Veiled Freedom Page 15

  Steve gestured to the dancing crowd. “I’m guessing that makes us both the oddballs in this group. Two sodas then? Coke? Sprite?”

  Amy hadn’t totally forgiven Steve’s incivility on their last encounter. But at least he was a known face, and at the moment she just didn’t feel up to crashing another table of strangers. “A Coke would be nice.” She couldn’t resist adding, “If you’re sure your girlfriend isn’t missing you. I didn’t mean to break up your party.”

  Even in the last of the twilight Amy could see red rising to Steve’s cheekbones. “There was no party to break up. I popped in to meet a fellow contractor. Business. But he disappeared. Meanwhile, why don’t you settle in here, and I’ll be right back.”

  Steve waited courteously for Amy to resume her seat before walking away. Amy’s expression lost its animation as soon as he disappeared into the crowd. She was deep in thought, hands curled in her lap, when two Coke cans dripping with condensation plunked down onto the table, followed by two paper plates piled high with barbecued ribs and finger foods.

  “Dunsmore won’t bother you again,” Steve said quietly, adding a stack of napkins. “I’ve already dropped a word to your manager. He’ll be out tonight.”

  Only then did Amy notice Peter through the French doors. He was arguing with the Sarai’s manager behind the reception desk, and even as Amy watched, he disappeared up a staircase toward the guest quarters. So that was why Steve had bothered lingering here with Amy. Despite his disavowals, he somehow still felt she needed a keeper.

  Well, that was certainly more in character with the man who’d chewed Amy out on their last encounter. But Steve had misread Amy’s thoughts, because Peter had been nowhere near Amy’s mind.

  Lifting a Coke can, she popped the tab. “Thanks. But I was actually thinking about my driver. Jamil had this crazy idea I was off to some wild Hollywood movie of illicit drinking, dancing, and partying. I told him I was just visiting with some expat colleagues. But I can’t help wondering what all this would look like through his eyes. And what it must feel like to be told he can’t enter a building in his own country because foreigners have freedoms he doesn’t. The idea that expats here have a choice and he doesn’t—well, I know how I’d feel.”

  Putting down the Coke without drinking, Amy demanded abruptly, “Is it true that Afghanistan’s new constitution makes this an Islamic state under sharia law?”

  Steve’s intent look dissolved, and again his grin made him young. “You don’t bother much with small talk, do you?”

  When Amy showed no response to his teasing, his expression grew serious. “It’s not the expats but the local Ministry of Vice that enforces liquor laws on Afghan citizens. Foreign entities that don’t check for passports have been getting kicked out of the country.”

  Steve picked up a barbecued rib. They looked and smelled wonderful, a reminder Amy hadn’t yet eaten supper. But she didn’t trust them near her silk attire, so she reached instead for a cucumber sandwich.

  “You’re in what is officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. And yes, sharia law is the basis of its jurisprudence. That’s nothing new. It’s been several years since the new constitution was ratified.”

  “And Iraq? What about their new constitution?”

  “Ditto, though not quite so long ago.” Steve chewed thoughtfully, a quizzical gaze resting on Amy’s face, her hair spilling over her shoulders without the confining scarf. “I’m surprised you need to ask. I’d have assumed that would be one of the no-brainers included in your field briefing. Or that you’d have researched it yourself before getting on a plane.”

  Steve laid down the half-eaten rib. As abruptly as Amy’s earlier query, he demanded, “Do your parents approve of their daughter galloping around a war zone? I’d think they’d be sick with worry.”

  “I’m not a child,” she said sharply. Sometimes possessing the youthful look of a teenager was a definite professional disadvantage. “And since my parents are to blame for my being here, they hardly have grounds to complain.”

  An eyebrow shot up as Steve reached for a napkin. “Enlighten me.”

  Amy dropped her sandwich back to her plate. “You want my whole life story? It’s hardly screenplay category.”

  “On the contrary, who you are determines what really motivated you to come here. And that does interest me.”

