Veiled Freedom (48 page)

“Miss Ameera, the foreign invaders are at the gate requesting to speak with you.”

The description was how Wajid referred to Steve Wilson and the other contractors who'd come to install the fiber-optic fencing. Amy's breath left her with a whoosh that gave away just how much she'd been anticipating the call.

Or hoping, at least. And not just for those promised Eid gifts. Amy had already distributed sweatshirts, woolen leggings and socks, winter cloaks, and other items she'd collected at the bazaar, and the delighted New Hope residents wouldn't be expecting anything else. But however infuriating Steve's rudeness, Amy had come away from yesterday's Thanksgiving celebration with a new respect for the security contractor, and she'd regretted parting on such an unhappy note.

The fragrance of roasting meat made Amy's mouth water as she descended the marble steps. Two yearling sheep were revolving slowly over a wood fire in the front courtyard, several older boys turning the spits under Jamil's supervision. One was for the men from Rasheed's quadrant, the other to accompany the dishes New Hope women and older girls were cooking for their own Eid feast. Amy hurried toward a tall, lean form in Army parka and cap carrying a large cardboard box through the gate.

It still seemed unbelievable Steve Wilson should turn out to be the same American soldier she'd written in the wake of 9/11 so many years ago. He couldn't have been many years out of his teens himself when he'd dropped into these mountains to fight the Taliban. One of the most dedicated soldiers he'd known, Rev Garwood had called him. But though he'd walked away with no overt injuries, the former Special Forces sergeant's faith—if not in God, then in any difference human beings could make in this world God had created for them—would seem as much a battle casualty as Soraya's husband or Jamil's family.

Amy stopped short as the newcomer deposited the cardboard box on the ground so that she caught sight of his face—and limp. It wasn't Steve but Phil. “What a nice surprise. Wajid told me there were expats at the gate. I didn't realize it was you.”

Phil straightened up with a grin. “We're in a bit of crisis mode, so Steve couldn't come himself. But he wanted to make sure these got to you this morning. Something about your Eid celebration.”

Had Steve really been unable to break away himself, or had he just chosen to avoid further contact with Amy? She swallowed back disappointment.

A pair of men in security uniforms finished ferrying in other boxes and bags as fast as they could move back and forth from the SUV outside the gate.

Phil turned to Amy. “I guess that's it. Do you need help to handle all this? Some of those boxes will require assembling.”

Despite the courtesy of his offer, Amy could see from the haste of his speech and glance at his watch that he was tamping down impatience. “No, I wouldn't want to delay you any further. My assistant and the kids can help me. But I sure appreciate you taking time for all this. I can't tell you how much this means to the children. Thank you.”

The children abandoned their running to swarm over boxes and bags.

Despite his hurry, Phil took time for another smile and a handshake. “My pleasure, really. I couldn't be home for the holidays. Doing something for these kids makes my own seem not quite so far away.” He slapped an open palm against his forehead. “Oh, just a minute. There is something I'm forgetting.”

Hurrying out the gate, Phil returned with another box, this one open. High-pitched yips told Amy what to expect even before he set it down. Scrabbling to climb out was a fluffy, roly-poly German shepherd puppy.

“That's from Steve. One of the K-9s had a litter, and he snagged the last one, a female. Figured your kids would enjoy her. And she'll be a better guard than any barbed wire.”

“Oh, she's adorable.” Amy lifted the squirming animal beyond the children's excited clutches. “But I don't think we'd be able keep her. Dogs are unclean animals, our caretaker told me.”

“Oh, but this isn't a dog,” Phil responded, deadpan but with a twinkle in his eye. “It's a
gorg,
a wolf. That's a clean animal here.”

Amy looked at him doubtfully, but just then Wajid ambled over to scratch the puppy behind an ear. “A gorg. I have long wished for one of these. I am told they are excellent guard animals. I will prepare a bed near mine to keep watch over it at night.”

For the children at least, the puppy was all that was needed to complete a perfect feast day. Once the visitors were gone, Jamil helped with the packages. He hadn't been available for story time the night before, leaving Amy to her own halting narration. So she'd braced herself this morning for explanations, though she wasn't sure how to erase that anger she'd glimpsed earlier.

