Margarita Wednesdays: Making a New Life by the Mexican Sea (2 page)

“Feel free to call back during open hours. Thank you for calling.”

“Please, Mary, you have no idea! I’m Debbie Rodriguez from the Kabul Beauty School!” I cried, raising my voice a few octaves. “I need help
now
! I could be dead by tomorrow morning! Hello? Hello?”

She hung up. Seriously?

W
HERE MY GOVERNMENT FAILED TO
help me, my friends could. That’s the lucky thing about being a hairdresser—you know everyone. Jane quickly sprang into action.

“You and your son have ten minutes to get outta there,” she said in a flat, clipped tone. “And that’s it. I’ll pick you up at the German restaurant down the road. Be ready.”

“Pack up your things! Now!” I yelled to Noah as I tore up the stairs to my bedroom.

“What?”

“We have to go!”

“Go where?” He stood in my doorway, bewildered, as I grabbed my
two biggest suitcases and began to fling the rumpled, dirty clothes I had just unpacked from my trip to the States back inside.

“Just pack!” There was no time to think. I don’t think it really occurred to me that I’d never be back. In went my jewelry, still in its travel case. I instinctively tossed in two beautiful pairs of boots I had bought in Turkey. Shoes went flying through the air one by one without the thought of making a match.

My suitcases thumped down the stairs behind me, keeping time with my pounding heart. I paused at the sound of laughter drifting from the salon, fighting back my urge to run in and hug my girls good-bye, to tell them everything would be all right, that I’d be back soon. But it was too risky. Any explanation would have to wait until my return, after things blew over. After one last quick glance around my living room, I ran out the gate with a confused Noah trailing behind, the two of us dragging our suitcases through the mud as I frantically led him to Deutscher Hof Kabul.

“Lock the gate behind us!” I screamed to Abdul, the gatekeeper, “and don’t let anybody in!” Ingrid, the restaurant manager, quickly cleared the room of perplexed diners, and made me sit. My shaking hands struggled to keep the water she handed me from sloshing over the edge of the glass. Where would we go? How would we go? I had no money on me, no plane tickets, no nothing. But Jane had it handled. She would get us to Dubai, and from there we’d be on our own.

Noah and I were whisked to Kabul’s Serena Hotel, at that time the most secure place in the country, where we were to hide out while the escape plans were being hatched by Jane and her all-volunteer extraction team. In the hotel, the doors were triple-locked behind us. I was allowed one call. “Make it fast,” barked Calamity Jane as she handed me my phone. “Don’t give away your location, and don’t give away your situation.”

I didn’t have to think twice about who to call. As I started to dial the number I had dialed so many times before, but never for this
reason, I thought back on the evening five years earlier, when Karen and I had made “our plan.”

T
HE BARTENDER SLAPPED DOWN TWO
white bar napkins in front of us. “So, what are we celebrating tonight, ladies?”

It was Wednesday, and for my best friend and me, it was our one night of the week to catch up, have a margarita or two, and share a good laugh. But on this particular Wednesday night, our conversation was rather sober. It was my last call before leaving Holland, Michigan, for my first trip to Kabul.

Karen was the type of mom who always made sure her children were decked out in the right safety gear, for fear they would suffer a broken bone, or a hangnail. Her kids called her Safety Mom. “Will you be with the group the whole time? Do they provide security?” she asked in between sips, with barely a pause to swallow.

“I don’t really know about the security,” I said, trying to sound reassuring, “but I’m sure we’ll have it.”

“Still, we have to have a plan in case . . . you know . . .,” she said. We looked down uncomfortably at our drinks. I was going into a country we had just bombed the hell out of and that was in massive need of rebuilding. I motioned to the bartender for another drink and lit a cigarette.

“At our last meeting they told us to bring a substantial piece of gold.”

“Define substantial,” Karen said, peering over her glass.

