Page 18 of Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin #4)

M Y MOTHER ADVISED THAT TO keep myself safe, I should peer into other people’s souls but never let them see mine.

My father said in the case of danger, I should find a man. Specifically, his dear friend Professor Ahmadi, who would always take care of me.

I think of these instructions now as I weave my way frantically through the streets of Kabul, dodging milling families, umbrella-topped food carts, and a pile of blocked vehicles honking furiously at one another.

Some people draw back from the strange sight of a traditionally garbed female in a dark head covering running around with a long gun.

Most are too consumed by their own panic to notice.

I dash behind a line of market stalls in various states of packing.

Race through another narrow alley, then another.

I careen into the wider cross street in time to discover a black-turbaned Taliban fighter standing on the other side of the jammed street.

From across the way, he takes me in, a lone female, and smiles.

His gaze falls upon my rifle. His smile grows.

I don’t know what to do. Raise my weapon threateningly? Flee back the way I’d come?

Except there’s a press of people behind me as well. Everyone trying to pour into the main avenues. Everyone desperate to escape.

A man pulling a four-wheeled wagon piled high with stacks of swaying trunks halts between me and the leering militant.

I don’t wait. I turn and run, bouncing off surging bodies and tripping over abandoned belongings as I fight my way upstream.

The university, from which I had fled just hours ago, now seems my only hope.

When I finally glance to my left, I don’t see the Taliban fighter anymore. But I still catch glimpses of black turbans pushing through the streets, emerging from various storefronts and side alleys. The crowd’s growing fright is palpable.

The smell of exhaust fumes and sweat-covered bodies. The feel of steel and concrete blast walls, pressing against a swelling tide of humanity. The congestion of red-and-black-umbrellaed four-wheeled market stalls, once set up to feed milling shoppers, now desperate to escape.

I veer right when a second scowling man appears in front of me, swerve left when a third snatches at my arm. It feels like swimming upstream, which makes me think of the last day at the lake, the feel of his fingers entwined in mine…

By the time I stagger through the university gates, I’m gasping in a gut-churning combination of grief, fear, and exhaustion.

All I want is sanctuary. What I discover, however, is a scene only slightly less chaotic than the city streets.

People dashing here, dashing there, while others appear to be nearly spinning in place.

And the noise—an undercurrent of anxious mutterings that seem to come from everywhere and swell to a crashing crescendo.

What’s happening, where to go? Rumors fly that the Taliban have entered from the west and south and are capturing all government institutions, including schools.

And yet the idea that an institution as prestigious as this university might fall still feels preposterous.

Of course, the Taliban, marching straight into Kabul…

No one knows what to do, because none of us possessed this level of imagination. And yet now, here we are.

Pressing my back against the wall, I work my way quickly to Professor Ahmadi’s office.

Inside, I find him sorting through his oldest and most precious notebooks, whose ragged pages are filled with lecture notes he has carefully curated over the years, official textbooks being hard to come by.

Even more amazing, he has an entire red binder filled with meticulously developed theorems and proofs, in hope of the day he’ll have a wider audience.

Now, one by one, he’s piling such treasures into open boxes.

He stills the moment he sees me. His dark eyes, set deep beneath heavy, gray-shot brows, fall to the rifle clutched in my trembling hand.

“It is that bad, then? Your father?”

I can’t say the words. The professor nods once, saving me from the heartache.

“And your brother?”

I shake my head.

He grunts. “I tried to warn your father. His brothers were doing him no favors. Side with them, pay the price.”

I open my mouth, but all that emerges is a half-choked sob, the beginning note of an animal’s wounded scream.

Ahmadi sets down the red-covered journal in his hand, considers me straight on.

An older man, he wears his intelligence like a fierce cloak wrapped around his tall frame and hawkish nose.

I’ve seen women swoon over him. And I’ve heard whispers about the others, female students upon whom he set his gaze, then dismissed once they succumbed.

Dokhtar Baaz, they whispered behind his back, a lecherous old man. I don’t think they were wrong.

I’ve worked for him for nearly a year, an exalted position for someone of my junior standing. But I’m not stupid. I observe how his gaze spends more time roaming the lines of my body than reviewing the long and torturous equations he has me copying onto the chalkboard.

Lately his focus has grown even more attentive, the first to notice my drift into bulkier, more traditional dress.

Then later, seeming to actually notice how my hastily scrawled numbers are scratched across the blackboard with surprising speed and fluidity.

I’ve had to force myself to slow down, to glance repeatedly at his annotations, as if in need of the information.

Now he considers me. Then, as a direct order: “Tell me.”

I want to make the announcement matter-of-factly, if not defiantly. Instead, my cheeks flush hotly, and I’m acutely aware of my shame.

I miss my mother. It’s foolish, but now more than ever, I long for the comfort of her embrace.

I want to confess to her all my stupidity and na?ve female failings.

I want her to tell me everything will be all right, and even if she’s lying, at least for a moment, I will be able to set down my burden.

Now I try to utter three simple words. My mouth opens, closes. No declaration emerges. I blush harder, try again. I still can’t make my throat work. My father might be progressive, but even he would be appalled by what I’ve done.

For an instant, terribly, selfishly, heartbreakingly, I am grateful he’s dead and will never know of my disgrace. Which makes me hang my head in shame all over again.

Professor Ahmadi, finally taking pity on me: “Who’s the father?” He asks the question brusquely. I’m grateful for the lack of berating.

“Does it matter?” I whisper.

“I would say, given the circumstances, it matters very much.”

I shake my head. “He’s gone. I’m alone. That is all that’s relevant.”

“Is he American?” Ahmadi asks sharply.

“No.”

“But you could say he is. An American combatant, recently recalled from Bagram?”

“I… I guess.”

