Ashes and Light

by Karen L. McKee

  He looked down at his body. “How bad?”

  “Bad.”

  He closed his eyes and swore. “I need to get out of here.”

  As if the needs of a kofr mattered. Khadija focused on her work, but felt the weight of his gaze, knew she was too aware of his hard body under her hands had too much knowledge of the hidden parts beneath his clothes. No innocent, she. She pulled away, but if anything that was worse. She needed something to distract her.

  “You’re the enemy of the Afghan people,” she said as she rummaged through the pack once more.

  He snorted and winced.

  “Be with those who mix with God as honey blends with milk…” he murmured.

  Khadija glanced at him, momentarily disconcerted. It was something her father would say.

  “Rumi was an Afghan, though his life took him elsewhere.”

  “As am I,” he whispered. Then he went still. “They come.”

  His eyes closed, his body suddenly limp beside her in a convincing show of unconsciousness. Khadija turned towards the tunnel. Tell them he was awake? She was no conspirator with this man.

  The same Afghani carried a steaming bowl into the cavern. He set the water down at the entrance and left without a glance in her direction.

  She dipped water to wash the wound, then washed the scalpel and turned back to her patient. There was nothing for it. She had to work with what she had.

  Michael Bellis’s gaze met hers as he caught her wrist again—so tight her fingers turned white. There was distrust—and so many questions in his eyes and—and a plea?

  She yanked loose. “It’s my help or slow death. Your choice.”

  That grin again, as his gaze bore into her.

  “I think—you would prefer my death.”

  His voice broke as he tried to sit up and she resented the fact he’d read her mind.

  A death for a death. It would be easy to plunge the scalpel to its hilt and finish the job. She could imagine the blood spray. Its warmth on her face and hands and the way that pale gaze would fade to emptiness.

  “I’ve been ordered to save you.”

  Was that regret in his eyes? Certainly it matched the regret she felt.

  “Then do what you have to.”

  His fists ground into the earth. His hands were broad, the fingers long and fine—not a soldier’s hands. More like the hands of an artist. They were so large compared to hers, the flesh toughened by years of labor.

  In Afghanistan?

  Had he helped prop up the puppet-king, Daoud—only to remove Western aid so the Russians could put in their man? He was old enough. It was the type of thing Amrikaayi would do. That was when the worst of the trouble had begun—at least that’s what her father said. And that led to where Afghanistan was today. Her anger gave her resolve.

  “The wound’s badly infected. I’m going to drain it.” Her scalpel slashed the livid entry wound, but found no satisfaction as Michael Bellis jerked. Only his fingers scrabbled in the dry cave earth. Viscous yellow-green fluid gushed out as Khadija excised the exit wound. The stench teared her eyes, but Michael only mouthed Rumi.

  “I died a mineral and became vegetable; from vegetable I died and became animal. I died an animal and became man. Then why fear death? Next time I will bring forth wings like angels; after that, who can say what I’ll become.”

  His voice was less than a whisper, yet she found comfort in the ancient prayer. In death, Yaqub would become an angel. Would it be so for her?

  Michael Bellis’s eyes were closed, his recitation stopped and his breath came in shallow gasps. Even his poetry had escaped him, it seemed.

  “I’ll clean the wound as best I can,” she said. “I don’t have the equipment to do it properly.” His hungry eyes flicked open, but all his strength seemed to have otherwise fled.

  She poured the stale-dated disinfectant into the still-steaming water, and found an unopened syringe. This was going to hurt like a demon, but he deserved it. She used the syringe to flood the wound with water.

  Michael Bellis gave a strangled cry that ended as quickly as it had begun. His back arched. His fist came up, then slammed into the earth. His eyes caught hers, then closed, leaving Khadija shaking.

  Those damnable hungry eyes. They had looked at her as if he expected her—no, wanted her—to—to help him die. But worse was the trust she had seen. Even though they were enemies and always would be, for some reason he trusted her. Didn’t he know only Hashemi’s order made her help him? Didn’t he realize it was only so he could reveal his secrets?

