What Changes Everything Read online

  dumbass," he said, addressing a passing vehicle, and then, over his shoulder again, added, "excuse me, ma"am. They drive crazy here."

  "I can see that."

  "If you don"t mind me asking, ma"am," Mendez said, "but what are you…well, what are you doing in Kabul? I mean, Holder here tried to explain but…"

  "I"m a nurse preceptor back home," Mandy said.

  "Pre-what?"

  "I work side by side with nurses that I train in the emergency ward. And we get our share of emergencies, especially on Friday…" Mandy trailed off, knowing that an emergency in Houston was nothing like one here. "On Friday and Saturday nights," she finished lamely. "Anyway, I"m here to visit some hospitals, maybe a refugee camp or two. I"ve brought supplies to hand out—antibiotics, sterile bandages, sutures, that kind of thing. I"ll observe. Maybe I can offer some best-practice suggestions on evaluation or triage."

  "Pretty brave of you to come here," Mendez said. "And to come alone."

  "Brave." It hadn"t been the word Jimmy had used. Mandy touched the edge of her

  headscarf as if it were her hair. "I worked for the Peace Corps way back when. I figured if I could do two years then, I could manage a couple weeks now."

  "But you"re on your own this time."

  She shook her head. "I"m working through an NGO that deals with refugees. The incountry director used to be married to a friend of mine. He"s connecting me to the people and places."

  "And where were you based, back in the Peace Corps?"

  "Ecuador. I worked in a clinic in there."

  Mendez drove in silence for a moment. "Forgive me, ma"am," he said, "but I don"t imagine Ecuador is much like Afghanistan. Here, we"re all just scooping teacups out of the Titanic. I"m probably not supposed to say that kind of shit, you know, morale and all…" Mendez twisted the steering wheel to the left, and Mandy lurched into the turn. "Let"s just say I wouldn"t want my mom here."

  "Sorry about my buddy here," Holder said as he socked Mendez"s right arm. "He"s got too many questions and too many opinions."

  "It"s all right." Mandy had heard a version of this, only with greater heat, from Jimmy. She"d hoped not to respond to questions like these. She"d hoped to talk only about her desire to help heal others injured by a war that had cost her son his legs. But this Mendez, he could be Jimmy. He even sounded a little like Jimmy used to sound. For reasons she couldn"t precisely name, she wanted to give him a fuller picture. "You"re right," she said, "I"m not Doctors Without Borders. But I sent a son here to fight," she went on. "It"s the hardest thing I"ve ever done—you know from your own families. While Jimmy was here, I was living back there, but living differently. I lived with an everyday fear. He returned, thankfully. But he"s—you know, he"s…" She thought about saying changed, but she was trying to get at the root of what she felt now, and part of that involved veering away from euphuisms. "He"s a double amputee." She paused, finding herself surprised again at the ugliness of this phrase. "So it"s also personal. I decided to try…maybe, to understand things better in the end. There have to be Afghan mothers here who feel like I do. I"d like to meet them."

  A car honked its horn as it passed them and Mendez cursed under his breath. "Yeah, well good luck with your work," he said. "Hell, it"s as likely to win hearts and minds as much as anything else we do out here."

  "Jimmy was a good soldier," Holder said after a moment. He turned to Mandy. "So how is he, really?"

  This was too complex a question to answer in this hurtling car, in front of strangers. What could she say? That loud noises frighten him and he seems to have forgotten how to laugh? That he says Afghanistan left him forever half a man, and that some nights he grows so dark it scares her, and then he drinks himself into oblivion? That sometimes she feels like she"s just waiting for the day he"ll give up altogether and become a delayed, unacknowledged fatality of this war, possibly taking her down with him?

  She looked out the window, aware of the awkward fall of silence. "He"s alive," she said. "In the end, I guess we"re lucky."

