Their Language of Love (11 page)

They were ushered ceremoniously into the sitting room. A log fire blazed in a gaping, soot-blackened fireplace and Rick and Abdul Abbas, almost reflexively, stationed themselves with their backs to it. Ruth skirted a large coffee table to get to the sofa and abruptly stalled. A brilliantly coloured rooster with turquoise and rust-orange feathers was pecking crumbs off the Persian rug as calmly as if he was in a barnyard. The rooster raised his wattle-crowned head to glare at the intruder in beady-eyed umbrage and took an elegant step back.

‘Will you just look at his majesty!’ said Nabila, chortling, arms akimbo. She had a throaty voice and, what Ruth
guessed, could be an East European accent that fell agreeably on their ears. She unwound her scarf and waved it to shoo away the bird. The rooster flapped his jewel-coloured wings and hopped on to the coffee table to squawk his indignation. Their hosts laughed uproariously and Ruth and Rick, infected by their hilarity also guffawed. Humiliated by the onslaught of such noisy merriment, the rooster scurried off between the curtains and Nabila settled on her heels to rub off the smears of white bird-poop from the carpet with a rag.

A goat tethered outside bleated intermittently as they chatted. Compared to the mansions of dignitaries in Pakistan, with their onyx floors and expensive European fittings, the Afghan minister’s house, though bulky, was made from simple brick and mud mortar.

Another log-fire welcomed them in the dining room, where Ruth could barely make out the rafters from the thin haze of smoke that had risen from the fire and clumped at the high ceiling. More smoke seeped in from the kitchen as Nabila popped in and out to help an elderly Afghan cook bring the steaming dishes to the table. The meat and vegetables were simply prepared—a welcome change from the fiery spices and rich curries the Pakistanis favoured. Abdul Abbas said something to the cook in Pashtu. The old man stood in the door to shout at someone they couldn’t see and the goat’s mournful bleating faded in a receding series of protests. ‘Tomorrow,’ Abdul Abbas said, ‘I will introduce you to my village.’ Ruth felt a soft touch in her heart, a feeling of being honoured.

The next day Abdul Abbas drove them through a torturous dirt road to his ancestral mountain village. The men they passed, recognizing the green Land Rover, touched their fingers to their foreheads in solemn salaams. The women—picking fruit, working in fields hewn out of the mountains or just sunning themselves on the flat roof of their mud huts—hid their faces in their shawls and followed the jeep out of shadowed eyes. On the outskirts of Kabul and in the villages, traditional norms continued to prevail.

Trailing a thick tail of dust, they arrived at a clearing. An immense, fortress-shaped dwelling, made from mud and straw, rose above them.

Ruth and Rick were invited to sit on hand-woven rugs spread on a grassy patch outside the fort. The air smelt of pine and wood-smoke. Banked by a cloudless vault of blue sky, the stark mountains faded into the misty distance. The tribesmen, handsome in turbans and beret-like wool caps with rolled rims, laid out fragrant platters of roast chicken, curried goat and rice-pilaf and poured spring-water from frosted steel jugs into thick, smudged glasses. Once they had served the food, the men, careful to maintain a respectful distance from Ruth, sat down to eat with them. They kept their politely lowered gaze averted from her face.

After lunch Ruth was invited to visit the dingy, smoke-filled rooms in the women’s portion of the fort. There was segregation between the sexes here. They had no electricity. The chattering women led Ruth up the dark steep staircase, which felt like a narrow tunnel, to the roof, now bathed in the chill glare of the slanting afternoon sun. In the larger
view the rooftop afforded her, the distant mountains, dark behind the chain of dun-coloured hills, appeared to be closer. The women clustered around her. The older women, with leathery, prematurely aged faces, screwed up their eyes to peer at her. They stroked the softness of her cashmere sweater with their gnarled hands and pinched the material of her slacks and jacket between their fingers. They clapped and laughed as Ruth drolly tried to converse with them in sign language. Hiding shy smiles in their shawls, the pink-cheeked girls peered at her out of eyes that carried a jewelled spectrum of gold-green colours that seemed to reflect the colours of the setting sun. All at once Ruth felt enveloped by the beauty of her surroundings, by the transformative power of her contact with a culture so unimaginably different from hers.

Encircled by Abdul Abbas’s hospitality, Ruth formed an impression of the country. Despite its obvious poverty, Afghanistan was a moderate nation state, reasonably in touch with the times. Some of the women in the cities wore Western-style clothing; many taught in schools and worked in hospitals and government offices. Ruth saw a few tent-like burkhas only in the bazaars. The Soviet presence was discernable, especially in the network of roads and tunnels crisscrossing the country, but their influence appeared benign.

