When Mohammed led the horses away, Tom wrapped one arm around me and tipped my chin up until our eyes met. He was right, of course. Our first child was due in less than four months.
The Lebanese ob-gyn I was seeing had assured me that as long as I took it easy, I would be able to work at the embassy until I was in my seventh month, then fly back to my parents’ ranch in New Mexico to have the baby. Tom would pack us out and join me in Albuquerque for the birth. After a month of leave, we would all go to Washington, D.C., where Tom and I would start Russian language training for our assignments in Leningrad.
“I stopped galloping three months ago, Tom. What if I promise not to trot or canter? ” I pleaded with a halfhearted pout.
“Ange, knowing how you ride, I’d say that would be an impossible promise to keep.” He laughed as he popped a spicy lamb cube into my mouth.
The following Monday, just as my taxi driver swung onto the broad corniche facing the Mediterranean, he tapped the brakes on his ancient Mercedes to avoid ramming the seawall and turned to gaze at a large yacht anchored just offshore. His unexpected stop threw me slightly forward in my seat, and I instinctively placed both hands over my swollen belly in that protective gesture of all mothers-to-be.
“I’ll get out here, driver,” I said in rapid-fire Arabic as I handed him a fistful of Lebanese pounds. I had reluctantly agreed on Saturday to Tom’s request that I stop riding my horse, but I still needed exercise. On this warm April morning, I would walk the final three blocks along the esplanade to the embassy.
For the past few months, our sector of Beirut had been relatively free of the sporadic bombings and gun battles that still raged in other parts of the city. A few American diplomats, including my husband, even jogged along the corniche before work.
My meeting with a group of Lebanese journalists had gone well, and I was planning to join Tom in his office for a lunch of falafel, hummus, and fresh pita bread I’d purchased from a street vendor. I grabbed the greasy paper bag of food from the backseat of the taxi and set off on foot for the embassy, absently patting my stomach and enjoying the fresh salt air. When I glanced out to sea for an instant to watch a flock of battling seagulls, my life suddenly ended—or should have. A blast of hot air, followed by a roaring in my ears, threw me hard against the cement seawall. The bag of food flew out of my hand, over the wall, and sank beneath the waves.
As I struggled to my feet, I could see a roiling black cloud rising into the air where the embassy stood just around the corner. Cars parked close to the compound had flipped over and were on fire. People were lying in the street. They were bleeding. Their mouths were open. They must have been screaming, but I could hear only a loud ringing in my ears. I began to run through the falling debris, one hand still on my belly to protect my unborn child. The entire front of the embassy had collapsed. Where Tom’s office had been, there was nothing.
ONE
June 2004
✦ WASHINGTON, D.C.
The first ring jarred me awake seconds before my forehead hit the keyboard. I inched slowly back in my chair, hoping no one had noticed me dozing off.
Narrowing my eyes against the flat glare of the ceiling lights, I scanned the long row of cubicles behind me. I was alone.
The second ring and the scent of microwave popcorn drifting in from a nearby office reminded me I was supposed to meet some colleagues for dinner and a movie near Dupont Circle at eight. It was almost seven thirty.
The third ring froze me in place when I saw the name flashing on the caller ID.
If irrational fear could still paralyze me like this after all these years, then perhaps it really was time to give up.
It wasn’t only real danger that would accelerate my pulse and cause me to stop breathing like a frightened rabbit staring down the barrel of a shotgun. It was little things. Tonight it was a telephone call.
I forced myself to grab the receiver halfway through ring number four.
“This is Angela Morgan,” I said, struggling to suppress the anxiety that had formed a painful knot in my throat.
My computer beeped and coughed up two messages from the U.S. Embassy in Honduras. I ignored them and began taking slow, measured breaths.
“Angela, you’re working late tonight. It’s Marty Angstrom from personnel.”
Marty’s chirpy, nasal voice resonated like the slow graze of a fork down an empty plate.
