Ashes and Light Read online

  Home would never be wholly safe again, either.

  She’d come running when her father sent her word of Yaqub’s death. After 9/11 the Amrikaayi had ended the Taliban’s hold on her country.

  But instead of new life, she’d found a country inhabited by the ghost of her brother, and kofr—the infidels—flooding in. They said they were there to help, but they were too much like the Russians. They didn’t build schools or houses for the poor—or at least not enough to make a difference. They only brought soldiers.

  She’d seen the pictures of how the West helped. Iraq. And Afghanistan sat right in the midst of the oil-rich East. Oil. Pipelines from Uzbekistan. That, opium, and weapons sales were why they were here. She’d come home thinking to escape her dishonor and had found a country being stripped of its honor day by day.

  That was why her hands shook. It was not just Omar or the old man—it was everything she was and everything bad Afghanistan might be forced to become.

  “Khadija?”

  She relaxed her fists, threw a shawl around her shoulders against the coolness of coming evening and gathered her shopping bags. “Yes, Papa. I’m coming.”

  “Could you make tea? We have a visitor. He will stay for dinner, I think.”

  Khadija hurried into the tiny kitchen at the back of the house. It gave onto the small, walled garden that would have been what attracted her father when he moved from the blasted concrete that was all that remained of their family home in Mikrorayon. She dipped water from the plastic bucket into a kettle, set it on the kerosene burner, and began dinner preparations.

  Aubergine—bruised now—would make a flavorful qorma eaten with the yoghurt and garlic and mint. With lentils and tomatoes and rice chalau it made a fine beginning. But she had no meat. The market had held nothing that looked fit to eat. There was their last chicken, but they kept the hen for the eggs that seemed all that tempted her father to eat these days.

  Yaqub’s death had stolen his appetite. They had been close as only a father and son could be, and had worked closely together—two doctors in a country where doctors were a scarce commodity. Her hands still shook as she set rice to soak.

  But no meat would dishonor her father. There was nothing for it; the hen would have to die.

  She made the tea, tenderly filling the white and blue porcelain teapot that had once been her mother’s treasured possession. She pulled her shawl over her head and carried the tray of tea and embarrassingly mismatched juice glasses through the curtain into the courtyard.

  “Your tea, Papa,” she said to the man she honored above all others. She stopped.

  She had expected one of the neighbors who often stopped by to take a meal with the honored doctor. Tradition said a person’s responsibility to help a neighbor was even greater than the duty to help a relative. It was sawat—something that earned you a place in Paradise. And so everyone who lived on Kohi Asamayi thought a doctor had the money to feed their neighbors. In truth, her father did much of his work pro bono, but honor said he would never turn people away—from care or a meal.

  Mohammed Siddiqui turned his face towards her voice, a beam of late sunlight through the branches of the spindly pomegranate tree caught in the constant tears running from his half-blind eyes and incised deep lines on his face. He was so much older than she remembered. Too much time had passed.

  He knelt beside the sad, silly circle of marigold plants at the back of the barren garden. The mangy leaves had managed to grow under his care—a futile attempt to bring life and color to a house that had only loss pulsing at its core. Beside him was a stranger, the man’s hand guiding her father’s to a newly opened orange flower with a gentleness she rarely saw—at least not among the war-hardened men of Kaabul.

  “Khadija! Look! The marigolds are in bloom.” Pleasure filled her papa’s face—something Khadija knew he had little of—and it made her smile—and feel guilty.

  “Wonderful. You’ll have a lovely garden, then.”

  She’d seen the blooms a few days ago and had meant to show her Papa who, when he had his sight, had always been an avid gardener. But life had intervened—all the demands of keeping house in a country torn by war. The simple act of showing the flowers had slipped her mind.

  And so she had failed him again.

  Khadija set the tray on the ground, pulled her scarf farther forward to hide her hair, then shivered as she spread an oilcloth tarp for them to sit on. She should feel gratitude to this stranger who had been kind to her father, and yet—it should have been her task, her gift to him.

