Lie Down With Lions (21 page)

“Good,” said Jane. “We will go home that way.”

Mohammed shook his head. “You cannot.”

“And why not?”

Kahmir and Matullah gave knowing smiles. Jane ignored them. After a moment Mohammed said: “The first problem is the altitude. This route goes above the ice line. That means the snow never melts, and there is no running water, even in summer. Second is the landscape. The hills are very steep and the paths are narrow and treacherous. It is hard to find your way: even local guides get lost. But the worst problem of all is the people. That region is called Nuristan, but it used to be called Kafiristan, because the people were unbelievers, and drank wine. Now they are true believers, but still they cheat, rob and sometimes murder travelers. This route is no good for Europeans, impossible for women. Only the youngest and strongest men can use it—and even then, many travelers are killed.”

“Will you send convoys that way?”

“No. We will wait until the southerly route is reopened.”

She studied his handsome face. He was not exaggerating, she could tell: he was being dryly factual. She stood up and began to shuffle the maps together. She was bitterly disappointed. Her return home was postponed indefinitely. The strain of life in the Valley suddenly seemed insupportable, and she felt like crying.

She rolled her maps into a cylinder and forced herself to be polite. “You were away a long time,” she said to Mohammed.

“I went to Faizabad.”

“A long trip.” Faizabad was a large town in the far north. The Resistance was very strong there: the army had mutinied and the Russians had never regained control. “Aren’t you tired?”

It was a formal question, like
How do you do?
in English, and Mohammed gave the formal reply: “I’m still alive!”

She tucked her roll of maps under her arm and went out.

The women in the courtyard looked at her fearfully as she passed them. She nodded at Halima, Mohammed’s dark-eyed wife, and got a nervous half-smile in return.

The guerrillas were doing a lot of traveling lately. Mohammed had been to Faizabad, Fara’s brother had gone to Jalalabad. . . . Jane recalled that one of her patients, a woman from Dasht-i-Rewat, had said that her husband had been sent to Pagman, near Kabul. And Zahara’s brother-in-law, Yussuf Gul, the brother of her dead husband, had been sent to the Logar Valley, on the far side of Kabul. All four places were rebel strongholds.

Something was going on.

Jane forgot her disappointment for a while as she tried to figure out what was happening. Masud had sent messengers to many—perhaps all—of the other Resistance commanders. Was it a coincidence that this happened so soon after Ellis’s arrival in the Valley? If not, what could Ellis be up to? Perhaps the U.S. was collaborating with Masud in organizing a concerted offensive. If all the rebels acted together they could really achieve something—they could probably take Kabul temporarily.

Jane went into her house and dropped the maps in the chest. Chantal was still asleep. Fara was preparing food for supper: bread, yogurt and apples. Jane said: “Why did your brother go to Jalalabad?”

“He was sent,” said Fara with the air of one who states the obvious.

“Who sent him?”

“Masud.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know.” Fara looked surprised that Jane should ask such a question: who could be so foolish as to think that a man would tell his sister his reason for a journey?

“Did he have something to do there, or did he take a message, or what?”

“I don’t know,” Fara repeated. She was beginning to look anxious.

“Never mind,” Jane said with a smile. Of all the women in the village, Fara was probably the least likely to know what was going on. Who was the most likely? Zahara, of course.

Jane picked up a towel and headed for the river.

Zahara was no longer in mourning for her husband, although she was a good deal less boisterous than she used to be. Jane wondered how soon she would marry again. Zahara and Ahmed had been the only Afghan couple Jane had come across who actually seemed to be in love. However, Zahara was a powerfully sensual woman who would have trouble living without a man for very long. Ahmed’s younger brother, Yussuf, the singer, lived in the same house as Zahara, and was still unmarried at the age of eighteen: there was speculation among the village women that Yussuf might marry Zahara.

Brothers lived together, here; sisters were always separated. A bride routinely went to live with her husband in the home of the husband’s parents. It was just one more way in which the men of this country oppressed their women.

Jane strode quickly along the footpath through the fields. A few men were working in the evening light. The harvest was coming to an end. It would soon be too late to take the Butter Trail anyway, Jane thought: Mohammed had said it was a summer-only route.

