Farishta Read online

  “That was twenty-five years ago, Marty, and no one in my Farsi class was ever sent to Tehran because the Iranians took everyone in the embassy hostage that year. You’ll see in my file that my husband and I were put in Arabic language training, reassigned to Yemen for a year, and then sent to Beirut.”

  Marty ignored my comments and continued. “I am told by unnamed sources that you still read and are able to recite Rumi in the original Persian.”

  “Who told you that?”

  How could this be happening? Rumi’s poetry, which had given me such comfort in the months after I lost Tom and the baby, was now being used by Marty as a rationale to force me back into the same conflict-ridden part of the world that had taken them away from me.

  “Is it true? ” Marty asked.

  My eyes were now brimming with tears, and the knot in my throat was returning. Fortunately, no one was in the office to witness my mini-meltdown.

  “Ange?”

  “So what? Rumi is the most popular poet in the United States.”

  “True.” Marty chuckled, irritating me even more. “But most Americans read his works in English translation.”

  I was too upset to respond.

  “The Department doesn’t have many Farsi speakers left,” Marty continued, “and they need someone up north who is fluent in Dari.”

  “I just told you I don’t speak Dari, and what do you mean, ‘up north’? I thought I was being assigned to the embassy in Kabul.”

  “Remember I said you’ll be spending a lot a time with the Brits?”

  “So am I being assigned to the British Embassy?” His question puzzled me.

  “You won’t actually be in Kabul. You’re going to be spending a year with the British Army at a PRT in Mazār-i-Sharīf.”

  Me? At forty-seven, they were assigning me to a Provincial Reconstruction Team, a military outpost that conducted surveillance patrols in the northern provinces? And not even a U.S. camp, but one where I’d be doubly an outsider—as a civilian and an American.

  “We’re putting you in a one-on-one Farsi–Dari conversion course next month,” Marti continued. “You should be fluent by December. They say Dari is just like Farsi, but easier. With your language aptitude, it shouldn’t take you too long to pick it up. Your Arabic won’t be very useful, but I hear your Russian may come in handy up there.”

  “My Russian?”

  “Yeah, they say some of the warlords in the north speak Russian. And the Russians still have an interest in what goes on up there—even after all these years,” he added with a conspiratorial flourish.

  “Look, Ange, they want you in Mazār by early January, and you’ll need a few days in Kabul for briefings before you head north. Will that be okay? ” Marty was now sounding almost apologetic. “Is Christmas a big deal with your family? Will they be upset if you aren’t home?”

  “Not really,” I said, glancing at a favorite old photo I had tacked to the cloth partition in my cubicle. Mom and I were halfway down our winding driveway at the ranch in New Mexico setting out luminarias for the annual Morgan Christmas fiesta. Her long, dark braid fell over her shoulder as she bent to help me light one of the candles.

  I remembered how much I had looked forward to coming back to the States from my overseas postings for the holidays before she died—but that was almost ten years ago. After Dad’s long illness and his miraculous recovery last summer, he had surprised my brother and me by marrying one of his nurses, a much younger woman from Albuquerque. The new Mrs. Morgan wasn’t big on the whole family Christmas thing.

  “Hey, Ange, watch out for those British officers,” Marty added in an awkward attempt at humor. “I think you’ll be the only female up there and with those big green eyes you’re not too bad looking even at your age.”

  I winced, but let it roll off me. “Thanks for the kind words, Marty. Shall I file my sexual harassment suit now, or just let it simmer until Monday morning? ”

  “Sorry, I’m kidding, Ange, nothing serious, okay? So, have you ever been in a war zone? ” he asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Does Beirut 1983 count?” I replied, gazing again at the photo of Tom and me. I recalled the moment just after the photo was taken when he had leaned over in his saddle to kiss me.

  “Oh, yeah, of course. Sure it does. Sorry,” Marty said, his voice softening. “You’ll do fine in Afghanistan. They even give you two R and Rs, so you’ll be able to come home twice. Hey! You could use one of your free trips to go check out London in case I’m able to get you that dream assignment. Have a great weekend, Ange.”

