More folded carpets and woven decor are stacked on a rack along the wall. The store has a rich collection of war rugs, small tapestries of traditional colors depicting land mines, tanks, and Kalashnikov rifles. One has a helicopter motif around the border and fighter jets at the center. Some have usa woven into a border while others have Cyrillic lettering.

“Who makes these?” I ask in Dari.

“Women. Children. Small fingers, good weaving.”

I think of the magazine article I read not long ago about opium’s ugly hold on Afghans, how they smoke it to forget their poverty or to ease an ache. A traumatized country has self-medicated with the crop that grows heartily on this land and enables them to feed their families and appease the warlords. The piece included a photograph of a mother blowing tranquilizing smoke into her infant’s face, the look on hers an expression of love. She did this, the writer explained, so she could sit in front of a loom for hours, tying thread after thread with cramped fingers stained with henna.

“Why do people weave war carpets?” I ask. He laughs, a joyless sound.

“You don’t like?”

I touch a woven tank and wonder if this trend started with the weavers or the customers. The shopkeeper does not wait on my reply.

“My customers like this very much. War, guns, history. If I put bullets on a chain, I can sell it as Afghan necklace.”

I don’t need to ask who his customers are. I can tell his shop is like one of the hundreds of souvenir shops in Times Square selling Statue of Liberty snow globes and place mats printed with the subway map—items no New Yorker would purchase.

The shopkeeper watches me with curiosity. He moves a bowl to the edge of the counter and invites me to look. The bowl jangles with pins of American and British flags and Russian and British military medals. I have no interest in this memorabilia. I thank him for his time and see the disappointment on his face.

I bow out of the store and nearly walk into two NATO soldiers. They are surrounded by a cluster of boys who have probably lived their entire lives in the shadows of soldiers.

I rub my hands together in the taxi, but they are still frigid when we arrive at the Ministry of the Interior. I’m trembling as I approach the glass doors at the front entrance, which is guarded by soldiers just as Arg was. They stop me before I come close. The world was so easy to navigate with my father at my side.

How will I present myself here?

I must choose between two conflicting rationales.

I will get nowhere if I admit who I am.

I will get nowhere unless I admit who I am.