Wade (2 page)

In Hazaristan, the more orthodox Sunni Muslims adopted the Taliban cause. They created their own Taliban militia patterned after the Afghan model and made guerrilla sorties against government forces and installations. Ahmad was in the thick of it Chloe was almost certain, though no one ever came right out and said so. With time, the inconclusive fighting grew commonplace, so she paid no more attention to it than to the rumbling of distant thunder.

Then one day she returned home from the bazaar with her mother to find a bonfire in front of the low stone house that was their home. On the pyre was every pair of jeans that she owned, every pair of shorts, every shirt that revealed her arms. Her rock posters had been used to start the blaze, and her boom
box, tapes and CDs lay melting in the flames. Her books, her makeup, every single thing she owned that identified her as different in any way from the women around her was destroyed. She'd turned on Ahmad, screaming. He'd knocked her to the ground, then stood over her as he told her exactly what had taken place and how things would be from that day forward.

The Taliban militia, in which he was now a senior officer, had captured Kashi and ousted President Zagros. They'd established strict adherence to ancient Islamic law as put forth in the Qur'an, or “El Noor,” the light, along with all the inflexible cultural edits of their Afghan brethren. Men were required to grow beards. The windows of houses must be painted black to prevent women from being glimpsed in passing. Females caught on the street without the covering of a burqa and a male relative to guard and monitor their conduct could be beaten by the police or any male citizen who took exception to their indecent exposure. Women could be punished for talking too loudly, laughing in public, showing the skin of wrist or ankle, wearing cosmetics—the list went on and on. Male heads of household were permitted, even encouraged, to use corporal punishment to keep the females in their charge in order. Conviction for premarital sex or adultery was now punishable by public execution of one or both parties. All schools for girls were ordered closed. Thousands of women had been sent home from their jobs as teachers, lawyers, doctors, nurses and every other occupation, with males appointed in their places.

Chloe had thought nothing could be worse, but
she'd been wrong. Her stepfather had been conscripted into the Taliban army and marched away to guard the northern border. Ahmad had taken over as head of the household, the man solely responsible for guiding and correcting the conduct of Chloe and her mother.

Conditions in the country deteriorated. Food became scarce, imported goods almost nonexistent. Women without male relatives to support them or a way to earn a living began to appear in the streets as beggars. Prostitution was forbidden, but became rampant nonetheless. The government infrastructure began to break down. Crime increased. Rabid dogs roamed the streets. As electric lines were cut and generating facilities damaged, power became available only for government buildings and a few hotels. Traffic lights and street lamps ceased to operate. Life returned to something like the Dark Ages.

And then, less than a year later, her mother had caught sight from her kitchen window of wild dogs attacking a toddler. She'd run screaming from the house to beat off the starving pack with a broom. The policeman who appeared on the scene cared nothing for the injured child, a small girl. Instead he attacked Chloe's mother for leaving her burqa in the house. As he began to beat her with his stick, one or two men of the Taliban appeared, shouting about the foreign witch with her sky-colored eyes who dared defy their laws. Chloe snatched up her own burqa and ran out to help her mother but was caught and held back. A stone was thrown, and then another and another. When it was over, the frenzied group faded away,
leaving Chloe alone with her mother's body where it lay crumpled against the house wall.

Chloe felt as if the jaws of a great bear trap had closed upon her. She developed migraine headaches so sickeningly painful that it seemed only cutting off her head could relieve their agony. She spent hours lying in her dim room. Sometimes she slept or gazed dully at the ceiling, but mostly she stared out a small hole scratched in the painted window at the barren landscape of ochre buildings, sun-scorched brown earth, vegetation gray-green with dryness and the encircling mountains blue-hazed with distance and dust. She didn't go out because there was no place to go, seldom joined the others in the common room of the sprawling stone house because she had nothing to say to them. She lost weight, allowed her long hair that could not be cut for fear of reprisal to grow lank and tangled. Sometimes, while she lay awake listening to barking dogs and crowing roosters in the night, she thought of suicide since it seemed the only way out.

It was Treena who saved her, meek Treena with her huge eyes, fade-away voice and constant attention to babies that were nursing, teething, walking or sickening with some childhood complaint. Treena, who concealed the courage of a lioness behind her submissive attitude. She had whispered to Chloe about the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a group that had banded together originally to help oust the Soviets but were now circumventing the edicts of the Taliban. The RAWA had spread into Hazaristan along with the Taliban incursion. They were in desperate need of teachers to instruct the
young girls who were being denied an education. Without knowledge these children would be forever consigned to the role of servants to men. Chloe's mother had been a teacher. Why should she not follow in her footsteps?

How long ago had it been, Chloe wondered, since she'd first heard of these brave women? Five years? Six or more? She couldn't remember. Time had scant meaning when there was little to distinguish one day from another, or one year from the next. It seemed that she'd been teaching her secret classes of girls forever, that her dangerous forays into other women's homes to present an hour or two of classes had been going on since she was a child. The lessons, the smiles of the girls, their hunger for knowledge, the intense friendships with the women who defied the Taliban—these things were what kept her sane. She sometimes thought it was what she was meant to do with her life, that fate had placed her in this place, at this time, where the knowledge she had gained in American schools and then from her mother would be most helpful. She was needed here, had found her true purpose and meaning. What could going away with a stranger offer her that might compare?

The American's presence, his daring in contacting her, had jeopardized her safety. To see him again could put at risk all she had achieved, might even create suspicion that could lead to discovery of her RAWA connection. Her friends, the women who had become like the most loving of sisters, would be in peril since their activity was considered a heinous crime. They could be sentenced to public torture fol
lowed by burning at the stake. Punishments had grown steadily more barbaric since the influx of Taliban from defeated Afghanistan.

