Mirrors and Cloth
By Karen L. McKee
Smashwords Edition. Electronic edition published by Twisted Root Publishing August 2011 Mirrors and Cloth Copyright © 2011 by Karen L. McKee.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For more information about Twisted Root Publishing, please visit our website at http://www.twistedrootpublishing.com
For an excerpt of “Ashes and Light” click HERE.
Also by Karen L. McKee and available at your favorite etailers as e-books and in print:
Ashes and Light
Judas Kiss
Second Spring
Shades of Moonlight
Mirrors and Cloth
When Brian and I arrived in Bikaner deep in the heart of the Rajasthani desert, the neem trees were in bloom. Their flowers filled the dry, Indian wind with a sweetness that will always remind me of the price of our lives. And of David.
“What d’ya think?” Brian asked as we considered the guest house while standing on a carpet of golden petals under the heavy sunlight. His Aussie accent was thicker than the dust on my tongue.
Our backpacks weighed heavy, as did the desert dust of the train from Jaisalmer. The neem trees rained glorious yellow to cover the driveway of the “General’s Lair”, a fine, wooden, merchant house – a haveli – preserved in the traditional, courtyard style of the Shekhawati area of Rajasthan. We had come to see the murals the merchants used to decorate their homes in the early days of the Raj.
“I just want a bath and to dig out of my pores,” I said.
Brian’s thick moustache twitched with his grin. “I’ll wash yer back.” He squeezed my hand and pulled me towards the house.
His touch sent a charming thrill up my arm. Brian, my nascent lover. But David waited at home while I conducted research for a magazine article on the murals. And I loved David.
Inside the house’s brass-hinged doors we stopped.
“Hello?” I called. My voice echoed across the forecourt and into the courtyard at the heart of the house.
The harsh sun filled the open, tiled area, but wide, shadowed galleries filled with potted palms, low tables and chairs surrounded that cauldron of light. Above, wood-grilled galleries would have allowed women caught in purdah to have a view of freedom. A breeze blew the scent of the neem trees even here and rattled in palm fronds.
A young man appeared across the pavement: dressed in western trousers and shirt, but tall, almost effete in that way young Indian men can be. “Hello? Hello. I am Jamal. You wish rooms?”
“Two, please,” I said and Brian glanced at me. But David still waited at home. David who needed me, wanted me. And I wasn’t sure of Brian, my charming, fellow adventurer. Not sure it would last. Not sure I would want it to.
Jamal looked at each of us as if catching the current, catching how close our hands hung to each other. Finally he led us through the gallery past huge brass planters, into cool breezes and past a long line of paintings on the stucco walls.
The paintings were of Rajput men of Rajasthan, with stern stares, magnificent curled moustaches, ornately tied turbans. I stopped, caught by the magnificence of coiled saffron cloth. I looked down the gallery. The men were everywhere, staring, each turban unique.
“Are these them? Are they some of the murals?”
Jamal shook his head. “My father’s work. When he retired from the army he made a study of the turbans of Rajasthan. Each tribe had its own style. You could tell where a man was from, how he thought, by his turban. It was his identity. But some of the tradition is lost in this modern day. He had them painted here to preserve them. Now he is gone.”
I looked back at the painting done directly on the stucco wall. The yellow cloth on the man’s head, the ruby cloth in the painting next to it – the whorls of fabric sculptured their own identity, their own landscape, twisted like an Indian script, and Indian thought.
In my room, I hauled my things from the pack. Dusty-but-clean clothing, a bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap. Aah, to strip and get clean.
In the mirror, the pale pink Rajasthani dust stained the creases of my eyes, my cuticles, the insides of my nostrils. David would laugh at my discomfort and tell me to come home where there was fresh water all the time.
Why was I here? That would be his question.
Work was the easy answer. I didn’t want to think about the hard one.
Hands fell on my shoulders and I stiffened.
Brian.
“You startled me.”
“Sorry,” his voice burred. His gaze scanned the room, the bed. “Nice. Like you.”
His hands slipped under my pony tail, down my back. “It’s going to happen, ye know.”
