An Infidel in Paradise (26 page)

“But do you love her?” I search his eyes, trying to read the answer.

“You’re different from anyone I’ve known.” I don’t know if he’s deliberately changing the subject or just following the course of his own reasoning. “I never know what you’re going to do next. You’re …” he hesitates, “so unexpected.”

It’s not the answer I want, but somehow we’re kissing and I’m not certain he’s the one who started it.

We jump apart when his landline rings.

“It’s after eleven,” says Mustapha. “Who would call this late?”

We both look at the phone as the ringing persists, but he makes no move to answer. Finally, it stops and he reaches for me again.

“Wait.” I press my hands against his chest and take deep, slow breaths, trying to clear my head.
Is this really what I want – sneaking around, jumping every time the phone rings, stealing someone else’s boyfriend?

The phone starts ringing again. Johan shifts around on the couch and groggily opens one squinty eye.

“I’m going to puke,” he says. And in that same instant, the door behind me bursts open and Aisha rushes into
the room, followed by a smaller-than-usual entourage of girls, and Ali.

Aisha stops just inside the door, and whatever announcement she was about to make dies on her lips as she looks at Mustapha and me, no longer entwined but only inches apart.

Ali waits a beat to see if she’s going to say anything before he blurts out the news that has brought them racing to find us.

“There’s rioting in the town,” he says, looking from Mustapha to me. “And bombing. We can’t get any news on TV, but we shouldn’t panic. It may not be that bad.” He looks directly at me, his eyes soft with concern, and I wonder why.

Then, all at once, I know.

I
try phoning Mandy on the landline, but no one picks up. I let it ring and ring as tears stream down my face, and my heart threatens to burst from my chest. Even Mandy can’t sleep through a bomb blast.
Why doesn’t she pick up?

I try Mom’s and Vince’s cell phones, even though Ali tells me that cell phone coverage has been shut down. It’s a security measure to make it harder for the rioters to communicate as they rip through the streets, leaving burned-out vehicles, looted shops, and dead bodies in their wake. Ali doesn’t know if rioters have made it inside the diplomatic enclave, but someone did. A truck filled with explosives blasted into the wall of the American embassy, right next to our home. There’s no news yet on the injured and dead.

How could I have left her alone?
The selfishness of it seems unbelievable, like the actions of someone else, someone I don’t even know. I have to go to her. As I sit on the sofa next to Johan, inches from his puke, all
I can think about is that somehow I must get to my sister.

A cup of tea materializes from nowhere. A servant mops round my feet, and I gag as a wave of nausea makes vomit rise in my own throat. Aisha sits on the edge of the sofa, rubbing my back.

I need to get out of here.

Ali and Mustapha talk in hushed tones. Television service has been cut. News is sketchy and unreliable. They say the rioting is the biggest concern.
If the bomb killed people, they’re already dead, too late to save, but how many more will die in the riots?

I take a sip of tea and my stomach recoils again. I stand up on wobbly legs and fall back down, putting my head between my knees. Aisha holds back my hair, obviously thinking I’m going to throw up. She croons meaningless words of comfort.

I stand up again, sway unsteadily, but manage to keep my footing as I slowly advance toward the door. Mustapha is immediately at my side, taking my arm. Aisha takes the other.

“Do you need to use the washroom?” she asks gently.

“No.” I take another shaky step, but now they are not so much supporting me as holding me back.

“Where are you going?” asks Mustapha. Based on the tone of his voice, he knows the answer. “There’s rioting in the streets,” he says, as if I’ve been deaf to every word they’ve been saying rather than feeling each of them pierce my flesh like nails.

“I have to go home,” I say. But I stop walking because he holds my arm and has frozen at my side.

“Let go.” There’s a strength in my voice that’s unfamiliar.

“I can’t let you go. There’s nothing you can do. I’m sure your family is safe. Your mother will take care of things.”

“My mother is not home,” I say, looking into his eyes and wondering if he can see in my own the enormity of what I’ve done to my sister.

“It’s just Vince and your sister?” he asks, surprised.

“Not Vince.”

“Well, your servants, then,” says Aisha, trying to sound confident, but I can hear the doubt creeping into her voice. “They’ll make sure nothing happens to your sister.”

“No servants.” I look at her directly so she cannot mistake my meaning.

“You left your sister alone?” It comes out as a whisper but reverberates off the walls as all eyes turn to me, accusing.

“I left her alone,” I confirm. “Now I have to go back to her.”

“It’s too dangerous,” says Mustapha, making one last effort to be the voice of reason, but his tone is pleading. I’ve already won.

“You can’t stop me.” I look up at him, and I almost feel sorry for him as he struggles between doing what he thinks is right and what he knows is inevitable.

“I’ll drive you,” he says.

“No.” Aisha and I speak as one voice.

“You can’t get there on foot, and I can’t send you with a driver. I’m not putting a servant into danger.” Now that the decision has been made, his voice is determined, fearless, and all at once, I have a vision of the man he will one day become. No matter what else happens tonight, I wasn’t wrong to love this boy.

“Then I’m going too,” says Aisha, and we both whip round to stare at her.

“No,” says Mustapha. “I can’t let you do that, Aisha.”

“And I can’t sit at home while you go out and risk your life, Mustapha.”

