In the morning, as he was covering the window before leaving, she had asked him about the tattoos.
‘They’re nothing,’ he said.
She had only known Daniel for ten short days but she understood that if he’d had something tattooed into his skin then it meant something. ‘What does the Arabic script say?’
‘Without pain you can never know joy.’ Crouching down, he took her bare feet from under the blanket and kissed the delicate skin of the arches. ‘Go back to sleep, my love,’ he had said.
‘And the numbers?’
He let her feet go, tucking them back into the warmth of the blanket before rising. ‘Just numbers.’
‘Stay,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘You know I can’t.’
After he left, Sofia lay in the warm hollow where his body had been, smiling with the memory of the night that had passed, gently packing away these new things she had learned about him into the special place now reserved for Daniel. It made what happened afterward more painful.
As she came out of the hut that morning Sofia saw him disappear over the ridge with a man she’d not seen before. In time she had come to accept he had known he would be leaving her that day and the night before had been his goodbye. No longer could she trust the memory of what she thought she had seen in his eyes, or that he had said she was beautiful, or even that she had told him that she loved him.
* * *
WHEN SOFIA GOT out of the shower the following morning she found a message on her phone from Jabril telling her not to worry about anything. He had an idea that would fix the visa situation and Minister Massoud. The message had not given her any comfort. She wasn’t so sure Jabril would be able to ‘fix’ her visa situation, or Massoud, and the fact that he thought he could, and that the solutions to both were linked, worried her even more. Between getting dressed, having breakfast, and heading out the door she had tried to ring him five times, but he’d not answered. In the first break in her appointments that morning Sofia crossed the reception to Jabril’s surgery.
‘He hasn’t come in yet,’ Iman said as she was about to knock on his door.
She turned to Iman. ‘Did you hear from him?’
‘Only to say he’d be late, or maybe not in at all.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘No.’
Sofia returned to her surgery to ring Jabril’s number again. Once more it went to his voice mail. She rang Zahra.
‘The last I saw of him was early this morning when he was leaving for the surgery.’ When Sofia informed her that Jabril hadn’t arrived at the surgery and had told Iman that he wasn’t coming in, Zahra told Sofia to hang up so she could ring him. In less than a minute Zahra was back on the line. ‘He’s not answering me either.’
‘Do you know what he’s planning to do about Massoud?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. What about Massoud?’ They both heard the ping of an incoming message on Zahra’s phone. It was from Jabril. ‘My husband apologises for not taking my call,’ she said, reading the message, ‘and he’s very busy and will see me tonight. At least I know he’s still alive. What’s going on, Sofia?’
‘I don’t know. He said he had an idea what to do about Massoud and fix my visa issue at the same time, so maybe it’s that.’
‘I don’t like this one little bit.’
When they hung up, Sofia rang Chief Wasim. He didn’t answer either.
Her last patient of the day was Afrooz, whose main concern seemed to be her fifteen-year-old daughter working at a beauty salon when she should have been at home waiting for the family to find a suitable husband for her.
‘Perhaps she’d like a career?’ Sofia offered.
‘She needs to be married before she’s too old and no one wants her. We can’t be stuck with her all our lives.’ Afrooz’s hernia was also giving her trouble again, ‘but not as much as my daughter. She’s my heart of pains.’
Sofia was finding it hard to work up any sympathy for Afrooz. She could help with the hernia, she said, but had little to offer with regard to her daughter and the beauty salon.
By the end of the day she had still not heard from Chief Wasim, or Jabril, and was beginning to become seriously concerned. With her last patient cancelling, Sofia rang Taban.
‘What happened? Are you alright?’
‘I’m fine. A few things were broken, nothing much.’
‘Jabril told me about a message.’
‘It’s nothing. Some crank.’
Sofia sat back in her chair. ‘Do you think it has anything to do with the boys?’
‘No idea, but it doesn’t seem any more boys are missing.’
As usual, Taban was playing down her problems. Deciding there was really nothing she could do, Sofia ended the call, promising to talk the following day if there was any news of the boys. As she was packing up for the day, Iman wandered in and sat down in one of the patients’ chairs.
‘I’m going home now.’
Sofia looked up from making some last-minute notes. ‘So I can see.’ She saved the document and closed the laptop to give Iman her full attention. ‘Something on your mind?’
‘Have you heard anything more about your visa?’ Iman asked, straightening out the cuffs of the long blue shirt she wore over her skinny jeans.
‘I rang the Australian embassy this morning but they’re not too optimistic about being able to reverse the decision, especially when I told them the order might have come from someone high up in the government. They
