by Gwen Florio
Farida chortled a moment later when Liv added, “If he did, maybe I would like him better.”
So it was the same with all women, Farida thought, this habit of making sport of their husbands’ foibles. She herself had had to invent some minor complaints about Gul, so as not to be conspicuously silent during the aunties’ interminable recitals of their husbands’ shortcomings.
Face the Future’s guard never touched the women, she told Gul. And he barely searched the men. It seemed the organization had more to fear from those hired to protect it than the people who called at the offices. “They are looking for a new guard. This will be the third since they’ve arrived. The man who is here now, they caught stealing.”
“What did he take?”
Farida shook her head in wonder. “Some towels. His wife has a new baby and they used the towels for blankets. These Amriki are so rich and so stingy at the same time. They have a shelf stacked with hand towels in the office WC, more than they need, and yet when two go missing, a man loses his job.”
Gul sucked at his teeth in sympathy. “Is that him?” He and Farida had reached the gate and waited in the short line there. A young man in a patched waistcoat, weariness bruising the skin beneath his eyes, made cursory work of checking people’s parcels. A battered Chinese-copy Kalashnikov was slung across his back, its magazine clearly empty. When Farida approached, he respectfully lowered his eyes.
“Your bag, please.”
She dangled it before him with one hand, letting it gape open, using her other hand to hold her burqa modestly together.
“Pass.”
She bade her husband goodbye and walked into the compound. She heard Gul’s voice behind her. She turned and saw him speaking with the guard. His hand flashed toward the man, and she saw the dull blue of afghanis pass between them. The guard bowed low. It all happened so quickly that she had no time to hear their conversation. But she was not surprised at all the next day, when Gul left her at the gate, to see a new guard, one whose erect posture, so different from the defeated demeanor of his predecessor, instantly put her on alert.
He asked for her bag and she stiffened. She knew that voice. She held out the bag. Unlike the previous guard, this man pawed insolently through her papers, removing the string that neatly bound them, and shuffling them into disorder. She sighed in exasperation. At the sound, he straightened. Even though she knew he could not see her features through her burqa, she merely peered sidelong at him.
“You may pass. Although I must advise you, for the good of your own reputation, to return to your home. I have seen nothing but men pass through these gates this morning, and now you go to work among them. I see this with my own eyes, and yet I still cannot believe.”
Farida snatched the bag away and hurried past him, into the compound, his words ringing in her ears, in a voice that was its own introduction. It was the Talib, the one with whom Gul and Nur Muhammed had been spending so much time recently. Surely, his presence at Face the Future only boded well for her plan. Still, she felt his eyes on her back as she hurried across the courtyard, and cold fingers of apprehension traced her spine.
Twenty-Seven
“We will need a very brave mujahid.”
The Talib’s words dropped like large flat stones into a quiet pool. There were five men in the room—the Talib, Gul, Nur Muhammed, and two of his most trusted deputies—and Gul saw the words’ meaning ripple toward them, and their visible resistance as it became clear. Nur Muhammed betrayed nothing, but Gul was sure he knew his father’s thoughts and was relieved when one of the others voiced them.
“This thing that you speak of, it is not our way. The Arabs, yes. But not us. We stand and fight like men.” This, from one of Nur Muhammed’s oldest associates. He spoke with difficulty, his mouth contorting around the gabbling sentences. A Russian rocket had blown away his wife, his children, and much of his jaw. Below his nose, his face collapsed into his neck.
In ordinary times, it would have been nearly impossible for such a man, so difficult to look at, to find a woman. But the years of war had taken away so many men that this one found a new wife just months after his injury. And then, after the loss of his young second wife—who foolishly ventured unaccompanied from the house, only to encounter some bandits roaming Kabul—he promptly found yet a third wife, who obediently, even gratefully, spooned food into the flapping hole of his mouth every morning and evening, and wiped his ruined neck and unkempt beard clean afterward.