I looked away. “Maybe.” But maybe not – even though his presence excited me. We’d met on the train to Pushkar sitting in the shade of a palm tree and watching the faithful bathe at the ghats. Our interest in travel had been a magnet between us: his eyes held the same far-away look owned by my reflection.
Bikaner was our last stop before returning to Delhi. There, I would go home.
He would continue his adventures.
He placed his lips on mine in a kiss deep enough it drowned me - even here in the desert.
I twisted away. The heat off his hands, off his body was different than I was used to. Different from David. Hot as the wind off the sand.
“Damn it, Lena! Why the hell are ye with me, then?” His hands dropped away suddenly and the disconnect staggered me.
How the hell did I know? I looked back at him and his broad shoulders and long legs. Heat flushed his face.
The current between us could sweep me away from all the certainties in my life. I shook my head. “I… I thought we were friends.”
He snorted and went to leave. At the door he stopped. “You have to decide. Ye can’t keep men on your hook forever.”
Then he was gone and I went into the bath, but the spots where his hands had been still held hot. The shower didn’t cool them. Not even thoughts of David could do that.
#
For a week we traveled to the towns around Bikaner to photograph the murals. The houses were ornately carved, signatures of the wealth of the builders, and their ruin when the caravan trade ended. The murals were paintings of village life, family life, the gods, and of the English the merchants encountered in the outside world. They faded in the dust and sun while Brian’s heat rose.
During that time Jamal’s wife, Sahri, was the main cook in the house. Small, verging on roundness, with the black hair and doe eyes one finds in the miniature paintings so famous in Rajasthan. She looked up at my height, at my trousers and seemed uncertain, but when I told her I liked my masala hot, we became friends.
In the kitchen she showed me her tiffen – her metal spice pot filled with tumeric, paprika, cardamom, and cloves. And pepper measured with a small silver spoon, the room filling with spices and our laughter as she told me of her life.
“I am happy,” she said, the mirrors of her tangerine colored sari casting fireflies of sunlight across the walls as if she was a firebrand caught in a box. “Jamal is a good to me. His father was good.” Her head waggled in that way that I had determined was Indian equivocation.
She looked at me speculatively. “Brian. He is your husband?”
I started to laugh. “No, no. Only a friend.” I’d fielded these questions before. “My husband is at home.” Now why did I lie? Why did I tell two lies? You don’t travel over a subcontinent with someone you don’t care about. Surely you couldn’t leave behind a man you loved?
She looked at me as if she couldn’t, didn’t, believe.
“It’s my job,” I said. “I’m a writer.” She still looked unconvinced. “My husband doesn’t like to travel.”
As I said it I saw David, again: at the airport, forlorn, as I walked through the departure gate; desperate on the phone when I called him.
I smelled his cologne, saw the quirk of his smile, felt his hands on my breasts, his lips on mine. I closed my eyes suddenly missing him, suddenly needing him.
Why the hell was I still here? I’d photographed the murals. I’d spent time admiring the turban paintings.
The need of him knocked the breath from my chest and pain loose in my throat. If only he would travel with me. If only I didn’t feel locked in a cage when I was with him at home.
“Lena?” Sahri asked. “You are well?”
I smiled. “I’m sorry. I miss him.” I brushed the hair out of my eyes and checked my watch. Eleven hours difference. It would be four o’clock the next morning at home. “Do you think Jamal would let me use the phone?”
“You love him?” she asked.
“I miss him,” I repeated, as if to convince myself.
She raised her brows and took me to Jamal. He arranged the call.
The phone picked up on the third ring and I heard a sleepy hello.
“David? It’s me.”
“Lena?” I could hear him waking up, picture him rubbing his eyes, pinching his nose.
“I was… thinking of you. I wanted to hear your voice.”
“When are you coming home?”
“Soon. I’m in Bikaner and I’ve just about wound up the research. I expect to be on a plane early next week.”
“Next week.” The echo on the phone made those words go on forever, as if he could not believe it was so far away.
“I miss you,” he said, and his tone – soft, yearning, the same voice that would whisper ‘I love you’ in bed – spoke of all the things I loved about him.
And then there was this little hesitation, and then: “How’s it going with Brian?”
I swallowed. “Okay. He’s a good photographer. It means that if my shots don’t come out, there’ll be his as backup.” I closed my eyes. Why was I doing this?
