A Cup of Friendship (29 page)

She was shocked at the depth of his feeling. “I’m sorry, Bashir Hadi. I didn’t realize. I’m such an idiot. I hadn’t wanted to intrude in your life. You are a very private man, and I have much respect for you.”

“None of that matters. What I’m talking about is that Jack will come back. Alive and well. But don’t you see? Your tears aren’t for a philosophical principle of who is deserving or what is just, but because of your own heart.”

“But Jack thought … and it wasn’t what he thought.”

“It doesn’t matter what he thought. He’ll be back. What would he do without … his crispy potatoes every morning?”

He smiled, and Sunny laughed again, then moved as close as she could to him while still keeping an appropriate physical distance. “You are my friend. And I care about you. Maybe you need to get a little more American in you and talk more about things you think about. The more you say, the more I know. Now tell me more about your son. Does he see a doctor at the German clinic?”

Sunny sat in one of the patio chairs and pulled one out for Bashir Hadi. Eventually he sat, but only after he said, “You will paint a mural on the wall, right? We can’t have it looking like this. Easter will be here soon, and we had a pact: The wall will be finished by Easter.”

A
hmet had arranged in advance for Khalid to work as
chokidor
at the coffeehouse for the morning. He said his morning prayers on the small rug in his room and drove Sunny’s car to the road across the river from the Mondai-e to the tailor’s shop behind the red and white Coca-Cola umbrella. The letter from Rashif to his mother felt as heavy as a stone in his pants pocket and weighed on him with its complete repudiation of acceptable behavior. The knife he carried weighed even more.

When he got there, he went inside, closing the thin door behind him. Rashif was wearing reading glasses and was bent over a small sewing table with a lone lightbulb hanging over it. Surrounding him were vests and pants, jackets and dresses, hanging above from wire hangers. The whirr of the sewing machine prevented him from hearing the door open and close, and by the time he looked up, Ahmet was looming over him.

“
Salaam alaikum,
” said Rashif kindly, as he stood. “You surprised me.” He removed his glasses, which hung on a black cord around his neck.

“
Wa alaikum as-salaam,
” replied Ahmet, politely, but his hands were clenched, perspiring.

“And how may I help you?” asked Rashif. “You have something to be altered?”

“I have this.” He put his hand into his pocket, took out the letter, and hammered it onto the table with his fist.

“My letter,” Rashif said calmly. “Where did you find that? Wait—I know you,” he said, smiling. “Sometimes when I sew, it takes my eyes some time to refocus. You are Ahmet. I am so pleased to see you.” And he started to hug him, but Ahmet pulled away with such a violent force that he pushed Rashif into the table, almost toppling it over.

“You have shamed my family, sir.”

Rashif’s shoulders sank and he shook his head. “Young man, how can my letter shame you?”

“You have made my mother unclean! I am not the son of a whore.” He moved his vest aside to show the knife hanging from his belt.

“You come to kill? Why? Where is it written that such a letter is wrong? There is no husband here. There is no wife. Yes, they’d be dishonored if there were, because adultery is forbidden. But here both husband and wife are long dead. How can a simple letter between a widow and widower bring shame?”

“It is not one letter. It is years of letters! It is the words of a husband to a wife.”

“Did you read them, Ahmet? Now, that would be wrong.”

“I read only one or two,” Ahmet lied. “To protect our family. This is my mother you have destroyed. My family!” He laughed. “And here is the irony: My mother cannot even read.”

Rashif sat. “I know she does not. I think I’ve known for some time but only recently have I known for sure. But that is exactly what love is. To write, unread. To travel far each week to receive that which is unattainable. Muhammad knew the truth about love. It doesn’t come often. And there is no reason when it comes to love—pretty or not, young or old—so go figure.”

“Do not talk to me of love!” Ahmet bellowed. But he thought of Yazmina and how his feelings for her could not be explained. Then he remembered his duty. “This isn’t a girl. It’s my mother. An old woman!”

“And I am an old man.”

