All the same. He had a knife.
“Give me your phone,” he said. “Now!”
She thought about what was at stake for him if the police came. Everything he stood to lose. She gave him the phone.
Chaltu looked back and forth between them with eyes that could hold no further terror. Taghi plopped Nina’s Nokia into the toilet. Then he brought out his own cell phone and punched a few numbers. Through the window she watched one of the young men let go of the tarp and put his hand to his ear.
Taghi began to speak, fast and in Farsi. Nina didn’t understand a word. Yet for the first time she felt a jolt of fear.
Fucking morons.
Taghi could barely control his anger. He felt it, warm and throbbing just under his skin. No one had better touch him. No one. Especially not those two idiots standing there fidgeting by the door. Just covering up a body with a green tarp-you would have thought it was a pretty simple job. It wasn’t like he was asking them to perform brain surgery.
They stood there staring at Taghi and the doctor lady and the woman on the floor. Farshad squirmed around like a three-year-old in need of a pee. His eyes moved back and forth uneasily between the doctor lady and him, as if he was trying to figure out what Taghi was thinking. Taghi knew he ought to say something, but he didn’t know what. Plus, he didn’t want to talk to that idiot. Not right now. They had a problem. The African wouldn’t go to the police, of course. The doctor lady, on the other hand…
Would a Danish woman be able to drive away from here and forget everything about the squashed corpse on the sheetrock outside? Could he let her go?
His thoughts were broken by Farshad, who again spoke way too fast and way too loudly. “Shouldn’t we…” He hesitated and flashed another look at the women in the tiny bathroom. “Shouldn’t we kill her, Taghi? Isn’t that what we should do?”
Taghi caught Farshad with a whipping blow across the back of the neck. He didn’t want to talk to him, mostly he wanted to hit him again, harder. Farshad’s astonished expression stopped him, and instead he spoke slowly and clearly.
“No, we are not going to kill her. Ajab olaqi hasti to. You are as stupid as a fucking donkey.” Taghi’s low, tense voice quivered. “Keep your mouth shut while I think.”
Farshad, clearly hurt, stared at him, then he bowed his head.
“Taghi.” The doctor lady’s voice sounded like a gunshot in the tense silence. “You’re all going to have to help me hold her. She won’t do anything.”
Taghi gaped at her. She couldn’t be serious. Did she think they looked like a bunch of nurses? He was about to say something, but he stopped. One glance at the sinewy little figure beside the African woman convinced him that there was no room for discussion at the moment.
The doctor lady had made a pallet for the woman consisting of Taghi’s down coat and Djo Djo’s fleece. On top of that she had laid clean white towels from the shoulder bag she’d brought along.
“Sit so you can support her head, and then shut up. Apparently you’re Jacob at the moment, and it works a lot better if you’re not yelling at your cousin.”
Taghi trudged back into the bathroom, and slid to the floor without another word. He raised the woman’s head and shoulders so she could rest against his thigh. He dared a quick glance at Djo Djo, who was still standing in the kitchen area, his expression an absurd mixture of terror and amusement. A brief, nervous laugh escaped him.
The eyes of the doctor lady gleamed fierily in the dark. “You two can make yourselves useful and see if there’s any hot water in the pipes.”
Djo Djo and Farshad got going too. Taghi heard them swearing beneath their breath at the kitchen sink. There was water, but it was cold. The African woman hunched over and pushed so hard he could see the small veins in her temples standing out in the weak light from the streetlamp. He put a hand on her forehead and sent a quick prayer off to heaven. For her, for the baby, and for the three of them-Djo Djo, Farshad, and himself.
He turned again and looked at the doctor woman. Nina. Her face blazed with a pale, persistent concentration.
“It’s coming,” she said, glancing up at him with something resembling a weak smile.
“I know.”
The African woman opened her eyes and looked directly at him as the next contraction hit. And he thought about what it must be like-to give birth here, among strangers, among men.
Down between the woman’s legs, the doctor lady reached out with both hands and made a quick turning motion, and Taghi heard the wet sound from the baby slipping out onto the white towels.
It was a boy, and he was already screaming.
“Blessed Virgin, Mary full of grace, free me from this pain, Gaeta, Gaeta, Lord have mercy upon me, may all your saints protect me, and I will honor you… honor you…” Chaltu had to pause for a moment because God’s fist squeezed the air out of her, but she continued the litany in her head and time disappeared for her; it was the priests’ mass she heard, she thought she could smell the incense and feel the pressure, not from labor but from the crowd, all trying to catch a glimpse of the procession, the long parade of holy men clad in white costumes trimmed in red and gold. “Hoye, hoye,” the children sang, swaying and clapping their hands, and farther forward she could see the Demera, the holy bonfire waiting to be lit. The Meskel festival had arrived in Addis Ababa, and she was a part of it, swaying in rhythm to it, and she felt uplifted, she felt like she could float above the crowds and see over them instead of standing there among backs and thighs and shoulders and legs.
“Chaltu, push. Go on now, push!”
Hoye, hoye… be joyful, for today the true cross is found, praise God Almighty for today all sins are forgiven… and Jacob’s eyes gleamed at her, his hands supported her so she didn’t stumble despite all the people around her pushing and shoving. In that moment it made no difference that she hardly knew him, that he was only home for a visit, that he wasn’t the one she was supposed to marry. She loved him, loved the open look in his eye, his rounded upper lip, the way his earlobe attached to his neck. Loved him, and wanted to make love to him. It was as if the holy Eleni herself smiled upon them and promised them that their love would be clean and unsinful. Hoye, hoye. Today life will conquer death.
But why did it hurt so badly? She no longer understood this pain, no longer remembered the baby, instead she called for Jacob, again and again, but he faded away from her, as did the priests, the singing and clapping children, and the bonfire, the flames of which were supposed to show her the way to salvation.
God’s hand crushed her, she could neither think nor scream. She could just barely sense that she was surrounded by strangers, and that the arm she was clinging to wasn’t Jacob’s.
“Look, Chaltu. It’s a boy. You have a son.”
They laid a tiny, wet creature, a baby bird, on her stomach. Could it really be hers? She knew she should hold it, but her arms felt cold and heavy as stone.
It took several minutes before she realized that the baby had been born, and that she was still alive. A miracle, it was, and she only slowly began to believe it. For the first time in many days she felt something other than pain and fear. She raised her heavy arm and curled it around the baby-bird child. Breathed in its odor. Began to understand. Hoye, hoye, little one. We are here, both of us. We are alive.