A year after their return to Lahore Rick brought the news that Abdul Abbas had been exiled in the overthrow. He and his family had fled to the United States. Soon, the Khyber Pass was closed to tourist traffic and civilian flights to Kabul, suspended. Ruth was not able to visit Afghanistan again.

Ruth felt a surge of warmth as she meandered her way to Abdul Abbas; his hospitality had made their visit to Afghanistan memorable. When Abdul Abbas noticed her, Ruth extended her hand and said: ‘I’m Ruth Walker. Remember me?’

Abdul Abbas recognized her almost at once. He smiled and held her hand in both his. ‘Of course, of course, my dear,’ he said, ‘I’m so happy to see you. And how is your dashing husband?’

That was not a word she’d choose to describe Rick; but for an instant she recalled Rick as a young activist, his thick sun-streaked hair falling to his shoulders, a scant beard downing his cheeks, holding up anti-Apartheid and anti-war banners—yes, the youthful Rick had had an air about him … his cropped hair was still thick and she wished he was with her at this moment to share in her delight in chancing upon Abdul Abbas—share the pleasure and adventure of their visit to Afghanistan his presence recalled.

Ruth smiled: ‘You look quite “dashing” yourself!’ With the camel-coloured Afghan coat draped over his broad shoulders and his tidy beard, Abdul Abbas looked well-groomed and classy. She noticed the fine cut of the expensive American suit beneath the coat.

Abdul Abbas introduced Ruth to the two young Americans standing with him. Of late, Ruth had noticed men like them at the larger, more anonymous receptions she was invited to; men so alike they could be clones. Bushy-bearded, brawny-muscled, with dark close-cropped heads and reserved countenance, they hardly looked American—dress them
in Afghan attire and even the Afghans wouldn’t tell them apart. She had assumed they were undercover operatives, even commandos, and had kept her distance. She had no wish to know them, or, for that matter, what they were up to.

Still, she was here, and she ought to be polite. ‘Hi,’ Ruth said, briefly holding out her hand to each and forcing an ironic, lopsided smile. She turned back to the Afghan. ‘I heard you and Nabila had migrated to America?’

‘We had to flee Kabul with only the clothes on our backs,’ he said. ‘My whole family is there.’ Ruth imagined the extended
family
of uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, and their children, and shook her head in sympathy.

After a moment’s pause, Ruth, desperate to lighten the mood quipped, ‘Did you take your goats and rooster with you?’ She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, the hint of a smile twitching her lips.

‘Only the clothes on our backs, my dear,’ said the Afghan, responding to her amusement with a quiet, rueful look.

Ruth blushed. She shouldn’t have said that. ‘Sorry,’ she said, including the young men in her embarrassed glance. ‘I didn’t mean to be flippant.’

‘Please don’t upset yourself,’ Abdul Abbas said pleasantly, and added: ‘We ate the fellow in the end.’

‘Oh no,’ said Ruth pulling the requisite face, and then asked: ‘Where’s Nabila?’

‘Back in the States. I’m here alone.’

As she and Abdul Abbas chatted, Ruth gradually became aware of how pleased the young Americans were to see her. It disconcerted her. While she talked to Abdul Abbas
their disarmed, puppy-eyes lingered on her, soaking in the comfort and familiarity her presence afforded them. Ruth felt her heart soften. They must miss home. They were so young, almost boys, caught up in war games—acting out their adolescent fantasies and those of older men. Her smiles became warmer, her tone tinged with indulgence as she included them in the conversation. She laughed when they slipped in a humorous remark and, swept by an unexpected wave of tenderness, every now and then she was almost overcome by the urge to touch them.

‘Where do you guys come from?’ she asked.

‘I’m from St. Paul, Minneapolis,’ said John. ‘Bill’s a redneck—from
way
down under.’

‘You’re from Australia?’ said Ruth, surprised.

‘No ma’am, I’m from Lubbock, Texas,’ drawled Bill, and punched his companion’s arm hard. ‘Don’t pay him no attention, ma’am. He thinks he is a stand-up clown.’

‘Stand-up comedian, you Neanderthal, you rodeo clown,’ said John, pushing Bill back with a series of small thrusts.

‘Ouch, ma’am, that hurts,’ complained Bill, looking at Ruth over John’s shoulder with comical pleading.

