Refuge (3 page)

“Who’re these guys?” Charlie says.

“Your servants,” Wali says.

Charlie retreats to the other end of the room and gestures for Wali to join him.

“Is there an issue, Mr. Matthews?”

“I don’t need servants.”

“There’s no need to whisper, I promise you neither of these men understand a jot of English.”

“I don’t need servants.”

“But all aid workers have servants.”

“You’re telling me there’s not a single aid worker out here that doesn’t have a servant?”

“Not one I know, and besides without their jobs these men will be homeless.”

“They live here?”

“In a hut at the bottom of the garden.”

Stumped, Charlie walks back to the men.

“Okay, what are their names?”

“This is Mukhtar, your cook and housekeeper.”

“Good to meet you, Mukhtar.”

Charlie sticks out his hand. Mukhtar shakes it vigorously.

“Yes sir, yes sir,” Mukhtar says.

“I like that,” Charlie smiles. “A firm handshake.”

“And this is Rasul your gardener.”

“Good to meet you, Rasul.”

Charlie sticks out his hand. Rasul continues sweeping.

“He is not much one for pleasantries,” Wali says.

They go out onto a verandah and into a garden filled with flowering bushes. Jasmine vines run up the side of the house and a big oak tree stands tall in the center of a well-kept lawn. Wali and Charlie sit down in a couple of rockers. Mukhtar soon arrives with tea.

“So I will come by after lunch to drive you to the office?” Wali says.

“Don’t think that’s a good idea,” Charlie says. “I need a day to recharge.”

“Recharge?”

“You know, get my strength back.”

Wali takes out his pad and pen.

“But everyone is most eager to meet you.”

“Please, Wali, just one day; it took me almost two to get here from New York.”

Wali stops writing.

“New York! You are from New York. Oh, you are a most lucky man, Mr. Matthews. Am I not correct in saying that New York has the most sexy women in the whole world?”

“You’ve obviously not been to Brazil—”

“And most of the time they wear almost nothing on their bodies?”

“That’s not really true.”

“Never, they never wear almost nothing?”

“I guess when they’re in the Hamptons.”

“Hamptons?”

“On the beach.”

“And when they’re on the beach, they let you have sex with them?”

“No.”

“Afterwards then?”

“No.”

“You mean to tell me you have never been to the beach with a young lady friend who let you have sex with her afterwards?”

Charlie can’t help but smile. Wali jumps out of his chair.

“Oh, I knew it! Mr. Matthews may I be so bold as to enquire how many females you’ve had the good fortune of having sexual intercourse with.”

“It’s tough to count.”

Wali lets out a groan.

I guess he’s not gay after all.

“Oh you do not understand, Mr. Matthews, the most dreadful conditions sexy young men like myself must endure. I am more likely to have sexual intercourse with a goat than a woman.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why? It’s not like you can make idle chit chat with women.”

“You mean there’s no way you could date someone?”

“Date?”

“You know, go to dinner, a movie, that kind of thing.”

Wali starts laughing so hard that Charlie grows uncomfortable.

“Oh, Mr. Matthews, you are quite the comedian. No, once in my village, there was this girl and boy who fell in love. So the boy goes to her father and begs to marry her. Of course, the girl’s father would not hear of it: he looked down upon this boy’s family. So one day they decide to run away to Kabul, but the girl’s family soon catch up with them, and they dragged them into the hills and buried them up to their waists. Now tradition is they always start with the small stones so as not to kill you too quickly. It goes on for hours, I tell you. The boy and girl were in agony, their bones broken, blood pouring from their faces, and then the girl watched as her father and uncle carried over a large stone and dropped it on her lover’s head. After that, her father turned to her and said, ‘You know I only did this because I love you’.”

“And then what did he do?” Charlie says.

“He shot her in the head of course.”

Jesus, Wali wasn’t kidding. This place is crazy.

“But you are fortunate,” Wali says. “You can go to the American Club. It’s where the foreigners go to drink. The foreign women too. It’s no more than a five minute drive.”

Charlie looks out into the expansive garden and leans back in his chair.

