by Gwen Florio
“It’s French,” said Farida. The word ran around the room, becoming two syllables on its journey. “Fer-enz.”
All the while, Maryam stood by beaming, full of pride. She gave an order and the women fell back, resuming their seats on the floor, except for one, barely out of her teens, who remained standing next to Farida. Farida belatedly recognized her as Gul’s younger sister Bibi. Gul had bought gifts for his whole family on their honeymoon trip to the old hill station of Murree, but he bought more for Bibi and her children than anyone else.
“We forget ourselves,” Bibi said. “She has had a long drive.”
Maryam clapped a hand to her face, then called toward the rear of the room. Servants appeared, bearing trays of food and more tea. The mass of women shifted to make a space for Farida, and a somewhat larger one for the food, which was placed on a piece of oilcloth, still stiff and new. Farida was accustomed to occasionally sitting on the floor while she ate. Still, in Islamabad, at least in the houses this large, many of the families had adopted the British custom of tables and chairs, as well as silverware. The women on either side of her began urging dishes upon her, scraping great heaps from the passing trays onto her plate until it was piled so high Farida wasn’t sure how she’d manage to eat without spilling the whole business. The women dipped their right hands into the food, conveying it to their mouths so expertly that not a grain of rice went astray. Farida scooped up a handful of pilaf, only to lose most of it down the front of her kameez.
Beside her, Bibi spoke in quiet, careful Urdu. “Like this.” She shaped rice into a ball with her fingertips and popped it into her mouth. Farida folded her fingers around a bit of rice. It crumbled against her palm. She glanced around to see if anyone noticed her incompetence. But the arrival of food seemed to have distracted the others from her presence. They stripped bits of lamb from meaty ribs with strong teeth, biting down on the bones to suck the marrow. Delicate hands, with fingernails polished in bright colors, glistened with grease. Purplish lipstick blurred onto chins. The air thickened with the mingled odors of spices and sweat. Her father’s words came back to her. “Those people, they are barbarians.”
Panic bubbled within her. She pressed her hand to the faint bruise on her cheek left by Alia’s slap until the pain made her flinch. She inhaled deeply and dipped her fingers into the rice on her plate, surprised at the satisfaction she felt upon forming it into a passable ball. But she soon stopped trying to eat everything that was given her, though her hosts mercilessly plied her with more, and then still more, until even her loose shalwar strained tightly around her waist. As the hours dragged on, she hoped for a respite but, if anything, the gathering grew more animated as harsh electric light replaced the daylight fading from the high windows.
“I cannot,” she protested as several gulab jamun, fried balls of spiced powdered milk, dripping with syrup, were placed on a new plate before her.
“Just eat a few.” Bibi glared. “Maybe you eat like this every day. Maybe it is nothing for you to turn away food.”
Farida had thought she might make a friend of the young woman but feared she had been too optimistic. “No, of course not.”
“But you push food away.” Bibi shoveled some kulche badami from her own plate onto Farida’s.
Farida put a weary hand to the cardamom-flavored almond cookies. A commotion outside the room saved her.
People ran, shouted. Tinny voices blared from a television. The door opened. Gul stood silhouetted. Women turned their faces away and pulled their dupattas over their heads.
“Mother. Bibi. Farida. All of you. Come quickly.”
The women moved, chattering through several hallways and into the main sitting room. There, they fell silent before a television so loud that its sound was distorted. Farida could not make out the words. The others seemed to grasp the situation before she did.
“Aiee,” someone next to her whispered. “There will be big trouble now for sure.”
Farida dodged from side to side, trying to see around people. Finally, she stood on her toes. The screen showed an urban skyline, plumes of smoke, two tall buildings. The view shifted. An airplane soared across the screen. Fire flashed orange from one of the buildings. Then, new scenes: the buildings again, smoke boiling up white and the towers disappearing, first one, then the other.
A collective gasp arose from the aunties.
Farida looked about. Bibi stood beside her, watching her rather than the television.
“Don’t you understand?”
Farida shook her head. “What is it?”