“That’s good, then. So you’re getting along?”
I heard the unasked question, and all I wanted was for him to just tell me to come home, just tell me how he felt, just tell me he felt threatened by all this – not just by the travel, but by me, by the interests I had, by the bravery I tried to show, by the spirit I had. Instead his reserve held him back until I could barely find him, and I wanted to scream.
Damn it David. Tell me!
Suddenly I was angry. This was David’s way of control – set me to wing, but keep me tethered. I’d been flying in his circles for years.
“Don’t worry. Nothing’s happened. Nothing will. Brian and I are just friends.” So who was I trying to convince? Brian’s hands brought chill to my bones and heat to everything else.
Brian shared my adventurer’s spirit. Brian had been there on early morning shoots. He understood about sweet light, understood about being alone in another country, about having someone to share that rush with.
Brian was… here.
I fought back my pique. “It’s been a hard trip. Real dry and hot. You wouldn’t like it much, I guess, - no golf courses - but the desert at night was so quiet I could hear my heart beat, and the moon rested like a lover on the top of the dunes.”
“That’s your magazine pitch, right?”
“I just wish you wanted to be here. To share this.”
“Why would I want to sleep in the sand? If I want desert, I’ll go to Palm Springs. You should be home, Lena. You belong here.”
I closed my eyes. Home, with the two car garage and the warm bed and the kitchen we shared. And the bed. “Soon.” I said. Soon so many things would happen. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
When I hung up Brian was standing in the doorway. “David?”
God, what had he heard? What had I said? “Been waiting long?”
He shrugged. “I came to get you. Thought you might want to go for a walk. It’s pretty nice out.” His gaze shifted to the phone. “Jamal said you were making a call.”
I looked at my hands and back at Brian. He must have heard. “I had to let him know when I was coming home.”
“Aah,” he said. He moved away from the door. “You interested in that walk?”
I rubbed my hands on my trousers and stood. It was time to deal with all this. I was going home next week. To a man I’d been with for five years and who needed me. I’d been right not to do anything stupid. Now I had to let Brian down - easily.
I followed him out into the night air and the falling neem blossoms.
Laughing, he picked some of the petals and rubbed them on his face. “Better than aftershave,” he said. From down the street came the sound of loud happy music and laughter.
We walked shoulder to shoulder through the neem-scented night, following the gravel road and the sounds to a huge tent. A Rajput wedding.
We’d witnessed them before, on the street, with the groom’s arrival on a white horse and the band wild behind him. We stood in the night under the clear sky, inhaling desert, and listened to the music. Figures moved across the canvas, like animated Shekhawati murals.
“You know I don’t want you to go,” Brian said, breaking the silence.
I looked up at him. “I meant what I told David.”
“Yeah,” his Aussie accent drawled his disbelief. “You didn’t tell him everything. You didn’t mention the temptation.” His hand caught mine. “I feel it in you, Lena. I see it in your eyes.” His gaze locked on mine and he leaned in to me, kissed me.
And I let him.
Tender. Yearning. The bristle of his moustache, the nip of his teeth on my upper lip. And the scent of him. Sweat and long days. The same scent I’d noted on the long drives together, as we bent over camera equipment, as we rushed out early for good camera light, as we ate dinner and drank beer on the roof of guesthouses in Bundi, Udiapur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer. The scent I’d tried to push away. And the awakening.
It was a sensation I’d been waiting for: better than coming home.
But there was David.
I stiffened, but he held my shoulders, held me still, until he was finished.
When he released me, I turned and walked home, feeling him behind me, feeling the heat he radiated, the life and the reek of adventure pounding at my senses.
At the house I ran up to my room, past the men of the painted turbans, and collapsed on my bed.
I touched my lips where the kiss still vibrated, fearless and alive. More alive than David’s voice on the phone, more alive than the life I’d lived with him.
That was Brian. It could be me, if I chose him.
I fell asleep thinking of the two men in my life and my dreams twisted them, reformed them, combined them into a single body on a white horse. A single being with David’s voice, but Brian’s moustache and Brian’s eyes.
I woke to moonlight streaming through my window.
Life. It was what I wanted. No more of the swaddled half-life I had at home.
