A Cup of Friendship (15 page)

“I have an idea,” Candace said, getting up from her chair. “Bashir, Bashir Hadi, come here, please. What do you think of this—?”

And she whispered something to Bashir Hadi that made him clap his hands and yell, “Impossible! You cannot do it. That would be something, all right.”

“But I can,” she said. And then she turned to the table, her eyes wide with excitement.

Bashir Hadi was breathless, waiting for her announcement.

“My ex,” she said, “knew everybody. And he introduced me to many, many people, mostly boring old bureaucrats. But he also introduced me to Malalai Joya. And that girl owes me one. She sure as shit owes me.”

Even over the music and the hubbub, Ahmet heard Candace almost scream the name “Malalai Joya,” and he wondered what this café was becoming—a center of revolution? A place of angry women and old reformers? Everyone in Afghanistan knew of Malalai, the member of parliament who spoke out against injustice, who wasn’t afraid to accuse the politicians of being partners with the drug lords and the warlords, probably the bravest woman in the country. Probably, the bravest person.

Ahmet admired her. How could you not? But here? At the coffeehouse? It would be dangerous and require many men to protect it. Malalai had so many enemies that he wondered how she went out each day knowing she could die at any minute. Of course his mother would surely enjoy having her here.

He breathed in deeply, his chest filling with the rich scents of the room, and felt two things: proud that maybe this brave woman warrior would come to his coffeehouse, and angry that her visit would put his mother, Sunny, and especially Yazmina in danger.

Yazmina
, he thought,
look at her tonight
. She is like the sun in that dazzling dress, with her hair showing under her scarf. He wanted to kick himself for smiling at her earlier, but he didn’t even know he was until it was too late. Controlling his impulses was something important to him. And what about the very rules he insisted on for his mother? But every single day Yazmina challenged these things in him. She brought out the child in him, made him forget his duty, and made him to want run and play in the streets. And especially on this night, this silly annual tradition of Sunny’s that he secretly enjoyed and looked forward to—even Muhammad liked a good party!

Yazmina made him want to hold her, protect her, and love her.
Yazmina
, he thought, watching her serve, talk to customers, clear plates, pour water.
Yazmina
.

Before the night was over, Sunny turned off the music and stood by the counter. She clinked her glass several times with a spoon to quiet everyone down. Of course, Jack was watching her the entire time, so he stood up to help. “Hey, everybody! The lady has something to say!” he roared with his deep voice and his contagious smile. He waited until the room was silent before he sat back down.

Then Sunny did what she did every Christmas, and only on Christmas, since she’d run this café in Kabul: She gave a short speech. She began by thanking everyone for coming, for making the evening perfect. She said she hoped they enjoyed the food (at which everyone whooped and hollered) and brought out Bashir Hadi to thank him for his delicious meal. He gave a slight bow and the room rumbled with applause. She introduced Halajan as the owner of the building and therefore the big boss and responsible for the place. She thanked Yazmina, who blushed, and Ahmet, who stood proud as she thanked him for his service all year. She gave each a beautifully wrapped gift and the café patrons applauded warmly. She thanked her turkey smuggler and the people who brought her Christmas baubles from afar.

And then Sunny’s voice grew quieter, and she raised her glass and said, “I could never run this place without the help of these wonderful people. This far away from my home and my family, I have found a home and a family that means the world to me. And this season always does me in. There’s something about Christmas, no matter where you are, it’s a time we put aside our differences and …” Her voice trailed off. She swallowed and blinked back tears. “I sound like a fucking Hallmark card!” she screamed, and everyone laughed and applauded. She quickly looked at Jack, who was watching her intently, his brows furrowed, worried for her, smiling, happy for her. She looked at Isabel and Candace, and the room full of customers and acquaintances. Her heart was so full it expanded to fill her chest, her throat, making it necessary to breathe out and in again. “I know I’m about as corny as they come, but on this night sappy is okay, right?” There was a resounding response. And then Sunny raised her glass and said, looking at her table of cohorts, “Here’s to friends. Merry Christmas, everybody!” Everyone yelled back, “Merry Christmas!” and then Sunny added, “And don’t leave without a gift!”

