The great thing about Sunny, Halajan thought, was not her lousy Dari, not her blue jeans, not that loud voice of hers or her big whooping laughter or her crazy hair. The great thing about Sunny was her insistence on the generators. Electricity every hour of the day and night. It was as if a miracle of Muhammad had happened here.
She looked around to be sure she was alone. Then she put a hand through her hair and smiled at her reflection in the door’s small window. Though her skin was brown and wrinkled like the walnuts in the marketplace, her short hair made her feel young and powerful. She mussed it up, enjoying its boyishness. She had given herself the drastic haircut one year before, when rumors drifted through Kabul that the Taliban were back, hiding in the hillsides of the Helmand province in the south. In a private act of defiance, her own personal statement of freedom—for she knew what would happen if the Taliban again gained control of her beloved people—she’d borrowed Sunny’s scissors and cut off her braids, which were, at the time, long enough to reach her waist. She put them in a box under a small table in her sleeping room, where they remained. And now, about every three months, she borrowed the scissors and gave herself a trim, keeping her hair just long enough to hide the truth when under a scarf.
Under her brown dress, she wore an old blue-jean skirt that ended above her knees. A remnant of the pre-Russian era of the 1970s—when women were free to study, to work, to come and go as they pleased, to wear almost anything they wanted as long as it was respectful to Muhammad—the skirt had become soft and worn over time. Her skinny legs were covered in baggy pants to keep them warm, like the salvars her father wore before he’d died what seemed like a hundred years ago, when his house was transferred to her, his only child, then just a young woman. She dug into a front pocket and pulled out a box of Marlboros and a purple plastic lighter. She lit up, took a deep breath in, and let it out with intense satisfaction. And it wasn’t just from the nicotine. It was from the act itself—dangerous, contemptuous, and fearless. Out here, Halajan was as close as she’d ever get again, she feared, to freedom.
She looked back on her life as a time line of the regimes that had run her beloved Afghanistan—in the burqa and out of the burqa, in miniskirts, back into long dresses—of the wars that took friends and family, of the droughts that caused famine and killed the roses and the trees of Kabul, and she realized she, like her country, had survived. The evils inflicted from the outside had been nowhere near as deadly as the poisons that had grown from within. One look into the black, cold eyes of a young Taliban warrior had taught her that.
She dug into the pocket of her dress and pulled out Rashif’s most recent letter. She admired its lovely penmanship with the flourishes that surprised her on every page. She imagined him at his shop on a narrow alley in the Mondai-e waiting for her with a smile that made her body rush with warmth, her skin tingle with pleasure. She thought of him as he nodded a “Salaam alaikum” and then walked toward her to discreetly pass her a letter that she immediately hid in the folds of her chador. Tomorrow it would be Thursday, her market day, the beginning of the Muslim weekend that ran through Friday, and she would pass his way again. And there he’d be with another letter just as he had been every Thursday for the past six years.
She had loved Rashif since she was a little girl, growing up in her father and mother’s house. He’d lived just a few houses away, and they had played after school in the empty lot that sat between their homes, exactly where the coffeehouse sat today. They often saw each other at family events and religious holidays. But as they grew up, they were more restricted by their culture, and like other teenagers throughout Kabul could no longer talk easily or even be in each other’s presence without many others present. Ultimately Rashif was married off by his family to Salima, and Halajan, at age fifteen, was married to Sunil, who would be her husband for the next thirty-six years.
Those years had been filled with joy and worries, the births of two children—Ahmet and his sister, Aisha (who was now studying in Germany, living with others from Kabul, something Halajan encouraged her to do, as she had encouraged Ahmet, who wouldn’t go and leave his mother alone, much to her frustration)—and disagreement and compromise as all marriages are. Though she considered herself modern, there was one thing she would have never done: bring humiliation or harm to her family by choosing her own husband. So for thirty-six years, she made her marriage work. Sunil was a kind man but a simple man. He went to work, came home, prayed, studied the Koran, and maybe spoke ten words over the course of a week. He died of tuberculosis, as so many had, nine years before.
