Andrea Busfield - Born Under a Million Shadows

“Who’s the foreigner?” he asked.

“A doctor,” I replied.

The guard nodded his head and disappeared inside, leaving us waiting outside.

Two minutes later he was back.

“Okay,” he said, and he stepped back from the gate to let us through.

Haji Khan was in the garden with about six other men dressed in expensive salwar kameez and wearing heavy watches. He got up to greet us and held out his hand to Dr. Hugo first.

“Salaam aleykum,” he said.

“Waleykum salaam,” replied the doctor. “I’m Hugo.”

“Nice to meet you, Hugo,” Haji Khan replied.

It was quite obvious he hadn’t the faintest idea who the British man was, and I smelled trouble coming.

As Haji Khan invited us over to the carpet to sit with him, he asked after the health of my mother and told me he hoped I was fine, doing well, and keeping happy. “If you were hungry, we could have made you something here—you needn’t have brought your own food,” he added, looking at my plate of unsold sandwiches. I tried to laugh, but because of the situation it came out as more of a squeak.

All of us then sat there on Haji Khan’s carpet with his friends gathered nearby, watching one another and saying nothing. Haji Khan must have been wondering what I was doing there with a doctor he didn’t know, but he didn’t ask because it wouldn’t have been polite. We had been invited into his garden, and we were his guests.

Now, if we could just continue to sit there, all nice and quiet, and drink the tea that was being poured for us, I thought we stood a pretty good chance of walking out of the gate in one piece. But then Dr. Hugo started talking.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he stated.

Haji Khan shrugged his shoulders in a way that said well, yes, actually, I was wondering.

“Well,” Dr. Hugo continued, coughing a little as he did, “I’m a friend of Georgie’s.”

Haji Khan said nothing.

“I also know that you are a good friend of hers, and over the years you have become quite, um, close.”

Haji Khan again said nothing, and because his silence was turning the air weird I tried to concentrate on my tea.

“Well, the fact is that I know things have changed between you two and, um, you’re not as close as you once were. But it’s quite clear that she still feels an awful lot for you, and I think it’s time you, um, well, you know, backed off a bit.”

Haji Khan continued to say nothing, but his eyes were growing dark and his eyebrows were moving inward. This was not a good sign, not a good sign at all, and I prayed the doctor would stop his talking, drink his tea, thank my friend for his hospitality, and go.

But he didn’t.

“I’m saying all this to you because Georgie is thinking of leaving for England, and the fact is I would prefer her to stay, for obvious reasons.”

“What reasons?”

It was the first time Haji Khan had spoken since the conversation began, and I heard the anger cooking in his voice.

“I think I’m in love with her,” Dr. Hugo told him, almost matter-of-factly.

It wouldn’t have been the first reason I’d have given.

“Have you slept with her?”

Haji Khan’s voice was quiet and careful, and I noticed his friends shifting themselves on the carpet.

“Sorry, but I really don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“I said, have you slept with her?”

“Well, no. No, I haven’t slept with her, but that’s not really the point here. The fact is we have become close, and I’m sure that if you just gave her some space, if you finally let her go, I know I could make her happy. I mean, come on, what could you give her here, in Afghanistan, in your culture—”

Suddenly, Haji Khan let out a roar so loud I dropped my cup of tea.

The doctor sprang to his feet in shock, and Haji Khan flew at him, grabbing him by the neck and pinning him to the wall.

“Are you mad?” he raged, spitting each and every word in Dr. Hugo’s face. “Coming to me and talking like this? Do you not know who the fuck you are dealing with?”

“Of course I know who you are,” Dr. Hugo gasped, struggling for breath and ripping with both hands at the one hand that held him. “I’m not scared of you!”

By now I was also on my feet, and from where I was standing Dr. Hugo didn’t look scared—he looked terrified.

“You stupid, stupid, stupid motherfucker!” Haji Khan screamed back at him, slamming his fury into his face. “You think you’re in love with Georgie? You think ? Well, let me tell you something: I am Georgie! That woman is my heart; she is locked in my bones, in my teeth, even in my hairs. Every inch of her is me, and every inch of her belongs to me. And you? You come here with your schoolboy dreams to convince me to ‘back off.’ Are you insane? Are you fucking insane?”

Haji Khan threw the doctor to the ground, leaving him choking for air at his feet.

“Get him out of here,” he snarled in Pashto to one of the guards who had crept closer at the first sign of trouble. “Get him out of here before I rip his throat out.”

He then walked away, into his house.

ON THE DRIVE back in the car Dr. Hugo was very quiet, which was fair enough—he had just been half strangled after all. His hands were also trembling, and the middle of his eyes looked bigger than normal.

“That man’s a bloody animal,” he finally muttered, “a maniac. What the hell does she see in him?”

I guessed he meant Georgie.

“Well, he is very handsome, and last week we found out that—”

“It was a rhetorical question, Fawad.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t know what rhetorical meant, but I guessed it might have something to do with a question that did not want an answer.

Still, if nothing else, Dr. Hugo’s visit to Haji Khan had made up my mind about one thing: the doctor was nice and all that, but a woman needs a man who can fight for her, especially in Afghanistan. And although I knew it was wrong, because my mother told me “Violence is never the answer,” I was beginning to think that Haji Khan was pretty “down-with-it-cool,” to use James’s words. I didn’t say anything, though, and for the rest of the journey Dr. Hugo also said nothing. He only rubbed at his hands now and again, and sometimes his neck.

About ten minutes later we stopped in front of my house, and he leaned over. His voice was almost a whisper in my ear.

“I’d appreciate it, Fawad, if you didn’t mention any of this to Georgie.”

“Okay,” I agreed, because I felt sorry for him. But I was far from happy about it. When I got back to my room, I’d have to write everything down on paper just so I could remember all the things I was now not supposed to tell anyone about.

I was hoping to avoid anyone who might make me lose the secrets hiding in my head but, because life is never how you want it to be, I came into the yard to see the whole house, including my mother, sitting in the garden. She immediately jumped to her feet. As she moved, I noticed an Afghan woman next to her who I thought looked like someone I knew, but I couldn’t think from where.

My mother’s eyes were wet, but her face was happy—incredibly happy in fact. And then I noticed that everyone else looked incredibly happy too, and I guessed that my mother must finally have said yes to Shir Ahmad, which at least meant I could scratch one secret off my list.