  That was the reason.

  Wasn’t it?

  Chapter 15

  Had it been a dream? A different dream—one without the screaming. A different kind of nightmare, more like.

  The stone lay rough under Michael’s cheek. Pain throbbed in his body. Each breath caught his side, but: I welcome difficulty as a friend. I joke with torment and prepare myself to know the sweetness that follows grief.

  Usually the recitations gave him strength, but now the thoughts tremored, just as his body did. Just let him die.

  No. He could not—yet. There was the message. Soon. His arms were no longer bound and that gave him a chance. He had to get his warning out.

  He kept his eyes closed, though the darkness of the cell—cave—grave—told him no one was present. No sound but his breathing, the trickle of stone fall nearby. How long had he been here? He’d tried to keep track of the days, but in the darkness it was impossible. Only the coming of Hashemi told of the passage of time, and that could be any time at all.

  It was like his enemy floated somewhere outside of time, an apparition that brought questions and torment. So far it had not broken Michael, but with each day and his weakening body, he wondered if he had the strength to hold on. And in the West the clocks ticked, the calendar of days marched past, and….

  Soon. Urgency filled him.

  Antiseptic scent and the feel of cool air on his chest made him think of a woman. Had she been here? In his dream, gentle hands had pulled him back from the dark places he walked since the rough Jeep ride from the Wakhan.

  They had brought him—somewhere. On the transfer from the vehicle he thought he smelled the scents of sheep, cooking fires, and cedar, and had heard the rushing of wind and running water. But there were many rivers in Badakhshan—five rivers fed the Amu Darya in these parts. He could be anywhere in one of the strongholds of the Hashemi’s jihad.

  Had she truly been here?

  He inhaled. Antiseptic, yes, but something more. Something—feminine. A light, reviving scent he remembered, like fresh coriander and citrus.

  His mind sorted the scent, reveled in some purpose, and landed on a recollection. Shampoo. He had last smelled it at Mohammed’s clinic. It was a Western shampoo she must have brought from London.

  Khadija. That was the face in his dreams. Those wide, green-flecked eyes and that striking face with its strong jaw and full lips. Those eyes so filled with strength and distrust. Yet she’d treated him with the quiet competence of a skilled physician. Odd—she’d denied such skill to her father. How the hell had she come here?

  A slight sound and a glimmer of light filled the tunnel. Michael feigned unconsciousness. It was too damn easy.

  Red light glowed through his eyelids. Footsteps paused. They came closer and Michael tensed. Overpower whoever this was, he’d be free. He had surprise on his side.

  The footsteps stopped beside him and he heard the whisper of cloth as the person moved. Michael rolled to his knees and opened his eyes. Hashemi! Kill him!

  Michael lunged upward.

  Ignore the pain, but dammit, his body didn’t move. His fist was too slow. Pain as he grabbed for Hashemi. More pain as Hashemi’s knee found Michael’s face.

  His legs—disobeyed as if they belonged to another. His feet were leaden lumps. The cave—tilted.

  Michael toppled sideways and a booted foot found his gut. More pain. Bile in his mouth. The world slipping, slipping awa
y. No! He had to be aware. It was the only way to be sure he did not tell them things. The world steadied—a world where Hashemi stood over him, a gun held casually in his hand.

  “I see you feel ready to continue our conversations. That is bloody good, Michael. I’m glad.”

  He called down the tunnel, and an Afghani Michael had come to know as Farhad arrived. Michael knew what was to come and his mouth went dry. His gaze locked on Hashemi. Remember the Arab’s face. Track him forever and kill him for all he has done.

  Too weak to fight, Michael could only twist in Farhad’s hands as he was dragged to the blood-encrusted bench and trussed on his back. His arms were tied below the slats, his legs bound to the wood, his chest and abdomen exposed even as he glared useless defiance.

