Summary
Brandon finds Richard trapped under a section of wall. The others help free him. Richard hugs Brandon and thanks him for saving his life. Brandon says now they’re even. The group forms a human chain to find their way through the dark. Brandon smells the fruity products of the Body Shop and realizes they are moving in the wrong direction. Brandon leads them to the Warner Bros. store, where he feels the Bugs Bunny statue out front. He leads the group past the Fila store and to the exit onto Vesey Street. They are excited to emerge into the daylight, but what looked like daylight from the bottom of the escalator turns out to be a light filtered through fine gray dust. It is eerily silent and there are no people around. They look up and see the South Tower, a 107-floor skyscraper, has collapsed.
Reshmina goes through the hole to land in another room; it is full of artifacts that look like they are from ancient Greece, but there are also Soviet weapons, English weapons, and old shields. Taz tells Reshmina that the Americans are in Afghanistan because they got in and don’t know how to get out. It’s bad if they stay, and if they leave. Taz says he knew an eighteen-year-old soldier who died fighting the war, which started before the soldier was even born. Taz says they’re “never going to change this place.” They come to a crack in the wall. Reshmina gets the idea to lodge a Soviet landmine in the crack and then throw a bust of Lenin at it. She misses, but an explosion elsewhere dislodges a chunk of rock and it triggers the landmine, sending Reshmina flying.
Brandon, Richard, and the others stare up at the still-intact North Tower. Brandon checks the time—10:25 a.m.—and realizes that people must have died in the South Tower, because it had been less than an hour since the plane hit it. An EMT rushes up and tells them not to breathe the toxic dust in the air. He gives them flimsy masks. Brandon realizes he is holding a stuffed Tasmanian Devil toy; he hadn’t realized he’d been holding it. Richard tells him to keep the toy because it brought them luck. At the sound of a sudden crack, Brandon looks up to see the top floors of the North Tower collapse, one by one. The sound builds into a tidal wave as the giant cloud of concrete dust expands like a blooming flower. Brandon runs for his life, stopping eventually to find Richard lying under the layer of dust.
Reshmina wakes up in the sunshine, lying on the ground by the river. Her mother and Taz explain that the mine blew a hole large enough for them to escape through. American and Afghan soldiers are among them, treating the wounded. Baba comes around the corner with a group of men from the village. Reshmina is relieved. She says she tried to stop Pasoon from joining the Taliban but couldn’t. A friend of Taz’s arrives. They discuss how it happens to be 9/11. None of the Afghans know what that is. Taz can’t believe it. He pulls out photos of the Twin Towers and explains that he was in the North Tower on the day of the attack. He says his father died in the attack. That’s why he’s in Afghanistan. He says his last name is Lowery because he took the name of Richard Lowery, the man who adopted him, but his father’s surname was Chavez. His first name is Brandon.
Reshmina translates for the villagers, showing them the photos. Reshmina asks if Afghans did 9/11. Taz looks uncomfortable. He says the terrorists were mostly from Saudi Arabia, from a group called al Qaeda, but their leader set up the attacks from Afghanistan and the Taliban let al Qaeda be headquartered there. He says the US invaded because the Taliban wouldn’t hand Osama Bin Laden over. Reshmina curses the people who did 9/11, but she asks why they are destroying Afghan buildings and people; she wants to know why they are getting revenge against Afghans—particularly when Bin Laden was caught ten years earlier in Pakistan. Taz’s friend Carter says that if you’re not with us, you’re against us. On his walkie-talkie, he calls in a missile strike on a house on the top of the hill. The blast destroys the houses below it too, and the group has to run toward the river to get to safety. He tells Taz that’s for 9/11. Taz whispers to Reshmina that that was not supposed to happen. Reshmina and the other villagers collapse to their knees and cry over their destroyed village.
Richard and Brandon walk three hours from Manhattan to Queens, arriving at Richard’s little house. His wife and kids are there and welcome them home. Brandon goes to the bathroom to clean up and sees himself in the mirror: he looks like a ghost, covered in gray dust still, but there’s also a dead look in his eyes. After showering, Brandon puts up some of Richard’s clothes, which his wife has cuffed because they’re too big.
Brandon phones his apartment and leaves a message for his father, telling him he is safe. He says, “I love you, Dad. Goodbye.” He chokes back tears. They spend the evening watching the news. Brandon learns that terrorists hijacked two planes and flew them into the Twin Towers. They are calling the pile of rubble Ground Zero. One hundred and twenty-five people died at the Pentagon too. A fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania because it seemed the passengers on board tried to take it back from the hijackers. Richard watches the president speak about retaliation. He says he wants revenge too, but wonders against whom.