As Sunny stood by the door to say good night to everyone, she handed everybody a present and kissed their cheeks. Only her friends and family remained: Jack, Isabel and Candace, Halajan, Bashir Hadi, Yazmina, and Ahmet. She wasn’t sure who were family and who were friends, and maybe they all were both, and maybe it didn’t matter one bit.

The night was all she’d hoped it would be. The music, the food, the wine and laughter, and not one argument—that made it different from her family back home.

There was no Tommy, and his absence had always weighed on her. But tonight she felt lighter than she had in ages. And, there was one last thing to do.

She took Jack by the arm, saying, “Come with me,” and pulled him out the back doorway of the coffeehouse to the hallway leading to her own rooms. She could hear Candace shout behind her, “Where the hell are you two going?”

There, hanging from a light fixture, was a bunch of plastic mistletoe.

And there, she kissed him.

I
t took only three Wednesday nights in January to make enough money to build the wall, because Candace had come through with her promise. Malalai Joya agreed to speak. She was accompanied by a group of UN security forces, which she dared not travel without. Ahmet, who’d tried to persuade his mother to dissuade Sunny from allowing her to come, eventually accepted his duty and hired several experienced
chokidor
, men who were licensed to use guns, not just carry them, to ensure the café’s safety from the
muhajideen
Joya often criticized for the deaths of thousands of Afghans. The café was standing room only, with people jammed together, shoulder to shoulder, sharing chairs, sitting on the floor, lined up against the walls. But there were no incidents. Only an evening that was thrilling.

In everything Sunny had read and heard about Malalai, nobody spoke about her beauty. That was probably because when she spoke, you didn’t see her anymore, only heard the passionate words of a staunch defender of human rights. You even forgot she was a woman when she bravely called for warlords to stop using the cloak of democracy to control Afghanistan. She also criticized America and its intentions in her country. Afghanistan had for so long been a place to wage war, fight for power, and harvest poppies, that the people were left uneducated, illiterate, impoverished, completely disenfranchised with no voice of their own.

Malalai stood in the front of the room, her black hair covered with a black scarf, her dark eyes fierce with commitment and determination.
You can speak for me anytime
, Sunny thought as Malalai gave her speech.

“Warlords are responsible for our country’s situation,” she said. “They oppress women and have ruined our country. They might be forgiven by the Afghan people, but not by history.”

Some women, Sunny thought, are meant for greatness. Some, like her, she supposed, were meant for providing a place to spread that greatness around a little. She found pride in that and wanted to hug Bashir Hadi and kiss him and thank him for forcing her to get off her butt and make more money. Without his pushing her, none of this would’ve happened.

The next week, Sunny researched the height requirements, Bashir Hadi hired the team of workers, and construction began. It wasn’t a difficult job. All they had to do was build another four feet onto the existing wall that encircled the building. They’d need to lay red clay bricks for the basic structure, side the wall with cement, and then add a fresh coat of paint so that the new section would blend seamlessly with the old.

As the wall went up, rising so high that the acacia tree in the courtyard of the house next door was barely visible, and the mountains to the east were completely obliterated, Sunny watched from her windows, standing with her hands on her hips. The wall was meant to protect, but it made her feel walled
in
. It was a perfect visual metaphor for the sad state of her beloved Kabul and the changes that had occurred in the years since she’d first arrived. When Sunny first came to Kabul, the Taliban had been “ousted,” which really meant they’d gone undercover, shaving their beards and cutting their hair when the Americans had invaded only a year before. Within a few short years, Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from Kandahar, was elected president in the country’s first democratic presidential election. Then America turned to Iraq, leaving the drug lords, the various mafias, all the bad guys, to raise money, get strong, and carve up their fiefdoms. Now the Taliban were back out in the open in force, broader and bigger, having used the time wisely to recruit and wage another rigorous insurgency that was feeling more palpable by the day.

So the wall represented more than mere protection. It was also about keeping things out, being separated from life on the streets, being fully aware that there were dangers encroaching on her home. The wall, in a word, sucked.