“Then this is what we shall do: we will head to the base together. You’ll be the expectant sweetheart of a US soldier. I’ll be your father. They will fly us both out of here.”

I give him a puzzled look. I highly doubt it will be that simple. And yet, having dictated his plan, Professor Ahmadi has already resumed packing.

“Is that all you’re taking?” He nods his chin in the direction of my only visible possession, the rifle dangling at my side.

I remember what my mother said. About what we would want. About what we would be allowed.

“I have everything I need,” I say at last, drifting a hand over my slightly rounded belly. And when he assumes that I’m talking about my unborn child, I don’t bother to correct him.

In the end, it is not so simple. Professor Ahmadi loads his car with all his boxes of books and bags of valuables, everything he’s convinced he can’t live without.

The moment we depart the university gates, however, we are immediately stalled in the same heavy congestion I encountered earlier.

No amount of honking or swearing makes a difference, and it quickly becomes clear we’ll never make it to Bagram, which is a full hour north of the city.

Instead, we set our sights on the Hamid Karzai International Airport, spending an agonizing four hours covering what should’ve taken thirty minutes.

Even then, by the final few miles, the crush of humanity has grown too dense to be passable by car.

We park in the middle of the road, the professor picking one suitcase, topping it with his most precious box, before slinging a black duffel over his shoulder.

He hands me a second. We set out unsteadily, quickly overwhelmed by the sheer chaos.

Women sobbing and wailing in the oppressive heat.

Grown men wading through drainage canals filled with knee-deep sewage.

The closer we get, the worse it becomes, the press of humanity congealing into an impassable wall pressing against a second even more imposing physical structure, this one topped by coils of razor wire and manned by grim-faced US Marines armed with assault rifles.

Children are being passed forward through the crowd.

Someone has even climbed halfway up, frantically trying to hand over a baby as if gaining access to the stream of departing US cargo planes is the only hope of survival.

I watch in a mix of horror and fascination. The Americans have abandoned us. The Americans will save us. It makes no sense and yet still isn’t as crazy as the three-thousand-year-old capital, my city, my family’s home, collapsing in less than twenty-four hours.

There are faces in the crowd I recognize and who recognize me. We all studiously avoid eye contact, though at this point, it hardly matters.

In war, there are winners and losers. Here are the losers, hundreds of thousands of Afghans who dared fight for a better future, and in the coming days, will probably pay with their lives. Or worse, their families will pay that price for them.

I’m grateful that my mother is already dead, that she does not have to see this. That she doesn’t have to swallow down the bitter taste in her mouth, which is now filling my own.

Eventually, Professor Ahmadi grabs my arm and pulls me away. There’s no hope for us here. Everyone is thrusting precious papers in the air, legal documents attesting to their right to leave the country. Everyone is lugging personal valuables and family treasures.

None of it matters.

“Should the worst happen, people will want to take everything, but in the end, they will be allowed nothing. Remember this, my sweet. Remember.”

Now I fall in step behind Ahmadi as we awkwardly press our way through the incoming streams of traffic in order to return to his automobile.

“We will be married,” he states as we are walking.

“I thought you were my father.”

He halts so abruptly, I nearly stumble into him. “Sabera! Look around. Surely you see everything has changed. It’s no longer safe for a young woman to be alone.”

I want to argue with him. But I recall the look of that first Taliban fighter leering at me from across the street, anticipation already brightening his eyes.

The professor releases the handle of his suitcase long enough to grasp my shoulder.

“I have the connections and resources to get us across the border. We will have to travel by car, but it can be done. In return, Sabera, I will be your husband. You will follow my lead, you will do as I say, and you will accept me in each and every way. Do you understand?”

The grip of his hand tightens, strong and bruising for a man of his years, while beneath those thick brows, his own eyes hold a gleam.

I regard him for a full minute. I remember bursting pomegranate trees and the sound of my brother’s laughter.

I remember my parents and the look they shared every day of their marriage.

I remember floating peacefully atop a deep, dark lake, my pale shirt spreading around me like butterfly wings, while his warm hand slipped into mine.

When I was a girl, I dreamed.

Now I nod once.

“I promised your father that I would keep you safe,” Professor Ahmadi states curtly.

“And I am a man of my word. I will accept the child as my own. I will provide for you both. Maybe it is not the marriage you expected, but I am an exceedingly brilliant man, Sabera. And it’s clear to me you are an exceedingly clever girl.

We might not do so poorly together after all. ”

He resumes forcing his way through the cresting human tide.

After a moment, I follow.

My father told me when the danger grew too great, I would need a man to save me.

My mother instructed me when the worst happened, never let anyone peer into my soul.

Use others. But never give too much of yourself away.

Perhaps they were both right in the end.

I have written this to you, Zahra, along with the other diary entries and assorted ramblings, because like any child who’s lost a parent too soon, I know how uncertain the future is.

I have borne witness to so much death and tragedy.

And yet from the first instant I held you in my arms, I have also experienced the greatest love and deepest joy.

I would’ve liked to have watched you grow up, my sweet child, to experience the expanding years and significant life events I never had with my own mother. But maybe, much like my maadar jan, my days have always been numbered.

Now, Zahra, I will give you the same advice my parents gave me:

Trust in Isaad. He kept his word, claiming you from the moment of your birth, before falling hopelessly in love with your clever and curious mind.

He will never willingly let anyone harm you, including me.

Trust in yourself. You are descended from warriors. The men in our family foolishly believe that distinction belongs to them, but it is the women, going back generations, who have made the bravest decisions and fought the toughest battles.

Remember, my sweet girl:

All the love you’ve ever wanted, you have.

All the courage you’ve ever needed, you possess.

All the secrets of the universe you’ve hoped to learn, you hold in your amazing mind.

My darling Zahra…

Chin up.