Farishta Page 13

  Surrounded by the attentive crowd wrapped in their dark coats and blankets, my attention was suddenly drawn to a small girl in a red cloak near the stage. She was tugging on her father’s hand and raising her arms. She wanted him to pick her up, but he was ignoring her pleas. She had the blond hair that occurred from time to time in this part of the country and with her apple cheeks and tight curls she reminded me of a young Shirley Temple. She caught me looking at her and offered me a wide smile before darting into the crowd.

  While the general was taking his position with the other dignitaries, Abdul whispered something into his ear and pointed in my direction. I presumed that he was conveying my refusal to join them on the stage. As soon as Kabir glanced my way with an angry scowl on his face, I saw his eyes grow suddenly wide. A voice in the crowd shouted, “Allahu Akbar.” Then came the explosion and the smoke and the screaming.

  The blast sent shock waves but little shrapnel into the crowd. Rahim threw me to the ground and covered my body with his. I could feel him bracing for a second explosion, but none came. Images of the black cloud over the embassy in Beirut flashed through my mind, but I forced them out and replaced them with the memory of Mike, crouched at my side in the auditorium, talking me through my panic attack.

  Rahim tried to stand up, but people kept tripping over us as they fled the site of the blast. I glanced toward the stage and could see Kabir looking strangely calm as his bodyguards whisked him off the field.

  The crowd thinned out rapidly, with only the injured and their families forming small clusters around the smoking and mutilated body of the suicide bomber.

  “Angela-jan, are you hurt?” cried Rahim as he helped me to my feet. I was shaken but uninjured and surprised at how calm I felt. I was also secretly thrilled to hear Rahim addressing me for the very first time using the familiar term jan after my name.

  “Angela, Rahim!” I could hear Fuzzy’s and Jenkins’s voices as they pushed their way toward us through the fleeing survivors. There were no medical personnel on the field.

  A few yards in front of me, I saw a red bundle on the ground. With a gasp, I realized it was the coat of the little girl. Her father was crouched over her, scanning the crowd desperately for someone to help him. Blood was gushing from a gaping wound in her leg.

  Mike’s first-aid training kicked in, and I went into autopilot. Femoral artery, I thought running to her side, pulling off my head scarf, stuffing it into the wound, and applying pressure. The blood continued to pulse from her leg. I pressed down hard on the artery and grabbing the end of the head scarf used it to make a tourniquet around her thigh.

  “Rahim, tell this man we must get his daughter to a hospital immediately or she will die,” I shouted. “Fuzzy, Jenkins, pick her up. Keep her head lower than her legs, and I’ll keep pressure on the wound.

  “Rahim, tell her father to come with us, and tell Jenkins how to get to the nearest hospital. We’re taking this little girl and her father there now.”

  Fuzzy, Jenkins, Rahim, and the girl’s father reacted quickly and without further discussion. Jenkins called the soldiers waiting for us at the safe house and told them to follow us to Sheberghān, where there was another PRT safe house and a small hospital. We arrived an hour later at the poorly equipped hospital, where the little girl and her leg were saved.

  By evening, Harry and Major Davies had driven over from Mazār with a convoy from the Forward Support Base to join me in meetings with the local police.

  Harry was relieved that none of us had been hurt in the blast, and although I could tell how awful he felt about what had happened, he stood by his decision to allow me to make the trip. Major Davies felt otherwise. He grabbed me by the elbow as I exited one of the meetings behind Harry. “Miss Morgan, I admire your quick thinking, but you wouldn’t have been in any danger if you had taken my advice in the first place. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “Thanks for your concern, Major, but I fully intend to meet with any officials in the northern provinces who are willing to see me. I believe that’s why I’m here,” I snapped as I pulled out of his grip.

