A Cup of Friendship (8 page)

But the driver had missed the green gate and ended up a mile away. So he called from his cellphone and Sunny had to navigate him through the streets. By the time they arrived, there were almost twenty customers—nineteen more than the usual Wednesday night. The doctor was wearing a beautiful
punjabi
, a long dress with baggy pants, in a deep blue with gold embroidery, and a long blue scarf that she wore on her head and then wrapped over her shoulders like a shawl. Once inside, she took the scarf off to reveal beautiful long black hair that had been woven into a single thick braid.

She spoke in Hindi, which most Afghans had some familiarity with because of their obsession with anything Bollywood, with an English translator repeating what she’d said. She cited statistics most people in the room already knew: that the Afghan fertility rate was the second highest in the world, but that Afghanistan was second only to Sierra Leone for maternal mortality rates, that every twenty-eight minutes a woman died in Afghanistan during childbirth. But she spoke mostly about her recent visit to the Badakhshan province, where the maternal mortality rate was known to be the highest in the world. For every sixteen babies born, the doctor said, one woman died in labor. Clinics were too far away, and even if a woman in distress could reach one, they weren’t well enough equipped to help. Besides, the doctors were men. Given the strict separation of the sexes, women would rather die than be helped by a male doctor.

She told a story about a pregnant woman in the village of Shattak who had complications during labor. The nearest hospital was thirty-seven miles away and there was no car. So what were the villagers to do? They got a ladder and laid it on the ground, then they laid the woman on the ladder and lifted it up, and twenty men took turns carrying the makeshift stretcher along the windy, rocky path, rarely used by a vehicle. The pace was slow, and the mother died on the way.

The room was silent. Sunny noticed from the other side of the room that Yazmina had stopped washing dishes and was listening with rapt attention from the kitchen. Watching Yazmina, her eyes full of concern and questions, Sunny knew she’d have to talk to her soon, even if it shamed her. For the health of the baby, if nothing else. Yazmina looked her way and Sunny smiled reassuringly.

Dr. Malik continued, explaining the midwife-training program she had created for young women from districts throughout the province, from which she already had more than fifty graduates. She spoke passionately about the need for donations of medication and supplies, for food and shelter, for education, for volunteers. With the illiteracy rate so high and the disrespect for women so deep, women didn’t have a chance to deal with their own health issues without more support. The crowd bombarded her with questions, with ideas, but she eventually prepared to leave in order to make an early morning meeting with the NATO health agency. She promised to return the following week to talk about the issues of children’s health, if people agreed to give some time to her cause.

“I’ll be right back. Got to meet Dr. Malik before she leaves,” Isabel whispered into Sunny’s ear, with Petr looking on. “Provide her with some insights about NATO.”

Sunny watched Isabel as she pushed through the crowd, and as it slowly dispersed, she could see her deep in conversation with the doctor. Isabel was one tenacious woman.

Later that night, after the customers left, Halajan said to Sunny, “When the doctor comes back, there will be more people. And the next time, more still. Like the saying goes, drop by drop a river becomes.”

Sunny felt as if she’d awakened from a long sleep. The night had been a success and she was invigorated. “And we’re helping the doctor. If we can get her some volunteers and make some money while doing it … So, how’d we do, Bashir Hadi?”

He was counting money at the coffee bar. He looked at her and smiled. “Very well, Miss Sunny. We did okay. But at this rate, a wall is months away. And winter’s just beginning. You know how difficult it is to get people to go out at night in the cold. We’ll have to work harder to get people here next week.”

“Let’s plaster the coffeehouse—a sign on every table, the front door, and I’ll email everyone I know in town and ask them to email everyone they know. Maybe I can get the email list from the UN.”

“Now you’re talking,” Bashir Hadi said.

Sunny went to her room carrying a teapot and a cup, turned on her computer, and checked for email. There were the usual news reports (Taliban insurgents fighting in the south, Pakistani nuclear weapons suspected) and promotions from her meat distributor in Dubai and from her oil company.

