The Warlord's Son (30 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

A FEW HOURS EARLIER, Daliya was sitting in yet another office, getting nowhere fast. A nervous woman named Allison didn’t seem to even want her there, much less out on the streets of Alzara.

“You just don’t do that here,” she insisted.

“Karen Wilkins said I could.”

“Karen doesn’t have to live here.” And Karen, who at midafternoon had driven Daliya from Jamrud on a rutted lane barely wider than a goat path, had just departed. That left Allison Clymer in charge, and she was making it clear that Karen’s opinion didn’t count for much here at the Pakistan Women’s Network’s Alzara clinic for women and children. But that didn’t stop Daliya from invoking the name one last time.

“Karen said it wasn’t as restrictive here for women as it is in Bagwali.”

“Please,” Allison said, holding out a hand in warning and practically coming out of her chair. “Don’t say the name of that village so loud here. There’s a lot of trouble between the two places. A lot of rumors lately. Saying it aloud will only make people suspicious of you.”

Daliya had indeed noticed a few heads turn her way when she’d said “Bagwali,” although she couldn’t say whether they were shocked or angered, because even indoors nearly every head remained covered by a veil or a burqa. There were perhaps a dozen women in all, seated on benches with babes in arms and infants underfoot. The men who’d brought them waited outside the open door, where loud music blared from a shop on one side, and the air was heavy with the scent of popcorn and frying meat.

Daliya had thought she knew what to expect in a place like Alzara. She had traveled by taxi through some of the poorest and most clogged streets of Rawalpindi, where she’d always turned up her nose to the reigning squalor, noise and confusion. And if her months in Peshawar had taught her anything it was to stop being such a snob about people who got a little grimy by having to claw their way through life.

But this place was the roughest and most unseemly she’d seen yet, and not only because of the dirt, the mounds of garbage and the general frontier scruffiness. The men carried enough weaponry to start a small war, and they’d stared through the truck window at Karen and her with icy, offended glares.

Daliya had also expected that it wouldn’t be too difficult to arrange some sort of transport to neighboring Bagwali, rivalry or not. Her unlikely run of success during the past several days had taught her— incorrectly, as it turned out—that persistence and ingenuity could overcome all obstacles, cultural or otherwise. But as far as this testy woman Allison was concerned, Daliya would have had more luck planning an afternoon stroll up Mount Everest than a five-mile ride to Bagwali.

“Look, it just can’t be done. Maybe on some days you could take a little walk in that direction, with an armed guide from one of the neutral clans, and by sticking to the side trails. But today you’d be lucky to even make it around the block. Even fat old Malik Jamil has been lying low, and that’s never a good sign.”

“Who?”

“The local warlord, Jamil Rafik-Khan, a Shinwari clan leader. Lives outside the village but keeps a
hujera
at one end of town. He usually puts in at least one appearance a day, a sort of grand tour every afternoon to allow the great unwashed to gaze upon his regal bearing.”

“You don’t sound impressed.”

“He’s a thief and a scoundrel. Skims half our supplies and generally makes my life miserable. He’s the main reason none of these women you see here came without an escort. Him and his thugs. And none of these ladies would even dare go anywhere near”—she paused, lowering her voice—“Bagwali. Didn’t you see all the men out in the streets with guns?”

“Aren’t they always like that?”

“They are. But there are more of them than ever. They’ve been trickling in for the last two days from farms and other villages. Only a few dozen more than usual, but here that means something. A feud. A battle. Something bad, and soon, and you don’t want to be caught in the middle of it.”

“Something to do with Bagwali?”

“Please.” She again raised her hand like a Stop sign. “None of the women seem to know for sure. But they’ve been gossiping about it. There’s a
jirga
tonight, some sort of war council. A lot of them are keeping their children indoors. Believe me, the streets are usually filthy with the creatures.”

Such a nice way to describe the people she was supposed to be helping. Daliya couldn’t help wondering if she, too, had ever sounded like that, nattering among her friends in Islamabad. It would probably be easy to burn out here, amid all this need and despair.

“Well, risky or not, you can’t stop me from going out that door,” Daliya said, speaking more bravely than she felt.

