Skelly worked a few hours more, sketching a detailed outline and a few conclusions, all of it in longhand on the broad yellow pages of a legal pad. His top remaining questions were on the last page, starred and underlined. He was so close. Then he pocketed his pencil and packed away the notebooks, slinging his satchel across his shoulder and strolling out the door.
By now it was midafternoon. There was still no sign of Najeeb, and with each minute the man’s absence seemed more ominous. There was also no sign of Najeeb’s father, or his uncle Aziz, or even the shadowy Karim. In fact, no one seemed to be around either the compound or the town but a few old men and small boys.
The place was almost spooky in its silence, oddly reminiscent of a Sudanese town where Skelly had once sat around with a hut full of women and children, anxiously awaiting the return of a raiding party. There was the same air of impending judgment, as if everyone of importance was off somewhere else, determining the future.
But here even the old fellows carried guns. It was apparently part of their wardrobe—kameez, sandals, blanket, turban and Kalashnikov.
Skelly realized that he craved news. He hadn’t listened to the BBC in days, ever since losing his portable shortwave along with his laptop and the rest of his luggage in the ambush. For all he knew, the Taliban was already on the run. He wondered if the Razaq story had gotten out, and how it was playing. Anything might have happened.
He decided to again test his escort’s English—the man was lurking just down the corridor of the hujera—and he tore out a page from his legal pad and scribbled the word “Najeeb.” Then he realized that if the man read at all, his letters would be in Pashto, or Urdu, which to Skelly looked just like Arabic. So he crumpled the paper and tried a few words aloud, but got only stares in response.
This was hopeless. He decided simply to begin walking, to see what would happen. He left the verandah without a problem, strolling beneath the wall of the housing compound. As he approached the compound’s iron gate, his escort drew near, taking hold of his arm and firmly but not belligerently steering him away. Perhaps they feared he would stumble into a group of uncovered women. Fair enough.
Next, Skelly turned onto the path leading toward the village, scanning the streets ahead for signs of telephone wires. Twenty feet along the hand grasped him again.
Skelly turned, smiling, but drew only an impassive nod. His escort looked to be in his seventies, although from experience with other Pashtun men Skelly realized the man might actually be a contemporary, wrinkled and dried by hard living and the relentless sun. These hills were not engineered for graceful aging, nor was the lifestyle.
He tried another path with some success until it, too, turned toward the village, and the arm steered him away. He felt like a sheep being herded by a border collie, nudged this way and that. But finally he found a footpath heading away from town toward a small rise that might at least offer a vantage point for the surrounding countryside.
The old man didn’t seem to mind, and Skelly began to worry more that his guard would simply disappear. He recalled Najeeb’s advice that he not try to leave the clan’s territory on his own. Perhaps he would unwittingly cross some nearby boundary, prompting the old fellow to shoot him. But it seemed safe to at least go up the hill, which looked like a climb of only a few hundred yards.
Looks were deceiving. It was a half mile or more to the summit, and Skelly was panting and thirsty by the time they got there, skirting a dust devil as it swirled down the slope. But the view was worth it. He sat on a large stone, taking in the sights while the old escort kept his feet.
Judging by the path of the sun, he supposed that Peshawar lay off to the right, well beyond a series of low hills. Straight ahead across a widening plain he could just make out a narrow track, where a truck inched along before a tiny contrail of dust. Behind Skelly was an even higher bluff, which would probably require a half day’s climb and a full canteen.
The most interesting view was down to the left, back toward the village. From his current elevation he could see past Bagwali, across rolling countryside to a second village that was now just visible beyond yet another stony hill. He figured the other town was no more than five miles away.
It was too distant to hear any noises from the place. In fact, there were no sounds up here except the distant bleating of sheep and the rasp of his breathing. His old escort seemed to have hardly broken a sweat.
Ten minutes later Skelly decided he had seen all he wanted. It was time to head back to the hujera and round up another pot of tea. Then a crackling noise like distant fireworks rolled across the plains. His escort snapped to attention, and together they gazed into the distance. The old man pointed toward the far village, muttering something in Pashtun. “Alzara,” he said. “Alzara.” Perhaps that was the name of the place.
