Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

by Deborah Rodriguez

  Again, a no. “A girl like you needs sleeves.”

  Sunny could feel the color rising in her cheeks. She was so tempted to tell Raven where she’d like to shove those sleeves. It almost made her miss shopping in Kabul, where she’d try to disguise her foreign status (and the resulting price gouging that would come because of it) by covering herself with a burqa. Of course, neither the shops nor the market over there had even the tiniest space for a girl to try something on, so she’d had to measure herself shoulder to shoulder with a string, which she carried with her everywhere to ensure, if not a proper, at least an approximate, fit.

  It had been a long two weeks. Even the stunning view of Puget Sound that had captured her heart so suddenly that first day had failed to reappear, leaving in its stead a dreary outlook of grey, so evenly dull that you couldn’t tell where the sea met the sky. But she did have to admit one thing. The evenings were becoming something that she actually found herself looking forward to. The old house had somehow become a kind of gathering place. Joe would “just happen to be wandering by” right before the sun went down, and Sky would stop in after work to “check on the vines”, which, to her, seemed to be doing just fine on their own, thank you very much, waking slowly from their long winter nap with little fuzzy buds swelling from their branches. Together she and Sky would drag in a few logs from the pile on the porch to build a fire, and the kitchen would soon fill with the warm, cozy smell of burning wood. Sky would bring wine from one of the vintners on the island, which the three of them would rate on a scale of one to ten. Joe would proudly present them with whatever masterpiece he’d spent that day concocting in his kitchen next door: pasta fazul, spaghetti bolognese, chicken cacciatore, each dish a delight for the senses. And Sunny would bring it all home with her world-famous cookies.

  And they’d talk. And talk. Actually, mostly Joe would talk, but sometimes one of the others would manage to get a word in edgewise. Sky told them he’d started to fill out his applications for the winemaking program at the community college in Yakima. Sunny shared some of the funnier stories about her time in Kabul, like the one about her crazy friend Candace appearing at Yazmina and Ahmet’s wedding with a live sheep in the back of her SUV. The perfect gift for a bride and groom, she had been told. And the time when the coffeehouse was about to be raided for alcohol, and Bashir Hadi had the brilliant idea to hide everything in Poppy’s doghouse, knowing how that would be the one and only place a swaggering Afghan officer would be too scared to look.

  She turned to look at the man in the passenger seat next to her. She had to admit she’d never come across anybody quite like him before, and she’d come across her fair share of characters in her travels. The new men in her life, she thought with a laugh. An old Japanese American Italian, who had to be at least twice her age, and a metal-studded island boy young enough to be her son, a thought that suddenly made her shudder. Ah, and let’s not forget Rick. Now there was one man who was truly pursuing her, like a fox after a rabbit. Since their meeting he’d managed to reach her once by phone, and had left several messages, which would pop up like crazy whenever she’d find herself within range of a cell signal. She didn’t feel too compelled to answer, as neither of them was budging on their position. But he was the one putting on the pressure, and she was sick of him trying to lay a guilt trip on her. Because, truth be told, sometimes she’d lay awake at night feeling a little bit like a traitor for abandoning Jack’s dream. Especially those nights when she missed him so badly she could swear her heart actually physically hurt. Those were the nights she’d grab her phone from the nightstand and punch up the last communication they had with each other, the one she’d read over and over so many times she knew it by heart.

  Hey you, he had typed from the ski cabin in Whistler.

  Hey you yourself.

  What r u doing?

  What, r u ten?

  LOL.

  Stop, she had begged him. I miss your face.

  Soon, baby. I miss your ass.

  Stop calling me baby!

  K.

  K?

  That means okay. Don’t you know anything?

  I know plenty, mister.

  How’s Santa Fe?

  Lonely. Can’t wait to see you.

  Two days. Twimbly.

  Yep.

  You’ll love it as much as I do. Promise.

  If you say so.

  I say so. Be there.

  With bells on, she had replied. And not a stitch more.