“I can’t, but they can. All those men with guns. Once you’re in the streets you’re at their mercy, and I’m taking no responsibility for you. Understood?”

“But Karen said . . .”

“Karen.” Allison spat the name like a cherry pit, the weary disdain of someone whose decisions had been countermanded one too many times. “Karen doesn’t know the half of it.
Karen
considers Jamrud hazard duty, and she’s what, three hundred yards from the main highway? Eleven miles from Peshawar? Jamrud’s a stroll through Knightsbridge compared to this place. If Karen thinks you can go for a nice little walk in Alzara, maybe she’d like to be your escort. If this were just any day, I might even squire you around in mufti. But as you can see I’ve got eleven women with babies to treat and only two hours left to do it.”

“Then I’ll just get out of your hair.”

“Wait.” The hand went up again, this time in supplication. Allison quickly scanned the room while flipping a strand of hair off her forehead, a harried gesture that made Daliya regretful for the intrusion.

“Go in our truck, then,” Allison said finally, heaving a great sigh. “I’ll send Muhammad with you. He won’t like it. It’s beneath his manhood playing nursemaid. But the truck’s got our logo on the side, which still counts for something, thank God. And he’ll just have to get used to it if he wants to earn his rupees.”

“Where will he take me?”

Allison shrugged.

“Around the block. Through the bazaar. Up one end of town and down the other. Which will last all of a half hour if he drives slowly enough. Not much of a tour. But since I don’t really know what you’re looking for other than a way out of town, it will at least give you a feel for the place, and show you what you’re up against. Maybe it will even convince you to just go back home.”

Back home. The words dropped heavily to the base of Daliya’s stomach, and despite having been on the verge of doing just that, she resolved to keep trying, even if it meant a little more wandering, and even if she wasn’t yet sure what she would be looking for. A vantage point, perhaps? Someplace where she could scan the horizon for roads and paths that might lead to Bagwali? She realized with despair that she didn’t even know which direction to look in, and she felt too embarrassed to ask. Truth be told, what Daliya needed most right now was luck, but she knew you almost never got lucky by sitting around waiting. Luck had to be ambushed, taken by surprise, and for the moment this offer of a driver was her only hope for doing so.

“All right, then. I’ll ride with Muhammad.”

MUHAMMAD GRUMBLED from the moment Daliya stepped into the cab of the small white truck. He wasn’t used to ferrying around women in local dress unless they were seated in the back, on the open flatbed. But Allison had ordered him, and Allison paid him every Friday. So, this woman in the blue burqa whose name he didn’t even wish to know had eased onto the seat, forcing him to prop his Kalashnikov in the middle, right next to the stick shift and hand brake. If any of his friends saw him and disapproved, he’d tell them it was for a huge bonus, a number that would make their heads spin.

Daliya was appalled anew by Alzara’s poverty. The children caught the worst of it—and if a lot of them were being held indoors then Allison was right, because there were swarms of them nonetheless. They were grimy and barefoot, garments in tatters and hair matted. Occasionally she spied a woman’s face in a high window, up near the rooftops where wood smoke poured into the endless blue sky. Otherwise there were no females to be seen older than the age of ten. Men with guns stood at every corner, some with grenade launchers, extra shells dangling from their other hands like soft drinks, swaying as they gestured in conversation.

After fifteen minutes of what seemed to be the same one-block circuit, repeated three times, Daliya demanded some variety.

“Where’s this
hujera
?” she asked. “This place where Jamil Rafik-Khan lives.”

“Busy place,” Muhammad said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “Too many people there.”

“Can’t be any busier than this.” A donkey cart had halted in front of them. Waves of men poured around it like a stream around a boulder. “Take me there.”

“It is too busy there. Too much happening.” Did she detect a note of fear?

“Allison said I should see it. Just once.”

Muhammad cursed, waving his hand again as if shooing a pigeon. But invoking the magic name of his paymaster seemed to have done the trick, and half a block later he turned up a side street that angled toward the end of town. The crowd thinned until they approached a cluster of low buildings beneath eucalyptus trees near the end of the lane. On one side were a few shops. On the other was a ramshackle house, where Daliya again saw blue-covered faces in an upstairs window, gazing out upon the world below. And there was much to gaze at here, because right next door was a large, low building surrounded by a mud fence. Six armed men stood out front near an iron gate. A line of vehicles along the curb included a long black truck with an enclosed rear, of a make she had never noticed before.

