Refuge (23 page)

“Ah, there you are,” she hears her father say.

Noor looks up. The last time she’d spied him he’d been reading in the garden.

“Goed, dankjewel,” she says.

Aamir Khan smiles.

“You should take a break,” he says. “Your brain can only retain so much in one day.”

“So what would you have me do?”

“How about relax?”

“I’ve no interest in becoming a woman of leisure.”

“And God forbid you ever become one. But a couple of hours—”

The woman on the tape utters a new phrase.

“What was that she said?” Aamir Khan says.

Noor rewinds the tape and waits for the woman to repeat the phrase.

“Ik ben hier op vakantie,” the woman says.

“I am here on holiday,” Noor translates.

“Now if that’s not a sign from Allah, I don’t know what is.”

Aamir Khan saunters back in the direction of the garden. Noor sighs and turns off the tape machine. She wanders through the house and into the kitchen. Mukhtar is at the sink cleaning up the breakfast dishes.

“Ah, Miss Noor, would you like me to make you some lunch?”

“It’s fine, I can make myself something.”

Noor opens the fridge. Its shelves are laden with enough food to feed thirty refugees for a week. She takes out a bottle of milk.

“Mr. Matthews likes my breakfast very much,” Mukhtar says. “Every morning he puts his thumb up and smacks my hand. He calls it a ‘hifithe’. It is most sad about his friend, is it not?”

“You mean his colleague?”

“Yes, but he and Wali are more like friends. That is most unusual, don’t you agree?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

Noor pours herself a glass and lets the milk slip down her throat.

Oh Lord, that’s good.

Noor can’t resist pouring herself a second glass.

“What would you like me to cook for this evening?” Mukhtar says.

“If it’s alright I’d like to make tonight’s meal,” she says, “but maybe you could help me obtain the ingredients. Just give me ten minutes and I’ll tell you what I need.”

Mukhtar leaves, and Noor contemplates what she’s going to cook. She draws a blank.

What were you thinking? You haven’t cooked in years.

Noor thinks about rushing after Mukhtar and withdrawing her offer.

But wouldn’t it be a nice gesture? A way of showing your appreciation to Charlie
, a voice says.

She opens the nearest cupboard and scans the first shelf of spice bottles‌—‌mango powder, carom seed, green cardamom, cinnamon, kala namak, coriander powder, tamarind, garam masala, tamarind, and nutmeg.

The last thing you want to show any Western man is appreciation,
she thinks
. Look how he misinterpreted my smile on the bus.

She scans the second shelf‌—‌shopa aniseed, holy basil, flax seeds, sonth dried ginger powder, mustard seed, methi leaves and zaafraan saffron. She doesn’t have a clue what to do with any of them.

And if he hadn’t,
the voice says,
maybe Tariq would have found you by now.

Noor shivers at the thought and feels ever more resolved to make the meal. She heads to the library and scans the bookshelves.
Afghan Cooking
, a book published in 1967, is the best she can find. She flips through it and fixes on a recipe for Afghan Kofta. Noor has fond memories of standing on a short stool in their Kabul kitchen and helping her mother knead the mixture of ground beef, onions, pepper and garlic into balls.

I can make this. Better yet I can make it well.

Six hours later she hears the front door slam shut.

Oh no, he’s back
.

By now she’s a frazzled wreck. Mukhtar had returned from the market with sides of beef not ground beef, and by the time she’d realized his mistake he’d already left to go visit a relative. She’d looked in vain for a meat grinder, and in the end had had to settle for cutting up the beef with a knife. However hard she’d tried she couldn’t get the meatballs to stick together well. Her mothers’ kofta had always had this wonderful symmetrical shape; hers looked like misshapen mud pies and crumbled at the slightest touch. Though she was loathe to waste a single shred of meat, she’d tried a second batch but they’d come out no better. At that point she’d begun cursing the very notion of cooking a meal for Charlie.

It’s as if I’m some clichéd housewife trying to impress her husband.

Any hope of returning to her Dutch studies has long been extinguished, and now she’s faced with either canceling dinner or going with what she has. She can’t countenance the former so with utmost delicacy she places her skewered meatballs in the oven and turns the heat up on the rice. She hears Charlie talking with her father on the verandah and prays he comes no further. The kitchen looks like a battle zone, and she a civilian who’s gotten caught in the crossfire. The conversation ends. She waits. Nothing.