“Who has no respect for the traditions. Who has a history of laughing at tradition and aligning yourself with the West. You bring shame into our house. I have come for one reason only,” Ahmet said, now taking out his knife, clenching it in his hand.

“Killing me for no reason will only bring more shame. The West, you say?” He stood, his brow furrowed, his temper clearly rising. “Helping our own countrymen to find their lives again when they return to Motherland Afghanistan? That is a bad thing? Under whose eyes? Allah’s? Show me in the Koran where it speaks so! And your mother? It is known that Muhammad married women whose husbands had died!” He stopped, drew in a deep breath, and sat once more.

“Then there is only one other thing to do,” Ahmet said, his knife pointed at Rashif. “You will marry her.”

Rashif smiled at first, and then stopped. He lowered his head respectfully and said, “I know I must pay for my transgressions. I will make restitution. I will marry Halajan, your mother.”

“And you will pray to Allah for forgiveness.”

“Yes, I will pray.”

Ahmet felt lightheaded, as if the rage and self-righteousness that had lifted from his body made him like a feather in the wind. He put the knife back in its sheath and leaned against the wall.

“Will you sit?” Rashif asked. “We can discuss the details of the marriage agreement. I will pour us some tea.”

Ahmet sat and Rashif went to his back room, where he had a sink and a hot plate, and prepared the
chai
.

Carrying a small tray with a teapot and two cups, Rashif said, “You are a good son, Ahmet, to protect your mother so. But what about your own happiness?”

“Me? I eat, I pray. I am happy.”

“But what about a wife? Will you marry one day?”

Ahmet sipped from his cup and then put it down with a sigh. It was a long time before he spoke. “There is one,” he confessed. It was odd how he could say such things to Rashif, as if he was already family. “She has eyes like the forest in springtime.”

Rashif nodded. “Remember that life is short and full of surprises. If you wait too long, opportunities fade like the setting sun.”

“She still mourns her dead husband.”

“Here is something I’ve learned, if I may offer it to you. What is in our hearts is never a one-way street. Only as children when we’re too young to understand the signs do we love unrequitedly. If you love, it’s because you feel its power reflected back on you.”

“She has a baby who she says is her dead husband’s. She has a baby!” he yelled, slamming a fist onto the table.

“That only proves she was a good, loving wife. And that she is a loving mother.”

“If only there was no baby,” Ahmet said, barely hearing what Rashif was saying.

“You know what Muhammad would say. She deserves to be loved. Baby or not.”

Ahmet sipped his tea, feeling very uneasy about more mentions of love. Men he knew would never talk this way. Maybe it was Rashif’s age, or his life experience, but there was something about him that made it almost acceptable to discuss such things aloud.

“The baby is a fact. She must be accepted,” said Rashif.

“That might prove impossible,” Ahmet said stiffly.

“I know you would never hurt the baby.”

“Of course not,” said Ahmet dismissively.

“Or try to give it away.”

Ahmet was unable to respond to this.

So Rashif said, “Sometimes another power can take control of a man’s will and darken him with terrible thoughts that lead to terrible deeds.”

“What do you mean by that? That I do not have full control over my deeds?”

“No, only that sometimes a man needs all the help he can get in order to keep him righteous in the eyes of God.”

The two men sat silent for a while. Ahmet looked up at Rashif and saw concern etched on his face.

Finally Rashif spoke. “A thought occurs to me. Love makes all things possible. So, should you ever need someone to act as your father’s proxy, since he is no longer alive, to ask a woman of your mother’s choosing to marry you, I could be that man.”

Ahmet put the notion, with Rashif’s letter, in his pocket for safekeeping. He repeated, “If there was no baby … But when you speak of this to my mother—and I know you will—reassure her that I would never hurt the baby.”

When he got back to the coffeehouse, Sunny was working at the counter, Bashir Hadi was in the kitchen, and Yazmina was sweeping the floors, the baby attached to her chest with the long scarf.

“Hello, Yazmina,” he said softly, standing several arm lengths away.

“Ahmet, good day,” she answered, without looking directly at him. The baby cooed. Yazmina leaned her broom against the wall and moved aside the fabric of her sling to see her baby’s face. She smiled.