Ruth found herself laughing immoderately. It was as if her misgivings, her distaste, were being expelled in the dimly felt guilty rush of relief at having misjudged these boys. They were not the ruthless professional killers she had assumed them to be. They were kids. Bill wrapped his arms around John and clasped him in a tight embrace to stop the shoving. ‘Stop it, you two,’ Ruth said, still laughing as she tried to pry them apart. She might as well have tried to separate conjoined
elephants. Their arms felt like truck tyres beneath their dark jackets. ‘That’s enough, boys,’ she said, wondering if they had even noticed her effort.

But acutely sensitive to her touch, Bill and John at once drew apart, and grinning with a touching mixture of apprehension and gratitude placed an arm around each other’s shoulders. Abdul Abbas, standing to one side, looked faintly forlorn.

And from her changed perspective Ruth noticed the two women, kicking up the hems of their swishing saris as they resolutely made their way through the crowd towards them. Ruth composed herself and acknowledged them with a smile. She fervently hoped it was too early for them to be drunk.

Jasmine, a lissome beauty with porcelain skin and thickly fringed cobalt-blue eyes, was married to a minor prince. Her French mother had separated from her Pakistani father when she was barely five and had gone back to live in France. She had had a disturbed childhood between her warring parents and, after the separation, she spent brief freewheeling spells with her mother in France. Their visits ended when her mother discovered her fifteen-year-old daughter in bed with her stepfather. She accused Jasmine of seducing her husband.

Chicks, short and curvaceous, was a divorcee with two small children. Her spherical chocolate face masked in white talcum powder, Chicks sported, like defiant trademarks, two clownish spots of rouge on her cheeks.

‘Too many sourpusses at this goddamn party,’ Chicks declaimed throatily in a recklessly loud and jovial voice as she came up to them. ‘Not fair, you’re hogging all the fun
guys,’ she said to Ruth. ‘Mind if we join you?’

‘Sure,’ said Ruth, concealing her misgivings. She could never tell if Chicks was drunk or just acting drunk. She glanced at Abdul Abbas. He was smiling at the women uncertainly but with his customary courtesy. Ruth introduced Chicks and Jasmine to the men.

Repulsed and intimidated by her at first, Ruth had come to appreciate Chicks’s keen intelligence. So long as one wasn’t the target of her jibes, she was fun—in small doses. While Chicks’s outrageous behaviour amused Ruth, she recognized that it cloaked mutiny and a helpless fury.

With her soft, rounded features and lilting Bengali accent, Chicks had looked and sounded different from other Pakistani women, and Ruth had soon picked up her story. Chicks had come from what was then East Pakistan to work in Lahore and had married a local Punjabi man with whom she had two children. He had treated her brutally and she had, after protracted and humiliating court appearances, finally obtained a divorce. She was stranded in Lahore when, after a bloody revolt, East Pakistan, absurdly separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory, declared its independence and became Bangladesh. Chicks belonged to a culture and race that was despised in the aftermath of the break-up of the two wings of Pakistan. Because of the custody terms of her children she found herself trapped in West Pakistan, a place where she didn’t want to be.

The Americans at once engaged the striking newcomers in conversation and Ruth, relieved, turned to Abdul Abbas to ask him where he lived in America.

He explained that he and his family had settled in a sparsely populated area about an hour’s drive from Albuquerque. The brown hills and rugged terrain of New Mexico reminded them of home.

‘You must miss Afghanistan,’ Ruth said.

The sympathy and kindness in her voice brought tears to his eyes.

He nodded: ‘Yes. Very much.’

To give him time to recover, Ruth told their little group about her visit to Afghanistan and of the hospitality Abdul Abbas and his wife had shown them.

‘You wouldn’t recognize Kabul now,’ the Texan drawled. ‘The Soviet tanks have flattened it. There are very few walls left standing.’

She had guessed as much from the images on TV. ‘Do you go there often?’ she asked Bill.

The Texan shrugged: ‘We’re with the US AID program,’ he answered. Devoid of the animation that had enlivened his features just a moment before, his blank face drew Ruth’s scrutiny. She wondered at the stock answer he had provided and more or less guessed the reason for it: although America was a conduit for the arsenal and hardware procured from all over the world that poured into Afghanistan, the Americans were forbidden on Afghan soil. The Americans did not want to provoke Russian sensibility by showing a too blatant support for the Afghan Mujahedeen. This reserve suited the Pakistan government, who did not want their close alliance with the American military to be known.