Beyond the Call by Eileen Rivers

Author:Eileen Rivers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

DESPITE THE DIFFICULTIES, Rodriguez remained determined to train her women.

And trying to get women into uniforms in a city where most of the men who lived there were working against the advancement of the province’s female police force was much harder than Rodriguez had expected.

Her first job was convincing the man who controlled the province, Naseri, that policewomen were vital to fight the Taliban and that they couldn’t do it without uniforms. And in order to do that, she had to again play the waiting game, at which she had become very adept.

The following Sunday, the week after the Afghan women spent a long training session absorbing FET strategy, Rodriguez sat, as she had nearly every Sunday morning since her arrival in the province, far from the provincial governor.

The provincial assistant walked around her, as he always did, to serve the men in the room first. The aroma of Afghan chai hit her nose as she followed the assistant’s quick pace and looked around a room that, no matter how many times she sat in it, still carried an opulence.

She thought of Bibi and the women in the stark office above her, hidden from view.

During a lull in the conversation Rodriguez scooched to her left and stretched her body as far as she could, managing to reach Thacker. She dropped the small piece of paper, which she had hastily ripped from her notebook, into his hand. On it was written one simple word, which she had, with very little effort, managed to turn into a challenging question. Thacker unfolded the piece of paper to find the familiar inquiry: Uniforms?

She had asked about them several times before, after the first meeting she’d had with her AFP recruits. All in good time and patience were the mantras she kept repeating to herself—familiar phrases from Thacker that had allowed her to get through these meetings without resenting the lack of progress. But now that the women were training, surely it was time. Surely they had waited long enough.

Thacker glanced back at Rodriguez. This time she refused to give in to patience and time. Her unit would be leaving Zabul in about a month, and the last thing she wanted was to leave the women with one of their primary goals—one of the first priorities they openly shared with the FET—unfulfilled. She met Thacker’s look with an equally long glance and smiled.

The colonel turned back to Naseri, and Rodriguez waited for her moment to speak.

Five minutes later she stood directly in front of the provincial governor making her case.

She repeated a line she found herself saying often: “The women are ready, sir.”

Naseri clasped his palms together and sat them on his desk.

“They want to look like police officers. They’ve started training.”

Naseri leaned forward and asked about the extent of their training: “How were they doing? What had they learned?”

She explained the search techniques the women had been taught and that they would be taught to make a proper arrest and perform all the duties that the American FET now conducts.

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