Veiled Freedom (21 page)

His bark of laughter acknowledged her hit. “That settles it, then. I don't know about you, but it's been a thirsty afternoon. How about I scrounge some drinks to settle the dust? I see some food over there too.”

Amy's glance flew instinctively to a stocky figure still stumbling toward the French doors.

“And don't look so worried. I'm no Peter Dunsmore. In my line of work, there are three things I need to be able to do at all times. Think straight. Drive straight. And shoot straight. And you can't do any of them when you're seeing double.”

A reminder of just who and what Steve Wilson was. “But you're off duty now.”

“I'm never off duty,” Steve contradicted. “Not when I'm on the ground in-country. I learned the hard way a long time ago that alcohol and guns don't mix. I watched a contractor mow down a taxi in Baghdad. If he hadn't been partying so hard the night before, he'd have noticed the car was full of women and children. That's when I switched to Coke. But I can get you something stronger.”

Amy shook her head. “When I first started working in this part of the world, I made a commitment that my Muslim coworkers shouldn't have to smell alcohol on my breath.”

Steve gestured to the dancing crowd. “I'm guessing that makes us both the oddballs in this group. Two sodas then? Coke? Sprite?”

Amy hadn't totally forgiven Steve's incivility on their last encounter. But at least he was a known face, and at the moment she just didn't feel up to crashing another table of strangers. “A Coke would be nice.” She couldn't resist adding, “If you're sure your girlfriend isn't missing you. I didn't mean to break up your party.”

Even in the last of the twilight Amy could see red rising to Steve's cheekbones. “There was no party to break up. I popped in to meet a fellow contractor. Business. But he disappeared. Meanwhile, why don't you settle in here, and I'll be right back.”

Steve waited courteously for Amy to resume her seat before walking away. Amy's expression lost its animation as soon as he disappeared into the crowd. She was deep in thought, hands curled in her lap, when two Coke cans dripping with condensation plunked down onto the table, followed by two paper plates piled high with barbecued ribs and finger foods.

“Dunsmore won't bother you again,” Steve said quietly, adding a stack of napkins. “I've already dropped a word to your manager. He'll be out tonight.”

Only then did Amy notice Peter through the French doors. He was arguing with the Sarai's manager behind the reception desk, and even as Amy watched, he disappeared up a staircase toward the guest quarters. So that was why Steve had bothered lingering here with Amy. Despite his disavowals, he somehow still felt she needed a keeper.

Well, that was certainly more in character with the man who'd chewed Amy out on their last encounter. But Steve had misread Amy's thoughts, because Peter had been nowhere near Amy's mind.

Lifting a Coke can, she popped the tab. “Thanks. But I was actually thinking about my driver. Jamil had this crazy idea I was off to some wild Hollywood movie of illicit drinking, dancing, and partying. I told him I was just visiting with some expat colleagues. But I can't help wondering what all this would look like through his eyes. And what it must feel like to be told he can't enter a building in his own country because foreigners have freedoms he doesn't. The idea that expats here have a choice and he doesn't—well, I know how I'd feel.”

Putting down the Coke without drinking, Amy demanded abruptly, “Is it true that Afghanistan's new constitution makes this an Islamic state under sharia law?”

Steve's intent look dissolved, and again his grin made him young. “You don't bother much with small talk, do you?”

When Amy showed no response to his teasing, his expression grew serious. “It's not the expats but the local Ministry of Vice that enforces liquor laws on Afghan citizens. Foreign entities that don't check for passports have been getting kicked out of the country.”

Steve picked up a barbecued rib. They looked and smelled wonderful, a reminder Amy hadn't yet eaten supper. But she didn't trust them near her silk attire, so she reached instead for a cucumber sandwich.

“You're in what is officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. And yes, sharia law is the basis of its jurisprudence. That's nothing new. It's been several years since the new constitution was ratified.”

“And Iraq? What about their new constitution?”

“Ditto, though not quite so long ago.” Steve chewed thoughtfully, a quizzical gaze resting on Amy's face, her hair spilling over her shoulders without the confining scarf. “I'm surprised you need to ask. I'd have assumed that would be one of the no-brainers included in your field briefing. Or that you'd have researched it yourself before getting on a plane.”

Steve laid down the half-eaten rib. As abruptly as Amy's earlier query, he demanded, “Do your parents approve of their daughter galloping around a war zone? I'd think they'd be sick with worry.”

“I'm not a child,” she said sharply. Sometimes possessing the youthful look of a teenager was a definite professional disadvantage. “And since my parents are to blame for my being here, they hardly have grounds to complain.”

An eyebrow shot up as Steve reached for a napkin. “Enlighten me.”

Amy dropped her sandwich back to her plate. “You want my whole life story? It's hardly screenplay category.”

“On the contrary, who you are determines what really motivated you to come here. And that does interest me.”

“Fine then.” Amy had done this often enough on the expat circuit to have her bio down to a rapid patter. “I grew up in Miami. My father's Anglo, pastor of a pretty big church, mother Cuban. Her father was a pastor too in Havana, jailed by Castro. After he got out, they made it to Miami when my mom was about six. A lot of people helped when they came as refugees, and my parents taught us to pass that on. When they weren't helping refugees in Miami, they were taking church teams on overseas humanitarian stints. I was sixteen the first time I went on a short-term missions trip doing hurricane relief in Honduras. There's an adrenaline rush to helping people smile again when they've lost everything. I got hooked.”

“You said
us
. You've got siblings?”

