Allure of Deceit (6 page)

Moments later, a slight tap came from outside—a sound she had not heard in months. Her stomach turned and she wondered if her ears played tricks. Then another pebble struck the outer wall. Zahira called Aza, more like an aunt than a house servant, from another part of the house, and Zahira pointed to the basket. “He must not know about the child,” she whispered. “Keep her quiet until I return.”

Zahira snatched an oversized wool scarf, wrapping it tightly around her head and shoulders, before heading to the outer room and opening the door.

And there was Parsaa. They had not talked alone in months, and she held his stare. “I need your advice,” he whispered.

She stepped aside and let him enter. A tiny mew interrupted, and Parsaa approached the blanket. The mother cat was alert with two kittens nestled between her legs. The other two had moved away from the blanket. One was still and the other crawled helplessly along the edge.

“I already tried.” Zahira spoke up. “She won't accept them.”

Of course, he took that as a challenge, kneeling to poke the rejected kitten. Then he held the back of the mother cat's neck and pinched her teat. The cat flattened her ears and opened her mouth with a long hiss. But Parsaa pinched again, before rubbing his damp fingers against the kitten's mouth and guiding it into position. The frantic kitten latched on with aggressive new hope.

The weary cat glared but did not roll away. Zahira didn't like being wrong. Not with him. “She may still refuse the kitten later. We should not intervene.”

Parsaa stood. “We must talk. Two foreign women came to the village today.”

She put her finger to her mouth. “You are sure Arhaan did not hear you?”

Worry was contagious. Parsaa looked guilty, explaining how he had spoken with Mohan, the caretaker and Aza's husband. “He will signal if Arhaan steps away from the workshop.”

Still she worried. Her husband had ways of sensing what she did not want him to hear, and Mohan and Aza did not like her meeting with other men in the house. She waved her hand for Parsaa to leave the house and wait by the clinic door. Then she circled the perimeter of the home, checking whether her husband or others lurked and listened nearby.

Parsaa was foolish to trust Mohan, who had lived more than seven decades. Arhaan knew the compound well. His hearing was keen enough to hear another man breathing. The compound was small, yet she and her husband lived in separate worlds. She had once admired his academic pursuits, but the work had become so narrow and strange over the years. The two no longer understood each other.

As she turned the corner toward the clinic, she studied the dark workshop where Arhaan spent most of his hours. At night, her husband had every advantage over her.

Zahira unlocked the clinic doorway with the only key, careful about cupping her hands around the lock to muffle the clicking noise. She held the door open and Parsaa emerged from the shadows. Once inside, she turned the deadbolt, switched on the desk lamp, and crossed her arms. He waited by the door, uncomfortable in the modern structure with its tile floor, stainless surfaces, and shiny cabinets.

There was no place like the clinic within a day's walk, yet most villagers resisted seeking care from Zahira. She heard what they said about her. She was eccentric and, if she were so skilled, they wondered, why did she remain in the remote area? Those with the best skills should not return home, or so the myth went. Then there were the rumors about abortions, though Parsaa had never spoken about those with her.

“Our meetings upset Mohan and Aza,” Zahira said. “It doesn't matter how long we have known each other.” She glanced back at him. He was sheepish or impatient, but it didn't matter. Parsaa only visited when he needed something from her. Foreigners visited, and he wanted advice. A child fell ill, and he asked for medicine. He purchased ammunition, and then arranged for secret shipments to her compound. He had questions and asked her to check the computer.

She could not admit it out loud, but Zahira missed her father. He knew how to control others. Unfortunately, Blacker had trusted Parsaa more than he did his own daughter. Parsaa owed his livelihood, his home, his comfortable existence to Blacker. And all that was based on her assessment of a man's loyalty years ago.

Parsaa was no longer a loyal friend. He wasn't disloyal, but such was the problem of old friendships—memories softened by age were cherished more than recent encounters.

She pointedly asked how long it had been since his last visit, though she knew exactly the number of weeks. Parsaa ignored her question. “Did two foreign women stop here today?” he asked. “Did you see the helicopter?”

She shook her head quickly.

“They are from an orphanage and are looking for children.”

“So why would they come here?” she snapped.

“They mentioned a nearby stop.” He leaned over the counter. “I thought you could check on them with the computer.”

“The computer,” she said bitterly. She did not hurry to turn on the machine, run by a special terminal and equipment purchased with funds from a foreign charity. Parsaa often asked Zahira to look up news about the government, fighting, the weather. He was curious about everything but her. During his last visit, she had coolly reminded him that he could afford similar equipment, but he dismissed that notion. He was hypocritical, seeking access to the modern world while denying it for the rest of the village.

The argument had kept him away for months. She didn't want to argue again.

Zahira tried to assure him. “If you told them there are no orphans, they will leave quickly. Women around here do not hand their infants over to strangers!”

But Parsaa suspected the women wanted something other than children. “They have read about Laashekoh on the Internet. I need to know what has been said and remove any mentions of the village.”

Zahira felt sorry for him and told him that what he asked was impossible. “Sometimes you can pull down what you have said, but not what others have said about a village.” She asked where the women were from, and he told her a place named Texas in the United States.

She grimaced. “They are probably Christians. They think they can control the destiny of our souls.”

