What Changes Everything (3 page)

       "How many years do I know you now, Mr. Todd? Long enough for me to say that you are still too trusting, and my words are not a—how do you say?—a compliment. You—"

       But Todd held up his hand, cutting Amin off. "Wait, my friend. First…" He reached to a tray on a table in the corner, lifted aloft two small glass bowls, and raised his eyebrows in a question.

       Amin let out an exasperated breath of air. "Too late for ice cream," he said.

       "Oh Amin, we haven‟t reached the end of the world yet. And even then—"

       "Your cook told me to strictly forbid you from eating ice cream after 3 p.m. because otherwise, you won't eat her dinners."

       "Yes," Todd agreed. "Shogofa will not be happy with me. But there's nothing for it; s
heer
yakh it m
ust be. It will clear our brains. Remember, we have the late meeting with the American nurse, Mandy Wilkens."

       "I didn‟t forget," Amin said. "But, Mr. Todd. Do you really want ice cream, or just to escape my reasonable words?"

       "The ice cream. Okay,
mostly the ice cream." Tod
d, mock-somber, put his hand to his chest. "I swear."

       Amin shook his head in resignation. "One scoop," he said. "Only one."

       Todd grinned as he headed out the office door and down the steps to the main entrance, where he slipped his shoes on. He nodded to his driver Farzad, smoking by the car. "
Salaam
'alekum," he sai
d to Mustafa, the building guard, who emerged from a small room next to the metal gates. Todd raised the ice cream cups as if they were admission tickets, which, in a way, they were.

       Todd was required to travel everywhere by reinforced car with tinted windows: to refugee camps, government offices, the UN compound, the rare meal out, even the five blocks to the guesthouse where he slept. He sat in the back, with Farzad driving and Jawwid in the front passenger seat toting an AK-47. Those who came to Todd‟s office were not allowed in the gate unless they‟d made a prior appointment and even then were thoroughly checked by his guards. "Your safety is a matter of our honor," Amin had explained. Todd understood, but this meant that everything in his Kabul environment was tightly controlled, which was not the way he functioned best. To do his job well, he needed to walk down narrow dusty roads as they descended into yet-unknown villages and to visit the over-filled refugee camps. And in fact, he came to life visiting homes fashioned of war rubble and roofed with U.N.-provided tarps, eating unimaginable food he hoped would not make him ill, witnessing the tremendous grace and imagination of the vulnerable. He loved the unexpected adventure of every day spent in the field. He got to do little enough of it as Regional Director, given all the deskwork combined with safety concerns. And he‟d soon be giving up even that.

       But today he still had the ice cream run.

       Over the five and a half years that he‟d been coming to this office, Todd had posited and re-posited compromises to ease the restraints he faced in the name of security. At last his grumblings evolved into a discussion: Todd, Amin, Farzad and Jawwid sitting on floor mats, drinking c
hai, Tod
d offering that both his job and his personal needs required more relaxed access to Kabul, at least occasionally, and the Afghan men talking among themselves at a speed that defied his limited Pashto. Finally, a little over a year ago, they had reluctantly agreed to let him walk the block and a half from the office to the ice cream stand, no Jawwid at his side, no Farzad following in the car. But, equally firmly, nowhere else. So this had become his nearly daily outing, the only moments when he could imagine himself free in this teeming ancient city of conflict and joy and loss that enchanted him.

       "How are you, Mr. Todd Barbery?" Mustafa asked in English as he opened the gate, making the second word sound elongated. Mustafa was the only Afghan who insisted on calling Todd by first and last name.

       "Te
h kha, manana," To
dd responded, as was their practice. One in English, the other in Pashto, and sometimes they expanded their respective vocabularies in a fleeting language lesson. At the moment, though, Todd desired no further words. He kept moving, waved goodbye, and heard the gate clang shut behind him. The sound of freedom.