Okay, maybe living here won’t be so bad after all.

THREE

NOOR CROUCHES OVER
her fire and tends the few sticks of kindling she was able to scavenge the night before. She hopes they’ll burn long enough for her water to boil. She’s never understood the logic of drinking tea on a hot day. Her mother never did either, but her father hasn’t gone a day in his life without a morning cup and, despite their circumstances, this is one indulgence she has no intention of depriving him of.

The water begins to boil, and she chastises herself for letting her mind wander. She focuses once more on the Dutch phrases she’s learnt.

Goedemorgen‌—‌Angenaam kennis te maken‌—‌Hoe gaat het met u? Goed dankuwel‌—‌Tot ziens.

Noor lifts the pot away from the fire and the kindling disintegrates into a pile of ash. She pours the water into their chipped teapot. The corrugated door of their mud hut creaks open, and her father emerges. He runs a hand through his straggly, gray hair.

“You are up early,” he says.

“It’s like an oven in there. I don’t know how Bushra can stand it.”

“Quite comfortably it seems.”

Her father picks up the teapot, leaving the cups and saucers for Noor.

“Care to join me in my study?” he says.

His joke lost its power to amuse years ago, but for her father’s benefit Noor forces a smile. They head along a dusty path until they come upon a bedraggled eucalyptus tree and a carved bench that her father constructed some years back. They sit down and stare out at the barren graveyard. A rabbit pops up from behind a nearby grave and sniffs the air. Noor thinks she’s hallucinating. She shakes her head only to see it still there.

How have you managed to survive in a place like this?

The rabbit stares right at her, its ears twitching and makes a couple of hops in her direction. Noor holds her breath. The rabbit hops closer.

“It should be ready by now,” her father says.

The rabbit bounds away over the endless earthen mounds towards the crimson Khyber Mountains in the distance. Noor sighs and pours the tea. There’s no milk to go with it; that’s a luxury they’d had to forego a long time ago.

“So, do you have a busy day ahead of you?” her father says.

“The administrator’s visiting.”

“That is a rarity.”

“The headmistress wants each class to perform a song. I suggested one from
The King and I
.”

“Ambitious.”

“She deemed it too provocative and said we had to do
Watan Rana Kawoo
instead.”

“Ah, that familiar favorite.”

“She thinks the lyrics are inspirational.”

“
‘We are the army of education and bring light in the darkness.’
You must admit that tugs on the old heart strings.”

“If you understand Pashtu.”

“Maybe your fearless administrator does.”

“I doubt it. None of them do.”

Noor’s stomach rumbles. She figures if she gets to school early enough she might be able to scrounge some naan from the kitchen.

“Do you think she might know the status of that scholarship?” her father says.

“I’m trying not to think about it.”

“And failing, it would seem; you were tossing and turning all night.”

“That had everything to do with this damn heat.”

Her father takes a sip of his tea. She knows he isn’t buying her explanation.

Why should he?
I don’t buy it either.

“I had the strangest dream last night,” her father says.

Noor waits patiently. Listening to her father’s dreams is another indulgence she’s never deprived him of.

“It was raining, in a manner you could not imagine, and there we were, you, Bushra and I huddled up inside the hut. Water started seeping under the door, and soon it was so high that we resolved to flee. We waded outside to discover the whole camp engulfed by a flood and everything and everyone being swept away. At that moment all seemed lost, but then, right ahead of us, was a boat with your mother at the helm. It was so tiny she only had room for one of us, and do you know whom she chose to go with her? She chose you.”

“I wouldn’t have left you.”

“But you did, and as I watched the two of you drift away, I do not think I have ever felt happier. It is a sign, my love, I think your time in this camp is coming to an end.”

“You always dream of Mamaan around her birthday.”

“I do not deny that, but this felt different. Truly it did.”

Noor kisses her father on the cheek.

“I love you, Baba.”

“I love you too, my dear.”

