Veiled Freedom

by Jeanette Windle

Amy stopped short as the newcomer deposited the cardboard box on the ground so that she caught sight of his face—and limp. It wasn’t Steve but Phil. “What a nice surprise. Wajid told me there were expats at the gate. I didn’t realize it was you.”

  Phil straightened up with a grin. “We’re in a bit of crisis mode, so Steve couldn’t come himself. But he wanted to make sure these got to you this morning. Something about your Eid celebration.”

  Had Steve really been unable to break away himself, or had he just chosen to avoid further contact with Amy? She swallowed back disappointment.

  A pair of men in security uniforms finished ferrying in other boxes and bags as fast as they could move back and forth from the SUV outside the gate.

  Phil turned to Amy. “I guess that’s it. Do you need help to handle all this? Some of those boxes will require assembling.”

  Despite the courtesy of his offer, Amy could see from the haste of his speech and glance at his watch that he was tamping down impatience. “No, I wouldn’t want to delay you any further. My assistant and the kids can help me. But I sure appreciate you taking time for all this. I can’t tell you how much this means to the children. Thank you.”

  The children abandoned their running to swarm over boxes and bags.

  Despite his hurry, Phil took time for another smile and a handshake. “My pleasure, really. I couldn’t be home for the holidays. Doing something for these kids makes my own seem not quite so far away.” He slapped an open palm against his forehead. “Oh, just a minute. There is something I’m forgetting.”

  Hurrying out the gate, Phil returned with another box, this one open. High-pitched yips told Amy what to expect even before he set it down. Scrabbling to climb out was a fluffy, roly-poly German shepherd puppy.

  “That’s from Steve. One of the K-9s had a litter, and he snagged the last one, a female. Figured your kids would enjoy her. And she’ll be a better guard than any barbed wire.”

  “Oh, she’s adorable.” Amy lifted the squirming animal beyond the children’s excited clutches. “But I don’t think we’d be able keep her. Dogs are unclean animals, our caretaker told me.”

  “Oh, but this isn’t a dog,” Phil responded, deadpan but with a twinkle in his eye. “It’s a gorg, a wolf. That’s a clean animal here.”

  Amy looked at him doubtfully, but just then Wajid ambled over to scratch the puppy behind an ear. “A gorg. I have long wished for one of these. I am told they are excellent guard animals. I will prepare a bed near mine to keep watch over it at night.”

  For the children at least, the puppy was all that was needed to complete a perfect feast day. Once the visitors were gone, Jamil helped with the packages. He hadn’t been available for story time the night before, leaving Amy to her own halting narration. So she’d braced herself this morning for explanations, though she wasn’t sure how to erase that anger she’d glimpsed earlier.

  It hadn’t proved necessary. Jamil displayed no lingering animosity as he returned with Rasheed from Eid services at the mosque to help distribute clothing, pile wood, and lift sheep onto spits. But neither remained any of the companionable partnership Amy had thought they’d developed these past weeks. It was as though Jamil had reverted to that silent shadow he’d been when Amy first hired him, offering no word or glance except those necessary to carry out his duties.

  Which didn’t keep him from making short work of instructions and diagrams as the children gleefully unpacked their treasures. Two portable goals were quickly assembled and dragged onto the playing field while Jamil turned his mechanical skills to an assortment of push trikes. One box held field hockey sticks, another Frisbees and deflated balls. There were crayons, markers, tubs of finger paints, and Play-Doh. Another box held kite makings. Safe, gentle children’s kites, not the lethal battle weapons Afghan kites could be with their metal- or glass-studded strings.

  Nothing personal that could be stolen or fought over, I told him. Amy hadn’t even thought Steve was listening, but Rev Garwood had said he’d followed Steve’s guidelines. How had a man without children of his own, who didn’t even believe in Amy’s mission here, read so exactly what she’d have chosen herself? And the “wolf,” which Rasheed had already looked over approvingly—Amy hadn’t needed Phil to tell her that was Steve’s astute thinking.