He asked how they could know so much about the area, and she was impatient, pointing out the same way he read stories about other parts of the world. “An outpost with nearly a hundred people was stationed nearby. Who knows what any of them have said about the village online?”

Laashekoh had no cell phones, no computers, and Parsaa still assumed that he could restrict the information's flow to one direction.

“Did they ask about me or the clinic?” To avoid eye contact, she started the computer.

He shook his head, and she dismissed his worries. “They came and you sent them away.”

“They had questions about the land, who owns it and when the transaction took place. I thought they might question you and Arhaan.”

She typed search terms before showing him photos of adults and Afghan children. “Would you recognize them?”

He shook his head, and she tried more phrases. “No,” he said.

She pointed out the government continued to sort out quarrels over land transactions that took place between 1996 and 2001, when the Taliban were in control. “That is not our transaction. Besides, we have a proper deed, and we have had no quarrels about ownership.”

“So there should be no questions for Laashekoh about the land?”

He had always cared more about the village than he did about her. She was but an extension of Laashekoh. “No,” Zahira said wearily. “The property deed is valid. The exchange was registered in 1990.”

“Is that enough?” he pressed.

“For you,” she retorted, and then she quickly controlled herself. The time was not right for her to press a claim. Others in Laashekoh had no idea who really owned the surrounding land.

She stood and let him sit before the computer. “Parsaa, all these years and you do not feel secure. No level of security is enough if someone wants what belongs to another.”

His long fingers jabbed at the keyboard with its overlay for Dari, and he asked for reminders because he used the computer so irregularly. How to search, how to use Google Translate, how to navigate among the pages. He was intent on knowing what was said about Laashekoh and did not notice her reticence.

Zahira felt foolish for how much she had once longed for Parsaa. The match had seemed so logical when she convinced her father to delay her marriage arrangements.

Blacker had one child and explained to his lieutenants that the strategy was to avoid making a compact and eliminating opportunities for an alliance. The marriage plans would not be finalized until she neared completion of her medical degree. Besides, Blacker wanted his daughter to be happy. Plenty of suitors were willing to wait for the prize—not Blacker's demanding daughter but rather the land and militia.

Afghanistan's political future was unclear. The ability of warlords to control a territory and its governance was slipping away. Larger forces could change the country overnight. But that was true in other lands, too. Blacker was torn between hoping his only daughter would live near the compound or leave the country for her safety, hoping she married a strong man who kept her in line or a weak man who welcomed her control. A young woman with no husband, brothers, uncles, or sons was vulnerable and could not control large tracts of land. No woman could oversee the militia Blacker had developed over the years.

Blacker wanted to extend his control far into the future, preserving the land for his daughter and her children. The husband didn't matter. Before approving a marriage, Blacker needed a better sense of where the country was headed. Many Afghans resented those who had cooperated with the Russians. The clerics prayed and griped, blaming arrogant and loose women for the fast-changing world beyond Afghanistan's borders.

It was no secret that Zahira had studied in Russia. Blacker dismissed criticism, noting that women had no interest in politics.

But his daughter was intelligent, raised by a man who rejected religious superstition and laws based on such nonsense. Any man linked to Zahira would struggle to hold on to the land. Blacker kept such thoughts to himself even as he looked for loopholes in the sharia inheritance laws. Blacker did not want his land to pass to another man simply because he had married his daughter. An outsider would lack the will to fight for the land.

Also, Blacker could not forget that his own wife had died giving birth to his only child and could not shake off fear of a similar fate for Zahira. The invisible, unyielding bonds of childhood were the best seal to such transactions.

Blacker had laid out his fears and plans to Zahira. If something happened to him, the property could be confiscated in a matter of weeks. “Parsaa owes our family much,” her father advised. “He won't forget. Besides, you will have more control over him as landowner than husband. Allah willing.”

Months before Zahira's marriage, Blacker had secretly arranged a debt with Parsaa's father. A signed document suggested that Blacker owed the other man a large sum of money in exchange for unspecified services over the years—and Blacker's land was transferred for payment. For Blacker, the imaginary debt was ideal. The deal eliminated criticisms about his daughter's education and rural interpretations of inheritance laws that eventually directed all his holdings to his daughter's spouse.

Blacker had died shortly before the Taliban took control of the nearby cities, closed schools, and imposed restrictions for women from previous centuries. And while the Taliban leaders ignored many poor, remote villages, including Laashekoh, women could not study or work. Travel was difficult. Airline flights were disrupted. Men with weapons set up random checkpoints along the highways, charging tolls and taking what they wanted from passersby.

When the Taliban were in control, Zahira relied on Mohan and other lieutenants loyal to Blacker to smuggle items to the compound. Weapons, books, electronics, tanks of fuel, and medical supplies were hidden in wagonloads brimming with produce, rags, scrap metal, birdseed, or copies of the Koran.

The land transfer had taken place years earlier, and as Blacker expected, it protected the property. The men of Laashekoh were tough, devout, and widely respected. The greediest and most ignorant Taliban were not about to fight a man with an entire village who would back his claim. Blacker did not inform Zahira's blind husband about the debt or property transfer. Arhaan did not question the brief marriage contract that specified wealth and “land surrounding the compound.”

But rules around property ownership were as tenuous as the country's politics. The Afghan government was deeply divided, and Americans who enforced many laws were withdrawing troops. Rules could be broken.