He frowned, unsure what to do, looking very boyish and handsome. “Where is Jean-Pierre?”
“Gone to Khawak. I need Rabia.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll send my wife.”
“Before you go . . .”
“Yes?”
“Please give me some water.”
He looked shocked. It was unheard of for a man to serve a woman, even with a simple drink of water.
Jane added: “From the special jug.” She kept handy a jug of filtered boiled water for drinking: this was the only way to avoid the numerous intestinal parasites from which almost all the local people suffered all their lives.
Mohammed decided to flout convention. “Of course,” he said. He went into the next room and returned a moment later with a cup of water. Jane thanked him and sipped gratefully.
“I’ll send Halima to fetch the midwife,” he said.
Halima was his wife. “Thank you,” said Jane. “Tell her to hurry.”
Mohammed left. Jane was lucky it was he and not one of the other men. The others would have refused to touch a sick woman, but Mohammed was different. He was one of the most important guerrillas, and in practice was the local representative of the rebel leader, Masud. Mohammed was only twenty-four, but in this country that was not too young to be a guerrilla leader or to have a nine-year-old son. He had studied in Kabul, he spoke a little French, and he knew that the customs of the Valley were not the only forms of polite behavior in the world. His main responsibility was to organize the convoys to and from Pakistan with their vital supplies of arms and ammunition for the rebels. It was one such convoy that had brought Jane and Jean-Pierre to the Valley.
Waiting for the next contraction, Jane recalled that awful journey. She had thought of herself as a healthy, active and strong person, easily capable of walking all day; but she had not anticipated the shortage of food, the steep climbs, the rough stony paths and the incapacitating diarrhea. For parts of the trip they had moved only at night, for fear of Russian helicopters. They had also had to contend with hostile villagers in places: fearing that the convoy would attract a Russian attack, the locals would refuse to sell food to the guerrillas, or hide behind barred doors, or direct the convoy to a meadow or orchard a few miles away, a perfect camping spot which turned out not to exist.
Because of the Russian attacks, Mohammed changed his routes constantly. Jean-Pierre had got hold of American maps of Afghanistan in Paris, and they were better than anything the rebels had, so Mohammed often came to the house to look at them before sending off a new convoy.
In fact Mohammed came oftener than was really necessary. He also addressed Jane more than Afghan men usually did, and made eye contact with her a little too much, and stole too many glances at her body. She thought he was in love with her, or at least he had been until her pregnancy became visible.
She in turn had been drawn to him at the time when she was miserable about Jean-Pierre. Mohammed was lean and brown and strong and powerful, and for the first time in her life, Jane had been attracted to a dyed-in-the-wool male chauvinist pig.
She could have had an affair with him. He was a devout Muslim, as were all the guerrillas, but she doubted whether that would have made any difference. She believed what her father used to say: “Religious conviction may thwart a timid desire but nothing can stand against genuine lust.” That particular line had enraged Mummy. No, there was as much adultery in this puritan peasant community as anywhere else, as Jane had realized listening to the riverside gossip among the women while they fetched water or bathed. Jane knew how it was managed, too. Mohammed had told her. “You can see the fish jump at dusk under the waterfall beyond the last water mill,” he had said one day. “I go there some nights to catch them.” At dusk the women were all cooking, and the men were sitting in the courtyard of the mosque, talking and smoking: lovers would not be discovered so far from the village, and neither Jane nor Mohammed would have been missed.
The idea of making love by a waterfall with this handsome, primitive tribesman tempted Jane; but then she had got pregnant, and Jean-Pierre had confessed how frightened he was of losing her, and she had decided to devote all her energies to making her marriage work, come what may; and so she never went to the waterfall, and after her pregnancy began to show, Mohammed did not look at her body.
Perhaps it was their latent intimacy that had emboldened Mohammed to come in and to help her, when other men would have refused and might even have turned away at the door. Or perhaps it was Mousa. Mohammed had only one son—and three daughters—and he probably now felt unbearably indebted to Jane. I made a friend and an enemy today, she thought: Mohammed and Abdullah.
The pain began again, and she realized she had enjoyed a longer-than-usual respite. Were the contractions becoming irregular? Why? Jean-Pierre had said nothing about that. But he had forgotten much of the gynecology he had studied three or four years ago.
This one was the worst so far, and it left her feeling shivery and nauseated. What had happened to the midwife? Mohammed must have sent his wife to fetch her—he would not forget, or change his mind. But would she obey her husband? Of course—Afghan women always did. But she might walk slowly, gossiping on the way, or even stop off at some other house to drink tea. If there was adultery in the Five Lions Valley there would be jealousy, too, and Halima was sure to know or at least guess at her husband’s feelings for Jane—wives always did. She might resent being asked to rush to the aid of her rival, the exotic white-skinned educated foreigner who so fascinated her husband. Suddenly Jane felt very angry with Mohammed and with Halima, too. I’ve done nothing wrong, she thought. Why have they all deserted me? Why isn’t my husband here?
When another contraction began, she burst into tears. It was just too much. “I can’t go on,” she said aloud. She was shaking uncontrollably. She wanted to die before the pain could get worse. “Mummy, help me, Mummy,” she sobbed.
Suddenly there was a strong arm around her shoulders and a woman’s voice in her ear, murmuring something incomprehensible but soothing in Dari. Without opening her eyes, she held on to the other woman, weeping and crying out as the contraction grew more intense; until at length it began to fade, too slowly, but with a feeling of finality, as if it might be the last, or perhaps the last bad one.
She looked up and saw the serene brown eyes and nutshell cheeks of old Rabia, the midwife.
“May God be with you, Jane Debout.”
Jane felt relief like the lifting of a crushing burden. “And with you, Rabia Gul,” she whispered gratefully.
“Are the pains coming fast?”
“Every minute or two.”
Another woman’s voice said: “The baby is coming early.”
Jane turned her head and saw Zahara Gul, Rabia’s daughter-in-law, a voluptuous girl of Jane’s age with wavy near-black hair and a wide, laughing mouth. Of all the women in the village, Zahara was the one to whom Jane felt close. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.
Rabia said: “The birth has been brought on by carrying Mousa up the hillside.”
“Is that all?” said Jane.
“It is plenty.”
So they don’t know about the fight with Abdullah, Jane thought. He has decided to keep it to himself.
Rabia said: “Shall I make everything ready for the baby?”
“Yes, please.” Goodness knows what kind of primitive gynecology I’m letting myself in for, Jane thought; but I can’t do this alone—I just can’t.
“Would you like Zahara to make some tea?” Rabia asked.