Farishta Read online

  Rahim stepped out of the colonel’s office and into the bullpen, where my office mates stared at us both in amazement.

  “Angela, may I speak to you alone?” whispered Rahim as he squeezed around my typing table. I nodded and followed him into the rose garden, which had exploded into a riot of red, yellow, pink, and white blossoms.

  Rahim looked at me with an expression I could not read. His silence was providing unspoken confirmation of the one thing I feared most—that no matter what I said to him in the future, he would never trust me again.

  “Does this mean that we were never really friends after all?” he asked, staring down at me. “I can’t believe you’ve been spying on me all these months. How could you possibly think that I would lie to you or the colonel about what was being said during your meetings? ”

  His deep brown eyes glistened, and his jaw muscles flexed while he waited for my response.

  “Oh, Rahim-jan,” I said, speaking to him for the first time in his native tongue and unable to control my tears, which were now flowing freely. “I always trusted you, and it has hurt me terribly to have to lie all these months, but as the colonel explained, I had no choice.”

  “Does this mean we can no longer be friends since you won’t need me to translate for you?” he whispered in Dari as he struggled to maintain his composure.

  “Of course, we’ll still be friends,” I said taking his hands into mine. “We can be better friends than ever. I’ve hated this deception. I only hope you’ll forgive me.”

  A single tear trickled down his cheek, and he wiped it away as a broad grin spread across his face.

  “I will forgive you under two conditions,” he said.

  I swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Since we can now speak to each other in Dari, I want to start calling you by your real name,” he announced.

  “My real name?”

  “Yes, your Afghan name. Governor Daoud calls you Farishta and so will I.”

  “That’s fine with me, Rahim,” I said, relieved at his modest request.

  “One more thing, Farishta-jan, before I forgive you for deceiving me.”

  “Yes?” Perhaps I had relaxed too soon.

  “Nilofar’s family has invited me and my American ‘cousin’ to dinner again on Saturday. I can only accept if you come with me. Will you?” he asked.

  “Of course, I will!”

  “Then, Farishta-jan, all is forgiven,” he said with an enormous sigh as he turned and ran to the interpreters’ room to share his surprising news.

  FORTY-ONE

  July 23, 2005

  “Angela, I was just informed by the boys at the airport that you have several kilos of letters and magazines and a hell of a lot of aluminum foil waiting to be picked up in your mailbox,” said Sergeant Major when I passed him in the hall.

  “I’ve authorized an airport run in your vehicle. The ops officer has instructed Jenkins to take ‘route blue’ south of town since we’ve had reports of a possible disturbance on the main road out of Mazār,” he added, looking mildly concerned. “Jenkins and Fuzzy are leaving in thirty minutes if you want to go along.”

  As the Beast churned up thick clouds of summer dust and Jenkins struggled to keep its fenders from scraping the mud walls that lined the narrow village roads south of Mazār, my cell phone began to vibrate in my pocket.

  “Hi, Angela, it’s Marty. How ya doin’?” My favorite personnel officer was calling from Washington, perhaps with good news about the elusive London assignment.

  “Marty! What a surprise! I’m fine, but I can’t hear you very well. Is there something urgent or can we continue this conversation via e-mail? ”

  “Don’t worry, Ange, it’s not a collect call. The Department’s paying and I’ll make it quick.”

  I gritted my teeth. The Department might be paying for his end of the call, but it wasn’t paying for mine. Every minute we talked was using up one of the cell phone cards that I bought on the street in Mazār. But I had to keep this civil. Marty was my lifeline if I ever had any hope of getting to London—which after six months in Afghanistan felt as far away as Xanadu.

  “What’s up?”

  “I’ve got two males and one female candidate bidding on your position at the PRT for next year. Only six months to go, Ange! I’ll need a two-page description of your living conditions ASAP.”

  “Any word on my next assignment? ” I asked hopefully.

  “I’m working on London, assuming that’s still your first choice but I . . .” Marty was fading and difficult to hear over the urgent voice that began crackling on the Beast’s two-way radio.

