Excerpt

“Oh you who stand outside,” said the voice, “enter.”

Mariana put down her twigs and pulled off her riding boots. She had intended to tell Nur Rahman too wait outside while she met privately with Haji Khan, but such a meeting was clearly impossible. Judging from all those shoes and weapons, the room was full to bursting with Afghan men.

She would never be able to ask her question now.

She stepped over the threshold on stocking feet, and found herself in a windowless chamber, whose only illumination came from the open doorway behind her, and from a small, filigreed copper lamp at the back of the room.

The lamp shone weakly onto the faces of a dozen turbaned men who sat, shoulder to shoulder upon a floor covered with layers of tribal rugs. Some of the men looked like the fierce, ragged men she had seen walking on the road. Others, who wore clean, starched clothing, looked like Afghan versions of Hassanâ’s family members. One or two of the group seemed to carry a special authority. Perhaps they, too, were Followers of the Path.

She hesitated in the doorway. The gatekeeper had failed to say she was a woman. Was she really welcome among all these men?

Certain she was not, she glanced quickly about her, taking in as much as she could, before she was asked to leave.

Embroidered hangings of every conceivable hue, some new, some rotting with age, covered the walls of the room. One or two of them were decorated with great wheel-like patterns. Others were thickly covered in triangles of bright silk stitching. Still others had been sewn with small, irregularly shaped mirrors that gleamed in the lamplight. A heavy, sweet scent, akin to the one she had bought in the market, hung in the air, eclipsing the smell of the courtyard.

At the back of the room, a sparsely bearded man sat cross-legged upon a string bed. His face was soft-featured, not sharply boned like those of the men who crowded around him. A smoking chillum stood beside him on the floor. Where his pupils should have been, his eyes were white.

He beckoned to her. “Come closer,” he ordered.

The men moved aside without speaking, to let her pass. The blind man pointed to a straw stool beside him.

The room was very hot. Not knowing what to do with her tiny gift, she laid it hesitantly on a square of cloth beside him. She groped for her handkerchief and mopped her face under her veil.

“May peace be upon you, Haji Khan.” Nur Rahmanâ’s pleading voice came from the doorway. “May I pay my respects?”

“Pay them from where you are standing. You have no need of me. But you, Khanum,” the blind man said, turning to Mariana, “you have something to ask me.”