Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

by Deborah Rodriguez

  Sunny forced a smile. Inside, she was feeling a little sorry, knowing that wouldn’t be the case.

  4

  “Have fun. Be safe. And remember what Yazmina said: not too many sweets. And no soda! And be careful not to …” The door of the old brown Mercedes slammed shut before Ahmet could say more. Halajan was anxious to get moving, knowing that the drive could take forever, a trip that should normally last no more than twenty minutes. They should have left earlier, and would have, had she not been forced to wait for Khalid, the chokidor, to arrive at the coffeehouse in his own sweet time to give them a ride. Traffic in Kabul had become a nightmare thanks to the barricades that could turn a through road into a dead-end street without warning, and the thing they called the ring of steel, which was really just a fancy name for the checkpoints guarded by the newly appointed police—those pimply-faced boys with goggles pushed up on their helmets, knives strapped to their body armor, flashlights attached to their rifles—trying their hardest to appear as tough as the international forces that came before them.

  “Just turn and go around that truck!” she yelled impatiently from the back seat. He drives like an old woman, Halajan thought. How she longed to grab the steering wheel from Khalid’s hand. You could bet your life she wouldn’t be so meek and courteous as he was being, not if she could drive.

  It was a full hour before he finally dropped them off at their destination. Najama tugged at the bottom of Halajan’s green chador, pulling her with a four-year-old’s determination toward the statue standing guard at the zoo’s entrance. The bronze lion glimmered in the early spring sunlight, his face proud and defiant.

  “Do not worry, little one. We will go say hello to our old friend Marjan, as always.”

  The girl ran ahead as Halajan struggled to keep up. The story of the hero lion was one of Najama’s, and Halajan’s, favorites. Of course, she had not shared all the details with her granddaughter. Like how, after the mujahideen had driven the country into violence and chaos, there was no one left to feed the animals in the zoo, and many of them died of hunger. Or how the deer and ducks met their ends on the dinner plates of the hungry fighters, and about how the others—tigers and bears and monkeys, all those who were considered haraam, forbidden—died of neglect or stray bullets. But Marjan, the lion; now there was a fighter, as proud and tough as the Afghan people themselves. As the story went, it was when the fighting had reached its peak that an idiot warrior with something to prove had slipped into the animal’s cage, seeking to tease him. But the mujahid was no match for the lion, who gobbled him up in an instant. The next day, the dead man’s brother came seeking revenge by throwing a hand grenade straight at the lion’s snout. Though blinded and scarred by the attack, Marjan refused to give in, and instead lived on through two more decades of war and turmoil into old age, finally coming to rest in a grave in the flower garden at the rear of the zoo. No, Halajan thought as she watched the child gently stroking the bronze cat’s majestic mane, Najama would hear those gruesome details on her own, soon enough.

  Yesterday’s clouds were gone, leaving behind a sky as blue as the deepest of the Band-e Amir lakes high in the Hindu Kush mountains. The crisp morning air had not been enough to keep away the flocks of families seeking a few hours of peaceful escape behind the zoo’s high, sturdy walls, or the young couples walking and talking together, safe from the judging eyes and wagging tongues of others.

  Halajan dug deep into her pocket for the coins needed to enter the aquarium. The girl skipped ahead through the blue doorway, Halijan hustling to join her inside, where she found Najama standing transfixed behind the low chain separating the people from the ugly brick walls holding the tanks. The look on her granddaughter’s face—that mix of curiosity and delight that seems only to appear on the very young—was well worth the price of entry. Though Halajan had to wonder what it was about a stupid fish swimming in circles through a forest of plastic plants that could bring so much joy. Halajan, she preferred the snakes.

  Outside, Halajan held tightly to Najama’s hand as she pushed her way through the crowd, past the cascading fountain to the pit where the big bears lived. Along the enclosure’s stone wall, a trio of women in blue burqas drew back with a start as a brown bear reared up onto his hind legs with bluster and command, as if he were a fat warlord waving around an AK-47. Najama squealed with delight, then spun on her heels, anxious to see more. The two of them wove their way down the stone pathways past the pens of listless gazelles and wolves, past a lone lioness pacing back and forth across a small patch of dirt, past a cage full of nasty-looking vultures pecking relentlessly at one of their own.