  “Delta two zulu, delta two zulu, this is Hotel one zero. Report received of BBIED your route. Return my location immediately. Repeat, return my location immediately!”

  I had lost the signal with Marty, and presumed we were in some sort of danger, but I hadn’t understood the message. I unclipped my seat belt in case I had to exit the vehicle quickly. Gripping the front seat, I scanned the street in front of us. I could see only a young boy riding his bicycle a few blocks away.

  “Fuzzy, what’s a BBIED?” I asked as Jenkins hit the brakes and shifted the Beast into reverse.

  “Bicycle-borne improvised explosive device!” shouted Jenkins before Fuzzy had even opened his mouth. The innocent youth who was now riding in our direction looked suddenly menacing.

  “How the fuck am I supposed to turn the Beast around in this fucking tunnel?” Jenkins fumed as he looked behind us at the narrow road lined with towering walls.

  Three children suddenly appeared in front of us and two more jumped out in back, blocking our way. Jenkins began honking and shouting out his window. This had the effect of summoning even more children into the street.

  The boy was now pedaling fast.

  Fuzzy released the safety on his rifle and took aim at the approaching cyclist. “Jesus, Jenkins,” he shouted, “can’t you get us out of here? I don’t want to shoot a kid.”

  “Let me get out and speak to the children,” I said. I could feel the bile burning my throat. I was scared, but I was also determined not to curl up into a useless ball. “I can explain why we need them to move.”

  “Angela, I want you down on the floor, now!” shouted Fuzzy. I obeyed without further discussion and resigned myself to the fact that my life was now in the hands of two young men who weren’t even old enough to buy a fucking beer in the United States of America.

  Jenkins leaned on the horn and maneuvered the Beast down the road in reverse. The children jumped out of the way when it became clear that these soldiers would not be passing out candy or free NATO newspapers.

  As soon as the road widened, he spun the Beast around. I climbed back into my seat and we drove as fast as the Beast would carry us back to camp. Neither the reported disturbance on the Mazār road nor the bicycle bomber ever materialized, but we were safe and no children had been harmed in my failed attempt to pick up my mail.

  With no new magazines to read, I composed a long e-mail reply to Marty that afternoon with a description of our mud-walled compound, my Spartan living quarters, coed bathroom, typing table, the Beast, and my still undefined but increasingly active role in the PRT command structure.

  It really didn’t matter what I wrote, however, because soon after my replacement got here at the end of December, the Swedish Army would take over the running of PRT Mazār from the Brits and would abandon this ramshackle collection of buildings for their far more secure compound under construction near the airport.

  FORTY-TWO

  July 24, 2005

  I’d overdone it at Sunday lunch and had gone up to my room for a little snooze before returning to the bullpen. Today was a workday, but I knew no one would notice my absence for an extra hour. The AC had been fixed in my room, and it was a comfortable eighty degrees. My nap was cut short by a knock at the door.

  “Farishta-jan, I need to speak with you!” It was Rahim, whose whispered voice and soft tapping were barely audib
le.

  As soon as I saw his face, I knew something was wrong.

  “Come in, Rahim.”

  “No, it would not be right for me to come inside your room,” he insisted as he planted himself in the doorway.

  “Shall we go downstairs?” I asked.

  “No, no. We must talk here,” he insisted. “It’s Nilofar.”

  “Did something happen to her? ”

  “We’ve been talking about getting married. She went to her mother and told her about us last night, and her mother went right to her father, who ordered her not to see me anymore. You know that her family is Hazara and I am Tajik. Her mother told her they had only been inviting me to their house for dinner because you came with me. They still think you and I are cousins, and they may let her visit you at the PRT, but she has been told never to see or speak to me again.” He pressed his fingers against his forehead and closed his eyes.

  “Her father is a merchant, but he lost most of his savings and all of their land during the years of fighting here. Nilofar’s mother told her that a Hazara businessman in Mazār has already asked their permission to marry her.

