As Michelle concentrated on twisting her can of Coca-Cola around in circles in the little pool of condensation forming on the old formica table, Sofia realised her father had started crying.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Michelle had said when she dragged herself away from her Coke to see why they had suddenly gone quiet. Pushing back her chair, she stormed out of the kitchen.
For once her father ignored Michelle’s histrionics. ‘Why do you have to go to a place where there’s a war, Sofia?’ he had asked the daughter who, until the Afghan madness, had never given him a moment’s worry.
‘It’s not war, Dad. There’s no fighting in Afghanistan anymore. The Americans defeated the Taliban.’
‘If you believe that crap you have no right going,’ he had said, before apologising for the harshness of his words.
Like all taxi drivers, her father thought he knew everything about everything because he spent his waking life listening to parliament and talkback radio, or poring over the newspapers while waiting for customers, and when he had customers he talked to them about their lives and world events. He also spent a good deal of his time talking to other taxi drivers who, in turn, spent their days listening to talkback, reading newspapers and earbashing anyone who was unfortunate enough to get into their cabs. Sofia believed that while taxi drivers might not know everything, they did know a lot more about life and the world than most people.
‘It’ll be fine,’ she had said, reaching across the table to take his hand. The truth was, now the time had come to leave she was regretting her decision. Scarcely able to admit it to herself, she was not about to admit it to him. ‘I’ll be back in a year. Twelve months, that’s not too long. You’ll see.’
The following morning Michelle had left the house before Sofia woke so there could be no sisterly goodbye. After checking in her luggage and collecting her boarding pass, Sofia and her dad had sat sipping coffee and trying to make cheery conversation, none of which concerned Afghanistan. When the parting could no longer be put off they had stood together outside the departures gate. Their conversation had run dry. Pulling his daughter into his arms he had whispered how proud he was of her before abruptly letting go and pushing her away.
‘Go on, girl. Get out of here. The sooner you leave the sooner you’ll be back.’
Twenty-four hours later Sofia had been flying over Afghanistan in the freezing predawn, the folding black velvet night shadows of the barren central plains and valleys gliding by slowly below her. She knew the land was dotted with villages and crisscrossed by roads and dirt tracks but there was not a light to be seen.
An aid worker would later tell Sofia that the imagination was always worse than the reality when you were travelling to a new location. He had been right. On that first flight into Afghanistan, Sofia had felt herself riding a terrifying emotional rollercoaster – from fear, to wonder, to elation and back to fear, all in a matter of minutes. But then the dusty city of Kabul had come into view, and as the plane began its descent, dawn broke and Sofia saw the Hindu Kush for the first time and her heart soared. This was it: the place she had dreamed of.
Despite her outward enthusiasm on that first drive into the city with Jabril and Tawfiq, Sofia had found the city confusing, and would soon find it cold and unfriendly. It was impossible to hide her foreignness, and her rudimentary language skills were problematic, making it hard to diagnose her patients’ illnesses. In those first few weeks she had felt like she was sinking. She was also painfully, achingly lonely. She had made a mistake. The dream was a nightmare. Most nights she lay awake thinking about how she was going to tell Jabril and Zahra that she wasn’t the right person for the job and that they needed to get someone local. And then one morning, Ahmad and Hadi had smiled at her and then Omar had waved to her and Babur offered a free lunch, and as she was crossing the square one of her patients stopped to ask how she was settling in and her world began to change.
Focusing less on her own fears and inadequacies, she had started to understand that, yes, there were cultural differences, but the people in the square were fundamentally the same as Australians. They had jobs to do, bills to pay, shopping, cleaning, cooking, children to look after and friends to meet. Within six weeks she had realised she was having real conversations with people. She was starting to find a rhythm and life began to feel comfortable. Throughout these difficult times her anchors had always been Jabril and Zahra, who propped her up when they could see she was faltering while going out of their way to make her feel welcome.
After being in Kabul for six months, Sofia still hadn’t known whether she would be staying past her contract, so Jabril had suggested she take some weeks off to see more of the country. That was when she had travelled to the little village in the Hindu Kush and met Daniel Abiteboul and decided to stay. Two years after making that decision Sofia had found herself lying on her bed, trying to find the courage to ring her father and tell him the thing he probably already knew: she was not coming back.
‘I know that every life is precious everywhere, Dad,’ she had said, as she tried to explain what he would never accept,
