Refugees (27 page)

Talk to him honestly,
thought Johar,
say I'm here to visit my brother.
He took another step and his stomach heaved. The rice he'd eaten earlier gushed onto the sand.

“Who goes there?” The guard raised his gun, searching the perimeter.

Johar wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stepped from the shadows. He walked forward, hands outstretched, each step a death sentence. “Asalaamu alaikum. I come as an ally.”

“What is your business?”

Johar stared down the metal barrel: “My brother rests inside. I must speak to him of family matters.”

“And who is your brother?” The boy had the dark skin and long nose of a Pashtun farmer, yet his stance was that of a soldier.

Johar felt another surge of nausea. He breathed cautiously, with his mouth open. “My brother's name is Daq. Daq from Baghlan, sahib.”

“Daq from Baghlan. Ha!” The boy laughed, his angular cheeks rounding a bit. The smile faded, as he looked Johar up and down. “You mean Daq from the
Taliban.”

Johar took another queasy breath. “I suppose. My brother told me he was here.”

“Wait.” When the boy returned, Daq walked by his side, lurching back and forth as if he were drugged.

“Brother, how are you?” Johar asked, forgetting how ill he felt.

Daq broke into a woozy smirk. “I expected you'd come here, pleading.”

“Should I send him away?” asked the guard, raising his Kalashnikov.

“No,” cut in Johar, “this is a private matter. In fact, my brother does not need your services at the moment. Take a break. Catch up on some sleep, sahib.” Johar's voice was firm. He felt fury and fear and pity all at once.

Daq's lids fluttered open. He stared at Johar with surprise, as if viewing him for the first time. Then he turned to the guard. “Yes, take a break. I will handle this matter.” The guard glared back with suspicion as he strode toward the road.

“So, what do you want?” demanded Daq.

“I came for our stolen supplies.”

“Your tainted American merchandise!” Daq snarled.

“Let me by.” Johar started for the door. Daq stumbled after him. He seized Johar's shalwar, but Johar pushed him off and barreled inside. A rat's nest of syringes, spent ammunition, and candle wax littered the dirt floor.

Daq lunged at him a second time. Johar caught his brother and pushed him backwards, knocking him to the floor and scattering debris.

Johar was surprised at his own strength and Daq's flimsiness. He swung open the interior door. There it lay in a pile—the computer, the phones, medical supplies. “Have you no respect?” Johar shouted.

A surge of Daq's old strength seemed to return as he hurtled toward Johar for a third time and slapped him against the mud wall. “It is you, brother, who have no respect,” shouted Daq. “You spend your time with infidels who order us to perform like slaves, who bomb us, and then retreat like cowards.”

Johar's resolve faltered. Americans
had
raided the country. It was true their bombing raids did not always hit the right targets. He'd seen the wounds that proved it. And there would be chaos if they left before order was restored. But that didn't change what Daq had done—to Dr. Garland, to the patients who waited for her help.

Johar stood facing his brother, whose hands still
gripped Johar's garment. “Would you rather Aunt Maryam starve in her house because the Taliban decree she cannot teach?” Daq's eyelids lifted, then slid closed. His grip on Johar loosened. Johar jerked away. “You're sick, brother. Let's talk. Let me help you.”

Daq wavered like a drunk. “I don't need your help. You'll not talk me into your weakling ways.” He reached into his vest, pulled out a knife, and held it to Johar's neck.

Johar froze. His breath caught in his throat. Talk was all Johar had. He refused to be poisoned by the gun in his pack. Even though Daq held a knife, he was still Johar's brother. “Remember Mother?” asked Johar, “her songs pure as a flute? Remember Father? The way he held us in his strong arms? You remind me of him, Daq. You could be strong too, if you stopped this insanity. Warlords who ruined the lives of their own people killed Father. It's crazy, Daq—killing your own. How are you different? And the Taliban?” Daq's blade scraped the soft flesh of Johar's throat. Terror and adrenaline surged through him. Slowing his breath so the knife wouldn't pierce him, Johar experienced a moment of strange calm, as if he were floating above his own fear. He said, “Brother, fight your hate. Fight your anger. It's killing you as surely as this gun has tried to poison me.”

“What gun?” Daq eased up on the blade and regarded it with glazed eyes.