He was stammering, obviously surprised that anyone in the Central American division at the State Department would pick up the phone this late on a Friday evening. I had apparently upset his plan to leave a voice message that I wouldn’t hear until Monday morning.
“Hello, Marty. It’s been a long time.” My heart was thundering. “Is this a good news or a bad news call? ”
“It depends,” said Marty.
“On what?”
“On what your definition of good is.” He chuckled.
The wish list I’d submitted to personnel for my next overseas diplomatic posting had been, in order of preference: London, Madrid, Nairobi, San Salvador, Lima, Caracas, Riga, St. Petersburg, and Kabul. I’d thrown in Kabul at the last minute, thinking it would demonstrate that I was a team player and increase my chances for the London assignment. But they would never send me to Kabul, not after what had happened in Beirut.
“Marty, please get to the point. Did I get London?”
I could hear him breathing through his nose into the phone like an old man with asthma. He sounded almost as nervous as I felt. Not a good sign. Was I being sent south of the border again just because I spoke Spanish? But why would that make Marty nervous?
Before I retired or was forced out of the Foreign Service for not getting promoted fast enough, I was hoping for just one tour of duty in Western Europe. Foreign Service Officers, like military officers, must compete against their colleagues of similar rank for the limited number of promotions available each year. Consistently low performers are drummed out long before reaching the traditional retirement age of sixty-five.
I desperately wanted an assignment in London, but I’d settle for Madrid. After all I’d been through—I deserved it.
“Well, you’ll be spending a lot of time with the Brits,” Marty replied eagerly.
“Meaning?” I put him on speaker and began to rearrange the stacks of papers on my desk. My pulse and breathing were returning to normal.
“Listen, Angela, I know you had some tough times a while back, but that was more than two decades ago.”
Tough times—a dead husband and a bloody miscarriage.
Yeah, those were definitely tough times,
I thought, looking over at the small silver-framed photo of Tom and me. We were sitting on our bay Arabian geldings at the Kattouah stables near Beirut. Our knees were touching. His horse was nuzzling mine. We were laughing.
Tom and I had met for the first time in 1979 at a private stable in the Virginia hunt country, where we’d arrived separately to rent horses for a few hours on the weekend. Although we were both studying Farsi in preparation for our first assignments as junior diplomats to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, we had different instructors at the Foreign Service Institute. Our paths had never crossed until that warm summer morning, when the New Mexico rancher’s daughter and the southern prep school boy discovered the first of their many common interests.
“Ange, you’re going to get kicked out of the Foreign Service in another year if you don’t get promoted,” warned Marty.
That was true. After the embassy bombing killed Tom, and I lost the baby a few days later, the Department had ordered me back to the United States to recover, but not for long. I stayed with my parents for three months, was given a low-stress desk job in D.C. for the following year, and was then expected to start Russian language training and take the assignment in Leningrad where Tom and I should have gone together.
During that two-year tour of duty in the Soviet Union, I had developed a taste for vodka—which became my painkiller and therapist of choice—an affinity that led to a series of less than stellar performance evaluations. After that disaster, I was exiled to Central and South American outposts where the Spanish I’d learned from my mother would come in handy and nothing I did would have serious policy implications for the U.S. government.
My father’s prolonged illness and my frequent trips out west to see him had made it impossible for me to take any more overseas assignments for the past six years. My career had been dying a slow and painful death in a series of dead-end positions at State Department headquarters in Washington.
“Continue,” I replied, growing weary of Marty’s little guessing game.
“You really need this promotion, Angela.”
This conversation was becoming unbearable. I focused on my breathing, willing my anxiety not to resurface.
“Marty, I’m going to hang up the phone right now if you don’t tell me where the Department is sending me.”
“Okay, you’re going to Afghanistan in December.”
Oh, God, this has got to be a joke.
I laid my head down on the desk blotter and closed my eyes.
“Marty, I don’t know a thing about Afghanistan,” I whispered into the speakerphone. What I didn’t add was that serving in another Islamic country, war or no war, was an experience I didn’t think I could handle.