  "Damn straight," Mendez said. Then, mercifully, he turned on the radio and Arabicsounding music flooded the car, making Mandy think of young women dancing in gauze dresses. She gazed out the window, remembering when she herself had been a young woman with clingy dresses and shapely legs and an easy stride, a woman who"d not yet cleaned blood off a wound

  or leaned over a terminal patient or had a baby ripen in her belly.

  She rested a hand on her chest, feeling the air move inside her. Something was badly broken in there, she knew. But maybe—and this was the secret hope she"d carried with her from Texas to Dubai and over the yawning stretch of Afghanistan—maybe she"d heal herself in their hospitals, by a taste of the country that had chewed up her son and then spit him back. Maybe, if God existed, if he were truly great, they"d all be healed.

  Todd, September 4th

  The argument had tumbled forward for almost 20 minutes now and had already begun circling back; Todd was ready for ice cream. To a casual observer, the debate might seem onesided; after all, Amin did all the talking. But Todd had a knack for disagreeing without speaking. His was the art of those too cautious or too isolated to engage in frank exchanges. He"d refined it over years of working far from home, challenging himself to seek persuasion through patience and through words used like pinches of pepper in a delicate dish.

  "This isn"t our work," Amin said, "I don"t trust Zarlasht; her aim is to manipulate," and then, with greater heat, "it"s dangerous to involve yourself in a dispute of this sort, Mr. Todd—I feel a responsibility to make sure you understand this," and finally, "it"s outside our sphere of responsibility anyway. We must concentrate on working for refugees."

  Todd smiled or grimaced now and then, nodded in a way that indicated nothing more than thoughtfulness, and occasionally glanced out the window. Though his vision was curtailed by the ten-foot-high, whitewashed security wall that encased the compound, he knew that just beyond it lay the chaotic life of Kabul streets, where women in burqas clutched kohl-eyed babies and begged at stoplights, and men pushing wheelbarrows loaded with bruised fruit swayed between cars with audacity, where underfed children scattered and regrouped to sell pieces of rusted metal intended for purposes Todd could never discern, where traffic lights and lane markings were thought to be for sissies and safe travel was achieved only through great boldness and luck. He longed for it. He longed especially now, stuck in a room of intellectual—and ultimately, he feared, irresolvable—discord.

  Finally, blessedly, Amin paused for breath.

  "Shall I get us some sheer yakh?" Todd asked.

  "Why not simply have told her to return on Thursday, instead of Wednesday?" Amin said, using what surely had to be the last of his arguing energy. "Then I could have said you were called out of town on an emergency. That might have discouraged her—or at least would have given me time to look into her claims, her family." Todd"s travel plans were always secret; Amin, his closest Kabul colleague—no, friend—was the only person here who knew that early Thursday, just before fajr prayers, Todd would depart for Islamabad. By Thursday evening, he would be waist-deep in issues involving refugees in Pakistan, and Zarlasht would have been turned away at the gate. After four weeks in Pakistan, Todd would return for one more month in Kabul, his last. Then back to New York, and to Clarissa, for good, though Amin hadn"t yet been told that, and of course that involved challenges of its own. Challenges not to be considered now; Todd always said his doctors insisted that, for his continued good health, he ignore all problems outside his current time zone.

  "Because, Amin, we cannot simply dismiss this as beyond our mandate." Todd kept his voice neutral in contrast to Amin"s heat. "You tell me the villagers are turning to the Taliban for justice. Well, Zarlasht is turning to us. If we do nothing, we are by default supporting the Taliban."

  "How many years do I know you now, Mr. Todd? Long enough for me to say that you are still too trusting, and my words are not a—how do you say?—a compliment. You�
�"

  But Todd held up his hand, cutting Amin off. "Wait, my friend. First…" He reached to a tray on a table in the corner, lifted aloft two small glass bowls, and raised his eyebrows in a question.

  Amin let out an exasperated breath of air. "Too late for ice cream," he said.

  "Oh Amin, we haven"t reached the end of the world yet. And even then—"

  "Your cook told me to strictly forbid you from eating ice cream after 3 p.m. because otherwise, you won't eat her dinners."

