Tom Smith - Agent 6

She’d been able to discover that he had moved to Kabul from the countryside as a young man, funded by his own father, who’d made money smuggling animal skins and karakul fleeces across the Afghanistan-China border. He’d arrived intending to support his family back home, a village suffering from poor harvests in one of the worst droughts the country had ever seen. Keen to fit in with the established middle classes, he was worried that religious conservatism would make him appear provincial. Wealthy and devout, the driving forces of his life were religion and commerce, two energies that did not always harmonize. His business acumen allowed him to compromise. Nara attended school because so did the daughters of his clients. He tolerated her decision not to wear the chador only because his clients did not make their daughters wear it. For a daughter not to wear a veil was a powerfr harvestocial signal, one dating back to 1959 when women from bourgeoisie families appeared without their veils during the Anniversary of Independence Day in Kabul. But Nara was under no illusion that her father’s tolerance was anything more than a commercial strategy. At heart he was strict and pious, and her education vexed him greatly. In business he’d achieved everything he’d set out to accomplish. With regards to his family, he had not. His children consisted of a simpleton son and an unmarried daughter.

Nara spent many hours worrying about the fracture in their family. Not only was she unmarried, no one was courting her, not even the sons of the elite who claimed to be open-minded about her education. In practice even the most liberal men preferred a traditional wife, which was surely why the educated Ara had risked a relationship with a Soviet soldier. No one else would fall in love with her. The same was surely true for Nara. The difference was that she’d resigned herself to this fate.

Nara could have made the decision to split with her family and move out. However, no matter what their difficulties, she loved her parents and understood that moving out might mean losing them altogether. They would not visit her. She couldn’t accept there wasn’t a compromise. Her father had compromised before: his career was founded upon it. Compromise was the country’s future. The new Afghan president understood that. He’d compromised on the issue of faith. Many enemies of the State had claimed it was impossible to work for the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan while remaining a Muslim. They argued Communism meant bombing mosques and burning the Qur’an. The new president had taken a conciliatory approach towards Islam. Even with regards to the inflammatory issue of female education, the argument made in its defence had been drawn from scripture, quoting the passage in the Qur’an that described the creation of man and woman: A single cell and from it created its mate, and from the two of them dispersed men and women in multitude.

There was a religious foundation to ideas of equality. Nara needed to somehow communicate this with her parents. Her faith might take a different form to the worship they recognized but it was just as strong. She considered her family a test model, a microcosm for the country. If she gave up on her family how could she work towards uniting the country?

Nara got into bed, too tired to read or think any more. She wanted to sleep, exhausted by the day’s events. She was about to blow out the lamp when she heard a noise. Her parents and brothers weren’t at home. They’d gone to visit family in the countryside outside Kabul, a family that Nara had no relationship with. The extended family embodied the worst side of tradition and they would not accept her even as their guest. She crouched on her bed and opened the window. The property had been built on a steep rise of hillside. They lived in the top-floor apartment. She peered into the alley, the hiding place for her textbooks. There was nothing to see. She heard the noise again, a creaking sound. It was coming from inside the apartment.

She got out of bed, leaving her room, bare feet moving silently towards the front door. Their apartment was reached by a narrow brick stairway. Whenever anyone climbed the stairs the timber doorframe creaked. Usually Nara felt no fear even when she alone. There was a security gate at the bottom of the stairwayer frid of thick steel bars. The gate was padlocked. There was no way an intruder could reach the front door. Nara stepped forward, ear pressed against the timber. She waited.

Whether by the force of the door smashing, or out of shock, Nara fell to the floor, looking up to see two men enter the apartment, kicking aside the remains of the timber frame. Nara’s body reacted faster than her thoughts: she was up on her feet, scrambling towards the bedroom. One of the men knocked her to the ground. Clawing her way out from under his body, she reached the bedroom. As she got to her knees, the second man kicked her. The pain was unlike any she’d experienced before, a detonation inside her stomach. She collapsed and curled up into a ball, struggling for breath.

The man stared down at her with hate-filled eyes, a stranger who spoke with so much anger in his voice it was as if he’d known her personally.

– You betrayed your country.

While he spoke the other man dropped onto Nara, pinning her to the floor. He sat on her chest, his weight forcing the breath out of her lungs. Handed her notebooks, he proceeded to rip them apart, the pages of neat text, the quotes by Stalin, the lessons taught by Leo Demidov, shredded and falling about her face. With a fistful of paper, he tried to force the fragments into her mouth. She pressed her lips shut. The man responded by lifting himself up from her stomach, relieving the pressure, before dropping back down. As she gasped he shoved the paper inside her mouth, his knuckles on her teeth, filling her mouth. The man standing over them commented:

– You wanted an education…

Nara could not breathe. She scratched at the man’s face. He slapped her hands away, pushing more paper into her mouth. There was so much it was pressing down her throat, causing her to gag. She flailed, helpless, hooking onto her bed-sheets, pulling them down.

Unable to focus, her vision blurring, her hand clasped something – the pen used to write her notes. Gripping it tight, she clicked the nib and swung it at her attacker. It entered his neck. She was weak from the attack but it went deep enough to make him cry out. His hands came loose. Free from his grip, she spat out some of the notes, sucking in a partial breath. Able to see again, her thoughts coming together, her strength returning, she forced the pen in deeper, pushing as hard as she could, feeling his blood run down her hand. He toppled, falling on his side.

Nara stood up in disbelief at her sudden freedom, spitting out the rest of notes. She jumped onto the bed, moving as far away as possible within the confines of the small room. The second man was by his partner’s side. He removed the pen, causing blood to gush. In the ensuing confusion, the man hopelessly trying to stem the bleeding, Nara assessed the distance to the door. She would pass too close to her attackers. Even if she did sneak past she would be caught in the living room, or the stairway. Feeling the cool night breeze on her bare feet she turned around, facing the window. It was her only chance of escape. She stepped onto the ledge, climbing onto the roof.

With no electricity, there was no residual light from the streets. The city was dark, the blackout stretching across the neighbourhood like an oil slick, spreading across the valley and up distant hills, broken only by the flicker of gas lamps and candles. The more expensive properties and the government buildings had diesel generators and they dazzled: ghettoes of brightness.