by Gwen Florio
The woman hesitated when Farida told her what she wanted. “The shoes, too?” Doubt laced her voice.
“Yes, and quickly.” Farida stepped out of her own embroidered slippers, tight on her pregnancy-swollen feet, and slid almost gratefully into the woman’s cracked rubber sandals. She waited until the woman began peeling off her burqa before doffing her own. The crone’s eyes widened at the sight of the apparatus stretched around Farida’s waist. Farida threw the foul garment over her body, then advanced on the woman, gripping her throat and putting her face so close she could almost taste the coppery fear on the woman’s breath.
“Not a word.” She tightened her hand around the woman’s throat. “Not one. Do you hear me? If you tell, the people who do this”—she patted at her abdomen, pushing the cloth against her so as to briefly outline the cylinders—“they will come for you and they will find you. Do you understand?” She slipped the rest of her money into the woman’s hand. “Stay here. In this alley. Until—you’ll know when. It won’t be long, inshallah.”
“Allah!” the woman wailed. Farida whirled and hissed at her before digging her hands into the dust of the alley, grinding her palms together until they bore a convincing layer of grime. The woman keened beside her. Farida fought an urge to stay with her, mourning aloud for lost things. Her gaze fell upon a stone, about the size of her fist, with jagged edges. She imagined it rocketing toward her, bashing against her skull as she stood pinioned to her shoulders within the earth, her baby’s kicks slowing as the life leaked from her body. She forced herself to her feet.
“Goodbye, little mother,” she whispered to the woman, and stepped back into the street. Farida forced herself to adopt the widows’ cringing posture, their sidelong way of creeping along the street. She made her voice high and wheedling as she hunched toward Face the Future, peering through the burqa’s screen.
“Please, please, a few afghanis, please. My brave husband, my mujahid, was murdered by the Amriki bombs, oh, help a poor widow, oh, oh, oh,” she whined as she inched closer. Her words caught in her throat.
There, as she had feared, was Nur Muhammed’s car. Beside it, scrutinizing the few women who passed, stood Hamidullah. Farida cursed the burqa’s grille that so badly interfered with her vision. The two people in the car must be Gul and Nur Muhammed. She looked toward Face the Future’s gate, mobbed by the usual unruly queue that gathered around any foreign establishment, men and women, futilely begging for jobs and money, begging to be saved.
Farida had hoped that, with Hamidullah gone, the gate would be unguarded, but no, Martin must have pulled someone from the crowd outside, stuck a Kalashnikov in one hand, some afghanis in the other, and appointed him guard for a day. And that man was stopping and turning away every person at the gate.
Someone touched Farida’s hand. She flinched. A woman in a burqa of fine blue silk, much like the one Farida had just traded away, offered her some afghanis. The woman stood alone, unaccompanied by a husband or son, likely one of the few women who held a high position in government, hence her confident bearing.
“Aiiii, mother.” Farida called down blessings upon the woman’s head and followed close behind as the woman worked her way through the crowd at the gate, heading toward the presidential palace.
“You! Stop!”
Farida froze at the sound of Hamidullah’s voice. Remembering that long-ago day when she walked into Afghanistan, she forced one foot woodenly in front of her, then the next. “One,” she counted. “Two.” And, between steps, “Afghanis. Please. Afghanis.” Her voice quavered. She held out her hand again. It, too, shook. She bent, hoping to hide the telltale bulk of her belly.
“Stop!” Hamidullah yelled again. Someone brushed past her so roughly that she nearly fell.
“Stop!”
Hamidullah’s sandals slapped against the concrete sidewalk. He reached out and unforgivably grabbed the woman who had given Farida the money. The woman screamed and whirled to face him, clutching her burqa around her. Farida heard car doors slam and knew without looking that Gul and Nur Muhammed were there.
The crowd at the gate, excited and aroused by this scene of a strange man assaulting a woman apparently of good family—albeit one walking alone—flowed up the street, the guard with them, toward Hamidullah, who shouted to the approaching throng.