  Though the zoo had made many improvements since its years of wartime neglect and its near-extinction under the Taliban, it was still nothing like the modern marvel it had been upon its opening back when Halajan was still in her teenage years, when things had been so different. The zoo had been the pride of Kabul, a wondrous oasis built along the banks of the flowing river, surrounded by the city’s winding hills. The generous King Mohammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, had even donated a pair of snow leopards from his own private collection at Kaaraiz e Meer, outside of Kabul. No, this sorry excuse for a zoo was not the zoo she had known. But still, they were trying.

  “Look at Mr Showoff.” Halajan led the little girl to an empty space between the tall fir trees, where a peacock stood in full bloom, his eye-spotted tail a shimmering fan of sapphire and emerald. “I think the poor bird is looking for a wife,” she said to no one in particular. Well, she thought, even single he is at least better off than the ones for sale in the narrow alleyway of the Kaa Forushi bird market, sitting day after day in their wicker cages, unable to spread their wings.

  Najama stood mesmerized by the bird’s splendor, so vibrant against its dusty brown surroundings. “Nana! I want a pretty bird! Luftan? Please?”

  “Inshallah.” God willing. Halajan smiled and herded the girl forward toward the next lonely animal, a single pig rooting in a pen of patchy grass, his pale snout blackened with dried mud, oblivious to the curious crowds eager to see the only pig in Afghanistan, where, under Islamic law, he was definitely considered haraam. But what was even more fascinating than the peacock or the pig to little Najama were the bright yellow and blue and green cars of the spinning ferris wheel in the distance. Halajan fiddled with the purple ribbons holding the tips of Najama’s thick braids in place, and did her best to ignore the girl’s pleas. She would just as soon jump straight off the top of Mount Noshakh naked than allow herself to be spun and tossed like that, locked like a pigeon in a painted cage dangling eight stories above the ground.

  “Look over there, Najama!” She turned the child’s attention toward a crowd that had suddenly gathered around the monkeys’ cage. As the two of them maneuvered their way closer, through a sea of brightly colored chadors and of a mob of dark cropped heads, Halajan spotted a short man in blue jeans tossing bits of kabob through the small open spaces of the wire fence. Everyone, young and old alike, was screaming with laughter at the little creatures as they competed for the tiny morsels, diving over each other and into the waterless moat in a routine fit for a circus. Halajan clicked her tongue. “Do these people not see?” she asked her granddaughter, pointing to the white metal sign with a big, red circle and backslash covering an illustrated hand with morsels tumbling out of it. “Do they not pay attention to the announcements?” she said, looking up to the loudspeaker above. “Do not feed the animals. Perhaps they cannot read, but are these people idiots?” Yet the monkeys continued to reward the crowd with their antics, encouraging more and more participation from their own side of the fence, until the floor of the cage was littered with food and garbage. The animals greedily picked their way through the contraband loot. When one curiously unwrapped an entire piece of chewing gum, popped it in its mouth and started to chew like a sassy teenager, the crowd roared. “Ach,” cried out Halajan in disgust as she grabbed Najama and turned to leave.

  But the laught
er around them had suddenly become a chorus of wild hollers and shrieks and whoops, and all at once the crowd was on the run, in pursuit of one tiny brown monkey who had somehow managed to escape from its jail. The men and boys were scrambling and pushing and leaping over each other—just like those monkeys—to claim the honor of being the first to capture the poor thing. One threw a soda can into the monkey’s path, and another followed, until the sky had become a sea of flying cans.

  Halajan had seen enough.