And then, a few years later, Rashif’s wife died. And almost immediately the letters began. She looked forward each week to the thrill of the exchange, to the joy of seeing Rashif’s smile and twinkling eyes.
She took a drag from her cigarette, folded the letter carefully, and stuck it deep in her pocket. She exhaled, watched the smoke wind its way up the house’s wall, dissipating into the air as it rose.
If only she could read. Only then would she learn what he was trying to tell her.
Ahmet leaned against the wall at the gate, watching the sky turn lavender over the hills that surrounded Kabul and the mountain peaks in the distance blur into the twilight. What was on the other side of those mountains? His sister knew; she’d left long ago. But he would never know because Kabul was his home and this was where he belonged. And yet, those mountains called to him like the muezzin’s song at sunrise. At times like this, when his chest tugged with uneasiness, he’d readjust the rifle on his shoulder and remind himself of his duty.
Four men approached, chatting loudly in an Eastern European language. Ahmet stood straight, not taking his eyes off them. They nodded. He opened the gate. Then two more, this time Americans. “Good afternoon,” they said in halting Dari. “Salaam alaikum,” he answered them. Ahmet never stopped to talk or ask questions, and he didn’t use a metal detector, like the fancy restaurants. But he had what he considered the surest method for safety clearance. He never failed to look into the eyes of the customers, because they reflected deeper truths than any momentary feelings of impatience or hunger or disappointment. The eyes of a man betrayed his heart. Even with a smile, the evil man’s eyes were as hard and shallow as a dry riverbed; even with a furrowed brow, the eyes of a good man were deep. In the Koran, the eyes were the gateway to the mind. “You will see” in the Koran meant “to know”; “thine heart and thine eyes” referred to your feelings and your thoughts, as Ahmet had been taught since he was a young boy in school.
After the busy mornings, the café quieted down until the afternoons, when people came for business meetings or just to talk politics, war, and the latest game of buzkashi before going home for dinner. On Fridays, the day of rest, when nobody went to work, the café was open and busy all day. No matter how hard Ahmet tried, he wasn’t interested in his people’s version of polo, played with a dead calf instead of a ball. Soccer was his game, or “football,” as the Brits called it. He enjoyed watching it on the big TV that hung on the wall inside the café. Foreign men bet on the games, but he could not participate. Betting was forbidden in the Koran.
He chuckled to himself at the memory of Sunny bringing a big TV home one afternoon. It was in a huge box, sticking halfway out of the trunk of her car, the hood tied down with twine to keep the thing from falling out as the car bounced over the severe potholes and plentiful rocks in the road.
Sunny had gotten out of the car, slammed her door shut, and turned to Ahmet. She flipped her hair out of her face, put her hands on her hips, and said, “You’re going to love this, Ahmet. Wait until you see today’s game.” She was referring to his favorite team—the Brazilians, who were in the finals against South Africa.
For years they’d watched the games on that big color TV, which sat on a small wobbly table in the back corner of the café. Ahmet was sure that one day its legs would go, falling to the floor under the weight of the huge TV. But it was better than what they had before—a small blac
k-and-white one, with rabbit ears, as Sunny called them, laughing, making fun, when she first arrived.
Getting the new TV to work had been another matter. It had taken three weeks, a new satellite dish on the roof, three friends to help run the wires, countless trips to the electronics and hardware stores, and several prayers to Allah that Ahmet wouldn’t miss the entire football season.
But when the TV finally worked, it was a beautiful thing! Ahmet had never seen such color. The games seemed so alive! The TV brought more customers into the café and Ahmet felt new respect for Sunny. Here was a woman unafraid of hard work, one with the perseverance of a goat that banged its head against the fence in the hopes of getting to the other side. However, here, too, was a woman like his mother and his sister, who challenged his expectations of the weaker sex and made him uneasy as well.