  "Yes," Todd agreed. "Shogofa will not be happy with me. But there's nothing for it; sheer yakh it must be. It will clear our brains. Remember, we have the late meeting with the American nurse, Mandy Wilkens."

  "I didn"t forget," Amin said. "But, Mr. Todd. Do you really want ice cream, or just to escape my reasonable words?"

  "The ice cream. Okay, mostly the ice cream." Todd, mock-somber, put his hand to his chest. "I swear."

  Amin shook his head in resignation. "One scoop," he said. "Only one."

  Todd grinned as he headed out the office door and down the steps to the main entrance, where he slipped his shoes on. He nodded to his driver Farzad, smoking by the car. "Salaam 'alekum," he said to Mustafa, the building guard, who emerged from a small room next to the metal gates. Todd raised the ice cream cups as if they were admission tickets, which, in a way, they were.

  Todd was required to travel everywhere by reinforced car with tinted windows: to refugee camps, government offices, the UN compound, the rare meal out, even the five blocks to the guesthouse where he slept. He sat in the back, with Farzad driving and Jawwid in the front passenger seat toting an AK-47. Those who came to Todd"s office were not allowed in the gate unless they"d made a prior appointment and even then were thoroughly checked by his guards. "Your safety is a matter of our honor," Amin had explained. Todd understood, but this meant that everything in his Kabul environment was tightly controlled, which was not the way he functioned best. To do his job well, he needed to walk down narrow dusty roads as they descended into yet-unknown villages and to visit the over-filled refugee camps. And in fact, he came to life visiting homes fashioned of war rubble and roofed with U.N.-provided tarps, eating unimaginable food he hoped would not make him ill, witnessing the tremendous grace and imagination of the vulnerable. He loved the unexpected adventure of every day spent in the field. He got to do little enough of it as Regional Director, given all the deskwork combined with safety concerns. And he"d soon be giving up even that.

  But today he still had the ice cream run.

  Over the five and a half years that he"d been coming to this office, Todd had posited and re-posited compromises to ease the restraints he faced in the name of security. At last his grumblings evolved into a discussion: Todd, Amin, Farzad and Jawwid sitting on floor mats, drinking chai, Todd offering that both his job and his personal needs required more relaxed access to Kabul, at least occasionally, and the Afghan men talking among themselves at a speed that defied his limited Pashto. Finally, a little over a year ago, they had reluctantly agreed to let him walk the block and a half from the office to the ice cream stand, no Jawwid at his side, no Farzad following in the car. But, equally firmly, nowhere else. So this had become his nearly daily outing, the only moments when he could imagine himself free in this teeming ancient city of conflict and joy and loss that enchanted him.

  "How are you, Mr. Todd Barbery?" Mustafa asked in English as he opened the gate, making the second word sound elongated. Mustafa was the only Afghan who insisted on calling Todd by first and last name.

  "Teh kha, manana," Todd responded, as was their practice. One in English, the other in Pashto, and sometimes they expanded their respective vocabularies in a fleeting language lesson. At the moment, though, Todd desired no further words. He kept moving, waved goodbye, and heard the gate clang shut behind him. The sound of freedom.

  The air was golden, which really meant full of dust, but Todd chose to see it in more romantic terms. He walked slowly, lingering, stretching his leash to its ends. He admired the energy of this mountain-ringed city—founded, it was said, by Cain and Abel, visited by Genghis Khan, loved by Babur, beaten down over and over, but with a core of perseverance and unlikely optimism. He found the faces of its people beautiful, a human mosaic of endurance creased with dark but resilient humor. These were qualities he valued; Afghanistan had found its way into his blood. The ice cream run was the most dependably enjoyable part of his Kabul day. He was grateful for the break from those who both helped him in uncountable ways and made him feel chained. And Afghan ice cream, seasoned with rosewater and cardamom and topped with grated pistachios, was a small miracle in a land that desperately needed miracles.

