Deny Tomorrow Read online

  “So where do we start?” Arianna asked Tarique.

  “First, we find some lodging. Then, we try to get an appointment with Fasi. Please wait in the car while I make some inquiries.”

  Arianna pulled out a small mini cam she kept hidden under her burqa and began filming the marketplace. The first thing she noticed was the large number of stray dogs that wandered freely around the village. Most of them were skin and bones. Next, she spotted an ox that was currently taking a dump next to a produce stand.

  “Eww! Gross,” she said to Kevin. “Look at that ox. Now, that’s a scene you won’t see in the States.”

  “For sure,” Kevin said. “Thank, God!”

  There were several produce stands, but from Arianna’s vantage point, all the vegetables seemed limp and over ripe. Nothing looked fresh. Nothing even looked familiar. Other vendors were selling household items such as rugs, vases, pots and pans… it looked like the American version of a rummage sale. Hanging from poles at another stand were some skinned goats with flies buzzing all around them. They were as unappetizing as oxen feces next to the produce stand.

  “This will make some good B-roll for our documentary. Notice how few women are in the market place and those that are there, are completely covered, of course, and accompanied by a man. How could you live like this day after day?” Arianna asked.

  “I guess you just would,” Kevin replied. “You’d have no choice, plus you wouldn’t know any better if this is all you’ve ever known. I think their contact with the outside world is non-existent, so this is normal for them.”

  Arianna zeroed in on the two Kervistanis that had helped them. She couldn’t take her eyes off the one who’d made her heart race on the ride here. Even in his grubby, unkempt condition, there had been an animal magnetism, drawing her to him. For Pete’s sakes. Get a grip and try to remember this is about Muslim women, not Muslim men. Just the same, she made sure she took numerous pictures of him to show the girls back home.

  “You need to be careful with that camera,” Kevin said. “We don’t exactly have permission to film here, especially you, as a Kervistan woman. I know these windows are tinted, but you’re still taking a big risk.”

  “Oh, you worry too much,” Arianna said. “If you want to get the story, you have to take chances, and I intend to do what I have to do to get this amazing story.”

  Kevin rolled his eyes. “Arianna, your impulsiveness is going to get you into trouble one of these days. Mark my words, sweetie. Mark my words.”

  Tarique returned with a man who led them to a mud and timber hut on the far side of the village. This was to be their home during their stay. The primitive dwelling had a kitchen with a wood burning cook stove while a large, tattered rug covered the floor of a sitting area. An additional side room would serve as Arianna’s bedroom…a thin mattress on the floor, her bed. Kevin and Tarique would sleep on the floor in the main room. In either case, a good night’s sleep wasn’t in anyone’s future.

  “Hey, guys, just let me enjoy a moment of freedom before we head out again, please,” Arianna said as she wrestled out of the burqa. “It’s so unfair that the men can come and go as they please while the women are stuck wearing this thing. Personally, I think this is just another way to control women in the name of religion.”

  “Way to take one for the team,” Kevin replied, giving her a quick hug. “Anyway, you have no choice. You either wear the damn thing, or you don’t get the story. Sorry, sweetie. I feel your pain, but it’s the only way.”

  Arianna felt refreshed as she lounged in her khaki shorts and t-shirt, but she knew she was just postponing the inevitable. She downed a quick bottle of water and then, looking at the burqa with disgust, exhaled deeply and said, “Okay, let’s do this before I change my mind.” Stepping back into the ‘walking detention center’, she headed out the door.

  THE THREE strolled back to the market place. Tarique and Kevin led, and as was the custom, Arianna trailed behind.

  “We have a Western journalist interested in our culture,” Tarique said to one man after another, looking for someone who might agree to an interview. “He’d like to interview a woman in the village. Do you know any women who would agree? My friend is willing to offer some compensation?”

  Most men looked at him as if he was crazy. Finally, one man asked, “How much?”

  “Three hundred rubles,” Tarique answered.

  The man looked around suspiciously. “And we could do this without anyone knowing?”

  “Yes. Yes. Very secret,” Tarique answered. “No one in the village would know.”

  “I agree then,” the man said. “I believe my sister would give an interview.”

  Tarique pointed to Arianna. “We brought another Kervistani woman so your sister would not feel uncomfortable talking to a man. This is good, right?”

  “Very good. We will do it. Three hundred rubles. You meet me here tonight at five-thirty, and I will take you to my house to meet my sister.”

  “I will give you half the money now and half when we meet.” Tarique counted out one hundred-fifty rubles from his pouch and handed them to him.

  “We also need to find a way to get an audience with Ali Hamdra Fasi,” Tarique continued. “Do you have connections to get an appointment with him?”

  The man scratched his beard and thought for a moment. “I think so, but this may be a little harder to arrange. You will be paying money for this, too?” the man asked with a gleam in his eye.

  “How much do you want?” Tarique inquired, beginning to tire of this guy gouging them for money.

  “I think maybe five hundred rubles would be enough.”

  “Five hundred rubles! Ah, well. A moment, please,” Tarique said, pulling Kevin aside to translate what had transpired so far.

  “What the hell! That’s outrageous. Do you trust this guy?” Kevin asked.

  “I do not know, but we must start somewhere,” Tarique answered. “Fasi is the only one who could give you a clearance to film openly in the village. If you want to film everywhere, you must have Fasi’s permission.”