“The
hujera,
” Muhammad said quickly, flicking a hand toward the fenced-off building. He seemed to want to get out of here as fast as possible. The armed men were glowering, stooping for a better look inside the aid agency’s truck. But just as it seemed they were in the clear, two red trucks rounded a curve toward them on the narrow lane ahead. Muhammad, who had driven aggressively among the children and the horse carts, now pulled meekly to the shoulder to let them pass. It made Daliya wonder if the local
malik
—what had his name been? Jamil Rafik-Khan, that was it—was inside one of them.

“Wait,” she said, as Muhammad prepared to ease back onto the road. She wanted to see the show, too, just like the women in the house next door, but Muhammad kept rolling. “Wait!” she repeated. “One minute, that’s all. Or I tell Allison.”

He mumbled something under his breath, but stopped the truck. Daliya looked back to see that the red trucks had pulled up in front of the
hujera.
The six men who’d been eyeing Muhammad and her were now fully absorbed in welcoming the arrivals with hugs and hand-shakes. Leading the newcomers was a tall turbanned man who, judging by the reception, must be Jamil Rafik-Khan.

“Now?” Muhammad said, easing off on the brake.

“Just wait!” she said. “One second more.” The hairs on the back of her neck prickled beneath the burqa, and she found herself glancing sidelong through the mesh so it wouldn’t be obvious she was staring. Such was the malignant nature of the man’s power, she supposed, or maybe some of Muhammad’s fear had rubbed off.

A second man in a white turban, big and loud, and with a bushy brown beard, also got a warm reception. The next pair to emerge from the trucks—two men pressed together, as if one were holding on to the other—moved quickly through the welcoming party without word or gesture. But that wasn’t what caught her eye. The fellow who seemed to be in tow turned slightly as the pair edged through the crowd, and the flash of his profile in the sunlight of early afternoon was electrifying. The giveaway, however, was his eyes, as familiar as old friends, and even in the brief glance they seemed sadder than she had ever seen them. But why would Najeeb be here, in the heart of what was supposedly enemy country? Surely she was mistaken, but she had to find out.

“Wait here,” she said, a foolhardy plan of action taking shape. She knew that if she paused to reconsider she would never go through with it, so she quickly unlatched the door, stepping into the street as the incredulous Muhammad turned toward her.

“What are you doing?” he hissed, still too frightened to shout. “Are you crazy?”

“Yes,” she said, shutting the door in his face.

She crossed the street diagonally, rushing straight for the house next to the
hujera,
the one where she’d seen the women upstairs. She had to restrain herself from breaking into a run, and she didn’t dare glance back at Muhammad, although she hoped he wouldn’t drive away. Two of the armed guards perked up, frowning at her, and she watched them through the burqa out of the corner of her eye. If they made a move, she would run.

But the distraction of the arriving guests, and perhaps also the aid agency logo on the truck, must have set their mind at ease just enough for them to let things slide, especially once Daliya disappeared into the front doorway of the neighboring house. Luckily for her, the menfolk weren’t home. Perhaps they were even next door, having a smoke inside the
hujera.
She headed straight for the steps in case anyone was following, and her pulse didn’t slacken until she reached the upstairs room, where the three women still huddled by the window.

They’d heard her coming, of course, and had seen her exit the truck. But they were only curious, not frightened. What could possibly be frightening about the sudden appearance of a woman dressed just like them, who for all they knew was a friend? In this town it was men who caused the problems, especially the ones next door. And at their sparse end of the village there weren’t even any female neighbors to shout at from the rooftop. So, if anything, Daliya was greeted as a welcome distraction, another bit of spice for an afternoon that had already provided more than the usual dose of stimulation, with the excitement of a
jirga
still to come.

Daliya didn’t really know what to say, so she mumbled a hello in her terrible Pashto, hoping it would suffice. But of course it didn’t.