Veiled Freedom (27 page)

The Afghan woman paused to fix the clamoring children with a stern eye. “Have you finished your schoolwork?”

Crestfallen faces gave the answer. The older children now spent weekday mornings in the large salon off the downstairs hallway, Rasheed having produced some secondhand blackboards, tables, and desks. Soraya had come up with the teacher, a young woman named Fatima, who showed up each morning accompanied by a teenage boy who returned at noon to escort her home.

“Then finish your studies and leave Miss Ameera to eat her meal in peace.” Soraya cast a critical glance around the rest of the courtyard. Finding nothing amiss, she headed for the stairs.

Amy smiled at the disappointed faces. “Go on and do as Miss Soraya says, and when I'm done eating, I'll tell you a story.”

As the children reluctantly scattered, Amy too headed for the stairs. With her leaving, the women below returned abruptly to life, a clatter of dishes and renewed conversation following Amy up the steps. Though she could comprehend their bashful reticence, it saddened Amy as she'd have liked to offer them friendship as well as survival.

I'm a woman like you,
Amy wanted to cry.

But she knew she was not. Amy was a foreigner, an infidel, and their savior, and all three created a divide she could not cross. Conversation was still difficult except through Soraya, and since Amy didn't want to put a damper on the Welayat women's own developing group dynamics, she kept her distance from courtyard life unless there was need to intrude.

Soraya, who could speak their languages, didn't bother. Unless her authority was in demand, she spent her time at New Hope in the office or apartment. These illiterate peasant women, the flaring of her high-bridged nostrils made abundantly clear, might be her responsibility, but they didn't belong in her social circle.

Nor Amy either, it seemed.

Kabul's capricious power grid had been off-line when Amy and Soraya set out that afternoon. But by the local news blaring from the TV as Amy stepped into her apartment, the electricity was back on. Soraya didn't turn her head from images of the latest insurgent attack south of Kabul. Hamida had overheard the two women's arrival as she spread out their evening meal on the rug. Sinking cross-legged to the oilcloth, Amy stifled a sigh.

Soraya spoke Amy's language, was educated at least to her level, and Amy had looked forward to the other woman's companionship as much as her assistance. Especially since she felt a respect verging on awe for all Soraya had accomplished. But though her new assistant was quick to do anything Amy asked, to correct patiently, if tersely, Amy's Dari grammar or discuss the needs of their charges, she never chatted.

There was no companionable conversation over meals or any other time. Soraya spoke as much as was required to do her job and no more. When the two women were alone in their suite of an evening, Soraya turned on the TV or shut herself into her room.

And that too saddened Amy.

Not that she had a right to sadness. Soraya more than earned her salary, and that was all Amy had any right to demand.

Kebabs, rice, and fried eggplant in yogurt sauce were as good as all Hamida's cooking. Amy ate quickly, smiling her appreciation to Rasheed's wife, who lingered to wait on the two women with nervous gestures. Hamida hadn't joined the other women since the courtyard incident, but she appeared unharmed, physically at any rate.

Finishing first, Soraya headed back to the office, where Amy knew she'd be taking advantage of the returned electricity to type up the afternoon's reports.

Escaping to her own room, Amy picked up a suitcase-shaped box. The deluxe flannelgraph set had been a gift from her parents when Amy set out to her first refugee camp assignment and was one of the few extras she'd brought to Afghanistan.

That first evening the Welayat group arrived at New Hope had been chaos, children and mothers alike frightened and unsettled. Little Tamana and her brother Fahim, among New Hope's new residents, were the first to beg Amy for a repeat of the story she'd told at the prison. The flannelgraph set's brilliantly colored backdrops and vivid movable figures were sufficient improvement on Amy's amateur artwork to induce awed gasps—and immediate calm. Since then Amy's stories had become a ritual the children insisted on each evening.

And I enjoy it as much as they do,
Amy admitted, heading back down the outdoor staircase. In the courtyard, a group was already settled beside the fountain, not just children, but some of the mothers, infants and toddlers nestled in their laps. A chair and low table were set out for Amy.

Farah stepped forward, a stack of Dari primers in her hands. “The children have all finished their work. I personally have checked that each was done correctly.”

“Tashakor. That's wonderful,” Amy thanked the girl with sincere delight.

The Welayat women had been offered the opportunity to attend classes, but only Farah and the youngest Hazara mother had chosen to do so. Farah devoured everything she was taught on the first hearing. Some of the older children were also leaping ahead.

We're going to need a second teacher soon. And another classroom. There's still that empty salon next to the schoolroom.

A breeze that had grown colder in the last hour tugged at Amy's loose tunic, tossed bright strands across her face, as she lifted the storyboard to the low table. She didn't cover her head in the privacy of the women's quarters, but for once Amy wished she'd brought a shawl, the bite in the air a reminder winter wasn't far off. Meals and community life would soon need to be moved indoors.

And that's more urgent than a second classroom. Or we can do both in there.
Unless Amy could talk Rasheed out of those remaining locked salons across the hallway.

Meanwhile, her audience seemed inured to dropping temperatures and cold tiles beneath their thin clothing as Amy was not. The children squirmed with anticipation as she draped a backdrop over the storyboard. Inside the kitchen, a Hindi soap went abruptly silent, the evening cleanup crew emerging to join the group. Even Aryana, the accused murderer who still spent most of her time outside huddled silently on her tushak, had drifted to the edge of the veranda, her two-year-old clutched tight in her arms.

“Fahim. Enayat.” Amy selected two older boys squeezed into the front row. “Would you like to see if Jamil is ready? You should find him finishing supper with Wajid in the guard shack.”

