Zahira assisted a few patients over the years, and rumors drifted about her skills. Embarrassed and then angry, she wondered how many in nearby villages had died from infections, childhood diseases, or diarrhea. How many girls had killed themselves after inopportune pregnancies? Her last patient was Leila, and Zahira had refused to provide that abortion. She didn’t mind if the girl or her mother whispered complaints. Zahira had to save Parsaa’s grandchild.
Paul was the first to ask questions, and she felt sick inside. She wanted no part of an award or the attention that it would bring, except that Paul had promised to take her and the baby far from Laashekoh, help her settle in places she had seen only on the Internet. She owed him the truth. Surely, he could find a way to handle the questions from GlobalConnect.
“There has been a misunderstanding . . . ,” she began.
Blacker had asked her to return home during her last break, just before the end of her training as a physician in Russia. Not for long, he promised, and she purchased the round-trip tickets. The events of one night spiraled out of control. How often had Zahira wished that she could go back and change the past? Her shame grew over the years, and rumors expanded into outlandish lies, all made worse because the plans that night were concocted by someone she had loved and respected more than anyone else in the world.
Her father was overjoyed by her return but behaved oddly, urging her to stay close to the compound. During previous visits, he had insisted on visiting friends and attending dinners as far away as Lashkar Gah, where he bragged about her studies and plans to work as a doctor. Over time, she sensed resentment and heard the whispers. “Aren’t the schools in Kabul good enough for her?”
Two days after Zahira’s arrival, late in the night, she was reading in her bedroom when she heard a soft knock. She opened the door, surprised to find Blacker. He no longer trusted most servants and had reduced the household staff to two.
He asked if Zahira could do him a favor, and she agreed immediately. He looked away, admitting what he asked was not easy or fair. He whispered how war would soon come to their land. “I fought for the wrong side, and that puts us both in danger.” He took her hand. “You are in danger because of your ties to Moscow.”
A change in the central government was inevitable. Her father tried to restore ties with the clerics and village leaders who reserved their loyalties for Islam over government, but he wasn’t sure it was enough. Zahira had never heard her father sound so distressed, and she worried her return to Moscow could be at risk. He claimed that he didn’t want to involve his daughter, but he insisted that she understand the local conflicts and alliances. Blacker was among the province’s wealthiest men, but most of his gains were made through connections with the Russians.
“That has lost us friends,” he said.
She sighed at the word us and already missed Moscow. Not just because of the museums, trains, and crowds. Not the university with battered books and teachers who invited students into tiny homes for arguments about literature, philosophy, and politics over tea or vodka late into the night. Those memories were treasures. More than anything else, she missed being an individual, separate from her father. People in Moscow knew her only as a woman from Afghanistan, a quiet and polite guest, separate and alone in Russia. They didn’t connect every comment, gesture, or act as an extension of her family history.
When Zahira was a child, her father often said, “Your mistakes become my mistakes.” He had never mentioned that she would pay for his mistakes.
But Blacker was despondent. Her father needed her. He talked about another ambitious man who despised the Russians and envied Blacker’s wealth. “I need a spy in his midst, and have a plan.” She listened, and the plan seemed so easy. Zahira simply had to pretend that she was a doctor and perform a procedure. No one would get hurt.
One night changed everything.
Long after sunset, stern men escorted a shivering girl into one of the compound’s small huts. Carpets, pillows, and furnishings had been removed and replaced by two tables, one large and one small, both covered with clean white linen. Two would-be caregivers wore dark veils exposing only their eyes. The girl was hooded, too. The men wanted to stay and watch, but the woman posing as Zahira’s unnamed assistant chased them off with a broom.
Once the door was closed, the assistant gently guided the girl to the temporary examining table. The girl clawed to remove the hood, and Zahira caught a glimpse. The child would have been pretty, if her face wasn’t contorted and blotched with tears.
The assistant mouthed the words. “She cannot know who we are.”
The hood should have made the task easier. The patient couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Supervisors in Moscow would have scolded Zahira for not asking about age, but she didn’t bother. Most Afghan women in the area didn’t know their age.
Besides, Zahira wasn’t doing a real procedure.
As a student at a Soviet medical school, Zahira had learned how to end unwanted pregnancies—a skill in high demand in Moscow. She had no qualms about the procedure. Spontaneous miscarriages were as common as abortions. Studies showed that as many as half of all pregnancies ended in miscarriage among women exposed to environmental hazards, substance abuse, serious infections, or severe malnutrition.
A tray waited nearby with scissors, knives, thread, aspirin, bandages, ointments, hot water—all items for show. Also waiting were tiny balls of raw opium for use after the procedure to allow easy transport of the girl away from the compound.
“Must I do this?” the girl whispered. The assistant arranged a light blanket over the patient and promised that she would feel no pain. “This will make your problem go away.”
The writhing girl struggled to escape the table. Pushing Zahira aside, the assistant pressed the girl’s shoulders down to the table and tightened straps across her chest to keep her there. Flat on her back, the girl clutched the blanket, moaning and twisting her head from side to side.