Noor pulls her headscarf over her hair and heads for a nearby alley. Noor read once that the Eskimos had twenty words to describe snow, and she wonders why the Afghans haven’t come up with a similar number for mud. Everything in the refugee camp seems to be made of it; the huts, the walls, the alleys, even the latrines. She comes to a wider lane already crowded with men making their way towards Jamrud Road, and crosses over the footbridge that spans the concrete storm channel. Shirtless boys are cooling off in its sewage-filled waters. She enters a ramshackle market.

“Water, miss,” a boy, standing next to a melting block of ice, calls out.

He thrusts a metal cup in her direction.

“Most refreshing, one rupee only.”

Noor puts her head down. She passes the kebab cooks twirling their skewers in the air like swashbuckling swordsmen, and the barbers shaving their early morning customers on the sidewalk, and joins the throng of refugees at the bus stop. She is the only woman. A Pakistani policeman lounges against the side of his rusted pick-up, smoking a cigarette. She catches his gaze and turns away.

“Hey. You,” she hears him say.

She squeezes past a one-legged man and strains up onto her toes. The next bus is a hundred yards away.

“Woman, I’m talking to you.”

A hand tugs on Noor’s sleeve. Noor swings around to find the policeman staring at her like a lascivious uncle.

“You traveling alone?” he says.

“I’m with my husband.”

“Where is he?”

Noor looks around as though he might be in the crowd.

“He was here a minute ago,” she says.

“You can wait with me.”

The bus pulls up, and the crowd begins to surge.

“There he is,” she says pointing behind the policeman.

The policeman turns, and she rips her arm away. She uses her slender frame to squeeze through the throng and onto the bus. She hears the policeman blow his whistle, but it’s to little effect. The bus pulls away, and Noor looks for an open seat. There are none to be had, and all she gets for her efforts are a couple of goons wiggling their tongues at her. She fixes them with a cold stare, and they turn away. She pulls her headscarf tighter and looks out of the window at a sparkling Land Cruiser ferrying a Western aid worker across town.

What I’d give to experience air-conditioning. Just once.

The bus arrives at her stop, and she wriggles her way off. The school is no more than a two hundred yard walk. In the courtyard the janitors are assembling the stage for the day’s performance. She slips into the kitchen and searches for some naan: she finds none. The janitors must have eaten it all. She closes her eyes.

“O Allah,” she says, “You have power, and I have none. You know all, and I know not. On this day I ask that you give me strength and kindly look upon me so that I may finally escape my present circumstances. Ameen.”

Noor opens her eyes. A janitor stands in the doorway ogling her. She gathers her books and pushes past him. She looks up at the heavens.

Surely, Allah has to be listening to me.

***

THE CLASSROOM DOOR
creaks open, and Miss Suha’s wrinkled face cranes around it.

“The headmistress and the administrator want to see you.”

Noor looks at Miss Suha, not sure if she heard her right.

“Well hurry up girl, they haven’t got all day.”

Noor puts her chalk down and turns to her students. All thirty girls are staring at her.

“Please continue with the exercise we were working on yesterday,” Noor says.

Kamila, a bright-eyed student with a dime-sized birthmark on her forehead sticks her hand in the air.

“Is anything wrong, Miss Noor?”

“Kamila, when teachers go and see the headmistress it’s not because we’ve misbehaved, it’s because we have important things to discuss. Now I want you all to have finished the exercise by the time I get back.”

“I finished it earlier,” Kamila says.

“Do the next one then.”

“I’ve—”

“Enough,” Miss Suha says.

Kamila clamps her mouth shut. The girls all believe Miss Suha to be a witch and the last thing any of them want is to be the subject of one of her spells.

Miss Suha leads Noor out of the classroom and hobbles down the corridor at her usual tortoise pace. All Noor wants to do is run ahead and leave her behind, but she is no more inclined to get on Miss Suha’s bad side than the girls.

“So what is she like?” Noor says.

“A whore,” Miss Suha says.

Noor doesn’t take the bait. Miss Suha holds that opinion of all Western women.

“They’re a promiscuous race those Dutch. She even brought a man with her. A reporter; probably someone she’s‌—‌well I’ll stop there, don’t want to offend your innocent ears.”

A reporter. The administrator asking to see me personally.