Thank God, he’s gone upstairs.

“So I hear you’re cooking tonight.”

Noor whips around to find Charlie standing in the doorway. She attempts to push her disheveled hair off her face.

“Mind if I grab a beer?” he says.

“You don’t need my permission.”

“Just trying to be sensitive.”

Charlie opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of Murree Beer. Noor glances at the oven and wonders if she should be turning the meatballs by now.

“So how was your day?” she says, catching herself too late.

The clichés only multiply
.

“Wali woke up,” he says. “I was the one to tell him he’d lost his legs. He’s devastated.”

“How are you doing?”

“I have both of mine.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I still have a job.”

Noor stops stirring.

“Jurgen called this afternoon. Said he told the folks at Mine Aware it was him who’d ordered me to go on the expedition, and if they fired me they’d never get any cooperation from the UN again. Hate to say it but you’re stuck with my sorry ass.”

Noor can’t explain it but she’s relieved. She does her best not to show it.

“I’m sure you’ll be able to do a lot of good,” she says.

“That’s what I’m hoping.”

Noor glances at the oven again; she needs to turn over the meatballs.

“I’m sorry, do you mind…”

“It’s okay,” he says, “I was off for a shower anyway.”

Charlie grabs another bottle and leaves. Noor opens the oven door and winces. The meatballs are burned on top. There’s nothing she can do. She twists them around and clumps of meat fall away.

Maybe this is how the Soviets came to think of Afghanistan. A failed venture that could only get worse the longer it went on.

She waits for the other side to cook and tries to dissect her emotions.

Everything I said was true. He can do some good out here, and perhaps in the process he can better himself.

But why are you so happy personally?
the voice inside her asks.

I’m not. Next week we’ll return to the camp and as far as I’m concerned we’ll never see him again.

She bends down and takes the meatballs out of the oven. She strains the rice and goes out onto the verandah. Bushra is reading a 1950s French travel guide while her father is bent over the table carving something into a strip of wood. Aamir Khan covers what he’s working on.

“Dinner’s ready,” she says.

“Oh, how wonderful. I’ll be right there.”

Noor retrieves the meatballs and rice from the kitchen and places them on the sideboard in the dining room. Her father and sister join her at the table. Ten minutes pass with no sign of Charlie, and with each passing minute Noor’s irritation grows.

He may be not as bad as I once thought, but he’s not a lot better.

“Let’s start,” Bushra says.

“No, we’ll wait,” Noor says.

“I’m hungry.”

“I can’t see why, you spent the whole day in bed.”

Bushra’s eyes drop to the table.

“Noor, apologize to your sister,” Aamir Khan says, “that was uncalled for.”

“I’m sorry, Bushra, I’m a little on edge that’s all.”

“Why?” Bushra says.

“I just feel cooped up in this house.”

“It’s huge.”

“I guess it’s a state of mind, that’s all.”

They wait five more minutes. Noor fixes her father with a stare.

“You should go get him.”

“That would be rude.”

“And his tardiness isn’t?”

“Did you make clear when dinner was?”

“The meatballs were cooking in the oven.”

“That means nothing to a man, he could have thought they would take an hour.”

Charlie saunters into the room in a fresh t-shirt and jeans, his hair still wet from his shower.

“Hope you guys weren’t waiting for me.”

Aamir Khan stands up and pulls Charlie’s chair back.

“Please sit, you have had a most stressful day,” Aamir Khan says.

My God, we’re back in the days of the Raj, and Baba’s his butler.

“I’ll survive,” Charlie says. “Everything okay this end?”

“Oh, most delightful, thank you,” Aamir Khan says.

Noor shoves her own chair back and heads to the sideboard. She begins doling out the meatballs and rice onto plates.

“So I got a proposal,” Charlie says.

Noor looks his way.

“Wali’s doctor says he’ll be out in a month, and I’ve decided to look after him.”

“That is wonderfully considerate of you,” Aamir Khan says.

Noor knows where Charlie is heading but feels powerless to stop what he’s about to say.

