End of Manners (25 page)

I didn’t like the idea of meandering on Chicken Street for too long—the incident at the gorge had made me extra wary. But Imo seemed to have forgotten about that already. She insisted on sitting down in the shop on a pile of carpets as if she had all the time in the world; she drank the tea the shopkeeper offered her and chatted him up as if they were old friends. She looked carefully at each shawl of the twenty he showed her, testing the softness of the wool between her fingertips. She even burned a strand of the fringe with her lighter to make sure there was no synthetic mixed in the weave. This was her next mission and she was taking it very seriously: she was determined to leave with the best shawl in the whole of Afghanistan. In the end she picked an orange one—a warm, vibrant color that suited her dark hair—and managed to pay only ten bucks for it, a bargain considering the delicate hand-stitched embroidery. I’d forgotten what a pro Imo could be when it came to haggling with the locals.

THE AIRPORT LOUNGE WAS FURNISHED
with heavy salmon velvet drapes on the windows and had dusty plastic carnations on the tables like a congealed interior from the sixties.

It felt colder in there than outside in the snow, but Imo had asked the waiter—a little man in a worn-out suit and tie—if he could bring an electric heater and had been instantly obliged. She studied the menu as if she were lunching at the Plaza and ordered a plate of Kabuli rice pilau with raisins and pine nuts. It had seemed highly unlikely that in this deserted mausoleum there would be a stove, let alone someone prepared to cook a pilau, but what seemed miraculous was that there would be raisins and pine nuts in a jar somewhere. However, like many other things in this country, what you asked for was at one point or another magically produced. Even in the midst of ruins and utter desolation, heat, food and life materialized when you least expected it.

Imo was wolfing down her pilau while chatting in Russian to the waiter. She must have been saying something quite witty, because he kept on laughing—in other words, she was actually being
funny
in Russian, which says a lot about her mastery of the language. She insisted on a particular joke, which got the man to laugh even louder. She went back to her pilau shaking her head and chuckling to herself, feeling no need to translate the joke to me and Hanif and share the humor.

Hanif was busy too, texting away on his mobile. He caught my inquisitive gaze and for some reason he seemed embarrassed and quickly justified himself.

“I’m sending a message to my sister-in-law. She’s about to go and check on my wife at the hospital.”

“Sure. You go ahead,” I said, trying to communicate to him that he didn’t have to explain if he didn’t feel like it. Again I felt his uneasiness.

“How is she doing? Any better?” Imo asked, peremptorily.

“A bit better maybe. The doctor saw her last night,” Hanif said and then paused, discouraged. “But she still has pain.”

“Have they found out what exactly is wrong with her? She’s been in the hospital for three days now, hasn’t she?”

“They took some new tests. The doctors are very good,” he said.

“Oh, okay. Well, then I’m sure she’ll be all right,” I said, hoping this comment might suffice to appease him. I caught Imo’s expression out of the corner of my eye. She looked at me—impatiently—as if I had said precisely the wrong thing.

“Hanif, you know the German hospital?” she said. “You should take her there. Really. I’d do that if I were you.”

Hanif nodded. I wondered how much they would charge him at the German hospital. His cell beeped twice, announcing a text. He scanned the display, then put the phone back in his pocket.

“I wouldn’t wait another day. It sounds like they have no clue what’s wrong with her, wherever she is now,” Imo added with a touch of gloom.

Hanif nodded again uneasily, as if he wished Imo would stop telling him what to do. Not to mention the fact that we had been in Kabul only a few days and here we were, already lecturing him on which hospital would take better care of his wife.

We’d been in the airport restaurant for an hour, with the electric heater under the table warming our feet, when the other passengers—the ones who had been left outside to brave the elements—had finally been granted permission to enter the building and prepare for check-in.

Some of them came up to the restaurant to warm themselves with a cup of tea and looked at our table with overt antipathy. They were almost all Westerners: aid workers, soldiers, UN personnel. There was a lot of pulling out cell phones, lighting cigarettes, screeching of chairs being moved across the cement floor.

There were a few young women—NGO workers most probably—wearing
shalwar kameezes
under their coats. Most of them had their heads covered.

Imo was in the midst of settling up accounts with Hanif. He had signed a receipt and was flipping through a wad of dollars with the nimble thumb of a bank teller. Imo pointed out a couple of veiled German women addressing the waiter in Dari.

“Ha, ha. The Saint Teresas of Kabul are here.”

She grinned at me and Hanif. The way she had a clever nickname for everything was beginning to feel a bit stale by now.

“How much longer before your flight leaves?” she asked me.

“An hour and a half.”

“Good, then you don’t have to wait too long.”

She rubbed her freezing hands, blowing on them.

“I’m dreaming already of the bottle of red and the filet mignon
au poivre vert
I’ll be having tonight.”

I realized the moment had come.

Hanif, the village women, Malik and I were already fading in Imo’s memory; we were about to turn into nothing more than mere extras in another one of her many adventures. She had just given away her clothes to the Tajik cleaning woman and she was ready to put on new ones and go for another spin.

From her cell phone conversations, I’d gathered that she and Demian—the young, very handsome and very spoiled man, I had assumed—were going to meet in London in less than fourteen hours, at the end of the Kabul–Dubai, Dubai–London flight. He would be waiting at Heathrow and they would go to dinner at some tiny, dimly lit French restaurant. She was about to move on to the next exhilarating banquet where she would pluck and sample new interesting morsels of delicious food. It was pathetic, but I couldn’t help feeling a pang of jealousy.