“A brother with World Vision, sister in Peru with USAID, two more in college. Anyway, I was overseas every summer until I graduated from Florida International University. Since then I've been in so many countries I've lost track. Mainly with Christian Relief, a volunteer NGO our church sponsors.”

“But you're not with them anymore. Why the switch to this New Hope Foundation? And why Afghanistan?”

Amy felt no surprise that Steve had remembered. By the sharpness of his gaze and tone, he rarely forgot much of anything. “New Hope's easy. School loans. Volunteer relief doesn't pay Wells Fargo. I've wanted to come to Afghanistan ever since liberation back when I was in high school.”

Bio complete, Amy firmly dragged the subject back to her own disquiet. “But I never had a field briefing. I was asked to come here at the last minute. Naturally I googled some country reports, bought a couple guidebooks. But I didn't read anything about sharia law.

“The media and politicians are always talking about how Afghanistan's a democracy now. The way they talked, I assumed it was like India or Turkey, where you've got Hindu or Muslim majorities. And of course one expects those beliefs will dominate the local culture. But since it's a democracy, people are at least theoretically free to decide what they want to keep of their cultural beliefs and philosophy and faith—and what they themselves might choose to change.”

Amy wasn't sure why she was spilling this out to a sardonic-looking contractor who was at her side only because he felt a certain guilt—except that the questions were burning inside her.

“But if sharia is still Afghanistan's governing law, then how can this be called a democracy? Under sharia, you're not allowed to think or do anything that's considered contrary to Islam. Forget political choice or women's rights. There's no freedom of speech. No freedom of religious or philosophical expression.” The horror of it was in Amy's voice. “Sharia means it's still a death sentence for an Afghan to so much as choose their own faith in God.”

“You've got that right,” Steve said. “It wasn't too long ago the local Islamic council put a Christian convert on trial. That made the international media. There's no doubt the purpose and timing was to challenge whether sharia or some foreign code of human rights was going to carry the day here.”

“And which did?” Amy demanded. “I remember hearing something at the time, but I was in India then, away from the news. I'm sure I'd have heard if they actually executed the guy.”

Steve shrugged. “In the end it was mutual face-saving. After enormous international pressure, the mullahs declared the man mentally incompetent, therefore ineligible for the death penalty. He was whisked out of the country and is living in Europe.”

“So in other words, they got out of it without anyone having to take an actual stand on religious freedom. Including our government. I thought we were in Afghanistan to help bring democracy and freedom. I cheered when we came over here, no matter how horrible it was, because I believed that it was worth the guns and the bombs. Not just for us but for the Afghan people. But if we haven't even given them basic human freedoms, then what are we doing here?”

Amy had started out calmly, keeping her voice below the rowdy hip-hop now playing. But tears were stinging her eyes, and her fingernails bit into her palms to keep them from spilling over. The outrage that had gripped her since Elsa Leister dropped that single, overlooked bombshell compelled her on. “People keep talking as though what matters is whether women have to wear a burqa or get to go to school. But every freedom we have is based first on the fundamental freedom to believe in your heart and worship God according to your own conscience. If you don't have that freedom, how can you ever have freedom over what you say out loud, much less what you do?

“You were a soldier, right? At least I know most PSCs were. You know the local language, so you must have served around here somewhere. Tell me, how could this have happened? How could you all have
let
it happen?”

“That's where you're wrong.” The harshness of the statement cut Amy off as much as its finality.

Steve's expression was no longer affable but as hard as chiseled stone, his gaze chips of gray ice. “Sure, I was a soldier and I served in Afghanistan. But my teammates and I came here with one very simple mission: to take out al-Qaeda and their Taliban support and prevent them from attacking our country again—period. We carried out our mission well, if you haven't noticed.”

“Look, I wasn't trying to disparage our troops. I know they're not the ones who make those decisions. But—” Amy hesitated, appalled at the misunderstanding, but the words burst from her. “Their superiors back in DC are, and they've had plenty to say about democracy and freedom. Besides, don't we owe something to the Afghans after coming over here and turning their country on its ear? Okay, so there're still people who want sharia law. But there must be plenty of ordinary people who really believed we were bringing them something better. I just can't help thinking those people must feel we've betrayed them.”

“The question is—who's betrayed who?” Like Amy, Steve kept his voice low, but its harshness bit through the music so clearly Amy couldn't have ignored it.

“Unfortunately only too many Afghans share your crazy idea that America can and should bring them a better life. But that's where they and you are dead wrong. They want
us
to bring them freedom,
us
to make changes. But America doesn't have the power or the will to bring freedom to Afghanistan or any other country. Or frankly the responsibility. And it never did.”

“I didn't mean—” Amy subsided as Steve's sharp gesture cut her off.

“Bottom line, you can't give freedom to people at the point of a sword—or gun—any more than you can give faith. And for much the same reason. It's got to come from inside. You'd think we'd have learned that by now. Oh yes, I can testify the Afghans believed when we came here that we were powerful enough to whistle the warlords to heel, wipe out corruption, and restore stability with all the precision and speed of our guided missile system. They know better now.

“But let me tell you what
we
expected. We expected that when we took away the excuses for these people to keep fighting and abusing each other that they would stop. That we could roll in with our money and heavy machinery and good intentions, have everyone shake hands, and get to work rebuilding this country.”

Steve crushed his now-empty Coke can under his fist with a force that sounded like a gunshot. “Now you've been here—what, three or four days? And I'm betting you've already made the same snap judgments they all do. With all the troops and weapons and aid, why aren't things getting any better?