The others murmured agreement as he spoke. A couple threw pointed glances at the Talib, but he smiled glassily, apparently oblivious. Gul wondered, not for the first time, if he made use of the opium that helped finance Nur Muhammed’s operations.
“Yes, yes, yes,” the Talib said now. “We fought, in our rags, we chased the Russians and their tanks from our borders. And who remembers us? No one. The Amriki come and occupy our land and give us a pittance of their treasure, and the world forgets all about the poor, noble Afghan people. Who gets the attention now? Those who carry out the most dramatic acts. Our own efforts are pitiful. Our bombs fail to explode, our rockets go astray. If the world notices at all, it laughs at us. No, we must have our own spectacular act, one that cannot go wrong. And we must have someone willing to carry it out.”
The Talib’s interrogator persisted, doubling over with the effort of speech. “Fine words. But where will you find such a one here? Are you volunteering?”
The Talib hesitated just long enough for Gul to enjoy the moment. “I think none of us should be the one. We will be needed to plan follow-up actions.”
The relief in the room was palpable, but so was the underlay of contempt. No one should suggest this sort of thing, Gul thought, unless willing to carry it out himself. Gul lifted his head, signaling his desire to speak. “It must be someone very courageous, someone whose loyalty is unquestioning. And maybe someone without a family, with little to lose.” He took a breath, ready to continue, but was surprised when Nur Muhammed broke in.
“I know such a one. I will speak to him. In the meantime, we will proceed. Equipment is needed. When we meet next week, all of you will bring the items assigned to you. Remember, ball bearings are best, but they will be hard to find. Nails are also ideal, but any sort of scrap metal will do, the smaller and sharper the better.”
The men around him laughed, prematurely white beards bobbing. If anything was plentiful in Kabul, it was shrapnel. Fragments of exploding shells and mines were embedded in walls and tree trunks and covered by the powdery layers of dust in the streets, ready to slice open the foot of the unwary child running around.
Nur Muhammed acknowledged the grim amusement in the room. “I think this will not be a problem.”
* * *
Gul stood outside the small general store kept by Nur Muhammed’s old friend. It appeared to be open, the goods removed from their nightly storage and arranged on the shelves that lined the side walls of the stall, not locked away behind the stout door that led to the back room where Nur Muhammed and his associates had met. Gul waited some moments. It was early, but already the street was busy.
Just a few doors away, a man sat on a stool, facing an ungainly box camera. The proprietor of the camera shop dove beneath a cloth and held up his hand to signal his subject not to move. A line of young men, dandified with kohl-rimmed eyes, oiled hair, and just-clipped beards, jostled impatiently to one side, awaiting their own turn before the lens.
The Taliban had banned photographs during their interminable reign, and now any man with a few extra afghanis was eager to possess his own portrait. The boldest among them would attempt to palm these from one friend to the next, eventually into the hands of a sympathetic sister who perhaps could find a way to show the photo to a particular young woman who somehow, through her musical voice or the long, tapered fingers holding her burqa closed, had captured the imagination of the man in question. But this was the most foolhardy sort of behavior. To be caught was to risk death at the hands of the girl’s fat
her and brothers, and to almost certainly guarantee it for the girl. Still, Gul looked at the men with a bit of nostalgia, remembering his own long-ago stirrings for the unattainable.
The morning was agreeably warm, the punishing heat of midday still hours off, and a young man might be forgiven for succumbing briefly to the fantasy that life, like the lengthening days of summer, had grown easier and more enticing.
