Veiled Freedom Page 12

  Meetra had shown no reaction to Debby’s gift, so the New Yorker laid the dried fruit beside the woman. Her eyes, all Amy could see above a shawl pulled across her face, were beautiful, dark and long-lashed, but they held a blankness that didn’t see the dirty yellow of the wall in front of them.

  “Then there’s Farah.”

  Unlike her neighbor, Farah had straightened up immediately at the intrusion of visitors. Her scarf hung free to reveal a fair-skinned teenager with blue green eyes and a mass of brown curls spilling over her shoulders as she snagged Debby’s offering.

  “Salaam aleykum, Farah.” Debby looked over her shoulder to Amy. “They get enough food of sorts these days, but I still like to bring them a treat. Something they can eat before the guards walk off with it.”

  The teenager munched the fruit as Debby continued. “Farah was thirteen when her guardian sold her off to a sixty-year-old neighbor in settlement for a gambling debt. The man had already beaten one of his other wives to death. She’s got some real spunk, so she pilfered a few afghanis for bus fare, dressed as a boy, and almost made it to Iran before she was found out. She’s been in here almost three years.

  “Zaira didn’t have the gumption to run away when her husband and his mother and sisters beat her, so she did what many women here do to escape. She set herself on fire with kerosene.”

  Zaira’s scarf slipped as she reached for her treat, and Amy saw that her face was a mass of burn tissue.

  “When she survived, she was arrested for defacing her husband’s property—herself. As for Aryana over there—”

  Most of the women were now roused, hands outstretched. But not even Debby’s gentle greeting raised the head of an olive-skinned Pashtun girl with a toddler curled up on her lap.

  “Aryana was married off to a distant cousin at fourteen. The guy seems to have been pretty decent from what she says. But when her son was two months old, her husband died and her brothers-in-law accused her of poisoning him. No autopsy and no trial. But some judge wrote up a guilty verdict, and she was arrested for murder. Aryana’s husband was the oldest brother, so there may have been some family inheritance at stake.

  “Najeeda’s mother-in-law started passing her around for money. When she got pregnant, the husband couldn’t be sure whose child it was, so he beat her badly. When she still didn’t lose the baby, he accused her of adultery. She’s been here almost seven years. Her six-year-old son is in here with her. She’ll be twenty this summer.”

  Najeeda would have been pretty, except that a broken nose had healed crooked and all but a few teeth were missing.

  The kindergarten class must have finished, because just then the door banged open. As a dozen children rushed in, the room came to life. A small, thin boy climbed onto Najeeda’s lap, and she hugged him tight, murmuring against his hair.

  “Theoretically, the boys have to leave the women’s prison when they turn six, the girls when they turn twelve, but if they have no place to go, even the hard-nosed prison officials haven’t yet tossed them out. Now Roya is probably the only woman who’d be considered a criminal back home. Ironically, here no one figures she should be in prison. She’s only in as a gesture to the Americans.”

  Perhaps what appalled Amy most of that horrible biographical litany was the youth of the prisoners. Most were far younger than Amy. The Pashtun woman snatching the last bag from Debby’s hand was an exception. Thin, stooped, with work-worn features, she might be anywhere from forty to eighty. Probably closer to forty, Amy amended, considering that the life expectancy for women here wasn’t much beyond that.

  “Roya was caught scraping opium gum in the poppy fields. On her husband’s orders, of course. Around here, that’s little more than weeding potatoes. But they’re supposed to be getting tough on drugs, and since the big landlords who actually own the poppy fields are off-limits, they grabbed a bunch of peasant labor. Roya hoped her husband would buy her freedom. But just last week she found out he’s divorced her and married a sixteen-year-old cousin of theirs. It was cheaper. Her two younger daughters live here with her.”

  By the time Amy and Debby reached the end of the room, Amy could no longer look at one more silent mound or beseeching hand. Stepping thankfully into the corridor, she drew in a shuddering breath. It wasn’t that Amy hadn’t read the reports, even known of such happenings Debby had been describing. But putting dry statistics to those hopeless faces and despairing eyes was worse than anything she’d encountered since arriving in Kabul.