  Forget the agony in his side, the reopening of the small oozing wounds on his chest. Focus on Hashemi.

  The Arab stood over him.

  “Michael,” he said softly, reasonably, his Oxford English so strange in the room. “How long it was I wanted to meet you. Ever since the night I heard your name.”

  He smiled. “We know you Amrikaayi work with The Doctor. We know you undermine the righteous force of Islam, but we will cleanse this country of you. You know I bring pain. This is your chance to escape it. Tell us what we want to know and release will follow.”

  Michael clamped his mouth shut against temptation to speak the real name of the man who had led the Afghani resistance to the Taliban. Hold to anger. Don’t converse. One word could lead to another. One name to another until all his secrets lay spilled on the floor along with his blood.

  Anything he said would only increase the river of blood across Afghanistan. He thought of the men and women lost to the Russians and Taliban. What difference had their deaths made, had his efforts made, if he told?

  Maybe if he hadn’t come, if America hadn’t interfered with the tribal factions, the country would have reached equilibrium by now. Maybe, though he doubted it. Maybe Hashemi was right—he, Michael, the Amrikaayi, all the interfering foreigners—were the source of the problem.

  He looked up at Hashemi and the release the Arab promised.

  To be free of the burdens this life entailed. Mohammed Siddiqui would say the only way to be free was to surrender to the burdens, to show Allah you accepted and still found the strength to live compassionately and with love. That was living as Allah and the Prophet lived. That was when love would find you. Michael had been in-country too long. He knew too much. After all the things he had done, there was no love in this world for him. There was only this mission and emptiness. Michael strained against his bonds.

  Soon.

  Hashemi shook his head.

  “Listen to logic, Michael. You will tell me. It is only a matter of time and the only question is what remains behind when I’m done. I can wound you and maim you and heal you so I can wound you again. I can ask these questions forever. It can be a hard process, or an easy one. It’s your choice. Your blood makes no difference—to me.”

  Michael knew the truth of the words. That was why Khadija had come—to heal him so he could be tortured again. He had not thought Mohammed’s daughter held that capacity for evil.

  Stay focused on his task. Stay focused on emptiness.

  The Arab shrugged.

  “Aah well. To work then.” He nodded and Farhad, hands hidden inside thick rubber gloves, dragged the long coils of battery wire to Michael.

  His body cringed on its own as Farhad sparked the wires over his body. His mind screamed his protest, but he held his mouth closed, held himself still.

  A stone I died…. Let death come, and peace.

  No—he had to get the message out!

  “Tell me the name of The Doctor!”

  The wires touched down and Michael lost his words—himself—in a landscape of pain.

  Chapter 16

  Mohammed Siddiqui held lightly to Khadija’s arm as she led him along the echoing corridors of Feyzabad’s Hospital. The stink of human waste filled his nose.

  Ahmad Mali Khan had left them to take a phone call. With the echoes it was as if they were alone in the world. Would that it were so. Then perhaps he would know how to heal this chasm that separated him from his daughter.

  Even Khadija’s arm seemed so far away.

  “Khadija? What do you see?” He felt her stiffen slightly, her pace quicken.

  “Not London Hospital.” Disgust in her voice, then silence again. It was as if she could barely stand to speak with him.

  “Tell me. You are my eyes.”

  A sigh, then: “The wards are clean, but the walls are cracked. The tile lifts everywhere. There are cockroaches in the kitchens. Flies get into the patient’s trays. The equipment at the nursing stations is broken. There is nothing on the supply shelves but what we brought with us, and—you smell it—the ammonia is enough to choke on.”

  He squeezed her wrist. “Not what you see in a proper British hospital.”

  No sign she’d heard. Just their quiet footfall. Her voice had brought her close for one precious moment, but her silence set her as far away as when she was in London. Farther, even.

