Farishta Read online

  I remained with the female voters at the back of the tent, feeling like a coward next to Miriam’s bravery. She stepped forward with her arms folded over her chest, and in her most authoritative schoolteacher voice, ordered the men to leave the premises immediately.

  “I believe that false ballots are being added to the boxes, honum,” the old man said sharply. “You must open them so my men can count the votes.”

  “These boxes will remained sealed until election officials deliver them tonight to the counting center in Mazār-i-Sharīf,” Miriam replied calmly. The three female poll workers stepped forward and stood next to her, their faces still defiantly exposed.

  I pulled out my camera and began snapping photos of their confrontation.

  “Journalists are not permitted here,” shouted the older man, glaring at me.

  I informed him that journalists were indeed permitted in the polling stations, but weapons were not.

  “And if I take your camera? ” he said angrily, “what will you do then? ”

  His arrogance infuriated me and I foolishly threw caution to the winds. “I am here from the PRT as an official election observer, and I am accompanied by armed NATO soldiers who are waiting for me at the bottom of the hill. Shall I summon them?” I asked, pulling my cell phone from my pocket. I didn’t mention that I was referring only to Fuzzy, Jenkins, and the two civilians from the British Embassy. I didn’t even know if my cell phone would work out here. I prayed silently that my bluff would succeed. It did.

  “You will pay for this,” he warned before exiting the tent with his men.

  After promising Miriam that I would report the incident to the election authorities in Mazār, I walked down the hill to find that Rahim had just cast his first vote ever. When my young friend saw me approaching, he waved his purple ink-stained finger in the air and shouted proudly, “Look, Farishta-jan, democracy!”

  By late that afternoon, our little convoy was headed northeast toward the narrow cut that would take us out of the Sholgara Valley. I rode in the Beast with Rahim, Fuzzy, and Jenkins, and regaled them with the story of the armed gang that had invaded the women’s tent.

  Jenkins couldn’t resist interrupting halfway through my story. “And you just stood there and said nothing, right, Angela? I don’t believe that for a second,” he snorted. Fuzzy nodded in silent agreement.

  “I did take a few photos for the record,” I admitted.

  “Fuzzy, keep your eyes peeled until we get through this pass,” Jenkins cautioned half in jest.

  “Right, mate,” grunted Fuzzy.

  Since the Beast had no AC and its windows had to be left down so we wouldn’t suffocate in this heat, we were in the lead as our little convoy entered the narrow gap that cut through the valley wall. Richard and his civilian bodyguards following close behind us were protected from our dust inside their air-conditioned, fully armored British embassy van.

  We had been driving through the canyon for less than a minute when Fuzzy stiffened suddenly and shouted at Jenkins, “Mate, hostiles ahead!” I peeked out the open window and could see armed men on the cliffs ahead of us. Jenkins was traveling at a good clip, but he hit the brakes hard. Richard’s much more heavily armored vehicle skidded to a halt, inches from the Beast’s rear fender.

  I stared up at the shadowy figures lining the ridge and prayed they were not allies of the man I had confronted in Miriam’s polling station. If anything happened to Fuzzy, Jenkins, or Rahim because of my actions, I would never forgive myself.

  Seconds later, our radio began to crackle with familiar call signs. “Delta two zulu, delta two zulu. This is bravo nine alpha. We are in overwatch north of your position. Bridge secure. Clear to move through to my location. Out.”

  “It’s the fucking Gurkhas,” said Jenkins, resting his head on the steering wheel and heaving an enormous sigh of relief.

  He gunned the Beast and we exited the narrow canyon into a shaft of bright September sunlight. Standing on a rise near the bridge was the young Gurkha captain who commanded MOT Bravo. Next to him was Mark, as I had never before seen him—covered with dust, unshaven, deeply tanned, with a pistol strapped to his hip and a rifle slung over his shoulder. He waved solemnly as our little convoy passed safely out of the valley.

  FIFTY-TWO

  October 2, 2005

  In early October, Rahim informed Colonel Jameson he would be leaving for France in January 2006 to begin his studies.