Indeed, activities all along the street catered to that very notion. In front of one stall, boys industriously yanked the rivets from oilcans and hammered them into satellite dishes, their blows ringing in syncopated rhythm to the music from a radio blaring behind them. Both radio and television had, of course, been anathema to the Taliban, which also had forbidden the books now sold openly in stalls all over the city. So what if street urchins snatched a book or two from the stacks and darted away, intent next upon stealing the food that their mothers would cook that night over the fire fueled by those selfsame books? The freedom to touch a match to something once so emphatically forbidden was enough to make one giddy with a sense of possibility, especially with the too-recent knowledge that to have so much as held a book—no matter that one couldn’t actually read it—during those dark years had risked, at best, a lashing from the stinging bamboo staffs or car antennas carried by the black-turbaned members of the much-despised and equally feared Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
Gul filled his lungs with air. His people had broken free of the Taliban and their impossible, impractical restrictions. Now they must cut the fetters in which the Amriki had so quickly wrapped them. The thought brought him back to the task at hand. There was still no sign of the proprietor. Gul coughed and shuffled his feet. He heard stirrings from behind the door and stepped back as it swung open and the owner emerged.
“A salaam alaikum, my young friend.” The man pressed his hand to his chest and bowed, beaming, toward Gul.
“Ve alaikum salaam.” Gul wondered at the difference in the man. He remembered him as sad-eyed and stooped, beset by the debt brought on by his need to care for his half-mad son. The boy, now a teenager, was as large and vigorous as his father once had been. But a few years earlier, in the same partisan attack that had killed the boy’s mother, a piece of metal had pierced his skull and tunneled through to something vital in his brain. Now he wandered the neighborhood with a smudge pot, his sheer bulk and inarticulate cries frightening people into giving him a few afghanis. The worries involved in raising such a child had turned the father into a nervous shell of a man, and Gul always felt apologetic when he came by to collect the rent. But on this day, the man stepped briskly to the counter.
“What will it be? You have come to shop, yes? The rent is not due, I think.” A shade of his old fearful expression crossed his face.
“No.” Was that kohl widening his eyes? And what of the orange overlay of henna hiding the gray in his beard? “My father wishes to see you.”
The man’s smile vanished. A summons from Nur Muhammed was not necessarily good news. “When does he wish me to come? Now?” The man’s gaze darted to the door behind him, and back to Gul.
“Tomorrow will be fine. Come to our home. Dine with us.”
Gul knew what the man was thinking: That a meal with Nur Muhammed could not possibly mean trouble. Or could it? The merchant’s obvious fearfulness made Gul uncomfortable, but what the man did next made him feel even more so.
“Here.” He felt along the shelves of the shop, grabbing at worthless things. A packet of crisps. A faded plastic comb. “Take these with you. Gifts for your family.”
“It is not necessary.” Gul moved away so the man could not put the items in his hands. “We will be happy to see you tomorrow.”
“Wait.” The man removed the board that blocked access to the store’s interior and put his hand on the door behind him. “Please. Come. There is something here that you must see. Something very special for the son of my oldest friend. Please.” He opened the door and spoke some words to a person within.
Gul wanted to leave, but the animated conversation had drawn the attention of others on the street, and he did not wish to cause a scene. He stepped into the narrow stall and let the man usher him through the door, which he closed and barred behind him. Gul started to object, but was distracted by a rustling noise within the darkened room. A woman rose from a sleeping mat and gave an exaggerated shrug, the folds of her burqa falling like water about her as she stood before them, the green garment pooling at her feet.
* * *
Gul’s chest tightened.
He tried not to stare. She stood straight-backed and sturdy before them, head bowed, her long hair unbound, falling across her face so that he could not see her features. Although the burqa at her feet was of cheap cotton, green instead of the ubiquitous blue, the clothing she wore beneath it appeared clean, if somewhat worn.
“Very beautiful, yes?”
Gul didn’t know how to respond. Had the man remarried? But no, no man would bring a stranger to his wife.
“I don’t understand.”
“She comes to see me. To—” The man made an obscene motion with his hands.
A whore? Gul fought to control his disgust. He glanced again at the woman. Although her face was still turned away, she held herself proudly. There was no hint of the cringing servility expected from someone of her lowly stature. He thought of the widows on the street, how they begged for money and, sotto voce, offered to make their gratitude known, for a few more afghanis, of course. They would lift their burqas to show faces hideous in their desperation. “I have a sister. A daughter. A virgin. She has saved herself for you.”