  She was further dismayed to find the stranger supporting Papa’s arm to lead him through the debris-littered garden. His familiarity said he’d done it many times before. Who was he?

  The man was broad shouldered and tall—far taller than her father who was tall by the standards of Kaabulay. His hair was dark, thick as any Afghan’s, but the sun caught places where it gleamed red-gold as copper, as if his head caught flame.

  His shaven face—a bad sign—held the hawkish nose and thin aesthetic look of many a Pashtun man, but there was something about him. The way he walked—not with the swagger of the usual Kaabulay male—but with a confidence and weight that said he was somehow connected to the earth. Even the way the dark brown karakul cap sat on his head and the long shirt and waistcoat and baggy trousers of his salwar kameez flowed over his long legs suggested he was a man to be feared. A man who took what he wanted.

  And that he was not from here.

  His eyes caught her and she knew. Pale eyes like a rain-soaked London sky. They seemed to catch some part of her. The palest blue she had ever seen—as if they had been robbed of color. Somehow they carried the same look of the children she saw in the orphan camps when she and her father provided medical assistance.

  Hungry, haunted eyes, sharp as a scalpel’s edge, even though this man wore more meat on his frame than most Afghanis.

  His gaze roamed up her to the shawl pulled over her hair, then came to rest on her face so she felt naked before him.

  Khadija lowered her gaze, but his regard shook her. It was like he knew everything about her, everything hidden under her clothes, and he should not look at her like that.

  To hide her tremor, she bent to aid her father, gently curling his gnarled fingers around his tea glass as the tall man folded himself onto the blanket with the ease of any Afghani.

  “Khadija, I forget myself.”

  Papa caught her hand. His face turned towards her, the deep lines around his eyes like scars of age in the angled afternoon sun. His dark eyes swam opaque in his semi-blindness. It had come on so suddenly, his letters had said, and the lines—they almost made his face strange to her—a mask of age and pain he never used to carry. The incessant tears—she swore they were not a medical condition.

  The wind caught in his mostly grey hair. He had cut it off as soon as the Taliban were ousted. But Papa was a devout man, even if he was shorn. He caught the strange man’s hand as well, as if his body would bind them together. She stiffened at Papa’s lovely smile.

  “Let me present my old friend, Michael Bellis. He is the son of the son of the son of the son of my great-great-great-grandsire’s cousin who left Kaabul for Amrikaa during the time of the Great Game.”

  He referred to the time when the kofr Russians and the English vied for supremacy over Central Asia. Afghanistan had been one of the prizes—one that had cost many foreign lives and was immortalized in the works of those like the Inglisi, Kipling.

  Amrikaayi. A chill found Khadija. Someone to protect her father from. She glanced back at those hungry eyes and found their cutting gaze. There was so much in them—what? Pain? Longing? Waiting? For what? Still, the man showed proper manners and did not speak to her directly.

  When had a Westerner ever waited—they always took. She looked away. Always Afghanistan was the pawn in someone else’s plans.

  Her Papa smiled happily and squeezed both their hands before releasing them.

  “How good it
is to have family here. So many have been killed in this long, sad, war, and yet it brings family back to us as well.”

  He slurped tea from his glass while Khadija tried to sort what he said. Family?

  “This lovely creature is my daughter, Khadija—or as I call her—Pishogay—little cat, for as a child she was always under foot and always putting her paw into things she should not. She has just returned from medical school in England, though I wish she had stayed to finish her residency.”

  He smiled proudly at her, reaching for her hand again. Khadija looked away, glad he could not see the guilt she felt under the stranger’s assessing gaze.

  “I came home because you needed me here. Besides, I had no talent for the work.”

  “Khadija, you topped your class!”

  “I had no—no bedside manner.”

  “You could have learned. You should have stayed.”