“In case . . . I guess . . . if we have to pay our way out of a situation.” I took a long, nervous puff at my cigarette, then looked away. I didn’t want to freak her out. I didn’t want to freak myself out. The unfortunate reality was that Kabul still wasn’t a very safe place.

Karen sat up and smoothed out her shirt. I could see a plan brewing in her head. “Okay, so here’s what we’ll do,” she said, using the
tone I’d often heard her use with her kids. “We need a word or phrase that will tell me you’re in trouble and that I need to call somebody.”

Knowing Karen, and knowing who she knew, I had no doubt that she would be able to get me out of any situation safely. Though I didn’t even want to
think
about why I’d need her, I went ahead and humored her. “You’re right! We need a code word.”

We spent the rest of the night channeling our inner 007s, kicking around different words and phrases—
bun in the oven, the goose is cooked, the armadillo can’t cross the road.

“When was the last time you actually said the goose is cooked?” I teased. “And really, an armadillo?”

“Okay, then, who on earth would believe that you or I have a bun in the oven?” She laughed back.

We finally settled on
the turkey is in the oven.
I’m not sure why we chose that one. It wasn’t even November. I blame it on the margaritas. But I was glad to have a plan.

N
OW, AFTER THE FIASCO CALL
to the U.S. Embassy, I wasn’t so hopeful. One ring, two rings. What time was it there, anyway?
Please don’t go to the machine,
I prayed. Karen’s deep voice came through on the other end.

“Hello?” I said, not sure whether I was talking to a person or a machine.

“Debbie?” was the reply. She sounded peeved. I admit that I may have, on more than one occasion, called her in the middle of the night. But there was no time for apologies, so I went straight to the point.

“The turkey is in the oven.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing myself say, but I was seasoned enough by now to know that phone lines in Kabul were hardly secure. My words were met with silence. In the meantime, Jane the Australian mercenary was motioning to me to wrap it up.

“What?” replied Karen, groggily.

I tried once more, slower. “The turkey . . . is in . . . the oven.” I closed my eyes and prayed she would remember that conversation from years ago. “Wait!” She remembered.
Thank God!
“Are there . . . giblets with the turkey?”

I paused and looked at Jane, now holding her hand out for my phone.

“Are there giblets with the turkey?” Karen persisted.

I scrunched my forehead, trying to remember what she could be referring to. And then I understood.

“Yes,” I said, looking at Noah. “The big giblet. Right now, it looks like it will come out okay, but if you don’t hear the timer go off within twenty-four hours, it’s time for a backup plan.”

“Gotcha.” I felt a little relief knowing that Karen had my back; if push came to shove she would do whatever she could to summon help. Of course, what she didn’t know was that I had already struck out with our own embassy.

“Thanks, Safety Mom.” I hung up and placed the phone in Jane’s firm hand. She popped open the back, removed my SIM card, and gave it back to me. It was go time.

With the convoy ride behind us, we bustled through check-in and then immigration, draped, tied, wrapped, and veiled beyond recognition, thanks to the Afghan disguise Calamity Jane had insisted upon. I didn’t say much as we sat waiting for the plane to leave Kabul airport. I kept glancing nervously out the window to make sure that my husband, Sam, or one of his thugs wasn’t coming after us on the tarmac. I knew it was dangerous for a wife to leave an Afghan husband without permission, and that house arrest, imprisonment, or even an honor killing was often the fate of an errant woman.

When we finally did lift off, I hid my face behind my headscarf and allowed the tears to stream endlessly down my cheeks. My sweet son held my hand tightly, not knowing quite what to say. For two and a half hours and a thousand miles my mind raced with questions. What just happened? Where did I go wrong? How do I keep Noah safe?
How do I keep myself safe? Where the hell should I go? Where the hell can I go?