She reached the women’s beach. Eight or ten village women were bathing in the river or in pools at the water’s edge. Zahara was out in midstream, splashing a lot as usual but not laughing and joking.

Jane dropped her towel and waded into the water. She decided to be a little less direct with Zahara than she had been with Fara. She would not be able to fool Zahara, of course, but she would try to give the impression that she was gossiping rather than interrogating. She did not approach Zahara immediately. When the other women got out of the water, Jane followed a minute or two later, and dried herself with her towel in silence. It was not until Zahara and a few other women began to drift back toward the village that Jane spoke. “How soon will Yussuf be back?” she asked Zahara in Dari.

“Today or tomorrow. He went to the Logar Valley.”

“I know. Did he go alone?”

“Yes—but he said he may bring someone home with him.”

“Who?”

Zahara shrugged. “A wife, perhaps.”

Jane was momentarily diverted. Zahara was too coolly indifferent. That meant she was worried: she did not want Yussuf to bring home a wife. It looked as if the village rumors were true. Jane hoped so. Zahara needed a man. “I don’t think he has gone to get a wife,” Jane said.

“Why?”

“Something important is happening. Masud has sent out many messengers. They can’t all be after wives.”

Zahara continued to try to look indifferent, but Jane could tell she was pleased. Was there any significance, Jane wondered, in the possibility that Yussuf might have gone to the Logar Valley to fetch someone?

Night was falling as they approached the village. From the mosque came a low chant: the eerie sound of the most bloodthirsty men in the world at prayer. It always reminded Jane of Josef, a young Russian soldier who had survived a helicopter crash just over the mountain from Banda. Some women had brought him to the shopkeeper’s house—this was in the winter, before they moved the clinic to the cave—and Jean-Pierre and Jane had tended his wounds while a message was sent to Masud asking what should be done. Jane learned what Masud’s reply had been one evening when Alishan Karim walked into the front room of the shopkeeper’s house, where Josef lay in bandages, and put the muzzle of his rifle to the boy’s ear and blew his head off. It had been about this time of day, and the sound of the men praying had been in the air while Jane washed the blood off the wall and scooped up the boy’s brains from the floor.

The women climbed the last stretch of the footpath up from the river and paused in front of the mosque, finishing their conversations before going to their separate homes. Jane glanced into the mosque. The men were praying on their knees, with Abdullah, the mullah, leading them. Their weapons, the usual mixture of ancient rifles and modern submachine guns, were piled in a corner. The prayers were just finishing. As the men stood up, Jane saw that there were a number of strangers among them. She said to Zahara: “Who are they?”

“By their turbans, they must be from the Pich Valley and Jalalabad,” Zahara replied. “They are Pushtuns—normally they are our enemies. Why are there here?” As she was speaking, a very tall man with an eye patch emerged from the crowd. “That must be Jahan Kamil—Masud’s great enemy!”

“But there is Masud, talking to him,” said Jane, and she added in English: “Just fancy that!”

Zahara imitated her. “Jass fencey hat!”

It was the first joke Zahara had made since her husband died. That was a good sign: Zahara was recovering.

The men began to come out, and the women scuttled away to their homes, all except Jane. She thought she was beginning to understand what was happening; and she wanted confirmation. When Mohammed came out she approached him and spoke to him in French. “I forgot to ask whether your trip to Faizabad was successful.”

“It was,” he said without pausing in his stride: he did not want his comrades or the Pushtuns to see him answering a woman’s questions.

Jane hurried alongside him as he headed for his house. “So the commander of Faizabad is here?”

“Yes.”

Jane had guessed right: Masud had invited all the rebel commanders here. “What do you think of this idea?” she asked him. She was still fishing for details.

Mohammed looked thoughtful, and dropped his hauteur, as he always did when he got interested in the conversation. “Everything depends on what Ellis does tomorrow,” he said. “If he impresses them as a man of honor, and wins their respect, I think they will agree to his plan.”

“And you think his plan is good?”

“Obviously it will be a good thing if the Resistance is united and gets weapons from the United States.”