I stood and the warm air streamed past my skin. Sweat beaded my shoulders. I pulled a t-shirt over my head and padded silently to Brian’s room.
His door was unlocked.
Inside lay Brian’s scent, the soft sound of his breathing, his form on the bed. I stood over him. Pale in the moonlight, his lashes dark on his cheeks and his dark hair fallen over his brow. I smoothed it away from his face and he stirred in his sleep.
“Lena?”
The sleepy whisper aroused me. I pulled the t-shirt off. “You were right, Brian.”
He blinked in the darkness and sat up, his gaze sliding across my skin. His legs slid off the bed and he stood in front of me, naked, aroused. His hand brushed my hair back from my eyes, touched my cheek. “I never wanted t’upset you.”
His touch was gentle. I liked his hands. Spatulate fingers and hands that created such wonderful photos. “I think… I was more surprised. Surprised at how I felt.”
He was silent in the darkness, then I heard him sigh.
“Brian.” My palm brushed his chest, my fingers caught in the hair there, found the nipple, and his breath hissed. I could see the glow of his eyes, feel the way he waited, poised, taught for what I would do.
And I knew I was ready for his reality. I stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “I should have kissed you back.”
I inhaled his sweat, his heat, the dust of his travels, his fear that I would never want him, his triumph that I did.
His lips tasted of salt and masala, his cheeks of neem blossoms. His arms were around my waist, mine around his shoulders and then he was running his hands down my hips, lifting me to him.
“God, Lena,” he groaned.
I kissed him again, pressed into him. His skin. His hardness between us. I bit his lip and moaned.
His head went down, trailing tongue over my cheek, over my neck, across my collar bone, seeking. Kneeling in front of me he took my breasts in his hands, squeezing them together, suckling, kneading. I grabbed his hair, arched my back, and when he stood, my hands fell to his waist, found him, held him in my hand.
“Come to bed,” I whispered.
We lay back together, our hands exploring. The rough hair on his chest. The way his hands worked, found my breasts, teased.
In the dim light I laughed softly, and reached for him. And I needed him. Needed his freedom, him inside. Perhaps inside I could break free, too.
Before daylight I rolled off the bed.
“I need to get back to my room,” I said. “Jamal and Sahri wouldn’t like this happening in their house.”
He sat up and caught my hand. “I’ve been thinking we should go to Bangladesh next. There’s the Sundarbans that are supposed to be terrific for tiger watching, not to mention the traditional ways of life. You could write about it.”
“I have to get my story proposals done and I’ve got a couple of pieces I need to research back home,” I said, looking down at him.
“You can change your schedule, can’t you? We’re together now.” He pulled me down and kissed me on the cheek, then patted my rear and urged me out the door.
In my room I lay down, cooling in the new dawn, his presence still in me. But he wasn’t David. David who I’d said I loved.
I could barely stand myself.
Was this what I wanted? I scrambled out of bed for a shower. But I couldn’t get clean.
At breakfast Brian sat too close, was too proprietary. Sahri looked at me strangely. Jamal frowned.
After breakfast Brian went to get train tickets for Delhi and I went to the gallery, sipping chai and studying the paintings, trying to unwind my guilt in those turbaned visages.
David needed to be told. But what? That I’d had a fling but was coming home? That I was leaving him for Brian?
Images of Brian in the night, sensations of our bodies. Pictures of David, tall and slim with his arms welcoming me home.
I sat down. Someone was going to lose. Someone was going to hurt and I’d promised myself to be honest in my life, honest in my love.
A soft hand fell on my shoulder and I looked down into Sahri’s eyes. She held a photo album in her hand and smiled. “I thought we could look at my wedding while you wait.”
“Your wedding?” I pulled a chair free for her. She sank down, her yellow sari falling in graceful folds around her ankles. The mirrors tinkled – small silver moons waiting to reflect light, or Jamal.
She ran her palm over the album cover. “It was three years ago.” She opened the cover and showed the first pictures. Sahri draped in gold and crimson, heavy kohl on her eyes. “That was my wedding dress.” She smiled.
“You’re beautiful,” I said.
She did that Indian waggle. “Not as beautiful as some.”