Two Afghan men who Ahmet knew approached the gate. He greeted them, held the gate open, and reminded them they’d need to check their weapons. Too many guns, he thought, his eyes following them as they walked through the courtyard and were welcomed by Bashir Hadi. If everybody has a gun, everybody is prepared to kill and to die.
Though today maybe half the people inside were locals, the café’s customers were mostly foreigners, both men and women, who found the place so comfortable that they would sit for hours, in groups talking or alone with a book, while Bashir Hadi worked the kitchen, Sunny took orders, Halajan, his mother, bossed everybody around, and Yazmina kept the place clean and orderly.
Yazmina, now there were two eyes, Ahmet thought, as his own followed an old man who was crossing the street in front of him surrounded by sheep. He was hitting a particularly fat sheep on its backside with the long stick he was holding.
Yazmina’s eyes were like the bottomless pools of the Band-e Amir, the lakes of the northern mountain region, which he’d seen in pictures. He was convinced she had probably been a whore before Sunny brought her here and was up to no good, because her eyes were the only pair that he couldn’t read.
He turned to look through the front courtyard into the coffeehouse. And there was Yazmina, wiping a tray, laying it on the counter, placing two saucers, then two cups on each. Then a basket of sweets. Look at me, Ahmet thought, let me see those eyes of yours. They will tell me the truth. As if she heard his thoughts, she did, and he immediately turned away, back to the street.
Most certainly a fahesha, a prostitute, he said to himself, as he lifted his rifle high on his shoulder and nodded at two foreign women approaching the gate. Their heads were covered, but they wore the pants and shoes of the West, probably with NGOs working futilely to help a people who needed no help. Such women, like his own sister, might be intelligent, with good intentions, but there were rules, and respect must be paid. His beloved country had survived various regimes in the past and it would survive whatever came its way. But if traditions were ignored, if the Koran was not read faithfully and understood literally, then his people were just as low as the snakes crawling in the brush in the desert.
And Sunny, like all the Americans—except for Jack, Ahmet admitted, who showed some respect—flaunted the traditions. No wonder his mother was so comfortable in the café. Sunny and she fought like dogs but were as connected as two cats from the same litter. They’d hired Bashir Hadi, a Hazara! And then they gave him a raise and a bigger job. Now he was almost running the place. How could they give that kind of responsibility to a Hazara? And then came Yazmina, a mountain girl from Nuristan, a Kafir. Ahmet kicked at the dirt. The café was becoming a UN of its own.
Even Ahmet was changing. Yes, he still heeded the muezzin’s call five times a day, praying on his own rug or at the mosque. And he kept the rules of Islam, but he could feel himself bristle at talk of the Taliban’s resurgence in his country. Tradition was one thing, but cruelty and violence were another. One could argue that that wasn’t what Muhammad intended at all. He frowned at the setting sun behind him to the west. Still, it was up to him to uphold the traditions of his home. Inshallah, he would. The world might be changing, but the word of Allah was forever, and it was Ahmet’s lifework to watch over his mother’s house, to keep it safe, and to keep it righteous under Allah’s watchful eyes.
Rashif sat at a table in the back of his shop, behind the sewing machine, behind the counter and wall covered with spools of thread, behind the curtain that separated his living space from his working space. He opened the drawer at the table’s base and pulled out a piece of ivory paper, the vellum he’d bought at the art supply store on Paint Street. He held the corner between his thumb and index finger, and confirmed again how much he liked the feel and the weight of this paper. It was smooth enough to accept the ink of the pen, and opaque enough to prevent the writing from showing through to the other side, yet textured and light enough to make it elegant when folded. And the matching envelopes were equally fine. He opened the ballpoint pen’s cap and attached it to the back of the pen.
Dearest Halajan, he wrote, in his simple penmanship. He wanted to be sure every word could be read, not because what he had to say was so important, but because writing was the only way he could say it. And he did not want Halajan to be unable to read one single word.