“This woman has wronged her husband! She has consorted with other men. With foreigners!” Gul and Nur Muhammed pushed past Farida to follow Hamidullah.
Farida edged toward the gate, now unguarded. She glanced back and saw Gul shaking his head, even as Hamidullah yanked at the woman’s burqa, trying to tug it from her head. The woman, silent for long, dangerous moments, regained speech.
“Do not touch me!” she screamed, in a voice emphatically not Farida’s. “My husband will kill you. When my brothers are through with you, there will be nothing left!”
Farida gathered the tattered burqa in both hands, lifted it high above her swollen ankles and, gripping her too-big sandals with her toes, trundled through the gate, pulling it nearly closed behind her.
* * *
“What were you thinking?” Liv unclenched her fists and slid her hands beneath her thighs, inadequate insurance against the impulse to throw something at Martin, to strike him, to keep hitting him until something broke beneath her blows.
She held herself rigid on one of the rickety chairs. Martin folded into himself on the sofa, his head in his hands. “Oh, God.” It was nearly the only thing he had said since she had found him.
Liv was still trying to process that first shock, a series of shocks, really—the sight of her husband kissing Farida, his stricken look as he turned and saw her, and the stark terror on Farida’s face before her headlong flight from the building. Liv felt sorrier for Farida than for Martin; sympathy fast followed by a mix of relief and regret at the thought that, this time, they finally would have to go home.
She stood and busied herself preparing tea, slamming the pot onto the burner, trying to calm herself with the familiar ritual. Martin moaned again. “What have I done?”
“Funny. It seems I might be the one to ask that. What have you done?” She came back into the living room, balancing her cup of tea on a tray. She’d made none for him. The tray rattled in her shaking hands, her fury mounting by the moment.
“Nothing, I swear. Oh, God.”
“You weren’t doing nothing, Martin. You were kissing her. She’s pregnant, for God’s sake. What were you thinking?”
“It’s not my fault.”
“A pregnant woman threw herself at you?”
He bent his head to his knees and said something into his lap.
“I didn’t catch that.” She looked at the cup in her hand. Now that she’d made the tea, she couldn’t imagine drinking it. Her throat burned with held-in rage.
“She wanted to come to the States.”
“Then she would have just asked us to help her. I don’t believe you, Martin.”
“Oh, God. My career is finished.”
My career. There it was. Nothing like the pretty words about being partners, spoken so long ago in their living room in Pennsylvania, when Afghanistan had seemed like an opportunity instead of a graveyard of lost glories. Clayton Williams, she remembered now, had been the one to use the word. Never once had Martin thought of her as a partner.
She put the teacup down—slowly, slowly—resisting the impulse to fling it in his face.
“Your career? That’s always your first concern. What about me? When I was attacked, you wouldn’t let me report it because of your fucking career. What about our marriage?” As if she didn’t already know the answer, hadn’t known it all along.
Another groan.
“You’d better pack,” she said. “They’ll want us out quickly. Even if what you said is true, they won’t be able to afford to have you here as the focus of any sort of investigation.”
“But tomorrow’s meeting. I’m presenting my report.”
“Do you really wa
nt to be there? By tomorrow, the whole city will know about this.”
“Maybe I’ll be able to work in Islamabad.” He raised his head. Tears streaked his face.
Crying for himself. Oh, Martin. She searched within for sympathy. Found none.
“Maybe,” she said, trying for neutrality. Islamabad was crawling with Afghan refugees. By the time the news got to Islamabad, it would likely have been entertainingly embroidered. Liv did the math. Farida had been pregnant, just, when she started working for Face the Future, but no doubt the stories would have Martin siring her child. Just another husband gone native, she could imagine them saying. It wasn’t supposed to happen in the Islamic countries, but here was proof that a foreigner could no more control his own nature than a Pashtun could overlook dishonor. The last thought made Liv shiver.
