Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

by Deborah Rodriguez

  But for now here she was, on a boat. Headed toward Jack’s dream. Without Jack. She took a deep breath and jammed her nearly numb hands deep into the pockets of her down jacket, where the latest letter from Halajan remained crumpled inside. Don’t grieve, the old woman had quoted from Rumi. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Well, Sunny thought, I’m good with that. As long as it doesn’t come around as a shitload of fog.

  2

  Bashir Hadi was hard at work, rubbing the copper espresso machine until it sparkled with the orange and green glow of the coffeehouse walls surrounding it. The aroma of fresh lemon from his worn rag blended with the sweet scent of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven, enough to make anyone’s stomach purr with anticipation.

  Outside, the temperature was dropping, but inside they were safe and warm, busy with the chores that needed to be completed before the Thursday evening rush. The calm before the storm, Sunny used to say. Hopefully tonight would bring the kind of storm they wanted—a crowd that would fill every table in the place—and not the kind that appeared to be brewing in the cloudy sky above. It had become difficult enough to keep the customers they’d worked so hard to get while Sunny was still there, what with the increased measures required by the UN, embassies, and NGOs to ensure the safety of their workers. Yazmina was grateful to Bashir Hadi for convincing first a stubborn Sunny, then later Ahmet and the rest of them, to increase the security. The wall, which now stood tall and defiant beneath Sunny’s magnificent painting of a thousand doves set against a cobalt sky, was the first step, the one that got them UN compliance, that gave sanction for UN personnel to frequent the café. Which they did, until the rules became even tougher. So then came the blast film for the windows, to keep the glass from shattering into hundreds of deadly shards, as well as a safe room for customers to run to upon word of a coming attack. The shipping container they had installed up against the front gate, to serve as an extra checkpoint and a place to deposit weapons, had helped gain more customers, as had the addition of a second chokidor, a young man who was hired to stand guard inside the coffeehouse during busy times. But even with all that, there was nothing they could do about the growing number of foreigners leaving Kabul each day, and there were some nights when their own voices seemed to echo off the walls as they straightened vacant chairs and wiped down the empty tables, trying their best to appear busy.

  Despite the chatter they’d heard from others in the neighborhood who had come to resent the foreigners’ presence in their country, at the coffeehouse they were always welcoming to those who had remained, those who had come to treasure the place as one of the last of its kind in a changing Kabul. But honestly, where else could these people find such good cappuccino and even better conversation? Sunny had worked hard to make the coffeehouse a special gathering place for those far from home, a place filled with laughter and warmth and aromas that clung sweetly to your clothes long into the night. Its reputation was something they were all grateful for, and something Yazmina was determined to preserve, no matter what. Thank goodness tomorrow would be Friday, the start of the Afghan weekend, and the day they would—inshallah, God willing—be making extra money from holding their weekly bazaar in the courtyard out front.

  Friday! Yazmina pushed herself up from the wooden chair where she had settled in to fold a pile of soft purple napkins. So much still to be done.

  “I am fine,” she assured Bashir Hadi when she noticed his slanted dark eyes narrow with concern. She placed her hands on her slightly rounded belly and gently rubbed, the warmth from her palms seeping through the thick cotton of her shalwaar kameez and onto her skin. So far no sickness with this little one, not like the last time. She remembered how hard it had been to try to keep hidden the sudden waves of nausea, and the mound growing from under her clothing, for so long. Seven months—from the day Sunny had taken her in until the day when her daughter Najama was born—of concealing the truth from almost everyone around. That her husband was gone, killed by a land mine while walking his goats, was no protection from the shame, or worse, that would have been inflicted upon her had her secret come out. When no husband was present, everyone was a suspect, and the pregnant woman considered a whore.

