Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul (15 page)

“You missed a spot.”

Sunny turned to see Joe on the lawn beside her, leaning heavily against the carved Afghan walking stick she had found for him inside the barn. “Very funny.” She brushed away the curls that had escaped from under her purple bandana and stood back to admire her work. The six-foot technicolor peacock splashed across the south side of the barn was worrying her a little. “He looks like he's angry.”

“Well, he is supposed to be screaming,” Joe said.

“Screaming, yes. Angry, not so much.” Sunny placed her brush into the bucket of soapy water with the others.

“Well you can't paint a smile on him and ask him to scream at the same time, can you?”

She cocked her head and squinted at her creation. “Maybe it's the eyes. They're too beady. He needs friendlier eyes.”

“He's a bird. Birds have beady eyes.”

“Well maybe his beak is open too wide.”

“How else would we know he was screaming?”

“Have you ever actually seen a peacock scream, Joe?”

“Nope. Just heard them.”

“Me too.”

“Well then, we will just have to keep our eyes open, won't we?”

Sunny wiped her hands on her jeans. “No, Joe,
you
will just have to keep
your
eyes open. I hereby dub you the peacock spy. Me, I just want to paint.” Painting had always been Sunny's favorite escape, and the bigger the canvas the better. She smiled to herself when she thought of how many times she'd painted and repainted the huge wall in front of the coffeehouse, trying so hard to get it just right, finally settling on an image that had haunted her from her last visit to Mazar-e Sharif, the thousands of white doves against the blue Afghan sky. She picked up the bucket of dirty brushes and circled the barn with Joe in tow. The rosebushes Sky had helped her plant needed watering, as it hadn't rained in weeks. The pale peach variety they'd found was perfect, exactly like the ones she remembered from Kabul.

“Can I be of assistance?” Joe asked eagerly.

“I've got it. Thanks.”

“What?” Joe cupped his ear with his hand as a plane flew across the late morning sky.

“I said I've got it!” Sunny yelled. But the look on Joe's face made her regret her tone. “Be careful,” she said, handing him the hose. “Don't trip. I'll be right back.”

 

By the time she emerged from the house with a tray, Joe was already seated safely on the lawn at the picnic table, Bear at
his feet. “
Chai
?” she offered, as she arranged the pieces of her favorite tea set from Afghanistan in front of him.

“Don't mind if I do.” Joe picked up a blue saucer and turned it upside down and back again, as if he were considering a purchase. “You know, these would look very nice in a tasting room.”

“Don't start, Joe. Although I have to say that I generally do like the idea of serving wine in teacups, like we had to do in Kabul. There's just something so wonderfully clandestine about it.”

“You're nuts. Who is going to want to drink wine from a cup?” Joe shook his head in disgust.

Layla and Kat, both with one foot still in the land of dreams, wordlessly joined them at the table, their eyes heavy with sleep. Sunny poured four cups from the ceramic pot in her hand. The green lawn stretched before them like a soft carpet rolling down to the water's edge. In the distance a red tugboat coaxed a container ship in toward the harbor. It looked just like a postcard.

“But with a view like this, who knows?” Joe continued. “Our customers could be tasting their wine out of an old shoe and they wouldn't notice the difference.”

“Stop already,” Sunny pleaded. “But if I ever were going to have a tasting room, which I am not, thank you very much, I would want to do it just like they do it in Afghanistan.”

“They have no tasting rooms in Afghanistan. They don't drink,” Kat said, her first words of the morning coming out in a croak.

“That's not what I meant. I meant I would make it warm, inviting. I would make people feel more welcome there than they feel in their own homes.”

“Ah, just like the Italians.” Joe looked up at the sky. “
Se vuoi perdere un amico vino poco buono e legna di fico.
If you want to lose a friend give them not so good wine and a smoky fire. Or maybe
it's if you want to keep your friends don't skimp, and make sure the room you are serving in is nice and warm. Either way, it's how they do it over there.”

“Well, you've never seen how the Afghans do it,” Sunny said as she took a seat. “I've told you how hospitable they are, Joe. Am I right, Layla?”

“It is true.” Layla sipped her tea. “We are taught even as young children the importance that comes from sharing a meal together. It is called ‘
aab u namak
'.”

“The right of salt,” Kat explained.

Sunny nodded in agreement. “They view it as a religious obligation.”

