Veiled Freedom (50 page)

He studied the exposed features, doubt warring with hope. The eyes were right, like his own in the mirror. And the nose. But his gaze had already moved on to the other female. A girl not far into her teens, slight, the scarf draped across hair and around shoulders allowing a glimpse of dark, curly hair, dark eyes enormous and wide-set in slim, olive-skinned features.

His breath drew in sharply. There was no mistake. What greeted his stunned scrutiny was a female version of himself.

Only a cleared throat brought him back to how long he'd been standing there motionless. “It is satisfactory?”

There was no longer doubt or hesitation as he turned to face those watchful eyes. “You have fulfilled your vow. I may keep this?”

“Of course. I will tell them myself of your courage and faithfulness in the service of Allah.”

He waited until the cloaked figure emerged into softly falling snow far below before gathering together his own load. Last of all, he tucked the envelope against his heart with the care given to a priceless treasure. There was no longer confusion nor anguish nor rage nor even resignation in his thoughts as he made his way down the broken stairwell. Rather, peace.

The peace surprised him. There was a certain serenity to having fate and future removed from his own grasp. His decision had been made. There would be no going back now.

“Miss Ameera, may I have speech with you?”

Amy looked up as Jamil's shadow fell across her laptop, her smile uncertain. The Afghan had been as silent and remote all day as he'd been since Thanksgiving, and these were the first words he'd addressed directly to her. “Of course. I'm just logging off here.”

Closing her laptop, Amy folded her hands on the lid as Jamil crossed from the doorway to her desk. Something had been hurting in her chest ever since she'd glimpsed Soraya's hostility last night. She'd come to Afghanistan determined to love these people, had succeeded more than she'd anticipated. Somehow it had never occurred to her to question whether those she'd worked so hard to serve might not reciprocate her affection.

First I get Rasheed mad at me, now Jamil and Soraya. Is Steve right, and they've only been friendly because I'm feeding them?

Then Amy's gaze fell on what Jamil was setting down on her desk. The Bible she'd given him as an Eid gift along with the now-tattered New Testament. Had he come to return them? The hard knot tightened in her chest.

Amy had enjoyed the occasional discussions Jamil initiated when Soraya and other New Hope tenants weren't within earshot. But had she overlooked that what to Amy was a pleasurable dialogue about faith might be to Jamil a threat, not just to his peace of mind but his survival? Was it possible his icy withdrawal these last days hadn't just been anger at Steve Wilson's intrusion into New Hope's small world?

If he gives back the Bible, I won't mention it again unless he does first. God, I really thought I was doing something good here.

But it wasn't the volumes he'd laid down that Jamil was pushing her direction. It was the tiny camcorder in his other hand. He said diffidently, “I am sorry that I was not able to obtain good pictures of the man you inquired about last night. He has not returned. But I have taken pictures of all the men who broke in and others too who have been along the street. Perhaps this man was among them. It was my thought that if I looked through the film we have taken, I could find all such men and put them together on one of your disks as we have done for your patrons.”

The disks he referred to were recordable DVDs Amy had purchased to make copies of the videos Jamil had been putting together for New Hope headquarters. Jamil set next to the camcorder what looked like a miniature laptop. A portable DVD player.

“I purchased this with my Eid bonus today. It will play the disk so that Wajid and Rasheed and the workers in the mechanics yard will know what these men look like. If you do not require the equipment, I have time to do this now.”

“Jamil, that's a wonderful idea. I should have thought of that myself. Our own ten most wanted.”

Jamil looked puzzled before he went on. “I had thought to print some pictures too. For Wajid so he will remember who to watch for. And perhaps to show some of the guards along the street. Only a few.”

“Do however many you need. It's just paper and ink.” Amy was so relieved his request involved nothing more alarming, she'd have happily authorized a hundred printouts. “I can't tell you how much I appreciate this. You're always going the extra mile.”

That too was an idiom that drew a puzzled look. Pushing back her chair, Amy gathered her shoulder bag and other personal belongings. “Just let me know when you're done so I can lock up the office. I'll be in my apartment or downstairs with the children.”

Jamil set to work at the laptop, expertly connecting the camera to upload digital footage. He'd set the small volumes he'd brought with him next to the computer, and catching Amy's eye, he said, “There is another question I have wanted to ask. I read the story of paradise in the new holy book you gave me for Eid. I understand now what the Paul disciple was speaking of when he wrote of Adam and Eve and sin coming into the world. And why he calls Isa Masih the new Adam. He is the savior you spoke of to the children. The one who would show a new way to paradise, is he not?”

“That's right.” Amy couldn't believe her ears or eyes. The chill of these last days might never have been there in Jamil's earnest speech, his probing gaze.

“Then perhaps this book will explain other things I have not understood in this one.” He touched the small leather-bound Bible, then the New Testament before he straightened up to look at Amy squarely. “You said these holy books could be read in Dari and Pashto as I have done now in English. I looked on the Internet and found this is true. But I did not see where they might be purchased here in Kabul. Rasheed has requested I go early to the bazaar in the morning. I thought I might search for these books.”

Amy had to swallow to find voice to answer. “I don't think you'll find them in the bazaar. Let me ask around. I think I know someone who might be able to get them.”

“Thank you.” The briefest of smiles touched his lips.