“It doesn’t matter. Neither does anybody else. You put it on your bid list.”
“It was the very last post on a very long wish list, Marty,” I said, trying to maintain my composure.
“Listen, Ange, at this point we’re filling positions in Afghanistan and Iraq with anyone remotely suitable who volunteers. We may eventually have to start forcing people to go, but you’ll get more brownie points if you go willingly now. I know this was your last choice, but it’s only for a year, and I promise to try and get you an onward assignment to someplace great . . . like London!”
In 2004, the United States was fighting not one but two wars. The one in Iraq, begun the previous year, was sucking most of the air out of the State Department. Meanwhile, the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan had been relegated to the back pages of
The Washington Post
and a few understaffed offices at the State Department.
I shared the sentiments of many of my Foreign Service colleagues, who believed we should have stayed out of Iraq and completed our mission in Afghanistan. A few brave souls actually spoke up and even resigned in protest. I’m ashamed to admit that I, like many, kept my head down, stayed focused on my less controversial part of the world, and tried hard not to think much about either war.
“Marty, I don’t speak Dari or Pashto.”
“Your personnel file shows you have an extremely high aptitude for foreign languages. It says you got the highest score ever recorded at the Foreign Service Institute when you took Farsi.”
“That was twenty-five years ago, Marty, and no one in my Farsi class was ever sent to Tehran because the Iranians took everyone in the embassy hostage that year. You’ll see in my file that my husband and I were put in Arabic language training, reassigned to Yemen for a year, and then sent to Beirut.”
Marty ignored my comments and continued. “I am told by unnamed sources that you still read and are able to recite Rumi in the original Persian.”
“Who told you that?”
How could this be happening? Rumi’s poetry, which had given me such comfort in the months after I lost Tom and the baby, was now being used by Marty as a rationale to force me back into the same conflict-ridden part of the world that had taken them away from me.
“Is it true? ” Marty asked.
My eyes were now brimming with tears, and the knot in my throat was returning. Fortunately, no one was in the office to witness my mini-meltdown.
“Ange?”
“So what? Rumi is the most popular poet in the United States.”
“True.” Marty chuckled, irritating me even more. “But most Americans read his works in English translation.”
I was too upset to respond.
“The Department doesn’t have many Farsi speakers left,” Marty continued, “and they need someone up north who is fluent in Dari.”
“I just told you I don’t speak Dari, and what do you mean, ‘up north’? I thought I was being assigned to the embassy in Kabul.”
“Remember I said you’ll be spending a lot a time with the Brits?”
“So am I being assigned to the British Embassy?” His question puzzled me.
“You won’t actually be in Kabul. You’re going to be spending a year with the British Army at a PRT in Mazār-i-Sharīf.”
Me? At forty-seven, they were assigning me to a Provincial Reconstruction Team, a military outpost that conducted surveillance patrols in the northern provinces? And not even a U.S. camp, but one where I’d be doubly an outsider—as a civilian and an American.
“We’re putting you in a one-on-one Farsi–Dari conversion course next month,” Marti continued. “You should be fluent by December. They say Dari is just like Farsi, but easier. With your language aptitude, it shouldn’t take you too long to pick it up. Your Arabic won’t be very useful, but I hear your Russian may come in handy up there.”
“My Russian?”
“Yeah, they say some of the warlords in the north speak Russian. And the Russians still have an interest in what goes on up there—even after all these years,” he added with a conspiratorial flourish.
“Look, Ange, they want you in Mazār by early January, and you’ll need a few days in Kabul for briefings before you head north. Will that be okay? ” Marty was now sounding almost apologetic. “Is Christmas a big deal with your family? Will they be upset if you aren’t home?”
“Not really,” I said, glancing at a favorite old photo I had tacked to the cloth partition in my cubicle. Mom and I were halfway down our winding driveway at the ranch in New Mexico setting out
luminarias
for the annual Morgan Christmas fiesta. Her long, dark braid fell over her shoulder as she bent to help me light one of the candles.