A Cup of Friendship

by Deborah Rodriguez

  He got up and asked the pilot to fly over Lake Band-e Amir to the west, so they cut back and lowered their altitude so Sunny could take in the lakes, truly one of the wonders of the world, she thought. Their deep, lapis blue waters looked as if they cut away the sand-colored mountains like glass, their edges at a ninety-degree angle, their cliffs frighteningly high above. The incongruous relationship of crystal clear water and dry, barren cliffs gave the area an eerie beauty, unlike anything Sunny had ever seen. Just east of where they circled was Bamiyan, the Hindu sacred site where the Taliban had destroyed the giant thirteen-century-old Buddhas only months before al-Qaeda did the same thing to the Twin Towers in New York.

  Then they headed north up to the province of Balkh, where the fourth largest city of Afghanistan, Mazar, as Tommy casually referred to it, was located. Its name translated to Noble Shrine, which referred to the shrine of Hazrat Ali, a spectacular blue-tiled mosque in the center of the city, a tourist destination for millions of visitors every year. According to most Afghan Muslims, this was where Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was buried.

  As the plane circled over the city, Tommy took Sunny’s hand, which felt awkward and made her shift in her seat. She let him hold it for a minute or two, careful not to be too abrupt when she casually slid it out of his clasp.

  They landed at the airport, where a driver was waiting in a minivan and took them into the city, to the Royal Oak Hotel, not particularly luxurious but modern, clean, and nice enough. When they checked in, they were issued one key, as if it were assumed that they were staying together in one room. Tommy must have told the receptionist they were married, because it was illegal for an unmarried couple to stay together.

  Sunny pulled Tommy away from earshot of the desk and asked, “And is there a key for me?”

  “I’m sure I can get a duplicate.” He turned back to the receptionist.

  “No, I mean, for my room.” When she saw his quizzical look she whispered, “Did you think we were staying together?”

  “That’s exactly what I thought.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m here, I agreed to come, but I need some … time.”

  “But that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To get to know each other again?” he said, smiling, as he put his hands on her waist. “Come on, babe—”

  But she pulled away, embarrassed by his inappropriate public display of affection, and said, “Please don’t ‘babe’ me, but I need to see if there’s still something between us, besides the, you know.” The sex would always be there, but what about the emotional relationship? Did they even have one? Besides, he could very easily disappear again and leave her with her heart in her hand.

  “All right, but you know there is, and I know there is.” He turned back to the reception desk to get another room.

  Jack walked into the coffeehouse that night carrying a beautiful bouquet of peach-colored roses wrapped in newspaper. He greeted Bashir Hadi warmly, they exchanged pleasantries about Bashir Hadi’s family and Jack’s flight, and then Jack asked him, “So where’s Sunny? She in the back?”

  Bashir Hadi paused for a moment, considering what he should say. “No, um, Miss Sunny is away right now.” He turned around quickly and went back to work, not wanting to be the one to tell him.

  Jack looked at his watch, frowning. “So when do you expect her?”

  “She’ll be gone for a few days.”

  “What do you mean?” The hand holding the roses dropped to his side, the bouquet pointed to the floor. To say he was disappointed was an understatement. He’d counted the days since he left, then the hours on his return flight, then the minutes as he was driven from the airport to the coffeehouse, and then, finally, he was here. “She go to Dubai? Picking up supplies?”

  “Yes, exactly, she went to Dubai,” Bashir Hadi said as he walked into the back pantry and disappeared from sight.

  Jack raised his brows. He scanned the room and saw Halajan in the rear cleaning a table. He passed her on his way to the back to get water and something to put the roses in.

  “Hello, Halajan.”

  “Welcome back, and hope your family is well.” She turned away from him and went back to work.

  “They are, thank you. It was a good trip. So, Halajan, where is Sunny? I brought these for her,” Jack said, holding out his flowers.

  She stopped, looked at him, and with her hands on her hips, she said rapidly in Dari, “Where is she, you ask? Not with you, because you weren’t here.”

  “What do you mean? What’s going on? Both you and Bashir—”

  “What’s going on? What are you, a stupid donkey? You did this to yourself. Like the saying goes—”

  “Halajan!” Jack interrupted. “Tell me now.”

  “Guess who’s back?”

  He felt his stomach clench. It couldn’t be him. Could it? “Halajan! Please just tell me for God’s sake!”

  And as quickly as she could speak, Halajan told him, without taking a breath.

  “Tommy,” Jack whispered.

  Halajan breathed deeply and then with unveiled anger, said, “And so he and Sunny went to Mazar-e Sharif for a few days and will be back on Sunday. She is there with him, and you are here alone. This is all because of you!” she railed.

  Jack looked stunned, drew in a deep breath, and looked away.

  “She went with him, they went together, to Mazar-e Sharif?”

  Halajan nodded and went back to work.

  “It’s a romantic place,” Jack said, “if you’re into stupid clichés.” He threw the flowers onto the table. “Good move,” he said sarcastically as he headed out.

  “You don’t have to worry, Jack,” Bashir Hadi called after him. “It would take much more than a fancy mosque to steal her heart.”