  No, she wasn’t going to let Steve’s contradictions, any more than Jamil’s continued aloofness, dampen the pleasure of this feast day. By the time Rasheed pronounced the sheep ready to lift from their spits, Amy had demonstrated how to throw a Frisbee and proved that even in long tunic and headscarf she could outscore the older boys in field hockey.

  Though the snow had melted, it was too cold to unroll the vinyl eating cloth outdoors, so the paneling between schoolroom and its neighboring salon was folded back to lay out a sumptuous feast. There were platters of saffron-hued pilau speckled with orange rind, grated carrots, and raisins. Others piled high with mantu and ashak, pierogi-style pastries stuffed with spiced meat and vegetable fillings. There was fried eggplant with yogurt sauce and potato-stuffed boulani pastries. Plastic basins overflowing with sticky puddings, melon slices, figs, and nuts. And of course, the roasted sheep.

  Amy had retained Becky’s DVD projector from yesterday, and when the feast was cleared away, the children worn-out from playing with their new treasures, she set up The Lion King on the schoolroom wall. Exhausted from being bounced from child to child, the puppy fell asleep in Farah’s arms.

  As Simba roared, Amy searched out her remaining staff with their own Eid gifts. For Rasheed, Amy had chosen a solar-powered radio too large for carrying around so Hamida might have opportunity to listen when the caretaker was off working. Maybe she’d even come across Christian broadcasts, beamed over the border through satellite feed. Nothing is impossible for you, God.

  Amy set aside a collection of Persian poetry for when Fatima returned to classes. Jamil and Wajid had received smaller solar-powered radios. For Jamil, Amy had added a full pocket Bible like the one she kept in her shoulder bag for daily prayer times. For just a moment as Jamil looked over the gifts, his aloofness slipped, and as once before, Amy caught a swift play of confusion and grief and longing across his face before he thanked her colorlessly and walked away.

  But he wasn’t allowed to escape so easily. Despite the treat of a movie, the children clamored for their customary story time. “The Eid story. Abraham and Ishmael.”

  Amy shook her head. “I don’t know that story as you tell it.”

  Though based on the Genesis account of Abraham obeying God’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac, the Quranic version replaced Isaac with Abraham’s illegitimate son Ishmael. To Christians, God’s supplying of a ram to take Isaac’s place was an image of the Son of God’s substitutionary sacrifice on the cross for their sins. In Islam, the emphasis was on every good Muslim’s willingness to sacrifice themselves to please Allah. Her Eid preparations had prompted Amy to do some digging on the Internet. She’d come away with more questions than answers.

  Why did the Quran change this particular biblical account so drastically? Had Muhammad, an Arab and descendant of Ishmael, been so desperate to be counted one of God’s chosen, he’d rewritten history itself to make his ancestor, his people, and not Israel, the original people of God? How had he missed so completely the truth that God’s grace and mercy, Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, cared not for ancestry or color or gender, but a yearning, seeking, repentant heart? Still, a feast day celebrating the local version was hardly the time or place to challenge it.

  “Paradise, then!” the children clamored. “Paradise!”

  “Paradise,” Amy agreed. This one she could tell herself. Retrieving the bright story boards, Amy began the now familiar phrases. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

  But when she finished, the children weren’t satisfied. It was Tamana who stood up to demand, “You promised to tell us what happened next. Why do we no longer live in the garden and play with the beautiful animals?”<
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  “I did promise, didn’t I?” Amy admitted. “But that story is a little sad. You don’t want to hear it tonight on Eid.”

  Yes, they did. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to gorge this bunch on so many unaccustomed goodies. The circle of bright eyes and small, eager faces were wide-awake and determined.

  Roya spoke up for the mothers. “If you do not mind, Miss Ameera, they will not sleep tonight until they have had their way.”

  “Fine. But I will need Jamil because I do not know the Dari well.”

  Jamil emerged from the shadows before Amy had to send a child for him, hunkering down beside her chair.

  “Okay, then, I told you how God made Adam and Eve. But I haven’t told you yet about Satan, the enemy of God. One day he took the form of a beautiful serpent and came to talk to Eve as she was walking near the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Do you remember what God told Adam and Eve about that tree?”