Ahmet actually liked the baby. He liked her smell, the little gurgles she made, but most of all he liked her reflection in Yazmina’s eyes. Never had a baby been so loved, he was certain of that. He only wished her eyes would look at him with a portion of that love.

And then Yazmina looked up at him. She smiled, her eyes glistening like stones in a river. He smiled back and fought the desire that surged through him to take her in his arms and hold her that way forever.

Could Rashif be correct, Ahmet wondered, that if he felt that way about her, perhaps she felt the same about him? That love made the impossible possible? One day soon, maybe,
Inshallah
, with Muhammad’s help, he would find the strength to test that theory.

“I
know you’re still upset, but we promised we’d try,” implored Isabel, sitting with Candace in the back of a black SUV. “You can be angry at me, but don’t take it out on those women.” They were on their way to a fund-raising meeting with representatives from American women’s aid groups.

“Well, it’s not as if any of this is rocket science,” Candace replied.

“But the bureaucracy, the red tape—”

“What red tape? All you need is cash and you can accomplish anything in Afghanistan.”

“I’m not so sure. There are extreme attitudes to contend with.”

“Money talks. You’ll see.”

“So we’re still partners. Not just this meeting—”

“On one condition: Unless you have real, hard proof, you keep your suspicions about Wakil to yourself.”

“Understood.”

Candace looked out the window and saw two boys running with kites trailing behind them, held aloft by the wind. One turned and ran backward as he pulled on the kite’s string, and she wanted to scream out to him to watch his footing, don’t trip in the gutter, but, as if he’d heard her, he turned around and caught himself in time.

She put a hand to her cheek, turned back to Isabel, and said, “But if you find anything real, which you won’t, you tell me.”

“It’s a deal.”

“Okay then. Let’s do this meeting. You do your job—have all the information including the number of women behind bars, the so-called crimes they committed, the conditions, et cetera—and I’ll do mine.”

Isabel put a hand on Candace’s arm. “We can do this.”

Days had passed and there wasn’t a word from Tommy or Jack. Sunny knew they’d left together, because Tommy had called her one last time before leaving Kabul to let her know they were on their way to the north. She wouldn’t be able to call them again, nor could they call her, because they’d be using untraceable phones. Sunny was beside herself with worry, but there was nothing she could do. They were completely on their own, without the support of an agency or even anyone else who might know where they were.

She kept busy in the coffeehouse, which was bringing in excellent business. From early morning to late at night the place seemed to buzz with activity. But her friends were elsewhere: Candace and Isabel were attending daily meetings.

Sunny was lonely. The coffeehouse was filled with people and yet
her
people were gone. And for the first time in her years in Kabul, she felt uneasy. The police and military on the streets seemed to have doubled in recent weeks, as if something was coming, something furious and uncontrollable. The
wop-wop-wop
of helicopters washed the skies, along with the muezzin’s calls. The increase of people at the coffeehouse was good for business but bad for its implication: People had stopped going to many restaurants and clubs and were going only to places authorized as safe, as if they were all waiting for the next shoe to drop.

News reports were bleak. There was a sense of impending trouble, and no wall, no matter how high, and no windows, no matter how strong, were any match for what might come.

She was on the roof after the breakfast crowd left, while Yazmina and Bashir Hadi were making the place ready for lunch. She was sitting on the bench, looking out over her troubled city, missing Jack, her skin tingling with memories of his touch, his mere presence. A flock of birds flew by in that miracle V formation, their wings fluttering hard and their bodies black against the vibrant blue sky, and just for a moment, she was up there with them. She, too, was flying over Kabul, watching it change and its people be moved by the whims of power—like a tree in the wind. And she remembered the other time when she felt so overtaken by a place, a moment. It was at Mazar-e Sharif.

Then she saw the birds swoop down and disappear from sight. She could still hear their calls, as if they were right outside. She ran downstairs and into the courtyard, the warbles and calls loud and crackling. The few trees were rustling with life; their leaves seemed to be lusher, deeper, thicker.

