Doctors Without Borders. But I sent a son here to fight. It's the hardest thing I've ever done— you know from your own families. While Jimmy was here, I was living back there, but living differently. I lived with an everyday fear. He returned, thankfully. But he's— you know, he's . . ." She thought about saying changed, but she was trying to get at the root of what she felt now, and part of that involved veering away from euphemisms. "He's a double amputee." She paused, finding herself surprised again at the ugliness of this phrase. "So it's also personal. I decided to try . . . maybe to understand things better in the end. There have to be Afghan mothers here who feel like I do. I'd like to meet them."
A car honked its horn as it passed them, and Mendez cursed under his breath. "Yeah, well, good luck with your work," he said. "Hell, it's as likely to win hearts and minds as anything else we do out here."
" Jimmy was a good soldier," Holder said after a moment. He turned to Mandy. "So how is he, really?"
This was too complex a question to answer in this hurtling car, in front of strangers. What could she say? That loud noises frighten him and he seems to have forgotten how to laugh? That he says Afghanistan left him forever half a man, and that some nights he grows so dark it scares her, and then he drinks himself into oblivion? That sometimes she feels like she's just waiting for the day he'll give up altogether and become a delayed, unacknowledged fatality of this war, possibly taking her down with him?
She looked out the window, aware of the awkward fall of silence. "He's alive," she said. "In the end, I guess we're lucky."
"Damn straight," Mendez said. Then, mercifully, he turned on the radio, and Arabic-sounding music flooded the car, making Mandy think of young women dancing in gauze dresses. She gazed out the window, remembering when she herself had been a young woman with clingy dresses and shapely legs and an easy stride, a woman who'd not yet cleaned blood off a wound or leaned over a terminal patient or had a baby ripen in her belly.
She rested a hand on her chest, feeling the air move inside her. Something was badly broken in there, she knew. But maybe— and this was the secret hope she'd carried with her from Texas to Dubai and over the yawning stretch of Afghanistan— maybe she'd heal herself in their hospitals, by a taste of the country that had chewed up her son and then spit him back. Maybe, if God existed, if he were truly great, they'd all be healed.
Todd
September 4th
The argument had tumbled forward for almost twenty minutes now and had already begun circling back; Todd was ready for ice cream. To a casual observer, the debate might seem one-sided; after all, Amin did all the talking. But Todd had a knack for disagreeing without speaking. His was the art of those too cautious or too isolated to engage in frank exchanges. He'd refined it over years of working far from home, challenging himself to seek persuasion through patience and through words used like pinches of pepper in a delicate dish.
"This isn't our work," Amin said. "I don't trust Zarlasht; her aim
is to manipulate," and then, with greater heat, "It's dangerous to in
volve yourself in a dispute of this sort, Mr. Todd— I feel a responsi
bility to make sure you understand this," and finally, "It's outside our
sphere of responsibility, anyway. We must concentrate on working
for refugees."
Todd smiled or grimaced now and then, nodded in a way that indicated nothing more than thoughtfulness, and occasionally glanced out the window. Though his vision was curtailed by the ten-foot-high whitewashed security wall that encased the compound, he knew that just beyond it lay the chaotic life of Kabul streets, where women in burqas clutched kohl-eyed babies and begged at stoplights and men pushing wheelbarrows loaded with bruised fruit swayed between cars with audacity, where underfed children scattered and regrouped to sell pieces of rusted metal intended for purposes Todd could never discern, where traffic lights and lane markings were thought to be for sissies and safe travel was achieved only through great boldness and luck. He longed for it. He longed especially now, stuck in a room of intellectual— and ultimately, he feared, irresolvable—discord.
Finally, blessedly, Amin paused for breath.
" Shall I get us some sheer yakh?" Todd asked.
"Why not simply have told her to return on Thursday instead of Wednesday?" Amin said, using what surely had to be the last of his arguing energy. "Then I could have said you were called out of town on an emergency. That might have discouraged her— or at least would have given me time to look into her claims, her family." Todd's travel plans were always secret; Amin, his closest Kabul colleague— no, friend— was the only person here who knew that early Thursday, just before fajr prayers, Todd would depart for Islamabad. By Thursday evening, he would be waist-deep in issues involving refugees in Pakistan, and Zarlasht would have been turned away at the gate. After four weeks in Pakistan, Todd would return for one more month in Kabul, his last. Then back to New York, and to Clarissa, for good, though Amin hadn't yet been told that, and of course that involved challenges of its own. Challenges not to be considered now; Todd always said his doctors insisted that, for his continued good health, he ignore all problems outside his current time zone.
"Because, Amin, we cannot simply dismiss this as beyond our mandate." Todd kept his voice neutral in contrast to Amin's heat. "You tell me the villagers are turning to the Taliban for justice. Well, Zarlasht is turning to us. If we do nothing, we are by default supporting the Taliban."
"How many years do I know you now, Mr. Todd? Long enough for me to say that you are still too trusting, and my words are not a— how do you say?—a compliment. You—"
But Todd held up his hand, cutting Amin off. "Wait, my friend. First . . ." He reached to a tray on a table in the corner, lifted two small glass bowls, and raised his eyebrows in a question.
Amin let out an exasperated breath. "Too late for ice cream," he said.
"Oh, Amin, we haven't reached the end of the world yet. And even then—"
"Your cook told me to strictly forbid you from eating ice cream after 3 p.m. because otherwise, you won't eat her dinners."
"Yes," Todd agreed. "Shogofa will not be happy with me. But there's nothing for it; sheer yakh it must be. It will clear our brains. Remember, we have the late meeting with the American nurse, Mandy Wilkens."
"I didn't forget," Amin said. "But Mr. Todd, do you really want ice cream, or just to escape my reasonable words?"
"The ice cream. Okay, mostly the ice cream." Todd, mock-somber, laid his palm on his chest. "I swear."
Amin shook his head in resignation. "One scoop," he said. "Only one."
Todd grinned as he headed out the office door and down the steps to the main entrance, where he slipped his shoes on. He nodded to his driver, Farzad, smoking by the car. "Salaam alekum," he said to Mustafa, the building guard, who emerged from a small room next to the metal gates. Todd raised the ice-cream cups as if they were admission tickets, which, in a way, they were.
Todd was required to travel everywhere by reinforced car with tinted windows: to refugee camps, government offices, the UN compound, the rare meal out, even the five blocks to the guesthouse where he slept. He sat in the back, with Farzad driving and Jawwid in the front passenger seat toting an AK-
47. Those who came to Todd's office were not allowed through the gate unless