She could not meet the man. It would be madness to try. The bazaar was a public place where she was never permitted to go alone. Even if Ismael could be persuaded to escort her, it would be foolhardy. No chance of a private conversation with the American existed since he would be as conspicuous in the public market as a black cat on a white doorstep. He could know little of the conditions she faced, much less understand their implications, so his discretion was in doubt.

No, she would not keep this appointment. Absolutely, she would not.

It was later that evening, after they had returned to Ajzukabad and Chloe and Treena were putting the children to bed, that Treena spoke again of the stadium meeting. As she bathed her middle daughter, less than three years old, from a basin of water, she said, “I know the handsome foreign devil had something to say to you earlier. Are you going to tell me what it was or must I guess?”

“Really, Treena, he only apologized.”

“And for this you became as still as a statue? Come, now. Such men were most forward in the films I used to see. Was it something improper?”

“Not at all.”

“A compliment perhaps? They could be tender as well, these men.” Her stepsister's eyes danced with laughter.

“Of course not!” To hide the flush that rose un
accountably to her face at the idea, Chloe picked up Uma, the five-year-old who was the eldest of the three girls, and began to brush her long, soft brown curls.

“He wanted you to meet him?”

Chloe gave her a straight glance. “You did understand him then.”

“A little,” Treena agreed. “You may as well tell me the rest, yes?”

“It was stupid.”

“But interesting enough to keep you silent all the way home. Please, Chloe. It's so exciting that he actually spoke to you.”

Treena would not stop until she had every detail, Chloe knew. And what reason was there to keep it from her when nothing would come of it? Paying careful attention to the braid she was making in Uma's hair, she said, “He only told me that he'd been sent by my father.”

“For what reason?”

“To…to take me back to the States.”

“Oh, Chloe.” Distress and sympathy were plain in Treena's face.

“I don't believe it,” Chloe answered, her voice grim. “Why would my father send someone now when he never answered my letters?”

“There are many reasons for things.”

It was one of the obscure answers so common in this part of the world. They had once driven Chloe crazy, but that was before she'd come to see that they could be an invitation to explore a topic as well as an evasion. “Such as?”

“Perhaps your letters have taken this long to reach your father?”

“My country may be far away, but it's hardly on another planet.”

Treena gave her a wan smile over her shoulder as she kissed her daughter, then slipped a clean nightgown over her head. “You thought differently at one time.”

“Experience is a useful thing,” she replied, since Hazaris weren't the only ones who could be obscure. “I wish I knew if this American really has news of my father. To hear of him, where he is, what he does, would be wonderful.”

“But I thought you had hardly seen him since you were a child, even before you left your country. You never speak of him. It has been as if you'd put him from your mind.”

“No.”

Chloe let that simple denial stand. She'd been her father's tomboy princess. They had built birdhouses and tree houses together, ridden bikes together, gone fishing together and even spent the summer together when she was ten, at a fishing camp beside some lake in Louisiana. Sometimes, when the icy wind blew from the mountains, or when the sky was silver-white with heat and the rain would not fall, she dreamed of those endless summer days beside sparkling water. She longed in her dreams for the Louisiana air that was as warm and soft as silk, for the near-jungle of trees so green that they tinted the world with emerald light, for the lazy amble of passing days that were each a haven of peace and safety. Waking, she felt
disoriented, as if she were in the wrong place. And she ached with memories of her dad, and how he had told her she was pretty, repeating it so often that she'd decided to believe it whether it was true or not. How could she ever forget him?

“I'm sorry,” Treena said quietly.

Chloe looked away to hide the sheen of moisture in her eyes. “I've wondered if my letters ever reached my father at all. If that was why I never heard from him, because he did not know where to write to me.”

Her stepsister made no answer as she knelt, wiping dust from her young daughter's legs and feet, murmuring soft nonsense to keep her still and entertained through the ritual. Something in the stiffness of her back caught at Chloe's attention.

“Treena?”

“All things are possible.”

Chloe frowned as she watched Ahmad's sister gently press the child down on a pallet in a corner of the bedroom she shared with Ismael. “Are you saying,” she asked with slow control, “that they might have been intercepted?”

Treena glanced at her from the corners of her eyes. “Oh, Chloe, must you always be so exact?”

“Not always.” If she wanted answers she would have to play the Eastern game of allusions and suggestions that permitted the speaker to make things known without leaving room for an outright accusation of betrayal. “Might there be a reason why someone would want to prevent this contact?”

“I can think of none.”

Nor could Chloe, other than sheer malice. And the
only person she knew who seemed capable of that lived in the same house. “It could have been easy if one had the task of mailing these letters.”

“True.”

The head of the household naturally handled correspondence, since it was assumed to be a male function. It was infuriating as well as painful to think that Ahmad had taken advantage of that to interfere so drastically. “I could kill him,” she whispered.

Treena shook her head. “It may be that he thought it was for the best.”

“You must be joking.”

“So much anger. You must not let it eat at you like Ahmad, Chloe. To have one in our family so consumed is enough.”

She gave a short laugh. “What reason has he to be angry? He always wins.”

“Our father left us with our grandparents after our mother died. He abandoned us while he flew away to that far-off magic land called America. Our mother's parents did their best, but they were not young and had stern views on many things. Our grandfather, in particular, had strong dependence on the old ways and ancient laws. He despised modern machines and ideas, and particularly American machines and ideas because they were most modern of all. It was he who sent my brother across the border to be educated by the mullahs in Kabul. When Ahmad returned from Afghanistan, he was changed. All the tenderness was gone from him. He had been forged into a sword of Islam.”

“And you?”