Jack was trying to reach her on the instant chat. She opened it.

Tried to get there, held up in a meeting. Miss me?

To which Sunny replied:

Don’t you smiley face me. Someday when you’re the head of the CIA, I’ll tell everyone that you use emoticons. That’ll get their respect.

She sipped the wine and awaited the reply.

You disparage the smiley face? What am I to think of a woman who would do that? Speaking of which, did you get people tonight? Or do I have to feel ashamed?

Sunny answered:

It wasn’t bad. You can hold your head high. But we’ll do even better next time. The doctor is coming back. She is incredible.

She took another sip while waiting for Jack’s response.

So … I’m waiting.

Sunny smiled and wrote:

Thank you. Seriously. It was a great night.

It seemed like forever before Jack responded:

So, when do you start work on the wall? Maybe then you’ll smiley face me.

Sunny typed furiously:

Stop being such a nudge!!! My god, you’re a pest.

And she laughed when Jack sent this:

Only if you stop with the exclamation points. And the smiley faces.

She responded:

Good night, you.

And then he did, too:

I have to go out of town. I’ll be back in a couple weeks. I know you’ll miss me. Stop crying. And go to bed.

She left her room, walked down the hall and up two flights of stairs to the roof. This was her place. There was a small table and chairs, pots for planting flowers once spring arrived, and her easel and palette. If riding in the car was where she could see, the roof was where she could breathe. In Kabul, in the coffeehouse, she was sometimes lonely, but never alone, except in the small space where she slept. And so, she made this roof her own.

It was windy and the sky was clear, black, and littered with stars, one of the wonderful perks of living here. Without electricity at night, there was little man-made light to diffuse the natural light that emanated from above. It was as if you could see into the sky, she thought, through its layers and into its core. Layers of stars, like translucent blanket upon blanket. The beauty was overwhelming. The wind blew her hair, and she willed herself to stop, to breathe,
to feel
.

It was a good night, tonight. She felt it was the beginning of something, more than just making money for the café’s safety features. People had come to
her place
to learn something, to talk and listen and be moved. It felt good, it felt like she was doing something important and not just making a good cheeseburger.

She wondered what Tommy would think when he got back. She shrugged. He’d have liked the crowd. He was a people guy. But he wasn’t impressed much by ideas, and he hated politics. Now, Jack, well … she stopped herself. No use comparing them. They were very different men. Not to mention that one was hers and one was her friend.

Finally she went downstairs to her room, wishing Tommy were waiting for her there. It was in bed where they got along best, she had to admit. And it was in bed at night when she missed him the most. Tonight, feeling the buzz from the coffeehouse, the passion of the doctor’s words, all the people, the emails from Jack, she was acutely aware of feeling lonely. As she spread her favorite orange-scented lotion over her arms and then her legs, giving more attention to her elbows and her heels, she allowed herself to think that maybe Tommy would come back soon. Another month, hopefully. He never wrote, he never called, so there was no way to know. No contact from the field, he’d told her. The only times he called was to get her to Dubai to meet him for a two-day furlough.

She climbed into her bed and covered herself in the warm soft blankets of rusts, reds, and russets. And then she turned over on her side, as she did every night. But tonight, she admitted to herself that she’d felt lonely even with Tommy the last couple of times he was home. Her mind shifted to Jack and how, if she were honest with herself, she’d like to be touching him, laughing with him, holding him against her body there in her bed under her roof, under the stars. But like Tommy, he was gone, too. And if he was thinking about anybody in his bed under the stars, it was surely his wife back home.

C
andace looked out at the valley from her apartment in the tower that rose high above Wakil’s compound, past the tops of the trees. From this vantage point, the trees appeared sparse. The Taliban had cut many of them down during the war to prevent the enemy from hiding in them, and local people had cut down many more since to burn for heat. The forest had been nearly wiped out and it occurred to her that the thick grove of trees they’d driven through to get here existed only because it had been situated along a river.