  “She called me this morning. She was crying and threatening to run away. What should we do, Farishta-jan?” he pleaded.

  I exhaled slowly. What could I tell him? He and Nilofar were headed for heartbreak or exile from their families—or worse. I cursed myself for having encouraged their flirtation. How could I have been such a Pollyanna?

  “Rahim, perhaps with time, her father’s heart will soften. You must be patient,” I replied, knowing that such a response would provide no comfort to my distressed young friend.

  “I love her. I will not stop seeing her,” he vowed through clenched teeth.

  Rahim remained for almost an hour in the doorway of my room, baring his soul about his love for Nilofar. All I could do was listen since I had no solutions to offer. Marriage for love was still a rare occurrence in Afghanistan.

  “Farishta-jan, will you still invite Nilofar to the PRT for meetings if her parents allow it? ” he begged.

  “Of course, I will.”

  I knew this was a mistake. It would only prolong their suffering and make it even more difficult for them when Nilofar’s parents made good on their threat to marry her off.

  It soon became clear that Nilofar was far more headstrong than I had imagined. She and Rahim continued to meet secretly at the university, and whenever she came to see me at the PRT, she made certain it was Rahim who let her in the gate and escorted her out at the end of our meetings. I so wanted these two young people to be together, but if I’d been honest with myself, I would have admitted that there could be no happy ending to this story.

  FORTY-THREE

  July 25, 2005

  An angry swarm of bees was chasing me across an open field. I ran barefoot toward a faceless man whose singsong chanting grew softer the closer I got. Tom appeared next to me, grabbing my arm and pulling me to the ground. We both crouched and braced for the explosion. “Tom, I can’t breathe,” I cried, but he was gone. The bees surrounded me, and my arms flailed as I tried without success to brush them away.

  I awoke with a start, gasping for breath in the rose-hued darkness of early morning Mazār-i-Sharīf. My cell phone, tethered to its charging cord, was vibrating loudly on my desk. Sunrise was still thirty minutes away, and the mullah across the street was completing the final verses of his first call to prayer.

  I jumped out of bed and grabbed the phone. My heart, thundering as it always did when calls came at odd hours, felt like it was about to explode. Peering through the cluster of communications antennas just outside my room, I could see the old mullah below, partially concealed under the thick summer foliage of his pistachio tree. I watched him slowly rolling up his prayer rug. I was still out of breath from my dream.

  “This is Angela Morgan.”

  “Ange, it’s Bill. Dad’s in the hospital and he’s pretty bad off. He was riding the mare when something spooked her. She threw him, and the doctors aren’t sure he’s going to make it. If you want to see him before he checks out for good, you’d better get back here pronto.” Bill’s words were as clear as if he were in the next room. I could hear the anxiety in his voice.

  After providing the gory details of Dad’s possible cerebral hemorrhage and multiple fractures, he made me promise I’d get home as soon as possible. As hard as this news was to hear, it wasn’t unexpected. I’d put off taking my R&R for just this eventuality.

  The colonel, Sergeant Major, the embassy—everyone—jumped through hoops to get me booked on the eight separate flights that would take me from Mazār to Kabul to Dubai to New York to Albuquerque and back again in the space of two weeks.

  Three days later, with my mind numbed by twelve time zones of jet lag and thirty hours of sleepless travel, I walked right by my brother, who had been waiting for me in the baggage claim area at the airport.

  “Ange, where are you going?” Bill’s familiar voice soared above the airport din like a well-aimed arrow and pierced the fog that shrouded my brain. I was still searching the crowd for his leathery face when two rough hands grabbed my shoulders and spun me into the biggest, tightest hug my brother had given me since grade school.

  As Bill’s embrace lifted me from the stupor of that long trip, the sights and sounds of home began flooding in—starting with Roberta Flack purring out of the airport’s Muzak system. Two fresh-faced, giggling teenage girls in jeans and tank tops walked by us, trailing their parents through the terminal, dragging their roller bags and fiddling with their cell phones.