  “Farishta-jan, he wasn’t even angry,” a surprised Rahim told me when he left the colonel’s office. “All he wanted to know was who I recommended for the new head interpreter.”

  “Rahim, by early next year, the British Army will have moved to Helmand and the Swedes will have assumed command in their new compound by the airport. Since the colonel can’t take you with him, he’s probably not too concerned about who will do the translating for the next PRT commander.”

  “I have recommended my mother’s brother-in-law, who has just finished medical school in Kabul,” said Rahim, beaming. “His English is better than mine.”

  “A doctor! Why would you recommend a doctor, Rahim?”

  “He can earn more as head interpreter at the PRT than he can working in a hospital.”

  “Have you told the colonel?”

  “Not yet. I will bring my uncle tomorrow to introduce him.”

  Since the announcement of his scholarship, Rahim had been spending as much time as the colonel would allow at the museum in Kabul with Jeef and Fazli. I knew he was also having clandestine meetings in Kabul with Nilofar, whose absences from Mazār usually coincided with his. I hoped they were being discreet.

  Although Mark and I had agreed to disagree about my complicity in their doomed romance, I thought I had finally convinced him that there was no harm in their seeing each other until Rahim left for France. Nilofar would be spending the rest of her life in Mazār-i-Sharīf married to a Hazara businessman she hadn’t even met. My two young friends deserved a few more months together before they were separated forever.

  I was thrilled about Rahim’s scholarship and had planned to suggest to Mark that we meet in Paris next spring. I’d skipped my workout to spend an hour at my desk answering an urgent query from the embassy after dinner. I headed over to the pub, where Mark and I had agreed to meet at nine, and ordered a cider. When the back door opened and he entered, still wearing his gym clothes, I waved at him from the bar.

  “Mark,” I called. “Come let me buy you something cold to drink.”

  “Angela, I need to speak with you, but not here,” he replied, nodding toward the empty soldiers’ dining hall. He was not smiling.

  “What’s wrong? ” I asked as he motioned for me to follow him.

  When I picked up my cider to bring it along, he grabbed it out of my hand and slammed it down on the bar. “Leave it!” he ordered. It was too noisy in the pub for anyone but me to have noticed his angry gesture.

  I followed Mark into the dining room and sat down across from him at one of the metal tables. “I don’t even know where to begin,” he said, his voice quavering. “A few minutes ago, I was taking a shortcut from the gym back to my room through the vehicle park when I heard a sound inside one of the empty shipping containers.”

  I knew what was coming.

  “Thank God, it was me and not one of the armed sentries,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

  “I saw something red moving in the shadows and asked whoever was inside the container to come out and identify himself.”

  My heart dropped. Nilofar had been wearing a red shawl when she came to talk to me in the afternoon about one of the girls she was trying to help. I thought she had gone home hours ago.

  “Nilofar? ”

  “Worse than that,” he replied. “It was Nilofar and Rahim, and God only knows how long they’d been in there or what they’d been doing.

  “I told them they were both out of their fucking minds. Do you know what they did then? ” he asked.

  I shook m
y head.

  “They wrapped their arms around each other and laughed. Rahim’s reply to me was that they were indeed out of their minds, but so was the whole country.” I smiled inwardly at my young friend’s courage.

  Two soldiers walked through the dining hall, discreetly ignoring our conversation as they passed the table. Mark waited until they were gone to continue.

  “I told Nilofar to call her brother immediately and explain that she had stayed at the PRT to have dinner with you,” he said, his voice rising. “I hate all this lying you’ve been doing to protect them, Angela, and now I’m doing it, too! I told Rahim that if I saw him with Nilofar again, I’d go to the colonel.”

  “Mark, I had no idea. I thought she left hours ago.”

  “Angela, if anything happens to those two, you will be partly to blame,” he said. His face was rigid with anger. “You seem quite willing to put yourself at risk, but you must understand that sometimes your actions involve others as well—with the Russian, with your little slumber party at the warlord’s compound, your secret solar cooking outings, your election adventure in the Sholgara, but especially your rash encouragement of Nilofar and Rahim.”