  She pulled Najama away from the spectacle and headed quickly back down the walkways that led to the zoo’s exit to sit and wait for Khalid. Have these people not learned anything? No, this was not the Kabul she knew, the one where respect and dignity mattered above all else. What had become of her city? Hers was not the Kabul where people acted worse than animals. Hers was not the Kabul where men felt free to piss on the streets regardless of who was nearby, where mothers fed their children opium and rented them out to others for a day of begging, where spectators gathered daily on a bridge to watch men suffering and dying from heroin addiction on the muddy riverbank below, as if it were a movie for their entertainment.

  She let out a huge sigh. How she longed to get home, to be out back in the little courtyard, alone, where she could pull off her itchy head scarf and light up a smoke, and dream of the old days, and the pride she had once felt for her city and its people. How she prayed that feeling would one day return. And how she hoped that that “one day” would come soon, inshallah.

  5

  The kitchen floor was finally beginning to reveal its true self, layer by layer, as Sunny relentlessly drove the sponge mop back and forth and back again. She paused to brush away the strands of wavy brown hair that had escaped from the clip on top of her head, and stretched backwards with a groan. The crappy mattress had done a number on her last night, a penalty she accepted as the price she had to pay for missing that last ferry. And with barely enough cell service to make a call, searching for a hotel or inn or B&B on this island would have been a nightmare. Figures. And today? If it weren’t for getting hopelessly lost in that green maze of towering pines that made every road around here look exactly alike, causing her to be two hours late for her appointment with Rick, she’d be watching TV in a cozy room at the Seattle Hyatt with a glass of red wine and a room-service pizza on its way.

  Rick Stark. On first impression she had been admittedly charmed. He was tall—taller than Jack—and carried himself with the air of a man who knew exactly what he wanted, the type whose every gesture was smooth and deliberate. She’d seen plenty like him before. In fact, there was a time in her life, or perhaps even two, when she would have welcomed a guy like that into her bed with open arms. But she hadn’t felt that way about anybody in a long time. Not since Jack.

  Rick had been the only customer in the coffee place when Sunny poked her head through the shiny silk banners hanging from the doorway, and as she entered he turned his head toward her, cellphone glued to one ear, and waved her over. She shook out the damp feathers clumped inside her puffy jacket, draped it over the back of a chair, dropped her leather knapsack onto the floor and sat, taking in the room around her as he continued with his conversation. The place felt like a flashback to the sixties; batik panels suspended from above, a Haight-Ashbury street sign over the bar, a poster of Chairman Mao—his profile tilted optimistically upward—behind the bakery counter, walls plastered with bumper stickers demanding that the ocean be protected, the earth be loved, the planet be saved. Sunny wondered why Rick had chosen this place to meet. He didn’t look at all like he belonged here, with his slicked-back hair, buttoned-down shirt and shiny black shoes.

  “What’ll you have?” he asked with a smile as he put down the phone and scraped back his chair.

  “Well hello to you too. Cappuccino, I guess?”

  “Wet, or dry?” he purred, as if he were offering something dirty or illicit.

  “Um, dry, I guess?” She had no clue. She’d gotten used to the whole venti or grande, regular or soy, caf or half-caf thing that had happened since she’d been away, but wet or dry? How the hell could a coffee be dry?

  Rick returned with a hefty ceramic cup filled with a creamy brew, the aroma of which brought back fond memories of times long gone. Sunny settled back into her chair with a little sigh.

  “Good, right? Twimbly’s finest.” He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table, his own cup clutched tightly between his hands.

  She took a little sip. “Mmm. The best I’ve had since my own, at the coffeehouse.”

  “Ah, yes, the famous café of Kabul. Jack never stopped talking about that place.”

  Sunny had to laugh to herself, thinking about how she had felt it was actually Twimbly Island that Jack never stopped talking about.

  “Must seem pretty quiet around here to you.” Rick checked his watch. “Not much happening, unless you’re into whale-watching or kayaking.”

  Sunny nodded as she blew lightly into her cup.

  “Of course,” he continued, “come summer, things do pick up a little.” He launched into a rapid-fire inventory of the island’s statistics and attractions—population 62,300, thirty-five miles of spectacular countryside from tip to toe, world-class cycling, canoeing, bird-watching—ticking them off one by one as if he were guiding a tour.