But on a bright, brisk afternoon in February, it was completed. All it needed was to be painted, and Sunny was taking color suggestions.

Halajan wanted a peacock blue. Bashir Hadi liked the pale orange that had been there, was used to it, argued that customers were used to it, too, and besides, he said, their gate was blue, and the walls should be different. When Sunny asked Yazmina her opinion, she was hesitant to answer but ultimately voted for orange, as did Jack and Ahmet.

“In the spirit of democracy, orange it is,” Sunny said.

She took her car and Poppy to Paint Street to buy the supplies, her spirits high. It had been a long time since she’d bought paints. Her favorite shop was one about halfway down the street. She parked in front and left Poppy inside to guard the car.

The shop was tiny, with brushes and supplies hanging from hooks on the walls and from the ceiling. Two walls were lined with displays from various American brands that had shallow shelves of little cards with a sample square of the color, the number, and the name, like #54 Florida Orange, or #208 Soft Mango, just like at the hardware stores back home.

Sunny took her time gathering the oranges that appealed to her, comparing them, trying to see them large and imagine what would happen to their color in the sunlight, and then, slowly, deliberately, narrowing them down to three. She took the little color cards to the shopkeeper, who sat on a stool at a counter, reading the newspaper and drinking from a can of Coke.

“
Salaam alaikum,
” she said in greeting, and continued in Dari. “I’m considering these colors for the wall around my house. What do you think?”

He looked carefully at the samples, and said, “Very, very nice. Joyful! Orange is one of my favorites.” Then he pointed to one and said, “But I don’t have that one in stock.”

“Well, that narrows it down,” said Sunny cheerfully. “Do you have a preference between these two?”

He thought long and hard and then said, “This one. It’s brighter. It will distinguish your house.”

“That’s exactly what I want it to do. Okay, so let’s go with that one.” Then she told him the height and length of her walls, and they discussed how much paint she would need, calculating enough for two coats.

The shopkeeper went to the back, while Sunny looked around the shop, waiting. But he returned quickly, shaking his head.

“I’m out of that color,” he said.

“That’s too bad. Well, then, let’s go with the—”

“I think I’m out of that one, too, but I will check.”

Sunny felt her impatience rise as she waited while he disappeared into his stockroom.

“As I thought, none of that color either!” he yelled from the back.

Sunny had to laugh. “Do you have
any
orange paint in stock?”

“No, not as such at this time.
Inshallah
, tomorrow. I’m sure that a shipment will have arrived.”

Sunny knew that “tomorrow” could mean a week or two or maybe never. “I don’t have that kind of time. What colors do you have in stock? Maybe a pale green? There was one that I liked—”

He looked down at the floor. “Sadly, not enough of any one color for your wall. I do have some Federal Blue, number 67, and some Colonial Yellow, number 317, which might look very nice together. Very stately. Oh, and some Designer White, and Bright White, but surely you don’t want to paint your wall white! That would be silly.”

She had to smile. His lack of paint didn’t stop him from being charming. “So that’s it? Of all these colors?” She gestured toward the displays with their hundreds of offerings.

“Perhaps I can order from Dubai.”

“Never mind,” she said in frustration, and then quickly added, “but thank you.”

She left the store thinking she’d try another paint store, but she knew it would be fruitless. If one didn’t have paint, none would have paint. She went back to her car, where Poppy was sitting in the front seat right behind the wheel, looking like a doggie driver.

“Let’s go home, girl,” Sunny said as the dog leapt to the shotgun seat. “We’ll figure something out.”

When they got back to the coffeehouse, Poppy went to her special place at the back of the café, where she followed her tail around and around several times before lying down in a ball on her
toshak
. And Sunny went to the courtyard to look at the wall.

It was now late afternoon. The sun was low in the sky and it lit up the wall as it settled into the west. The part of the wall that was unpainted seemed to sparkle as it caught the light; the fragments of glass and stone in the cement glittered. It reminded Sunny of the wall she’d painted in high school that got her suspended, sent to court, and sentenced to two weeks of so-called community service, which in actuality was picking up litter from the side of the highway.

