Veiled Freedom (12 page)

Amy spun around to where Hamida was watching silently from the doorway. “Tea? Chai?” The latter at least was the same in Dari as it had come to mean in English. Amy made drinking and eating motions. “And some food too if you have it.”

“I am sorry.” Jamil opened his eyes and pushed himself up. “It is nothing.”

“No, no, sit!” As he subsided, Amy busied herself cleaning up, rolling debris and discarded bandage into the dirty T-shirt. She was stuffing it into an outer pouch of her shoulder bag when Hamida came back with a teapot and two cups. The steaming brew she poured was green tea boiled with milk and cardamom, strong and bitter and very sweet. Life returned to Jamil's eyes as he drank thirstily.

As Amy sipped her own drink cautiously, she shook Steve's manila envelope out onto the card table. However disagreeable Steve had been, Amy appreciated his parting gift, especially the list of UN–approved accommodations. With this she could arrange housing and even transport without leaving the security of New Hope.

Amy was familiarizing herself with the sat phone when Hamida reappeared to unroll a length of oilcloth across the floor tiles. Removing the water bucket, she returned carrying two plates of steaming yellow rice. Amy understood her hesitation. A foreign guest deserved the highest honor. But Amy was female, and men and women didn't eat together. When Hamida finally set the food on the oilcloth, Jamil resolved the problem by retrieving a plate and retreating to a corner.

Amy carried her food to the card table. No utensils had been supplied, but she expertly molded rice into a ball with her right hand, popping it into her mouth. The yellow rice contained shredded carrot and raisins and bits of meat Amy couldn't identify.
Palau. Palaw. Pillau.
The transliterations were as wide-ranging as the variations of the rice dish traditional throughout the Middle East and not dissimilar to the Spanish paella Amy's mother prepared in Miami.

So it wasn't the taste that stopped Amy's eating. Sitting on his haunches, back to the room, her new assistant was eating with voracious concentration, his plate empty before she'd managed half a dozen bites. Amy noted again how thin Jamil was, shoulder blades and ribs standing out starkly under the threadbare material of his tunic. How long had it been since he'd eaten a decent meal? How many others in Afghanistan could not on this day dream of such a mound of food?

Appetite gone, Amy unobtrusively returned her plate to the oilcloth, digging out a hand wipe to clean her hands as she returned to her work. The accommodations list was arranged alphabetically, and Amy had just connected with a guesthouse called Assa when out of the corner of her eye, she saw her barely touched plate disappear to be silently replaced by the empty one.

A male receptionist answering Amy's call switched to English as soon as she spoke. A good beginning, but he regretfully informed Amy the guesthouse had no vacancies. She'd worked through B's Place, Gandamack Lodge, and Kabul Inn when Jamil rejoined her at the card table.

Hamida had X-ray vision—or was peering through the window—because she was immediately there with a basin and a pitcher of water to rinse hands. As Hamida cleared their meal, she added the wadded burqa to her load.

Jamil translated her apologetic murmur. “She says she'd been missing this since visiting the bazaar with her husband. She misplaced it when unloading his vehicle. She apologizes that it was not clean for your use.”

So Rasheed didn't keep the thing stashed for offending female passengers. “No, please tell her it was perfect and tashakor for its use.”

Jamil was complying when heavy footsteps, thuds, and a raised male voice signaled Rasheed's return.

Emerging, Amy was delighted to discover her luggage deposited on the veranda. The chowkidar also handed over a three-by-five card covered with inscriptions Amy couldn't read.

“Mr. Bruce asked me to acquire this for you.”

“The MOI card!”

“You will need to take it to the Ministry of Interior to be filled out and have a picture taken.”

“Now?”

Rasheed shook his head. “You have not heard? There was a bombing outside the ministry. It will not be open again today nor tomorrow either. When it is open again, I will find out for you.”

“But it has to be done in forty-eight—”

The chowkidar was already walking away.