To the west, she could see the dry, dusty wasteland that led to Kabul, and to the east, the Hindu Kush that rose dramatically, their jagged peaks silhouetted against the early morning sky, their barren sides partly shadowed so that they looked like folded paper. From this vantage point, the problems of the country seemed as small as the houses far off in the distance. She felt like a queen surveying her vast kingdom.

The guards outside her door, and the female servants who would bring her breakfast and take her to Wakil’s private
hammam
to help her bathe and give her a massage, added to her feeling that she was part of Wakil’s royal retinue. He attended to every detail except the one that she wanted most: to spend private, intimate time with him. She felt a wave of desire, to hold him, and feel his body under her, but this was not going to happen. They hadn’t made love since they’d arrived.

Wakil said it was because he was here in his home, his school, and he could not. It was impossible. He said she was his soul mate, that his heart had found its home, that making love to her was one of the great pleasures of life, and that she was almost impossible to resist. But that they should not, not here anyway. It would have to wait until after they arrived in Kabul.

They were leaving for the city today and Candace had mixed feelings about it. Though she respected all he had done for these children, and loved seeing him with them and at his work, she’d rather have Wakil the man than Wakil the prince. And yes, she had to admit that she was ready for nice restaurants, to wear pretty clothes, and to sleep with Wakil in his house. Of course, they couldn’t really sleep together, and they’d have to stay on separate floors, but in the night, when everyone else was asleep, he could come to her room.

She was also eager to get back to work. It was her responsibility to raise money for Wakil’s school, and she’d set up meetings with several NGOs involved with the welfare of Afghan children.

It was late morning by the time they said their good-byes and got into the same black SUV with the same driver who’d brought them here. Sitting close to Wakil in the back, their shoulders touching, she thought back to when they’d met and how warm and gracious he was, the way most Afghan men are. He’d invited them to his home if they were ever back in Kabul, and a month later when a meeting sent Richard there, she’d contacted him. She knew that night, as they ate their elegant dinner in his home, what she wanted to happen between them, what seemed destined to happen given the strong pull toward Wakil she felt in his presence, but had no idea that she would come to see him as a leader, a man of such importance. She had no idea then of his ability to persuade her to do almost anything. Wherever he led, she would follow.

Back up through the pine trees and out into the open, dirt-brown, rock-strewn plains, the car headed toward Kabul. Past shepherds tending their goats, wood-slatted trucks carrying chickens to the city’s market, transport donkeys carrying bags of produce, a convoy of army vehicles at the roadside with camouflaged soldiers, their rifles hanging from their shoulders. They passed a truck of men in white shirts and baggy pants, Pashtun vests, brown jackets, and turbans, all carrying rifles—probably Taliban. As they neared the city, they passed a dilapidated sea of tents, as far as the eye could see, set behind a high barbed-wire fence, where shoeless children played with a ball, its skin sheared partway off, so that it flopped instead of rolled, where men loitered and women crouched on the hard earth, huddled together, it seemed, to ward off the cold. There, a long line of people snaking out from under a tent. And there, several dogs pulling something apart with their teeth.

Candace looked at Wakil for an explanation.

He said, “A refugee camp.”

“Yes.” She had seen these before, had even entered their fences, when traveling the country with Richard. She’d never forget the eyes of one mother, her baby wrapped in tattered blankets, her three other children with stomachs swollen with hunger leaning against her as if she could provide them the shelter they needed. “But so close to Kabul. Where are these people from? From Pakistan?” she asked, turning back to her window. “How can they let people live like this? Look at the children. They have no shoes.”

