Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [88]
It was a formal question, like How do you do? in English, and Mohammed gave the formal reply: “I’m still alive!”
She tucked her roll of maps under her arm and went out.
The women in the courtyard looked at her fearfully as she passed them. She nodded at Halima, Mohammed’s dark-eyed wife, and got a nervous half-smile in return.
The guerrillas were doing a lot of traveling lately. Mohammed had been to Faizabad, Fara’s brother had gone to Jalalabad. . . . Jane recalled that one of her patients, a woman from Dasht-i-Rewat, had said that her husband had been sent to Pagman, near Kabul. And Zahara’s brother-in-law, Yussuf Gul, the brother of her dead husband, had been sent to the Logar Valley, on the far side of Kabul. All four places were rebel strongholds.
Something was going on.
Jane forgot her disappointment for a while as she tried to figure out what was happening. Masud had sent messengers to many—perhaps all—of the other Resistance commanders. Was it a coincidence that this happened so soon after Ellis’s arrival in the Valley? If not, what could Ellis be up to? Perhaps the U.S. was collaborating with Masud in organizing a concerted offensive. If all the rebels acted together they could really achieve something—they could probably take Kabul temporarily.
Jane went into her house and dropped the maps in the chest. Chantal was still asleep. Fara was preparing food for supper: bread, yogurt and apples. Jane said: “Why did your brother go to Jalalabad?”
“He was sent,” said Fara with the air of one who states the obvious.
“Who sent him?”
“Masud.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know.” Fara looked surprised that Jane should ask such a question: who could be so foolish as to think that a man would tell his sister his reason for a journey?
“Did he have something to do there, or did he take a message, or what?”
“I don’t know,” Fara repeated. She was beginning to look anxious.
“Never mind,” Jane said with a smile. Of all the women in the village, Fara was probably the least likely to know what was going on. Who was the most likely? Zahara, of course.
Jane picked up a towel and headed for the river.
Zahara was no longer in mourning for her husband, although she was a good deal less boisterous than she used to be. Jane wondered how soon she would marry again. Zahara and Ahmed had been the only Afghan couple Jane had come across who actually seemed to be in love. However, Zahara was a powerfully sensual woman who would have trouble living without a man for very long. Ahmed’s younger brother, Yussuf, the singer, lived in the same house as Zahara, and was still unmarried at the age of eighteen: there was speculation among the village women that Yussuf might marry Zahara.
Brothers lived together, here; sisters were always separated. A bride routinely went to live with her husband in the home of the husband’s parents. It was just one more way in which the men of this country oppressed their women.
Jane strode quickly along the footpath through the fields. A few men were working in the evening light. The harvest was coming to an end. It would soon be too late to take the Butter Trail anyway, Jane thought: Mohammed had said it was a summer-only route.
She reached the women’s beach. Eight or ten village women were bathing in the river or in pools at the water’s edge. Zahara was out in midstream, splashing a lot as usual but not laughing and joking.
Jane dropped her towel and waded into the water. She decided to be a little less direct with Zahara than she had been with Fara. She would not be able to fool Zahara, of course, but she would try to give the impression that she was gossiping rather than interrogating. She did not approach Zahara immediately. When the other women got out of the water, Jane followed a minute or two later, and dried herself with her towel in silence. It was not until Zahara and a few other women began to drift back toward the village that Jane spoke. “How soon will Yussuf be back?” she asked Zahara in Dari.
“Today or tomorrow. He