“ So I was wondering if you’d help me, Aamir? Course I’d pay you, and you guys could go on living here, in fact you’d kind of have to if it’s going to work.”

Noor catches her father’s eye and shakes her head. Aamir Khan looks away pretending not to have seen her.

“That is a most generous offer,” Aamir Khan says.

“Trust me,” Charlie says, “you’d be doing me the favor.”

“Baba—” Noor says.

“Wait your turn, Noor, I think it only appropriate to ask your elder sister’s opinion first.”

Noor is flabbergasted. Not once since they’ve been in Pakistan has her father not consulted her first.

“So Bushra,” Aamir Khan says, “what do you think of Charlie’s offer?”

Noor tries to catch Bushra’s gaze, but Bushra is staring down at the table cloth.

There’s no way she’ll agree to live in a house with a strange man
.

Bushra mumbles something, but her voice is so quiet that no one can decipher what she said.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” Aamir Khan says.

“I like living here,” Bushra says.

“Then since I do too, that is settled. Thank you, Charlie, we accept your offer most gratefully.”

Noor stands there with her mouth agape. Charlie smiles at her. She twists away and dollops the rest of the food out.

Why didn’t he ask my opinion in the kitchen? Obviously because he wanted to set me up.

She plunks everyone’s plates in front of them and returns to the sideboard to retrieve her own. She sits down and sees Charlie shoveling up a forkful of rice.

“If you don’t mind,” Noor says, “we always say a prayer before we start eating.”

“My bad,” Charlie says.

How I hate that expression.

“Bismillah ar-Rahman, ar-Raheem,” the three Afghans say.

Charlie picks up a skewer and brings it up to his mouth.

“I assume you’re going to say one too,” Noor says.

Charlie looks bewildered by her sudden onslaught.

“Sorry, course.”

Charlie closes his eyes.

“Dear God, thank you for this meal, for saving Wali’s life, and for keeping everyone in this room safe. Amen.”

He opens his eyes.

“Oh, that was most heartfelt,” Aamir Khan says.

And you couldn’t be more of a sycophant.

Out the corner of her eye, she watches Charlie take a meatball off his skewer and pop it in his mouth. He chews it over and over as if he’s having difficulty swallowing it. He reaches for his glass of water and takes a large gulp. The meatball slithers down his throat.

“If you don’t like it just say,” Noor says.

“What do you mean? It’s good.”

“Sounds like faint praise to me.”

“What? Should I’ve said that it was awesome?”

“Not if you don’t believe that to be true.”

Charlie shakes his head and eats some rice.

“Well your rice is awesome, Noor. Thanks for making it.”

Noor tries some. It has the texture of daal that’s been left in water overnight.

“Have you ever read
On The Road
, Charlie?” Aamir Khan says.

“It’s got to be my favorite book,” Charlie says.

“I am ashamed to say I had never read it before, but this morning I noticed it in your library—”

“You’re lying,” Noor says.

Everyone looks in her direction. She stares Charlie down.

“Come on,” Charlie says, “every kid in America with half a brain’s read Kerouac.”

“The rice, you don’t think it’s awesome. There were no high-fives, no thumbs up. Besides it’s cold and sticky.”

“Maybe I like it that way.”

“No, you don’t.”

Charlie holds his hands up.

“We really need to fight over this?”

“Just so you’re aware,” Noor says, “the reason it’s the way it is, is because you took so long to join us.”

“That’s the reason?”

“When someone goes to the trouble of cooking you dinner the least you can do is come down on time.”

Charlie picks up his napkin and wipes his hands with it. He fixes Noor with the first cold stare she’s ever received from him. It disconcerts her.

“You ever thought that sometimes people say things to be nice?” Charlie says.

“That’s what every liar tells himself,” Noor says.

Aamir Khan’s fork clatters onto his plate.

“Noor.”

“No, it’s cool, Aamir,” Charlie says. “I’m happy to give Noor an honest review if she wants one.”

Charlie pops a meatball into his mouth, and takes what seems like an eon to swallow it.

“So?” Noor says.

“If you’d ripped the sole off my shoe and cut it into tiny, little pieces it’d have tasted better.”