  “Fine then.” Amy had done this often enough on the expat circuit to have her bio down to a rapid patter. “I grew up in Miami. My father’s Anglo, pastor of a pretty big church, mother Cuban. Her father was a pastor too in Havana, jailed by Castro. After he got out, they made it to Miami when my mom was about six. A lot of people helped when they came as refugees, and my parents taught us to pass that on. When they weren’t helping refugees in Miami, they were taking church teams on overseas humanitarian stints. I was sixteen the first time I went on a short-term missions trip doing hurricane relief in Honduras. There’s an adrenaline rush to helping people smile again when they’ve lost everything. I got hooked.”

  “You said us. You’ve got siblings?”

  “A brother with World Vision, sister in Peru with USAID, two more in college. Anyway, I was overseas every summer until I graduated from Florida International University. Since then I’ve been in so many countries I’ve lost track. Mainly with Christian Relief, a volunteer NGO our church sponsors.”

  “But you’re not with them anymore. Why the switch to this New Hope Foundation? And why Afghanistan?”

  Amy felt no surprise that Steve had remembered. By the sharpness of his gaze and tone, he rarely forgot much of anything. “New Hope’s easy. School loans. Volunteer relief doesn’t pay Wells Fargo. I’ve wanted to come to Afghanistan ever since liberation back when I was in high school.”

  Bio complete, Amy firmly dragged the subject back to her own disquiet. “But I never had a field briefing. I was asked to come here at the last minute. Naturally I googled some country reports, bought a couple guidebooks. But I didn’t read anything about sharia law.

  “The media and politicians are always talking about how Afghanistan’s a democracy now. The way they talked, I assumed it was like India or Turkey, where you’ve got Hindu or Muslim majorities. And of course one expects those beliefs will dominate the local culture. But since it’s a democracy, people are at least theoretically free to decide what they want to keep of their cultural beliefs and philosophy and faith—and what they themselves might choose to change.”

  Amy wasn’t sure why she was spilling this out to a sardonic-looking contractor who was at her side only because he felt a certain guilt—except that the questions were burning inside her.

  “But if sharia is still Afghanistan’s governing law, then how can this be called a democracy? Under sharia, you’re not allowed to think or do anything that’s considered contrary to Islam. Forget political choice or women’s rights. There’s no freedom of speech. No freedom of religious or philosophical expression.” The horror of it was in Amy’s voice. “Sharia means it’s still a death sentence for an Afghan to so much as choose their own faith in God.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Steve said. “It wasn’t too long ago the local Islamic council put a Christian convert on trial. That made the international media. There’s no doubt the purpose and timing was to challenge whether sharia or some foreign code of human rights was going to carry the day here.”

  “And which did?” Amy demanded. “I remember hearing something at the time, but I was in India then, away from the news. I’m sure I’d have heard if they actually executed the guy.”

  Steve shrugged. “In the end it was mutual face-saving. After enormous international pressure, the mullahs declared the man mentally incompetent, therefore ineligible for the death penalty. He was whisked out of the country and is living in Europe.”

  “So in other words, they got out of it without anyone having to take an actual stand on religious freedom. Including our government. I thought we were in Afghanistan to help bring democracy and free
dom. I cheered when we came over here, no matter how horrible it was, because I believed that it was worth the guns and the bombs. Not just for us but for the Afghan people. But if we haven’t even given them basic human freedoms, then what are we doing here?”

  Amy had started out calmly, keeping her voice below the rowdy hip-hop now playing. But tears were stinging her eyes, and her fingernails bit into her palms to keep them from spilling over. The outrage that had gripped her since Elsa Leister dropped that single, overlooked bombshell compelled her on. “People keep talking as though what matters is whether women have to wear a burqa or get to go to school. But every freedom we have is based first on the fundamental freedom to believe in your heart and worship God according to your own conscience. If you don’t have that freedom, how can you ever have freedom over what you say out loud, much less what you do?

  “You were a soldier, right? At least I know most PSCs were. You know the local language, so you must have served around here somewhere. Tell me, how could this have happened? How could you all have let it happen?”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” The harshness of the statement cut Amy off as much as its finality.

