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  ASHES and LIGHT

  By

  Karen L. McKee

  Published by Twisted Root Publishing at Smashwords

  "Ashes and Lights," Copyright © 2010 Karen L. McKee

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  ASHES and LIGHT

  By

  Karen L. McKee

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  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 cha
nce 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 c
ame 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.

  Chapter 2

  Half-running up the broken street, Khadija reached the last small house with its back pressed against the steep slope of the hill. She slammed inside, away from the sewer stench, into the comforting familiar shadows, the scents of bread and spices and tea and the faint scent of the English-leather soap she had brought back from London for her father.

  She slumped against the heavy wood door. Allah, thank you for this refuge from the world of foreigners and men. She raised her eyes to heaven and realized she was almost hyperventilating. Forcibly she slowed her breath.

  She should not be so shaken. Inshallah, she’d dealt with worse in London. A guilty flush warmed her face.

  She’d done worse as well.

  But today she’d been trying to help the old man. She’d saved him from death, and yet she’d still done evil. It was like everything she did in her life turned back on her and made things worse, made her less than nothing and soiled. She needed to sort through this confusion and find some way to redeem herself in the world.

  “Khadija? Is that you, Pishogay?” The slight tremor was a new addition to Papa’s voice that worried her. She realized she’d heard another voice as well.

  Male.

  All the relief drained out of her. Even here there was no stable ground for her feet.

  A shadow filled the space beside the window—that was the place Papa would not allow anyone to sit. He said it had been Yaqub’s favorite spot in the evenings. It was the place Papa still faced when he took his tea.