* * *
AFTER DROPPING CLEMENTINE off at the MSF facility where she and Daniel would spend the night, the two cars headed off to Fatima’s single-storey house on the outskirts of Kandahar. Having once belonged to her parents, its mudbrick walls were still washed the original dull ochre with tiny windows all but hidden within deep sills. Thick, rough-hewn timber beams supported the low white ceilings with the hard concrete floors covered in rugs that had belonged to Fatima’s family for generations. In summer the cavernous rooms were blessedly cool, but in winter they were bitterly cold.
‘Do you think your friend will be able to answer my questions freely with another man in the room?’ Daniel had asked as they were pulling up outside the house.
Sofia smiled and shook her head. ‘Somehow I don’t think that’s going to a problem.’
‘What do you mean?’
Sofia’s smile broadened. ‘Fatima’s not like an ordinary woman. There won’t be any man there to look after her honour.’
After Fatima’s elderly guard opened the huge metal gates, they followed him through the courtyard to the cool dark interior where Fatima was waiting for them. After greeting her friend Sofia made the introductions and left, wandering back out into the courtyard. With Tawfiq deep in conversation with the guard, Sofia walked a little further off to sit by herself on a small stone wall that had once been part of the family’s enclosed vegetable garden but was now full of weeds. As Sofia watched, the afternoon sun began to fade behind the vast undulating plain, washing the empty sky a soft pink.
From her initial meeting with Fatima, Sofia had been taken by the strength and determination of the female entrepreneur from Kandahar until she eventually came to see her as part of the rich heritage of fierce Afghan women that went back centuries. Aware that one of these women, Commander Kaftar, was her friend’s idol, Sofia had once told Fatima that she reminded her of Afghan’s famous female warlord. While Fatima had been pleased, Sofia, who had actually met the warlord, knew that would not have been everyone’s response.
There were many crazy stories about Commander Kaftar, but the one that had cemented her legend had been an exchange between her and a Taliban leader. Like everything else about Kaftar, though, whether it was true or not was anyone’s guess.
New to the area, the Taliban leader, Mullah Baqi, had tuned into Kaftar’s radio frequency to warn the local warlord that he intended taking over his land. ‘And I will fuck your wife!’ he had added for good measure.
Grabbing the microphone from her radio operator, Kaftar had shot back, ‘And my husband will fuck yours.’
Until that moment the Talib had been unaware his adversary was a woman, although that was probably understandable in Kaftar’s case. She might have had the necessary anatomy to bear seven children but that was where the similarities between her and the fairer sex ended.
‘If you come into my valley and kill me then people will laugh at you for killing a woman,’ Kaftar had warned Mullah Baqi. ‘And if you come into my valley and I kill you then people will laugh because you were killed by a woman.’
The Taliban commander knew a lose-lose situation when he heard one and had made a tactical retreat.
Two years previously Sofia had been working with a group of midwives in Baghlan Province, which was part of Kaftar’s personal fiefdom in the north of Afghanistan, when she had received a message through the village imam that the warlord wanted to see her. While she had been intrigued by the request, Tawfiq had been horrified.
‘You cannot go,’ he had told her as they sat together on the stone steps leading up to a room Sofia was using to train the women. Two girls had come to sit in the dirt in front of Sofia and stare at her. She’d tried talking with them but all they did was giggle. Tawfiq’s response had surprised her. It was the first time he had told Sofia what she could or could not do.
‘But I want to meet her,’ she had said, turning to look at him. ‘She’s an Afghan legend.’
‘Are you crazy? This is an unwise decision.’
‘Making what people thought were unwise decisions was what got me to Afghanistan in the first place, Tawfiq. It’s also what got me to the village in the Hindu Kush and my work with midwives, which is what got me here today.’
Tawfiq had considered this. ‘Yes, those were good unwise decisions. Sometimes this can happen, but making an unwise decision about Commander Kaftar is not a good unwise decision. This one will get you killed.’
‘She has no reason to kill me.’
Tawfiq had hit himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘She doesn’t need a reason to kill you! This is Kaftar. How can you know she won’t kill you anyway?’
‘Think about it. Why would she summon me just to kill me? She doesn’t even know me.’
Tawfiq had rolled his eyes toward the heavens. ‘She doesn’t need to know you! She doesn’t need a reason to kill you! This is Kaftar! I think this rests my case: if she doesn’t know you, why would she summon you unless she wants to kill you?’
Sofia had been resting her head on her knees, staring back at the children in what had become a staring contest she was going to let them win. ‘Because I’m a doctor, or because of what I’m doing with the midwives? There could be a hundred different reasons.’
Tawfiq ran his hands down his face in frustration before placing his hand on his heart. ‘Dr Sofia, you know all you have to do is ask. You are the owner of my choice, you are the sand under my feet, but I don’t know how you will get there if I cannot take you.’
Sofia looked at Tawfiq, who seemed quite pleased with his logic. She conceded it was a good point. With Tawfiq happy
