“Well, he has noticed that Mahmoud comes to you in the night and takes you out for some hours to interpret dreams for people and then brings you back, escorting you into the room, when he checks to see everything is in order. Ashton has made a kind of cosh out of stones knotted into a sock, and with this he will lie in wait, and when you return he will lay out Mahmoud with a blow to the head, exchange clothes with him, and of course take his weapons. Annette will be in the burqa they gave her for the conference. They will slip out in the night, steal a vehicle, make their escape, and drive until they reach an army outpost or a patrol. He doesn’t think anyone will notice they are gone until dawn prayers the following day. The perpetual roar of the diesel will cover the sound of his stolen truck. He thinks.”
“Does he? Does he know that these people habitually disable their vehicles at night, just like they locked up their horses in the old days? Does he know that the area we’re in is completely controlled by Taliban and mujahideen groups? We haven’t even heard a helicopter since we’ve been here. And any military or police they may find might just as easily sell them back to the mujahideen. Does he have any idea what would happen to Annette, an unprotected woman and an American? They’d stake her down in a shed someplace and invite every man in the district to use her.”
The old man shrugged. “Apparently he has high-level contacts in the security services here. He hinted rather broadly that he was some kind of agent and that as soon as he got free and made contact, all would be well. Do you think he was fabricating?”
“I don’t know. Manjit thinks he’s a spook, and Manjit’s no fool.”
“What will you do, Sonia, now that you have this information?”
“I don’t know,” she answers. “But Annette can’t go with him.”
In the night, Sonia awakens to movement, the creak of a charpoy, a rustle of clothing. She does not sleep deeply now; sleep seems less necessary since Ismail came to her, there in the pit. She lies still and waits. Before long she hears the door open and feels moving air on her cheek, then a hand on her arm. It is Mahmoud. She rises, throws her dupatta over her head, and leaves with him. He takes her through the inn, but not to the same room. It is one closer to the sound of the diesel. There are rugs and cushions there and a dim oil lamp burning on a small table. He tells her to sit and wait, then leaves. He has an odd expression on his face, she thinks, frightened but also excited.
A few minutes pass, then Idris Ghulam enters. He sits on the cushions opposite her. His face, his black eyes, look fierce in the yellow lamplight. He says, “If you are a witch, then I am cursed. I gave orders that you should not interpret dreams, but everyone ignores this, and now even I am ignoring my own order. No one but Mahmoud knows I have come here, and he knows I will kill him if he tells, and to you I say the same thing. If I hear from anyone about this, on that day you die. Do you understand me?”
“You don’t have to threaten me, Idris. I am trained to keep secrets. It is my honor to keep secrets. And besides, Alakazai will kill me whatever you do. So you need have nothing to fear from me. But you have come here to tell me your dream. You have had a dream, not like the one you had before, but a good dream.”
He gasps and says, “How did you know?”
“Because I said it and it was so. I also say there was a woman in your dream.”
“Yes, there was! A beautiful woman in an abaya made of gold. She was gigantic, as tall as a house. I was like a child next to her. She said she would lead me to Paradise. How did you know?”
“You would not understand if I told you,” Sonia says. “Just tell me your dream, as much as you remember.” It was a reasonable guess, she thinks, with some satisfaction. Men in patriarchal cultures who are under extreme psychological stress often have anima dreams, as the suppressed female principle in them struggles to break out.
Idris says, “I was in a room, in a palace, everything marble and gold, and fine rugs on the floor. The woman came and told me this was the porch of Paradise, and I was welcome to come in, but God had something He wanted me to do. Of course, I agreed. So she said I should follow her, and she led me through a door and down a grand stairway, down and down, and as we went lower, the stairway became poorer and narrower and lower, and it stank. It was dark, I could no longer see the woman, but I could hear her voice. At the bottom of the stairs was a small stone room and on the floor were three pots, one filled with sand and the other two empty. The light was dim, like candlelight, but there was no candle. The voice said, Idris, here is sand: you must separate the black grains from the white, putting the white grains in the right-hand pot and the black grains in the left. And take care not to put a single grain wrong, or you will be condemned to eternal fire, for this room is the gateway to Hell. Then I was alone, and I thought, I am doomed, because no one can do this task, not in a thousand years. Then I prayed in my despair, but there was no answer from God. After a while I heard a tapping sound, and footsteps, and into the room came a little girl, a beautiful little girl, but she had a stick; she was blind. She asked what I was doing there and I told her and she said, Oh, that is an easy task if you know the way of it. I will teach you. I said, how can you separate the black grains from the white? You are blind. She said, I am not really blind. It is a pretense, because my father wishes me to marry a man I don’t like, so I pretend to be blind. Do you want me to help you or not?”
Here he pauses and passes a hand over his face. Sonia waits. A minute goes by and then he speaks again.
“Because I knew it was wrong to ask the help of a disobedient girl I said nothing. I thought, This is a test of God; this is the real test. But she seemed to know my thoughts; she said, Idris, don’t be foolish. God does not play tricks. Do you want help or not? So I said yes, please help me, although the words stuck in my throat. She took my right hand in hers and plunged it into the sand, and I found I could feel the difference between the grains. The black grains felt as big as peas. In a short time I had separated all the grains perfectly. And as soon as the last grain fell, the room and the little girl disappeared and I awoke.”
“This is a very good dream, Idris Ghulam. The great pir Najd ad-din Kubra writes of such a dream and calls it one of the greatest of dreams sent by God. Don’t you feel that it is?”
“Yes. I felt very peaceful after I awoke, but also confused. Can you tell me what it means?”
“I can. But you will not like to hear it. You will cry out at me that I am making a false interpretation, even though in your deepest heart you will know it is true. Are you willing to hear it?”
“Yes,” he says impatiently. “Get on with it!”
“Then listen, in the name of God the merciful, the compassionate! This is a dream about the greater jihad, the struggle within the human soul to reach God through right thinking and right actions. The woman is Wisdom, and she is an aspect of the divine presence. Wisdom is often a woman in dreams of men, because it comes through an inner part of them they do not listen to, in the way of men who think that women have nothing of importance to say. You are that kind of man. She says she can lead you to Paradise, which is true, but the way does not lead through fine furnishings and marble halls. These represent the goods of this world, gold and land and honor and reputation. Wisdom says you must turn your back on these and plunge downward into a filthy stairway. This represents evil, the dark things that you do and do not admit are wrong and against God’s law. But God sees everything. The bowl of sand means all the actions you do in religion with an impure heart, all the hypocrisies, the insincere prayers, the false teachings that have infected your mind. It is as impossible to arrive in Paradise through these as it is to separate the black grains from the white in a bushel of sand. Now a helper comes, and she is a little girl, a disobedient little girl, who pretends blindness. The meaning of this is that you yourself are pretending blindness, and that also you have given your obedience in error.”