CHAPTER 27

TWO HOURS LATER

When the door was kicked open, Dr. Julia Gallo was caught in a significant state of undress. The outside temperature that afternoon had been quite mild, which meant that inside the small, poorly ventilated mud brick room where she was being kept, the temperature had been stifling.

She had been lying on the floor trying to stay cool while staring out the small hole in the base of the wall. She wore only a damp T-shirt and trousers, both of which clung provocatively to her body, and her long, red hair hung loose about her shoulders.

Her overseer had returned. The mentally challenged man had not been there that morning to feed her. In fact, no one had come by her cell at all that day, and she had been battling a terrible fear that she had been forgotten or worse still, purposely left to die.

Julia was ravenous, and as the man set the tray down, she noticed that there was more food on it than usual. Whether it was an attempt to make up for his tardiness or an additional apology, like the candies he had given her yesterday, she could not say. She also didn’t much care. Whoever these people were, they were not feeding her enough. A meal this size, as paltry as it still was, was the least they should have been feeding a prisoner. She had no idea how much weight she had lost since Sayed had been murdered and she had been taken into captivity, but she had to imagine it was significant and she hadn’t had that much extra weight to lose to begin with.

Julia collected her clothes and quickly dressed. Affixing her hijab, she looked down and noticed her guard’s new basketball shoes were gone, and in their place he wore a pair of battered boots too big for his feet. When she looked up, she saw that his eyes were red and puffy.

Something had happened to him, and intuitively she knew it had to do with the boys who had come to rape her the day before. Pointing at his feet, she spoke quietly the Pashtu word for shoes, “Botaan?”

The man’s eyes welled with tears and he rubbed his sleeve across his face to try to hold them back. He began stammering and gesturing at his feet. Julia couldn’t understand what he was saying, but it sounded like his shoes were gone and that it had something to do with his brother.

He had been very attached to his shoes and she found it horrible that his own brother would take them away. The Taliban were absolute bastards. Stealing from a mentally challenged man was reprehensible. But if al-Qaeda had no problem using the intellectually disabled as suicide bombers, then she shouldn’t find it difficult to believe that the Taliban would prey on them as well.

Her body was desperate for nourishment, but Gallo poured some tea and held the metal cup out to her guard.

He didn’t know what to do. His captive was offering him tea? Having been steeped in the Pashtunwali his entire life, he understood that he was obliged to accept and so took the cup.

“Sta noom tse dai?” asked Julia. What is your name?

He drank the warm tea in one long swallow and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Zema num Zwak dai,” he replied. His sadness over his shoes temporarily forgotten, Zwak’s broad face broke into a wide smile.

Whether it was his size, his beard, or the pointy sweatshirt hood he always wore, the man reminded Julia of a gnome. “Zema num-” she began, but Zwak interrupted her.

“Doktar,” he said proudly.

Julia smiled back at him. He had heard and understood her yesterday. “Hoo,” she replied. “Doktar Julia.”

“Doktar. Doktar,” Zwak repeated, even prouder of himself.

They were communicating. That was good. If she could bond with him, maybe she could convince him to let her go. She had learned a long time ago that the fastest way to build a bond with someone was to ask them to do you a favor.

“Sarraoh nan shpa,” tonight cold, she attempted in her broken Pashtu. “Sheta brresten? Lutfan.” Do you have any blanket? “Please.”

“Doktar. Doktar,” Zwak repeated. “Soor wextu.”

Julia smiled and nodded. “Hoo, soor wextu.” Yes, red hair. “Sheta brresten?” Any blankets? she asked once more.

Zwak looked at the blanket on Julia’s bed and then back at her. Then without another word, he set down the metal cup and walked out of the room, slamming and locking the door behind him.

He was a strange little man. She wondered if she had offended him. Resigning herself to the fact that there was nothing she could do about it now, she sat down on her bed, tore off a piece of nan bread, and used it to scoop food into her mouth.

She poured more tea and savored the rest of her food. When she was finished, she discovered that Zwak had hidden two more pieces of dashlama, just like the candies he had given her yesterday, under her plate. Julia put one in her mouth and tried to enjoy it. Stay positive, she repeated to herself, but it was so hard.

She wasn’t living day to day. She wasn’t even living hour to hour. It was minute by minute, and she was slowly losing her mind, as well as her will to live. She chastised herself for being so weak. She needed to snap out of it. She had to focus on something worthwhile that she could live for.

She searched herself, but couldn’t come up with much. The one significant person in her life was her mother, and their relationship wasn’t exactly storybook material. Julia had spent a good part of her adulthood trying to find her own sliver of sunshine beyond the mammoth shadow her mother cast. It was that search that had brought her to Afghanistan and, ultimately, to the cell in which she now sat.

If the Taliban killed her today, she felt she wouldn’t have left much of a mark on the world.

A voice deep inside told her she was being too hard on herself, but she refused to listen to it. She didn’t want to be told she was a good person and that her life had value. She had gotten Sayed killed, and who knew how many other Afghan women who had been naïve enough to follow her political advice had been brutalized or killed because of it. Rise up. Take control of your lives. Embrace your rights, she had told them. It was all easy enough for an American woman to say, especially one who could go home to her First World country any time she wanted.

What an idiot I have been, Gallo thought as she broke down.

The tears were flowing down her face when the door to her cell was kicked open. It took her by surprise, as it always did, and her heart leaped into her throat. Looking up, she expected to see Zwak, but instead she saw several of the men who had killed Sayed.

They moved quickly. Two of them jerked her up off the bed while a third approached with a light blue burka and other items.

Once her wrists were bound, her eyes blindfolded, and the burka had been pulled down over her head, she was shoved outside.

She heard several vehicles come to a skidding halt only feet away and she was thrown roughly inside the nearest one.

As it lurched away, she could feel the presence of another person near her. As he began to cry, she knew in an instant that it was Zwak and that wherever they were taking her, it was so they could kill her.