Johar inched his hand toward the pistol in his pack. He remembered Dawn's words:
if you have a weapon, a criminal can use it against you.
The gun's weight disgusted him. “Daq,” he exclaimed, “I'll never escape the fact that I like poems and weavings and flowers.” Johar rested the gun just inside the opening of the pack.

“Little weakling, what does that have to do with it?” Daq's eyes shot open again as if a spark had taken hold. He wavered forward on his heels, the knife swinging wildly.

“Brother, you are lost,” exclaimed Johar. “We all know your strength, your bravery, your ferocity, but it's not your rage that makes you alive. It's your love, your joy like Father's. Like when you shear the sheep or dance to your music. Why do you hide that away? Do you want to be just a hard, bitter shell?”

“You lie.” Daq began to whimper. He spotted the gun in Johar's hand, and his yellowed eyes glittered with terror. “You're going to shoot me!”

“No, never. This gun is poison!” Johar thrust it onto the dirt floor by Daq's feet. “Take it. Kill me if you want. But you need to know one thing. I am no coward, and I have
never
been a coward!” Johar watched as his brother gaped at the gun. “I won't fight back with vengeance,” Johar continued. “For me that is the weakling's way.”

“Brother?” Daq muttered, as if emerging from a dream. He stared at the knife in his fist, then looked up at Johar. Tears swam in Daq's eyes, and he was trembling.

“Why are you crying?” Johar asked.

Daq lurched forward. He hurled the blade onto the floor. It clattered against Johar's gun. “Nothing. It's nothing,” he muttered, roughly brushing away his tears.

Johar touched Daq's shoulder. “Tell me. Are you sick from drugs?” Daq spun away. His shoulders shook. “I have no doubt you were a great soldier,” whispered Johar. “I only mean that one can find other ways to fight; not from hatred, not for vengeance.”

“Aunt Maryam is dead,” Daq cried. “She was killed by American bombs that fell on the Taliban jail.”

Johar felt the life drain from his body. “Is it true, brother?”

“It is true.” Daq crumpled to the ground, sobbing. “The Taliban, they should not have put her in jail. They should never have stopped her teaching.”

Johar fell on top of Daq among the needles and the trash. He strained to listen for Maryam's voice whispering poetry in a deep, soft corner of his mind. But there was only silence. Johar began to weep.

D
awn lunged onto Susie's futon for the satellite phone. “Hello?”

“Dawn!” Louise cried out.

“Louise, you're all right!” Dawn yelled.

“I'm fine. It's just that the clinic…” She sounded exhausted. “Nils said you called.”

“He told me you were gone,” Dawn said. “Where were you? I've been calling the whole day. I was scared you were hurt, or…I didn't know.”

“I went to visit some families outside the camp in the morning, then to get supplies. I didn't find out what happened until this evening. It's so depressing.”

“Yes, but at least you're okay. What about Johar? Is he…” Dawn could hardly speak the words.

“Johar is unhurt.”

“Thank God you're both all right. Who robbed the place?”

“Johar's brother,” replied Louise. “He came to Suryast a couple of days ago. He was furious at Johar for working with an American. I guess he decided to get his revenge by robbing the clinic.” She paused. “Heroin has almost destroyed him.”

“It's lucky you weren't there. Was Johar there when it happened?”

“No. Johar discovered the robbery the next day. He went to where Daq was staying and confronted him. It must have taken every shred of nerve. Daq was so deranged he was violent.”

Dawn swept away all other emotions. “Is Johar in shock?”

“No, but he's grieving. His aunt was killed.”

Dawn inhaled sharply. “How?”

“In a prison near Baghlan. An American bombing of a Taliban compound. Daq gave him the dreadful news.”

“God, that's really awful. Tell him I'm sorry. Tell him to call me when he can.” Dawn's heart was aching and racing all at once. “Louise, I want you to know that I feel terrible for the stuff I've put you through.”

There was a pause, then Dawn heard sniffling. “That's good to know.”

“I'm sorry for being mean, for running away.

#x201D; Louise's sniffles turned to sobs. “You had me so upset! Especially with all that's going on in New York.”

Dawn's tears slid down too, warm on her cheeks. “At first it was terrifying. Who knew if a bridge would get blown up, or some nut would spray anthrax in the subway.” She paused, then continued warily. “But I'm not sorry I came. I've learned so much. And I feel like—I feel like I've done so much too.”