  An international criminal investigation team flew in from Kabul to view the mangled body of the unidentified suicide bomber and gather evidence. Only a few bystanders, like the little girl who had been near the bomber when he pulled the cord on his belt of explosives, had been hurt by the blast. Kabir was unharmed, and none of his deputies seriously injured. No one had died except for the bomber. According to the investigators, the explosives, which had eviscerated the bomber but left his shoulders, neck, and head untouched, were unusually compact.

  Over the next few days, evidence and witnesses began to vanish mysteriously. The identity and motives of the bomber and any possible accomplices were never uncovered, leading some to conclude that Kabir might have arranged the attack himself to build sympathy and support.

  After the incident in Andkhoy, I silently vowed never again to leave the PRT without my tiny golden goddess and her leaping gazelle pinned to my jacket.

  The ambassador’s trip north was postponed indefinitely.

  Surviving the bombing along with my quick action in getting the little girl to a hospital had profoundly altered my standing with the few officers at the PRT who still questioned my presence, except, of course, for Major Davies.

  When our convoy returned to Mazār the next afternoon, Jenkins breathlessly recounted to a very attentive Sergeant Major how I had taken command of the situation. That night, I received a round of applause as I walked through the pub on my way to the treadmill. When I returned an hour later and the chief of staff offered to buy me a beer, I accepted and enjoyed my first drink in the pub.

  Early the following morning, when Harry saw me attempting to squeeze my legs under the typing table that served as my desk in the bullpen, he took pity on me and offered to let me use one of the two empty desks in his office. The larger one was reserved for the British diplomat who would soon be arriving, but the spare one for official visitors, he admitted, was rarely occupied.

  Much to my regret, these men, who would soon be rotating out with the rest of their regiment, would be replaced by the far more conservative soldiers and officers of Major Davies’s Royal Gurkha Rifles. I was especially disappointed that Harry, with whom I had established a great working relationship, would be leaving in three weeks.

  At least Fuzzy and Jenkins would still be here. Both were scheduled to complete their military service at the end of the year. They had been asked and had agreed to stay on at the PRT as my designated driver and vehicle commander until I left in December.

  Major Davies, who would be around for another six to eight months, seemed indifferent to the fact that I had survived the Andkhoy bombing. I was growing increasingly uncomfortable with his silent brooding stares during every meeting we attended together.

  And then there was Rahim. After the suicide bombing, he and I had begun to bond in a way that remained unspoken between us, but which I hoped would survive my coming months of linguistic deception.

  TWENTY

  February 23, 2005 ✦ MAZĀR-I-SHARĪF

  TO: MorganAL

  FROM: PlawnerRP

  SUBJ: Possible human rights abuse

  Ambassador was approached at a reception in Kabul yesterday by the minister of women’s affairs. She has received complaints about ill-treatment of females in Mazār central prison. Investigate and submit report with recommendations. Thanks for reporting on your meeting with Kabir and the suicide bomber’s attempt on his life. Glad you’re okay.

  I was equally thankful that I hadn’t been injured or killed in that bombing. My coolheaded reaction continued to astound me when I recalled the chaos of the moment. The Estonians’ demolitions still caused me to jump, but when faced with an actual crisis, I had been able to draw on reserves of strength I though I would never regain after Beirut. Was it Mike’s swift intervention when I panicked during the triage exercise that had improved my ability to handle stress? Would it last?


  “Sergeant Major, I’m going to need my vehicle today,” I said, walking into his office and waiting politely for him to finish another profanity-laden conversation with his counterpart at the Forward Support Base. “My embassy has asked me to visit the central prison to check on reports of abuse of female prisoners.”

  He looked harassed as always, but his attitude toward me had done a complete 180 after the suicide bombing in Andkhoy. Where before he was the soul of obstruction, he now bent over backward to accommodate all of my vehicle requests, even at the last minute.

  “Angela, I’m terribly sorry to disappoint,” he said, “but I don’t have a single spare driver. Jenkins and five of his mates are at the Forward Support Base for a day of training. The others are all out on patrol.”