She saw again the large plaza at the mosque covered with doves and the women in the white burqas, and she turned, got her paints, and began to mix the colors herself. There was no compromising. She finally saw the mural in her mind and knew she wouldn’t be satisfied until she got the colors just right, even if she had to re-create them on her palette. This time she didn’t need charcoal or sketching. This time she’d begin with brushes and paint. She spent hours experimenting until she was satisfied. Nothing was perfect. But she was in Kabul, after all, and not in Jonesboro at the Country Roads Mall with a Home Depot and Michaels, the craft store that was crowded with the scrapbook-crazed. She had to make do with what she had.
Indigenous
—was that the word Isabel had used?

Finally she dipped her brush into the paint of her palette. She put the brush to the wall, the paint to the rough surface. Yes, she thought, after a few strokes, taking a step back. It was, indeed, the most beautiful blue.

It took little time for Candace and Isabel to raise enough money to bribe the prison warden for Jamila and her friends’ freedom. But that was just a start. They’d have to find places to house them, money to feed them, medical care, schools for their children, and, of course, security so that they’d be safe from family members who wanted them dead because of the shame they had brought upon them.

First Jamila, and then, hopefully, Candace and Isabel would be in the position to help more women across the country. With the support of various international women’s aid groups, they intended to create a shelter system for women to prevent them from being incarcerated, and a safe haven for those once out.

But Isabel knew, from her years in Africa and the Gulf, that bribing a warden was one thing; dealing with hundreds of years of repressive attitudes was another.

Protecting Jamila, who had escaped from the men who’d been pimping her, often several times a day, for pennies to any man who could pay, wouldn’t be easy. The men who’d bought her when she’d been sold to repay a debt would want the return on their investment and would be after her to put her back to work as a prostitute. Or they’d simply kill her. Isabel knew she’d have to get her out of the country to keep her alive.

At the prison, Isabel admired Candace’s deft way with the warden and the guards, and soon they were in the women’s building, walking its long, dank hall toward Jamila’s cell. When they got there, the women were huddled in the far corner; one child was lying across his mother’s lap, asleep. Candace and Isabel looked for a familiar face but couldn’t find one until Haliya came forward, her head and face fully covered with a large scarf as always.

She approached the blue bars and put her hand around one, her fingernails blackened from dirt, and whispered in broken English, “Jamila is gone. They took her.”

“What do you mean? To another cell?” asked Isabel, in her broken Dari. And in that way, the women were able to make themselves understood.

“No, they took her away.”

“Who did? Where?”

“The guards came with the men. Jamila cried, so I think she knew that they meant to finish what they’d started. To take her to Bahrain, Dubai, or Qatar to work for them.”

“Jesus. Those motherfu—” Candace started to say but stopped herself, her teeth clenched, her jaw tight.

“The Gulf area,” Isabel said, knowing what this meant. “When was this?”

“Two days ago, more or less.”

“Let’s go,” said Isabel, patting Candace’s shoulder with the back of her hand.

“Will you try to find her?” asked Haliya.

“Yes,” answered Candace. “We will.”

But Isabel knew it would be impossible. The Gulf was like quicksand where women sank, suffocated, and died beneath the sexual morass of being bought and sold against their will. There was no way they would ever find Jamila in the Gulf, where she’d be put to work as a sex slave for local laborers. She was gone. The thought made Isabel sick.

All she could do was hope, even pray, that the Gulf wasn’t Layla’s fate as well.

It would be days before Candace would accept the fact that there was nothing they could do. But during that time, they made arrangements, with the magic of bribery, the way all things were accomplished in Afghanistan, to get Haliya and the others released.

The black car was met by two security guards with machine guns over their shoulders at the gate of the Serena Hotel. One guard said something to the driver, who rolled down the windows so they could search the inside of the car. The guards leaned their heads in, first examining the front seat, and then the back, where the women sat cross-legged. The guard commanded the driver to open the trunk and the hood. Then they checked underneath the car with a mirror on a long handle, and only then, apparently satisfied, waved the car through. The driveway was long and U-shaped and made of a light-gray stone. In the center of the drive was a thick carpet of grass surrounded by small flowers, and sitting in the middle, a large marble fountain with water spouting twenty feet into the air before cascading down a sculpture of a large fish.