“Amrika. It has been attacked. Some people—mujahideen, I think—bombed them.”
Others whispered their horror as the towers fell again and again. All except for Nur Muhammed and, she realized, Gul. She looked toward Maryam, who eyed the men even more closely than she. Nur Muhammed said something to his son. Gul’s face went dark with emotion.
Farida sidled through the crowd until she stood behind her husband. “What is happening?”
She saw the assessment in his gaze and willed herself to stay calm.
“We are leaving Peshawar.”
“Oh.” She tried to disguise the emotion she felt. Surely, she would have gotten used to it, but she could not deny the relief flooding through her at the thought of returning to Islamabad and her family. Already, she was thinking of how Alia would laugh at her tales of the voracious aunties. She remembered that Gul’s father had ended the lease on the villa that the family had rented for the wedding. “Where will we stay now? Perhaps near my parents?”
Gul waited a long moment before he spoke again. “We are not going to Islamabad.”
Farida stepped back. “No.”
“Yes. We are going to Afghanistan. To Kabul. The Taliban are strong, but the Amriki are stronger. There will be a power struggle. My father will want to align himself with the winners. To do so, he must be there, talk with people, see things for himself.”
“No.” Already, she knew it was hopeless. “You are from the south, from Jalalabad. You told me so yourself. You have never lived in Kabul. What do you know of it? How will we survive?”
“What do you know? We lived in Kabul just before we left for Pakistan.” His words ran beneath the hubbub in the room. “You must never speak of that time. Not to me, not to my family. But now we must go there again. And quickly, to reestablish ourselves before the Amriki come. Look there.” He gestured toward the screen, where yet again, planes swooped and buildings fell.
“Do you really think they will let this go unpunished?”
Six
PHILADELPHIA, SEPTEMBER 2001
Liv rose late and unsettled.
She blamed scheduling—Martin taught afternoon classes on Tuesdays and she was working from home while shepherding a particularly demanding project—along with the torpor of a September morning. After fifteen years in the Philadelphia suburbs, the cloaking dampness of the heat still surprised Liv, who had never stopped missing the searing but mercifully brief season in her native Minnesota. It was a little past nine. Coffee. She needed coffee.
She poured herself a bowl of a cereal so lacking in taste that it made her believe its claim of healthfulness and, through force of habit, turned on the television. She muted the sound, mindful of Martin, who was still sleeping. The coffeemaker, set up the night before, hissed and burbled to fragrant life. She set the cereal aside, filled her mug, and welcomed functionality back into her synapses. Steam wreathed her face. Sweat pricked her hairline. She turned to the television.
A red banner at the bottom of the screen announced BREAKING NEWS. The anchor leaned toward the camera. Deep furrows plowed his forehead. Liv, her vision still sleep-blurred, squinted over the rim of her mug. The scene switched to a video of inky smoke pluming from a gashed skyscraper. The words on the banner came into focus.
The mug slipped from Liv’s fingers and shattered against the tile. Coffee scalded her bare feet. She registered the fact of the pain, of the jagged bits of porcela
in, of the need to step carefully. Too late. She tracked blood down the hallway to the bedroom, grabbed at Martin, and shook him.
“What the hell, Liv?” He sat up. “Are you all right? What happened to your foot?”
“Come. Now. Something’s wrong. Not with me. Maybe with air traffic control.” She fled back down the hall.
The breached hull of the Pentagon filled the screen. Martin, safe in slippers, kicked mug shards aside and folded her in his arms. “Nothing’s wrong with air traffic control.
“We’re under attack.”
* * *
Liv fielded the shrilling phone: the dean’s office, calling once to cancel classes, then again to announce a faculty meeting the following day. Both sets of parents: “No, we can’t see anything from here. New York is ninety miles away from Philadelphia. You know that.” One of Liv’s colleagues at the college library said a fellow researcher was attending a conference at Columbia. “Unless she’s playing hooky, it’s fine. It’s at the other end of the island. Yes, really.”
