Page 27 of Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin #4)

T HE RATS STARE AT US. We jolt awake during the night to discover them mere inches from our sleeping bodies, beady eyes fixed upon our noses, chins, ears. Even Isaad has taken to wrapping his head for bedtime. If he finds its hot and uncomfortable, he’s wise enough not to utter a word.

Then there’s the smell. Human sweat, raw sewage, soiled diapers. This “temporary” camp was meant to hold a couple thousand. Now swelled ten times past that point, it’s like a septic wound, ready to burst.

Isaad announces my pregnancy the moment we arrive.

I’m self-conscious, but quickly relent. A refugee camp is less a way station than a dumping ground for desperate humanity.

There’s screaming all night long. Innocent people caught in the grips of vicious nightmares.

Young men caught up in explosive violence.

Young women caught by callous predators.

As a pregnant female, I’m entitled to protective custody.

Which is to say, Isaad and I are moved into a secured section within a larger gated compound, where we are closer to the police and new arrivals.

Once upon a time, a family was entitled to their own little structure, but due to overcrowding, those standards have long since passed.

We share the single-room unit with a family of six, one set of parents and four small children who greet our arrival with rounded shoulders and terrified eyes.

A threadbare blanket hangs as a makeshift curtain down half the space in a pitiful attempt at privacy.

Our first night, after spending an entire day standing in line to receive a single ration of food, Isaad hands half to me. Then, after thirty seconds of staring at his own meager portion of cold rice drowned in greasy curry, he hands over his bowl to the father of the family.

“It is not for us,” Isaad states gruffly. “We are Afghan, not Indian. This food will only hurt our stomachs.”

The four children fall upon it gratefully, their parents gazing at us in quiet exhaustion.

And I think, not for the first time in the past few weeks, that there’s more to my husband than meets the eye.

A woman can give her body. It’s not so hard after all. The things men want, the demands they feel are so important. It costs us everything, but it costs us nothing, because a clever female, a strong female, can meet basic expectations, while keeping everything of value to herself.

In the beginning, it enraged Isaad. Our first night, when he made it clear he was my husband in every way possible. And I lay there, not thinking of lakes, or hot summer days, or those moments where once I could see an entire future in one man’s eyes…

I thought of none of those things.

I felt nothing.

In the end, my “husband” rolled away in a huff of rage.

We were on the road. Limited to sleeping awkwardly in a cheap hotel or cramped car.

But as we grew closer to the border, still not having been blown up by an IED or shot by a Taliban soldier, Isaad’s attentions grew more frequent, more urgent, more… creative.

Things of which I had no idea. Persistence that invited rather than commanded and was therefore even more threatening to my determination to remain aloof.

Which seemed to make him all the more determined on the subject.

By the time we arrived at the border, Isaad’s resources had run dry.

I volunteered the contents tucked inside the single volume I had plucked from my father’s library—books may be priceless, but when making my selection I knew cash would matter most, hence my father’s “safe book.” Next up, having been allowed to cross into Pakistan and now desperate for entry into a designated camp, I produced my mother’s necklace.

It took a bit more haggling, as the officials had been bribed with many heirlooms by now, but fortunately, I’d picked the pendant with equal care.

Ironically, the necklace was my mother’s least favorite, as it featured stones from my uncles’ mines.

The impressive size and exquisite color of the watermelon tourmalines, however, made it an exceptional piece—and a final homage to a place and people that were no more.

We were finally granted entrance only to spend even more hours standing in line, where despite our more than generous offerings, uniformed guards stared at us in open disdain.

I waited for my husband to explode into a show of vanity and self-importance.

But at each checkpoint, in front of bored officials and heavily armed police, he remained a study in devoted family man.

He murmured reassuring words in my ear. He requested our safe passage. He begged for the life of my baby.

Day after day, line after line, obstacle after obstacle.

Professor Ahmadi, the once notorious Dokhtar Baaz, put his own future on the line to fight for my unborn child.

I learned perhaps there’s more to life than pretty lakes and hot summer days after all.

The family sharing our cabin is kind. They have already been at this refugee camp for six months. They have relatives in Australia. They hope someone, anyone, might approve their paperwork sooner versus later so they can continue on to their loved ones.

They are Hazaras. In other words, as Shiites in Sunni-dominated Afghanistan, they have long been subject to discrimination.

A return to the Taliban-controlled state would mean at best persecution, at worst, genocide.

Unfortunately, their fate isn’t much better in Pakistan, where they must face down glowering guards and distrustful neighbors.

As if life behind coils of razor wire isn’t hard enough.

After the first night of Isaad sharing his food, the woman, Malalai, appears with an offering of her own—adult diapers. She offers them first to me, and then, much to Isaad’s consternation, to him.

It’s not safe to use the latrines at night, she informs us.

Forget the hungry rats and packs of feral dogs.

The camp is filled with young men, lost, traumatized, inured to violence.

Stabbings are daily, some the result of short-tempered exchanges.

Some simply the last straw of troubled minds that can’t take one second more of the noise, the smell, the oppressive rain/heat/cold.

The police are too few, the doctors and social workers nearly nonexistent.

Keep my hair covered, she advises. Also, my head bowed and my gaze down. I may have escaped the Taliban, but that doesn’t mean I’m safe. Women can change countries; we still can’t change the minds of men.

Very quickly, we discover Isaad isn’t wrong about the food.

Afghan cuisine is a satisfying mix of sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, tangy and comforting.

The endless curries served up here, however, rip through our intestines.

By the third evening, both Isaad and I can only lie on our mats and moan, our one precious bottle of water not nearly enough to replace the fluids pouring out of our bodies.