  The sadness of this narrative of human disobedience and paradise lost gripped Amy more than she read in the absorbed faces around her. This group was acquainted enough with human wrongdoing to accept it unquestioningly. It was Amy’s own distress that hastened to add, “But even though Adam and Eve had lost paradise and would no longer live forever, they or their descendants, God still loved them and forgave them. He made a sacrifice of an animal just like the Eid celebration today as a promise that someday a Savior would come from the seed of Adam and Eve who would bring forgiveness and restore paradise and eternal life to the human beings he had created. Best of all, because of this Savior, one day mankind would walk and talk with God again.”

  “Muhammad,” Tamana spoke up.

  The other children raised her statement in a chant. “Muhammad! Muhammad!”

  “No, not Muhammad,” Amy said as she felt unfriendly eyes on her. Sometime during her story, Rasheed had stepped unnoticed through the double doors from the main hallway into the schoolroom, and he was unsmiling, dark gaze hooded and watchful.

  Then Amy realized Rasheed wasn’t the only newcomer.

  “But that is another story for another day,” she finished firmly. Closing the story boards against an outbreak of protests, Amy hurried across the salon. “Eid mubarak, Soraya. But what are you doing here? I thought you were celebrating with your family today.”

  “Eid mubarak,” Soraya murmured, but she too was unsmiling, and Amy wondered fleetingly if her latest story had crossed some line until she saw that Soraya’s eyes were rimmed with red as well as the usual black kohl.

  As her housemate edged away from the released children into the hall, Amy followed to say quietly, “I wasn’t expecting you until Sunday. Is something wrong at home?”

  “I—yes. There has been a medical emergency. My family—they were hoping—I had hoped—they need to pay the hospital—I thought perhaps an advance on my salary—”

  The awkward jerkiness of Soraya’s speech was so uncharacteristic Amy stared at her, bewildered. “I’m sure we can—”

  But just then Soraya drew herself up to her full, stately height, a mixture of shame and defiance on her proud features. “No, it is not my family who requests. It is I. The bonus that is customary for Eid, I did not remember to pick it up before I traveled home, and because of the great need there, I felt it best to come for it immediately.”

  “Sure, of course, just one moment.” Amy was completely bewildered. As she sprinted up the staircase, she pulled her cell phone from her ever-present shoulder bag. Thankfully, Becky Frazer answered immediately.

  “Becky, I don’t know if I’m being conned, but was I supposed to give a salary bonus for Eid? Soraya’s here hinting for one.”

  “Oh, honey, are you saying you didn’t pay it? Yes, definitely. It’s what they call the thirteenth month salary, so they can all shop for Eid. Unless you paid the extra month for the Ramadan feast, in which case you can get by with less. But a lot of NGOs give both. After all, they can afford it.”

  The nurse’s dismay gave away the enormity of Amy’s mistake. “I did get them a gift, but what must they be thinking of me?”

  “Well, it’s still Eid, so it’s not too late,” Becky consoled. “They may be too polite to ask, but they’ll sure be expecting it.”

  Amy still had afghanis on hand from her New Hope Eid shopping. Quickly filling four envelopes, she slipped back downstairs. Reticent as Soraya was, only a serious crisis could have propelled her across town to accost her employer, and Amy felt absolutely terrible.

  “Forgive me for forgetting this yesterday with your other gift,” Amy said quietly, handing Soraya an envelope. “I am so sorry I made you come all the way back here.”

  Soraya’s expression lightened as she slid the envelope inside her tunic. “It is of no importance. Forgive me. If it were not for my family’s need, I would not consider disturbing your feast celebration.”

  Amy grabbed a fluorescent lantern to light Soraya’s way back to the gate. It was still two hours until curfew, but with the shortening days, night had already fallen, and Amy looked doubtfully down the dark street. The sounds of partying could be heard behind compound walls, but Amy spotted only a single man loitering among parked vehicles across the streets. Lifting the lantern high, she made out a silhouette of average height and stocky build.

  The man straightened up under her suspicious stare, and as he headed down the street and around the corner, Amy asked uneasily, “Are you sure you shouldn’t spend the night? It’s pretty dark out.”

