Could Rashif be correct, Ahmet wondered, that if he felt that way about her, perhaps she felt the same about him? That love made the impossible possible? One day soon, maybe, Inshallah, with Muhammad’s help, he would find the strength to test that theory.
“I know you’re still upset, but we promised we’d try,” implored Isabel, sitting with Candace in the back of a black SUV. “You can be angry at me, but don’t take it out on those women.” They were on their way to a fund-raising meeting with representatives from American women’s aid groups.
“Well, it’s not as if any of this is rocket science,” Candace replied.
“But the bureaucracy, the red tape—”
“What red tape? All you need is cash and you can accomplish anything in Afghanistan.”
“I’m not so sure. There are extreme attitudes to contend with.”
“Money talks. You’ll see.”
“So we’re still partners. Not just this meeting—”
“On one condition: Unless you have real, hard proof, you keep your suspicions about Wakil to yourself.”
“Understood.”
Candace looked out the window and saw two boys running with kites trailing behind them, held aloft by the wind. One turned and ran backward as he pulled on the kite’s string, and she wanted to scream out to him to watch his footing, don’t trip in the gutter, but, as if he’d heard her, he turned around and caught himself in time.
She put a hand to her cheek, turned back to Isabel, and said, “But if you find anything real, which you won’t, you tell me.”
“It’s a deal.”
“Okay then. Let’s do this meeting. You do your job—have all the information including the number of women behind bars, the so-called crimes they committed, the conditions, et cetera—and I’ll do mine.”
Isabel put a hand on Candace’s arm. “We can do this.”
Days had passed and there wasn’t a word from Tommy or Jack. Sunny knew they’d left together, because Tommy had called her one last time before leaving Kabul to let her know they were on their way to the north. She wouldn’t be able to call them again, nor could they call her, because they’d be using untraceable phones. Sunny was beside herself with worry, but there was nothing she could do. They were completely on their own, without the support of an agency or even anyone else who might know where they were.
She kept busy in the coffeehouse, which was bringing in excellent business. From early morning to late at night the place seemed to buzz with activity. But her friends were elsewhere: Candace and Isabel were attending daily meetings.
Sunny was lonely. The coffeehouse was filled with people and yet her people were gone. And for the first time in her years in Kabul, she felt uneasy. The police and military on the streets seemed to have doubled in recent weeks, as if something was coming, something furious and uncontrollable. The wop-wop-wop of helicopters washed the skies, along with the muezzin’s calls. The increase of people at the coffeehouse was good for business but bad for its implication: People had stopped going to many restaurants and clubs and were going only to places authorized as safe, as if they were all waiting for the next shoe to drop.
News reports were bleak. There was a sense of impending trouble, and no wall, no matter how high, and no windows, no matter how strong, were any match for what might come.
She was on the roof after the breakfast crowd left, while Yazmina and Bashir Hadi were making the place ready for lunch. She was sitting on the bench, looking out over her troubled city, missing Jack, her skin tingling with memories of his touch, his mere presence. A flock of birds flew by in that miracle V formation, their wings fluttering hard and their bodies black against the vibrant blue sky, and just for a moment, she was up there with them. She, too, was flying over Kabul, watching it change and its people be moved by the whims of power—like a tree in the wind. And she remembered the other time when she felt so overtaken by a place, a moment. It was at Mazar-e Sharif.
Then she saw the birds swoop down and disappear from sight. She could still hear their calls, as if they were right outside. She ran downstairs and into the courtyard, the warbles and calls loud and crackling. The few trees were rustling with life; their leaves seemed to be lusher, deeper, thicker.
She saw again the large plaza at the mosque covered with doves and the women in the white burqas, and she turned, got her paints, and began to mix the colors herself. There was no compromising. She finally saw the mural in her mind and knew she wouldn’t be satisfied until she got the colors just right, even if she had to re-create them on her palette. This time she didn’t need charcoal or sketching. This time she’d begin with brushes and paint. She spent hours experimenting until she was satisfied. Nothing was perfect. But she was in Kabul, after all, and not in Jonesboro at the Country Roads Mall with a Home Depot and Michaels, the craft store that was crowded with the scrapbook-crazed. She had to make do with what she had. Indigenous—was that the word Isabel had used?
Finally she dipped her brush into the paint of her palette. She put the brush to the wall, the paint to the rough surface. Yes, she thought, after a few strokes, taking a step back. It was, indeed, the most beautiful blue.
It took little time for Candace and Isabel to raise enough money to bribe the prison warden for Jamila and her friends’ freedom. But that was just a start. They’d have to find places to house them, money to feed them, medical care, schools for their children, and, of course, security so that they’d be safe from family members who wanted them dead because of the shame they had brought upon them.
First Jamila, and then, hopefully, Candace and Isabel would be in the position to help more women across the country. With the support of various international women’s aid groups, they intended to create a shelter system for women to prevent them from being incarcerated, and a safe haven for those once out.
But Isabel knew, from her years in Africa and the Gulf, that bribing a warden was one thing; dealing with hundreds of years of repressive attitudes was another.