It now sounded as if a full-fledged battle was in progress, small-arms fire punctuated by deep thumps from what must have been RPG rounds. On a hunch, Skelly tugged at his escort’s sleeve. The man seem transfixed by the noise, as if it might be encoded with a message. When Skelly finally got the man’s attention he pointed toward the sounds and said, “Najeeb?”
The old fellow nodded eagerly, as if Skelly had just provided the answer to an important riddle.
“Najeeb. Yes!”
Then the escort pointed toward the town, and as another deep thump echoed through the hills, said evenly, “Najeeb gone. Najeeb gone.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A FEW HOURS EARLIER, Daliya was sitting in yet another office, getting nowhere fast. A nervous woman named Allison didn’t seem to even want her there, much less out on the streets of Alzara.
“You just don’t do that here,” she insisted.
“Karen Wilkins said I could.”
“Karen doesn’t have to live here.” And Karen, who at midafternoon had driven Daliya from Jamrud on a rutted lane barely wider than a goat path, had just departed. That left Allison Clymer in charge, and she was making it clear that Karen’s opinion didn’t count for much here at the Pakistan Women’s Network’s Alzara clinic for women and children. But that didn’t stop Daliya from invoking the name one last time.
“Karen said it wasn’t as restrictive here for women as it is in Bagwali.”
“Please,” Allison said, holding out a hand in warning and practically coming out of her chair. “Don’t say the name of that village so loud here. There’s a lot of trouble between the two places. A lot of rumors lately. Saying it aloud will only make people suspicious of you.”
Daliya had indeed noticed a few heads turn her way when she’d said “Bagwali,” although she couldn’t say whether they were shocked or angered, because even indoors nearly every head remained covered by a veil or a burqa. There were perhaps a dozen women in all, seated on benches with babes in arms and infants underfoot. The men who’d brought them waited outside the open door, where loud music blared from a shop on one side, and the air was heavy with the scent of popcorn and frying meat.
Daliya had thought she knew what to expect in a place like Alzara. She had traveled by taxi through some of the poorest and most clogged streets of Rawalpindi, where she’d always turned up her nose to the reigning squalor, noise and confusion. And if her months in Peshawar had taught her anything it was to stop being such a snob about people who got a little grimy by having to claw their way through life.
But this place was the roughest and most unseemly she’d seen yet, and not only because of the dirt, the mounds of garbage and the general frontier scruffiness. The men carried enough weaponry to start a small war, and they’d stared through the truck window at Karen and her with icy, offended glares.
Daliya had also expected that it wouldn’t be too difficult to arrange some sort of transport to neighboring Bagwali, rivalry or not. Her unlikely run of success during the past several days had taught her— incorrectly, as it turned out—that persistence and ingenuity could overcome all obstacles, cultural or otherwise. But as far as this testy woman Allis
on was concerned, Daliya would have had more luck planning an afternoon stroll up Mount Everest than a five-mile ride to Bagwali.
“Look, it just can’t be done. Maybe on some days you could take a little walk in that direction, with an armed guide from one of the neutral clans, and by sticking to the side trails. But today you’d be lucky to even make it around the block. Even fat old Malik Jamil has been lying low, and that’s never a good sign.”
“Who?”
“The local warlord, Jamil Rafik-Khan, a Shinwari clan leader. Lives outside the village but keeps a hujera at one end of town. He usually puts in at least one appearance a day, a sort of grand tour every afternoon to allow the great unwashed to gaze upon his regal bearing.”
“You don’t sound impressed.”
“He’s a thief and a scoundrel. Skims half our supplies and generally makes my life miserable. He’s the main reason none of these women you see here came without an escort. Him and his thugs. And none of these ladies would even dare go anywhere near”—she paused, lowering her voice—“Bagwali. Didn’t you see all the men out in the streets with guns?”
“Aren’t they always like that?”
