Clementine looked surprised by the question. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, shrugging as if it shouldn’t matter.
Sofia was about to ask her to find out but decided it really didn’t matter now the group was about to be disbanded.
‘As you can imagine,’ Clementine continued, ‘after hearing about you from Taban and my colleagues in Kandahar, I was interested in meeting you, and now I’ve discovered Daniel has known you for years. How extraordinary.’
‘How extraordinary,’ Sofia repeated, suspecting Clementine was fishing for information, which meant Daniel hadn’t told her much. While she was trying to fathom Daniel and Clementine’s relationship, Clementine was probably trying to work out theirs. Was Clementine feeling the same little twists of jealousy she was trying to ignore?
‘Perhaps we could all get together? Friday maybe?’ Clementine looked from Sofia to Daniel. ‘You could both come to my place for dinner perhaps?’
‘Sofia’s going to Kandahar on Friday, Clem.’
She turned back to Sofia. ‘To see your midwives?’
‘They’re not my midwives,’ Sofia said. Again, she knew she’d been rude. ‘To tell them I won’t be coming back.’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘It’s too dangerous, and my presence could be putting the women in danger.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Clementine, looking as if she had retreated into her thoughts.
‘Okay, we need to go now,’ said Daniel.
‘Just a minute, please,’ Clementine said, grabbing Daniel’s arm to stop him moving, although she was looking at Sofia. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware, Dr Raso, but MSF has recently opened a maternity unit in Kandahar and we’re desperately short of trained staff. I was hoping … Well, I’ve been wondering since I heard about your … the midwives if it might be possible to discuss our maternity staff teaming up with them, and now, with you not being able to continue their training … I’m thinking out loud here,’ she said. ‘I assume their training isn’t finished?’
‘That’s right.’ Sofia was wondering where Clementine was going.
‘Well then, perhaps MSF could help finish their training? It would definitely take the load off our maternity ward if there were competent midwives in the villages.’
The offer had come out of left field. Sofia’s first reaction was to not let herself get too excited. She had no idea whether it was genuine or not. So many foreigners made so many promises that came to nothing. This might be the same, but if it was genuine then this was an offer Sofia couldn’t afford to ignore. ‘You do understand I can’t speak for the women?’ she said.
‘Of course, I know what village women are like.’
Sofia bristled. What are village women like, she wanted to say, but decided against it. She wondered whether her dislike of Clementine was obvious to Daniel.
‘Look, I was intending going down sometime next week,’ Clementine was saying, ‘but I could change plans and go with you this Friday to meet the women.’ She looked over at Daniel. ‘I know Daniel’s interested in hearing about what you’re doing there so he might like to come too. Daniel?’
‘We’ve already discussed this, Clem. It’s not Sofia’s choice. She needs to hear back from her contact with the midwives.’
‘Of course,’ Clementine said, as if his point was irrelevant, ‘but really, it makes perfect sense. If we travel down in the MSF cars with their security guards then Dr Raso will be better protected, and she could introduce me to the midwives so I could discuss the possibility of MSF finishing their training with them directly.’
‘Clem, you need to back off,’ Daniel said. He didn’t sound too happy, and while Sofia could clearly see Daniel’s annoyance, Clementine didn’t seem to notice or didn’t care.
Sofia was not liking how Clementine was trying to hijack her last trip to Kandahar, but if there was a possibility that MSF would continue the women’s training then she wasn’t about to jeopardise that. ‘It’s possible,’ she said carefully, ‘but I’d have to run things by Fatima and she might want to discuss it with the women first.’
Clementine flashed Sofia a perfect smile before turning back to Daniel with the same megawatt smile. ‘It seems like a good idea, don’t you think?’
‘The idea has its merits, but it’s Sofia and her contact’s decision.’
Rummaging around in her handbag, Clementine retrieved a business card and handed it to Sofia before finding her phone and checking the time. ‘Okay, I really do have to go.’ She turned to Daniel. ‘Will I see you tonight?’
‘Probably not.’
It was only a second, but Sofia registered the woman’s disappointment. She had clearly expected to see him. ‘Okay, call me.’ Leaning in, she kissed Daniel on the cheek and said goodbye to Sofia before hurrying out.
‘Clem’s a bit of a whirlwind,’ Daniel said as they followed her out the door, ‘but if she says she’ll train your midwives she will.’
They were lovers, Sofia decided, but he was not in love.
19
BECAUSE PEOPLE OF Daniel’s importance rarely found their way into the middle of the slums, Taban had promised Sofia that, barring any unforeseen emergencies, she would wait for them in her clinic.
After driving as far as they could into the mountain suburb before they had to get out and walk, Tawfiq pulled up beside a pile of plastic bags bursting with rotting garbage. Locking the car, he lit a cigarette before wandering off to look for some boys he could pay to watch over the car until they returned. With the morning heating up, the stench from the garbage would soon become unbearable.
‘What’s your poison?’ Sofia asked Daniel. ‘Do we wait here for Tawfiq to return and risk passing out from the smell or do we head up to Taban’s?’
‘Let’s head up.’
The sturdier homes they passed along the dirt path were built from rocks or cinder blocks, but they sat alongside more flimsy dwellings. Carrying the whiff of impermanence, these places were constructed with varying degrees of desperation: offcuts of plywood, the rotting hardwood of old crates, sticks, cardboard, rusting tin, ripped plastic sheeting and anything else people could scavenge from an unguarded