“I can't imagine what you might have learned that was worth all that.”

Dawn gazed at her garnet ring. She vowed that this conversation would stay kind. “Remember that memory I started to have about a car trip? I finally remembered it all.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was my birth mother. She was taking me to Epiphany. I remembered her yanking me from the car so hard that my hands had red marks, and refusing to talk to me. I remembered her pushing my hands off her coat and leaving without looking back.”

“Nobody should have to go through that.”

“True,” Dawn sighed. “But I'm so relieved to get it out. Get it behind me.”

“But that's so hard.”

Dawn said, “I never would have left a kid with strangers. I would have loved my child, no matter what. Maybe my mother was sick; maybe she needed a shrink. Maybe I'll forgive her someday. But Louise?”

“Yes, dear?”

“I had already made up my mind, I mean before that.”

“What do you mean?”

“She wasn't the one who fed me. She wasn't the one who was there….” Dawn felt shy, and shifted her train of thought. “At the site, when I played, I started to feel other people's pain. I wasn't the only one hurting anymore. Helping them made me strong. Maybe I had to get away to quit blaming you.”

“I'm proud of you,” Louise said softly. They were quiet for a time.

“It's not to say that you haven't hurt me,” said Dawn.

“I'm sorry that I hurt you,” said Louise. “I'm learning things about myself too.”

Dawn recalled the note Jude had found. “Have you heard from Victor?”

“He left,” said Louise. “He got in touch with me about a week ago and tried to explain. But there's no excuse for him not calling the police when he knew you were gone. And no excuse for not telling me! You should know that I plan to file for divorce.”

“What did you see in him?” Dawn's anger swelled.

“That's a hard one,” Louise admitted. “I married late, so maybe I didn't take the time to know what I was getting into. I was desperate for a child, and then we couldn't have one. Victor definitely had his moments, but he wasn't cut out for children. Truth is, I should never have married him.”

Dawn was suddenly alarmed. “If you get a divorce, does that mean you can't keep me? You won't get rid of me? You won't send me back to Epiphany House?”

“Never!” Louise's words came in jerks. “I couldn't imagine giving you up.”

There was more silence. Dawn's emotions played havoc, veering from fear to panic to fury. “It will be hard enough to convince social services that you can handle me without another parent. But they'll never let me stay if you keep traveling all the time.” Heat flared through her. “I hate it when you leave!”

“Dawn, I'm so sorry about that. After those towers fell I imagined that happening in San Francisco….” She paused, and Dawn heard more sniffling. “Being so far away, I've missed you
—truly
missed you, and missed all I want for us. I've made a decision to only take local assignments in the future. I've been distant and, well, just plain avoiding you.” She sighed. “Getting close to people is damn scary!”

Dawn realized that fear hid behind Louise's harsh shell,
behind her sense of duty, even behind her pity. Dawn would never have guessed that when she first saw her standing like a dour general in Epiphany's halls. “But what's so scary for you, Louise? I mean, I know relationships can be scary, but I just figured I was messed up from moving all the time, from not having parents.”

“You're not messed up, dear. Or maybe we both are.” Louise was silent for a moment, then said, “My parents were missionaries who were constantly traveling, teaching languages, building medical centers, showing tribes the ins and outs of irrigation and things like that. I got used to them being far away even when we traveled together.” She sighed. “They taught me how to be the classic type who can save the world but can't deal with her own family.”

“Why did you want a kid, then?” asked Dawn.

“Maybe it's selfish, but I wanted someone to connect to. Then I didn't know how.”

Dawn chuckled ruefully. “I was good at disconnecting too. I was so out of it.”

“In what way?”

“All this time when I was searching for my mother—or wishing I was with her—I imagined there was some mystical blood bond, that we'd have some instant understanding. I even fantasized that she might be a musician.” Dawn laughed. “Sometimes connections form when your head is turned a hundred and eighty degrees the other way. You and I, it's surreal how alike we are.”

“You're right,” said Louise.

“We're both trying to help people. We're both runners.” They laughed together. Then Dawn said, “One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“I want to keep doing what I've been doing with flute playing—maybe join a band and play music for sick people, maybe in hospitals, cheer them up, connect with them. I've sort of figured out a way to help people. I'm actually good at it! I know it's idealistic, but…”