  He pushed too hard, but a clutch of sadness crossed her father’s face reminding her she could never be her brother. He had been the light of both their lives—full of light and grace and brilliance and devotion to his studies and his faith. She could never compare to that.

  And now she disappointed her father once more. Coming home before her residency was complete. Coming home in the hopes she would not dishonor him more.

  It was a sore point between them after he had risked so much to send her out of the country.

  “I was not meant to be a doctor, Papa. I’m sorry, I’m not… Yaqub.” To speak his name still hurt her heart.

  She caught a slight movement from the foreigner, a stricken look on his face.

  “You knew Yaqub?” She turned to him, resenting that this man could presume to think he shared their pain. Yaqub would not consort with such a man—her brother had believed as she did, that Afghanistan must be free of foreigners like the Russian invaders.

  But Michael Bellis nodded. There was a glimpse of pain again and then it was replaced by cold. Those cold, hungry eyes saw everything, but there was no way he could know her brother as she did, as her father did. His suggestion somehow sullied Yaqub’s name.

  “You are Amrikaayi. How could you know my brother?”

  Something passed between her father and Michael Bellis even through her father’s sightless eyes. Khadija frowned.

  “From the States, yes,” he said in almost perfect Pashto. There was only a slight rapidity to the speech, not quite the long A’s of the Kaabulay. More like a speaker from Herat. There was not a lot of traffic between Kaabul and the far west of Afghanistan. He sighed.

  “I’ve spent many years in Afghanistan and Iran, have I not, old friend?” A soft, familiar smile at her father, who nodded.

  A chill ran up Khadija’s back. She looked away from those eyes that could devour the world and the full lips that seemed to mock her from across the blanket. This was worse than the debacle with the old man because she did not have her burka as a shield and she had this strange feeling that this kofr saw her and all her flaws.

  The wind seemed to hiss over the garden walls, bringing dust off the flanks of Kohi Asamayi to dim the new pomegranate leaves. The voices of men called to each other and the laughter of children came from the street that ran the side of the house. She should just leave, as any proper Muslim woman would. This courtyard was a man’s place, now.

  “There were few things that would bring Amrikaayi to this country before 9/11,” she said coldly.

  Michael Bellis only shrugged, his face becoming a practiced mask.

  “My father’s company had interests in Western Afghanistan. When he died I took over the business. I’ve spent my life traveling between Herat and Mashhad.”

  “Then you did not know my brother well.” Khadija chanced a triumphant glance. Yaqub had spent his life in Kaabul.

  Those blue eyes held on her face as if daring further questions. She met his gaze, and a specter of warmth seemed to cross it, seemed to bleed into her. Her breath caught in her chest. Who—what—was this man who was so gentle with her father? Kofr—infidel—enemy of Islam. Or friend? She lifted her chin. No, she would not trust a man whose motives were so uncertain.

  “Your eyes and your attitude betray you aren’t Afghani. An Afghani man would never speak to an unrelated woman.”

  The skin around his eyes crinkled in laughter. “And a true Afghani woman would not answer.”

  All the blood ran from her head. She had forgotten herself once more and shamed her father. Her sins must show in her face and this kofr was laughing at her. Laughing!

  Her father’s laughter broke her sense of horror.

  “Pishogay, you goad our guest. Didn’t I tell you, Michael? Khadija, Michael is family. He has brought medical supplies and word of the outside to Kaabul all these years. How else would I have managed to provide care at the clinic?”

  She knew what that meant. She glared at Michael Bellis. This man had brought secret supplies, had operated secretly under the Taliban. Had placed her father and brother in danger by his very presence. And now Yaqub was dead.

  She eased to standing.

  “Papa, it’s time I prepare dinner.” She looked at Michael Bellis—the smuggler of medical supplies—and other things, she was sure.

  “You will stay for dinner, I suppose?” she asked in cold English.

  Another flash of amusement across his face. Then it grew still, cold. Cold as the wind that blew over the garden wall and carried the scent of the last snows off the distant Hindu Kush. It chased away the tannin tea-scent and the scent of the marigolds.

