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“I still think it’s a bad idea,” I said. “But knowing you, everything will work out great.”

Sean laughed. “I’ll let you know. But keep it quiet. I don’t want anyone else to know about it.”

So I left Sean and the Gandamack, and a few days later, I left Afghanistan. Sean also asked several mutual friends their opinions of his planned trip—as with everything else, Sean couldn’t keep his mouth shut. But I would only find this out later because Sean had told them, like me, to stay quiet. We all stayed quiet, until we couldn’t anymore. Only then would I learn that everyone told Sean the same thing: that the trip was too risky, and that he was acting like an idiot.

CHAPTER 18

SUSPICIOUS MINDS

My new house in Pakistan was the nicest I had seen in Islamabad, nicer than anywhere I had ever lived during my resolutely middle-class life. Brick with white trim, it was an over-the-top knockoff of a colonial mansion, with a ridiculous five bedrooms, an even more ridiculous five bathrooms, a giant two-story living room with floor-to-ceiling windows, a view of the Margalla Hills, a roof deck, bunny planters, and a landlord who was a colonel. I figured I deserved it. To save the company money, for almost a year I had either slept at friends’ houses in Islamabad or rented a cheap room, while the company continued to pay for the bulk of my apartment in India. But after giving up my Delhi apartment the previous summer, my expenses had dropped to a dangerously low level. I didn’t want my increasingly cheap company to get used to it. I also wanted my own space again, and since Dave had no place to live in Islamabad anymore, as he was spending most of his time in Afghanistan, getting a house together made sense.

At least, that’s what I told myself. Moving in after only a few months of dating seemed crazy, especially considering his anger issues and my lack-of-support problems, but, hey, this was a crazy lifestyle. We were both mature. Somehow we could make it work. And we needed it, needed the anchor. The Italian restaurant where we had always gone for dates had just been blown up, the night after Tammy, Dave, several other friends, and I ate dinner there. Dave bought us a pool table. I bought us a wooden bar and stools. All the foreigners were creating their own havens, to stay out of the Pakistani madness. Our mantra had become like my misanthropic father’s: Outside bad, inside good.

My trusty driver Samad cleaned up the house, picked out new lighting fixtures, and supervised the painting of the walls, which the previous German tenants had desecrated with pink-and-rust triangles. He told me he wanted to be the gardener.

“I love this work, Kim.”

So I made him the gardener. I even let Samad move into the tiny maid’s room, with its own entrance, so he had a place to stay during the day and sleep if I made him work late. I gave him a piece of carpet, a DVD player, a spare TV. He brought in a mattress. I watched how Samad worked, how he was so meticulous, so trustworthy for a kid of twenty-two. I wanted to find a way to help him.

Samad did not own his own car. He took whatever car his company handed him—which meant that en route to Peshawar one morning, after making various clanking sounds, our car broke down. The engine appeared to be held together by duct tape and staples. I spent the next ninety minutes berating Samad for not checking the car, an experience that made me feel slightly dirty, like kicking a puppy. Samad needed a new car, one of his own. He needed it for our safety. So we cobbled together loans, from me and others and Samad’s helpful boss, to get him a sleek black 2008 Toyota Corolla. He started crying when he showed up at my house with it. He washed it about thirty times a day and cringed whenever I climbed inside holding a large cup of coffee.

So my new life was set: new house, new car, new live-in if longdistance boyfriend, and inevitably, new intrigue.

Samad soon drove me to a lunch date with a political officer at the Afghan embassy. I had known him for years, ever since he had