She turned the pages, taking me through her preparations, the ceremony, Jamal looking uncomfortable on his white steed. And then the binding ceremony where their robes are tied together and Sahri followed her husband around the fire. And then they are wed.
At the back of the album were photos of friends and Sahri went to close the album, but a picture caught my eye. I stopped her and turned the album towards me.
Sahri in her wedding finery with two young men in ornate turbans. There was a smile on their faces, an arm draped over Sahri’s shoulder, and a look of regret in their eyes.
“Who’s this?” I asked.
Her eyes locked on the picture and then stuttered up to me. “My brothers,” she answered and swiftly closed the book. “They were my brothers.”
I lifted the book up to her. “You look very close.”
She nodded and started to turn away.
“Do you see them much?”
Sahri turned back to me and sighed. She set the book down and returned to her chair. “It is different here,” she said. “Here with marriage you have a new family. You belong to your husband.”
“You don’t see them?”
“I no longer exist for them. I am Jamal’s.”
The moment stretched long. “You must miss them,” I finally said.
She took her photos and fled back to the kitchen. I gulped down the last of the chai and went back to my room to pace. I needed to get out of here, out of Sahri’s prison.
When Brian came back, we left.
#
Our train was to leave at seven pm and the train station was the usual bedlam.
The scent of human excrement battled that of new-fried pakorah, samosa, glasses of orange juice on ice, and sugar cane. Old women sat on bundles of cloth, loose children roamed, a goat foraged near its owner, loose cattle lowed and bullied their way past. Younger women wound their way through the crowd, their colorful saris glittering in the crowd, mirrors reflecting their men as if they had no light of their own, while the men – the men stamped their uniqueness with their wonderful turbans.
I gulped water and sat on my pack, Brian seated beside me. I wondered about my decision. Had I made one? It didn’t feel like I had in a long, long time.
I looked at Brian and at the women in the crowd. Finally I sighed.
“I can’t go,” I said.
Brian glanced at me from his study of a Bangladeshi guidebook. “I thought we decided what we were doing.”
I looked down at my hands. It was the same thing David had done, the same thing Jamal had done to Sahri. I stood up. “This isn’t going to work.”
Brian closed his book, his body stiff. “Are you having second thoughts now? You worried about David?” His face had flushed.
I shook my head, suddenly tired – tired of the not knowing, tired of the shiftless place inside me. “It’s not like that. I’ve just been thinking.”
“Thinking what?”
“About you. About me. About identity and freedom.”
“There’s no such thing as freedom.
That was what I was afraid of. It was like something coiled around my neck. I closed my eyes and nodded slowly. “You might be right. But I’ll never know unless I give it a try on my own, will I?”
“What the hell are you talking about? I thought we wanted to be together, that you were leaving David.”
“I am leaving David. At least for now. Maybe forever. But I’m leaving you too.” I reached for my pack and Brian’s hand snapped out and grabbed my wrist. I pulled back but he held on.
“You leave now and it’s over – we’re over.”
Finally I nodded and a peacock chortled across the railway tracks. Things were breaking, ending. “That’s a chance I’ll have to take.” I pulled loose from him and hefted my pack onto my back. “I’m sorry, Brian. I really am.”
He looked up at me and his face was hard, his voice lowered. “Don’t bother changing your mind.”
I nodded and found a trail through the crowd past the women, those women who only reflected those around them.
Outside, the sun beat down on my head and the omnipresent neem trees set their flowers free. I swayed, wondering what to do. There was Delhi. I could go home.
But facing David wasn’t what I needed either. I needed to find my own way first.
A surge of wildness filled me. The flowers fell on my hair. I could go anywhere, do anything. I hailed a cab and climbed in, then told them I wanted a guest house – any guest house except the General’s Lair. I’d call David from there and hopefully he would understand.
If not, there were still murals to be studied. And a life to be learned.
I leaned forward to the driver and asked him to take me to the market first. “How much?” I asked. “What is the price for a length of turban cloth?” Out here, in the world, I would learn to wear it.
About the Author
Karen L. McKee is a writer, photographer and consultant who lives on the West Coast of Canada with two delinquent Bengal cats. She is the author of literary, erotic and fantasy fiction. When she isn’t travelling, she’s plotting her next adventure, whether a book or a journey to some distant land, because, she says her worst day of writing or travel is better than the best day of working.