“Community service, my ass,” she said aloud.

Everyone hated Jonesboro High, especially the building itself with its gothic balustrades and small windows and its four-story height. It loomed over the edge of town like a fortress. They called it the Pink Prison. And so, Sunny had decided to beautify it. She knew she could draw, and her notebooks covered with doodles and more elaborate drawings that filled the margins proved it. But she’d never painted. So she went to the hardware store and, using the money she made working as a cashier at the corner market after school and weekends, bought paint and brushes and thinner and flashlights, and got some friends to meet her behind the school at midnight that Saturday. They were to hold the flashlights as she painted. And paint she did, as they all drank beer and smoked weed. Had she had more time, it would’ve been better, but by six the next morning it was done.

She remembered the sun rising over the flatness of Jonesboro, its light reflecting in the windows of the small, nondescript houses that lined the streets. The sky was purple, a lighter yellow and orange at the horizon. As the sun rose, it shone right onto her painting. She hadn’t planned it that way, but there you are. Sometimes the things unplanned are the things that make magic. Some said they could see it from miles away. Some said that the way the rays of the morning sun hit the yellows and golds of her painting that morning created a glare so intense that you needed sunglasses even that early. (Of course nobody was up and out that early on a Sunday morning, but it became the stuff of legend, nevertheless.)

She remembered standing back, paintbrush in one hand and the other hand on her hip, trying to look at her work objectively. And all she could think was that if only she’d had a better blue, it might have been something. As it was, with the sun’s rays on it, the nude figure lying in the forest literally shimmered. Surrounding the figure were large palms and flowers and animals very simply wrought like folk art, primitive, an outsider’s view of paradise. Her friends stood, openmouthed, awestruck, at the painting. It was beautiful. It was lush and vibrant. And it was going to get her into one heck of a mess.

You just don’t paint your principal in the nude.

For that’s exactly who the naked woman was. It was Mrs. McQueen’s face on a completely nude body, still wearing her horn-rims but without her shoulder-padded suits and sensible shoes. It was Mrs. McQueen looking very postcoital, reclining on her side, up on her elbow, head in her hand, her other hand covering her crotch.

Standing in her courtyard now, thousands of miles and worlds away from her small town, Sunny decided she’d paint her wall herself. But not with Colonial Blue or American Mustard, or whatever the hell those colors were. She’d paint it with her own oils. A mural. Her heart caught in her throat with excitement, and she ran inside to begin sketching. She would paint the street side of the wall with something bold and simple so that it would be easy to identify the coffeehouse, and she would paint the wall facing the windows with an elaborate scene, so that when she looked out she could pretend, if only for one moment, that the wall didn’t exist.

It was the same late afternoon and Yazmina stood before her mirror. She was glowing. This baby, now that she was over the sick period, was making her hair shine, her cheeks rich with color, and her smile broad. And yet, the same baby was making her terribly worried, though nobody looking at her would’ve ever known. Her dark, heavy dresses and her long
chaderi
hid her pregnant stomach, but soon the day would come when the baby would want to show itself. And then what? Her smile faded. She never understood before the shame that pregnant women felt, but she understood it now. Why would anyone believe this was her husband’s baby? She would bring shame to everyone, especially Bashir Hadi and Ahmet. Everyone would think she was a prostitute. If she was not killed for being pregnant, she would certainly die in childbirth as so many women did. But, perhaps,
Inshallah
, Muhammad would watch over her and see to their safety. And in Muhammad’s absence, since he had many more important things to do, she had Halajan, who could move mountains almost as well.

And what about her sister, Layla? Was she still at home with their uncle? Had the snows been enough to block the roads and prevent anyone from going out or coming in? Or had the sun been stronger this winter and allowed the drug lord to come for her, too? Not a day went by that she didn’t pray to Allah for Layla’s well-being as much as that of her own baby. She had to find a way to ask Sunny to talk to her friend Mr. Jack. He would know people. He would be able to reach Layla before the spring. But Sunny was already keeping one secret for her. To ask her for another deed? It was too much.