Free Born Under a Million Shadows by Andrea Busfield

mother once said, and as Pir Hederi found to his cost, love is blind.
     
    “Doesn’t Haji Khan come from Shinwar, not Jalalabad?” I asked Georgie as she drank her coffee on the steps of the house. It was cold now, and she was wrapped in a soft gray
patu
, a parting gift from her lover before he left for the east.
    “Yes, he does,” she admitted. “But he has a house in Jalalabad and tends to spend most of his time there. Why do you ask?”
    “Oh, nothing,” I mumbled, wrapping my arms around my body and coming to sit by her side.
    “Here, get under this.” Georgie shuffled closer, placing the
patu
around my back and over my shoulder. It carried the heat of her body and the smell of her perfume. “Better?”
    “Yes, thanks. It’s cold, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, it is,” she agreed, and I bit at my bottom lip, not sure where to begin, and even less sure about whether Georgie would take the
patu
away once I did begin.
    “What’s the matter?” she finally asked after we’d sat there in silence for the best part of a minute. “You look serious.”
    “Do I? Well, yes, maybe I am,” I admitted. “It’s just that, well, I heard that there are a lot of poppy crops in Shinwar.”
    “Not at the moment there aren’t; it’s winter.” She laughed.
    “I know that,” I joined in, happy to have got the subject going at last. “But usually there are. Shinwar is famous for poppy.”
    “Yes, I suppose it is,” Georgie agreed. “And your point is?”
    “Nothing.” I shrugged. “I just thought I’d mention it.”
    “Why? Because you think Khalid is involved in poppy?”
    Georgie turned her head to look at me. To my gigantic relief she didn’t seem angry, but I still thought it best to ignore the question.
    “Look,” she continued. “I know a lot of people think Khalid is involved in drugs because he’s a rich man, but he isn’t—isn’t involved in drugs, that is; of course he’s a rich man. Khalid hates drugs. He says they trap people in poverty, they damage the reputation of the country, and they pay for the insurgency that is threatening to wreck Afghanistan once again. He hates them, Fawad, absolutely hates them.”
    “But how can you be sure he’s telling the truth?” I asked.
    Georgie reached for the packet of cigarettes lying by her feet, removed one from the box, and lit it.
    “Well, there are a number of reasons,” she explained, releasing a line of smoke through her lips. “I know he has several projects running in the east helping farmers find work awayfrom poppy growing, like providing them with fruit and olive trees and seeds for wheat and perfume flowers. But mainly I know he’s telling the truth because I trust him.”
    Georgie looked away, sipped her coffee, and sucked heavily on her cigarette. I turned my face to my feet and watched from the corner of my eye as she slowly dragged a pale hand through her hair, stroking it away from her face. Against the near-black of her hair and the gray of the
patu
, her skin looked frosty white, and dark circles hung beneath her eyes.
    “Are you tired?” I asked.
    “A little, yes,” she replied, a small smile thinning her lips.
    I nodded. “I am too,” I said, which wasn’t true, but I didn’t want her to feel alone. Haji Khan had been gone a week, disappearing from our lives as suddenly as he had appeared, and I guessed she was missing him.
    “I’ve known Khalid for three years,” Georgie stated, almost as if she had read my thoughts. “I would know if he was lying to me.”
    “I didn’t say he was lying.”
    “No. Well, not in so many words you didn’t, so, thank you.”
    I shuffled my feet and let the softness of the
patu
cover them.
    “But . . . how can you really be sure that he’s not?”
    “How?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders in a very Afghan way that marked her out as nearly one of us. “Because I am.”
    After a few seconds’ pause, during which a crease appeared in the middle of her eyebrows as if she