Isabel watched from her rear window and seethed with anger. Here the Afghan government provided police, here they provided security and protection, because here were Westerners, here was money, here was political power. In the prison, they provided nothing to their own people, to women and children who barely had enough bread and water to survive. They provided no clothes or schooling or beds, and only threadbare blankets to withstand the cold. She shook her head and pounded her fist on the car door’s handle.

“We’re almost there,” said Candace, gently patting Isabel’s hand.

Isabel looked at her and breathed out, wondering if she, too, was raging. “Can you believe this place?” she asked.

“What did you expect?” answered Candace. “This ain’t no democracy. Come on, you’ve seen this before a thousand times.”

“And it always gets to me. But more here than anywhere.”

“That’s because you’re in it now. You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid.”

Isabel raised her brows and said, “Indeed I have, haven’t I.”

“And I’m proud of you,” Candace said.

“The last time someone said that to me, it was my own mother.”

She thought back to her home in London, the house where she grew up, going to her school with only British girls, the “Pakis” going to their schools, the blacks going to their schools, the neighborhoods divided by history, color, and language. And then she remembered something her mother had told her before she died. “You will find that thing that makes you unafraid to die. That important thing that makes your life of value.” All these years, Isabel thought that being a journalist was the thing of value that she was bringing to the party. Now she knew there was more. Now she knew that a person had to act, to be truly engaged, in order to make a real difference.
Mum
, Isabel thought,
it’s taken me eons to understand. But now I do
.

At the front, the women got out and walked up the few steps to the atrium leading to the hand-carved wooden doors. Isabel led the way and said, “Here’s good,” at a sofa that looked out from the wall of windows onto a tree-filled courtyard.

The women sat, Isabel on the sofa that faced the entrance and Candace adjacent to her in a low armchair covered in a woven fabric with a geometric design. The lobby had the same maroon and orange Afghan colors of the warden’s rooms in the prison, Isabel noticed. The minute they sat, they were approached by a young man in a freshly pressed, crisp
shalwaar kameez
and embroidered vest, and asked if they wanted something to drink. Something about him looks familiar, she thought.

Candace ordered tea, but Isabel was distracted. The waiter repeated the question.

“Yes, yes, tea for me, too, please,” Isabel answered. She still couldn’t place him.

They waited quietly for their guests to arrive.

The waiter returned with small plates of
kish mish
. As he stood, he looked directly at Isabel before walking away. A shiver ran through her. She’d seen those eyes before and figured they were the eyes of so many Afghans or other people living in third world countries who worked in places like this, serving wealthy Westerners. But there was something about this particular man. She knew for sure that she’d seen him before.

She watched him pause in the doorway, behind Candace, and perhaps it was the angle and the distance, but she remembered where she’d seen him before. It was at Wakil’s school, the same young man who’d driven off in the car after talking to Wakil.

She stood up, unsure why, on instinct.

At that moment he shouted in Dari, “Death to the Western oppressors!
Allah akbar!
” a phrase she’d heard before in many languages all around the world.

Isabel cried out, “Oh my God. We have to—”

And then he put his hand in his vest.

She threw herself on Candace.

The force of the explosion shattered walls and windows. She lost all hearing, pain shot through her neck, and blood gushed into her mouth. She coughed and screamed, she thought, and fought for air. But little came.
Wakil
, she tried to whisper to Candace, who was underneath her.
Wakil!
Then she saw her mother, sitting on her bed reading to her. She could smell her perfume, feel the silk of her blouse, feel her hand stroking her hair. And then she saw Jamila’s face, her dark eyes pleading for help.
Jamila
, she thought,
Jamila
. There was so much left to do! Layla! She told herself not to panic. There was so much left to do. She thought she heard someone say her name. Then she closed her eyes.