If you’d like to learn more about her, visit her at: http://www.karenabrahamson.com.
If you enjoyed “Mirrors and Cloth”turn the page to try the first two chapters of the Romantic Suspense novel “Ashes and Light”.
Twisted Root Publishing is pleased to provide the very best in Romantic Suspense.
Ashes and Light
Karen L. McKee
Prologue
August 2001, Bamiyan, Central Afghanistan
The night ran thick with screams, just like so many other nights.
Michael Bellis willed himself motionless as he peered out into the half-lit carnage. Behind him, Yaqub quietly crouched in the collapsed mud house, working his healing wonders as he methodically triaged the injured.
Yaqub had the almost supernatural talent to ignore the madness, the sounds, the gunfire, and work calmly over his patients. Michael vibrated with the need to move, to protect the Hazzara villagers, even though he and Yaqub were woefully unprepared for the large force of Taliban soldiers that had taken the town.
Another rocket seared the night. It slammed into a stately, mud-daub tower and exploded in hellish flame no one could have survived. The concussion ran up his legs as mud brick and dust rained down.
One of the women shrieked—her voice ululating like the cries in the streets and the buildings around them.
“Silence!” he ordered.
Fire glared off the rugged cliffs and the yawning alcoves where the Taliban had destroyed the giant, awe-inspiring Buddha figures.
Panicked quiet filled the little group behind him. The women and children huddled together, masking the vocal woman’s sobs with desperate hands.
To comfort them would be the right thing to do, but right now all his attention was on survival——theirs and his. They would live or die together depending on the women’s obedience. At least that was part of Afghan culture——along with the pride and stubbornness that had kept Yaqub and the others fighting the Russians and now the Taliban.
He leaned back to his observations post, automatically inventoried the changes the explosion had caused to the ruined townscape. The knowledge would help their retreat from this shelter that would surely soon be discovered.
“We need to move,” he whispered back.
Yaqub crawled forward just in time to see another woman dart towards their meager safety from across the ruined street. A sniper bullet spun her around and dropped her.
“The devil lives here, and his name is Hashemi,” Yaqub muttered through his black beard. He was clothed, as Michael was, and as every other Afghani male, in the baggy trousers and long tunic and the black-and-white striped turban the Taliban required. “Praise Allah, Khadija is safe in London. These devils kill the women or they rape them and leave them for dead. We have to get them out.”
He lifted his hairy chin at the cluster of bombed out structures across the street where more woman huddled hidden.
“Not easy.” Michael muttered. In Afghanistan nothing came easy. In fact, all of Central Asia was a bomb waiting to explode into the flank of the West and the Taliban were looking to ignite it.
“When did Allah ever provide easy tasks?”
Michael grinned through his matching beard, then yanked Yaqub down as a jeep whined past bristling with Hashemi’s armed men. The vehicle bumped over the woman’s body, but didn’t pause.
Michael held Yaqub’s gaze.
“You know you’re my brother in all but blood, and I would do anything for you, but to try to save the women trapped in those ruins is suicide. If we don’t leave now, we won’t be leaving at all.”
“Then take them.” Yaqub motioned to the frightened children and their mothers they’d managed to rescue. “I’ll get the others.”
“Like hell. You’re too valuable.”
“Then I’ll just have to live, won’t I?” Yaqub half-stood. “I’ll see you in Kaabul, if not sooner.”
Michael yanked him down.
“Damn you, Yaqub, I’m not kidding. A doctor’s worth a damn-sight more than an agent. We came to bring messages. Not run a rescue mission.” That was the trouble with Yaqub. He might be calm in the face of crisis, but he was no agent.
Except when he was providing medical care, he always ran head-long to do the right thing, leaving Michael feeling slow, stodgy and a trifle dishonorable when he proposed a more cautious approach. But caution had helped him live this long in a landscape where nothing lived out its natural lifespan.
Michael looked out at the flame-lit street, assessing each door, window, and slab of darkness in the ruins. Where the hell was that sniper?
“I swore a Hippocratic Oath to preserve life.”