  The boy Churagh ran to Todd, waving his newspapers. "How are you?" he said in overenunciated English. Churagh had identified Todd as a soft touch; he bought a paper and gave the boy a friendly squeeze on the arm. Sometimes they chatted and Todd bought a second newspaper. Today Churagh seemed to sense Todd"s preoccupation; he followed but kept a distance. Though he wouldn"t admit it to Amin, Todd was having trouble shaking the unease brought on by the conflict between his desire to help Zarlasht somehow, and the strength of Amin"s arguments. He wanted to play Zarlasht"s visit over in his mind without Amin"s voice in his ears. Churagh seemed to sense Todd"s preoccupation; he followed but kept a distance.

  This had been Zarlasht"s third visit to Todd"s office—too many for simple courtesy calls. Mostly, he was the one who called on government officials, and the visitors he did have at the Kabul office were usually NGO representatives, not hospital administrators like Zarlasht, so he"d been vaguely uneasy about what she might want from him. When she"d arrived, she was not shown to the meeting room full of cushions; instead, she sat on a chair in front of his desk. Amin stood in the corner so that Zarlasht would not suffer any harm to her reputation by being alone with a Western man. She wore, as always, a headscarf, no burqa. He guessed she was about 40 years old, although he"d found the stress and want of their lives took a toll on Afghans and knew she could easily be a decade younger.

  The first time she visited, Zarlasht chatted without making any specific request; she said she"d heard good things about him and wanted to meet, since she worked as an administrator in Maiwand Hospital and often dealt with refugees. The next time, she told a story about her grandfather, a story of captivity and separation, her grandfather taken away by the Soviets, and she a child, so scared, hanging onto his robe, chanting "please don"t go don"t go, Granddad."

  "Not to worry, my dear," the grandfather had said, a soldier flanking him on each side.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Only out to buy you a television set," the grandfather said in a story so improbably only a child would believe. "I"ll come back with it soon."

  "When?"

  "An hour. Two at most. Before dark, surely."

  So she released her hold on him. And did not see him again for two and a half years— infinity in the life of a child—until he appeared one afternoon in the home she shared with her mother and grandmother. Sitting at the table, her grandfather smiled and raised his hand in greeting. But she didn"t recognize the frail stranger. "Who is this man? Why is he here? What does he want?" she asked her grandmother, and at that, his smile slid away and he began to weep. They"d pulled out his nails in prison, roots and all, so he had only the soft ends of his fingers, and he"d received electric shock torture so many times it left a hole in his tongue. He couldn"t eat, couldn"t bear food in his damaged mouth, so he was fed intravenously until his death, less than two years later.

  Political discord in this land had always been marked by blood and pain. The stories were unending, shocking the first time, sad but predictable after that. Still, Todd had been moved not only by her story but by the simple way in which she told it, without melodrama or any apparent attention to its effect on him. On the way out the door, almost as an afterthought, Zarlasht had mentioned a cousin who was being beaten by her husband.

  That cousin was the focu
s of her visit today.

  "Things are worsening for her," Zarlasht said, starting in even before the cup of chai arrived. "She can stand that her husband beats her, but she cannot stand the beating of her only daughter. Last week he poured boiling oil on the girl"s legs. They will be scarred. We are lucky it was not her face."

  "I"m so sorry."

  "My cousin is determined to stop him," she said.

  "She is brave."

  Zarlasht turned her head away as she nodded. "My cousin"s father went to the elders," she said, gazing as if at someone no one else could see. "He asked that a jirga be held to hear her complaints against her husband. They agreed at first, but now her husband has gone to them and sought their support, and they are threatening to cancel the hearing and instead punish her for speaking against her husband."

  "Can"t her father help?"

  "He is not as powerful as her husband," Zarlasht said. "It is whispered that the jirga wants to stone her for defying her husband and encouraging other women to do the same. Also as a show of strength, so the foreign occupiers—forgive me, but this is how they speak—can see that sharia holds sway less than 70 kilometers from Kabul. It"s not her own life that she considers. She doesn"t want her daughter left alone with a father who views her as an object. In this case, the girl will have no future at all."