Today is the most beautiful day. The air is chilled but the sky is blue and it is the day before I see you. You are the sunshine of my week.
I have news. The new sewing machine I have been waiting for has been shipped from Pakistan and is making its way across mountains and deserts to my little shop in the Mondai-e. Let us pray that it’s not confiscated by the warlords or destroyed by the fighters in the Khyber Pass. They say it will arrive in six weeks. What a celebration we will have!
He looked up from his paper and laughed to himself. If only, he thought, or as the American kids from the International School who bought Coca-Colas and chocolate bars at his friend Ibrahim’s kiosk across the street said, “As if.” As if he could celebrate with Halajan, take her face in his hands and kiss her and twirl her in a midnight dance. If only!
He went back to his letter and was about to write more, when the squeak of his metal door as it opened, and the clang as it shut, announced a customer. It’ll have to wait, he thought, as he stood up, brushed aside the curtain, and greeted the man with the dark suit folded neatly over his arm. My love will just have to wait.
The car bumped and lurched on the dirt road, throwing stones up against the windshield. Through the cloud of dust Candace Appleton could see the green of the valley ahead. Here, on the outskirts of Kabul, it was brown, dry, and bleak, just like the city itself. But right ahead was a lush, fruitful paradise. It was everything Wakil had said it would be.
He sat beside her, behind the driver of his new SUV, talking about his plans for the new roads he was having built out this way. She admired his strong profile, imagined his lovely body under his simple gray cotton tunic and pants. On his head he wore a turban made from such exquisite silk that it looked regal. She glanced once more at his meticulously trimmed beard, his dark-rimmed eyes. He was, indeed, a beautiful man. A young man, too; ten years her junior, to be precise. But it wasn’t just that. Maybe it was his commitment to his country, to helping boys without fathers of their own, to building them a clinic, a school, an orphanage out here in the vast green countryside. Or perhaps it was his attentiveness toward her and their passionate lovemaking. Or how he’d vowed to marry her when the time was right. To have a family. Or a combination of it all. Because she had fallen deeply in love with him, which made the fact that she’d left her husband for him easier to justify.
All these years she’d never done anything for herself, except, of course, the shopping, the little nips and tucks, the necessary things to keep her looking good as she grew older, which was a requisite for being married to a man who was in the public eye. Leaving Richard was the first real thing she’d done for herself in eighteen years of marriage. Eighteen years! She looked out the car’s window and sighed. And still, it had been so easy to walk away since there had been no children involved. S
he’d wanted them, and not just one—the way she grew up, lonely and treated like an adult even as a young girl—but an entire brood! When she didn’t get pregnant instantly, Richard had no desire to find out why or explore their options.
Then she met Wakil. It was at a conference her husband had attended at the U.S. consulate in Afghanistan for representatives of NGOs and local community organizers to meet and discuss priorities and funding. She sat with the other guests, in the back, behind the round tables of the participants. But she couldn’t keep her eyes off Wakil even then—he was so very passionate about his work, and he spoke with such eloquence. Later, at the reception, her husband introduced them. The connection was instant.
“Your school sounds wonderful,” she had said to him.
“It’s a clinic and a home to orphans as well. You must come and see it,” he’d answered. “It’s in a green and lush part of my country. A place I know you will appreciate.”
She laughed. “Because you want my support?”
“Because I noticed you—how could I not?—during the conference, listening, taking notes, and I saw a woman with not only beauty and passion but a deep power to accomplish things.” He paused, smiled as her face flushed with the effects of his charm, and then added, “And I think you must love children as I do.”
Were these simply corny pickup lines? It didn’t matter. She was hooked.
And look where it had brought her: to this rich, verdant valley with this glorious man, where she would do something with her life, for once. Wakil gave her a real reason to be. Not just designer clothes, fashionable parties, a townhouse on Beacon Hill in Boston, and volunteering for this museum or that educational institution.