Michael glanced back at his friend and knew that look. Knew that tone of voice, too, and knew he was defeated.
Again.
Yaqub’s expression was the same stubborn, passionate look Yaqub’s father got when he’d decided on a mission. Or when he treated one of Hashemi’s victims. The determined look meant nothing would dare to block his purpose. A typical Afghan expression when you discussed the fate of Afghanistan. There was nothing these people were more passionate about.
Getting in Yaqub’s way when he was like this was like trying to stop one of Afghanistan’s earthquakes. You only got crushed.
“Damn you, Yaqub…. What is it about all you Siddiqui?”
A palm tree’s explosion illuminated the last mud tower of the city.
“Khpel amal da lari mal,” Yaqub said. What you do, will come back to you. His dark gaze was determined. Then he grinned, knowing he’d played the trump card between them. Michael owed Yaqub and his father so much.
There might be a way. There might. Yaqub with his beard and turban could probably pass for Taliban. He might have a chance to talk his and the women’s way free even if he was spotted.
“Look, I’ll go for the others,” Michael said. “You take these women. There shouldn’t be any problem once you get to the hills.”
Yaqub caught his arm. “You sure?”
“Inshallah, I’ll live to drink your father’s tea and beat you at chess again. Now go.”
Yaqub grinned and turned to the women, speaking in swift Pashto of the plan. He led the small group out the rear of the ruin and into darkness. Michael sent a prayer after them and stepped beyond the shattered wall, rifle ready.
He eased sideways through shadows.
Farther east the last tower in Bamiyan laid a shadow across the street. If he could cross there and find his way to the women, he might—just might—be able to lead them to safety.
Well-honed skills settled over him and the night reduced to him gliding silent as a shadow over fallen brick and mortar. He glided across the street and ducked into an empty doorway as one of the patrols passed.
Yaqub’s need to help the women was understandable. The damned Taliban hunted Shi’ite female flesh. In their warped belief, they’d been “married” by the Imams in the madrasas of Pakistan. It gave them permission to rape any woman they found. Many of the victims in this honor-bound country took their own lives out of shame.
In Afghanistan the chasm that now separated the Sunni and Shi’ite branches of Islam was as bad as the schism between Islam and the West.
He slunk through another shadow and stopped. Ahead, the low walls held only half a roof and he ducked under to find five women cowering in fear.
“You must be very silent and very brave. Understand?” he whispered in Pashto.
The grandmother of the group—all of thirty-five by his estimate—nodded and clutched the hand of her daughter’s daughter. The girl could be no more than eleven by the look of her, but she’d been found by the Taliban. The poor child whimpered into the woman’s shoulder.
Michael had them clasp hands and led them out of the shelter down through the maze of ruins and across the street. He started to breathe. Miraculously, they were going to do it. They were going to get free.
But then came the scream. Sheer terror, it lifted into the night, going octaves higher than a human voice should, until Michael wanted to cover his ears. Gun fire. More shouting and screams. Screams to the heavens. Pleading.
And then there were Yaqub’s shouts.
Chapter 1
May 2002, KAABUL, Afghanistan
The accident between the old man and the military convoy unfolded much like the many pleats of Khadija’s blue burka. One thing leads to another, they say. In this case, the covering and incident only showed that Khadija no longer belonged.
First there were the boys kicking a soccer ball at the side of the rubble-strewn street. Even half-muffled by the burka their shouts raised a brief, painful memory of Yaqub playing with his friends when she was so much younger.
Then there was the man with no legs. The baker’s son, Omar, who sat on a pram-wheeled cart beside the display of the huge rounds of flatbread. He harangued female customers with lewd comments so Khadija made a point of crossing the street when she passed by.
Then there were Khadija’s shoes.
They were boots really—Marks and Spencer boots she had bought against the cold and rain while she was in medical school in London. They were the problem—just like everything she’d brought back with her and everything she’d become. If she’d never gone to London, would Yaqub still be alive?
The accident happened like this.
The shouts of the two boys filled the gritty Kaabul air and Khadija wished she was young again and running after Yaqub. Though at twenty-four she wasn’t old, in her country she would never again be able to join the boys kicking the soccer ball as she had done on the side streets near Victoria Station. And now there was no Yaqub to play with, anyway.