“They are. But there are more of them than ever. They’ve been trickling in for the last two days from farms and other villages. Only a few dozen more than usual, but here that means something. A feud. A battle. Something bad, and soon, and you don’t want to be caught in the middle of it.”
“Something to do with Bagwali?”
“Please.” She again raised her hand like a Stop sign. “None of the women seem to know for sure. But they’ve been gossiping about it. There’s a jirga tonight, some sort of war council. A lot of them are keeping their children indoors. Believe me, the streets are usually filthy with the creatures.”
Such a nice way to describe the people she was supposed to be helping. Daliya couldn’t help wondering if she, too, had ever sounded like that, nattering among her friends in Islamabad. It would probably be easy to burn out here, amid all this need and despair.
“Well, risky or not, you can’t stop me from going out that door,” Daliya said, speaking more bravely than she felt.
“I can’t, but they can. All those men with guns. Once you’re in the streets you’re at their mercy, and I’m taking no responsibility for you. Understood?”
“But Karen said . . .”
“Karen.” Allison spat the name like a cherry pit, the weary disdain of someone whose decisions had been countermanded one too many times. “Karen doesn’t know the half of it. Karen considers Jamrud hazard duty, and she’s what, three hundred yards from the main highway? Eleven miles from Peshawar? Jamrud’s a stroll through Knightsbridge compared to this place. If Karen thinks you can go for a nice little walk in Alzara, maybe she’d like to be your escort. If this were just any day, I might even squire you around in mufti. But as you can see I’ve got eleven women with babies to treat and only two hours left to do it.”
“Then I’ll just get out of your hair.”
“Wait.” The hand went up again, this time in supplication. Allison quickly scanned the room while flipping a strand of hair off her forehead, a harried gesture that made Daliya regretful for the intrusion.
“Go in our truck, then,” Allison said finally, heaving a great sigh. “I’ll send Muhammad with you. He won’t like it. It’s beneath his manhood playing nursemaid. But the truck’s got our logo on the side, which still counts for something, thank God. And he’ll just have to get used to it if he wants to earn his rupees.”
“Where will he take me?”
Allison shrugged.
“Around the block. Through the bazaar. Up one end of town and down the other. Which will last all of a half hour if he drives slowly enough. Not much of a tour. But since I don’t really know what you’re looking for other than a way out of town, it will at least give you a feel for the place, and show you what you’re up against. Maybe it will even convince you to just go back home.”
Back home. The words dropped heavily to the base of Daliya’s stomach, and despite having been on the verge of doing just that, she resolved to keep trying, even if it meant a little more wandering, and even if she wasn’t yet sure what she would be looking for. A vantage point, perhaps? Someplace where she could scan the horizon for roads and paths that might lead to Bagwali? She realized with despair that she didn’t even know which direction to look in, and she felt too embarrassed to ask. Truth be told, what Daliya needed most right now was luck, but she knew you almost never got lucky by sitting around waiting. Luck had to be ambushed, taken by surprise, and for the moment this offer of a driver was her only hope for doing so.
“All right, then. I’ll ride with Muhammad.”
MUHAMMAD GRUMBLED from the moment Daliya stepped into the cab of the small white truck. He wasn’t used to ferrying around women in local dress unless they were seated in the back, on the open flatbed. But Allison had ordered him, and Allison paid him every Friday. So, this woman in the blue burqa whose name he didn’t even wish to know had eased onto the seat, forcing him to prop his Kalashnikov in the middle, right next to the stick shift and hand brake. If any of his friends saw him and disapproved, he’d tell them it was for a huge bonus, a number that would make their heads spin.
Daliya was appalled anew by Alzara’s poverty. The children caught the worst of it—and if a lot of them were being held indoors then Allison was right, because there were swarms of them nonetheless. They were grimy and barefoot, garments in tatters and hair matted. Occasionally she spied a woman’s face in a high window, up near the rooftops where wood smoke poured into the endless blue sky. Otherwise there were no females to be seen older than the age of ten. Men with guns stood at every corner, some with grenade launchers, extra shells dangling from their other hands like soft drinks, swaying as they gestured in conversation.