  “I can drive myself,” I replied. “I only need one vehicle to go into town, I know how to use a stick shift, and Rahim knows the way to the prison. All I need is a vehicle commander to ride shotgun.”

  “Sorry, luv, officers aren’t allowed to drive,” he said, tilting his closely shaven head to one side and raising an eyebrow.

  “Sergeant Major, I’m a civilian and the State Department allows us to drive our own vehicles. My Foreign Service colleague at the German PRT in Kunduz drives himself alone all the time.” What I didn’t add was that most Afghan men considered it culturally offensive for a woman to drive. It was not against the law for females to have driver’s licenses here, as it was in Saudi Arabia, but only a few brave women in Kabul had taken the plunge after the Taliban fell from power. As far as I knew, there were no lady drivers in Mazār-i-Sharīf.

  When two of the three phones on his desk began to ring, he furrowed his brow, reached into a metal locker, and handed me the keys to the Beast. “When do you want to leave ? ”

  “Fourteen hundred hours, if that would be possible.”

  “For you, Angela, anything,” he said with as much of a smile as he would allow anyone to see. “I’ll send Fuzzy to protect you from the bad guys.”

  Rahim had such a look of distress on his face when he saw me in the driver’s seat that I had to force myself not to laugh. Even I had to admit that the image of me in the shaking Beast, its keys jangling in the ignition, could not have been the most comforting sight for this young man, who had never seen a woman drive anything in Afghanistan. He climbed warily into the backseat.

  “Angela-jan, do you know how to drive this? ” he asked.

  “My question was slightly different, Angela,” interrupted Fuzzy, as he wedged his rifle between his leg and the door and began the longest sentence he had ever uttered in my presence.

  “Have you ever driven anything as big as this Land Cruiser in a city like Mazār-i-Sharīf, where no one has a license, women do not drive anything, there are no stoplights, there appear to be no rules of the road, and drivers completely ignore the few aging policemen who are attempting to direct traffic?”

  “Calm down, both of you. I’ve driven in New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Moscow. Mazār will be a piece of cake,” I said, laughing to conceal my own nagging unease about driving the Beast into town. Adjusting my head scarf, buckling my seat belt, and swallowing hard, I hit the clutch and shifted into reverse. I could see Rahim in the rearview mirror. He was mumbling something to himself—probably prayers.

  I did attract a lot of attention as I steered the Beast cautiously into town. “Angela, you’re going to cause an accident,” Fuzzy said nervously. “Every driver who sees you is doing a double take.”

  I kept my eyes on the cars, camels, and pedestrians ahead of us, grinding the Beast’s gears and white-knuckling the steering wheel. What happened next made up for everything I’d missed.

  Traffic had come to a complete standstill when we entered the boulevard that circled the Blue Mosque. Directly in front of us was a rusting yellow taxi with a mottled paint job that resembled the skin of an overripe banana. It was packed with young men. Inside the trunk, its lid propped open with a piece of wood, were two women concealed under white burkas.

  Women riding in the trunk of a car were not an unusual sight in Mazāri-Sharīf. A woman driving a car was unheard of.

  The two leaned toward each other, their heads bobbing in animated conversation, their exposed fingers pointing in my direction. When the traffic jam cleared and we began to move, both women lifted their burkas, revealing two young, heavily made-up faces. They smiled at Fuzzy and me and gave us an enthusiastic thumbs-up before dropping their burkas as the taxi sped away.

  “Beautiful girls.” Fuzzy whistled. “I guess you gave them something to talk about when they get home tonight.” There was no comment from Rahim in the backseat.

  When we arrived at the prison, Fuzzy reluctantly stayed behind to guard the Beast while Rahim and I crossed a muddy plaza and walked through the heavily guarded front entrance.

  “Why are we coming to this prison, Angela-jan?” asked Rahim as a guard escorted us through several locked gates.

  “My embassy wants me to investigate reports of abuse of female prisoners.”

  “There are women in here?” Rahim seemed surprised. We had passed several corridors of cells filled with sullen young men, but had not seen a single woman.