She’d come home to this place that was a strange land. Like a nightmare really. Her city and yet not. No longer filled with gardens, no longer filled with picnicking families and laughter and well-dressed woman like her mother had been. No longer with Yaqub and his laughter.
Around her, shattered buildings lined the sewer-sided streets, and were inhabited by stick-thin men and blue-clad ghosts. That was all that was left of Kaabul. All that was left of the place her father had said the ancients called the Light City of the Angel King.
She raised her chin, wishing for the wind that lofted the kites above the rocky slopes of Kohi Asamayi—Asamayi Hill. Once Yaqub had sent his fierce red kite into the clear sky, but now the sky was masked with dust off the mountains and the smoke of cooking fires polluted the fading blue. Only the wind still blew—perhaps it could lift her away as well. The burka made her light—less than nothing.
That had been her mistake—looking away—because the bread-maker’s son spotted her shiny boots, so different from the clack, clack, clacking plastic sandals on most women. When she’d raised her gaze, Omar rolled up to her and grabbed her shoe.
“Khadija Siddiqui, you must sit with me awhile,” he said, shocking her.
It was Haram—religiously forbidden—for a woman to speak to a man not of her family. And he—Afghani decorum said he should not speak to, or touch, a proper Islamic woman. But that was the problem, wasn’t it?
The street rumbled as yet another of the omnipresent foreign military convoys returned to its compound just south of Kohi Asamayi. She looked down at Omar’s grinning face and broken yellow teeth. The foul scent of his unwashed body and diesel found its way through the burka and she wished she was home. She wished she was with Yaqub who always made her feel safe. She should be home, not out wandering the dying city, but marketing had demanded it. She closed her eyes against the fear.
“Come, sweet one. Let me see your face. You can go naked like you did in London, now that the kofr—the infidels—are here. You come to my room. I know of British ways.” He worked his pelvis back and forth lewdly so his cart rattled. “I have money.”
She jerked back in revulsion, and his cart rolled into the street. Its left wheel caught in a hole in the pavement, sent Omar sprawling, swearing, right into the path of an old, bearded man.
Who tripped and fell, directly in front of the military convoy’s first huge, green-yellow troop carrier.
Grinding brakes and Khadija saw the too-bright eyes of the female soldier driving, but the carrier was too big, too heavy, and moving too fast, while the old man was far too slow.
Khadija dropped her marketing bag and leapt; in emergency rooms you learned to respond.
Grabbing the old man’s arm, she tore him from the pavement, hauled them both out of the way in time to look up at the fair faces of the soldiers that reminded her too much of a pale-faced doctor in London, and even more of the graveyard her city had become.
She shivered and turned back to the old man. Brown-grey beard worn long like the Taliban had preferred. Pale turban over shaken, black eyes.
“As-salaam ‘alaykum.” Peace be with you. “Are you all right?” she asked in her best medical voice, still steadying him.
His gaze changed from fear to disgust.
He spat. Right at the ornate grill that covered her eyes. Warm spittle sprayed her face.
“Worst of whores,” he swore and jerked away. “Harlot! You do not speak to me!” His voice rose and Khadija realized the blue ghosts were whispering in the street.
Omar laughed as he hauled himself back on his cart.
“You see? I know what you are.” He thrust his hips again and she grabbed her fallen market bag and fled.
Down the road towards the narrow streets of Kohi Asamayi. The skull cap of the burka was too tight. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe.
How could she ever think she could have saved Yaqub? She’d saved the old man and still she’d done wrong. Everything she did was wrong. All of her choices—going to medical school—allowing her father to send her to the west when the Taliban came to power. It was all one mistake after another.
Except coming home after Yaqub died. She had to help her father.
Catcalls and yells in the street behind her. She glanced behind and down the length of Darulaman Road to the ruins of the old king’s palace and the fenced encampment of foreign soldiers who had come to “free” her country. Their flapping flags—red-white, red-white-blue—were an abomination given the state the country was in.
Closer, the stick men and blue ghosts called her the worst kind of whore, and the burka couldn’t hide who she was.
Omar knew the abomination that was Mohammed Siddiqui’s daughter.
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