“Martin. Hurry. I don’t care if we take separate flights once we get to Islamabad—in fact, I’d prefer it—but we’ve got to go. We’ve already missed today’s UN shuttle, but I’ll book us on the one tomorrow. You do realize, don’t you, that we’ll be lucky to get out of here alive?”
* * *
Gul, hurrying with his father toward the growing crowd surrounding Hamidullah and the woman, stopped and inhaled. Surely that was Farida’s perfume?
He looked about, focusing on his surroundings for the first time since his father and Hamidullah had described the unthinkable scene with his wife and That Man. But those running past him were, as usual, mostly men, their faces alight to the possibility of excitement. The only woman he saw—other than the one berating Hamidullah with increasing desperation—was a widow who slipped onto the grounds of Face the Future. Gul started to walk away, back toward the car, then looked more closely at the beggar through the gate’s narrow opening. The woman moved quickly, but the heaviness of her gait seemed familiar. He glanced back over his shoulder to reassure himself that everyone else was sufficiently distracted farther down the block, then eased through the gate.
“Farida,” he called in a low voice.
The woman broke into a lurching trot, heading across the compound toward the house at the far end. He glanced at her feet, swollen in cheap sandals, the toenails painted the same saucy shade of scarlet that Farida had insisted upon even as her pregnancy progressed. “I may look a cow, but I am still a woman,” she’d protested when he’d teased her about it.
“Farida, wait. I am alone.”
She stopped and stood with her back to him.
“They told me what happened,” he ventured.
“No. They told you what they thought happened. That Man, that foreigner”—she sounded strangled—“he is the one you should be hunting, for what he did to me.”
“But you were alone with him. He touched you. Hamidullah saw it. His hands upon you. You kissed him.” Despite himself, his voice rose.
“No. No. Liv—That Woman—left me alone with him. He backed me into a corner. Forced himself upon me. What was I to do?”
Scream, he thought. Fight. Even though he knew better. No one would believe the word of a woman.
She turned to face him. “If I had had that”—she pointed to the knife in the hand dangling by his side—“I would have killed him myself for daring to dishonor me, our son. My husband, my love,” she said, her voice full of pain, “I never betrayed you.”
But he had betrayed her. Still. These things were permitted a man. A mere conversation with a neighbor had brought about the death of his cousin’s wife. Decades, centuries of tradition buffeted him, constants in an uncertain world. There was only one way. His hand tightened on the reassuring hilt of the knife. He steeled himself for what must be done.
His gaze fell on Farida’s feet, the silly painted toenails so bright and hopeful in their grotesque footgear, and he thought of the day she had walked across the border, bonding herself to him and his people in a way far more consequential than the simple act of marriage. The knife fell from his fingers, and instead of condemning her, he spoke the truth: “I believe you.”
Her shoulders slumped. Tears glittered behind the burqa’s screen. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“I’ll tell them. I’ll fix this.”
Farida straightened and looked past him.
Thirty-Six
Liv stood amid their sad collection of belongings in the living room, including the emergency suitcase she’d packed. So many months in Afghanistan, yet they’d accumulated painfully few things beyond the clothing and the books they’d brought with them, as well as a suitcase packed with trinkets and faux-pashmina shawls. There were a couple of rugs, rolled and bound within sheets tied tight with twine. They’d always meant to buy more, as gifts for relatives, but never got around to it because Martin so hated the mandatory haggling and refused to go to the markets, anyway.
For the first time since she’d seen him with Farida, Liv looked directly at Martin. The beginnings of a potbelly that he’d brought with him to Afghanistan had bloated into a full paunch. The skin of his neck puffed over his collar. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands trembled. Liv tried to remember the confident man on talk shows who delivered opinions on the situation in Afghanistan and inspired such envy among his fellow faculty members. She wondered how he’d spin their time here upon their return.
