Jane dropped her towel and waded into the water. She decided to be a little less direct with Zahara than she had been with Fara. She would not be able to fool Zahara, of course, but she would try to give the impression that she was gossiping rather than interrogating. She did not approach Zahara immediately. When the other women got out of the water, Jane followed a minute or two later, and dried herself with her towel in silence. It was not until Zahara and a few other women began to drift back toward the village that Jane spoke. “How soon will Yussuf be back?” she asked Zahara in Dari.
“Today or tomorrow. He went to the Logar Valley.”
“I know. Did he go alone?”
“Yes—but he said he may bring someone home with him.”
“Who?”
Zahara shrugged. “A wife, perhaps.”
Jane was momentarily diverted. Zahara was too coolly indifferent. That meant she was worried: she did not want Yussuf to bring home a wife. It looked as if the village rumors were true. Jane hoped so. Zahara needed a man. “I don’t think he has gone to get a wife,” Jane said.
“Why?”
“Something important is happening. Masud has sent out many messengers. They can’t all be after wives.”
Zahara continued to try to look indifferent, but Jane could tell she was pleased. Was there any significance, Jane wondered, in the possibility that Yussuf might have gone to the Logar Valley to fetch someone?
Night was falling as they approached the village. From the mosque came a low chant: the eerie sound of the most bloodthirsty men in the world at prayer. It always reminded Jane of Josef, a young Russian soldier who had survived a helicopter crash just over the mountain from Banda. Some women had brought him to the shopkeeper’s house—this was in the winter, before they moved the clinic to the cave—and Jean-Pierre and Jane had tended his wounds while a message was sent to Masud asking what should be done. Jane learned what Masud’s reply had been one evening when Alishan Karim walked into the front room of the shopkeeper’s house, where Josef lay in bandages, and put the muzzle of his rifle to the boy’s ear and blew his head off. It had been about this time of day, and the sound of the men praying had been in the air while Jane washed the blood off the wall and scooped up the boy’s brains from the floor.
The women climbed the last stretch of the footpath up from the river and paused in front of the mosque, finishing their conversations before going to their separate homes. Jane glanced into the mosque. The men were praying on their knees, with Abdullah, the mullah, leading them. Their weapons, the usual mixture of ancient rifles and modern submachine guns, were piled in a corner. The prayers were just finishing. As the men stood up, Jane saw that there were a number of strangers among them. She said to Zahara: “Who are they?”
“By their turbans, they must be from the Pich Valley and Jalalabad,” Zahara replied. “They are Pushtuns—normally they are our enemies. Why are there here?” As she was speaking, a very tall man with an eye patch emerged from the crowd. “That must be Jahan Kamil—Masud’s great enemy!”
“But there is Masud, talking to him,” said Jane, and she added in English: “Just fancy that!”
Zahara imitated her. “Jass fencey hat!”
It was the first joke Zahara had made since her husband died. That was a good sign: Zahara was recovering.
The men began to come out, and the women scuttled away to their homes, all except Jane. She thought she was beginning to understand what was happening; and she wanted confirmation. When Mohammed came out she approached him and spoke to him in French. “I forgot to ask whether your trip to Faizabad was successful.”
“It was,” he said without pausing in his stride: he did not want his comrades or the Pushtuns to see him answering a woman’s questions.
Jane hurried alongside him as he headed for his house. “So the commander of Faizabad is here?”
“Yes.”
Jane had guessed right: Masud had invited all the rebel commanders here. “What do you think of this idea?” she asked him. She was still fishing for details.
Mohammed looked thoughtful, and dropped his hauteur, as he always did when he got interested in the conversation. “Everything depends on what Ellis does tomorrow,” he said. “If he impresses them as a man of honor, and wins their respect, I think they will agree to his plan.”
“And you think his plan is good?”
“Obviously it will be a good thing if the Resistance is united and gets weapons from the United States.”
So that was it! American weapons for the rebels, on condition they fought together against the Russians instead of fighting one another half the time.
They reached Mohammed’s house, and Jane turned away with a wave. Her breasts felt fulclass="underline" it was time for Chantal to be fed. The right breast felt a little heavier, because at the last feed she had started with the left, and Chantal always emptied the first one more thoroughly.
Jane reached the house and went into the bedroom. Chantal lay naked on a folded towel inside her cradle, which was actually a cardboard box cut in half. She had no need of clothes in the warm air of the Afghan summer. At night she would be covered with a sheet—that was all. The rebels and the war, Ellis and Mohammed and Masud, all receded into the background as Jane looked at her baby. She had always thought small babies ugly, but Chantal seemed very pretty to her. As Jane watched, Chantal stirred, opened her mouth and cried. Jane’s right breast immediately leaked milk in response, and a warm, damp patch spread on her shirt. She undid the buttons and picked up Chantal.
Jean-Pierre said she should wash her breasts with surgical spirit before feeding, but she never did because she knew Chantal would not like the taste. She sat on a rug with her back to the wall and cradled Chantal in her right arm. The baby waved her fat little arms and moved her head from side to side, frantically seeking with her open mouth. Jane guided her to the nipple. The toothless gums clamped hard and the baby sucked fiercely. Jane winced at the first hard pull, then at the second. The third suck was gentler. A small, plump hand reached up and touched the round side of Jane’s swollen breast, pressing it with a blind, clumsy caress. Jane relaxed.
Feeding her baby made her feel terribly tender and protective. Also, it was erotic. At first she had felt guilty about being turned on by it, but she soon decided that if it was natural it could not be bad, and settled down to enjoy it.
She was looking forward to showing Chantal off if they ever got back to Europe. Jean-Pierre’s mother would tell her she was doing everything wrong, no doubt, and her own mother would want to have the baby christened, but her father would adore Chantal through an alcoholic haze, and her sister would be proud and enthusiastic. Who else? Jean-Pierre’s father was dead. . . .
A voice came from the courtyard. “Anybody at home?”
It was Ellis. “Come in,” Jane called. She did not feel she needed to cover herself: Ellis was not an Afghan, and anyway he had once been her lover.
He came in, saw her feeding the baby and did a double take. “Shall I leave?”
She shook her head. “You’ve seen my tits before.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “You must have changed them.”
She laughed. “Pregnancy gives you great tits.” Ellis had been married once, she knew, and had a child, although he gave the impression he no longer saw either the child or its mother. That was one of the things he would never talk about very much. “Don’t you remember from when your wife was pregnant?”
“I missed it,” he said, in that curt tone he used when he wanted you to shut up. “I was away.”
She was too relaxed to respond in like manner. In fact she felt sorry for him. He had made a mess of his life, but it was not all his own fault; and he had certainly been punished for his sins—not the least by her.