Veiled Freedom (57 page)

Pul-e-Charki was the local maximum security prison made notorious under the Soviets and, later, the mujahedeen and Taliban. Its rep hadn't improved as much as it should have in the years since liberation.

“I've convinced him to wait for fingerprint results. This is the last batch, so if we don't get a hit, we're out of luck. But I don't want to be responsible for turning some local Good Samaritan over to the interrogation methods I hear they're still practicing up at Pul-e-Charki. A single match, and we can let everyone else go.” Hamilton snatched up a folder a policeman laid in front of him. “And here we go.”

Steve turned to his two subordinates. “I'm heading over with Jason. It won't make the system work any faster, but at least I can be looking over a shoulder and get right back over here if anything comes up.”

“So what do you want us to do in the meantime?”

“Nothing much left
to
do now but wait.”

“Your husband?” Amy had braced herself for family tragedy, even a clandestine relationship. This was the last answer she'd expected. Amy pulled the other chair over and sat down. “But you said your husband was killed in the mujahedeen bombing.”

“Yes, my first husband, Kareem. Ibrahim is—was—his cousin and mine. His wife, my younger sister, was killed too in the bombing. To marry was a logical solution for the family and our children—my daughter and his son.”

A conclusion leaped to Amy's mind. “Fatima.” How had she missed the resemblance?

“Yes, she is my daughter. But she is also a teacher, a good teacher.” At the sound of her name, the girl emerged from Soraya's bedroom to curl up at her mother's feet. Soraya touched the bandage on her head lovingly. No wonder Amy's housemate had been so frantic.

“And the young man who usually picks you up? He is Ibrahim's son?”

“No, Hamid is Kareem's youngest brother. Fariq is Ibrahim's son and my nephew.” A flicker of anguish crossed Soraya's face. “But though he is my sister's son by birth, he is the son of my heart. He was still an infant when Ibrahim took me as wife. He is now ten years old and knows no other mother.”

Amy wasn't sure if she was more disturbed by Soraya's falsehoods or that she'd felt any need to make them. “Why didn't you just tell me you had a family? Did you think I wouldn't have offered you the job if I'd known you were married? Because it wouldn't have made any difference.”

“Would you have asked me to live with you?” Soraya's expression was more defiant than penitent, but she was wringing her hands in her lap.

“Well, probably not,” Amy admitted. “I was looking for a single roommate like myself, and I wouldn't have wanted to take you away from your family. As it seems I've done. But you could have lived at home and commuted. I meant what I told you at the time—that living in was not a condition of the position.”

“And that is why I did not tell. We had lost our home—again. Our new rooms are too far to come every day. At least two hours in public transport. But Ibrahim does not understand.”

“He doesn't want you working here?”

“No, no, I have his permission to work. More, I have his command. Ibrahim does not speak English. He is an engineer with the city water system, but the pay is small, and there is little opportunity for baksheesh.”

Baksheesh. Tips, handouts, or to the American mind, just plain bribes, and the only way any government employee in Afghanistan could afford to eat on their miniscule salary.

“So it is necessary that I work for the foreigners because you pay much better salaries. But I must also attend my husband and his home. And now that we have moved far from where the foreigners live and work, this is difficult. I travel to attend his needs as much as I can, but sometimes it is not enough, and he becomes angry and does not wish me to return here.”

So instead of extended weekends, Soraya had simply been heading to another job. Amy's sympathy was quickly moderating her exasperation.
And I thought you were so privileged compared to Farah and all the others.

“Your husband sounded very angry,” Amy agreed cautiously. “Your son—I mean, stepson—would he really . . . ?” She broke off at a sight she'd never expected to see from the proud aristocrat who was her assistant. Though her head was held high, tears were running down her cheeks.

Soraya unknotted her hands to make a sweeping-away gesture. “He does not mean it, I am sure. Ibrahim is a good man who does not hit me or my daughter. He is only desperate. You must understand it is hard for him. I am some years older than Ibrahim. My father was an engineer. My first husband was an engineer too. He helped to build many of the streets of Kabul. He was a modern man and wished his daughter to study and know the world beyond Afghanistan.”

The words spilled out of Soraya as though she wanted Amy to understand what had brought her to this place and point in time. “But Ibrahim, you must understand that for him it has been different. The mujahedeen destroyed the university before he could finish. Then came the Taliban. Ibrahim had to leave his studies to work. He was not able to earn the title of engineer though he has learned to do the work.”

A title which here carried all the prestige of a PhD back home, an indicator of how highly their social scale rated the technological skills necessary to propel this country into the twenty-first century.

“And now Ibrahim is angry that even with my work here and Fatima's, we must again lose our place of residence.”

“Again?” Amy was missing something in this account. “But why? Has something happened?”

“Happened?” Soraya stared at Amy as though her employer were the one not making sense. Then anger flashed in her magnificent eyes, burning away tears. Her hand flung wide to encompass the suite and beyond its walls. “
This
is what happened. The foreigners came here—and we of Kabul lost to you our homes.”

“I'm not following you.” Amy shook her head. “New Hope didn't take this place from anyone. We rented it.”

“Yes, you rented it. And for how much?” Soraya didn't wait for an answer but went on impatiently. “My family was not wealthy, but they were educated, professional people. We lived in an apartment building where many professionals lived. The wealthiest then could rent a home in the Wazir for a few hundred dollars in your currency. Our apartment was perhaps fifty.