  Steve’s expression was no longer affable but as hard as chiseled stone, his gaze chips of gray ice. “Sure, I was a soldier and I served in Afghanistan. But my teammates and I came here with one very simple mission: to take out al-Qaeda and their Taliban support and prevent them from attacking our country again—period. We carried out our mission well, if you haven’t noticed.”

  “Look, I wasn’t trying to disparage our troops. I know they’re not the ones who make those decisions. But—” Amy hesitated, appalled at the misunderstanding, but the words burst from her. “Their superiors back in DC are, and they’ve had plenty to say about democracy and freedom. Besides, don’t we owe something to the Afghans after coming over here and turning their country on its ear? Okay, so there’re still people who want sharia law. But there must be plenty of ordinary people who really believed we were bringing them something better. I just can’t help thinking those people must feel we’ve betrayed them.”

  “The question is—who’s betrayed who?” Like Amy, Steve kept his voice low, but its harshness bit through the music so clearly Amy couldn’t have ignored it.

  “Unfortunately only too many Afghans share your crazy idea that America can and should bring them a better life. But that’s where they and you are dead wrong. They want us to bring them freedom, us to make changes. But America doesn’t have the power or the will to bring freedom to Afghanistan or any other country. Or frankly the responsibility. And it never did.”

  “I didn’t mean—” Amy subsided as Steve’s sharp gesture cut her off.

  “Bottom line, you can’t give freedom to people at the point of a sword—or gun—any more than you can give faith. And for much the same reason. It’s got to come from inside. You’d think we’d have learned that by now. Oh yes, I can testify the Afghans believed when we came here that we were powerful enough to whistle the warlords to heel, wipe out corruption, and restore stability with all the precision and speed of our guided missile system. They know better now.

  “But let me tell you what we expected. We expected that when we took away the excuses for these people to keep fighting and abusing each other that they would stop. That we could roll in with our money and heavy machinery and good intentions, have everyone shake hands, and get to work rebuilding this country.”

  Steve crushed his now-empty Coke can under his fist with a force that sounded like a gunshot. “Now you’ve been here—what, three or four days? And I’m betting you’ve already made the same snap judgments they all do. With all the troops and weapons and aid, why aren’t things getting any better?

  “I have no real issue with the aid crowd. Salt of the earth and all that, but they’ve got to be some of the dumbest smart people I know. I’ll never forget one of my Basra PSDs. A twenty-six-year-old woman with a master’s in international relations contracted to lecture Shia and Sunni leaders on religious reconciliation—as though she’d any experience.”

  Amy opened her mouth with a biting reply. But a memory of a college roommate with a fresh law degree heading to Baghdad to raise gender awareness among Iraqi generals closed her jaw. Her friend’s security budget alone could have underwritten a tsunami refugee camp. “We don’t all run those kinds of projects. Some of us do practical things like feeding people and meeting survival needs.”

  “I’m sure you do. All I’m saying is you should try looking at it the other way around. Enough money’s been poured into this entire region to turn it into the Garden of Eden. If the locals would stop trying to kill each other and us. Or lining their own pockets instead of working for the good of their country. After all, who’s to blame if the bulk of the aid money has to be wasted on security?”

  The jerk of Steve’s head encompassed the noisy, dancing crowd. “Do you think these people like spending their days locked up behind barbed wire and sandbags? that they wouldn’t prefer to be out there doing a whole lot more for this country than they are? The Afghans had a choice for a future, and they’ve been their own worst enemy.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  Steve wasn’t done. “You have to understand sharia isn’t just law to these people. It’s the way to God. More accurately, to the Afghans or any Muslim, there’s no difference between the two. And if you really believe, as they do, that enforcing Allah’s law—sharia law—not just on yourself but your family and community is the only way to heaven, then standing up for it against all your new, powerful infidel allies not only makes sense but is downright laudable. I’ll give our State Department credit they weren’t dumb enough to persist. They wouldn’t have won, believe me.”