  Soraya had not yet dropped her burqa into place, so Amy could see her shake her head. “No, no, my family is in need of my return.”

  “Then at least let Jamil take you home in the car.”

  Jamil had followed the two women to the gate, and Wajid was in the process of letting him into his sleeping quarters in the mechanics yard.

  “No, my family would never permit it. It is not so late. And look, the bus is coming now.”

  Sure enough, the sound of air brakes signaled an approaching city bus at the corner. Dropping her burqa into place, Soraya hurried to catch it. Jamil had turned to stare down the street where the loiterer had disappeared.

  As she watched to see Soraya safely aboard the bus, Amy called, “Jamil, that man who was over there, could you see if he was one of the men from the other night? I wonder if they’ve been released.”

  When Jamil shook his head, Amy dug into her shoulder bag. Jamil and Wajid had eaten the Eid feast with the men on Rasheed’s side, so Amy had been filming the New Hope feast herself. She pulled out the camera and handed it to Jamil.

  “Then would you mind taking this and keeping a bit of a lookout, just in case that man comes back? Maybe see if you can film him if he does? Then we can check if any of the women recognize him.”

  Jamil nodded as the camera disappeared into his vest.

  Then Amy handed him an envelope. “Oh, and here’s your Eid bonus.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Amy rushed back inside the gate. She still had two more envelopes to deliver. But she paused for a final stare after the bus, now departing with Soraya aboard. The fluorescent lantern had been full on her housemate’s face, and Amy had seen Soraya’s smile evaporate, a glance flicker to Amy as she’d dropped her burqa into place. Something in those dark eyes had been disturbingly similar to what Amy had glimpsed in Rasheed’s hooded glare.

  Was it dislike she’d seen there?

  Or guilt?

  Paradise lost.

  Jamil had lingered only briefly to carry out his employer’s directive. He too had watched the loiterer’s retreat and had seen what Ameera missed, a stocky shape boarding the bus as Soraya hurried over. Should he have told Ameera the man was no spy but her housemate’s lover?

  But no, he’d finished with such interference. Jamil walked through the vehicle gate. If only it were as easy to leave behind the tale Ameera had told tonight. But translating her words had burned them too firmly into his mind to dislodge. Her story of paradise given and lost was not in the book he
’d now read so many times he’d lost count. But it differed little from the versions mullahs recounted in schools and mosque. The Garden of Delight, which foolish mankind had tossed away, accessible now only to those successful in earning Allah’s favor and forgiveness.

  The mechanics yard was empty of travelers on this feast day. The snow was now gone underfoot, but the moon floated bright and high. Stars glittered against the night’s freshly washed backdrop. Their silver touched the swaying crowns of the orchard across the back wall so that they might have been a blurred mirage of a garden where men played with wild beasts and God walked with his creation.

  Paradise. Jamil longed for it so deeply it haunted his dreams. What was in those dreams, he could never be sure when he awoke. Greenness. Beauty. Lush vegetation like Ameera’s pictures, so different from the barren rock of much of his country. The dreams always evaporated with his waking like mist when sunlight hit the fields.

  Still, what he’d seen in his dreams didn’t matter. It was the assurance of paradise for which Jamil longed. The fear that in Allah’s absolute sovereignty and stern justice paradise was already lost to him haunted the nightmares that came with his dreams. For it was so much easier to attain hell than paradise. At least for such as he. The smallest fraction, an infinitesimal tipping of Allah’s scales toward death rather than life, condemnation rather than mercy, guaranteed his doom.

  To fail in carrying out the five pillars of Islam, in following the exact lifestyle of the prophet, in protecting the Quran from defilement—these were only a beginning. There were other worse things. Things that weighed the scales so far down in debt that no hope was left of tipping them back to Allah’s favor, if one prayed and fasted and offered every earning for the rest of one’s days.

  Ameera spoke so glibly of freedom in serving her prophet. Only it wasn’t freedom that offered paradise but truth. So assured the mullahs. With enough unswerving, submissive devotion to truth, there was, if never a certainty, at least the hope that in the divine will of Allah, who wrote a man’s destiny and tied it around his neck before he was ever born, paradise might be attained and hell’s fires averted.