  I was stunned at the intensity of his anger, but I was not going to stop those two from seeing each other. They had too little time left.

  “Mark, you have no right to interfere with their relationship,” I argued. “They’re both adults and they know the risks. Once Rahim leaves for France, they’ll never see each other again.”

  “And you have no right to encourage them, Angela,” he replied.

  He had gone too far. I stood and glared down at him. “I will admit that I was wrong about one thing. You and I really are far too different for anything to have worked out between us. You can at least be grateful that I had more sense than Nilofar and didn’t do anything to embarrass you in public.”

  My eyes brimmed with tears as I walked out of the hall without another word.

  Mark didn’t speak to me the following morning. He wouldn’t even look at me. Nilofar called in the afternoon to apologize for causing any trouble. I didn’t see Rahim, who had departed early for Kabul. This time, Nilofar did not try to follow him.

  I begged her to come to the PRT so we could talk. She spent the afternoon with me in an unused conference room going over the previous day’s confrontation with Mark and voicing her despair at Rahim’s imminent departure. When I told her what had transpired between Mark and me, we briefly reversed roles as I burst into tears and collapsed into her arms.

  With only three months left to my tour, and my brief relationship with Mark now at an end, I focused relentlessly on my work and began to prepare detailed briefing memos for my yet-to-be-named successor. Alone in my room at night, I would have plenty of time to feel sorry for myself, but I vowed that no one at the PRT would ever see that side of me.

  I kept Fuzzy and Jenkins busy the following week with trips to all five provinces to meet the members of the new provincial councils. The PRT had already heard from council members in Sar-e Pol, who complained that they had nowhere to hold their meetings and were currently using one of the governor’s storerooms. There were similar reports about a lack of resources from the other councils.

  I was counting the days until I could leave this place and had with great sadness added Mark to my long list of failed relationships. I deeply regretted that our friendship had ended this way, and I still missed our after-dinner conversations, but he was avoiding me like the plague. Thank God, he would soon be gone.

  Rahim knocked on the door of my room the following Friday when he returned from Kabul. I hadn’t seen him since the incident with Mark.

  “Farishta-jan, I am sorry to bother you on your rest day. I had to come to the PRT today because I am the duty interpreter.”

  His face reddened, and he took a deep breath before continuing. “I am so sorry that Nilofar and I have upset the major and that you are now angry at each other.”

  “It’s not your fault, Rahim,” I replied. “The major and I just had a misunderstanding. We’ll get over it. It’s you and Nilofar that I’m worried about.”

  “Thank you, Farishta-jan, but Nilofar and I know we have no power to change our fate. All we can do is enjoy our last few months together as much as we can.”

  He turned to leave, then reached into his pocket. “I almost forgot, Professor Mongibeaux asked me to give this to you,” he said, handing me a small box.

  “Farishta-jan, I think Nilofar may be calling to schedule a meeting with you later this afternoon,” he added with a sly grin. “I will let her in when she arrives. Khuda-hafiz, God be with you.”

  He was impossible, but I adored this boy.

  Inside the box, nested on a square of dark blue silk, was a tiny silver medallion. It was a miniature replica of the Ai Khanoum plaque Jeef had shown me on my first visit to the museum.

  FIFTY-THREE

  October 15, 2005

  “Angela, Fuzzy and I are making a quick mail run to the airport for Sergeant Major. I think there are some packages for you. Want to come along? ” Jenkins had spotted me eating a late lunch alone in the officers’ mess.

  “I’d love to go.”

  “Rahim is coming, too. He wants us to drop him at the university. We know what that’s for, don’t we?” Jenkins said, pursing his lips and batting his eyelashes.

  “He’s going to meet Nilofar? ”

  “Bingo!” Jenkins replied.

