Veiled Freedom (5 page)

Beggars remained everywhere. Men missing limbs squatted on sidewalks or negotiated traffic on wheelchairs crafted from bicycle tires. Women in burqas exposed a cupped palm at intersections, small, ragged children at their skirts. Nor in the glut of automatic weapons and armed vehicles did Steve see any indication of a country at rest from war. It wasn't just the ISAF convoys with their armored Humvees and turret guns. A dozen different uniforms belonging to the Afghan police, army, or hired security firms roamed sidewalks, stood guard at intersections and outside buildings, and crouched behind sandbags on the tops of walls.

And I thought we'd freed this place.

Just what did those war victims in their wheelchairs and burqas scrabbling for a daily food ration, the shopkeepers and street vendors with their watchful eyes think of the new Afghanistan he'd helped create? or of the Westerners flooding their city with new cars and shining towers and shopping malls and restaurants few Afghans could ever afford to enter? for that matter, of those equally ostentatious new domes and minarets that did nothing to put food on their tables?

Steve felt a sudden weariness that was not from jet lag.
Why did I come back here?

Because it's safer than Iraq, and the money's even better. I was tired of being shot at, remember?
After all, who was Steve to sneer when his own latest contract would net him five times what he'd ever earned as a proud member of his nation's Special Operations Command?

A city of dirt and mud.

Such was Amy Mallory's first disenchanted impression as the Ariana Airlines flight banked above a wide, dust-brown mountain valley. A dirty haze blurred a maze of lines and rectangles that crawled up barren flanks of encircling foothills. As the plane dropped, the maze resolved itself into endless mud-brick compound walls and flat-roofed houses the same dun hue as unpaved streets. Only in the basin's center could be glimpsed brick and glass and concrete of modern construction.

Kabul.

First impressions were not improved by grit whipping across face and eyes during an interminable march from plane to terminal. Or the hot, bumpy drive into the city. Dust as fine as talcum powder seeped around window- and doorframes, drifting through the mesh grille that covered Amy's face to clog her throat and nostrils. She reached under shiny polyester to wipe at sweat trickling down her face, and her hand came away muddy.

Swallowing dryly, Amy tried not to think of the bottled water she hadn't bothered to pick up at the airport. Instead, she glanced into the reflective surface a coating of dust had made of the nearest window. It showed a blurred, pale blue outline as though Amy Mallory were no longer an individual—capable, independent, world traveler, international aid worker—but a shapeless, anonymous blob.

A burqa. The women's prison that to the twenty-first-century West had come to symbolize Afghanistan.

So get a grip and stop whining. I've been dreaming and praying about coming to this place for years. Where's my sense of adventure—and humor?

The latter had withered badly under the driver's glare in the rearview mirror.
Drop Amy Mallory into any back corner of the planet,
her long-suffering father often joked,
and you could count on her emerging unscathed, chattering a new language, a fresh project under way, and a host of new friends in tow.

If an exaggeration, Amy's communication and people skills had proved useful. But neither her sunniest smile nor the Dari phrases she'd memorized on the long flight over had made any visible impression on the turbaned, bearded Afghan who'd picked her up at the airport. The flight had been at least half expatriate but overwhelmingly male, and Amy's unease began as she'd witnessed one passenger after another whisked through immigration into recent-model SUVs.

Several such groups screamed private security contractor. All male, all physically fit, in the safari-style clothing, heavy boots, and wraparound sunglasses that seemed to be the community's international uniform. And though they appeared unarmed, the catlike aggression of their stride bristled invisible weapons. Amy had been going through the first checkpoint when one such pair walked by unchallenged, the tallest sliding a cool, gray gaze over Amy as they passed. Not as though noting a young and presentable female. More like assessing a threat level.

Meanwhile Amy found herself in one endless line after another. When she finally emerged, it was to her current escort holding up a hand-lettered sign to a steady chant of her last name. The large, burly man in pajama-like tunic and baggy trousers had stared at her as though she were martian. Only when Amy held up her passport, matching her name to the sign, had he herded her to this ancient Russian army jeep.

Then without a single word, he'd pulled out a bundle of shiny blue cloth. Shoving it at Amy, he'd stood there expressionless, unmoving, giving no indication of understanding her protests, until with exasperation Amy tugged the tight cap piece of the burqa over her head and allowed the voluminous material to drop around her. A strong odor of perspiration and sandalwood talc indicated regular use. The driver's wife? Okay, so the handful of other expat women climbing into those SUVs had been farsighted enough to include long sleeves and a head shawl in their travel wardrobe. Still, if it weren't for that sign with her name on it, she'd wonder if she were being kidnapped.

Now she was being paranoid. But Amy didn't allow tense muscles to relax as a dissonance of car horns, blaring radios, and vendor cries swirled around her. Through the burqa's mesh grille, the accompanying shapes were such a dizzying kaleidoscope, she found it easier to keep her eyes shut. The worst was that neither mesh nor polyester allowed air to flow easily, so that between dust and dryness and recycled carbon dioxide, Amy found herself gasping for breath. She was growing desperate enough to yank the burqa away when the jeep slowed, then stopped. A moment later, the back passenger door opened. Groping for her shoulder bag, Amy scrambled out.

Now that her world was still, Amy could make out a paved street, the construction concrete and brick instead of sun-dried mud. A high wall in front of Amy had once been peacock blue, faded now to the color of her burqa. A black, metal pedestrian gate and a wider vehicle gate farther down completed a match with the JPEG she'd received. Her surly escort had, after all, conveyed Amy safely to her destination, the Kabul headquarters of the NGO—nongovernmental organization—that had brought her here: New Hope Foundation.

