‘I think he said he didn’t want a vest.’ Jabril laughed. ‘I couldn’t hear much. He was asking about you but Ahmad was more interested in selling him a vest.’
Sofia groaned just as Daniel stepped out from under the awning and Jabril made a hasty retreat to his surgery.
13
SOFIA HAD BEEN planning to look busy when Daniel arrived, but by the time she had sat back behind her desk and opened her laptop he was already in her doorway. She looked up.
‘Daniel?’
His name had come out all wrong, a question; as if she was unsure it was him; as if she was surprised to see him standing in her doorway; as if she hadn’t been waiting for him for the last five years.
‘It is. And it really is you,’ he said, offering the smile she had loved.
‘Depends who you think I am.’
‘I think you’re the woman I met in a village in the Hindu Kush who wasn’t sure she was going to stay in Afghanistan. Are you going to invite me in?’
‘And if I said no?’
‘I’d probably take my chances and come in anyway.’
‘Then you’d better come in.’ Getting up from her chair she walked around her desk to offer him her hand, but instead he leaned in and kissed her on both cheeks. The smile, the kisses and the remembered scent of him were unnerving. ‘Please,’ Sofia said, returning to her desk as she pointed to one of the patient’s chairs. ‘I’m interested to know if you knew it was me when you asked for the meeting.’
‘I thought the Australian doctor called Sofia with the Italian surname might be you, but when I heard you had red hair I knew it was.’
She gave him a smile. ‘So my job description included red hair?’
‘It might have.’
‘You remembered me by my hair?’ Was she flirting with him?
‘Didn’t your father say something about men remembering your hair?’
‘Actually, he said they’d fall in love with me because of my hair, but close enough.’
‘Maybe he was right.’
She ignored the comment. ‘What else do you remember?’
‘That your mother died when you were little and you read a lot growing up.’
‘You didn’t mention anything in your email about having met before.’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.’
‘Of course I remember you.’ She thought it strange that he would think otherwise considering they had been lovers, even if it was only for ten days. Maybe Daniel Abiteboul took random lovers whom he randomly forgot? ‘You grew up in Marrakech. You spent a lot of time with your cook’s family, and despite the fact that your mother was a writer she didn’t encourage you to read. I also remember that you looked very different back then. You had a beard, longer hair and wore Afghan clothes.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’ He looked pleased, as if she had just reminded him of something he’d forgotten.
Sofia looked at her laptop and straightened it up on the desk, wondering if she should say what she was about to say. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.’
‘And yet, here I am.’
‘And yet, here you are,’ she repeated. What had it been? Three minutes, and she could already feel herself falling into him again. It had been the same in the village, and like in the village, she had no idea how to protect herself from this man, but protect herself she must. She had no intention of being hurt again.
The note of love is true, her father would say with tears in his eyes whenever he spoke about the first time he had seen her mother. Finding a love like that and then losing it must have been the worst thing. ‘Her hair was just like yours,’ he would say. ‘She was the most magnificent woman I’d ever seen. When this happens to you, Sofia, you’ll know. Love can be nothing else.’ Sofia didn’t believe in love at first sight. Attraction was immediate; love, real love, took time.
‘I’m sorry, Daniel, it’s a little hard for me to take this all in at the moment. You … me … here,’ she said, pointing to him and then herself with a half smile.
When he spoke his voice was softer, less sure of himself, as if his words were a private thought, awkward to share. ‘It was strange for me too when I knew I’d be seeing you again.’
The intimacy of his words threw Sofia off balance. Everything about him threw her off balance. She fiddled with her laptop again, pushing it away before lining it up with the edge of her desk. What she really wanted in that moment was for him to leave and come back again when she’d had time to gather herself. She needed to move their conversation to safer neutral ground. ‘Tell me how you think I can help you.’
Sitting back in his chair and crossing his legs, he looked more relaxed again. ‘The short version is I’m here to assess what the country’s health requirements might be in light of the imminent US and Western troop withdrawals. With the suspected deterioration of the security situation and the very real possibility that the Taliban will regain power, a lot of aid agencies will be pulling out, so the UN needs to know how best it can support the indigenous and grassroots organisations still here on the ground. And while it’s not officially part of my brief, I’m particularly interested in the women’s organisations here and how we can help them. When I began to ask around about who I should talk to, your name kept coming up.’
Maybe that was a little too businesslike, she thought, starting to laugh. ‘How long have you been practising that speech?’
It made him laugh too. ‘Only the first part, which I already feel like I’ve said a hundred times. The last part was just for you.’
When Sofia found herself wondering how long it would take for them to become lovers again, she knew she needed to get the conversation back on track. Pulling her laptop toward her, she pushed it away again. She had to stop playing with her laptop. ‘I live a quiet life here. I don’t know how you think I can help you.’
‘You’ve got your practice here in Kabul that deals with women’s health issues, right?’
‘This isn’t my practice. I work for Dr Jabril.’
‘Okay,’ he said, a little less sure of himself, ‘but you’ve been working as a women’s doctor in Kabul for what – at least five years now? If that was the only thing then you’d already have a perspective I’d like to hear, but I understand you also work in the Kabul slums and in remote villages training midwives.’
Rather than being put off by her lack of enthusiasm, he appeared to become surer of his footing. She was trying to underplay her work; he was refusing to let her, she thought, wondering which of her friends he had been talking to. ‘I usually work one day a fortnight in Jamal Mina, which, as I’m sure you know, is one of the biggest slums in Kabul. And yes, I train midwives in various places around the country, which was something I started back in the mountain villages, thanks to you.’
‘I remember, and I’m glad you continued with that.’
‘All I do is turn up and provide the technical knowhow. It’s the women who do all the hard work.’ He wasn’t reacting to anything she was saying, which made her suspect he probably knew all this already. ‘Someone has to set these groups up and find the women to be trained, and that can be really difficult. Each of the women probably needs to get permission from her husband or father or some other male in the family, and they need to make the commitment to turn up one day every month in between all their other responsibilities. If that isn’t difficult enough, each woman needs a male relative willing and able to escort her to the meetings and wait to take her home again at the end of each day. When that’s all in place then I turn up. My job’s the easy part. But how do you know all this about me?’