The first thing I did once we landed in Dubai was to call Karen to let her know we were okay. Safety Mom had sat by the phone for twenty-four hours straight, at the ready to pull some strings to persuade Holland’s mayor, our congressman, and the governor to come to my rescue, if need be. That was my girl. The next step was to connect Noah with his brother in Northern Cyprus. He would be safe there. But me? I had no clue. With just two suitcases to my name, the options were few. I had lost my life, my work, my home, everything I had thought was mine to keep forever, all within just a couple of days. For the first time in my life, I was truly scared. I felt guilty, worried about the girls I had been forced to leave behind. And I was alone.

Karen graciously offered me a place to stay, my hometown being the obvious solution—but not to me. Holland, Michigan, is one of those towns you don’t get out of. You grow up there, you go to school there, you marry a Hollander, you die there. You just don’t leave. But I had. And going back did not seem like an option. My sons were no longer living there, my father had passed away, and my mother was involved with a new man, unfortunately a man who didn’t seem to think there was room for us both in her life. There didn’t appear to be anything left for me there.

The truth is, I had become a sort of mini-celebrity in Holland, due to my book. And now everything had gone up in smoke. If I did move back, I’d have to tell my story over and over and over, answer the same questions again and again, at the grocery store, at the bank, over margaritas with my girlfriends. I just couldn’t see it. I wasn’t even sure what that story was. My life had just crashed and was burning around me, and I was trying to figure out where the fire was and who started the fire and how to put the fire out and salvage my life, and I knew I couldn’t do it in Michigan. I would have rather lived alone on a mountain. And that’s exactly what I did, sort of.

I
T WAS A
C
ALIFORNIA GUY
who came to the rescue. Mike and I had met years before, and he was well versed in my Afghanistan adventure. So when he heard I needed help, he kindly offered the lifeline of his home on top of Bell Mountain Road in the Napa Valley. My decision was a quick one. I desperately needed somewhere to go where nobody knew me, where I could lick my wounds in private and try to pull myself back together. And Napa? The land of Cabernet? One of the top ten vacation spots in the world? I pictured massages and mud baths, gourmet dining and hot-air balloons, right?

Wrong. I found myself in the woods. On top of a mountain in the woods. In a community of hardworking, teetotaling vegetarians who pretty much kept to themselves. Not that that was a bad thing, because all of a sudden I found myself among some very caring, nurturing people who seemed to thrive on helping those in need. And, at the time, I certainly was one of those. But they were also extremely conservative, and my bling-toting, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed,
tequila-loving, bacon-craving self was still very much intact, despite my recent upheaval.

My first few weeks in Mike’s ranch-style house were spent frantically trying to reach anyone I could in Afghanistan. Desperate to find out what was happening, I’d stay up all night to be on Kabul time, trying to connect on Skype, staring at my laptop screen, waiting anxiously for e-mails to come in. I needed to figure out the truth about what was going on.
What can I do? Who can I call?
I’d finally drift off into a fitful sleep, only to wake in a panic once I remembered what had happened. When I was able to connect with the salon, Sam would inevitably be there. I later found out that he had been spreading lies about my departure, saying that I had gotten tired of living in Afghanistan, had made my money, and was now off somewhere living the good life. The girls also later let me know that Sam had forced them to hand over a portion of the money I had sent them via Western Union. In the meantime, getting back to Afghanistan was all I could think about. I realize now that I was in shock, like someone who had just been involved in a horrible car crash or witnessed a devastating earthquake.

But deep down inside I knew it was too risky to go back, and when a sense of reality began to sink in, I froze. Mike’s blue futon became my home base, where I’d watch TV—endless episodes of
Army Wives
and
Boston Legal
—for hours on end. The Kardashian sisters became my life. Weird things had begun to happen to me when I tried to leave the house, like the day I burst into tears when I couldn’t find the car in the Safeway parking lot. In fact, I was crying a lot, mostly inside the car, panicked that I’d lose my way among the twisty mountain roads and crisscrossing highways of the valley. I began to mistrust the GPS lady and her constant “recalculating,” and the fear became so overwhelming that I stopped going out.