  “Let’s hope so,” said Jack, walking out. He’s away for a few weeks and she’s gone for good? What had he been doing in America but freeing himself for her? For crying out loud! He slammed the coffeehouse door behind him.

  The doves were what did it for Sunny, the thousands of white doves of Mazar-e Sharif. The mosque itself was a wonder in dark blue, turquoise, gold, and earth-colored tiles, intricately patterned, completely covering every inch of the huge shrine except for the domed rooftops. But the doves gave the place life. She was alone, having arranged to meet Tommy here after he explored the old museum in the mosque. She wasn’t sure if it was the mosque that made Sunny feel claustrophobic or being with Tommy. All she knew was that she needed to breathe.

  Spread out over a section of the plaza were millions of doves. They were a bubbling froth, their warble a low boil. What added to the magic were the groups of women in white burqas feeding the birds wheat they’d bought from the small metal cart of a nearby vendor. Without apparent hair or face or distinguishing characteristics of any kind, they looked like large doves themselves.

  But there was one woman in a sky blue burqa who stood and turned to Sunny, and though Sunny couldn’t see her eyes through the mesh fabric, she felt the woman’s gaze on her. Then the woman gestured to Sunny, subtly but distinctly, and Sunny went to her, not knowing why. Normally, she would’ve ignored her, thinking she was a beggar. Up closer, Sunny could see the woman’s dark eyes through the mesh, and she imagined that the woman was smiling at her.

  The woman took Sunny’s hand in her own, kissed it, and placed it on her forehead. She whispered something to Sunny in Dari and turned Sunny’s hand over and poured wheat into it.

  “Tashakur,” thank you, Sunny said with a small bow of her head. Then she dug into her bag for some change to give her, but when she looked up, the woman in blue had vanished, leaving only those in white. Sunny turned around in every direction searching for her on the plaza. It seemed impossible for her to have disappeared so quickly, but she was gone. Maybe, just possibly, the magic of this place had transformed the woman’s blue burqa to white, just like the doves in the legend. And if so, she was, indeed, a seventh dove, one with a link to God.

  She
stooped to feed the doves with the wheat the woman had given her. When she stood, tears began to flow down her cheeks. She didn’t know what it was nor did she expect it, but she was embarrassed and put on her sunglasses. Something powerful had touched her. Even though she was not Muslim or very good at any sort of religion, she was overwhelmed with the spirit of the place. She breathed in deeply and felt that God or whatever it was that gave people strength was with her now. It was as if the woman with the wheat and the white doves, the holiness of the place itself, put her in touch with something powerful and made her feel more at peace than she’d felt in a long time.

  She met Tommy at the prearranged time and place, where he’d told their driver to pick them up and take them to the village of Balkh, the birthplace of the prophet Zoroaster, where Alexander the Great headquartered for two years after his invasion and where he’d taken his wife, and which was destroyed by Genghis Khan, more than a thousand years after that. This tiny village, now big on carpet weaving and tourism, was a microcosm of Afghanistan itself: rich in history, devastated by plunder, the people decimated by a frequent changing of the guard, and then exploited by a government in cahoots with one set of foreigners or another. Like Balkh, Afghanistan was owned by everybody but Afghans.

  In the car on the way back, Sunny said to Tommy, “I need your help with something.”

  “Oh, really,” he said, with a dopey grin. “And in exchange—”

  “Yazmina was stolen from her home in Nuristan to pay off a debt of her uncle’s. She got away. So now she fears the men who took her will return for her sister, who’s only twelve. When the snows melt and roads open—”

  “And?” he asked, putting a hand on her leg and leaning over to nuzzle her neck.

  She picked up his hand and put it on the car seat. “And, I need your help. We need to try to get Layla out of there before the men come back.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” He leaned back and looked at her.

  “No, I’m not kidding! I’m deadly serious, Tommy! Come on, you could get a small plane. You know a million people. You can do it. Please.”

  “You’re serious!” He laughed. “You’re fucking kidding me! I don’t think you understand: It’s easy to get her. It’s what happens after we get her. We’re talking blood oaths. The uncle owes money, but he can’t pay, so he pays with the girl. He doesn’t pay and … this is how wars get started. I am not risking my life and the life of my ‘millions of people’ to save—or maybe save—the life of one little girl. It ain’t happening.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Yes, but a practical asshole.”

  Afterward they went back to the hotel, where they each went to their own rooms, and then met for a late dinner. It was nice, the food was good, and Tommy would’ve looked delicious if she wasn’t so pissed off. But she couldn’t stomach the idea of sleeping with him. As attracted to him as she was, as invigorated as she felt to be out of Kabul, she was angry. Her experience at the mosque today told her to be at peace with herself, to follow her heart. Oh, she was at peace. Tommy was a selfish jerk who had no soul or empathy. He was a coward.

  So for the second time in her life she did something that surprised her: She didn’t sleep with the cute guy when he asked, she simply went home. She’d rather be alone than alone with someone she no longer had feelings for, except for anger and the distant memory of once having loved him.