“Yes,” said the man, as though reading his thoughts. “This one is special. Look how she keeps herself tidy. She goes to the baths every time before she comes to see me.” He leaned closer to Gul and spoke in a whisper. “She once had a husband, so there is no concern about defilement. And she cannot have children.”
“Why do you tell me these things?” Gul tried to ignore the stirring within his loose shalwar. The woman stood so very near. A step, maybe two, would bring him close enough to touch her.
“Why, because!” The man’s face glowed with goodwill. He gestured expansively. “I give her to you. To the son of my dearest friend. Today she is yours. For me, she has only a few moments, but for you, the whole day.”
The woman gasped, and Gul looked openly at her. She stooped to gather up her burqa, lowering it quickly over her face, speaking in rapid Dari as she did so. The man replied, his commanding tone unmistakable. She turned her back on them and squared her shoulders, but otherwise made no move to leave.
“I will close the store. No one will bother you.” The man left before Gul could say anything. Gul confronted the closed door. He hesitated, and looked over his shoulder at the woman, her back still turned. He had never been with a woman other than Farida. Still—a whore. He reached for the door.
Fabric whispered behind him.
He knew without looking that she had again removed the burqa. By the time he turned, she had stepped out of her shalwar. Strong calves flashed beneath the hem of her kameez. Still with her back to him, she raised her arms and pulled the garment over her head. She put her hands on her hips and tugged down her undergarments, then stood as she had before, straight and unmoving, her hair falling forward over her shoulders.
Gul thought of how Farida modestly slid off her clothing beneath the blankets when he came to her at night, and wriggled into it again before leaving the bed in the morning. He told himself it was not wrong just to look. He crossed the room and put a tentative hand on the woman’s shoulder. She trembled, and he pressed his hand more firmly against her, as though calming a restive horse. He slid it down the length of her back, marveling at the smoothness of her skin. She must have been but a girl when she was married, he thought, to still be so young. He cupped her buttocks, and then, barely breathing, eased his hand between them. She obligingly moved her feet apart and stood moti
onless. All day, the man had said.
His couplings with Farida were hushed and hurried with family always in the adjoining rooms. He glanced over his shoulder toward the reassuring sight of the door’s heavy planks. He pressed himself against the woman’s back and brought his arms around her to put his hands on her breasts. They were small and high, unlike Farida’s, now heavy with her pregnancy. There was a raised vertical line between her breasts, and he fingered the thin scar before dropping his hands to unfasten the drawstring of his pants. He lifted the long tail of his tunic, then rubbed himself against her again.
She sighed. “You will pay, yes?”
Gul’s hands, which had returned to her breasts, stopped moving. “You are a gift.” She was, after all, he reminded himself, a whore.
She thrust her hips backward, rubbing against him. A groan escaped him.
“Yes?” she whispered again. She reached back and took him in her hand and guided him between her legs so that he could feel the heat there. He thrust eagerly, but she pulled away a little.
“Yes? You will pay?”
“Yes,” he almost shouted, tugging her down onto the sleeping mat, so roughly that she nearly fell, and he laughed because it didn’t matter. His lovemaking with Farida had, of necessity, been slow and careful of late. The whore rolled onto her stomach and obligingly tilted her buttocks toward him, but he turned her over, pinning her shoulders against the mat, and mounted her hastily. She cried out and he thought it was another of her whore’s tricks, but he didn’t care, and he pushed himself hurriedly between her legs, frantic to enter her. But her body had gone rigid and she slapped and shoved at him, calling out, “Gul, wait, no!” and she shook her head so that her hair fell away from her face. She put her hands to his cheeks and tugged at him until he was forced to look at her, and even now, so many years later, with the ravages of war etched upon her features, he knew Khurshid.