  The guard pulled open a metal gate and motioned for me to go through. When Rahim tried to follow, the guard shoved him back.

  “No men in the women’s quarters,” he said in a menacing voice.

  “But the American woman does not speak our language. I am her interpreter,” said Rahim, explaining to me in English the guard’s objections, which I had already understood.

  “No men,” the guard repeated.

  “He won’t let me go in with you,” said Rahim, glaring at the guard in frustration.

  I had been dreading just such a moment for weeks and hadn’t worked out a solution. I couldn’t reveal my knowledge of Dari, but I was loath to leave the prison without completing my assignment—especially when I finally had the opportunity to do something constructive.

  I was about to give up and leave with Rahim when a striking young woman poked her head around the corner from inside the female wing of the prison. “Does someone need translation?” she asked in heavily accented English. Her glossy black hair was uncovered and tumbled long and loose over her shoulders.

  “Hello, madam. I am Nilofar. May I be of service?” Her liquid brown eyes flicked from me to Rahim, who seemed to have taken root where he stood.

  “Do you work here? ” I asked after I had introduced myself.

  Her eyes continued to jump between my face and Rahim’s.

  “No, madam,” she answered, smiling at me with the straightest, whitest teeth I had ever seen. “I am a law student and I come here to help women accused of marriage crimes.”

  “Marriage crimes?” I asked.

  “All of the women in this prison are here for marriage crimes,” she said grimly. “Come with me. You can meet them and their children. They will tell you their stories.”

  There had been no mention during my many meetings in Kabul about women being thrown into jail for violating their marriage vows. Perhaps that was because all of my briefers had been men.

  “There are children in here with them?” I asked.

  Rahim stood silently in the doorway, watching the two of us talk as the guard continued to block his way.

  “Your son must wait outside,” said Nilofar, flashing her radiant smile at Rahim. He blushed and looked away. “I will take you in to see the women, madam.”

  “He’s not my son, he’s my interpreter,” I told Nilofar. Turning toward Rahim, who now looked like he was in actual physical pain, I added, “I guess you’ll have to wait with Fuzzy. I’ll be out in an hour.”

  The poor boy had been struck dumb by the unexpected appearance of this beautiful young woman, but I could see he was also upset that she would be taking his place as my interpreter.

  Rahim parted his lips to speak, but pressed them together again as his eyes darkened. He turned and walke
d away from us without a word.

  I followed Nilofar into the cell while an unarmed male guard closed the door behind us and flipped the bolt to seal us in.

  Faded blue carpets covered the cement floor. There were twelve women sitting on threadbare cushions that lined the four walls while their children played in the center of the room.

  A female warden in a gray uniform was sitting on the cushions, talking with two prisoners who were breastfeeding their babies. Some of the women looked old enough to be grandmothers. It was freezing. A small charcoal brazier in the center of the room provided the only warmth. But even with these deprivations, the women looked clean and well fed.

  Nilofar explained to me that the Afghan judicial system, even under the new constitution, did not favor women. Legally, they could marry without parental consent after their sixteenth birthday. In reality, local custom and traditional Sharia law dictated that parents choose the husband, negotiate the bride-price with the groom and his family, and hand their daughter over at any age in a contractual arrangement—a virtual sale euphemistically referred to as a “marriage.” Even an educated woman like Nilofar was subject to these customs, she told me with a grim smile.

  “I study law at Balkh University in Mazār-i-Sharīf,” said Nilofar as she took a seat on an empty cushion and motioned for me to sit next to her. “One of my professors told us about these women. They have no lawyers and no family to help, so I come each week to talk to them and try to find a way to get them out or at least make their life in this prison a little better.”

  “Do other law students come?” I asked.

  “No, they are afraid to anger the women’s families. Fathers and husbands can have their daughters and wives convicted and sent to prison if they believe they have shamed the family by refusing to marry or running away. They don’t like it when others interfere.”