  How things had changed for her since then, how different she was from that scared mountain girl, on the run from the men who had taken her from her home as payment for a debt owed by her uncle. The girl she was then would have never dared dream of all this; the coffeehouse, a home filled with laughter and joy, a new husband whose heart had grown large enough to allow him to see past the old ways and embrace her dead husband’s child as his own. Even Kabul had come to feel like home, the staggered muezzin’s call to prayer that was broadcast from the highest minaret of every mosque now a welcome background to the sounds of daily life, instead of a noise that made her jump right out of her skin, and the crowds of people of all colors and clothing now as familiar a sight as the goats that brayed on the hillside back home.

  “Najama! Pay attention, qandom, my sweet one. Don’t you want to learn to read?” Across the room, Halajan struggled with the fidgety little girl squirming on her lap. Yazmina smiled at her mother-in-law’s wrinkled brown face, remembering how eager the old woman had once been to learn to read herself, and how grateful she had been to Yazmina for her help.

  “Listen to your nana,” she said, using the name Sunny had given Halajan after Yazmina had married her son Ahmet. How fortunate she was to have this woman as her mother-in-law, so unlike those she had heard of who beat and scarred their sons’ wives for bearing girls instead of boys, or those who starved and abused the young girls sold into marriage with their sons.

  Yet she had not always held so much love in her heart for Halajan, whom she had at first seen only as a stubborn busybody with a tongue as quick as a serpent and an attitude to match. How shocked she had been by the thoughts the woman stubbornly held onto, and shared with the world so unashamedly. Of course, she was still all those things, but now Yazmina understood better. Halajan, as well as her husband Rashif, came from a different time, a time that she and Ahmet had never witnessed, a time when ideas were not cause for punishment, and when women could be doctors or lawyers without being considered immoral. Yazmina had also come to admire her strength and her fierce loyalty. Halajan would do anything to protect her family, the café, her home. And hidden underneath that grey chador, along with the baggy denim pants and defiantly short grey hair she kept concealed from the outside world, Yazmina knew there was a heart that was softer than the baby-fine pelts used to make President Karzai’s sheepskin hats. Just to observe the way she looked into the eyes of her husband Rashif was enough proof of that. How lucky she felt to have this new family to fill the dark hole left by the loss of her own parents, so many years ago now.

  Yazmina placed a fresh kettle of water on the bokhaari, pausing to savor the heat from the burning wood inside as it softened her limbs one by one. If only Layla were here. It had been one month since she had tearfully kissed her little sister goodbye, with equal measures of hope and fear. Sunny’s friend Candace had convinced them that a stay in America would be good for the girl, and had generously called upon her connections to obtain a student visa. How could Yazmina say no? She longed for the world for Layla, so who was she to keep it from her? Yet she counted the days until her sister’s safe return to Kabul.

  Across the room she saw Halajan’s eyes light up as the door to the coffeehouse opened. In came Rashif, accompanied by a blast of cool air so strong that he scrambled to shut the door behind him.

  “You are early!” Halajan said, clearly delighted. Najama slid off her lap and ran to embrace the short man’s knees in a tight hug. He, in turn, magically produced a piece of toffee from the pocket of his brown korti, handing it to the child with a kiss on the top of her head.

  “Are they still there?” He nodded toward the passageway that led to the house where he lived with Halajan. Yazmina knew he was eager to join her husband and the other men, that he had close
d the tailor shop early for this very reason. After all, Rashif had been the one to push Ahmet in this direction, the one who had first encouraged him to open his eyes and form his own ideas, who had convinced him to loosen his grip on some of the old fundamentalist ways. Sitting among Ahmet and his friends from the university, discussing new ideas and new ways of doing things, surely must bring back memories of Rashif’s own early days as an activist. If only it were not so risky, meeting like that in a time and a place where anything that went on behind closed doors was cause for gossip, or worse.

  “They have been in there for hours already. Please tell Ahmet he is needed here in the coffeehouse. It’s getting late.” But before she had finished her sentence, Rashif was already out the back door.

