Free Streams of Babel by Carol Plum-Ucci

only given me an earpiece, no hidden piece for my voice. They are afraid I will forget myself and speak too loudly to them. They think sixteen is not a man yet.
    I appreciate Hodji's humor, despite that he sometimes says dirty words like "hot babes." His joking makes these extremists around terminal five seem like just other guys, not natural-born killers who would be happy to saw off my limbs if they knew what I was up to. Americans use the term "terrorist" to describe such men, but Americans are far more terrified than most people. "Extremist" suits my culture's thinking.
    Safely behind them, I still have their screen captured on my
terminal, and I watch the extremists' chatter. For the moment, they are merely joking with a contact in London about how you can buy and sell amazing things on eBay if you live in Europe or America. The London contact bought blue jeans for a dollar and sandals for two dollars. It is not interesting yet. So I send an instant message to Hodji:
You Americans, you treat your children like sacred cows. SEND.
    I smile as his chair suddenly squeaks. He is not expecting me to be so brazen, to lay a message right on his screen, what with these extremists right under our noses. It is enough that I have their screen captured on my screen. I am myself again—puffed up and exhilarated like the American cowboy.
    If I send Hodji more messages, he will tell Uncle Ahmer, who would later smack my lungs loose or grab my hair for a lecture. He helps the Americans because he likes the money and gifts. He feels no sense of loyalty to them as my father did.
    But I can't resist my own urges sometimes. Hodji's constant lectures about what I
should
be doing at sixteen, they seem condescending. He acts like America sets all the laws in this world. I must straighten him out. I start an e-mail to him in scramble mode.
You treat your children like sacred cows. Of course, I would very much like to go to school and play football, but I like my job very much more, thank you. If you are correct and I am the best programmer/hacker you have
ever met personally, why do you protest to my doing it? Here in Pakistan, people don't care so much that I am sixteen. I don't want to go where I am not a man, thank you. No more than you would like to go back to school pants and vars...varsh...
    I cannot remember the word they had tried to tempt me with, last time they offered to send me to live with my aunt Alika and cousin Inas on Long Island, New York. Hodji says my father made him swear to do this if something happened to him, and Hodji is now torn. He is an honorable friend to my father—but he needs me as a spy right now. Americans will not let minors spy, not on their own turf. So, if I went, I would have to become an American schoolboy, and it is hard to find informants with both computer skills and knowledge of many languages. Hodji doesn't want to lose me yet.
    And I do not want to go. You don't swap your manhood for appealing trinkets, no matter how good they are—like flat-screen monitors and education and Wendy's Double Double Cheese Cheese and yarsh ... varsh...
...varsity letter sweaters. It is very ironic, Hodji, but for me to become American, I would lose much liberty. As you in your eloquence have stated: "Americans would shit themselves before letting a teenager spy on their turf." So, I will have my fun over here where the rules are not so rigid, and rely on you and Roger to bring America to me with your tempting gifts, thank you. I am a v-spy, now and forever.
    V
stands for virtual, and v-spy is what online informants like me are called.
    As part of my reward, Hodji's boss in Karachi, Roger O'Hare, sends me gift boxes of American things. He cannot come to our village often, because he has blond hair and would make notice of himself. I have only met him twice, late at night, but I sometimes awaken to find a sizable box by my bed with no note. In the last were two fat Starbucks coffee sacks, a Snoop Dogg CD, a Red Sox