  Two days earlier than expected, on a quiet Friday afternoon, Sunny walked into the coffeehouse with her small bag and was happy to find it just the way she’d left it except for a vase of roses on the counter that were a little droopy and wilted. Poppy greeted her the way she always did when she walked in—with her paws on Sunny’s chest and a lick on her chin. Yazmina and Halajan were probably taking their afternoon rest time together, as they’d been doing for the past week or two. But one thing was unusual. Bashir Hadi seemed angry.

  “Welcome back,” he said curtly. His back was to her. He was polishing the coffeemaker, turning its copper from a pockmarked brown to a shiny orange.

  “Hello to you, too, Bashir Hadi. How are you? Your family? All is well, I hope.” She nodded toward the vase. “Pretty flowers.”

  “Sure, we’re all fine here. Why even ask? Nothing much matters.”

  What the hell was up with him? she thought. But she said, “What is it, Bashir Hadi? Come on. Something’s bothering you.”

  He finally looked up from his work and said, “It’s good you’re back. You—” But he stopped himself.

  “Bashir Hadi?” She looked at him imploringly.

  “You left for your trip with Tommy and then guess what happened?”

  “Don’t tell me another bomb?” she said, quickly looking around the coffeehouse. “Or that a pipe burst or the roof—”

  “No!”

  Then Halajan walked in and asked, “So did you tell her that Jack was here?”

  “You mean he’s back? He’s here in Kabul?” Her eyes lit up, and she breathed out hard.

  Bashir Hadi shook his head from side to side. “He walked in only an hour after you left.” He watched Sunny’s face fall. And he pointed to the flowers. “They were beautiful when he brought them.”

  Halajan started to say something, but Sunny didn’t hear it. She’d already grabbed her stuff and was running to her room.

  She took her cellphone from around her neck and dialed his number.

  “Is that you?” It was his deep, masculine voice.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “How’re the doves?”

  “Lovely, you wouldn’t believe what—I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  “Send me a postcard.” He was about to hang up.

  “Come over.”

  “Yeah, maybe, when you get back, if you get back.”

  “I’m back already, here at the coffeehouse.”

  There was silence.

  “Jack! You can’t blame me for going. You were gone. And hardly a word the entire time! Tommy came home and—”

  “Hardly a word, if I remember right. He was never very articulate, that guy.”

  Sunny had to agree. “So come on over. I came back without even knowing you were here. And we didn’t sleep together, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “You think I’d worry about that? I never did see what you saw in Tommy. I mean, he’s a good-looking guy, but not much in the brains department.”

  “All right, you. You don’t have to go insulting my choices, okay? And what about you and Pamela, anyway?”

  “It’s over. ‘We’ve grown apart’ were her exact words. Like a scene out of a movie. ‘We’ve grown apart,’ can you believe it? She’s gotten used to me being gone, and now, with Charlie going to college, she wants out. At least my kid still calls me ‘Dad.’ ”

  “Jack, I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t blame her,” he said. “I feel the same way.”

  There was a long, silent pause. And then Sunny asked, “So, tell me. You didn’t sleep with your wife?”

  “Funny, and this may be the first time in history that a man is proud to say this to the woman he loves: I promise I didn’t sleep with my wife once. I’m on my way.”

  And she, the woman he loved, waited for Jack to come home.

  Isabel took Candace to the Pul-e Charkhi prison east of downtown Kabul. It was even more shocking for her on this second visit, perhaps because sharing it made it more real than it had seemed the first time. There were some faces she hadn’t remembered seeing, but there in the fifth cell, locked behind the blue bars with a dozen other women, was the one who haunted Isabel, the one who spoke English and pulled on her kameez and begged her for help.

  This time, Isabel was able to steal a minute to talk to the woman while Candace chatted with the guard. Isabel squatted low so that she was face-to-face with her. She looked younger than she’d remembered.

  “What’s your name?” asked Isabel.

  “Jamila,” she answered.

  “J
amila, how are you doing? Are they treating you all right? Do you have enough to eat?”

  She glanced quickly at the guard to be sure she wasn’t listening.

  “They treat us like animals—only goats are fed more than we are and have a choice between grasses on the hillside or leftovers. We eat only leftovers.”

  A voice behind her said, “The grasses would be better!”

  And all the women laughed just enough to get the attention of the guard, who said nothing but glared at them. But then Candace said something to her, and the guard turned her attention back to her.

  “Can you help us?”

  “That’s why we’ve returned. To help get you out.”

  “I cannot go without my sisters. Please help them, too.” And she gestured to all the women in the cell. “And their children, who must stay with them wherever they are.”

  “I don’t know when or how many, but we’ll try.”

  “Otherwise, they will sell me as a slave for—” But she stopped herself, the color in her cheeks rising. “For men.”

  “What are you saying? The prison will sell you?”

  “Yes, they send the young ones like me to the Gulf, or worse yet, we stay in Afghanistan, for the pleasure of men.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because they took my friend Haliya, whom they traded for money outside of Kabul, but she ran away. She’d overheard them talking when she pretended to be sleeping in the back of the van. When they caught her, they beat her, destroyed her face, and threw her away like garbage. The police picked her up and brought her back and she told us what she’d heard.”

  “Is Haliya here now?”

  “Yes, in the corner there. I’ll get her.”