The Warlord's Son (13 page)

Which they eventually did, of course, once the college boy told them. And when Najeeb was then banished from his father’s lands the following spring, the worn but glossy bird book had been nestled at the bottom of the small sack of belongings handed over to Najeeb. And now he was back in these hills, staring from the window of the bus, the memories sprinting down the slopes toward him like raiders on horseback.

ASUDDEN SWERVE of the bus lurched him back to the present as his forehead banged the window. The bus was pulling onto the shoulder at a high curve. All the translators and fixers were rising to their feet, filling the aisle to exit. Of course. It was that time of day.

“What the hell are we doing?” he heard Skelly shout from a few rows back.

“Prayers,” he said calmly over his shoulder, rising to join the procession. Fawad and his men were already kneeling on the verge, some of them unrolling small rugs. All the fixers were here, too, even the Clerk. Najeeb found an empty patch of ground and whisked away the gravel with his palms. Then he knelt, lowering his forehead to the ground, praying for safety and mercy and peace. He thought of Daliya, wondering yet again where she might be, hoping she was safe. Then he prayed for calm and strength, settling upon a fragment of a sura that had always been a favorite.

“With every hardship there is ease. With every hardship there is ease.” Repeating it five more times until it calmed him.

The men around him began to stand, brushing off clothes and hands. For this one moment, he realized, all of them who called this place home had showed their unity and their backsides to the foreigners aboard the bus, and despite his current state of loyalties he momentarily swelled with pride. Faces stared down at them through smudged windows with expressions of boredom and idle curiosity. Najeeb wondered what God must make of this rabble by the road, praying beneath the gaze of the cash-paying infidel. That thought, too, gave him a rebellious sense of pleasure. Then he glimpsed the Clerk, just ahead of him on the left, rubbing dust from his hands, and he relapsed into worry and apprehension.

Just before boarding he saw Skelly eyeing him with what seemed to be disapproval. If he hadn’t known better, in fact, he’d have said that the man looked mistrustful, which troubled him more than he would have expected. Hardly the sort of relationship you needed if you were heading into a war zone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HAD THE PESHAWAR POLICE conducted more than their usual cursory examination of the crime scene outside Najeeb’s apartment, they might have found a tiny cell phone lodged in a bush some thirty feet beyond the body.

The phone’s battery was dead, or else it would soon have attracted the attention of a passerby, beckoning like a cricket from its hideaway. But even in silence it was an important marker, the starting point for an odyssey of panic and indecision that, by the following afternoon, led all the way to Islamabad.

The trail ended at Quaid-i-Azam University, at the office of Professor Rana Bhatti in the Department of International Relations. There, beneath the languid whirl of a ceiling fan, one of the professor’s former students sat nervously in a stiff-backed chair by the desk, anxiously awaiting her mentor’s arrival. The visitor had been waiting more than an hour. To kill time she scanned the pages of the newspaper
Dawn
for any hint of the troubles she’d left behind. Finding none, she aimlessly surveyed the posters, placards and photos on the office walls for at least the twentieth time since her arrival, wondering yet again what was to become of her. Because for the first time in her life, Daliya Qadeer was on the run and unsure of herself.

From the moment she’d broken free of the man with the knife she’d considered calling her parents. She craved the safety and comfort of their familiar voices, the touch of their hands, the softness of the bed in the room where she had grown up. Under the circumstances, she knew, they would welcome her home in a heartbeat. Yet she also knew relief would give way to anger and recrimination once her transgressions became known, and she’d had quite enough of anger and recrimination.

Returning to her aunt and uncle’s was out of the question for the same reason. They would react more as jailers than protectors, outraged to have lost control of their ward. They’d have locked her up, releasing her only for meals and bathroom breaks until her parents could be summoned.

She thought next of calling Rukhsana, but when she reached into her purse she discovered that her cell phone was gone. And by then she was so accustomed to the shortcuts of speed dial—pound-one for Rukhsana, pound-two for Najeeb—that she couldn’t have told you the actual number for either if her life had depended on it. And for a while she thought it might.

Seeking help, she made her way to a PTT call office in the Saddar Bazaar, an ill-lit shack where the man on duty seemed more interested in swatting flies than connecting his customers. First she tried Najeeb at the
Frontier Report.
But by then it was nearly nine o’clock and just about everyone had gone home. She decided not to leave a message, worried that it might fall into the wrong hands, especially since Najeeb might not retrieve it for days. For all she knew he was in Afghanistan by now, which also meant that returning to his apartment was out of the question. Too much danger there anyway, and next time she might not be so lucky.