  “I think—perhaps not.” He sighed, his voice carrying a tinge of—what?—regret?

  “But Michael, you’ve not visited in a long time. Please, stay for the meal. Khadija is a proper cook, even if she lived abroad.”

  “I’m sorry, old friend.” The Amrikaayi caught her Papa’s hand again with that gentle familiarity that snagged somewhere in Khadija’s chest. “I have meetings to keep or my business will surely fail. You know businessmen—they don’t like to be kept waiting.”

  He stood with a lithe movement that spoke of years of action and caught Papa’s arm as he rose to say goodbye. The two men embraced, warm Afghani-style. Then Michael Bellis turned to Khadija.

  “It has been a pleasure.” He held out his hand in a gesture so Western it took her breath away.

  Stricken, Khadija looked at the proffered hand, then at his gaze. To not shake his hand would be rude and that would upset her father.

  Michael Bellis smirked and held his hand steady as if this was a test. Well, she would not fail it. She hauled her hand inside her sleeve and lightly caught his fingers for a single shake, keeping the fabric between their flesh. Bellis’s brows rose and he turned to her Papa.

  “You have a proper daughter, old friend.”

  There was laughter and taunting and perhaps admiration. He stepped past Khadija towards the kitchen door and she hurriedly caught her father’s arm to follow.

  “You see him out, Pishogay. I would like to stay and smell the flowers a little longer.”

  Dismissed, she followed Michael Bellis into the haunted house. At the door he grabbed a petu—a traditional shawl—off a peg and swung it around his shoulders against the cool so that standing in the gloom he could almost have been any Kaabulay she saw on the streets.

  Except for the eyes.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said, keeping her gaze lowered. “You are most welcome in this house.”

  He snorted and fingered her burka where it hung by the door. “These aren’t required in Kaabul anymore.”

  “They are—for women of faith.” And that was what she wanted to be.

  He stood so close—close enough she could feel the heat of his body in the cool dimness and smell the male-animal scent of his skin. His tall presence made it difficult to breathe.

  That infuriating smile again as he opened the door; he squinted against the glare of sunlight on dust as he checked carefully in both directions as if he expected English traffic. Wh
en he stepped out, he turned back to her, and their gazes locked again.

  There was something more about those eyes. Something dangerous and almost beckoning.

  “He’s a good man, your father. Compassionate.”

  “He is a man of Islam. And he still has capacity to trust.”

  His face was so still, yet conveyed so much. Want. Need. Loss. A hint of kindness. She could not look away. In another world she might have touched him, offered comfort.

  “And you do not.” He shook his head. “Don’t let his friendship with me lessen your opinion of him.”

  Then he was gone, striding down the street with a long fluid movement, her breath stolen by that last hungry gaze.

  Chapter 3

  Michael had been a fool to come here. He brought too much danger with him and the memories of family the house evoked were almost too difficult to bear. What must the old man feel? And yet he had been gracious.

  Michael rubbed his hand over his eyes. He knew tonight the nightmares would come, just as they did each time some reminder came of what had happened to this family. He glanced over his shoulder at the battered door the woman had shut so solidly behind him.

  It was like the clouds blocked the sun and she did not even know it—the haunted loveliness she carried.

  He shook his head and eyed the weathered clay that covered the brick buildings. So battered and yet these streets only hid the life that ran like a vein of precious lapis, deep in this country.

  On the hillside, a man in a gold-threaded Kandahari cap fed fodder to a goat tethered next to a mine crater. There was nowhere in Kaabul that had escaped the violence, and yet nowhere that small bits of beauty did not shine through. Like in Khadija’s green-brown eyes.

  Fool.

  Mohammed Siddiqui and his daughter didn’t need an agent of death in their midst. Michael rubbed his stubbled chin. Guilt had brought him to make sure the old man was cared for, to somehow make things right—as if that was possible.