The assistant removed the clothing from the lower half of the girl’s body and then spread the legs, tying each to either side of the narrow table. With shaking hands, Zahira tried to be gentle dabbing and cleaning, but she felt foolish. The smell of isopropyl alcohol filled the room, and the assistant smiled. Zahira wanted to knock the silly tray away, push the assistant out of the room, and admit that the ordeal was a lie.
In Afghanistan, as in Moscow, the doctor put community and government over individual need. The Soviet oath required doctors to abide by the principles of Communist morality while medical schools in Afghanistan were influenced by Islamic ways. Most medical students, regardless of where they studied, eventually stumbled onto the Hippocratic Oath and its revisions over the centuries. The classical version, more than two thousand years old and drafted on paper long after the Greek physician’s death, forbid practitioners from giving a pessary for an abortion or drugs to end life. It also assumed that only men could practice medicine, and doctors were expected to avoid “all mischief.” The medical students in Moscow dismissed the oath as naive for modern medicine, so technical and complex, but Zahira was idealistic, trusting that she could become a doctor who cared for both patients and community. Blacker wielded justice in their region, as far as the eye could see and beyond. She could develop her own system of care.
Her father insisted the night’s small procedure would end the fighting and save lives.
Using a metal skewer, rounded to avoid injury, Zahira tentatively poked at the girl’s genital area. A choking sound came from underneath the hood. Gagging, Zahira backed away.
She could not insert the probe.
The assistant grasped the skewer. “Some people don’t know about pain,” the woman muttered. She followed specific instructions issued earlier by Blacker—roughly shoving the girl’s legs apart, violating the girl, and then carving a small V into her upper inside leg, deep enough to leave a scar.
Once done, the assistant slammed the knife to the table.
The woman lean
ed over the patient, murmuring how the girl did well. Her husband need never know about her transgressions. That is, as long as she cooperated in supplying information about activities to certain messengers. “The procedure left a scar, and you do not want him to wonder how our messengers know this. Do you understand?”
The girl nodded, the hood damp with tears. The assistant shoved raw opium into the girl’s mouth and joined Zahira. “She is ours now. Allah will protect us all.” The woman then ordered Zahira to leave so she could clean the space. Ashamed, Zahira walked away from a patient who would haunt her memories for the rest of her life.
Zahira’s father, who had given her life and education and freedom, asked for one favor and made it sound so easy—conduct a small procedure with enough blood to be messy and memorable. All Zahira had to do was go through the motions of performing an abortion the child did not need and leave a scar. Blacker counted on having an informant in the household of a rival who despised Afghans for not resisting the Russians and who questioned the wisdom of educating girls or boys in foreign ways. Blacker wanted ears inside his rival’s house to learn about all visitors, purchases, documents, and plans passing through the household.
The girl would provide regular reports to a nearby vendor. Otherwise, her husband would hear the reason for the scar.
The rival’s downfall was in marrying a young, uneducated girl, distraught over her own betrayal and shame. Weeping, the girl confided in her equally ignorant sisters, who had ideas about how to end the torment of guilt. During her first night of marriage, as the husband slept, the young bride wrapped a blanket over her shoulders and crept away from the bedroom into the kitchen and searched until she found a container of fuel used for cooking. Alone, in the darkness, she tipped the container, sloshing the kerosene onto the blanket, bathing herself and relishing the heady fumes.
Then she scratched a match.
The old husband was severely burned and died soon afterward. Two other wives and twelve children perished, along with a servant couple and their three children. The youngest son of the servants, Qasim, barely survived. He wasn’t burned, but he suffered a head injury after his mother pushed him from a small window. Furious that a servant’s son had survived flames when the household master and his children did not, the husband’s extended family sent the boy to an orphanage.
The informant would have done little to help Blacker. The Soviets were already withdrawing from Afghanistan, and Afghan politics were in turmoil. With the Islamists taking control, he wanted Zahira to leave the country. But he was ailing, and Zahira comforted her father until the end.
She did not tell him that her sponsor had canceled her scholarship, prohibiting her from returning to Moscow to conclude her studies. She was a sham, not a doctor, and the conclusion of the classical Greek oath haunted her. “If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.”
The shame of failed rationalization was more disturbing for the educated.
In embarking on a medical career, much like bearing a child, an individual must be hopeful rather than dwell on potential disaster. The hardest part about choosing whether or not to abort is that one cannot reverse the decision. A mother must live with the consequences and hope that she can survive the unending series of possibilities that tease the mind. Did the woman or her child miss a life of misery or joy? Caregivers like Zahira could not answer the question, and such is a woman’s torment.
Paul was livid to hear that Zahira had done no family planning. “You have not handed out the contraception or helped with childbirth?” He slammed his hand down. “I believed in you. I brought you the computer, the BGAN terminal, the GlobalConnect equipment so that you could connect with other programs for support. What the hell have you been doing?”
She waited for patients, but the rumors about a night of mischief were pervasive. Blacker’s men and their wives whispered, and nearby villagers despised her, associating her with an abortion, a fire, and the destruction of a family that left a void in the region for marauders to fill.
Shame and dishonesty with one patient destroyed her confidence. The villagers did not want an abortionist or a charlatan in their midst.