  Sunny was determined to keep her own impressions of the place to herself. “Well, Jack certainly did love it here,” she heard herself say.

  Rick stared into his cup and laughed a little. “True. True. That guy loved everyone, everything, and every place. Sometimes made me wonder if he could tell shit from Shinola. Excuse me for a second,” he said, reaching for his phone, which had begun to buzz like an angry bee. Sunny bristled a little at his last comment as she watched Rick’s fingers peck at the screen.

  “I’m sure you’ll find plenty to do around here once the weather improves,” he continued without raising his head.

  “Oh, I’m not planning on being here that long. Nowhere near that long.”

  Rick paused and lifted one eyebrow up toward her. “Really?”

  “Not in my plans.” She wiped a drop of milk from the table.

  “Huh.” His head bowed back down to the phone. “So I assume you’ll be heading back to your Kabul coffee shop?” he asked as he returned to his typing.

  Sunny started to shake her head, the echoes of Jack’s convictions still bouncing around in her brain. But Jack was gone. And with him went the last connection she had over here, in the States, with Kabul—those shared memories that had kept it all alive for her day after day. “Not sure,” she heard herself answer. Saying those words out loud for the first time made her realize just how much she missed her old life. She had never felt as alive as she did in Afghanistan. More seemed to happen in just one day there than happened in a lifetime anywhere else.

  “So what can I do for you today?” Rick asked, his eyes still riveted onto the little screen.

  Sunny sat forward and tucked her curls behind her ears. “I want to make a deal with you. Jack’s half, my half, to you. Market value. Clean and simple.”

  Rick slowly put down the phone and turned his toothy smile back on her. Then he cleared his throat. “Well, that’s certainly an interesting proposition,” he said after a beat.

  Sunny was about to ask him about the property’s last appraisal when the phone rang again. Once more Rick apologized but took the call, heading outside to the parking lot while he talked. She could see him through the café’s window, pacing back and forth in the mist. Sunny checked her watch, pissed that missing the last ferry had now clearly become a certainty. All of a sudden the guy didn’t seem so attractive to her anymore.

  “So let me ask you something,” Rick said as he came back in and blotted the moisture from outside off his face with a napkin. “What makes you so certain you want to sell?”

  “What am I going to do in a place like this? This was Jack’s dream. Not mine.”

  “But you don’t know w
here you’re going?” Rick narrowed his eyes.

  Sunny shrugged her shoulders.

  “Well, what do you think Jack would want you to do?”

  “Jack’s not here.”

  “Just saying.” Rick tilted his head back and drained his cup. “Another?” She shook her head. Rick shouted out his own triple shot order to the sleepy guy behind the counter. “You don’t think he’d rather see you tucked away safe and sound here on Twimbly than running around Pakistan or Tajikistan or whatever Stan strikes your fancy next?”

  Sunny didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Under the table she could see Rick’s legs dancing their own little jig. Cut this guy open and he’d probably bleed caffeine, she thought.

  And then Rick said something she hadn’t expected. “Well, personally, I think I know what Jack would have wanted. And me? I want to do right by him. So here’s what I’m willing to do.” He leaned forward and folded his hands together on the table. “My half, to you. Market value minus twenty per cent. For cash, that is.”

  Sunny was stunned. “You want to sell?”

  “For Jack,” he said solemnly. “For you.”

  She drew back as he slid a clammy hand over hers. “You mean you’re not going to start up the winery again?”

  “It wasn’t exactly a part of my plans. I’m really too busy to do it justice. And now …”

  “Well it wasn’t exactly a part of my plans either,” she protested.

  “It’s quite a good deal I’m offering. You really should think about it.”

  “I could think about it until the cows come home and it wouldn’t change anything.”

  Rick sat back again and drummed his fingers on the table.

  “So, wait,” Sunny continued slowly, as if speaking to a five-year-old, “if you want to sell, and I want to sell, why don’t we just agree to sell the whole mess to someone else?”