  “Debby, these stories are terrible! My grandfather was Cuban and spent years in prison, his crime being an outspoken Baptist pastor in Havana. I used to think nothing could sink any lower than Castro. But these women have suffered even worse outside of prison than they are in there.”

  “It’s how too many Afghan women live. Human rights studies estimate upwards of 70 percent suffer some kind of abuse, a lot of it from their own families or in-laws. Back when I first came, journalists and film crews were always coming in here to collect the prisoners’ stories. We all figured the notoriety alone would push the new regime at least into stopping this kind of arrest.”

  Debby grimaced. “Now there are four times as many prisoners, plus kids stacked in here like sardines. I was over at MOI this morning to see about opening another wing. So far, it’s no go. Still, for a country this size, I used to wonder why so few in jail. I mean, eighty women out of an entire city? Then I learned these were the lucky ones. Most women in their circumstances don’t end up in jail. They just disappear. Or prove more successful than Zaira in ending it themselves.”

  “So maybe, for all the injustice of it,” Amy said slowly, “they’re better off in here than back home. Those kids have more opportunity with what you’re doing than they would on the streets.”

  “Exactly. Which is why I wanted to bring you here.” Debby faced Amy, determination on her round face. “Take Farah. She’s still only sixteen years old. When she gets out, if she goes home, she’ll be handed over to that sixty-year-old neighbor. And Aryana. No one will allow an accused murderer into the house. Not to mention, I wouldn’t give an ice cube in the Sahara for that little boy if he goes home to claim his daddy’s piece of the pie. And Roya. No one’s going to keep an elderly field-worker in jail forever. Especially with two kids to feed. But now she’s divorced, so where can she go?”

  “And—?” Amy asked.

  “I’ve been talking to every NGO I know about some kind of halfway shelter for these women when their sentence is up so they aren’t forced to go back to the homes that abused them. Except the only thing my pushing’s done is make the prison administration agree the place is overcrowded. So they’ve ordered a bunch released, including the three I mentioned. They’ll be out next week.”

  “What about Alisha and her program?”

  “Their funding is tapped out. Besides, USAID is a State Department program, and it’s not PC to interfere, however deservedly, with local culture or family structure.”

  Amy had listened with half-incredulous dismay, but Debby’s last statement roused her ire. “I am so sick of politically correct. What about right and wrong? It’s bad enough there are judges who’d put these women in here—”

  Amy stopped as Alisha and Soraya emerged with the children’s teacher into the hall. Geeti had been listening to Amy and Debby with blank incomprehension, but now she broke into voluble speech as she waved the other women over.

  Debby turned back to Amy. “We’ve got to discuss some accounting issues before I turn over this project. Are you in a huge hurry? It’ll just be a few minutes.”

  “No problem. I’ll wait with my driver in the schoolroom.”

  Not all the children had returned to their mothers; at least a dozen remained in the schoolroom when Amy entered. They sat in a circle on the floor, playing duck, duck, goose.

  More disquieting was the silence, a girl’s bare feet moving noiselessly around the circle, the others tensed expectantly, as though engaged in some illicit pursuit. W
as play also forbidden in this horrible place?

  Jamil didn’t look as though he’d moved from where Amy had left him. His back was to the children, cell phone again to one ear, eyes focused on the nearest wall.

  As the circling girl tapped her “goose”—the small girl in the pink tunic Amy had first spied in the window—Amy stepped into Jamil’s line of vision to say quietly, “It’ll be just a few minutes more.”

  At her voice, Jamil’s head shot up, his cell phone flying from his hand, and for an instant Amy caught a play of conflicting emotion across his face—unhappiness? fear? uncertainty?—so strong she was startled into silence. Then a thud and a startled yelp spun Amy around.

  The clatter of phone to floor—and perhaps Amy’s own interruption—had distracted the runners so that they’d collided, the older girl’s weight slamming the smaller child into the matting hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.

  Amy hurried over to them. “Oh, sweetie, are you okay?”