  It was all so wonderfully normal and unremarkable. No one stared at them because of how they were dressed, no one was carrying a rifle, and there were no blast walls.

  “God, I’m glad you’re here, Ange,” Bill said. “It looks like Dad’s going to pull through. He’s awake and sore, but as ornery as ever. There’s been no more bleeding, thank God. The doctors want us to put him in assisted living, but he said if he can’t go back to the ranch, they might as well just shoot him and dig a hole.”

  “So what are we doing? ” I asked my brother, who was still gripping me tighter than a drowning man in a stormy sea. Although Bill and I had drifted apart after I’d joined the Foreign Service, the potential loss of that final link to my childhood was summoning emotions I thought had faded long ago.

  I remembered how much Tom and I had enjoyed visiting Bill and my parents at the ranch. My mother adored Tom, while Dad in his own gruff way had made him feel like he’d always been a member of our family.

  One of our favorite things to do when we went to the ranch was ride the fence line. On those daylong mounted treks, we would walk our horses through miles of prairie short grass, checking for breaks in the barbed wire and rescuing stranded heifers. The last time we had visited the ranch together was right when we were starting to try for a baby. As we rode, Tom and I spent hours talking about the day when we would be able to share all of this with our own children. I had imagined lazy afternoons in years to come when I would send Tom off with Dad and the kids to check the pastures while Mom and I made fresh tortillas and roasted chili peppers for supper.

  It was still painful to acknowledge that my dream of a large and loving family gathering at the ranch to celebrate the holidays was never going to happen. Bill had been running the business side of Dad’s spread for the past few years, but since he also worked part-time in Albuquerque as an accountant, he had already leased most of the land out to neighboring ranchers.

  Bill’s wife, who also worked in Albuquerque, had been nagging him since they got married to give up their long-distance commute and move into the city. The thought of no Morgan family members on the ranch saddened me, but since I hadn’t lived there full-time for almost thirty years, I had little say in the matter.

  Dad’s young wife, who clearly hadn’t planned on becoming the nursemaid to an invalid old man, was sitting near his hospital bed when we arrived. She was the saddest-looking person in the roo
m, but it wasn’t because of Dad’s injuries. Bill told me she had just learned that although Dad’s estate would provide her with a comfortable living when he was gone, he had left the ranch to Bill and me.

  Our ever-practical father, who knew that his young wife wouldn’t be willing to nurse him back to health and who didn’t want to bother Bill or me, had also with great reluctance arranged for the sale of fifty prime acres of his ranch to a developer in order to cover the expense of round-the-clock nursing care at home.

  Six days after I arrived, we took Dad home and settled him into his rented hospital bed. The nursing assistants started their rotations, fussed over Dad, and pretty much took care of everything, to the great relief of the young Mrs. Morgan, who spent most of her time watching soap operas and doing her nails.

  Bill and I went on a few rides together, but we didn’t go far and didn’t talk much while we rode. He asked very few questions about my life in Afghanistan.

  On my last day at the ranch under the blazing New Mexico sun, I cooked an Afghan meal of lamb, rice, and dumplings in a solar oven Bill helped me assemble out in the barn with an old cardboard box, a windowpane, and aluminum foil. Even Dad, a meat-and-potatoes man, seemed to enjoy the food.

  “This solar box stuff is pretty neat, Ange,” he said, smacking his lips.

  “So tell us what it’s like over there in Afghanistan.”

  “It’s beautiful, Dad, confusing and heartbreaking,” I began.

  “Are you really the only woman with all those foreign soldiers? ” asked Dad’s wife, grimacing at the thought.

  “I am for the moment,” I replied. “There were a few women at the PRT before me, but none lived there full-time, like I do.”

  “I assume they all speak English,” huffed my father.

  “Most of them are British, Dad. Their English is better than mine.”

  “Why didn’t they put you with some of our American boys? ” he asked with a hint of anger in his voice.