       The air was golden, which really meant full of dust, but Todd chose to see it in more romantic terms. He walked slowly, lingering, stretching his leash to its ends. He admired the energy of this mountain-ringed city—founded, it was said, by Cain and Abel, visited by Genghis Khan, loved by Babur, beaten down over and over, but with a core of perseverance and unlikely optimism. He found the faces of its people beautiful, a human mosaic of endurance creased with dark but resilient humor. These were qualities he valued; Afghanistan had found its way into his blood. The ice cream run was the most dependably enjoyable part of his Kabul day. He was grateful for the break from those who both helped him in uncountable ways and made him feel chained. And Afghan ice cream, seasoned with rosewater and cardamom and topped with grated pistachios, was a small miracle in a land that desperately needed miracles.

       The boy Churagh ran to Todd, waving his newspapers. "How are you?" he said in overenunciated English. Churagh had identified Todd as a soft touch; he bought a paper and gave the boy a friendly squeeze on the arm. Sometimes they chatted and Todd bought a second newspaper. Today Churagh seemed to sense Todd‟s preoccupation; he followed but kept a distance. Though he wouldn‟t admit it to Amin, Todd was having trouble shaking the unease brought on by the conflict between his desire to help Zarlasht somehow, and the strength of Amin‟s arguments. He wanted to play Zarlasht‟s visit over in his mind without Amin‟s voice in his ears. Churagh seemed to sense Todd‟s preoccupation; he followed but kept a distance.

       This had been Zarlasht‟s third visit to Todd‟s office—too many for simple courtesy calls. Mostly, he was the one who called on government officials, and the visitors he did have at the Kabul office were usually NGO representatives, not hospital administrators like Zarlasht, so he‟d been vaguely uneasy about what she might want from him. When she‟d arrived, she was not shown to the meeting room full of cushions; instead, she sat on a chair in front of his desk. Amin stood in the corner so that Zarlasht would not suffer any harm to her reputation by being alone with a Western man. She wore, as always, a headscarf, no
burqa.
He guessed she was about 40 years old, although he‟d found the stress and want of their lives took a toll on Afghans and knew she could easily be a decade younger.

       The first time she visited, Zarlasht chatted without making any specific request; she said she‟d heard good things about him and wanted to meet, since she worked as an administrator in Maiwand Hospital and often dealt with refugees. The next time, she told a story about her grandfather, a story of captivity and separation, her grandfather taken away by the Soviets, and she a child, so scared, hanging onto his robe, chanting "please don‟t go don‟t go, Granddad."

       "Not to worry, my dear," the grandfather had said, a soldier flanking him on each side.

       "Where are you going?"

       "Only out to buy you a television set," the grandfather said in a story so improbably only a child would believe. "I‟ll come back with it soon."

       "When?"

       "An hour. Two at most. Before dark, surely."

       So she released her hold on him. And did not see him again for two and a half years— infinity in the life of a child—until he appeared one afternoon in the home she shared with her mother and grandmother. Sitting at the table, her grandfather smiled and raised his hand in greeting. But she didn‟t recognize the frail stranger. "Who is this man? Why is he here? What does he want?" she asked her grandmother, and at that, his smile slid away and he began to weep. They‟d pulled out his nails in prison, roots and all, so he had only the soft ends of his fingers, and he‟d received electric shock torture so many times it left a hole in his tongue. He couldn‟t eat, couldn‟t bear food in his damaged mouth, so he was fed intravenously until his death, less than two years later.

       Political discord in this land had always been marked by blood and pain. The stories were unending, shocking the first time, sad but predictable after that. Still, Todd had been moved not only by her story but by the simple way in which she told it, without melodrama or any apparent attention to its effect on him. On the way out the door, almost as an afterthought, Zarlasht had mentioned a cousin who was being beaten by her husband.

       That cousin was the focus of her visit today.

       "Things are worsening for her," Zarlasht said, starting in even before the cup of c
hai
arrived. "She can stand that her husband beats her, but she cannot stand the beating of her only daughter. Last week he poured boiling oil on the girl‟s legs. They will be scarred. We are lucky it was not her face."

       "I‟m so sorry."

       "My cousin is determined to stop him," she said.

       "She is brave."

       Zarlasht turned her head away as she nodded. "My cousin‟s father went to the elders," she said, gazing as if at someone no one else could see. "He asked that a
jirga be hel
d to hear her complaints against her husband. They agreed at first, but now her husband has gone to them and sought their support, and they are threatening to cancel the hearing and instead punish her for speaking against her husband."