I step away from her as she moves between him and the door and seems to rise up to his height.

“Well, you’re going to have to, because you can’t come,” he asserts, also seeming to grow to his god-creature proportions. “I won’t allow it, and you know your father and mine would never forgive me if I let you put yourself in danger.”

“
My
father has never said no to me,” she scoffs. “And as for your father, if I’m going to live in this house, he will have to get used to my nature.”

If I wasn’t so desperate to get going, I would almost enjoy this battle. Aisha is every bit the haughty princess I’ve always known her to be, and I’ve never liked her more.

“Mustapha,” I say urgently. “We don’t have time for
this. Aisha is too bossy to take orders from anyone, not even you, so deal with it. No offense, Aisha.”

“None taken,” she says, still glowering fiercely at Mustapha.

She takes my arm and together we hurry from the house with Mustapha trailing in our wake. We head across the lawn toward a massive garage I hadn’t noticed before. There are only a few teenagers left sitting at tables. I wonder if most have gone home, or if they’re inside trying to get some news. We walk past several servants, who greet Mustapha in subdued tones.

Walking into the garage, I’m amazed at the fleet of vehicles to choose from. There are two uniformed servants, obviously drivers, sitting at a desk just inside the doors. Mustapha has a brief discussion with them in Urdu. There’s obviously some disagreement about him taking a car out alone, and I wonder if they fear for his safety or their jobs. Finally, one of them takes a set of keys off a hook next to the desk and reluctantly hands it over.

We walk over to a black midsize SUV with tinted windows.

“It’s bulletproof,” says Mustapha, no doubt trying to be reassuring, though until he says it, I hadn’t even considered getting shot at.

Aisha climbs into the front next to Mustapha, and I get in the back, happy to have the feeling of being alone. I couldn’t bear the effort of making conversation right now. I run through all the ways I’m going to be a better
sister if I can only get home to Mandy and find her unharmed. I try to quell images of what might happen to her at the hands of angry rioters.

Mustapha has another discussion with the guards at the gate. It goes on for so long I start wondering whether I could scale the perimeter wall. Mustapha finally raises his voice and the discussion is finished.

The gates open, and as we turn onto the quiet jacaranda-lined street, I marvel at the deceptive peacefulness of this beautiful moonlit evening.

T
he streets are deserted as we drive down the wide boulevard that crosses the city from Mustapha’s neighborhood to the diplomatic enclave. He takes a different route than my driver. It’s more direct, and I wonder if he’s unaccustomed to keeping a low profile or just sacrificing caution to speed. I feel exposed on the empty streets, but at the same time, there’s a sense of safety in the wide open spaces. We’d be able to see people coming from a distance, though I’m not sure what we’d do about it. We pass through several red lights, barely slowing down, and although we hear sirens in the distance, there are no police waiting to pounce on us for traffic violations. They have bigger problems tonight.

A shadow lurches out from behind a tree, and Mustapha screeches on the brakes as Aisha gasps. We all sigh in relief when we realize it’s only a calf that’s lost its mother in the darkness. We’re a long way from the farms on the outskirts of the city, but on a night like
tonight, farmers will join the urban poor in the rioting. I don’t even want to consider what chaos drove this poor creature so far from home. It stands confused in our headlights. As Mustapha slowly drives around it, we hear shouting and what sounds like gunshots. Mustapha stops the car again and kills the motor as we listen for the direction of the noise.

“I thinking it’s coming from down there,” says Aisha, gesturing just ahead of us and to the right.

“I don’t think so,” says Mustapha. “I think they’re behind us.” He points in the opposite direction.

We listen for several more minutes before the awful reality dawns on us. Mustapha and Aisha are both right.

“We need to get off this road,” says Mustapha urgently. “We’re too exposed.”

“Maybe we could outrun them,” I suggest.

“We can’t go forward. We’d be driving right into them.”

“If we make a right at the next corner, we might be able to get behind them,” says Aisha.

“It’s our best chance,” Mustapha agrees. He starts the motor and we slowly advance.

Aisha leans forward, watching intently out the front windshield for signs of movement. I’m on my knees, looking out the back window. We turn onto a narrow road flanked by small cement-block shops. It’s only a block away from the gleaming, high-towered boulevard, but it’s a step back in time. Corrugated iron shutters are pulled across storefronts and secured with
padlocked chains. There are no streetlights here and no lights in any windows either. It’s as dead as any ghost town. I shudder.

The noise of voices is getting louder, and we can hear the stamping of many feet.

“I think we’re driving right into them,” murmurs Mustapha.

“But I can still hear them behind us as well.” Aisha’s voice quavers, and sweat breaks out on my forehead in spite of the car’s AC.

Craning to see through the darkness, I spot them the second they come round the corner, hundreds of them, marching forward like an army. The ones at the front pause briefly when they catch sight of us, like they’re trying to make sense of what they’re looking at. But the seething mass behind presses them onward. They carry weapons, farm tools, thick wood-handled hoes and scythes. All at once, they raise them above their heads and begin to run.

“They’re chasing us!” I shriek.

Mustapha doesn’t need more information. The car leaps forward and I fall back in my seat. I struggle to put on my seat belt as we take a sharp turn and I’m slammed into a side door. I crawl across the seat, grappling again for the belt, but another turn slams me against the other door and I tumble to the floor.