Amy turned to her luggage, her first act to dig out a change of clothing. The outfits she'd collected in India and Kashmir were female versions of the
shalwar kameez
. Conscious of Afghan sensibilities, Amy had forgone the filmy silks of India's hot plains for Kashmir's elbow-covering sleeves and heavier synthetics. The outfit Amy chose now was deep burgundy, its only ornamentation gold stitching around the neck and cuffs. The matching scarf Hindis draped over the shoulders would do as a head covering.

But another need was more urgent on Amy's mind. She was going to learn Dari, if only so she didn't have to rely so heavily on a translator. Gathering up the burgundy outfit and shoulder bag, Amy turned to Jamil, choosing her phrasing with delicate care. “Could you ask if there is a place where I might take care of personal needs?”

Amy didn't know what Jamil said, but as she followed Hamida to a door at the far end of the veranda, she was relieved to discover she'd been led to the right place. An indicator of the original owner's wealth, floors and walls were tiled in intricate mosaic. A marble sink boasted brass fixtures and a gilt-framed mirror, though like so much else, the gilt frame lacked most of its glass, and the sink had no water.

Amy took her time wiping away dust and perspiration, restoring the minimal makeup she wore in a fragment of mirror, brushing her hair until it shone again. A futile exercise once she tucked every shining wisp under the burgundy scarf.

Still, the effort improved Amy's spirits, and despite the indignity of her headscarf, the outfit was comfortable. Amy had come to love the loose, easy feel of shalwar kameez. Lose the headscarf, and the calf-length tunic over drawstring pants had to be the most comfortable women's clothing on the planet.

Her change in dress certainly made a difference to Rasheed and his wife. It was as though Amy had suddenly become visible as a human being. When Amy returned to the sat phone and guesthouse list, the two were gone, perhaps to their own meal, but they reappeared just as Amy was informed that Naween Guesthouse was full. Hamida greeted Amy's makeover with an excited twitter, and for the first time she let her chador slide down from her face as she patted the burgundy material and fingered the gold embroidery. Amy saw green eyes, the light-skinned Slavic features of northern Afghanistan, and several missing front teeth. Hamida was at least a decade younger than her grizzled husband and must have been pretty before hard work—and maybe Rasheed—had worn her down. Did she have a family somewhere? children?

Rasheed himself might never have been the stern, censorious man who'd forced Amy into a burqa. With an expansive smile, he lifted the sat phone from her hand. “Please you do not need to occupy yourself so. I will fix all.”

It wasn't Rasheed's first time with a sat phone; he quickly punched in a number. Finished, he beamed at Amy. “The Sarai Guesthouse is where Mr. Nestor and Mr. Bruce stay when they are here. They have a room for you. I will drive you there when you are ready.”

And what's your commission?
Amy wasn't sure she liked the new jovial Rasheed or the satisfied glance resting on her new outfit.
He thinks he's won. He's exercised his will over me, a female, and gotten away with it.
But Amy was going to need the man's connections and knowledge of the local system that Jamil wouldn't have.

At her request Rasheed took Amy on a tour of her new rental property. Downstairs, a single large salon on each side opened onto the inner courtyard. To either side, a tiled staircase wound up to the second-story balcony. Upstairs, the rooms were smaller with two on each side. Amy was pleased to find a second bathroom directly above the first.

Rasheed nodded when Amy explained her interest in expanding to the front courtyard and at least part of the main wing, waving aside her suggestion that she negotiate personally with the landlord. “That is not necessary. I will speak with Khalid myself tomorrow. I am sure all can be arranged. Whatever you should require I have already informed Mr. Bruce I will fix it for you.”

Amy would have liked to survey the entire property from this upper level, but the only windows in the women's quarters opened onto the interior courtyard. In contrast, the main wing had no windows facing inward through which visitors might catch a glimpse of female residents. At the top of each outer staircase, a door led into the main wing's second story. But like those locked salons in the hallway, these doors were in good repair and locked.

“Hamida will clean all of this when you require it,” Rasheed said.

His wife and Jamil had both trailed at a discreet distance during the tour. Hamida pulled her chador back over her face as she stepped out onto the second-floor balcony.

So even in the prison of their own quarters, they've got to worry about men looking over the back wall.
Amy rebelled.