  At least then, their letters had spoken of their affection, had told him of her life. Now Khadija had become a foreign creature—as if a stranger had come home to him. He had missed something in her letters and the realization made him feel so helpless. A father should not be helpless.

  “I fear this trip has been difficult for you.” He heard the rustle of her burka, felt the slight hesitation in her step and each hesitation broke his heart anew.

  “I’m fine.” Such brittleness in her voice.

  “Your voice shakes as if you’re tired. The trip was long.”

  “The trip was fine.”

  “Then… what is it? Pishogay, we used to talk about everything. Now we barely speak.”

  “I was a child then. Now I’m a woman. I focus on my duties and your question. This place is a mess. They must lose more people to sepsis than to injury or illness. It’s like we’ve stepped back a hundred years. And my name is Khadija, father. I’m no longer Pishogay.”

  It was the final rejection and left him empty.

  He had always called her Pishogay. It was their joke, a name given of a father’s special affection. When she pulled her arm from him, he was too alone in the darkness. He wanted to reach for her, but was afraid he would find her gone.

  “The foreigners—they put money into battles and forget hospitals or helping our people earn a living. They don’t care about the people.”

  The fatigue and finality in her voice said these words had been bitten back for many days, but he could not tell her how she was wrong. He could not chance another barrier. Only gentleness would show her the error of her ways.

  “The foreigners funded this journey.”

  Even spoken softly, he regretted how his words seemed to hang like a challenge. He knew Khadija would treat it like a vendetta. She’d become so strident in her views.

  “It’s their money that funds the supplies we brought. It’s their money that sends the foreign doctors here.”

  “As usual, you side with them. How can you, after Yaqub, father?”

  He caught a bit of burqa fabric before the wave of strangeness swept her totally away.

  “Pishogay—Khadija—you must listen! Please listen. You used to be able to hear the other side of things.”

  He found her hand and felt the tension in her thumb, her palm. She wanted to pull away, wanted to abandon him. He would not lose her!

  “The foreigners can do things we can’t. Think of the women, Khadija. Many have ailments like Ahmad Mali Khan’s daughter. Many die in childbirth because there are only male doctors. The foreigners don’t hold with that. Surely you want the women to get help.”

  “So you’d have foreign men touch our women?”

  There was ice in her question. Since when had she become so strident about Islam?

  “What have you become, father? The Law says that wome
n are to be with their fathers and their husbands. They are not for other men. That…is sin!”

  Her voice held such loathing and so much pain. He wanted to pull her to him, take her in his arms, stroke the fear out of his child, but he knew this time he could not. Her hand was too rigid. Her breath was too quick. She was ready to run, ready to pull away and never come back.

  He could not chance that.

  “I… I feel like the barest breeze, the puff of my breath, could send you from me,” he said. He bowed his head. “Let’s speak of this no more.”

  Chapter 17

  The pale sunlight through a warped hospital window placed lines on her father’s face Khadija hadn’t seen before. Were those scars around his eyes? Certainly there were shadows under them and a slope of sorrow to his lips.

  She wished she could help him understand that his ways were old. He failed to see what was happening to their country. To allow foreign doctors to touch Afghani women—what was Papa thinking?

  Finally he grasped her arm lightly and started down the barren hallway towards the operating theater. He seemed to have lost weight on this journey. She would need to make sure he ate more. She had to care for him, protect him, and for that she would deal with Michael Bellis.

  It had been two days since she had been there and she had said nothing to her papa. He would not approve of her actions. She kept telling herself it didn’t matter, nor did it matter that the Amrikaayi was her father’s friend. What mattered was saving her people from a dishonorable fate.

  Michael Bellis held information Hashemi needed to cleanse Afghanistan. So the Amrikaayi had to live and that required antibiotics. His life would be traded for the information she needed.

  A full course of ampecillin would probably do it. Or some of the chloramphenicol her father had brought north for the hospital. It had been unloaded their first day here.