I thought of how, back at the gorge, our relationship had dramatically shifted. Ironically, the first time I had been able to react and shut her up had also been the first time I managed to feel something akin to true affection for her. When Imo had come undone I had finally caught a glimmer of who she really was. I had seen Lupita Jaramillo surface beneath the tears, the frightened child whose chromosomes Imo still carried within her.

But now, as we were about to part, she had swiftly put her mask back on and reactivated her former self. I was disappointed that it was this version of Imo—her glamorous persona rather than little Lupita—that I had to say good-bye to. Yet part of me felt grateful: down at the gorge Imo had bestowed something upon me without her being aware of it.

I had found her gift hidden in the folds of my own fear, while we were under the muzzle of the gun, smelling metal mixed with the man’s sweat. It was there and then I had realized I’d be able to face my deepest fear, that I would not have to succumb to it.

I peered out through the dusty salmon drapes of the Kabul airport restaurant, looking down at the final passengers dragging their luggage over the tarmac under the thickening snow.

Suddenly a prolonged screech issued from the loudspeakers, followed by more crackling sounds, then by a voice that first spoke in Dari and then in equally unfathomable English.

“That’s the last call for my flight,” said Imo, smiling and checking the time on the display of the minuscule cell she had been holding for hours like the hand of a child.

“Good, it looks like it’s actually on time. Amazing, isn’t it?”

Almost all the passengers crowding the tables in the restaurant got up simultaneously. The urge, the anxiety, was tangible: there was a rush, a general eagerness to accelerate, like a flock pushed towards the gate. Everyone rushed except for Imo. She picked up her hand luggage, wrapped herself in her shawl, left a more than generous tip on the table and hugged me. I took in her musky exhalation, the smell of her hair.

“Maria, promise you’ll call me as soon you land in Milan.”

She kissed me, cupping the back of my head with her hand.

“Oh, this is so sad,” I managed to say. “I can’t bear to see you go.”

It was true and I wanted to let her know I felt that way.

Imo looked at me, blinked. I think she was surprised. She stroked my hair.

“Maria,
carina mia.
Isn’t this terrible? Didn’t we have just the best time together?”

“Yes, we did.” I wanted to say more, but I didn’t know how to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t sound clichéd, and besides I could tell she was gone already, her energy focused elsewhere, her body still here, her mind at her destination.

“You must come to London. Soon, promise. There’s so much more we need to do together!” she said. Then she turned to Hanif, who had sprung to his feet, bringing his hand to his breast.

“Hanif, you have been simply the greatest,” she said, although with just a touch of formality. “I beg you, please, if there’s anything I can do at my end. You know, about your wife. You let me know if you need any help for the German hospital. You have my e-mail and my phone number. Anything I can do, really.”

Imo took hold of Hanif’s hand and gave it a squeeze for her final supplication.

“Will you do me a favor and stay here with Maria until they call her flight? Here, have something to eat, tea, coffee, cake, whatever you want.”

She left more notes on the table and gave me a look, to check out how I was faring. She knew I’d be nervous to be left alone without her.

“Shall I leave you some more money, Maria? I’ve still got some dollars, if you like.”

“No, what for? I don’t need anything.”

“Are you sure? Then I’ll leave you in Hanif’s capable hands. He’ll see to it you get checked in okay, and then in an hour you’ll be on the plane. Everything cool?”

“Sure, don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” I smiled at her.

“Good. Call me tonight or tomorrow,” she said. “Actually tomorrow would be better.”

She winked at me, alluding, perhaps, to her evening ahead.

“Ciao, bellissima,”
she said. “I’ll miss you.”

So she left, waving her hand until the last moment, until she disappeared behind the salmon drapes. She exited the stage just like that, letting the fabric fall back behind her like the drop of a curtain.

Hanif and I sat down again in the lounge that was empty once more. He was furtively checking his watch. He had just pocketed his fee in cash and was probably itching to get away from me and rush to his wife. I doubted he was going to miss either one of us; this had just been a hundred-and-eighty-dollara-day gig for him. His obligation was going to end in less than an hour, as soon as they called the Kabul–Istanbul–Milan flight, the one I was going to take. Once on the other side of the gate, I wouldn’t be Hanif’s responsibility any longer. At the passport control we would say good-bye, exchange business cards and the usual promises of keeping in touch. Then, with a sigh of relief, he would bolt to his car with the sole thought of getting to the hospital as fast as he could, and Imo and Maria would disappear from his mind as if we’d never existed.

We didn’t say anything to each other for a few minutes. I realized that Imo’s absence had redesigned the way we related to one another; we were unsure whether we were supposed to feel more intimate or more estranged now that she was gone. Of the three of us, he and I had been the shy ones. Without Imo’s constant chatter, we no longer knew how to interact.

I drummed my fingers on the tabletop and sighed. He and I were the only two left in the room, the waiter was wiping the tables down with a rag, the early-afternoon light waned on the snow-whitened tarmac. I asked Hanif if he’d like some tea, a plate of rice, a drink. He shook his head at each offer and closed his eyes, pressing his hand on his tie. Now that only a handful of minutes still tied him to me, he had withdrawn into himself even more. His English had deteriorated; he didn’t seem to speak it anymore. It was as if his clockwork mechanism had wound down and these were his final movements, increasingly inexpressive and insincere.

“Hanif, go. There’s no need for you to stay.”

“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head, solicitous and diligent. “No problem.”

“No,” I cut him off, raising my voice slightly. “Go. You go and check on your wife, please. I’ll be absolutely fine on my own.”

He looked at me questioningly. He couldn’t suppress his hopefulness.

I nodded emphatically. After all, I only had to wait for them to call my flight, go downstairs and check in.

Enough already with the babysitter, I told myself. Show some dignity.

“Go, Hanif. I mean it.”