‘Only child of an Irish mother and French-Moroccan father who was a former soldier turned mercenary. By the time my mother realised he was heartbreak material I was fourteen and she took us both back to her native Dublin, which was a bit cold, wet, dark and dreary for a boy from Morocco, although I did become rather partial to the pubs and the Irish women, especially the red-haired ones.’
He watched her roll her eyes and laughed.
‘Well, it’s true. Anyway, my mother’s still living in Dublin writing reasonably successful romance novels, while my father’s reinvented himself as a member of the French parliament.’ He laughed. ‘He’s had two wives since my mother and is recently divorced again. I hear he’s going to marry for the fourth time. She’ll be the second wife younger than me, which is inevitable, really, when you think about it. He likes them young and I keep getting older. I don’t see much of my father, in case you hadn’t gathered. A long time ago we discovered we didn’t have much in common.’
‘I knew your story would be interesting.’
‘If it’s the only thing you know then it seems ordinary.’ Daniel reassessed what he’d just said and frowned. ‘It was ordinary, really: a dysfunctional family, only dysfunctional in an exotic place. Aren’t most families dysfunctional?’ He was aware that he still wasn’t really talking about himself. Protective habits of a lifetime were hard to break.
When the waiter arrived to take drink orders from the men he noticed Sofia had nearly finished hers and asked if she wanted another. She declined. He hoped she wasn’t about to leave.
‘Morocco sounds better than Leichhardt,’ she offered.
‘Tell me about Leichhardt?’
Sofia pulled her legs further under her. ‘Inner-city working-class suburb, gentrifying.’
‘Family?’ He thought he might have asked this question back in the village but couldn’t remember her answer.
She began rattling information off as if ticking a shopping list.
‘Mother died when I was twelve, single working father and younger sister. Your normal totally dysfunctional family only in a not-so-exotic place.’ Finishing off her drink, she smiled as she put the glass back down on the table between them. ‘I escaped by going to Afghanistan.’
‘Why Afghanistan?’ Was he asking too many questions? It was a bad habit, he knew, remembering that in the village she’d accused him of being her therapist. While he could have written the habit off as the result of a career asking questions, it really had been his natural state since a young boy. Probably it was what made him good at his job, but he was genuinely interested in most people, and especially Sofia.
‘No one here frets about how long it’s going to take for the plumber to come to fix a leak,’ she was saying, ‘or how they couldn’t possibly manage without three bathrooms and a huge TV. People look out for each other here. I like that. My dad doesn’t know the people who live three doors away but I know everyone in Shaahir Square. Everyone.’ She opened her arms wide as if to include the whole world. As he listened to this relaxed and animated Sofia, he could see the young woman from the village and wondered what his parents might make of her. He decided his mother would probably love her and his father would try to seduce her.
‘I know their kids,’ she was saying, ‘and their parents and their grandparents. I know their history and what they care about. I suppose some people would find that a little claustrophobic but not me. Maybe it’s my Italian roots longing for the great big family I never had.’
There could be no doubt she loved Afghanistan. It was in the way her face and eyes lit up when she talked about it and how animated she became. He could in some ways understand, but the place was far from perfect. ‘How do you cope with the danger?’
She didn’t seem happy with the question. ‘Everyone wants to know that and the only way I can explain it to my friends back home is that they know sharks exist in the ocean but they still go in. It’s the same here. You live with it however you can or you get out.’ She pulled a face as she smoothed out the filmy blue and silver material covering her feet resting on the chair. ‘You’ve lived here. You know what I mean?’
‘Humour me.’
‘Well, firstly, Chief Wasim, the Kabul chief of police, is my landlord and lives in the apartment below me.’ She laughed at the look on his face. ‘He’s obviously a powerful man in Kabul, and as long as he remains powerful and doesn’t make too many enemies, he’s a big part of my insurance policy. I also have Tawfiq and Rashid, my driver and the guy who guards my surgery. Both of them carry guns and are supposed to protect me. For all I know Chief Wasim’s wife, Behnaz, carries a gun too. Actually, now that I think about it, Behnaz is probably my best line of defence. No one crosses Behnaz.’
Folding his arms, he leaned back in the lounge and gave her a smile, all the while acutely aware that Massoud’s men had stopped talking when Sofia mentioned the chief of police. A large part of Daniel’s job with MSF was reading people and their body language, which was sometimes more instructive than what they said and didn’t say. He also had to be good at risk assessment. He wouldn’t have worried about the proximity of Massoud’s henchmen in a public lounge in normal circumstances, and that they had stopped to listen when she mentioned her landlord might be normal curiosity, but his gut was saying it was something else.
‘It’s such a lovely night,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we go back out to the gardens?’
26
WHEN SOFIA AND Daniel reached the gardens they discovered it was full of staff clearing away the stage and the chairs.
‘Damn,’