  The girl in the pink tunic hadn’t moved. But just as the older girl was giving her playmate a panicked tug, the smaller girl drew in a gasping breath. She rolled to a sitting position. Then she caught sight of bloodied palms, scarlet soaking through the ripped knees of her pink pants. Even the little girl’s wail was no more than a mewling kitten, the other children crowding close with anxious murmurs.

  “Shh, don’t cry. It’ll be all right.” The child wasn’t pacified by Amy’s English litany, and holding the writhing little body while digging the first aid kit from her bag proved no easy task. Amy had managed to extract scissors to cut open a bloodied pant leg when a hand stopped her.

  “Excuse me.” Jamil’s expression held nothing but solicitous courtesy as he lifted the scissors from Amy’s grasp, his expression so composed Amy wondered if she’d imagined that earlier distress. “Her mother will not wish to lose the clothing.”

  Jamil proceeded to work the pants gently down over the scraped knees. Even for Afghanistan, the little girl’s tunic was long enough to offer decency. Jamil sorted through the first aid kit. Bemused, Amy watched him swab hydrogen peroxide and smooth on antibiotic cream, the deft experience of those long, thin fingers so clearly greater than her own, she made no effort to intervene. Amy had no idea what he said to the little girl as he taped gauze into place, but she was smiling through her tears before he was done.

  “And to think I was patching you up,” Amy exclaimed as Jamil closed the first aid kit. Her own dressing still swaddling Jamil’s left foot looked clumsy next to the little girl’s neat bandages. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d had first aid training?”

  “I was once a medical student.” It was the first personal comment Jamil had ever made, and as though he regretted it, he got to his feet immediately. “And you did a very competent job. I was thankful.” He nodded toward the little girl. “The child should remain still so she does not pull off the bandages.”

  Easier said than done. The girl had attached herself to Amy like a limpet, and when Amy tried to peel off clinging arms, the little girl’s wail rose enough that the other children looked worried, their hushing murmurs anxious. Were they afraid of that hard-faced warden out there?

  Amy looked up at Jamil. “Tell her if she’ll let me go, I’ll tell her—all of them—a story.”

  It worked. By the time the girl released Amy, the others were squatting down, their soft chatter holding excited anticipation. Amy glanced around. The room’s only furnishing was a blackboard, but among the donated supplies was a bright rainbow of colored chalks. Amy drew a navy blue circle, then reached for sunshine yellow. Few tales from her own childhood made sense to children who lived without electricity, books, toys, pets, TV, DVDs, computers, or even running water. But the refugee camps had taught Amy which stories offered universal delight.

  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light.’”

  Amy was no Picasso, but she could draw the sun and moon, sky and clouds, trees and flowers, birds and fish. The children whispered excitedly with each new picture, those close enough reaching up to touch a leaping whale, a dubious lion.

  “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’”

  Human figures emerged discreetly behind green bushes. The very cadence of the biblical narrative was the rhythm of Eastern storytelling, the Dari into which Jamil was translating a dialect of the Persians whose fabled princess Scheherazade had staved off death with her tales for a thousand and one nights.

  “And every day in the cool of the evening, God came down to walk and talk with Adam and Eve in the garden. They ate the fruit and played with the animals. And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

  The small faces upturned to Amy were far from clean, but they were rapt with wonder, eyes wide with delight, and to Amy they were all beautiful, even the spiky-haired boy who crept close enough to rub a dirty face against Amy’s tunic.

  But now Amy could hear voices approaching down the hall. Grabbing the eraser, she wiped away the garden and creatures. “I have to go, and you need to find your mothers.”

  The children’s unhappy protests as they straggled reluctantly to their feet were high praise. A girl of seven or eight tugged imperiously on Amy’s arm.

  Jamil translated. “She wishes to know what happened to the beautiful garden and why we can no longer play with the wild beasts.”

  Amy bent down to look into the girl’s face. The girl’s long-lashed gaze met hers with fearless interest. A bigger boy jostled her deliberately, stepping in front to seize Amy’s attention, but the younger girl pushed him out of her way, eyes intent on Amy’s as she waited for her answer. Life had not yet cowed her spirit, bowed her head and shoulders into submission, as it had the women huddled silently in those dark dormitories.