A small panel in the pedestrian gate slid sideways; then the gate opened. An elderly Afghan man stepped out, beard long and white, assault rifle hanging by a strap over one shoulder. The driver headed up a cobblestone path, leaving Amy to shoulder her bag and follow. As the gate clanged shut behind her, Amy seized the opportunity to yank off the burqa. A late morning sun felt deliciously cool after the sauna inside the burqa, and Amy felt no shame as she used the polyester to wipe away sweat and grime before balling it up under one arm.

But now that she could see, Amy found herself swallowing back disappointment as well as dust. In the JPEG the gate's black metal hadn't shown itself rusted enough to fall off its hinges. The cobblestone path led to a courtyard with a fountain. Behind the fountain, marble steps rose to a columned portico and into a two-story villa.

But the fountain wasn't running, the courtyard's tiled mosaic broken, windows on both floors boarded over. Though the lot was several acres, only tree stumps, broken trellises, and sun-baked dirt remained of what had once been extensive gardens and orchards. Alongside the path, a cinder-block partition divided the property from pedestrian gate to main residence. Over this wall, the sun glinted on a metal shed roof. Banging, thuds, and men's voices indicated some kind of manual labor.

A similar cinder-block divider on either side of the villa effectively cut the property into four. In the quadrant where Amy had entered, stacks of bricks, tiles, sawed lumber, and piled-up cement sacks suggested repairs. But these were thick with dust, and Amy saw no workmen in sight.

Nor anyone else. Where was evidence an international nonprofit organization occupied these premises? Amy's escort had disappeared up the marble steps. Little though she welcomed his company, he was Amy's only contact here, so she quickened her steps. Debris propped massive wooden doors permanently open. Amy walked through into a wide hallway. Her escort had already reached the far end, where doors were missing altogether. In compensation, double doors to either side were not only closed but locked, a tentative wiggle of door handles confirmed. To the left of the back entrance, a staircase curved upward.

Tap-crunch. Tap-crunch.

The footsteps whirled Amy around. A man had stepped onto the broken mosaic of the courtyard. Amy's first thought was the watchman, but this man was far younger, closer to Amy's own age. He'd stopped to look around, his head tilted back to take in the boarded-up windows, giving Amy the opportunity to look him over thoroughly.

He was bareheaded, with the curly dark hair and beard, high forehead, and wide-spaced, espresso-brown eyes of a movie-screen Jesus that had startled Amy the first time she glimpsed such features in real life here in this part of the world. Behind him, the pedestrian gate now stood open, the elderly watchman shuffling inside. No mystery then. The newcomer too had just come in off the street.

Ahead in the far doorway, Amy's driver-escort had paused to look back. As his unsmiling gaze rested on her naked face and arms, Amy again felt unease, acutely aware of being not only foreign here but female and alone. She was beginning to understand the rationale of tugging that blue polyester back on. A burqa could be as much a shield as a prison.

No, now I'm not being paranoid. Where is this boss of mine who's supposed to be here?

Then the watchman disappeared into a guard shack beside the gate. Her driver-escort stepped forward through the missing exit doors. At that same moment, a shadow at the base of the staircase coalesced into a black chador, the less-confining women's covering that left eyes and nose exposed. A straw broom in the wearer's hands slid over the tiled floor as silently as she'd emerged from the shadows. The presence of another woman gave Amy the fortitude to return to the entrance to confront the young man.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Amy dredged up her laboriously memorized Dari to repeat the second question. “
Che mekhaahed?
”

The young man looked startled, whether from her atrocious accent or because he hadn't noticed Amy inside the hallway. His gaze rested everywhere but on Amy as he responded hesitantly, “You are an American, yes? I am looking for the—how do you say it?—the boss who is in command of this facility. I was told I might inquire as to employment.”

“Oh, you speak English.”

The young man certainly looked like he needed a job. At this closer vantage, Amy could see that he was very thin even for his slight build, cheekbones protruding above beard and mustache, shoulders bony under the tunic. His dark eyes were sunk deep into their sockets and somber.

Amy shook her head. “I'm sorry. I just got here myself, and I'm looking for my own boss. But you might try over there. I heard men talking on the other side of that wall.”

“Mallory?” The driver reappeared in the far doorway. “The American will speak with you now.”

So Amy
did
have a new boss around here somewhere. And surprise of surprises, her escort could speak quite passable English when he chose.

The driver's gaze fell on her new acquaintance.
“Tu!”

Amy caught none of the rapid Dari that followed, but the driver's peremptory gesture needed no translation. The newcomer obediently hunkered down on his heels in the passageway. At the jerk of her escort's head, Amy followed him through the missing doors. The woman in the black chador drifted out behind them, still sweeping.

Once outside, Amy could see that the villa was actually three wings that formed a square with the rear property wall around an interior courtyard. A colonnade around the three sides of the house supported a second-story balcony. Huge stone pots had once held flower shrubs or potted trees, and in the center was another fountain.

But here, too, the fountain held no water, its basin cracked. Missing tiles exposed crumbling concrete, and a wrought-iron balcony railing was rusted to brick red.
It must have been so beautiful. How could they let it be destroyed so?

Maybe it was just the consequence of war, though one would think that would be repaired by now. Amy abandoned her inspection as her escort tapped his foot outside a door on the right-hand colonnade. When Amy obeyed his gesture to go inside, he didn't follow but strode away across the courtyard.

The salon Amy entered was as dilapidated as the rest of the premises, plastic bags tacked over windows instead of glass, plastered walls stained and peeling. The only furnishings were a card table and plastic chairs. The woman hadn't penetrated with her straw broom—Kabul's powder-fine dust lay thickly over everything.