Ignoring protocol, he’d found this apartment himself, agreeing the rent directly with the landlord rather than using the official Soviet channels. He had one criterion – it should be impossible to be mistaken for, or resemble in any way, the home he once shared with his wife and daughters. For this reason he liked the fact that he was near speakers erected outside a tea room that broadcast the muezzin’s call to prayer, a sound that filled his apartment, a sound that he’d never shared with his family. His intention was to crowd his life with things that didn’t remind him of Raisa – to make his existence so foreign there was nothing that flashbacked to the life he’d lost. The large windows opened to views of the city ntialthe surrounding mountains, a view that could not have been more different from Moscow. Even the layout of the apartment was peculiar: a single room large enough to serve as a bedroom, living area and kitchen. It was imperative there not be separate rooms. Closed doors played havoc with his imagination. His first apartment in Bala Hissar, the centre of old Kabul, had been designed for a traditional Islamic family with a back room intended for a wife and daughters. While living there Leo often heard the muffled sound of Raisa’s voice. He’d run to the door and throw it open only to reveal an empty room. Another night he’d heard the sound of Elena’s voice, then Zoya, both voices bringing him running. No matter how far-fetched the notion that his family might be together again and living with him, the imagined sound of their voices would bring him checking on empty rooms, sometimes three or four times a night. Insanity was not far away. His temporary solution had been to unscrew the doors, set up mirrors in the hallways so that he could see the empty space at all times. He’d begun looking for a more suitable apartment.

Leo retrieved his pipe: a thin wood tube with a small steel pot roughly two-thirds of the way down from the mouthpiece. There were crude carvings around the rim, a blackened interior where the opium burned. Though it had never been mentioned directly, his addiction was no secret to his superiors. A system of tacit consent allowed soldiers and officials any pleasures accessible to them, a form of compensation to supplement wages that could never be high enough to offset the dangers of Afghanistan. For Leo, opium had nothing to do with pleasure, it was a continuation of the logic he applied to his apartment, making his body foreign and quite unlike the body that had slept beside Raisa nearly every night of his life for fifteen years – an addiction, certainly, but also a strategy to cope with his grief.