It rang and rang and rang. Someone’s cousin had been on one of the planes. Someone else’s son worked in one of the towers. Liv sought to submerge her dread beneath the effort of maintaining the same firm, detached voice she used with students who asked for last-minute help on their research papers.
“Liv, God.” A friend’s voice wobbled through the line. A birdlike object soared the length of the television screen. “Some of those people in the towers. They’re just showing it now. Do you see? Oh, Jesus God, there’s another.” Someone else flew from a tower window. Liv’s stomach heaved. She eased the telephone cord from the jack.
With the phone’s clamor stilled, the newscasters’ sepulchral voices echoed in the room. Late-morning sounds came separately through the open window. Their neighbor, unbelievably, was cutting his grass. The lawn mower, after a teeth-grinding time, clattered unevenly to a halt. Bumblebees droned heavily in the hollyhocks. A black-and-white dog lay in a patch of sidewalk shade, panting in noisy damp gusts.
Martin sat in a chair pulled close to the television, his bare knees nearly touching it. Like Liv, he hadn’t dressed and was wearing only his boxers and a light summer robe. He tapped at his laptop, glancing from its screen to the television. Liv stood and kneaded her fist against the stiffness in her hip. “Turn it off. I’ll get us some ice water and fix a cold plate.” She took an uneven step and put a hand on his shoulder.
He dug a knuckle against bloodshot eyes. Graying stubble patched his cheeks. “I just got an alert from one of my listservs. Massoud is dead.”
Liv tried to remember Massoud among the panoply of one-named characters in the obscure Central Asian countries comprising Martin’s specialty. When he’d chosen the field, it seemed a sure thing, the world in a lather over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Martin’s star flared bright and brief, illuminating conferences, speaking invitations, even a trip to Pakistan to interview Afghan refugees, all with the heady expectation of a better position at a university. But that unspoken promise vanished once the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. Martin found himself relegated to a quaint niche, unable to move beyond the suburban college where fierce battles over a dwindling endowment meant he’d never been able to return to the countries of his focus. One of those places had surely spawned this man, this “Massoud”? Liv prompted.
“A Northern Alliance commander in Afghanistan. The Lion, they called him. The Taliban feared him like no other. He’s in here.” He picked up the book from the end table. “Don’t you remember?”
Liv kept her counsel. Of course she’d read his dissertation—she’d helped with the research, after all—but retained nothing but the sense of gratitude she’d felt upon reaching the end.
“He was assassinated two days ago. You know what this means, don’t you?”
Liv waited for him to tell her.
“I have a better idea. Hand me the telephone. I need to call the newspaper and tell them what’s going on.”
On the screen, the towers yet again performed their slow-motion tumble into the boil of dust and debris. “Do you think they don’t know?” At his look, she plugged the phone back in.
Martin’s words trailed her into the kitchen. “Put me through to the newsroom. Yes, I know they’re busy. This is about the attack.” He wandered to the kitchen’s entrance. Liv felt his eyes upon her as she pulled cold cuts from the refrigerator and arranged them on a plate, slicing a tomato atop them. She opened the freezer and stood a moment in the rush of cool air before dumping ice cubes with a clatter into tall glasses.
“Liv, for God’s sake. Yes? Good. I’ll wait.”
Liv dropped a final cube into a glass and slammed the freezer door.
“This is Martin Stoellner—Dr. Stoellner—from the college. We spoke some months back about my presentation on tribal unrest along the Pakistani border. No. You didn’t do a story then. No, I’m not calling about that now. Actually, in a sense, I am. You’re writing about these attacks? Then write this: Afghanistan is involved.”
Liv swung to face him.
“A mujahid commander named Massoud, an enemy of the Taliban, was assassinated there two days ago—never mind, this will mean nothing to you. Just forget that nonsense they’re spouting on TV about homegrown terrorists. This was no McVeigh.
“This is jihad.”
Seven
PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN, SEPTEMBER 2001
Farida started at the sound of a car moving along the hushed street. It was nearly four in the morning.