The vital question then became where to spend the night. In Peshawar it was especially problematical for a young woman on her own. Any hotels other than a handful of the best ones would regard a Pakistani woman traveling alone as virtually a prostitute, subject to questioning and possibly arrest. All of the finer hotels, however, were booked solid with foreign journalists.

The police? No thank you. They would only turn her over to her aunt and uncle.

It was then that she thought of the office at her uncle’s computer store. Her cousins always locked up by eight, and because she occasionally held the fort at lunch she had her own key. There was a small couch for customers, and a locked washroom just down the alley that they shared with two other stores. It would be the perfect hideaway until morning, a haven where she could collect her thoughts and plan her next move. And perhaps somewhere in the piles of paper atop her desk she could find Najeeb’s or Rukhsana’s home phone numbers.

The office was stuffy, creepy. An aging fan that normally ran throughout the day was still, and the becalmed air smelled of cigarette butts, dusty carpeting, unwashed teacups and the warmed plastic of the computer monitors. She considered switching on the fan, but worried—irrationally, she knew—that it might somehow draw attention to the place, as if connected to a sensor at her uncle’s house that would bring the whole family running. She flicked on the fluorescent ceiling light just long enough to spot the best way to the couch, then turned it off and negotiated the path in the dark. Exhausted, she sagged onto the dirty cushions. The upholstery was rough, smelling of cigarettes, so she cradled her hands beneath her cheek. By bending her knees slightly she could just fit.

But the moment she shut her eyes the evening’s events reeled back, unspooling across her eyelids like a lurid news bulletin. She had tried leaving Najeeb’s apartment around lunchtime, only to be spooked by the sound of a door opening on the floor below, the tread of heavy footsteps on the stairs. That convinced her to play it safe, or so she thought, waiting for nightfall when she presumably wouldn’t be seen. Perhaps Najeeb would even make it home first.

Darkness came, and Najeeb didn’t, so she steeled herself for a quick exit, making as little noise as possible. She made it down the stairs without a hitch, then pushed open the door. No one was around. The night felt fresh and free. There would be a host of explaining to do, and plenty of lying, but with Rukhsana’s help she’d make it.

Shortly after reaching the sidewalk, a shadow darted toward her from the left. She barely had time to turn before seeing the glint of metal. But it was the smell that gave the man away, the same as the night before. His breath was a violent emanation of hashish and garlic, and his body reeked of grime.

A callused hand clamped across her mouth, it, too, carrying the distinctive smell, yet also with a dusty hint of rosemary, as if he’d been hiding in a thicket of the stuff. His free hand shoved something hard against the small of her back—the handle of his knife?—pressing her spine as he shoved her forward, stumbling and turning at the same time, as if he was positioning her to make her a more inviting target. The hand at her back fell away, and in turning she saw the blade sweeping toward her in a wide arc. She tried to lunge away, wanting to scream now that the other hand had come loose from her mouth but feeling as if all the air was squeezed from her lungs.

It was then that a second shadow joined them—another hand darting across her attacker’s arm, grabbing the wrist of the knife hand. There was a grunt, a thump, and all three of them piled down like derailed boxcars, heaping onto the dusty bare ground by the sidewalk just beyond the pooled light of the street lamp. Daliya scrambled to her feet, suddenly free of them. Then it was as if they had forgotten her altogether, the two men rolling atop each other, grunting and gasping. No words, only a series of animal noises and a wet, tearing, meaty sound, like the one a butcher makes when hacking into a slab of lamb, followed by a cry as forlorn as any she’d ever heard. She was still briskly backing away, hesitating in flight, feeling she should thank this man for her deliverance.

But what if the wrong man won? Or what if the right man turned out to be even more dangerous? For he, too, was strange to her. So she turned and ran, faster than she had ever run before, fighting off the ridiculous unbidden notion that her mother would strongly disapprove of such unwomanly behavior, her daughter sprinting and sweating like some athlete. She didn’t stop for five blocks, despite the stares she drew after reaching the crowds at the fringe of the bazaar. She knew she must be a sight, her eyes blazing with panic, and for once in her life she wished to be covered head to toe. Then she turned a corner and stopped, panting, sweat running between her breasts and down her spine. And she began to walk, trying to control her breathing, looking straight ahead. Thus was Daliya on her way, seeing no possible path that might return her to her former life.

As she lay exhausted on the filthy couch, she inventoried her sins of the past several weeks. The lies and subterfuge were a beginning, and the visits to Najeeb’s apartment ranked high. But all those might be covered up or explained away if not for the overnight stay. That was what would damn her in her parents’ eyes. It was the point of no return, the unpardonable sin, the irreparable breach. Meaning she would now have to either go it alone or make her way forward with Najeeb, which was like no choice at all. Najeeb was her future, whether he had yet made up his mind or not. So she had better find him as soon as he returned from Afghanistan. In the meantime, she needed a place of temporary refuge, and she thought of one just as she was dropping off to sleep.