       "Can‟t her father help?"

       "He is not as powerful as her husband," Zarlasht said. "It is whispered that the
jirga
wants to stone her for defying her husband and encouraging other women to do the same. Also as a show of strength, so the foreign occupiers—forgive me, but this is how they speak—can see that s
haria hol
ds sway less than 70 kilometers from Kabul. It‟s not her own life that she considers. She doesn‟t want her daughter left alone with a father who views her as an object. In this case, the girl will have no future at all."

       Zarlasht did not cry during this small speech, but her eyes were tight with an anguish that seemed so personal Todd felt sure she was speaking of herself, not a cousin. His natural impulse was to reach to squeeze her hand, but he knew this would violate all kinds of cultural protocol. He looked out the window for a minute instead, and then turned back. "I‟m so sorry about all this, Zarlasht. But why come to me?"

       "Because I know your reputation," Zarlasht said. "I think if you summon Haji Mulak, and you mention the name of my... my cousin's husband, it might make a difference. Say you want to know about the case of Hamid, his wife and daughter."

       Todd smiled. "I fear your confidence in my reach is unrealistic."

       "I don‟t think so. They talk about how you go to see the refugee camps, and how more food and doctor visits follow." Zarlasht paused, then spoke in a slightly softer voice. "And I have nowhere else to go."

       That sentence hung in the silent room for a moment, sucking out its air. Todd glanced briefly at Amin, whose eyes carried a clear warning. "Give me a few days," he told Zarlasht.

"Let me see if I can help. Come back Wednesday."

"T
ashakor," she sai
d, putting her right hand to her chest. "M
a salaam
."

       She barely looked at Amin as she left, and no sooner had she walked from the building than Amin began to argue. "This is not your business, Mr. Todd. It is a local affair. To interfere in this matter is not only useless, but perilous. She must know this. So I wonder why she comes to you."

       Though Amin was a private man, Todd had heard something of his past, enough to reinforce his trust of Amin‟s political instincts. As a teenager, Amin had waited on Najibullah while the ousted president was held in the UN mission. With the Taliban takeover, he‟d fled over the mountains to Pakistan, joining other refugees. Eventually he got a scholarship to be educated in the States, and then returned to Afghanistan. He had a wife, three daughters and a son who lived outside Kabul, and who he saw only at week‟s end, leaving his brother to look after them day-to-day. Amin believed the best future for Afghanistan lay in an alliance with America, but he also believed Americans were blind to Afghan cultural nuances, failing to understand how telling someone what they wanted to hear had become a survival skill, and how quickly and violently apparently seamless alliances could be shattered.

       Todd generally followed Amin‟s advice; in fact, he wasn‟t sure he‟d ever before resisted this insistent an argument. But Amin was all logic and reason, lists of pros and cons, risks to be considered, unlikely gains to be weighed. Todd knew all that; he knew what was allowed here, what wasn‟t, and still in these last of his remaining days on the job, he wondered about the advantages of simply speaking out, trying to do the right thing. He knew better than to express that aloud; Amin would invoke cultural differences and surely call him naïve besides.

       From a half-block away, Todd could see a longer-than-usual line at the ice cream stand,

jammed not with the children who generally gathered there—even Churagh had given up trailing him—but with men, maybe a dozen. Odd; he wondered about it for a moment. Outside the enclosed marketplace, crowds were rare. Fear of suicide bombers always rumbled in the subconscious, and beyond that, of course, a group of any size drew the unwelcome attention of passing troops, whether Afghan or foreign.

       He quickly dismissed his worry as paranoia—this was
ice cream
he was talking about— and joined the back of the line. He raised a hand to the two men dressed in long white over-shirts and loose pants who dished the ice cream into cups on a table topped with a bright red, plastic sheet. By this time, the vendors knew Todd by sight and generally greeted him with big smiles. Sometimes he ate his ice cream right there in front of the stand, chatting with simple words, pretending for a moment he belonged and could linger casually. Now, though, they were too busy to acknowledge Todd, if they even saw him.