  But even after those tough nights and all the uncertainty they churned up, by the damp, cold light of day she still couldn’t imagine herself surviving on this island. And though she wasn’t quite sure where she wanted to go, or what she wanted to do, she did know that wherever and whatever it was, she was going to need some money to go there and do it. In the meantime, at least she wasn’t paying for a hotel room. And when she thought about how much karmic debt she was avoiding by not relying on the kindness of friends with couches, a little while longer on the island didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Except, she thought as she heard the car engines around her finally come to life, at times like now.

  Two hours later, from the comfort of a thinly padded vinyl chair bathed in flickering fluorescent light, Sunny gave up on the thought of finding that clear head a visit to the mainland had promised. She checked her watch for the tenth time in twelve minutes. What was he doing in there, getting a full set of veneers or something? She stood and stretched her arms above her head and released an enormous yawn that echoed across the still room.

  From behind her desk, the receptionist paused from stamping envelopes to shoot Sunny a look. She’d noticed the girl earlier, when she and Joe first came in. How could you not, with that hair that looked like an upside-down skunk, one half a dazzling white, the other as black as night. Now the girl swiveled slightly in her chair, away from Sunny, and went back to her work. Sunny pulled her phone from her leather knapsack and snapped a close-up from behind.

  Found the perfect new do for you! she texted to Candace, thrilled for once to have an actual cell connection, which she then took advantage of to read, listen to, and delete even more messages from Rick. A quick look at the news sites was enough to tell her she hadn’t missed a thing—the world was still pretty much a mess. She checked her watch again. “What the hell is going on in there?” she asked herself, but apparently said out loud.

  The girl shrugged her shoulders without turning around. “Dr J. likes to take time with his patients. He thinks it shows that he cares.”

  “Yeah, and if I know my friend Joe, he hasn’t stopped flapping his jaws long enough for the doc to get even the tiniest peek inside his mouth.”

  The girl continued with her envelopes. Sunny yawned again. “I’m gonna go get a Coke. Want one?” She headed toward the office door.

  Now the girl swiveled sideways in her chair and placed her right hand on her heart in a gesture Sunny recognized as definitely not American. “Thank you, but I’m not thirsty right now.”

  Sunny stopped in front of the desk. “Where are you from?” she couldn’t help but ask. She was curious. She’d seen that same type of body language all over the world, just not here.

  The girl raised her eyebrows and sighed, obviously annoyed by the question. Sunny decided not to push it. “So what’s it like working here, um, I’m sorry, what was your name?” she asked instead, in a lame attempt to engage the girl in a little conversation.

  “What’s it like?” the girl responded incredulously. “And my name is Kat.”

  “You know, like do you get any interesting cases?”

  “In a dental office?” The girl once again turned back to her work.

  “Or does anybody famous ever come in?”

  “Deawaana,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Excuse me? Did you just call me crazy?” The word deawaana was one of the first Sunny had learned in Kabul.

  “No, I—” the girl fumbled.

  “Wait, how do you know how
to speak Dari? Why, you’re Afghan, aren’t you?”

  “I’m an American,” the girl answered abruptly.

  “Okay. But you, or your parents, or you and your parents, were born in Afghanistan, am I right, Kat?”

  “So?”

  “Well, I’m from there too!”

  The girl looked confused.

  “I mean, I lived there for six years. Right in Kabul.”

  “Why? Did the military make you go? Or were you CIA?”

  “Me? Oh no, I had a coffeehouse. An amazing little place.”

  Sunny dragged a chair over to the counter and, forgetting all about her Coke and her boredom and Joe and his teeth, began to pour out her story—how she had escaped small-town Arkansas for the adventure that was Kabul, how her then-boyfriend’s money allowed her to start up the café, how proud she was of its success, and how very much she missed the place and all of its craziness. It felt good to share her memories with this girl, and even though the poor thing hadn’t asked and had no choice but to listen, Sunny couldn’t help but believe that behind that mask of boredom there was a tiny spark of yearning to hear what she had to say.