“Shoes? They have no clean water. Little food. And they are Afghans. Displaced during the war, returning to nothing. Some have come back from Pakistan, where the government is shutting down their camps, forcing them to return home to nothing. Their houses gone, their land gone, no jobs, no money. The corrupt government has nothing to do with them,” he said bitterly. “The Russians, NATO forces, the Americans, the insurgency—with every war, homes are destroyed, people flee, and then they come back to nothing. To less than nothing. Destitute, living on top of land mines, living in squalor, in their own shit. Afghans living worse than prisoners in their own country.”

“So don’t you think the UN and the—”

“We must not be so naive. NATO, the UN … they have no power to make real change. Even the rich countries are not concerned. Afghanistan needs to rid itself of the people who only want to rape its women, enslave its children, destroy its land, its resources.” His voice spit anger. “And keep it far from God.”

Of course she agreed with him. After witnessing his school, his clinic, and the refugee camps, she knew he was right.

His face was reddened with frustration. “This is exactly why the Taliban are on the rise. Out of the depths of our people’s misery.”

But this stopped her. “You can’t be saying that the Taliban is a better alternative!”

“I certainly
understand
their growing popularity. That is all.” He turned to her, gentler now. “You have a good, open heart, my Candace. This,” he said, pointing to the tents, “is exactly why we need your help.” He took her hand in his. “You will change these people’s lives. And many more.”

His tone quieted Candace, who kept her eyes on the camp as they passed. They sat in silence a long time.

As they entered Kabul’s outskirts, they went from makeshift city to makeshift memorial. A forest of green flags, raised high on thin wooden poles that were stuck into the dusty earth, stood bent in the wind. Candace had seen these many times before. They marked the graves of martyrs—Afghan boys and men who died fighting in battle. There was a real cemetery for foreign fighters, the Sherpur Cemetery, but an Afghan was buried on the hillsides, on the plains, in the valleys, with only the small green piece of fabric on a wooden pole to mark his grave.

Then they reached the city walls, plastered with posters and sprayed with bullet holes and graffiti, mostly in Dari, with antigovernment slogans. These words Candace knew. Her husband had spent a lifetime trying to turn the spread of this feeling in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, without doing the real work of raising funds to invest in schools, hospitals, and businesses. Now, after spending time with Wakil, she realized how futile and wrong-headed Richard’s efforts had been.

Through the clogged streets, they finally made it to Wakil’s house. The car was whisked through a double gate, guarded by two armed
chokidor
, and drove up a long U-shaped driveway paved in smooth stone. Wakil’s house wasn’t just large; it was a mansion. It had five floors, and the tiled mosaics covering much of the exterior reminded Candace of a mosque, but without the domes. They were greeted at the front door by a servant in a silk turban, who escorted them to an inner courtyard where a blue-tiled fountain gurgled with water into a small pool and potted trees reached up to the stained-glass skylight five stories above. The stone-pillared canopies surrounding the courtyard gave the building the feel of a palace. It was simply breathtaking, even after she had been in it many times. Another servant then rushed in and whispered something to Wakil, who turned to Candace.

“I must go. There is an emergency. I will see you at dinner, my love.”

She smiled at him, though she felt rejected. They’d come to Wakil’s home precisely because he was supposed to have more time for her. Was she being a spoiled baby or had some heat diminished in their relationship?

She was shown to her room on the third floor. While she was unpacking, her cellphone rang. It was her contact at the embassy telling her that a renowned Indian doctor was speaking tonight on children’s health issues at a local coffeehouse. He thought Candace would be interested in meeting the doctor given Candace’s recent work on behalf of Wakil’s clinic. She closed the phone and sat on the high bed that was covered in gorgeous handmade silk fabric, rich with color and texture. As she ran her hand across the luxurious bedspread, she smiled. This was a sure way to get Wakil’s attention. The doctor—her skills as well as her ability to get attention for her projects—was just what his clinic needed. She knew he’d cancel any plans he might have to attend this event with her so that she might entice the doctor to help the clinic. So what that Candace wasn’t the main attraction. She’d be more than happy to share the spotlight with the good doctor.