“Even under the Taliban we kept our homes. Then the foreigners came and began paying thousands of your dollars for any home with electricity and high walls and running water. So those who had rented here moved instead to our building. Our rent became five hundred dollars. We had to move to a few brick rooms with no electricity or sewer. Then those rents became three hundred dollars. We moved again to a mud house such as peasants inhabit far from the city center.

“And now there too the owner wishes to raise the rent to more than two hundred dollars. A teacher earns only fifty dollars. My husband earns little more. We have his mother and a widowed aunt to feed. Ibrahim wishes me to request an advance on my salary to pay the rent. He came with me today to ensure I obeyed. He doesn't understand that next month it will be the same. But where cheaper rents remain, there is not even running water or buses to come to work. My husband will no longer be able to reach his job. So you see why I must stay here even if I cannot see Fariq.”

Soraya was wringing her hands again. “Please do not ask me to leave. I will work longer hours. If necessary, I will remain here Fridays.”

The inadvertent consequences of even the best of intentions. If Amy had been frustrated at New Hope's ridiculous rental costs—many times what a similar facility would rent for in Kashmir or India—what had the expat real estate boom done to ordinary Kabulis?
Like a game of musical chairs until the bottom rung ends up on those dirt terraces up the mountain.

“I am so sorry” was all Amy could say. “But how does Fatima get here every morning then? And your nephew Hamid?”

“A cousin lives not far. Fatima pays their board with her teaching, and Hamid attends school. At least for now.”

Soraya's foreign-earned income paid for school bills and books and uniforms as well as food and rent and all the rest of the family's needs. And that was the flip side. The expat economy that skyrocketed rental values also pumped in much-needed income, at least to Kabulis with skills of value to Western employers. How did you explain the trickle-down economics of international aid to those on the bottom of the trickle-down? Amy could now forgive even Ibrahim's arrogant hostility. It had to be galling to watch his wife earn far more than he only because she could speak to the foreigners overrunning his country.

If Amy couldn't fix all the broken pieces of the international aid system, at least she could do something for this single piece dropped into her path. “I don't want to lose you or Fatima either. To be honest, I can't afford to lose either of you. And I think I have a solution for all of us. Why don't you bring your whole family here? The suite next to the office is still empty, and Fatima could have your current room. Call it a salary bonus for the two of you.”

Amy's offer was a generous one even if she did need Soraya as much as Soraya needed the job. So she was taken aback when Soraya demanded, “For how long? My husband will not be pleased if he must move again soon.”

“Well, I hadn't actually been thinking of a time limit.” Amy studied her housemate. The cool glance, no longer tearful, that dropped quickly under Amy's gaze to her hands. The sullen droop of the full mouth and rigidity of posture.

Slowly, even reluctantly, Amy asked, “Why do I feel you are still angry with me? My offer was only a suggestion. You certainly don't need to feel obligated to say yes. But I need you to be honest with me. Have I offended you in some way?”

Soraya didn't look up immediately, the submission life had instilled warring with the strength of her emotions and personality. Then she raised her head proudly to look at Amy, and there was no mistaking the defiance. “I am not angry with you. You are a woman hired as I am to do a job in my country. You do the job well and are kinder to these women than required. But your superiors in America, how long will they wish to pay lodging and food for these women and their offspring? If I bring my family here, how do I know tomorrow you will not be gone and we will be again in the street? Is that not the way of your people?”

Soraya's shoulders hunched. “I think the Russians were better for us in Afghanistan than the Americans. At least they made no promises. They came in with their guns and helicopters and tanks, and they told us how it would be. If one did not protest their rule, at least there were books, schools for girls, jobs, no burqas. But the Americans—you gave us hope. You made promises, and we believed them. If the Russians could bring so much, how much more the Americans? There was to be a new world. Democracy. Freedom.”

Soraya's lips twisted with contempt. “But it is always the same. I was translator for one of your literacy programs. The women were excited to read the Quran, to see if it truly says what their husbands and the mullahs say it does. But in three months the instructor took her pay and went back to America, though the women had not yet learned to read. Then I worked for a sewing institute. The women learned to make clothing and so feed their families. But after six months the sewing machines were carried away. The program was over, they said. So I have seen over and over. And all the money promised to our country to help—where has it gone? We see your houses and new cars and restaurants. What is left for us?”

The worst was that Soraya had hit the nail dead-on. There was no denying most aid projects were limited commitments, personnel even more so. Few aid workers were like Becky Frazer, staying long enough to learn the language and culture. A typical stint ran from a few weeks to a year at most, with Amy's current three-month contract at the top of the bell curve.

“I'm sorry, Soraya. I can sure understand how it would seem that way. And I know projects aren't always coordinated well. But it's better than nothing, isn't it?”

“Better than nothing? When we had nothing, we endured! To give hope and then snatch it away is not better than nothing. It is cruel. As to freedom, the mullahs and the warlords are still in charge. Women must still wear the burqa and be treated as property. And when the money runs out, will you not all leave to some other country where your services will again be paid? These women and their children—where will they go then? Or do you promise you at least will stay?” Soraya looked challengingly at Amy.

Amy felt weary. Somewhere in someone's wiser brain than hers was the perfect answer. But she had no idea what that might be.
Soraya is older, smarter, and better educated than I. She knows good and well that in a just world she'd be the one in charge here, not me. But even if maybe it shouldn't be, New Hope is my responsibility.