  It was so risky for the two of them to be seen together at the university. I warned them repeatedly about this and begged them to confine their meetings to the PRT. Too many people knew them there and word might get back to her parents. They refused to listen.

  The afternoon was sunny and dry, and we drove into town enjoying the breezes blowing through our open windows. With the monthlong fast of Ramadan in its second week, it was quieter than usual at midday. Rahim babbled on to his captive audience about how Nilofar had insisted her arranged marriage with the Hazara merchant be delayed until she graduated from law school. Her parents had concurred even as they informed her that her future husband would not allow her to work once she started having children. Fuzzy and Jenkins agreed with Rahim that this small victory was a wonderful development.

  Rahim had apologized profusely to Mark after the incident in the shipping container, and Mark had stopped avoiding me completely, but our conversations were strictly professional. I now had no one at the PRT with whom to share my concern about Rahim and Nilofar. They were deeply in love with each other, and it was difficult for me to imagine them calmly shaking hands in January and saying good-bye forever.

  Fuzzy was for the first time in a long time in a good mood. He smiled at Rahim’s story and waved at the children who ran alongside our vehicle.

  Jenkins turned the Beast into the western entrance of downtown Mazār. As we approached the intersection in front of the Blue Mosque, he slowed for a small boy dragging two overloaded donkeys through the traffic.

  A young man with a clipped beard, wrapped in a gray blanket—odd attire for such a balmy day—stared intently at us from the curb. Suddenly, with no warning, he threw off his blanket, pointed an AK-47 at the Beast, and began to fire.

  Unbidden images of the black clouds billowing over the embassy in Beirut and Tom’s body lying in the rubble raced through my mind as I watched this young man calmly squeezing off round after round in our direction. I was frozen in place, staring out the window and hypnotized by the muzzle flashes coming from his rifle. Less than five seconds had passed.

  Fuzzy reacted instantly. He pulled his weapon from between his knees, shoved it out the window, and prepared to return fire. Jenkins stepped on the gas and laid on the horn. Rahim, with lightning reflexes, hit the RELEASE button on my seat belt, shoved me to the floor, and covered me with his body. Bullets from our attacker made staccato pings as they punctured the Beast’s metal skin and shattered the front windshield.

  Jenkins sped around the Blue Mosque and out of town, h
eading for the airport as fast as the traffic would allow until he noticed Fuzzy slumped over in his seat—his mouth hanging open. Fuzzy’s rifle was lodged under his arm, which dangled out the window. A thin trickle of blood poured from his left eye and from a hole in the back of his head where a bullet had pierced his skull.

  “Jesus Christ, Fuzzy’s dead!” cried Jenkins. He was swerving dangerously, unaware that he had also been hit. Blood soaked his right sleeve as he struggled to keep the Beast from running into oncoming traffic.

  I crawled back into my seat and pressed my fingers against the side of Fuzzy’s neck to check for a pulse. There was none.

  Fighting back the panic that was beginning to rise in my throat, I began to talk myself down. You’re alive, Angela. Get a grip. No one is shooting at you now. You have nothing to fear. I could hear Mike’s clear instructions and my response: “Morgan, if this happens again, you’ll know what to do?” “Yes.” I could either curl into a helpless ball on the backseat of the Beast, or I could help my friends.

  Fuzzy was beyond help, but Jenkins was losing blood fast.

  The three of us were in shock, but we had to get to the airport quickly where there were medics to care for Jenkins. Rahim didn’t know how to drive.

  “Pull over, Jenkins. I’ll drive.”

  “I think you’ll have to, Angela,” he said as the Beast bounced across an empty patch of dirt at the side of the road. Jenkins radioed the PRT to report the ambush and crawled into the backseat, grimacing and breathing hard. He was growing weak from loss of blood.

  Rahim wrapped Jenkins’s arm with bandages from the first-aid kit and kept pressure on the wound while I drove the Beast to the airport with Fuzzy’s bleeding corpse slumped against the window on the seat next to me. I resisted the urge to look over at him. There was no time to feel anything until we were safely inside the perimeter of the Forward Support Base.