  My colleagues were not surprised when I called to say I wouldn’t be joining them for dinner. It happened often. I walked home in a daze.

  My apartment, a few blocks from the State Department, was still the only place I felt completely safe. Other than my solitary evening jogs through Foggy Bottom, I spent far too much time alone there.

  Tom and I had shared this place for the first eighteen months of our marriage. It was a small one-bedroom, which we had leased to friends when we were sent to the U.S. Embassy in Yemen. Our plan had been to sell it when we came home after a few tours of duty overseas and buy something bigger for the three kids we were going to have.

  I put on an old jazz album that Tom loved, kicked off my shoes, poured a glass of wine, curled up on the couch, and stared out the window at the diamond and ruby lights spinning around Washington Circle. This was not how I’d planned the final years of my diplomatic career. This was not how I’d planned my life.

  Ever since Beirut, I hadn’t handled stress—or living—very well. This evening’s call from Marty had been almost more than I could bear. I walked barefoot into the bedroom, my toes sinking into one of the carpets Tom and I had bought in Yemen, which I had imagined in the living room of the Victorian townhouse we were going to own. The wall behind my bed was covered in photos of the two of us: Tom and me laughing with our arms around each other on the front porch at my parents’ place in New Mexico; clowning with embassy friends in front of one of Sana’a’s medieval mud-brick towers; Tom taking his horse over a triple bar jump at the stable in Beirut.

  Although riding was the passion that had bonded us the instant we met, our styles could not have been more different. Tom’s parents had enrolled him in lessons as a boy. By high school, he was competing in stadium jumping and three-day eventing for juniors. My brother and I had been taught to ride with English and Western saddles by our father but it was our no-holds-barred races across the high desert of New Mexico that had shaped my more aggressive riding style.

  During our two overseas diplomatic assignments together, Tom and I sought out fellow horse lovers as soon as we arrived. Lebanon had been more problematic than Yemen because of the security situation, but we had discovered the Kattouah stables hidden in a valley just outside the Beirut city limits. The small group of regulars—expat and Lebanese riders—had welcomed us like family and had teased Tom constantly about his concern that I might harm the baby or even give birth during one of our Saturday rides. I had not been on a horse since I lost Tom.

  I went to the bookshelf, pulled out one of his small, leather-bound collections of Rumi’s poetry, and pressed it against my chest. When the tears began to flow and I dropped it on my pillow, it fell open to a well-read page. I curled up on my bed, whispering the words in Farsi until I fell asleep.

  TWO

  August 2004 ✦ ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  Ali’s Afghan restaurant in south Arlington, redolent with sautéed garlic and the sweet charred odor of roasting lamb, thundered with the sounds of men talking and laughing above the tunes of a Bollywood soundtrack. Over the course of my four months of Dari language training with Ali’s uncle, Professor Ahmad Jalali, this restaurant became like a second home to me. I wanted my language training and these lunches to go on forever—anything to put off my eventual year in Afghanistan.

  The State Department had given me no choice: Learn Dari and go to Afghanistan or get ready to retire ear
ly if I didn’t get promoted in 2005.

  Professor Jalali was spending six hours a day, five days a week alone with me in a small windowless room at the Foreign Service Institute. Our weekly trips to his nephew’s restaurant were essential for both our sanities. And it didn’t hurt that the food was delicious.

  When I reported for my first day of instruction, I learned that he would be my private tutor and that as few people as possible were to know how fluent I was expected to become in Dari. Jalali had been ordered by his supervisor not to discuss my language ability with anyone. Marty said it had something to do with a request that I quietly assess the accuracy of certain interpreters at the PRT who were rumored to be concealing information from the Brits. I was too despondent to make additional inquiries about the reasons for this secrecy.

  My evenings were spent alone in my apartment studying Dari, reading Rumi, and flipping endlessly through the photo albums Tom and I had assembled during our few years together. I ran my fingers over his curly blond hair and laughing face in each photo where we were waving and smiling or wrapped in each other arms for our obligatory “kissing shot”—each one with mountains, monuments, stables, or beaches in the background. I had almost thrown them all away in a drunken rage many years ago. Thank God I’d saved them. The only pages I still couldn’t bear to look at were the ones with snapshots Tom had taken after we found out I was pregnant.