“Yes,” Layla continued. “It is written that everybody must be ready to give daily bread to his neighbor. But also a guest must always be honest and faithful to his host.” She paused for more tea. “There is a story, one that we are told as children, about some thieves who come into a man's home in the night, when everyone is sleeping. The leader tells them to start carrying out all the family's belongings that have worth, like the carpets and the cushions. Then the leader puts his arm into a cupboard and finds a hard, smooth object he believes must be a gem. His men are almost done when he puts this gem to his lips. He is disappointed to find that this gem is just a block of salt, but is worried that he has stolen property from a man whose salt he has shared. He quickly tells his men to put everything back into the house, and then sneaks away with nothing before the family wakes.”

“So the moral of that story is always leave food out on your counters and you will never need an alarm, or a guard dog. Right, old Bear?” Joe reached down to scratch the dog's neck.

“But seriously, guys,” Sunny said, “there are also some pretty funny rules they have over there about these things. Like you are
never, ever supposed to offer to help in an Afghan's home. Just not done. It would be considered an insult. And whatever you do, you have to eat slowly. I learned that one the hard way. They just keep refilling your plate, again and again, and no matter how much you eat, they say, ‘But you didn't eat a thing!' And if they invite you to dinner? Don't accept. At least not the first time, or even the second. If they really want you to come, they ask three times.”

“Yeah, like they don't really mean it the first two times,” Kat smirked.

“No, it is not that,” Layla said. “It is like what you tell me here, when people ask how are you, and they are just being nice but do not really want to hear the answer.”

“And over there,” Sunny continued, “when someone asks you to stay for tea, you have to figure out if it's just a polite way to end a conversation, or if they're actually asking you to stay for tea.”

“Still sounds pretty two-faced to me.” Kat tugged her sleeves down over her wrists and cupped the tea in her hands.

Layla shook her head. “It is just being polite. By Islam, it is your duty to treat others as you want them to treat you.”

“Ha!” Kat almost spit out her tea. “That's a laugh.”

“What do you mean? Why is that funny?” Layla's brows furrowed with confusion.

“Maybe it's obligatory to treat strangers that way, but do you really think Afghan men would want to be treated the way they treat their wives and daughters?” Kat's eyes darted back and forth from Layla to Sunny.

Layla sat forward on the bench. “Not all men are like that. It is mostly just when shame is brought upon a family that men turn mean and violent.”

“Yeah, exactly. Once again, it's all about what other people think. Shame isn't shame unless it's witnessed.”

“But there are rules—”

Kat leaned in toward Layla. “Rules for what reason? Those kinds of rules don't keep people safe or protected. It's just the opposite! Those rules turn innocent people into walking targets for just trying to live their lives, for doing what other people do normally and naturally. And those are just the people who dare to live differently. The others are too oppressed to even
dream
of another life, so they're as much of a victim of those fucking rules as everyone else.”

Sunny had never seen Kat so worked up. Nor had she ever seen Joe so quiet.

But Kat wasn't finished. “And what kind of place is it that makes a woman dress like a Halloween ghost just to go outside? How can you live in a place like that?”

Now it was Layla who was getting mad. “Freedom is not a miniskirt, or swimming with almost nothing on.”

“So true!” Sunny chirped, trying her best to lighten the mood. “Me, I've always been a fan of the burqini. Honestly, I gotta say, sometimes being covered can feel kind of liberating. It's like you're anonymous, like a superhero in disguise.”

“Oh please.” Kat rolled her eyes. “I'm just saying a woman should be able to wear whatever the hell she wants.”

“But it is our choice,” Layla objected. “To me, I am proud to wear the
hijab
. I was taught that it's like the oyster protecting the pearl, or the wrapper around a sweet piece of candy.”

Kat slammed down her cup. “Ugh. Don't you see how objectifying that is? It's like you're a thing, not a person.” She covered her eyes with her hands and shook her head.

Sunny understood where Kat was coming from, to a point. And she also felt bad for the girl, always so full of anger. Yet at the same time, she sort of wanted to shake her.

But Layla wasn't done. “I don't think you really know what it is like there.”

“I know enough. Trust me.” Kat crossed her arms in front of her chest.

Layla shook her head. “Then I don't understand how you can feel that way about the country you are from. I cannot wait to get back there to taste the sweet
kharbuza
, to smell the fresh
naan
, to feel the soft air of spring after the long winter nights. You just do not know.”

“Well, good luck to you the next time you get the hots for a guy.”

Layla lowered her eyes to the table, her cheeks turning the color of the Autumn Fire Red Sunny had used for the peacock's tongue. She held herself back from comforting the girl, knowing that anything she did would embarrass Layla even further.

“At least I am not a
faahisha
,” Layla muttered into her scarf, clearly not intending for any of them to hear.

“Whoa—” Sunny cautioned.

“Excuse me?” Kat interrupted. “Did you say
whore
? Speak English.”

Layla whipped around to address Kat. “You are the one who is friends with him. The way you joke with him as if he is a brother or a husband. I have seen what you do. Are you going to marry him?”