“You don’t understand,” she said bitterly. “Abortion is evil until a woman needs one, and then her need is the exception. They pass their shame onto me.”
Paul took a deep breath before swinging hard at the side of her head, knocking Zahira to the ground. “I risked my reputation on you. Damn you, I needed you.”
Stunned, Zahira lay on the ground. She did not move. She deserved the blow. She loathed herself for not telling the girl the truth.
Paul crouched, and she prepared for another strike. Instead, he reached for her hands and lifted her, placing her in the chair facing the computer. “I need you.” His voice was soft, resigned, and he asked if anyone had ever seen the stash of old medical supplies. She shook her head.
“Perhaps this can still work.” He was anxious and prepared for the scheduled Skype call. Hurrying, he set up his laptop on her desk and explained what Zahira needed to say. He would introduce her to the woman in charge of GlobalConnect, and Zahira could describe dozens of mothers who over the years had benefited from her work delivering healthcare in the remote region. Together, Paul and Zahira would dispose of the old medicines and supplies.
“All you have to say is that family planning prevented economic disaster in this area,” Paul explained. “You explain how I have supported you. You tell her about a few patients. You have records, but promised patients not to release names or other details. If you are believable, then I can promise more funding. You can leave this place to forget and atone.”
Telling her story to Paul did not end the pain of years of lies—not that she had ever lied to donors. They accepted her limited skills and made assumptions, anticipating that village women would be eager for care. At least she could stop lying to herself.
Paul wanted more lies for the woman who controlled GlobalConnect. Zahira needed his help to leave Afghanistan with her daughter. Zahira worried about the questions. Her records were a product of her imagination, and a skilled physician would likely detect more hope than truth.
“You don’t have to show records, and she’ll expect your patients to deny receiving treatment,” Paul said. “Don’t worry. Caring too much makes people stupid.”
CHAPTER 26
Saddiq hurried in his search, trying to ignore the plush carpets, sofas, and pillows; the sparkle of electric lanterns hanging in the air and glassware and figurines lining the shelves—all in a warm house that lacked the odors of cooking, wood smoke, or musty dirt floors.
The place was like an enchanted setting in a story, overwhelming the eye. He forced himself to ignore the trinkets—all except a tall brass vase that he could use as a weapon. His priority was to find at least one other exit, in case someone suddenly entered the home. The house was traditional, on a much larger scale than his family’s home, with more rooms and intricate hallways. He had no idea how many might live in the place too silent for its size, and anyone could be waiting.
First, he checked the two massive living areas, one for men and the other for women, though he couldn’t tell the two apart. He was cautious and paused at each threshold before swiftly crossing the room, keeping an eye out for possible hiding places while hoping that a guard did not wait to slice at him with a knife.
Soon after he exited the second living area, a strange and terrible shrieking started up behind him. “Kee! Kee! Kee!” “Who? Who? Who?”
He wanted to run, but the room’s windows were high and small, designed to prevent unwanted peering yet also eliminating easy escape. Clutching the vase, ready to defend against an attack, Saddiq turned and saw nothing in the dark hallway. He dared not proceed.
Then a large black bird strutted away from the shadows. “Ke
e!”
A myna. Saddiq wasn’t sure the bird understood, but he tried a friendly response. “Kee,” he whispered. “Khoda hafiz.” “Allah protect you.”
The bird bobbed its head, as if appreciating the response, and quietly followed Saddiq. One set of rooms led to a closed interior courtyard. A dead-end. Another doorway connected to the kitchen area, a separate building, with an exit to the rear.
The next room had an elegant carved table. Set before one of the ornate chairs was a group of small plates and elegant utensils, the kind used by foreigners for eating, or so his father had once explained. A tall rack contained numerous bottles with amber, garnet, and clear liquids gleaming in the low light. Beverages of some sort. Backing away, Saddiq searched for the sleeping areas, but the first two doors he opened were rooms used for storage, packed with boxes of all sizes.
The bird persisted in tagging along.
Another narrow hallway led to a set of narrow stairs leading to a second floor, but Saddiq decided that the woman caring for the child would prefer sleeping on the main floor and keeping her charge close. Holding the metal vase with both hands, he headed down the hall toward soft light.
The bird cackled in its happy way.
To his left, a room was lit in eerie blue, the glow coming from a box that resembled a small television. Instead of news or stories showing people, an odd pattern of squares repeatedly marched across the screen.
The house showed no signs of a child, no toys, no tiny shoes or clothes, no blankets and dishes with mashed food drying along the sides. The house was too clean.
Perhaps the infant no longer lived at the compound. Or Leila had lied.
Saddiq would have to return to Laashekoh and ask for his father’s help. He headed to the end of the hallway and opened the heavy door onto a beautiful bedroom in soft golden light. Instead of a jumble of blankets on the floor, there was a raised bed with a stiff cover of rose silk and intricate embroidery in blue and moss green. Next to the bed was a table with piles of books, and on the other side was a large basket. Holding his breath, he approached the basket. Inside, a baby slept, nestled underneath another cover of embroidered silk, the rose color matching her tiny lips.
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