Now, almost as one, the men trot off to their homes, including the mullah, who has two wives and a boy. Sonia thinks they will beat all the women now, but not very hard. She is left alone on the dusty street with poor Mahmoud, who looks like he is going to cry.
“It is over, Mahmoud,” she says. “Untie me and carry me back to my room in the hujra. You have been saved from Hell today; God has been merciful to you. And when you have done that, I will interpret your dream for you.”
Mahmoud carries her toward the hujra, but on the way he is stopped by two armed men with the look of seasoned mujahideen. There is a brief argument. The men don’t want her returned to her prison; someone wants to see her. For the first time she hears the name Alakazai and it seems to be a significant one, for on hearing it Mahmoud stops arguing and follows the men. They go down several streets, the roar of the diesel generator grows louder as they walk. They go through a gate in a high mud wall and enter a house. Mahmoud is dismissed, protesting, at the door, and Sonia is forced to hobble on the edges of her feet, following the men, who make no effort to help her.
One of them grabs her arm and hustles her through an open door and into a small room with a high window. In it there are two charpoys and a low table, upon which is a tray with a tea service and a covered basket from which issues the smell of fresh naan. On one of the charpoys sits a man. Sonia collapses on the other. The guard goes to a corner and squats down with his rifle across his knees.
The man on the other charpoy indicates the tea with a flick of his hand.
“Would you like some tea, Mrs. Laghari?” he says in English.
“Yes, thank you,” Sonia answers, and pours. To her surprise it is not the strong milky tea of the region but some herbal brew, flowery, like chamomile or jasmine. But it is hot and she drinks a whole cup and eats a piece of bread. The man watches her and she returns the favor.
He is a comfortably padded man, broad-shouldered, with a tan face and a neatly trimmed dark beard. His ethnic origins are not at once clear, for he has the hawk nose and the hazel eyes common among the Pashtuns, but his air of comfortable self-assurance, relaxed, faintly amused, is one she associates with the plains to the south. And there is something wrong about him, a cast of ill health; the whites of his eyes are yellowish, and there is a faint unpleasant odor in the room. That’s why the herbal tea. The man’s innards are not right.
“How are your feet?” he asks, after she has drunk the tea.
“How do you think?”
He shrugs. “That was a clever ploy. You almost started a riot there, among the women. Idris is very angry with you.”
“It wasn’t a ploy. I was perfectly sincere.”
“Were you?” A look of amusement here. “You consider yourself a Muslim?”
“I am as much a Muslim as you are.”
“Even though you wander around without your husband, unveiled? Even though you are an infamous blasphemer and apostate?” He sips his tea, not taking his eyes off her. “You know, I saw you on television. It was quite a per for mance. I thought you seemed more an ally of our jihad than not.”
“Really. Then you couldn’t have been listening to what I said.”
“Oh, I listened. And I was intrigued. Who was this American who spoke perfect Urdu and had such interesting ideas? Why had I never heard of her before? So I made inquiries, and of course I quickly learned that I had heard of her before; the whole umma had heard of her. And I was amazed that this Sonia Bailey would have the arrogance to lead a party of spies into a Muslim country.”
Sonia surpasses a shudder of fear. She says, “We are not spies. We are scholars. And the Prophet, peace be upon him, says that the ink of scholars is more precious than the blood of martyrs.”
The man waves his hand as if shooing flies. “Yes, yes, anyone can quote from the Hadith when it suits them, but the fact remains that you have already been condemned by competent judicial authorities. I could have you executed this minute.”
“Yes, you could,” she says agreeably. “Or you could have me beaten five times a day and locked in a filthy stable. I’d be dead in a few days from septic shock, and you wouldn’t have to confront the women again.”
“I’m not afraid of a few women.”
“Nonsense, Mr…?”
“My name is Alakazai.”
“Really? Then we are clan cousins of a sort. My son is an adopted clansman of the Barakzai.”
A transient look of irritation passes over the man’s face; Sonia observes it with interest and switches to English. “Although you’re not a big one for clan connections, are you, Mr. Alakazai? You’re not a real Pashtun at all. I suspect your father or grandfather was a detribalized Pashtun living in the south, what they call a Pathan in that country, and one or more of them must have intermarried with the locals, Punjabi or Sindhi perhaps, even Bengali. There is something of the babu about you, I think. Idris and the others are true Pashtuns; their lives revolve around honor, loot, and beating up any women or foreigners that come their way. But not you, and so we have to ask why they follow you. And the answer must be that you’re the one with the connections. the paymaster, feeding money and arms from the Pakistanis. You might even be an actual ISI agent. On the other hand, I’m sure you have good connections with al-Qaeda as well. You’re just the sort of deracinated, half-educated, semi-Westernized misogynist they like to recruit.”
He regards her expressionlessly, tracing the line of his beard below his lip with a forefinger.
“And please don’t tell me you’re not afraid of women, Mr. Alakazai. Sexual terror is the motor of your entire movement. That’s why you blow up girls’ schools and toss acid in the faces of their students.”
“Is that what you really believe? Remarkable, when you have traveled so much in the umma. You must be willfully blind.”
“You don’t blow up girls’ schools?”
He made the fly-chasing motion again. “I have the greatest respect for women. A modest woman caring for her family is one of God’s greatest creations. But it is also obvious that when the head is full the womb is empty, as we observe throughout the West. In whatever nations that accept the curse of women’s education and freedom from the control of men, we see a rapid decline in population; we see pornography; we see sexual disease. Not a single one of the so-called advanced countries is reproducing its original population at replacement levels. In Europe, virtually all the population growth is Muslim, and it is clear now that in a certain number of years all these nations will have Muslim majorities. This is because we understand that the function of women is established by God and anything that seeks to destroy that function must be haram. Do you see? It’s really very simple. Islam is a simple religion, and therefore it is the truest and most beautiful of all religions. So tell me, who are you working for, the CIA?”
“That’s what everyone thinks, but I’m surprised you do too. I thought you would know that someone who speaks the local languages and is conversant with local culture couldn’t possibly work for the CIA. The CIA is a bunch of white men in suits having cocktails at the American embassy, when they’re not firing missiles into villages from drones, usually the wrong village.”
“Very amusing. But if you’re not a spy, what are you doing in the Northwest Frontier Province?”
“I was traveling to my brother-in-law’s house in the Leepa Valley to participate in a conference about how to bring peace to this region.”
“Oh? And how shall we bring peace to the region?”
“I have no idea. We didn’t get a chance to hold the conference.”
He makes a generous sweeping gesture. “Then by all means hold it. No one is stopping you.”
“You don’t mean that you’re setting us free.”