Kat burst out laughing. “Me? Get married? No way.”

“Well then it is you who shames our country.”

“
Our
country? It's not my country, it's yours.”

“How can you say that about the place you are from?”

“Because this, my country, is a free country. And thankfully I can say whatever I want.” Kat swung her legs over the bench and stood. Layla did the same.

“What just happened?” Sunny asked as she watched them storm off in separate directions.

“
Amor, tosse, e fumo, malamente si nascondono.
In English? Love, smoke and coughs are hard to hide.”

“Coughs, Joe? Really? And it started out as such a nice morning.”

“It is still a nice morning. They'll get over it.”

Sunny hoped he was right. Another complication in her life was all she needed now. Kat was clearly hurting, but who was she to offer advice? There were days when she still felt as though she was holding on by a thread, when the memory of Jack's touch or the mere mention of his name could turn her into a puddle of tears. How many mornings did she fight the urge to pull the covers up over her head and stay there all day, preferably with a gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream? Sometimes she felt as though she was existing in limbo, perpetually wandering through a maze between a past so vivid that she could swear it had never ended, and a future as muddy and cloudy as Twimbly itself.

Yazmina leaned back on her
toshak
, struggling to lift her feet onto a pile of soft pillows, and rubbed her hands lightly over her growing belly as if it were a magic lantern from which she might make a genie appear. The time seemed to be moving so slowly with this one, not like with Najama, who had arrived long before any of them were prepared.

She yawned and allowed her eyelids to slide shut as she pictured the activity in the coffeehouse below. Along with the warm weather there would be more customers, she hoped, the front courtyard sprinkled with the afternoon regulars reading their newspapers, chatting over their espressos. Ahmet would be there by now, if he was already home from the university, which he would try to be on a Thursday, his meeting day. She felt good when he was in the coffeehouse to see all who entered—no one else had the gift he had of simply looking into a man's eyes to learn all that he needed to know. The Koran said that the
eyes are the gateway to the mind. Ahmet could tell a man's evil intentions in a flash. Of course, Bashir Hadi had been urging them to purchase a metal detector, particularly after a recent suicide bombing of a bus full of policemen. But Ahmet felt confident with Daoud checking backpacks and purses at the gate, and with Khalid arriving in time to join him for the evening shift.

Once weapons had been checked and locked up for safekeeping in the shipping container at the gate, and after each and every person had been stopped for a final once-over at the door, greetings would be made, and only then would the customers make their way in to find their tables.

Rashif would not yet be back from his shop in the Mondai-e. Yazmina could picture him standing, stretching, carefully covering the still-warm sewing machine, unplugging the hot plate, and locking the door behind him. He would be anxious to return home to join Ahmet and the other men. Sometimes, after things quieted down in the coffeehouse, he and Ahmet would continue the discussions late into the night, long after she had headed up to bed. But to Yazmina, this was a good sign. Both she and Halajan were appreciative of Rashif's ability to draw out the good sense that had always lived inside of Ahmet, and for encouraging him to use his voice for the benefit of others.

She imagined Bashir Hadi downstairs, ruling the roost just as Sunny had done, with a firm hand and a smile that could charm
Shaytaan
himself. Bashir Hadi would be keeping one eye on the tables and the other on the kitchen, making sure that everything was being prepared exactly as his recipes dictated. Yazmina felt a rumbling from deep inside her rounded middle. She and her family owed Bashir Hadi the world for his dedication to the coffeehouse. There was no way they could have made it this far without the man's hard work.

Yazmina's stomach growled again. If she weren't so tired she'd head downstairs to help, and to help herself to one of his delicious burgers. Perhaps Halajan will bring her something after she returns from wherever it was she went today with Najama. How inseparable those two had become. Thick as thieves they were as they'd giggle together over something only they were privy to, or as they'd sit snuggled up in a quiet corner to look at books for hours on end. Her biggest wish for her daughter was that she'd grow up to become as strong and willful a woman as her nana.

Where were those two? she wondered as she checked the time. They should have been back by now. Maybe they were buying ice cream, or stopping at Shahr-e-Naw Park, so that Najama could run and play. The thought of that made her smile.