Though under Soraya's tutelage and constant practice with the children Amy's Dari vocabulary had multiplied greatly, it was still nowhere up to narrating an entire story.

Jamil arrived before Amy had finished setting out the evening's illustrations, the women hurriedly pulling shawls across their faces as Fahim and Enayat tugged him across the courtyard.

Soraya would have been a more logical assistant—if nothing else, so that the women didn't feel the need to cover themselves. But the few times Jamil hadn't been available, the Afghan woman's frowning disdain discouraged Amy from repeating the experience, while the children always clamored for their original translator.

Crouching beside Amy, Jamil offered his small fans no encouragement, but the former medical student had by now tended enough of their scrapes and bruises that he'd earned an affectionate Jamil-jan, whether he liked it or not. As he obligingly shifted his back to the listeners, scarves dropped away from faces.

“Tonight I'm going to tell you about a boy who fought a great big giant with only a slingshot and five stones.” Amy had wracked her brain for stories to satisfy her demanding audience. She had never realized how many dysfunctional family relations and frighteningly powerful villains the average fairy tale contained until she'd tried retelling them in this context.

So she'd returned to stories that seemed to make more sense to these children, perhaps because their own world and recent history were not so far removed from the tales of disaster and war and oppression and captivity that filled the pages of Amy's own holy book. If the paradise story was always in demand, the children loved such adventures as Joseph, Daniel and his three friends, the Syrian leper Naaman's captured slave girl, who'd all known just such injustice and imprisonment as this group.

The flat-roofed adobe dwellings, pastoral backdrops, and village life of Amy's flannelgraph set might have been Afghanistan as much as the biblical scenes they were meant to illustrate. Amy had deliberately stuck to the Old Testament, whose patriarchs were also claimed by Muslims.

If I'm telling the stories differently than the mullahs, no one's complained yet. I just wish I could tell them about Jesus. I wonder if Jamil has read that New Testament yet. He hasn't mentioned it.

“When the giant saw David was only a boy, he laughed at him. But David picked up his slingshot and faced the giant bravely.” Amy placed the next figure on the storyboard. “‘I am not afraid of you. You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty.'”

David and Goliath was a new story by the enthralled faces of children and adults alike. Jamil looked as absorbed as his listeners, his hand gestures an exact mimic of Amy's. He didn't seem to have noticed the toddler who'd climbed into his lap. A small boy suddenly laid his head on Amy's knee, face turned to look up at her with rapt attention. On Amy's other side, seven-year-old Tamana sidled close to do the same.

As Amy brushed fingers across the nestled head, put an arm around the little girl's shoulders, something sweet and warm wrapped tendrils around her heart. She'd barely made a start here at New Hope and in Afghanistan. But on this night, these few children and their mothers at least would go to bed safe and warm, with stomachs that did not ache with hunger and no cause to be afraid.

Let them know too that like Joseph and Daniel and David, they're not alone in this great, big, scary world. You love them, Father God, and are watching over them. And maybe someday you'll open the door for me or someone else to tell them the rest of the story.

“‘This day the Lord will hand you over to me. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord's—'” Amy stopped at the sound of a quickly suppressed cough.

Rasheed came into view to lean against a pillar. How long had the chowkidar been listening from the open door under the stairs? Then Amy caught sight of another door standing open at the top of the stairs, a shrouded female shape at the railing. Soraya had stepped outside to listen from the balcony.

Not that it should matter, but even as Amy resumed her storytelling, something in Rasheed's expression, the watchful immobility of the listener above her, replaced Amy's former warm pleasure with a chill.

Jamil approved of the story Ameera had told tonight. To stand and fight the evil oppressor against overwhelming odds—more so, to emerge victorious through the strength and favor of Allah—were the daydreams brought home by every Muslim boy-child from his studies with the mullahs. Just such a warrior had been the prophet Muhammad himself, wielding a mighty sword in defense of the faith, conquering huge swaths of territory during his lifetime.

A very different personage from Ameera's Jesus.

Jamil dug Ameera's gift from his vest though twilight through the window bars was fading fast. He'd now read of Isa Masih's birth, the prophet's trial of temptation, his beginning as a miracle worker. It had taken several evenings, sounding out each word, refamiliarizing himself with the boxy script until night fell and Jamil could no longer make out the tiny letters. The reading was getting easier, the stories fascinating enough that he'd drifted to sleep for once with no thoughts that held fury or pain nor dreams that lingered when he awoke.

That this biographical account at least was true, there seemed no reason to doubt. The Quran spoke of Maryam, virgin mother of Isa. The prophet Muhammad also wrestled with evil jinn and received visits from angels. Every Muslim knew Isa was a miracle worker who healed the sick, cared for the poor, even raised the dead.

Still, Islamic lore was as filled with saints who did miracles as with heroes who fought great battles. The credulous still prayed at their shrines, pouring out treasure in hopes of miracles and healings, though Jamil's stricter instructors had been scathing toward those who turned to the dead in such pagan practices.

Impatiently, Jamil pushed on, leafing carefully through the thin, fragile pages. What of the prophet's teachings? There was nothing in these stories to explain why anyone would care to restrict the reading—or believing—of this book.

The answer was on the very next page. The prophet had climbed to a mountainside to get away from the crowds. Jamil could picture in his mind the surging, pressing multitudes like a New Year's pilgrimage to the shiny blue domes of Hazrat Ali's shrine in Mazar-i-Sharif. There on the mountain, Isa sat down to instruct his disciples. The teachings began with the rhythm of poetry: