Silent Hearts by Gwen Florio

Author:Gwen Florio [Florio, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

“It is a most modern home.”

Ismail, one of the local employees at Face the Future’s Kabul office, showed Martin and Liv around their new home in the organization’s compound. Martin thought that at least Ismail’s appearance was reassuring, even if nothing else about Kabul was. The man was tall and lean, with a neat beard and a thatch of coarse black hair above expressive eyes, everything Martin had remembered of Pashtuns from those long-ago meetings. Kabul was higher, and correspondingly colder, than Islamabad, and Ismail wore a woolen waistcoat over his shalwar kameez. More than anything, he had a solemnity that Martin found refreshing after the garrulous criticism so freely offered by Pervaiz.

Ismail had coolly negotiated the drive from the airport into the center of town, making relaxed small talk as the car dodged a variety of vehicles and pedestrians that made the chaotic streets of Islamabad seem orderly in retrospect. As in Islamabad, the cars were British-style, with the steering wheel on the right, but the traffic lanes used the American system, or at least Martin thought they did. Actually, it seemed to him as if nobody made an effort to keep to the proper side of the road, and it cost him a great effort not to close his eyes against imminent disaster as Ismail whipped the car around the teetering overloaded buses, donkey carts, and bicycles carrying entire families, the women’s blue burqas spreading like sails in the backwash of passing vehicles.

Face the Future’s compound was in Wazir Akbar Khan, Kabul’s best neighborhood, Ismail told them with a bit of a flourish. So Martin tried to hide his apprehension at the sight of the small cinder-block house, its stone floors bearing the streaks of an indifferent attempt at cleaning. Rolled-up rugs leaned against the walls.

“Western-style dining room.” Ismail stood beside a wobbly table and chairs. He led them up a narrow staircase. “Real bed.” A lumpy mattress topped a plywood frame. “View of courtyard.” He pushed aside a sheer curtain that did little to deflect the blinding sunshine pouring through the dirty glass. Martin stepped to the window. The roof over the kitchen formed a balcony of sorts. Below lay a courtyard of bare earth bordered by a few anemic rosebushes, leaves white with dust.

“And finally,” Ismail’s voice rose in excitement, “real WC.” He held open the door to a closet-size room that indeed featured a toilet, its bowl stained orange, beside the more traditional hole in the floor. A green plastic pitcher with a long spout sat beneath a faucet in the wall. Higher up the wall, directly above the faucet, was a rusty showerhead. There was no separate stall or even a curtain, just a drain in the floor. Martin thought longingly of the palatial bathroom at the Marriott.

“Well,” he said into the silence. “This will be—”

Liv broke in. “This will be very fine.”

She did not look directly at Ismail. Sometime before she’d left the plane, she’d tucked all of her hair beneath

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