“Hamida is not educated, and she is barren. But she is a hard worker, and she is not stupid. She can learn whatever you wish for her to do.” Turning to his wife, Rasheed broke into Dari.

Repeating his directive, Amy guessed, and by Hamida's apprehensive expression, not kindly. At that moment Amy hated Rasheed for the way he spoke of his wife and how he was grinning at Amy as though he'd just offered her a housewarming gift.

Her indignation warmed Amy's smile as she stepped toward the other woman to acknowledge the halfhearted introduction. “
Salaam aleykum
, Hamida. Please call me Amy.”

Hamida's fingertips barely brushed Amy's offered hand.

Pointing to herself, Amy repeated with clear emphasis, “Thank you so much—tashakor—for a delicious meal and all your help.”

“Ameera.” Rasheed nodded, shaggy beard wagging as though Amy had been speaking to him. “Yes, that is a much better name. An Afghan name. Ameera.”

Under the expectant pleasure of his beard-splitting grin, Amy gave up being angry. She wasn't here to bang her head against countless generations of cultural attitudes. By Afghan standards Rasheed might even be a decent husband. Hamida looked well fed, adequately clothed, with a roof over her head despite the barrenness that entitled any good Muslim husband to a divorce.

Stay focused. I'm here to help women and children, not try to reform macho jerks.
Her mind flashed to a tall, lithe form.
Of any nationality.

Just so the chowkidar didn't treat Amy like that. Amy infused authority into her voice as she continued to smile at Hamida. “This property is much too large for one person to clean. Would you ask Hamida if she knows of a few other women who need employment and would like to help?”

“Of course,” Rasheed agreed, though he didn't add a translation to his wife.

Amy let it go because she'd just remembered another undone item on her to-do list. She turned to Jamil. “What about you? Do you have a place to stay?”

Again Rasheed intervened. “That is not necessary. There is a place for him to sleep in the mechanics yard. It will be useful to have another guard at night.”

That explained the trucks and noises Amy had encountered over the cinder-block partition. “The other side of the property is rented out?”

“The business belongs to Khalid.” Rasheed led the way downstairs. “But you need not be concerned. There is no entrance into this side of the property.”

Amy would have inquired further, but an undulating cry split the air. It was followed by another more distant cry, then another. The city mosques issuing the third, or midafternoon, of the day's five calls to prayer.

The effect on her Afghan companions was electric. As one, Rasheed and Jamil unwrapped the light blanket, called a
patu
, that Afghan men wore draped around their necks to spread it out on the courtyard tiles. Amy's presence was forgotten or ignored, their flow of speech so rapid Amy caught only the occasional
“Allahu Akbar.”
“God is great.” They bowed, hands dropping to their knees. Then they were prostrate on the ground, foreheads pressed against the material that separated them from the ground.

Hamida had drifted away, perhaps to her own prayers.

After an awkward moment, Amy slipped unobtrusively back into the original salon and sank into a chair at the card table, feeling as though she'd been spying on something intensely personal.

These people have things to teach us about prayer and devotion. How many Christians stop everything to pray five times a day?

To Amy it was a gentle rebuke. For the first time since she'd stepped off the plane she pulled her thoughts from all that needed to be done.
I'm here, heavenly Father, as I've dreamed for so long. Thank you for bringing me this far, for keeping me safe from my own stupidity. Thank you for this unbelievable opportunity to do something new here. It's all so much bigger than I expected, and I'm not sure I know what I'm doing.

Against the inside of Amy's eyelids, a mental image sprang to vivid Technicolor, then another. A terrified toddler lost on a crowded sidewalk. The passionate relief on a man's face as his son's arms closed around his neck. The indomitable grin of a grizzled old man propelling his legless body in a homemade wheelchair. The skeletal hand and hopeless slump of a woman in a burqa wailing
baksheesh
. The somberness of remembered grief turning a young man's eyes old. A black veil falling away to reveal a gap-toothed smile of unexpected sweetness. Even the furiously twisted faces of her own attackers, their anger birthed not of hate but of fear.

But even without really knowing them yet, I care about these people. You made them, and I know you love them. They've suffered so much. I want to show them your love.