– You promised!
Leo didn’t understand where they’d come from. He hadn’t shared his plans: he hadn’t told anyone where they were going.
Slowly he turned to Nara. She was standing just behind him, her arms behind her back. Under his stare she said:
– The captain asked me to keep him informed of our movements.
Leo had made an amateur’s mistake. He’d believed Nara had been partnered with him to learn. She’d been partnered with him as a spy. Considering his own record, it was only logical that the captain should take such a precaution when dealing with a defector.
Fyodor Mazurov was led out under armed guard. Watching him, Ara remained silent, sensing that any display of affection might provoke the Afghan soldiers. She was not arrested: such an event would disgrace the minister. Her punishment would be decided by and carried out by her father. If she were shrewd she would deny that she loved him and put the blame entirely on his shoulders, claiming he was besotted with her. But she was in love and Leo thought it unlikely she’d deny the fact even though it was sure to bring her much hardship and disgrace.
As the last to leave the cellar, Leo said to his trainee, Nara Mir:
– You have the makings of an excellent agent.
She took the remark at face value, not understanding its implications. She smiled.
– Thank you.
Greater Province of Kabul City of Kabul Murrad Khani District
The electricity was out across the neighbourhood and Nara was forced to finish her night-time prayers by the flame of a sooty gas lamp. In her thoughts were the lives of the deserter, Officer Fyodor Mazurov, and his lover, Ara, a woman Nara had previously admired as a progressive figure in their neighbourhood. Educated, employed, and intelligent, Ara had been a role model. Though she had behaved according to her duties, she wondered if she’d been right to inform Captain Vashchenko that Ara was their prime suspect. Had she not, Leo might have been able to save both of them. Yet their predicament could hardly be seen as Nara’s fault. She’d merely reported on their actions. They must carry responsibility. Not convinced by her own rationale, her prayers were interrupted by doubts. Ara would suffer shame and possibly physical violence. No matter how liberal her father might appear as a Communist minister, sexual politics were separate from mainstream politics and his attitudeowards this romance would be conservative. Fyodor would be tried by a military court. Ara would be judged and sentenced by her father.
Breathing deeply, without a sense of composure and balance she normally hoped to achieve through her prayers, she rolled up her mat. It was not expected for a woman to pray in congregation, the emphasis was upon private worship. Though there were no theological reasons why she should be prevented from praying in mosques, the conditions placed upon her attendance were so strict it made public worship onerous. At her last visit she had been accused of wearing perfume, eventually conceding that she’d used soap to wash her hands and that the soap may have been fragranced. After the humiliation of being sniffed by a jury of men, she now prayed in private.
Glancing around her room, at the prayer mat, the clothes, wardrobe, chair, lamp, she thought upon Comrade’s Demidov’s lesson. If an agent were to search her room the only possessions that revealed something distinct and controversial about her were those given to her by the Soviets – an exercise book and a cheap pen. Normally when she wanted to study she was forced to smuggle her textbooks into her bedroom. The books were stashed outside, sealed in plastic against weather and dirt, in a crevice in the broken mud-brickwork of the narrow side street. It was laborious to remove them without being seen by the neighbours or the boys who played in the alley and she often wondered if she was being excessively cautious, whether her training had altered her judgement. Caution made sense as a tactic: if her parents had reacted coolly to her enrolling in university it was troubling to conceive of their anger at her new occupation, working for the Afghan secret police.
Nara’s father, Memar, was one of the country’s leading architects. Appointed leader of his guild, he’d been elected as a liaison to the State functionaries, making him one of the most influential voices when it came to any major construction project in Kabul. A veteran of his craft, known as a master, ustad, he ran a programme for apprentices, including Nara’s older brother. Her brother had squandered the advantages handed to him. He was lazy, spending most of his time racing through the streets of Kabul on a customized, imported motorbike, impressing his friends. Handsome and popular, he was more interested in socializing than study. Nara had never been asked if she wanted to enrol in the programme, nor had she visited one of her father’s construction sites. The possibility of following his career had not only been denied to her, it had never even been imagined. He did not and would not discuss his affairs directly with her. In order to know anything about him she’d been forced to do her own investigations, listening to private conversations, reading his letters – a precursor to the profession she’d chosen.
She’d been able to discover that he had moved to Kabul from the countryside as a young man, funded by his own father, who’d made money smuggling animal skins and karakul fleeces across the Afghanistan-China border. He’d arrived intending to support his family back home, a village suffering from poor harvests in one of the worst droughts the country had ever seen. Keen to fit in with the established middle classes, he was worried that religious conservatism would make him appear provincial. Wealthy and devout, the driving forces of his life were religion and commerce, two energies that did not always harmonize. His business acumen allowed him to compromise. Nara attended school because so did the daughters of his clients. He tolerated her decision not to wear the chador only because his clients did not make their daughters wear it. For a daughter not to wear a veil was a powerfr harvestocial signal, one dating back to 1959 when women from bourgeoisie families appeared without their veils during the Anniversary of Independence Day in Kabul. But Nara was under no illusion that her father’s tolerance was anything more than a commercial strategy. At heart he was strict and pious, and her education vexed him greatly. In business he’d achieved everything he’d set out to accomplish. With regards to his family, he had not. His children consisted of a simpleton son and an unmarried daughter.
Nara spent many hours worrying about the fracture in their family. Not only was she unmarried, no one was courting her, not even the sons of the elite who claimed to be open-minded about her education. In practice even the most liberal men preferred a traditional wife, which was surely why the educated Ara had risked a relationship with a Soviet soldier. No one else would fall in love with her. The same was surely true for Nara. The difference was that she’d resigned herself to this fate.
Nara could have made the decision to split with her family and move out. However, no matter what their difficulties, she loved her parents and understood that moving out might mean losing them altogether. They would not visit her. She couldn’t accept there wasn’t a compromise. Her father had compromised before: his career was founded upon it. Compromise was the country’s future. The new Afghan president understood that. He’d compromised on the issue of faith. Many enemies of the State had claimed it was impossible to work for the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan while remaining a Muslim. They argued Communism meant bombing mosques and burning the Qur’an. The new president had taken a conciliatory approach towards Islam. Even with regards to the inflammatory issue of female education, the argument made in its defence had been drawn from scripture, quoting the passage in the Qur’an that described the creation of man and woman: A single cell and from it created its mate, and from the two of them dispersed men and women in multitude.
There was a religious foundation to ideas of equality. Nara needed to somehow communicate this with her parents. Her faith might take a different form to the worship they recognized but it was just as strong. She considered her family a test model, a microcosm for the country. If she gave up on her family how could she work towards uniting the country?
Nara got into bed, too tired to read or think any more. She wanted to sleep, exhausted by the day’s events. She was about to blow out the lamp when she heard a noise. Her parents and brothers weren’t at home. They’d gone to visit family in the countryside outside Kabul, a family that Nara had no relationship with. The extended family embodied the worst side of tradition and they would not accept her even as their guest. She crouched on her bed and opened the window. The property had been built on a steep rise of hillside. They lived in the top-floor