  “Let them be, dokhtar.” Halajan rose to begin setting the tables. “If our country is to find its way forward, we must make room for thoughts to simmer a little. Talk can be a powerful weapon, because one day it will lead to action. We must use patience. Our struggle has been a long one, but stumbling forward is better than plunging back.”

  Yazmina knew better than to argue with the old woman. Although she could hear Rashif’s voice in Halajan’s words, she knew how proud she was of her son’s virtuous nature and his ability to allow change in himself, even if it sometimes seemed to come at a pace as slow as a mule’s. But deep down he was clearly his mother’s son, her modernist ways seeping in through the blood they shared.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the phone. There was a girl at the gate, reported Daoud, the chokidor who was on guard. Zara, she said she was called. She was asking for someone named Omar. Perhaps someone should come to see what this was about?

  “I will go,” said Yazmina, seeing Bashir Hadi bend over to open the oven door in an attempt to rescue his cookies from burning. She pulled her pashmina shawl around her. “Bya, come Poppy,” she ordered the German shepherd that Sunny had left behind. She waited as the old dog rose from her spot by the warm oven and stretched, first her front legs, then the back. Though she wasn’t much of a watchdog anymore, Poppy merely being there was enough to make many people think twice about their actions.

  When Yazmina saw the visitor standing alone by the gate, she understood why Daoud had hesitated to let her enter. Women in burqas were not a common sight at the coffeehouse. And with the chatter about threats of suicide bombings against places where foreigners gather, conducted by men disguised as covered women, one had to have suspicions about what that burqa might be hiding.

  But as Yazmina drew closer she could see by the shivering narrow shoulders and the feet—small and slender even in their sneakers—that this was truly just a young girl. “Come inside, little one,” she said softly. “Let us get out of this cold.”

  Yazmina saw Bashir Hadi’s face turn stiff with alarm as she entered with the covered girl. Halajan stood defiantly and drew Najama tightly into her arms. For one long moment, the coffeehouse remained silent.

  The girl must have noticed as well, for suddenly she flipped the entire burqa up and over her head to reveal the blue denim jeans and yellow T-shirt underneath. “Please,” she said, “I am sorry to disturb you. I am only looking for my friend Omar.”

  “I’m sorry, khwaar jan, dear sister. There is no Omar here.”

  The girl lowered her dark eyes toward the floor. “But I know he is here. I have followed him here before.” Then she looked back to Yazmina. “All I am asking is to speak with him.”

  Yazmina thought about the young men gathering at Halajan’s house. This Omar must be one of them, one of the students who crossed through the passageway in the wall each Thursday afternoon for their weekly discussions. But still, one couldn’t be sure, nor could one be sure of who this girl Zara was, or who might have sent her here.

  “I tell you, there is no one here by that name.”

  “But I am his sister,” the girl pleaded.

  “I thought you said he was your friend,” Halajan shot back.

  The girl looked down at the floor again, clearly embarrassed.

  “Is he in danger?” Yazmina glanced at the back door, thinking of Ahmet and Rashif in that roomful of men.

  Zara shook her head. “No. No danger.”

  Halajan lifted Najama into a chair and slowly approached the anxious girl. “You must fly away home, young one.” She placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders and turned her toward the door. “Your love life has no business here.”

  The girl turned back to face Yazmina and Bashir Hadi. “I am sorry to have disturbed you. Please accept my apologies.”

  Yazmina watched with a little knot in her stomach as Halajan escorted Zara to the door. There was something not right with this girl. She could not help but think of herself when she was not much older than that age, scared and alone with nobody to turn to and nowhere to go. She hurried past Halajan and followed the girl out into the courtyard. “Wait!” she called, catching up to her under the budding branches of the acacia tree. Zara turned, and when she did Yazmina recognized the look of desperation in the girl’s eyes as her own. This must have been how she had appeared to Sunny that first day when they crossed paths at the Women’s Ministry, where Yazmina had fled from the men who had taken her from her uncle’s house. “I know you are upset.”