At the end of the day on September 11, 2019, Reshmina digs through the rubble that was her home, searching for anything of value that could help them survive. Americans were meeting with families, arranging for compensation for their losses. Taz brings Reshmina blankets, food, and a portable stove. Reshmina complains about how they can’t do much with the money the Americans will give them, not when they’ve been “bombed back to the Stone Age,” as Carter said. She says none of the invaders will let them get past the Stone Age.
Reshmina tells Taz: “Your country helped create the Taliban. You gave them weapons and trained them to drive out the Soviets. We have the old textbooks to prove it. Even when you try to help us, you hurt us. And yourselves. Maybe what we need is for you to stop ‘helping’ us.” She says the US helps with one hand but holds a gun in the other. Taz says he joined the army in 2010, at age eighteen, because he wanted revenge, but now it’s just a War on Terror, and he isn’t sure who they’re fighting. He says maybe America is the bullies, who do whatever they want and never get in trouble for it.
Taz tells Reshmina that there’s a program where, if she works for the US Army as a translator, she might get US citizenship eventually. She thanks him but says no. Before leaving, he gives her his Tasmanian Devil toy, saying maybe it’ll bring her luck too. After Taz walks away, Reshmina and her father decide to go down to join their family in the valley. She sees the figure of Pasoon in the distance. He raises his arm. Her heart aches at the sight of him, but they will always remain apart as long as Pasoon chooses revenge. Reshmina turns away and tells her father, “I’ve found another path.”
Analysis
Brandon continues to show resilience as he gathers survivors in the underground mall and uses ingenuity to find a way out. Unable to see, Brandon applies his knowledge of the underground mall to determine that they are heading in the wrong direction. With his sense of touch and smell, Brandon turns the group around and brings them to the escalator that leads to street level. In an eerie moment, he arrives in the daylight to find that gray dust is filtering the light and there doesn't seem to be anyone around. In an instance of situational irony, Brandon learns that all 107 floors of the South Tower are missing from the skyline.
In Reshmina’s storyline, the blast from the fighting above ground opens a hole in the cave. But rather than lead to the outside, the hole exposes a secret room full of antiquities. Gratz emphasizes the foreign origins of the objects in the room to underscore the symbolic significance of the relics. Going as far back as Alexander the Great and the Mongol Empire, outsiders have always tried to invade and occupy Afghanistan. Reshmina sees the United States as just the latest in the long line of failed conquerors.
The theme of powerlessness arises as Taz and Reshmina discuss the United States’s culpability in the destruction amongst which Reshmina has lived for her entire life. Taz explains it will continue to be bad for Afghans if the US stays, but also bad if they leave because the Taliban will regain power (a prediction borne out in reality when the Biden government withdrew troops from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban swiftly recaptured control of the country). In admitting that the US will never “change this place,” Taz concedes that, as much as he and his military would like to believe themselves capable of eliminating the threat the Taliban poses, they are powerless to stop a political and military movement that continues attracting new members.
In another parallel, the climaxes of both Reshmina’s and Brandon’s storylines involve the children experiencing profound losses. For Reshmina, it is the needless and total destruction of her village carried out by a military friend of Taz’s who blows up the entire village, as though the villagers were the enemy. For Brandon, it is witnessing the North Tower collapse into dust and rubble, killing his father. With these events, both protagonists lose the last of their innocence, trading their childhood naivety and ideals for a grim confrontation with extreme violence and tragedy.
After each storyline reaches its climax, Gratz presents an instance of situational irony. It turns out that Taz is merely a nickname, and the soldier—who took his adoptive father Richard’s surname Lowery—is actually Brandon Chavez, the protagonist of the first storyline. Unbeknownst to the reader, Brandon has been present in both storylines for the entire novel. In an instance of dramatic irony, he attempts to explain the significance of having lived through 9/11 to the villagers, none of whom have even heard of the attacks. For readers of the novel, Brandon’s traumatic story of survival offers some explanation as to why he wanted to join the army to seek revenge against the people responsible for the attack. But to the villagers, his explanation comes off as absurd when he tries to provide a roundabout explanation as to why the US still occupies Afghanistan even after Bin Laden was killed.
The novel ends on a bittersweet note as Reshmina and Taz part ways. Having decimated Reshmina’s village, the Americans bring survival supplies and make promises to compensate the villagers for the destruction. Reshmina emphasizes the hypocrisy of helping with one hand and holding a gun in the other—i.e. trying to “help” people that you are simultaneously subjugating with the threat of violence. Gratz touches again on the theme of revenge when Taz concedes that his initial desire for revenge is gone. Just as Leo warned him not to become the aggressor, even in retaliation, Brandon/Taz realizes he is the bully his father worried he would turn into.