Yazmina's mind drifted into the world of the sleep, where loved ones long gone reappear as if they'd been among the living all along. In her dream, she and Layla were at their home in the mountains of Nuristan, where they had lived before their parents died. The small wooden house looked the same, but somehow different. Their mother, draped in bright, shiny beads, was at the stone hearth in the middle of the room in which all four of them had always eaten and slept, tending to the bread she had made from the wheat of her field. Her father, with his thick arms and proud eyes, was filling a tray with yogurt and cheese from his flocks. And, in the way that many dreams go, everyone else was present as well. Sunny, Jack, Halajan, Rashif, and Ahmet; all of them were gathered around the low, wide table, as Yazmina cradled a newborn in her arms. To welcome the child, a goat—or was it two?—had been sacrificed, the lifeless, blood-soaked pile of hide and bones still in plain view from the window facing the east, the one built to face the sunrise. If it were two goats,
the bundle in Yazmina's arms would have been a boy. If only one, a girl.

In her dream, everyone was gathering closer as Yazmina held the baby to her breast.
Jalah
…
Sabir
…
Anwaar
… they began to chant, reciting from the list of her ancestors' names. Yazmina waited for the familiar tug at her nipple, knowing how tradition stated that the name being mentioned as the child first begins to feed would become the one he or she will carry throughout their life.
Rashad
…
Sulayman
…
Kawthar
…

Suddenly, the rhythm of her extended family's voices was interrupted by a racket so loud it could have wakened each and every dead relative on that list. Was this still a dream? She stirred and remained on the
toshak
with closed eyes, unsure of whether she wanted to wake or not. It wasn't long before her body made the decision for her, rousing slowly, limb by limb, as if she were a marionette being unpacked from a box. But as her consciousness rose, so did an awareness that the clamor hadn't stopped. Some unthinking person downstairs was not using their headset, again. Shouting, shooting, things breaking. A ridiculous Bollywood movie, no doubt. Do they not know they are disturbing those around them? And why hasn't Bashir Hadi told them to turn the volume down? It was not like him, to allow something like this to go on. She struggled to bring herself fully upright. She had better get downstairs fast or they'd have some very unhappy customers. The last time this had happened, a table of French contractors had stood and walked out without even paying.

She was halfway down the stairs when she saw the two women who came in every week from the Italian embassy peeking out from behind the closet door as if they were playing hide-and-seek. She smiled, but their faces remained frozen
with an expression she couldn't read. The annoying racket had stopped, and now the coffeehouse seemed eerily silent. Then she noticed the overturned table. An Australian aid worker she recognized was standing behind it, facing toward her, but when she reached up to wave hello he suddenly dropped to his knees. As he did, another regular went flying across the room behind him, as if in slow motion, landing on his belly atop a pile of shattering dishes that came sliding from the tray he had tripped on. Then the vile smell of sulfur hit the inside of her nose, filling her with a queasiness that left her weak in the knees.

“Yazmina!”

At the sound of Bashir Hadi's voice, everything suddenly became horridly clear. Yazmina squeezed her eyes shut and ducked, one hand shielding her head, and the other her belly. The unmistakable clatter of gunfire bounced off the coffeehouse walls with a sickening echo. And then the only sound remaining was the ringing in her ears.

She jerked upright, her heart pounding its way right out of her chest, her eyes frantically searching the room for her family. But she did not see Ahmet or Najama or Halajan anywhere. What she did see was a man in black, lying crumpled on his side in front of the counter, an assault rifle cradled in his motionless arms. She remained frozen on the stairs, the shock of the brutal scene before her rendering her powerless.

“Yazmina! Over here!” It was the sound of Bashir Hadi's voice that unlocked her frozen limbs. He was behind the counter, dazed and pale on the floor, a red stain spreading rapidly across the bottom of his pants. Another gun lay abandoned at his side.

“You are hurt!” A driving pulse pounded in her ears as she stared down at the blood streaming from his leg. She called to the Italian women for help. “Please, you need to try to stop
the bleeding.” Yazmina ripped off her head scarf and handed it to them. “I must find my baby.”

“You can't go out there!” one of them called to her as she turned to the door. “What if there are more of them?”

“I saw only the one,” she heard Bashir Hadi's voice behind her.

“Call for help!” Yazmina cried out. “People are hurt!” An American journalist Yazmina recognized stood wide-eyed at the door, staring down at the dead gunman on the floor. Sounds of movement—plastic chairs scraping across the cement, people calling out for one another—were coming from outside. Yazmina ran back and pressed the phone from the counter into Bashir Hadi's hand, and rushed out the door.

“Najama! Halajan! Ahmet!” she screamed, their names echoing off the corners of the courtyard, blending with the soft whimpering and cries for help rising up from the pavement at her feet. “Najama!” she shouted. “Where are you, my child?” She desperately scanned the tables for her daughter's purple ribbons or her mother-in-law's big green chador, her husband's square shoulders and his slicked-back hair. Her family was nowhere in sight. They were safe,
inshallah
. Only then did she allow her eyes to open to the carnage around her, and what she saw made her heart break for all the world and everyone in it.