So that was it! American weapons for the rebels, on condition they fought together against the Russians instead of fighting one another half the time.

They reached Mohammed’s house, and Jane turned away with a wave. Her breasts felt full: it was time for Chantal to be fed. The right breast felt a little heavier, because at the last feed she had started with the left, and Chantal always emptied the first one more thoroughly.

Jane reached the house and went into the bedroom. Chantal lay naked on a folded towel inside her cradle, which was actually a cardboard box cut in half. She had no need of clothes in the warm air of the Afghan summer. At night she would be covered with a sheet—that was all. The rebels and the war, Ellis and Mohammed and Masud, all receded into the background as Jane looked at her baby. She had always thought small babies ugly, but Chantal seemed very pretty to her. As Jane watched, Chantal stirred, opened her mouth and cried. Jane’s right breast immediately leaked milk in response, and a warm, damp patch spread on her shirt. She undid the buttons and picked up Chantal.

Jean-Pierre said she should wash her breasts with surgical spirit before feeding, but she never did because she knew Chantal would not like the taste. She sat on a rug with her back to the wall and cradled Chantal in her right arm. The baby waved her fat little arms and moved her head from side to side, frantically seeking with her open mouth. Jane guided her to the nipple. The toothless gums clamped hard and the baby sucked fiercely. Jane winced at the first hard pull, then at the second. The third suck was gentler. A small, plump hand reached up and touched the round side of Jane’s swollen breast, pressing it with a blind, clumsy caress. Jane relaxed.

Feeding her baby made her feel terribly tender and protective. Also, it was erotic. At first she had felt guilty about being turned on by it, but she soon decided that if it was natural it could not be bad, and settled down to enjoy it.

She was looking forward to showing Chantal off if they ever got back to Europe. Jean-Pierre’s mother would tell her she was doing everything wrong, no doubt, and her own mother would want to have the baby christened, but her father would adore Chantal through an alcoholic haze, and her sister would be proud and enthusiastic. Who else? Jean-Pierre’s father was dead. . . .

A voice came from the courtyard. “Anybody at home?”

It was Ellis. “Come in,” Jane called. She did not feel she needed to cover herself: Ellis was not an Afghan, and anyway he had once been her lover.

He came in, saw her feeding the baby and did a double take. “Shall I leave?”

She shook her head. “You’ve seen my tits before.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “You must have changed them.”

She laughed. “Pregnancy gives you great tits.” Ellis had been married once, she knew, and had a child, although he gave the impression he no longer saw either the child or its mother. That was one of the things he would never talk about very much. “Don’t you remember from when your wife was pregnant?”

“I missed it,” he said, in that curt tone he used when he wanted you to shut up. “I was away.”

She was too relaxed to respond in like manner. In fact she felt sorry for him. He had made a mess of his life, but it was not all his own fault; and he had certainly been punished for his sins—not the least by her.

“Jean-Pierre didn’t come back,” Ellis said.

“No.” The sucking eased as Jane’s breast emptied. She gently pulled her nipple from Chantal’s mouth and lifted the baby to her shoulder, patting the narrow back to make her burp.

“Masud would like to borrow his maps,” Ellis said.

“Of course. You know where they are.” Chantal belched loudly. “Good girl,” Jane said. She put the baby to her left breast. Hungry again after burping, Chantal began to suck. Giving in to an impulse, Jane said: “Why don’t you see your child?”

He took the maps from the chest, closed its lid and straightened up. “I do,” he said. “But not often.”

Jane was shocked. I almost lived with him for six months, she thought, and I never really knew him. “A boy or a girl?”

“Girl.”

“She must be . . .”

“Thirteen.”

“My God.” That was practically grown-up. Jane was suddenly intensely curious. Why had she never questioned him about all this? Perhaps she had not been interested before she had a child of her own. “Where does she live?”

He hesitated.

“Don’t tell me,” she said. She could read his face. “You were about to lie to me.”

“You’re right,” he said. “But do you understand
why
I have to lie about it?”

She thought for a moment. “Are you afraid that your enemies will attack you through the child?”