Andrea Busfield - Born Under a Million Shadows

“He was right, of course, and I felt ashamed. I tried to argue back, but Khalid was so concentrated on the offense I’d caused him and his own sense of outrage that he wouldn’t budge.

“Thankfully, the next morning he was calmer, and the day after that he was calmer still, until we were laughing and joking and talking of our love in the way we used to. Even so, I sensed he was different in some way I couldn’t yet understand; not quite the man he used to be. But I ignored the feeling and let my love continue to grow for him until it was the only thing left holding my life together.

“But maybe I should have listened to that little noise in my head rather than the love in my heart, because nearly three years later he still doesn’t phone as often as I would like, as often as I need to hear him, and no matter how many times he tells me he’s sorry and how many promises he makes to try harder, within two weeks he does exactly the same again. And that’s why I’m not sure he was all that happy to see me last night because I told him that if he continued to treat me like this he would push me away forever. I would leave him.

“I love Khalid, and when I’m with him and I look into his eyes I know he loves me too, but sometimes that love seems so far away and almost impossible to hold on to.”

Georgie lit a cigarette and stared over at the goats filling their bellies with dry grass.

“Why don’t you just get married?” I asked, thinking this might be the ideal solution for everyone because Haji Khan would have to come home at least once a week on “ladies’ night,” the Thursday before the Friday holiday when the men return from their compounds to spend time with their families.

Georgie turned to me, tears burning her eyes red. “I’m a Godless kafir , Fawad. Khalid’s a Muslim. How is that even possible in today’s Afghanistan?”

LIKE THE RAINS of spring that come to wash away the gray of winter, once Georgie had cried her tears, the world around us brightened.

Baba Gul, who was as thin as a stick and seemed to laugh a lot for a man on the fast track to Hell, eventually arrived before the sun dropped, and before the guard in charge of our lives grew fidgety to leave for Jalalabad. Disappearing into the hut that might or might not be his by the time Georgie visited again, Baba Gul was shown some paperwork, which he might or might not have been able to read, and my friend talked to him about his goats while I spent the last of the day in the fields with Mulallah, who seemed a lot happier once her father returned without having lost anything else they owned to a game of cards.

As we chased the goats around the field, it soon became clear that Mulallah wasn’t like other girls I knew—not that I knew that many. She was strong in her eyes and hard in her talk, and, more amazingly for a girl, she was a very fast runner, which is a good talent to have in Afghanistan. As she raced through the fields with her red scarf floating from her neck, I thought she looked like a firework.

I really hoped to see Mulallah again when Georgie returned to talk to her father once the winter had left us, and I don’t know why, but I decided under that hill as we tumbled in the grass and she helped me clean the goat shit off my knees that I wouldn’t tell Jamilla about her.

“You and Mulallah looked like you were having fun,” Georgie remarked when we were back in the car.

I saw the twinkle in her eyes and knew she was trying to tease me.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “She’s actually quite good fun—for a girl.”

“Oooh,” Georgie sang, “you lurve her. You want to kiss her, hold her, and marry her.”

“Georgie,” I said, shaking my head, “sometimes for a woman as old as my mother you are very immature.”

Once we got back to the big house, Haji Khan also seemed to be in a better mood than I was expecting, given Georgie’s talk of hot words the night before, and after kicking off our shoes and pulling off our boots we spent the evening filling our bellies with food so pretty it could have come from a painting. It was a massive feast of chopped green and red salad, bowls of creamy white yogurt, fried chicken coated with orange-colored spices, rice and meat, dark green spinach, and warm naan bread followed by fizzing Pepsi and plates piled high with yellow bananas, red apples, and pink pomegranate seeds.

After the meal—when we were all able to sit straight again after all the food we had eaten—we took turns playing carambul , with Georgie coming out the clear winner after Haji Khan missed a couple of easy shots because she was a guest and he didn’t want “to give her another reason to complain.” We then slouched on the cushions wrapped in furry blankets to watch a comedy show on Tolo TV, and I drank so much green tea my stomach grew round as a ball.

But though I laughed with everyone else at the jokes on the television, under my blanket with its red swirls and bright yellow flowers my heart was breaking because every time Georgie’s words came running back into my brain I felt them trickle down my throat to tear at my insides, as if I’d eaten broken glass for dinner.

It was bad enough that she drank alcohol and smoked like a National Army soldier, and that she had come to my country in search of a moon that spent its days hiding in the sun, but it had never even crossed my mind that she had no God. I’d always thought she was a follower of the prophet Jesus. But to have nothing, nothing at all—not to believe in anything—well, this was the worst thing she could have possibly told me.

Georgie was my friend and I loved her as much as I’d ever loved anyone, but she was going to Hell for all eternity, that was for sure. And in Hell a single day feels like a million years. My mother once described it as a place of terrible grief and sadness where the flames had been fanned for a thousand years until everything burned red. After that, Hell was fanned for another thousand years until it grew white-hot, and then it was fanned for a thousand years more until it became nothing but black. As Georgie’s words kept rushing back into my mind, I couldn’t stop the sight of her pretty face screaming in pain, the fire eating at her skin, and her mouth full of the fruit of the thorny tree that would boil like oil in her belly, bringing unimaginable agony.

It’s true that pretty much all of us would be spending at least some time in Hell unless we were the best of all mullahs, because there are a lot of rules in Islam and not all of them are that easy to follow. But Allah is merciful, so even though Ismerai would go to Hell for his smoking, Baba Gul for his gambling, me for my drinking and thieving, and Haji Khan for falling in love with a woman who wasn’t his wife, as well as for his possible drug empire, all of us would get out eventually and find our way to Paradise because we were Muslims. But Georgie had no chance. She had no God, and therefore she had no one willing or able to save her. And she couldn’t even climb out to the light, because if you throw a rock into Hell it takes seventy years to hit the bottom. Hell is so big it will never become full with all the world’s sinners, and you can never escape from it. Even worse than that, Georgie would have to suffer alone because all her friends would eventually leave her. Even the warlord Zardad and his testicle-eating man-dog would get to Paradise in the end.

And when you know all this, as I do, it’s hard to look into the eyes of the person you love and not see her death looking back at you.