Protecting Jamila, who had escaped from the men who’d been pimping her, often several times a day, for pennies to any man who could pay, wouldn’t be easy. The men who’d bought her when she’d been sold to repay a debt would want the return on their investment and would be after her to put her back to work as a prostitute. Or they’d simply kill her. Isabel knew she’d have to get her out of the country to keep her alive.
At the prison, Isabel admired Candace’s deft way with the warden and the guards, and soon they were in the women’s building, walking its long, dank hall toward Jamila’s cell. When they got there, the women were huddled in the far corner; one child was lying across his mother’s lap, asleep. Candace and Isabel looked for a familiar face but couldn’t find one until Haliya came forward, her head and face fully covered with a large scarf as always.
She approached the blue bars and put her hand around one, her fingernails blackened from dirt, and whispered in broken English, “Jamila is gone. They took her.”
“What do you mean? To another cell?” asked Isabel, in her broken Dari. And in that way, the women were able to make themselves understood.
“No, they took her away.”
“Who did? Where?”
“The guards came with the men. Jamila cried, so I think she knew that they meant to finish what they’d started. To take her to Bahrain, Dubai, or Qatar to work for them.”
“Jesus. Those motherfu—” Candace started to say but stopped herself, her teeth clenched, her jaw tight.
“The Gulf area,” Isabel said, knowing what this meant. “When was this?”
“Two days ago, more or less.”
“Let’s go,” said Isabel, patting Candace’s shoulder with the back of her hand.
“Will you try to find her?” asked Haliya.
“Yes,” answered Candace. “We will.”
But Isabel knew it would be impossible. The Gulf was like quicksand where women sank, suffocated, and died beneath the sexual morass of being bought and so
ld against their will. There was no way they would ever find Jamila in the Gulf, where she’d be put to work as a sex slave for local laborers. She was gone. The thought made Isabel sick.
All she could do was hope, even pray, that the Gulf wasn’t Layla’s fate as well.
It would be days before Candace would accept the fact that there was nothing they could do. But during that time, they made arrangements, with the magic of bribery, the way all things were accomplished in Afghanistan, to get Haliya and the others released.
The black car was met by two security guards with machine guns over their shoulders at the gate of the Serena Hotel. One guard said something to the driver, who rolled down the windows so they could search the inside of the car. The guards leaned their heads in, first examining the front seat, and then the back, where the women sat cross-legged. The guard commanded the driver to open the trunk and the hood. Then they checked underneath the car with a mirror on a long handle, and only then, apparently satisfied, waved the car through. The driveway was long and U-shaped and made of a light-gray stone. In the center of the drive was a thick carpet of grass surrounded by small flowers, and sitting in the middle, a large marble fountain with water spouting twenty feet into the air before cascading down a sculpture of a large fish.
Isabel watched from her rear window and seethed with anger. Here the Afghan government provided police, here they provided security and protection, because here were Westerners, here was money, here was political power. In the prison, they provided nothing to their own people, to women and children who barely had enough bread and water to survive. They provided no clothes or schooling or beds, and only threadbare blankets to withstand the cold. She shook her head and pounded her fist on the car door’s handle.
“We’re almost there,” said Candace, gently patting Isabel’s hand.
Isabel looked at her and breathed out, wondering if she, too, was raging. “Can you believe this place?” she asked.
“What did you expect?” answered Candace. “This ain’t no democracy. Come on, you’ve seen this before a thousand times.”
“And it always gets to me. But more here than anywhere.”
“That’s because you’re in it now. You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid.”
Isabel raised her brows and said, “Indeed I have, haven’t I.”
“And I’m proud of you,” Candace said.
“The last time someone said that to me, it was my own mother.”
She thought back to her home in London, the house where she grew up, going to her school with only British girls, the “Pakis” going to their schools, the blacks going to their schools, the neighborhoods divided by history, color, and language. And then she remembered something her mother had told her before she died. “You will find that thing that makes you unafraid to die. That important thing that makes your life of value.” All these years, Isabel thought that being a journalist was the thing of value that she was bringing to the party. Now she knew there was more. Now she knew that a person had to act, to be truly engaged, in order to make a real difference. Mum, Isabel thought, it’s taken me eons to understand. But now I do.
At the front, the women got out and walked up the few steps to the atrium leading to the hand-carved wooden doors. Isabel led the way and said, “Here’s good,” at a sofa that looked out from the wall of windows onto a tree-filled courtyard.
The women sat, Isabel on the sofa that faced the entrance and Candace adjacent to her in a low armchair covered in a woven fabric with a geometric design. The lobby had the same maroon and orange Afghan colors of the warden’s rooms in the prison, Isabel noticed. The minute they sat, they were approached by a young man in a freshly pressed, crisp shalwaar kameez and embroidered vest, and asked if they wanted something to drink. Something about him looks familiar, she thought.
Candace ordered tea, but Isabel was distracted. The waiter repeated the question.