Amy lingered in the office doorway. “You do understand why I haven't told the children the rest of that story as it is in the Bible.”

His expression turned grave. “But of course. You are a guest in this country. The mullahs do not tell the story so. If you teach the children to question the mullahs, it would be considered a great insult to my country, to Islam. The mullahs might be angry enough to demand you be sent back to your own country. Perhaps even enough to punish the women for allowing their children to listen.”

Footsteps sounded in the hall, and Amy saw Jamil sweep her gifts into his lap. The footsteps belonged to Hamida, carrying Amy's supper down the hall. Amy started toward her but turned back in the doorway as Jamil spoke up quietly.

“I understand why you would not wish to tell these stories to the children. But in your holy book, did not the mullahs of Isa Masih's time become angry with the truths he told? And when they told his followers to be silent, did they not reply to the mullahs that they must obey God and not the commands of men? Were they not even beaten and put in prison and killed with stones because they would not be silent?”

“Miss Ameera, where do you wish me to serve your meal?”

It was well Rasheed's wife had interrupted, because for these questions of Jamil's, Amy had no answer to give.

Jamil slid the shiny disc of a newly copied DVD and its accompanying stack of printed photos into an envelope, which he left with Ameera's camera and laptop neatly arranged on her desk. But a second DVD along with three printed images he slid against his heart, the folded paper crackling inside his vest, as he left the office. The second video was much shorter than the one he'd left for Ameera, shorter than the YouTube clips that had come to fascinate Jamil since he'd discovered them. But its contents held the explosive force of that martyr's blast he'd witnessed with Ameera the day he'd arrived back in Kabul.

Jamil had expected to need subterfuge to keep Ameera from observing just what footage he wished to duplicate. Her trust once again dismayed as much as it surprised him. Did his employer not know how many there were who would be pleased to exploit such faith?

As I once thought to do.

Jamil made one last stop before heading to his quarters. To keep the children from rummaging through them, Jamil had helped Ameera stack the boxes of Eid bonanza in the infirmary until other storage could be arranged. Jamil quickly found what he needed, then added some items from the first aid supplies. These he regretted taking, because he could not be sure of replacing them. But his alternatives were even less palatable.

Wajid was already sleeping when Jamil reached the front gate. This had been one of the old man's painful days, and his opium pipe had fallen from an outflung hand onto the guardhouse floor. Jamil didn't try to wake him, lifting the gate key instead from the guard's belt. He'd have it back before Wajid awoke, since Rasheed had assigned him a meat run in the morning. The fattest and healthiest animals were snapped up before the sun cleared the mountain peaks, and Jamil would be expected to be at the bazaar before Rasheed rolled from his tushak.

Inside his room, Jamil slid his handiwork from his vest. Folding the printouts once to hold the DVD disc in their fold, he slipped the oblong into a plastic bag and sealed it with first aid tape. He repeated the process with a second plastic bag, then slid the whole package out of sight into a gap between cinder-block wall and tin roof. He would retrieve it if all went well. And if it did not . . .

If it did not, his efforts would no longer matter.

The camera images stored, Jamil went to work with his other acquisitions. It was painstaking labor, and the night was far gone before he'd finished. But though he turned off the flashlight, it was not to sleep. He sat crosslegged on his tushak, face tight with concentration, nails digging into his palms. He was setting out a train of thought.

Jamil had been an ardent pupil of his mullah professors since he'd first sat on a classroom bench, legs too short to touch the floor. Even then his aspiration had been to please not just those impressive robed figures with their tall turbans and long beards but the god they served. Allah. The Beneficent and Merciful One, as the rakats proclaimed. Creator of a universe that to Jamil's youthful eyes and ears had been as beautiful as it was exciting.

Muhammad, those instructors had taught Jamil, was the apostle of Allah, final and greatest of a long procession of prophets Allah had sent to call mankind to submission. To please the Almighty One, to gain merit in the scales of Allah, the faithful were called to emulate the prophet's life to the smallest detail. And of course, the ultimate emulation was to wield the sword in jihad. Even better, to lay down one's life in the glorious fight to extend Allah's kingdom on earth, thereby securing the only absolute hope of paradise the Quran and all the other teachings of the faith had to offer.

But Isa Masih too was a prophet. A great one, next only to Allah's apostle, according to Muhammad's own words. And here was where Jamil was laying forth each step in turn with the meticulous deliberation of solving a difficult mathematical equation. An equation on which his life and future—yes, and his very breath—hung in those same scales.

If to emulate the prophet Muhammad was meritorious, was it possible that emulating the life of another great prophet was also meritorious before Allah? that walking in the footsteps of Isa could also balance the scales of divine justice? Healing the sick and feeding the hungry did not advance Allah's kingdom on this earth. But Isa Masih had said that he called people to a different kingdom. A kingdom not of this earth but within a person.

Was it possible that in not teaching of this other kingdom, the mullahs who'd brought the faith to Jamil's homeland at the point of a sword had left out something vital? that without the expression of this other kingdom that was not of this world, as Isa Masih had stated again and again, the conquest of earthly kingdoms under the banner of Allah was not enough, even if that conquest should reach the ends of the earth? Perhaps this lack was why, for all its long subjugation under the rule of Islam, Jamil's homeland still lay battered and gasping for deliverance from violence and cruelty and corruption and oppression.