face. Her shaking seems to grow as her mouth opens. Her eyes look at one and the other of his.
       "My dokhtar," he whispers.
       Her lips move several times before rasping the single word.
       "Padar."
       He pulls her close, pressing her cheek hard to his. "I have found thee, my beloved dokhtar. I have found thee." Weak arms surround the man. Small fingers pull.
       "I have come to lift the pain," he whispers into her hair. "It is not yours to hold. It is not good for man to lose it."
       Her sigh is a long and happy one.
       The Vakhan winds come, and a coldness begins to blow across all of God's good earth.