“Yes, yes, tea for me, too, please,” Isabel answered. She still couldn’t place him.
They waited quietly for their guests to arrive.
The waiter returned with small plates of kish mish. As he stood, he looked directly at Isabel before walking away. A shiver ran through her. She’d seen those eyes before and figured they were the eyes of so many Afghans or other people living in third world countries who worked in places like this, serving wealthy Westerners. But there was something about this particular man. She knew for sure that she’d seen him before.
She watched him pause in the doorway, behind Candace, and perhaps it was the angle and the distance, but she remembered where she’d seen him before. It was at Wakil’s school, the same young man who’d driven off in the car after talking to Wakil.
She stood up, unsure why, on instinct.
At that moment he shouted in Dari, “Death to the Western oppressors! Allah akbar!” a phrase she’d heard before in many languages all around the world.
Isabel cried out, “Oh my God. We have to—”
And then he put his hand in his vest.
She threw herself on Candace.
The force of the explosion shattered walls and windows. She lost all hearing, pain shot through her neck, and blood gushed into her mouth. She coughed and screamed, she thought, and fought for air. But little came. Wakil, she tried to whisper to Candace, who was underneath her. Wakil! Then she saw her mother, sitting on her bed reading to her. She could smell her perfume, feel the silk of her blouse, feel her hand stroking her hair. And then she saw Jamila’s face, her dark eyes pleading for help. Jamila, she thought, Jamila. There was so much left to do! Layla! She told herself not to panic. There was so much left to do. She thought she heard someone say her name. Then she closed her eyes.
Sunny painted the entire background of the mural the color of the Afghan sky that day in Mazar-e Sharif when the sun was high and reflected in the blue and gold tiles of the mosque. She used the same roller that she and Bashir Hadi had used to whitewash the old mural. She could feel the weight of the paint in her shoulder as her arm dipped and then rolled up and down again and again. She stood on a wooden box from the storage room so she could reach the top of the wall.
Once the background was done, she began to use smaller brushes to get the images just right. White was easy, but the off-white and shadows, the gold of the roof in the sunlight, took time, was harder to achieve.
But the doves came, the doves and the women who looked like doves, a few larger, closer, many smaller in the distance, the mural emulating the courtyard she experienced that day at Mazar-e Sharif.
She was in the midst of painting her sixth dove, getting its neck right. This wasn’t a photograph, of course, so there was room for artistic license, but they had to look like the beautiful doves she remembered. She had dipped her smaller brush into the white circle of paint on her palette, and was reaching for the wall when the earth rumbled and she heard something that sounded like distant thunder. It sent a current of fear through her as if she’d been struck by a bolt of lightning.
But not one window was shattered. The wall stood, but a car alarm went off, and then another. Birds flew from the trees and over the roof, and the sky blackened with soot. When she ran into the coffeehouse to check the radio for news, it was as silent as a church, though it was filled with customers who were frozen with fear. She turned on the radio and quickly learned there had been a suicide bombing inside the Serena Hotel, followed seconds later by another near the U.S. Embassy and another at the circle less than a mile from the coffee shop. Soon, the customers returned to their conversations, now in hushed voices of concern, and Sunny hoped with every ounce of her being that her friends were safe.
Sunny sat at Candace’s bedside at the emergency hospital, holding her hand, waiting for her to regain consciousness. She’d just come out of surgery for her leg, which was broken in seven places and required two pins. Her face and arms were covered in scratches; her head required fifty-seven stitches. Had the wooden shard hit her any lower, she might’ve been killed. But as it was,
she’d be fine soon enough, the doctor had told Sunny.
It wasn’t long before her eyelids fluttered open.
“Sunny.” She smiled, squeezing her hand. “Am I glad to see you.”
“You, too.”
“Everything hurts.”
“You’re going to be fine. Just no high heels for a few months.”
Candace tried to raise her head to look down at her body but couldn’t.
“The doctor said he’d be here soon to explain everything. So just relax.”
“It was terrible. The explosion … wait, how’s Isabel? Where—”
“Candace,” Sunny began, and then stopped. She looked away.
“Was she hurt? She threw herself on me. She must’ve seen it coming, and she threw herself right on top of me. I thought I heard her try to tell me …”
“Candace,” Sunny said again, and then, she couldn’t help it and she began to cry.
“Sunny, what is it? Tell me.”
“She’s gone. We’ve lost our girl.”
“Oh, God,” cried Candace. “Oh, no.”
Isabel was dead. She’d acted as a blanket for Candace, protecting her from the worst of the broken windows and falling beams, while taking their deathly impact herself.
As Sunny held Candace, they both cried.
“She saved my life.”
Sunny squeezed Candace’s hand.
“She was one brave and stupid Brit.”
Sunny laughed a little.
Candace continued, “I hate her for doing that. Her life was so much more … much more … than mine.”
“How can you say that?” Sunny said. “You—”
“We were sitting three feet away from each other!” Candace interrupted, shaking her head. “One dies, the other breaks her fucking leg?” She began to cry again, this time uncontrollably.