  “I can’t believe you’re defending them!” Amy pushed her plate away. “Are you saying it’s okay to put someone on trial because of his belief in God? to force people to follow a religion, not by personal choice but on pain of death?”

  “Not at all,” Steve said evenly. “I agree that freedom of personal faith is so basic a human right there can’t be any other real freedom without it. And that sharia is an oppressive system. But I also believe any real change has to come from the Afghan people themselves. You can’t have it both ways. Either it’s our right and responsibility to ram democracy and freedom down these people’s throats. To make them be good and get along. In other words, to stop acting like they have for a thousand years. And you’re talking powerful people with a lot to lose. We’d need Saddam or Taliban tactics and a whole lot more troops than we’ve got. Or if we’re really going to give them freedom, then they—not we—have the responsibility of stopping the killing and corruption and abuse. And for that matter, living with the consequences if they won’t. All we can hope to do is ensure they don’t become a launching ground against our own country again.”

  “Except that as long as the mullahs run the show, that change has no chance. What you’re really saying is that it’s hopeless. That it’s always been hopeless. For the Afghans if not for us. So why are we still here?” Amy didn’t like the despairing note that had crept into her low appeal.

  “You tell me. I’m just doing a job I’ve contracted. When I’m done, I’ll head home or take another gig elsewhere. What I won’t do is take it personally. How do you think these people get by?”

  It was now full night overhead, any stars or moon hidden behind the smog and dust, the only illumination a dim white gray of fluorescent tubing along tree branches and verandas. But the party was going strong, the dancers moving with fresh energy to an impromptu karaoke competition, the pools heaving with wet bodies.

  “They come. They do the job they’re hired to do the best they can. Some better than others,” Steve amended dryly, and from his ironic expression, he too was thinking of a certain mineralogist. “Then they go home. If you can’t do that, you’re not going to make it here. Why do you care so much, anyway? You don’t know these people. And one way or another, you
’ve got more freedom than under the Taliban to feed the hungry and take care of women and children and whatever else you came here to do.”

  “Because I came here to make a difference. I really believed I could make a difference.” Amy raised her chin high, but the fluorescent lighting overhead wavered as if underwater. “I guess that sounds pretty naive.”

  “Not naive. Passionate.” As though surprised at his own words, Steve straightened abruptly.

  A cell phone rang. Steve snatched it from his belt. “You’re where? You’re kidding. . . . I’ll be there as fast as I can.” Slapping the phone shut, he pushed himself to his feet. “That’s my contact. Got to go.”

  But the security contractor didn’t move immediately. Roughly, he said, “There’s nothing wrong with caring enough to be passionate. Passion is the only way great things get done. Believe it or not, I was once young and dumb enough to feel that way. But caring can get you hurt, especially in Afghanistan. Just watch your back, okay?”

  Steve had taken two strides away when he turned around. “By the way, if you’re really looking to make a difference, there’re some pretty needy kids in that neighborhood just past Khalid’s new palace.”

  What a strange man Steve was. One minute hard and cold as ice, the next almost kind. Amy watched him swiftly retreat with relief. At least now she could discreetly wipe away those unshed tears.

  Amy wished she could be angrier. But she was too honest not to recognize at least some element of truth in his harsh lecture. She swallowed back a lump in her throat. Why had that man’s words, that simple piece of data she should have known, hit her so hard?

  Because all these years she’d dreamed of coming here and sharing God’s love with these people. All those years in Sunday school of praying for the door to be open to the Muslim world. And she was so sure that the invasion, however ugly for both sides, was worth it in part because it meant that door cracking open.

  Amy had given credit to her own country for achieving that freedom. Like other Americans, she’d cheered those purple-thumbed Afghan voters, the signing of that new constitution. How is it possible that was wrong? How could I not know? And why had so little been said on cable news or anywhere else of what democracy really entailed in Afghanistan beyond those triumphant elections, a few unveiled spokeswomen judiciously trumpeted across the TV screens of the world?