Halfway through the night, Isaad staggers to his feet, determined to summon help. He collapses at the door. The husband, Rafiq, helps him back to bed. The couple have nothing to offer but their compassion.

When I awake again at first light, their five-year-old boy, Omid, is stealing our water bottle. I want to cry out in protest. But I don’t have the strength, as he takes the bottle, tips it back, and pours the final few precious drops onto Isaad’s parched lips.

“Sleep, Kaka, sleep,” he whispers comfortingly. I would cry, but I don’t have enough moisture left.

We survive. We learn. We adapt. Somewhere around the fourth week, I make my way through the camp to the communal showers for my designated slot, Isaad striding along beside me.

At one time, I would’ve rolled my eyes at his puffed-up chest and self-important swagger.

Now I’m grateful for his protective arm and beetled brow as mere mortals scatter before us.

Suddenly, a teenage boy lurches into our path. He isn’t screaming as much as gasping, his hands clutched over his stomach, where I can see a splotch of red spreading rapidly across his tattered and dirty tunic.

Two older men come skittering to a stop behind him, one grabbing at the teen’s arm, yanking him back.

The boy staggers. The men burst into a frenzy of sharply delivered words.

Isaad is already tucking me behind his imposing form.

The men aren’t Afghan. Maybe Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan or Burmese; the refugee camp is a virtual United Nations of homelessness.

More chatter, the second man now yanking at the boy as well.

The boy doesn’t speak. He sways dangerously, his face leeching of color as more red seeps across his shirt.

The second man speaks up harshly, his intent clearly ominous as he prepares to drag the injured youth away. I don’t know what else to do. I twist out from behind Isaad’s looming form, wrap both my arms around the young boy, and pull him against me.

The sudden insertion of a clearly pregnant female shocks both of the men into silence.

I use the opportunity to hiss out forceful words of my own. The two men immediately raise placating hands before exchanging alarmed glances, then bolting away.

I can feel the boy shivering. Shock, pain, exhaustion. I whisper reassuring words as he collapses against me. I cradle his form as we sink to the ground, offering what comfort I can, as four other teens burst onto the scene, taking in me, the wounded boy, then Isaad’s obviously enraged expression.

They begin to mutter in agitation, their language foreign to Isaad and rapidly increasing his hostility.

Quickly I cut them off with a slew of questions, followed by rapid-fire instructions.

In the next few minutes, they mobilize, two returning with a thin brown blanket, the others helping lift their friend atop, then each grabbing a corner, the refugee version of a stretcher, as they heft up their friend’s injured form and sprint in the direction of the makeshift medical clinic.

Bit by bit, the crowd returns to the demanding task of basic survival, till it is just me and Isaad. I’m covered in blood, while Isaad wears a look of confusion.

“What was that?” he asks.

“The boy was waiting in line for food. The men thought he’d taken their place. There was some kind of disagreement… The boy’s friends came, but not in time to help.”

“How do you know this?”

I hesitate, studying the man who is now my husband. I search his face for a long time. I must pick my next words very carefully.

“I listened to them.”

“That is not Dari, nor Pashto, nor English.” Isaad frowns at me. “How did you understand them?”

Then when I don’t immediately answer: “Tell me, Sabera. Where are they from? What were they speaking?”

I am saved from having to confess that I have no idea, that all syllables in any language are nothing but bright, shiny notes, waiting for me to pluck them out of the air and string together in a song of my own making.

That I can do the same with numbers. And symbols and faces and names.

For me, the entire universe is nothing more than an assortment of threads that I can weave together, rip apart, then form anew in any and all configurations.

And most of the time, I can do it between drawing one breath and another.

It took me years to understand others don’t experience the world the same way.

And it took my mother to make it clear that others must never know.

Life for a woman is hard enough.

A fresh commotion. Two dark-clad policemen appear, sending an immediate shiver of panic through the crowd.

Then a tall man with unkempt curly brown hair and heavily whiskered cheeks strides up behind them.

He wears stained blue surgical scrubs with a stethoscope dangling haphazardly around his neck.

“They said a woman understood him. You.” His gaze locks on me, still seated on the ground with red streaks across my hands, my clothes, my face. “What’s your name?”

Isaad takes an immediate step forward in aggravation. The two policemen muster accordingly.

The doctor raises a commanding hand, declares in a distinctly American accent, “Stop. You.” His gaze once again zeros in on me. “Your name.” It’s not a question, but a command.

I murmur obediently. “Sabera Ahmadi.”

“She is my wife—” Isaad begins. The doctor couldn’t care less. His attention remains fixed on me and only me.

“Mrs. Ahmadi, the wounded boy that was just dragged into my clinic, you can understand him?”

“Yes.”

“Then come with me. I need you, if that boy’s to live.”

The look my husband gives me…

Be still, I want to tell him. Everything will be all right.

And it occurs to me for the first time that I’ve grown accustomed to his bristling eyebrows and hawkish nose and perpetually brooding features.

I’ve come to appreciate the way in the middle of the night, when my dreams are especially bad, he will tuck my head against his shoulder, even if we never speak of it come morning.

My mouth opens. I grasp desperately for words of assurance. But just because I can understand nearly every language doesn’t mean I always know what to say.

“Before the boy bleeds out!” the doctor barks.

The security men take a threatening step forward.

I shift away from my husband, toward the impatient physician.

His gaze homes in on my bulky figure. “And you’re pregnant? Of course. Fuck it. All right, one life at a time in this hellhole.”

Then a string of exasperated mutterings I understand better than he thinks as we head for the woefully understaffed, undersupplied medical clinic.

A young man I saved.

And who might well be the death of me yet.

Zahra, I’m sorry.

Zahra, I love you.

Zahra, forgive me for what happens next.