But at least they’d get to return. Farida, though . . . Liv had heard enough, during those months of talking with women, to know the fate that awaited any woman touched by a man not her husband, let alone a foreigner. Martin hadn’t wanted trouble when she herself was attacked, but she’d be damned if she’d let him treat Farida—whose situation was, after all, far more dire—with the same indifference. As soon as she could slip away from Martin, she’d use the satphone to call ISAF, tell them about a woman in danger, downplaying the details, and say that the woman in question was key to their mission.
Martin cleared his throat. “When we get home . . .” he began. He fiddled unnecessarily with the twine circling one of the carpets.
“We? Martin. There is no we. When we get home, we’ll divorce.” As soon as she spoke, she wondered why it had taken her so long to come to this.
Martin gave the twine a final yank. “I’m going over to the office to pack up the files.”
The door banged behind him. She’d have to wait to make that phone call. He hadn’t responded to her pronouncement about divorce. Liv realized she didn’t care.
* * *
Martin carried a box to the file cabinet, opened a drawer, and transferred the contents to a carton.
The electricity was still out, the hum of the computers and the drone of fans silenced. The office was deserted. The word had spread, he thought. No doubt his supervisor already was trying to contact him. He disconnected the computers and made sure the satellite phone was turned off. He’d tell the man that the satphone had run down, that the generator that powered the computers during outages was out of gas. Postponing the inevitable. He’d almost certainly be allowed to resign. It was to no one’s advantage for word to go out to the wider world. The university job, the book—although maybe with a university press instead of a major publisher—remained within the realm of possibility. And with Liv about to take herself out of the picture, his daydream of bringing Farida to the States remained alive. Maybe he’d bribe Ismail to get her out of the country, at least as far as Islamabad. She could stay with her sister until he could make the necessary arrangements. He’d have to come up with an explanation for Mrs. Khan about why he’d never given Farida her letter, but he’d worry about that later.
On second thought. He crossed to the desk, retrieved the letter from its locked drawer, and without opening the envelope, ripped it in half, then quarters, then again, distributing the scraps among the various trash cans in the office. There. He could say truthfully it had disappeared, adding—again truthfully—that things had a way of going missing from the office.
He returned to the cabinet, dropped an armful of files into the box and leaned against the wall, remembering how Farida had felt against
him, fragile despite her bulk. Reality, like a fanged viper, hissed at his foolish notions of rescue. He might never see Farida again.
The sounds of the streets came to him, the usual racket of horns and grinding gears, and over that, a roar that eventually separated itself into shouting male voices. Martin straightened, wiped his eyes, and carried the carton to the window. He started at Farida’s husband, standing inside the gate, in animated conversation with one of the beggar widows who were a constant and bothersome presence at Face the Future’s entrance. Through the partially open and unguarded gate, he saw a group of men down the street, confronting another woman. Her high, protesting voice reached him, and as he watched, she drew her burqa around her and strode away from the men, who milled about for a few moments before coalescing at some unseen signal. Fists raised, faces contorted, gathering others along the way, the mob surged back up the street toward Face the Future.
Martin dropped the box of files.
* * *
Liv, making a final sweep of the bedroom to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, heard a commotion. She looked out the window and saw a crowd of men up the street, some brandishing Kalashnikovs. She shouted for the servants, even for Martin, damnably out of earshot in the office across the compound. No one answered. From her vantage point, she could see the partially open gate, absent the guard. Maybe the men would rush past on their way to whatever had so agitated them. But what if they didn’t? She thought of the men in the market, the way they’d surrounded her, her helplessness against their collective purpose.
Tinny cracks sounded, a few at first, then more, and she belatedly recognized them as shots. She ran down the stairs, grabbed at the flimsy sticks of furniture and jammed them against the door before fleeing back to the bedroom. She pulled the thin mattress from the inadequate springs and hauled it to the window that faced the courtyard. Beneath the shouting of the mob, she heard her own voice.