The same night that Nur Muhammed announced the family’s departure from Peshawar, Farida slipped away. She tore out the title page to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and scrawled a note, in English, to Alia.
“Please, if you value my life, you must come for me. They are taking me to that terrible country. Alia, I will surely die there.” She folded the paper and palmed it to a servant, along with a good portion of the rupees Alia had given her.
“This must go now. Tonight.” The stupid girl stared. Farida grabbed her shoulders and shook them. “Go! Run!”
The girl pulled away, brushing at her clothing as though Farida had dirtied it. “You are lucky I don’t tell them of this.” She took the note and the money nonetheless, slouching away at something considerably slower than a run. Farida spent the rest of the night in tense and solitary wakefulness, grateful that Gul was with the men in their quarters, discussing plans for the journey.
Now Farida made a despairing calculation. Three hours for someone to drive the note to Islamabad. Three back. She’d sent the girl into the night after ten. It was impossible that Alia would come to her so quickly. Unless—her heart leapt at the possibility—Alia had arranged for someone in Peshawar to help, someone local, who would know how to deal with these people.
Farida dressed, her hands shaking. Yes, the car had stopped in front of the house. Yes, that was the front door. Yes, those were footsteps.
She cast about for an excuse to Gul’s family if they intercepted her. Something about a family emergency, maybe. She wondered if they would try to stop her, whether there would be violence. She squared her shoulders. She hoped Alia had sent more than one person. And money. A lot of money.
The footsteps stopped before her room. A knock sounded.
Farida forced herself to open the door slowly, trying to arrange her features into a neutral expression.
Maryam stood before her.
“Good. You’re dressed. Come quickly. We must leave now. There’s very little time.”
“But—” Farida clutched the doorjamb for support. “But I heard a car.”
“Yes. It’s waiting for us.” Maryam snapped an order to a servant bustling past, then looked into the room. “We can send for your things later. They’ll store well here.”
“Store?” Dozens of silk shalwar kameez folded within sheets of tissue paper filled Farida’s trunks, stacked shoulder-high against one wall. Two were devoted solely to trays of shoes; slippers, really, fl
imsy things dyed to match the colors of the robes she’d wear with them. Smaller boxes within the trunks held her jewelry—the engraved gold bangles, the seed-pearl necklaces, the swaying jeweled teardrops for her earlobes, and the tiny sparkling studs for her nose. Soft squares of felt wrapped the cut-glass bottles of perfume, and there were even a few Western-style outfits from her days in London that she had tucked beneath everything else, mainly because she could not bear to admit to herself that she would likely never wear blue jeans again.
Maryam thrust Farida’s new burqa toward her. “Put this on. They’re waiting for us in the car. Take what you can bring in a small bag.”
Farida reached into one of the trunks, feeling about for some underthings. Her hand bumped a familiar shape, emerging with a favorite bottle of perfume, and a dupatta to wrap it against breaking. The mutilated copy of Alice sat on the bedside table. She stuffed it into her bag. Maryam clasped her hand so hard Farida almost cried out, and jerked her toward the car.
Farida cast a final glance down the darkened street, but there was no other car, no one sent by Alia, no one at all to save her from being kidnapped—was there any other word for it?—into that wild land.
Maryam nearly dragged her the last few feet and shoved her into the car where Gul and Nur Muhammed waited. “We must get to the border before daylight.” Farida seized at a last, forlorn hope. How would they get into Afghanistan? Guards would stop them. She was sure she’d heard someone say, in the confusion of the previous evening, that the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan closed within hours of the attacks, but the taut silence within the car warned her against posing questions. It was hard to see through the burqa’s screen, and besides, it was dark. Still, Farida could see there were more doughboy-helmeted troops on the streets than usual.
The car quickly left the city and the soldiers behind, speeding through the countryside over roads increasingly rough. The headlights picked out large groups of young men walking in the opposite direction, toward the city, carrying signs and swinging what looked like children from the ends of ropes. The signs were in Urdu and English. BUSH IS DOG said one. CRUSH AMRIKA read another.