  Professor Jalali, known to all as “Doc,” was a diminutive Afghan of Tajik extraction. He had a thick gray crew cut, horn-rimmed glasses, a broad smile, and a Ph.D. in Persian literature from Kabul University. Doc had been a teacher in Mazār-i-Sharīf before fleeing Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion.

  “Uncle, is this the woman who is going to live in our beloved city? ” asked Ali as he rushed out of his steaming kitchen and wiped his hands with his apron on the first day Doc took me to Ali’s restaurant. Where Doc was the complete image of a meticulous professor, his nephew was the total opposite. The loud, smiling, rotund chef stroked his short black beard and shook my hand vigorously when Doc introduced us.

  “Hamid,” Ali shouted in Dari to a tall young man leaning against the kitchen door, “bring palau, ketfa, and bulonie for my uncle and his guest and don’t forget the naan.”

  As soon as the steaming trays of rice, lamb brochettes, savory pastries, meatballs spiced with cinnamon, and hot flat bread were placed before us, Ali stepped behind me and folded his hands over his broad chest. In a booming voice, he announced in English to his kitchen staff and the other customers eating lunch that his uncle Professor Jalali was teaching “his very best Dari to this brave American woman, this angel,” who had volunteered to spend a year living near the city of his ancestors in their war-torn country.

  Not exactly volunteered, I thought.

  I shot a look at Doc, hoping he could find a way to rescue the situation. He knew that the degree of my language skill was not to be raised at Ali’s restaurant or anywhere else. As well meaning as Ali was, someone that gregarious was bound to spread word of my fluency throughout the Afghan population in D.C.—and to his relatives in Mazār-i-Sharīf.

  “Angela Morgan,” Ali continued, “when you come to my restaurant, I will call you Farishta. This is our Dari word for ‘angel’—like your American name.”

  Doc smiled at me, patted my hand, and said, “Farishta is a good Dari name for you. I should have thought of it myself.” He looked up at his nephew and winked quickly at me. “Ali, you must always speak to my pupil in Dari, but very slowly or she will not understand what you are saying. She’s only a beginner.” Ali nodded gravely before returning to the kitchen.

  There was little training available in late 2004 for American diplomats assigned to Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan. Some of my colleagues were being sent out with no language instruction at all. Our only other preparation was a week of lectures on current Afghan history and politics, which raised my anxiety to new levels with its relentless focus on the conflicts that had led to the 9/11 attacks.

  I soon discovered that there was far more to Afghanistan’s past than the events of the last few decades or even the last few centuries. The faded tourist posters plastering the walls of Ali’s restaurant reminded his customers that Afghanistan’s violent and colorful lineage was thousands of years in the making. Alexander the Great, Darius, Zoroaster, Marco Polo, and Genghis Khan, all players in the endless cycle of conquest by invaders and their ultimate defeat, looked down on Ali’s customers and inspired me to learn more about Afghanistan’s ancient works of art, architecture, and literature.

  “Look, Doc,” I said, pointing at one of the faded posters, “your nephew likes Rumi!”

  Doc snorted and shook his head.

  When on the first day of class I had mentioned my love of Rumi’s poetry and reminded Doc that Rumi had been born near Mazār, he had wrinkled his nose, straightened his glasses, and made it quite clear that we would be reciting a lot more of his favorite poet Hāfez than my man Rumi.

  “Angela, my dear, you must understand that Hāfez sings. Rumi merely recites,” he chided me gently.

  Doc was persistent, but he could not change my mind about Rumi, whose every verse reminded me of Tom. Soon after Tom and I had met that morning at the riding stable in Virginia, we began reviewing our lessons together every day after Farsi class. We were so young and so idealistic—excited about being diplomats, representing our country overseas, and helping to make the world a better place. The attraction between us was growing, but we had both been too shy to do anything about it until one evening I hosted a study group at my apartment and Tom came. After everyone else had gone home, he recited one of Rumi’s love poems to me in flawless Farsi and I wouldn’t let him leave.