  Dear God, let it be different for her. May she grow up in a different world than this.

  “What is your name?” Amy asked. “Nametan chist?”

  “Tamana.” The girl pointed to the boy she’d shoved. Amy caught the meaning of her words without translation. “Baradar”—“brother.” “Fahim”—his name.

  “That is a story for another day,” Amy said gently.

  “Then will you come back to tell it?”

  Amy didn’t have to answer because at that moment Debby, Alisha, and the others entered the schoolroom. At a harsh phrase and sharp clap from Geeti, the children scampered off.

  Debby hurried over to Amy. “Sorry about the wait. Alisha and I have to run over to the men’s prison. But I wanted to ask if you’ve had time to think about what I’ve shared.”

  “Actually, I enjoyed the wait,” Amy answered sincerely, but she was shaking her head. “I’ve got to be honest. I sympathize with these women and kids. But this isn’t the kind of project New Hope had in mind for Kabul. And though I may have room and budget, I don’t have personnel. I have two translators, but they’re both Afghan men. I don’t think these women are likely to get much sympathy from them.”

  Debby’s round face showed her disappointment. “I understand. It just seemed so perfect when I ran into you. Especially since I’m out of time.”

  Alisha, in conversation with Geeti and Soraya, beckoned to Debby.

  Hurriedly, Debby added, “I have to go. Geeti will show you out. But I’d sure like to chat a bit more, maybe answer your concerns. Are you hitting the Thursday circuit tonight? If not, I’d be happy to pop by your guesthouse.”

  “I’m staying at the Sarai. You’re welcome to drop by.” Amy’s eyebrows came together. “I did see a mention on the guesthouse bulletin board of an open house tonight. Is that what you mean by Thursday circuit?”

  Debby chuckled. “If you don’t know, yo
u’ll find out soon enough. The Sarai has one of the biggest Thursday bashes in town. I’ll plan on dropping in when I get away from here. Is it a date, then?”

  “It’s a date.”

  “Go right! Go right! No, left! There’re unfriendlies approaching. A mob of them. Just protesters, but it’s looking ugly.”

  An armed phalanx advanced warily across the sand. Four men formed a diamond at compass points around a fifth. Four more ranged out to form a square around the diamond. All wore tactical vests, and all but the center cradled unslung M4s.

  “Okay, you’ve got shooters there. Get him out! Get him out!”

  The square’s two forward points dropped to one knee and began firing. Behind them, the diamond collapsed, hands grabbing at the center figure and rushing him backward. This would have been easier if he hadn’t been six and a half feet tall and upward of two hundred and fifty pounds. Halfway back, the big man slumped to the sand. The square’s rear points jumped in to haul the man to a concrete walkway.

  “He’s safe! He’s safe! Break contact!”

  Firing stopped. Half a dozen firing targets lay riddled with bullets. The entire phalanx retreated to the concrete.

  As Steve joined them, Jamie McDuff ran a pen down a clipboard. “Not bad. You got the principal out. But you lost both shooters and took out a civilian. This isn’t the Marines. You don’t stay and fight it out. Break contact and get out of there just as soon as the principal’s safe. Mac, good simulation. Good thing Khalid isn’t your size. Let’s try it again. Julio, you take center this time.”

  Steve offered McDuff a thumbs-up as he headed downfield where Phil, with no medical emergencies on hand, was putting two dozen assorted TCNs through “scoot and shoot” runs, half the group prone on the sand laying down imaginary fire while the rest retreated, then vice versa.

  “Lock and load. Fire. Cease fire. Okay, I think we’re ready to hand out ammo.”

  The sand wasn’t local but had been trucked in to create an artificial dune a hundred meters long and twice a man’s height, an effective if inelegant bullet trap for firing exercises. The training facility itself might have been mistaken for a military base. Rows of armored Humvees and personnel carriers. A helipad. Prefabricated Army “hooches” for housing TCNs. A high concrete perimeter wall topped with guard towers and machine-gun nests.