It hadn't proved necessary. Jamil displayed no lingering animosity as he returned with Rasheed from Eid services at the mosque to help distribute clothing, pile wood, and lift sheep onto spits. But neither remained any of the companionable partnership Amy had thought they'd developed these past weeks. It was as though Jamil had reverted to that silent shadow he'd been when Amy first hired him, offering no word or glance except those necessary to carry out his duties.

Which didn't keep him from making short work of instructions and diagrams as the children gleefully unpacked their treasures. Two portable goals were quickly assembled and dragged onto the playing field while Jamil turned his mechanical skills to an assortment of push trikes. One box held field hockey sticks, another Frisbees and deflated balls. There were crayons, markers, tubs of finger paints, and Play-Doh. Another box held kite makings. Safe, gentle children's kites, not the lethal battle weapons Afghan kites could be with their metal- or glass-studded strings.

Nothing personal that could be stolen or fought over, I told him.
Amy hadn't even thought Steve was listening, but Rev Garwood had said he'd followed Steve's guidelines. How had a man without children of his own, who didn't even believe in Amy's mission here, read so exactly what she'd have chosen herself? And the “wolf,” which Rasheed had already looked over approvingly—Amy hadn't needed Phil to tell her that was Steve's astute thinking.

No, she wasn't going to let Steve's contradictions, any more than Jamil's continued aloofness, dampen the pleasure of this feast day. By the time Rasheed pronounced the sheep ready to lift from their spits, Amy had demonstrated how to throw a Frisbee and proved that even in long tunic and headscarf she could outscore the older boys in field hockey.

Though the snow had melted, it was too cold to unroll the vinyl eating cloth outdoors, so the paneling between schoolroom and its neighboring salon was folded back to lay out a sumptuous feast. There were platters of saffron-hued pilau speckled with orange rind, grated carrots, and raisins. Others piled high with
mantu
and
ashak
, pierogi-style pastries stuffed with spiced meat and vegetable fillings. There was fried eggplant with yogurt sauce and potato-stuffed
boulani
pastries. Plastic basins overflowing with sticky puddings, melon slices, figs, and nuts. And of course, the roasted sheep.

Amy had retained Becky's DVD projector from yesterday, and when the feast was cleared away, the children worn-out from playing with their new treasures, she set up
The Lion King
on the schoolroom wall. Exhausted from being bounced from child to child, the puppy fell asleep in Farah's arms.

As Simba roared, Amy searched out her remaining staff with their own Eid gifts. For Rasheed, Amy had chosen a solar-powered radio too large for carrying around so Hamida might have opportunity to listen when the caretaker was off working. Maybe she'd even come across Christian broadcasts, beamed over the border through satellite feed.
Nothing is impossible for you, God.

Amy set aside a collection of Persian poetry for when Fatima returned to classes. Jamil and Wajid had received smaller solar-powered radios. For Jamil, Amy had added a full pocket Bible like the one she kept in her shoulder bag for daily prayer times. For just a moment as Jamil looked over the gifts, his aloofness slipped, and as once before, Amy caught a swift play of confusion and grief and longing across his face before he thanked her colorlessly and walked away.

But he wasn't allowed to escape so easily. Despite the treat of a movie, the children clamored for their customary story time. “The Eid story. Abraham and Ishmael.”

Amy shook her head. “I don't know that story as you tell it.”

Though based on the Genesis account of Abraham obeying God's command to sacrifice his son Isaac, the Quranic version replaced Isaac with Abraham's illegitimate son Ishmael. To Christians, God's supplying of a ram to take Isaac's place was an image of the Son of God's substitutionary sacrifice on the cross for their sins. In Islam, the emphasis was on every good Muslim's willingness to sacrifice themselves to please Allah. Her Eid preparations had prompted Amy to do some digging on the Internet. She'd come away with more questions than answers.