She came awake suddenly at the sound of the call to prayer, a loudspeaker squalling plaintively from just down the block. The dim predawn light bathed the office in pale gray. Her mouth was sticky and dry, her hair a mess, and her clothes smelled just like the couch. She washed up as well as she could at the sink in the bathroom down the alley, spooked by rats that scurried for cover as she approached the door.

When she stepped back into the office she considered making tea, but wanted to leave as little sign of her presence as possible. Besides, it was time she got moving. Her search for phone numbers had been fruitless, but at least now she had the beginnings of a plan. Just before locking the door behind her she considered writing a note for Rukhsana, taping it to the door of the neighboring office, where her friend worked. But there was no telling who might open it first. Besides, Rukhsana was still answerable to parental authority.

One thing Daliya didn’t lack was money, and once the banks opened she would have even more. A weekly allowance from her father arrived via wire transfer—a secret they’d kept from her mother—and it had accumulated to a middling sum that might get her by for weeks. She’d supplemented the total by setting aside most of her salary from her uncle. She also had a credit card, yet another offering from her father. He’d made her swear never to use it except in an emergency, but surely this qualified. She decided to hold off using it for as long as possible, however. No sense in furnishing anyone with a map of her movements.

She had decided that her next stop would be Islamabad. Getting there was another matter. Traveling alone by bus wouldn’t be impossible, but it would attract unwanted attention. A taxi, then. But not just any taxi, hailed in the streets. Those drivers would be too unreliable, perhaps even too dangerous—or so she believed in her frazzled condition. She knew of only one location where she might do better, and fortunately it was a place where her presence wouldn’t necessarily be cause for suspicion. It was the lobby of the Pearl Continental. Najeeb had taken her to the hotel’s cafe once, for cake and tea. Wildly expensive, but it had provided a glimpse of how the foreign visitors lived, and she had watched them arranging for cars from a fleet of white Mercedes out front. Better cars, and better drivers.

It went without a hitch. The concierge quickly arranged the trip and took her cash. She was grateful she had dressed well for her trip to Najeeb’s apartment, a journey that now seemed a lifetime ago. While waiting for the car she tried calling Najeeb again at the
Frontier Report,
but got only the vague information that he might be away for a while, and when her inquiries grew more insistent the reporter who’d answered grew curious, prompting her to hang up. There was no way to know whom she could trust.

Yet, with each new move this morning she experienced a burgeoning sense of crossing new boundaries, of breaching the forbidden, and found that this boldness thrilled more than it intimidated. Was this how it was for men? she wondered. This to-hell-with-everyone sense of simply striking out on your own? Or had it become routine for them, a part of their nature? She hoped that the feeling would last, because she was certain she would need it to sustain her through the uncertainty of the days to come.

But as she sat in the office in Islamabad, awaiting the arrival of Professor Bhatti, her doubts again gained the upper hand. It was nearly four o’clock. A full two hours had now passed. Maybe the professor wasn’t coming, and maybe she wouldn’t help. Calm yourself, she thought. Of course the professor would help. Wouldn’t she?

The university was where Daliya, in the ancient days of her previous life, had always felt the most free to speak her mind, and of all her teachers none had been more encouraging than Professor Bhatti. With the professor’s encouragement, Daliya went toe to toe with the boys, arguing and bantering, and often as not emerging the winner. The anger that flashed from their eyes announced her triumphs with regularity, as did the professor’s nods of approval.

But what she craved most from the professor now were a few kind words, the offer of a hot shower and the refuge of confession. Too much to ask, probably. Perhaps the professor wouldn’t even remember her name. If she left now and went to her parents’ house it would be awful, but safe. Even the comfortable prison of a disapproving home would be preferable to this cold uncertainty.

And if Professor Bhatti was so exalted, and was indeed the right person to turn to, then how come the university hadn’t given her a better office? The woman shared it with another teacher, even though she was supposedly the acting assistant to the department head. The ceilings were high, and there was plenty of shelf space, but the walls needed painting, and the other professor’s clutter seemed to be encroaching like some weed that would eventually take over.

Even her father, with his relatively low standing at the ministry, at least had a private office, plus upgraded electrical outlets and his own desktop computer. Professor Bhatti had only a laptop and an old phone, the sort with push buttons and a rotary dial. And her office was next door to the men’s room, with its almost constant comings and goings, the sounds of creaking hinges and flushing coming through the wall. Daliya had pushed the office door shut upon arrival, hoping to be seen by as few people as possible. She hadn’t yet decided what to do if the other professor showed up first.