After fifteen minutes of what seemed to be the same one-block circuit, repeated three times, Daliya demanded some variety.
“Where’s this hujera?” she asked. “This place where Jamil Rafik-Khan lives.”
“Busy place,” Muhammad said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “Too many people there.”
“Can’t be any busier than this.” A donkey cart had halted in front of them. Waves of men poured around it like a stream around a boulder. “Take me there.”
“It is too busy there. Too much happening.” Did she detect a note of fear?
“Allison said I should see it. Just once.”
Muhammad cursed, waving his hand again as if shooing a pigeon. But invoking the magic name of his paymaster seemed to have done the trick, and half a block later he turned up a side street that angled toward the end of town. The crowd thinned until they approached a cluster of low buildings beneath eucalyptus trees near the end of the lane. On one side were a few shops. On the other was a ramshackle house, where Daliya again saw blue-covered faces in an upstairs window, gazing out upon the world below. And there was much to gaze at here, because right next door was a large, low building surrounded by a mud fence. Six armed men stood out front near an iron gate. A line of vehicles along the curb included a long black truck with an enclosed rear, of a make she had never noticed before.
“The hujera,” Muhammad said quickly, flicking a hand toward the fenced-off building. He seemed to want to get out of here as fast as possible. The armed men were glowering, stooping for a better look inside the aid agency’s truck. But just as it seemed they were in the clear, two red trucks rounded a curve toward them on the narrow lane ahead. Muhammad, who had driven aggressively among the children and the horse carts, now pulled meekly to the shoulder to let them pass. It made Daliya wonder if the local malik—what had his name been? Jamil Rafik-Khan, that was it—was inside one of them.
“Wait,” she said, as Muhammad prepared to ease back onto the road. She wanted to see the show, too, just like the women in the house next door, but Muhammad kept rolling. “Wait!” she repeated. “One minute, that’s all. Or I tell Allison.”
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He mumbled something under his breath, but stopped the truck. Daliya looked back to see that the red trucks had pulled up in front of the hujera. The six men who’d been eyeing Muhammad and her were now fully absorbed in welcoming the arrivals with hugs and hand-shakes. Leading the newcomers was a tall turbanned man who, judging by the reception, must be Jamil Rafik-Khan.
“Now?” Muhammad said, easing off on the brake.
“Just wait!” she said. “One second more.” The hairs on the back of her neck prickled beneath the burqa, and she found herself glancing sidelong through the mesh so it wouldn’t be obvious she was staring. Such was the malignant nature of the man’s power, she supposed, or maybe some of Muhammad’s fear had rubbed off.
A second man in a white turban, big and loud, and with a bushy brown beard, also got a warm reception. The next pair to emerge from the trucks—two men pressed together, as if one were holding on to the other—moved quickly through the welcoming party without word or gesture. But that wasn’t what caught her eye. The fellow who seemed to be in tow turned slightly as the pair edged through the crowd, and the flash of his profile in the sunlight of early afternoon was electrifying. The giveaway, however, was his eyes, as familiar as old friends, and even in the brief glance they seemed sadder than she had ever seen them. But why would Najeeb be here, in the heart of what was supposedly enemy country? Surely she was mistaken, but she had to find out.
“Wait here,” she said, a foolhardy plan of action taking shape. She knew that if she paused to reconsider she would never go through with it, so she quickly unlatched the door, stepping into the street as the incredulous Muhammad turned toward her.
“What are you doing?” he hissed, still too frightened to shout. “Are you crazy?”
“Yes,” she said, shutting the door in his face.
She crossed the street diagonally, rushing straight for the house next to the hujera, the one where she’d seen the women upstairs. She had to restrain herself from breaking into a run, and she didn’t dare glance back at Muhammad, although she hoped he wouldn’t drive away. Two of the armed guards perked up, frowning at her, and she watched them through the burqa out of the corner of her eye. If they made a move, she would run.
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