Andrea Busfield - Born Under a Million Shadows

“This will be the staircase,” Haji Khan said, which made me laugh because we weren’t stupid. “Your rooms will be upstairs. One is your bedroom, one is a large seating area, and the other room is for maybe the children.”

Haji Khan looked at Georgie from under his heavy eyebrows. I could see he was taking a chance with his words, seeing as he had practically killed their last child.

“Here you can relax and see a wonderful view of the mountains to help keep your mind happy,” he added, and Georgie smiled, which made Haji Khan smile, and because both of them were smiling I smiled.

So far it was going very well, and I thought that if the new house filled with the promise of their children couldn’t keep Georgie in Afghanistan, nothing would.

“So, what is your thinking?” Haji Khan finally asked.

Georgie looked around.

“I think it will be wonderful, Khalid, but—”

“Please, Georgie,” he interrupted, frowning as his eyes fell sad, “not with the ‘buts.’ Please, first, let me show you one more thing.”

Haji Khan moved away and out the door, speaking again as he stepped outside.

“You see this garden to the river and to the road over there? This will all be yours. We will build the walls so you have privacy, and we will put beautiful roses in the ground along here”—he pointed to the left side of the garden—“and here”—he pointed to the right—“and here”—he pointed in front of him. “This way all of the day you will be surrounded by color and beauty.”

Georgie slowly looked around, probably imagining the colors that might shine in her world and what her life might be like surrounded by flowers in the garden and spring in her hallway.

As she considered things, Haji Khan moved away from us, his head bent low and his hands reaching out to each other behind his back. He was really trying, anyone could see that. I could almost feel the hope he was holding inside his hands. I knew that if Georgie really loved him there was no way she could refuse him, but when I searched her face she was looking away into the distance and I saw the worry in her eyes as she lifted a hand to block out the sun.

“Shit!” she suddenly shouted.

I looked to where she had been looking and saw something dark move along the roof of a nearby house. I looked back at Georgie, but she was gone, running toward Haji Khan and shouting at him to get down. As he turned to face her, she threw herself straight into his body. He stumbled backward before catching her in his arms, just as the bullets cracked in the distance and began to scream over our heads.

I threw myself to the floor as Haji Khan’s bodyguards opened fire, killing our ears with the noise of their guns.

Scared beyond scared, I raised my head to look for Georgie and saw her lying in the arms of Haji Khan. Blood covered her clothes, and her face was pulled into his chest. He was shouting at the guards firing around him. “Get the car!” he yelled, but his words were barely heard over the noise of battle.

“Georgie!” I screamed, and I got to my feet to run toward her.

When I reached them, Haji Khan pulled me flat to the ground. “Keep down, Fawad!” he shouted. His eyes were wide with pain, and I saw blood rushing from his shoulder.

“Georgie,” I whispered, and I pulled myself closer to her face so I could hold it in my hands.

Her life was pouring from her body like a river. Splashes of it colored her skin, which had grown white. Underneath my fingers she trembled as if a terrible wind from winter had suddenly blown over her.

I didn’t want to believe it. I squeezed my eyes hard shut and prayed to my God with all my strength. But I knew she was dying. We were going to lose her.

“Please, Georgie, please,” I begged, “we haven’t time. You have to say the words. You must believe!”

All around me the bullets kept flying, whistling and cracking over our heads and kicking up dirt around the garden that was waiting for Haji Khan’s roses. Above me I could hear him ordering his men and still calling for the car, but all I could see was Georgie’s face, and her dark eyes now hearing my voice and reaching for me.

We had one chance, just one chance, and it was slipping away so fast.

“Georgie, please believe,” I whispered, and I felt the tears tumble from my eyes, blurring her face. “You must believe, or you are lost! Georgie!”

“Fawad,” she breathed into my face, but her sound was too soft and I had to put my ear close to her mouth. “Fawad, don’t worry… I believe… I promise you, I believe.”

“It’s not enough,” I screamed back at her, because I couldn’t be gentle. There was no time to be gentle. We had only seconds. “You’ve got to say the words, Georgie! Please, you must say the words!”

And as my tears fell onto her lips, I saw her grab at the power deep inside her and she looked at me hard.

“La ilaha,” I told her, pushing the wet hair from her face and pressing my ear to her mouth.

“La ilaha,” she copied.

“Il-Allah,” I said.

“Il-Allah.”

“Muhammad-ur-Rasulullah.”

“Muh… Muhammad-ur-Rasulullah.”

There is no God except Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

And as Haji Khan’s car arrived, kicking up the dust in front of us, she closed her eyes and Georgie was gone.

THIS SUMMER THE Taliban leader Mullah Dadullah was killed in Helmand. He was a nasty piece of work who paid money to the disabled and mentals to carry out suicide bombings in our country. In the past he’d also killed thousands of Hazaras, just because he didn’t like them. So when he finally got what was coming to him, everyone was pretty surprised, so much so that the governor had to put his body on TV so they knew it was true.

More amazing to me, though, was that he had only one leg.

“You would think that if he had only one leg they would have caught him a lot quicker,” I mentioned to James after he’d sent his story over the computer to England.

“Fawad, for the past five and a half years no one’s been able to find Mullah Omar, who’s a six-foot-four-inch bloke with one eye riding around on a motorbike, so why the surprise? And if the rumors are to be believed, Osama bin Laden’s running around Waziristan clutching a kidney dialysis machine. I’m telling you, Stephen Hawking could outrun this lot.”

“Who’s Stephen Hawking?”

“He’s a clever man in a wheelchair who speaks through a computer.”

“Really? Like Professor Charles Xavier in X-Men ?”

James released the weights he’d been struggling to lift to his chest—one of his latest plans to win Rachel’s hand in marriage—and looked at me with his hands on his hips.

“You, my boy, have been watching too much television,” he said, breathing heavily.

And he was probably right.

After Pir Hederi’s sandwich business failed to make him any money, he had turned half of his shop into a DVD store. Amazingly, it was a fantastic success. Now, instead of spending my afternoons walking around Wazir Akbar Khan advertising “cak,” I was checking films for him so that he wouldn’t get a visit from the Vice and Virtue Department.

It was the best job I’d ever had.

Jamilla was also pleased with the development because she now got to spend most of her mornings mooning over Shahrukh Khan, much to Pir Hederi’s disgust.

“Doesn’t that man ever stop singing?” he shouted one day because even Dog was refusing to come into the shop.