  10

  The warm smell of baking bread greeted Halajan as she headed down Qala-e-Fatullah road toward the string of colored bulbs blinking in the dawn light. “Salaam alaikum,” she said to Fattanah, who sat behind the open shopfront window handing out slabs of golden flatbread to a dwindling line of hungry customers.

  “Wa alaikum as salaam,” the woman answered back, her gaptoothed smile always a welcome sight. Over her shoulder Halajan could see a handful of cross-legged women on the bakery’s raised floor, silhouetted by the brick oven’s glow, their sleeves rolled up high on their sturdy arms as they weighed and kneaded and pounded and rolled the lumps of floury dough into the long oval discs she picked up early every morning for the coffeehouse. Back when Sunny was there the bread had been the hard French kind that all the foreigners seemed to like so much, delivered from Carte Se, a whole forty-five minute drive away. But Halajan, she preferred Fattanah’s soft, chewy naan, and also preferred to pay her money to these women who worked so hard to support their children. She’d never forget the day the Taliban shut down the widows’ bakeries, where bread was baked by women left without male relatives to support them, to be sold to other women like them at a price they could afford. Even though bakeries run by women had a long tradition in Afghanistan, under the Taliban the only jobs women were allowed—in women’s hospitals, women’s prisons, or at the security checkpoints in airports—were those made necessary by the Taliban’s own rule, the one that forbade non-related men and women from mixing. The bakeries had been a lifeline for many desperate women, the only thing keeping their families from starvation. For a while the Taliban let them be, but it wasn’t long before the women endured threats and beatings that came with orders to shut their businesses down. But now the bakeries were back, and though this one sold bread to everyone, Fattanah made it a point to hire widows to do her baking.

  She thanked Fattanah as she exchanged her coins for a stack of naan taken fresh from the fire on a long wooden paddle, and headed back home where, behind the bright turquoise gate and the towering wall, everything was still quiet. Only Bashir Hadi was visible to her through the windows as she crossed the patio to the coffeehouse’s front door.

  “Salaam.”

  “Sob bakhair. Good morning to you, Halajan.” He paused and propped his mop against a chair, the low morning sunlight bouncing off the wet floors. “Let me take that from you.”

  Halajan handed him the bundle of bread she’d carried wrapped in a bleached-out head scarf, and started down the hallway toward the back door, just as she did every morning, her plastic shoes clack-clacking on the marble tiles and Poppy trailing close behind, just as she did every morning. In the privacy of the tiny courtyard, Halajan untied her head scarf and leaned back against the concrete wall, her wrinkled face turned toward the sky. Poppy groaned and stretched out in a sunny corner to warm her aching bones.

  “You and me both, girl. We’re not as young as we used to be.” Halajan remembered the day Jack delivered Poppy to the coffeehouse. She had screamed. But, as usual, Jack had done a good thing. Poppy had earned her weight in gold just from being by Sunny’s side, and now by keeping a wary eye on all those who entered the coffeehouse, as rheumy as those eyes were. Halajan missed Jack, so handsome, so tall, like a movie star. And so brave, the way he swooped in to rescue Layla when she was in danger of being taken from her home in the mountains, just as her sister Yazmina had been. But what she loved most about Jack was how he made her laugh, the way he’d say things to her about Sunny—right in front of her face—in the rapid-fire Dari that Sunny could never understand. And Sunny, too, she missed. Sure they’d fought like cats and dogs, and Sunny could be so annoying with that laugh that was as loud as the horn of a truck stuck in traffic, but still. Like they say, there is a way from heart to heart. And it was true. After all they had been through together, they had become as close as family. Not to mention the credit Sunny deserved for all the improvements she had made on this house Halajan had rented to her for her café. The three humming generators drowning out all signs of life around her were proof of Sunny’s determination. If they had remained out in the front courtyard where they had been, the coffeehouse never would have had the success it did.