  “It is nothing. I am fine,” the girl insisted, continuing toward the street.

  “Please.” Yazmina stopped her with a hand on her upper arm. “If there is something I can do to help you, you must tell me. Are you in some sort of trouble?” Yazmina glanced down at the girl’s middle.

  The color rose in Zara’s cheeks as her eyes widened. “No! Of course not!”

  “Have you been bothered, or threatened?”

  The girl shook her head and wrapped her arms around each other.

  “Has someone hurt you?”

  Again a silent no.

  “Well then, what could be so bad to make you appear as though you’re carrying the weight of a hundred bricks across your shoulders?”

  The girl remained silent, her eyes turned toward the ground.

  “Do not be ashamed that you came here,” Yazmina assured her. “I understand how difficult things can get sometimes. If there is something I can do to help you—”

  Yazmina could see the girl’s lower lip start to tremble before she spoke. “It is my parents,” she said, her words rushing out like water from a spigot. “I know they are arranging a marriage for me. I saw two women pay a call on my mother. I hear my uncles and aunts talking. I know the proposal to my father will come soon.”

  “But that is a good thing, khwaar jan,” Yazmina assured her. “You are not a child. This is the proper way. Do not be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid.” The girl wiped away a tear with the back of her sleeve.

  “Well, what is it then? Are your parents not good parents, do they not want a good life for you?”

  “Yes, they are good parents. I love my parents. And I do not wish to disobey or dishonor them.”

  “So what is the problem?” Yazmina brushed strands of the girl’s long silky hair away from her face with her fingers.

  “I don’t want to be married,” Zara answered, a little too adamantly.

  Yazmina nodded slowly. “Ah. It is because the man is mean? Or old? Or ugly?”

  The girl shook her head. “I do not know yet who the man is.”

  “So perhaps he is a good man. Like my Ahmet.”

  The girl hesitated slightly before finding her answer. “But I want to study.”

  Yazmina nodded, and tried to imagine herself in this girl’s position. She was married at fifteen to her childhood friend Najam. There had been no questions in her mind, no thoughts of studies up in the mountains of Nuristan. She had been happy in her marriage until the day Najam had died, killed before he even had a chance to see his daughter Najama come into the world. But life was different here in Kabul, and the rules seemed to change with every passing wind.

  “Perhaps your parents will understand,”
she suggested.

  The girl shook her head. “Not this time. This man is a wealthy man. His mother arrived with a servant, in a big car. My parents have turned away offers that have come before, but I know this one is different. I hear my family whispering, I see my aunts and uncles looking at me as if I were a prized sheep picked for sale at the bazaar.”

  “It is clear your parents are caring. They are choosing well for you.”

  Yazmina saw Zara’s shoulders suddenly heave. “But my heart belongs to someone else,” she confessed, with a sob so loud it echoed off the courtyard walls.

  Omar, Yazmina thought to herself. Halajan was right. She embraced the girl and held her trembling body close. “Quiet now. You must calm yourself. This is not the end of the world.” She could practically feel the girl’s pain shooting out from beneath her skin. But still she must do what was right.

  “You need to stay away from this boy,” she said softly into the girl’s ear, which only made her cry more. “It is the way things are done, little one. We all know that. It is tradition.”

  But tradition or not, for now this girl was suffering. Perhaps Yazmina could not do much to change the situation, but what she could do was offer her friendship. She knew all too well how it was to feel helpless and alone.

  She waited for Zara’s cries to subside, then took her hand and walked her to the gate. “Be strong, khwaar jan,” she said with a hug. “Sometimes things work out in ways you could never imagine. But if you need me, I am here for you. Remember that.” The girl quietly thanked her, furled the burqa up into the air and over her head, and left.

  Back inside the coffeehouse, Yazmina hurried to hug Najama. She prayed her daughter would never have reason to feel as sorrowful as that poor girl did, but who knows what life might bring? She was worried for Najama’s future, especially now, when everything around them seemed so uncertain.