Why did the Quran change this particular biblical account so drastically? Had Muhammad, an Arab and descendant of Ishmael, been so desperate to be counted one of God's chosen, he'd rewritten history itself to make his ancestor, his people, and not Israel, the original people of God? How had he missed so completely the truth that God's grace and mercy, Jesus' atoning sacrifice, cared not for ancestry or color or gender, but a yearning, seeking, repentant heart? Still, a feast day celebrating the local version was hardly the time or place to challenge it.

“Paradise, then!” the children clamored. “Paradise!”

“Paradise,” Amy agreed. This one she could tell herself. Retrieving the bright story boards, Amy began the now familiar phrases. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

But when she finished, the children weren't satisfied. It was Tamana who stood up to demand, “You promised to tell us what happened next. Why do we no longer live in the garden and play with the beautiful animals?”

“I did promise, didn't I?” Amy admitted. “But that story is a little sad. You don't want to hear it tonight on Eid.”

Yes, they did. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to gorge this bunch on so many unaccustomed goodies. The circle of bright eyes and small, eager faces were wide-awake and determined.

Roya spoke up for the mothers. “If you do not mind, Miss Ameera, they will not sleep tonight until they have had their way.”

“Fine. But I will need Jamil because I do not know the Dari well.”

Jamil emerged from the shadows before Amy had to send a child for him, hunkering down beside her chair.

“Okay, then, I told you how God made Adam and Eve. But I haven't told you yet about Satan, the enemy of God. One day he took the form of a beautiful serpent and came to talk to Eve as she was walking near the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Do you remember what God told Adam and Eve about that tree?”

The sadness of this narrative of human disobedience and paradise lost gripped Amy more than she read in the absorbed faces around her. This group was acquainted enough with human wrongdoing to accept it unquestioningly. It was Amy's own distress that hastened to add, “But even though Adam and Eve had lost paradise and would no longer live forever, they or their descendants, God still loved them and forgave them. He made a sacrifice of an animal just like the Eid celebration today as a promise that someday a Savior would come from the seed of Adam and Eve who would bring forgiveness and restore paradise and eternal life to the human beings he had created. Best of all, because of this Savior, one day mankind would walk and talk with God again.”

“Muhammad,” Tamana spoke up.

The other children raised her statement in a chant. “Muhammad! Muhammad!”

“No, not Muhammad,” Amy said as she felt unfriendly eyes on her. Sometime during her story, Rasheed had stepped unnoticed through the double doors from the main hallway into the schoolroom, and he was unsmiling, dark gaze hooded and watchful.

Then Amy realized Rasheed wasn't the only newcomer.

“But that is another story for another day,” she finished firmly. Closing the story boards against an outbreak of protests, Amy hurried across the salon. “Eid mubarak, Soraya. But what are you doing here? I thought you were celebrating with your family today.”

“Eid mubarak,” Soraya murmured, but she too was unsmiling, and Amy wondered fleetingly if her latest story had crossed some line until she saw that Soraya's eyes were rimmed with red as well as the usual black kohl.

As her housemate edged away from the released children into the hall, Amy followed to say quietly, “I wasn't expecting you until Sunday. Is something wrong at home?”

“I—yes. There has been a medical emergency. My family—they were hoping—I had hoped—they need to pay the hospital—I thought perhaps an advance on my salary—”

The awkward jerkiness of Soraya's speech was so uncharacteristic Amy stared at her, bewildered. “I'm sure we can—”

But just then Soraya drew herself up to her full, stately height, a mixture of shame and defiance on her proud features. “No, it is not my family who requests. It is I. The bonus that is customary for Eid, I did not remember to pick it up before I traveled home, and because of the great need there, I felt it best to come for it immediately.”

“Sure, of course, just one moment.” Amy was completely bewildered. As she sprinted up the staircase, she pulled her cell phone from her ever-present shoulder bag. Thankfully, Becky Frazer answered immediately.

“Becky, I don't know if I'm being conned, but was I supposed to give a salary bonus for Eid? Soraya's here hinting for one.”

“Oh, honey, are you saying you didn't pay it? Yes, definitely. It's what they call the thirteenth month salary, so they can all shop for Eid. Unless you paid the extra month for the Ramadan feast, in which case you can get by with less. But a lot of NGOs give both. After all, they can afford it.”