  She hitched up the elastic waist of her sagging blue jeans and reached deep into the pocket of her long sweater, feeling around for the hard metal tube Sunny’s American friend Candace had given her the last time she had passed through Kabul. An electric cigarette. Whoever thought of such a thing? But Candace had urged Halajan to give it a try, thinking it might help her quit her secret habit. Halajan had no desire to stop smoking, but Candace had also mentioned that since there would be no smoke, there would be no evidence, and that made some sense to her. Her insides filled with the fruity vapor as she took her first drag of the day, the sight of the fake orange glow at the tip of cylinder almost making her laugh out loud. Next time she’d try to remember to put her Marlboros back in her pocket.

  Candace. Halajan shook her head just thinking of the woman. There was another one who at first had made her hackles rise like an angry cock. Even Sunny hadn’t seemed to like her much when they first met in Kabul, until they found out they were both from the southern part of their country, perhaps, Halajan thought, the same tribe. But Candace had changed, no longer the Princess Candace who used to charge into the coffeehouse in her high heels and bangled arms, demanding the best table, tossing her fancy coat carelessly at whoever was standing guard by the door. From what Halajan could see, Candace had become a more serious person, one who had learned how to put her big mouth and deep pockets to work for people who had neither voice nor money. Halajan marveled at the way that woman could make things happen like magic, like conjuring up an instant throng of customers clamoring for Yazmina’s designs after she saw how clever the girl was with a needle. And like pulling the tangled strings of Afghan bureaucracy to give Yazmina’s sister Layla the gift of a stay in America. But also the things she did for people she didn’t even know, finding the money needed for food and supplies and bribes to help women in prison for what they call moral crimes—the crimes of refusing to be forced into sex with those who have paid for it, for being victims of rape or of abusive husbands—women imprisoned for making their own decisions in personal matters. Her latest work was creating a network of safe houses to help those who had managed to get out of prison, and for those in danger of being put in one. Halajan always looked forward to hearing what Candace was up to, and was glad her work brought her through Kabul so often.

  The shadows from the branches of the pomegranate tree in the center of the concrete courtyard grew shorter as the sun rose in the morning sky. By now the tree struggled to bear fruit, and what little it did manage to produce was small and sour. The tree had to be as old has Halajan herself, growing tall in this spot from the days when the property was just an
empty lot, a place where she and Rashif would play as children. How could they have ever imagined, back then, where their lives would take them? It had been no surprise, so long ago, that their young love was not meant to be, and that they had both been married off to others by their families. But finding each other again after so many years, after they had each been widowed, was almost a miracle. Six years they spent with barely a word between them—even the slightest acknowledgment in public was strictly forbidden by tradition—the only communication written in ink on the pages of the letters Rashif slipped into her hand every Thursday at his shop in the Mondai-e. She’d quickly hide the envelopes in the folds of her chador—if the letters fell into the wrong hands there would be a terrible shame brought upon her family. Her collection grew to hundreds of letters, all remaining unread until the day Yazmina innocently came across one of them, and then discovered Halajan’s other secret: Halajan couldn’t read. She smiled now, just thinking of the words she’d first heard in Yazmina’s voice. I am dreaming of seeing your eyes, Rashif had written, and had called her my dear, always signing off with Love, your Rashif. And now they were married. That, she thought, was the true miracle. It was the influence of Rashif himself, and the love of Yazmina, that had lured her son Ahmet off his strict traditionalist path, opening the door for Rashif to become her husband. For in Afghanistan, a woman whose husband dies leaving her with a son can only remarry if her son, the eldest male member of the family, arranges it.

  And that had been just the beginning of the changes in Ahmet. Before Rashif and Yazmina had come into his life, it seemed as though his only ambition had been to remain as the chokidor for the coffeehouse. Halajan had encouraged him over and over to become something bigger, to go to Germany, perhaps, to join his older sister Aisha at the university there. But Ahmet had made it his mission to protect and take care of her, like the good Afghan son he thought he should be. How proud she was that he was now finally going to the university here in Kabul, and even prouder that he was starting to open his eyes, and his heart, to a world beyond that of the fundamentalists.