  Before Doc and I could begin another argument about the merits of our favorite poets, Ali came bursting through the kitchen doors carrying a small laptop computer. “Uncle, my brother has just sent me photos from last week’s buzkashi game. You must see them! Khan Cherik’s horses won again, and my brother tells me that Governor Daoud is livid,” he said, laughing.

  Ali pulled a chair between Doc and me to show us his photos of the fierce riders on their rearing stallions. “Look,” said Ali, touching the screen with a greasy finger, “there is your nephew Qais on my brother’s favorite stallion. You see how well he sits? ”

  I was captivated by this game, which reminded me so much of the wild gallops of my youth across the high desert of New Mexico. As Ali showed me the photos, Doc explained the rules of the game. Hundreds of riders mounted on powerful stallions, bred only for this violent competition, battled one another for the privilege of dragging a headless calf around an enormous field at a full gallop. I was mesmerized by the power, beauty, and fierce courage of the buzkashi horses.

  Ali, sharing his uncle’s delight in my interest in the game, loaded a DVD of The Horsemen into his laptop.

  “This, Farishta, is buzkashi,” declared the beaming chef. “Watch closely, because I doubt you’ll be able to see a real game while you are in Mazār. Afghan women do not attend these competitions.”

  Doc explained that the movie featured actual Afghan riders, some of whom he had seen compete in Mazār as a boy.

  “Farishta,” he said in his most professorial voice as the movie continued, “only if you understand buzkashi will you ever understand Afghanistan.”

  I threw up my hands. “But, Doc, how will I ever understand this game? It’s too confusing. There are so many players, and they move so fast I can’t figure out which rider is on which team.”

  “Precisely,” he replied.

  THREE

  November 29, 2004 ✦ WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Language training was over. I had been deemed sufficiently fluent in Dari, and the dreaded departure date was only three weeks away. Every night, I was being shaken awake by stomach-churning, heart-thumping panic attacks and night sweats. Was this more menopause? Was my post-traumatic stress disorder resurfacing or was I now getting a combo package? />
  The term PTSD had been coined by the psychiatric community only three years before that April day in Beirut when the American Embassy exploded in flame-licked clouds and collapsed with Tom inside. Three days later, when my baby was stillborn, I almost bled to death before a Lebanese neighbor found me lying on the floor of my apartment and took me to a hospital.

  I could have resigned at that point but I liked the travel and the prestige of being a diplomat. The pay was good and I really didn’t know what else I would do. I needed serious help to cope with my trauma, but there was none available. The culture of the State Department was to deal with such events the British way—with a stiff upper lip and a stiff drink. Short of being hauled out in a straitjacket, Foreign Service Officers, like military officers, would never voluntarily consult with a shrink and risk losing their security and medical clearances. For years, I struggled without professional help to overcome the trauma and loss of that week—an effort that included significant amounts of legal self-medication and a string of disastrous relationships.

  When the excessive drinking, which had started in Leningrad, the pills, and the parade of unsuitable men caught up to me and were about to drag me into a hole from which I would never emerge, I locked up my emotions, threw away the key, and buried myself in a series of inconsequential diplomatic assignments.

  Intellectually, I knew that my anxiety about going to Afghanistan was irrational. Although it was technically a “war zone,” the possibility that I would be wounded or killed was minuscule.

  Mazār-i-Sharīf was on the north side of the Hindu Kush, where the only fighting in the past year had been between competing Afghan warlords and their militias. All U.S. and allied combat operations were in the south along the Pakistani border.

  By December 2004, the flood of U.S. government employees and contractors going to Baghdad was getting most of the attention inside the Department of State. All Green Zone–bound volunteers were required to attend a security course, which included several days of first-aid training as well as weapons and explosives familiarization. There had not been any similar preparation available for civilians headed to Afghanistan. Hoping that some training—any training—would help to calm my fears about going, I managed to talk my way into one of the classes two weeks prior to my departure.