  “Okay. Pay the guy,” Kevin said reluctantly. “I think he’s fleecing us, but we’re stuck. We need this appointment.”

  “Okay, we agree,” Tarique said, turning back to the villager.

  “Fasi is a media whore,” the man said. “If you feature him in your film, you will surely get his permission to go wherever you want.”

  “Where does Fasi live? Can you take us there?” Kevin asked and Tarique interpreted.

  The man hesitated and looked expectantly at Tarique. “Well, maybe, yes for another small fee, I think I can do that,” he said with a sheepish grin.

  Kevin turned and whispered to Arianna. “Jesus Christ! I see these people understand capitalism quite well. This guy’s a fucking entrepreneur.”

  Tarique paid the man fifty more rubles, and they were off to Fasi’s dwelling on the far side of the village, sitting off by sitself. His house was much larger than the small stone huts most people inhabited, and Arianna thought that by Kervistani standards, this must be considered a mansion. A tall, stone wall surrounded the unadorned two-story dwelling. In the front courtyard, several young boys were in the midst of a soccer game. Any girls that lived there were sequestered inside.

  Kevin took out a small, digital camera and began shooting the warlord’s compound. He made sure he got shots of the children, the guards, and some local villagers who were milling around. This kind of footage would really add to the authenticity of their documentary.

  “They say Fasi is with his men in the hills,” Tarique informed them. “He will return tonight, so we will see if we can get an audience tomorrow.”

  “That seems so long,” Kevin groaned. “Why can’t we just start filming? We’ve still got several hours of daylight. I’d love to film the marketplace and get some quick interviews.”

  “Oh, that would not be wise. These are a suspicious people, especially of Westerners. If we were to begin filming ev
erywhere in the village, we would be rounded up and put through a terrible interrogation. You know we have to get Fasi’s permission. Even filming with your small camera is a risk. So please. Put your camera away. Let us return to our headquarters to eat and rest. Then, we will meet the sister at five-thirty.”

  The three turned to leave and collided with some villagers who began making a big fuss. Infidel was the one word Kevin clearly understood as an angry man bumped hard into him. A sharp look from Tarique told Kevin not to retaliate as he pulled him away.

  “Heathens!” Kevin yelled after them despite Tarique’s admonishment.

  “Shh! Please, it is okay,” Tarique said. “We do not want to anger these people. Anyway, they do not understand what you are saying. Let us go.”

  As the three of them rushed back to their rented lodging, they came upon a group of women, dressed in traditional garb, wailing and moaning. For some reason, a man with a switch was beating them. The women were huddled on the ground in a big burqa ball with their backs to the man. Though the stings had to be quite painful, the women made no attempt to defend themselves. It was as if they were resigned to their fate.

  “Quick, Kevin,” Arianna whispered. “Get a shot of this.”

  Arianna watched in horror as the man continued to strike the defenseless women as other men looked on, approving the beating. This was exactly the kind of abuse she hoped to document. She wished she could pull the mini cam out from under her burqa and film the whole thing herself, but that was not possible.

  “Hurry, Kevin,” Arianna said again, but as she looked in his direction, she saw he was fumbling through his camera bag, a bewildered look plastered on his face.

  “I can’t,” he said, patting his clothes and digging through the bag.

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” Arianna asked.

  “The camera. It’s gone! I can’t find the fucking camera.”

  “What? You were just taking pictures with it back at Fasi’s compound. How could you lose it so fast?”

  “I was sure I put it in my bag, but now it’s not there. The camera and all my film are missing. God! You don’t think they have pickpockets here do you? That scuffle... I mean, you might expect that in a large city, but not in a primitive place like this. These people don’t even have pockets for Christ’s sake!”

  “Well, we may as well forget it,” Arianna said. “That camera, wherever it is, is long gone. Luckily we’ve got other cameras back in the car, but we have to be much more careful from now on. Let’s get the hell out of here before anything else happens.”

  ZACH AND his men had been checking out Fasi’s compound when Kevin and the phony Kervistani female had shown up. It wasn’t too bad until Kevin took his camera out and started taking pictures of everything and everybody in sight, including Zach and his men. That was a big problem. There was no way those photos could leave this country. So, he had signaled the men to relieve Kevin of the camera. In one of the oldest tricks in the books, one man created a diversion while the other picked him clean. Kevin never knew what hit him.

  But something nagged at Zach about these two. In less than twenty-four hours, Fasi would be dead and all hell would break loose in this area. Fasi’s men would immediately take Kevin captive as well as his female companion as soon as it was discovered she wasn’t really a Kervistani woman.

  But how to warn them to leave? He’d already told them once, but it appeared they had no intention of leaving. He needed to figure out some other way to warn them of the danger they were in, but he didn’t know how to do that without blowing his cover.

  When the CIA was formed under President Truman, no one envisioned a renegade group such as Zach’s. This covert arm of the agency secretly worked to subvert foreign powers and overthrow enemy governments. Officially they didn’t exist, and Zach had to make sure it stayed that way. But at what point do you risk blowing the mission, never mind blowing your cover for all time, to save two people. After all, these were journalists. Did anyone think for one second they wouldn’t write about Zach and his men at the first opportunity they had? And once outed, his career would be over, and he’d likely be the target of some assassin himself.

  The plan was supposed to be a quick in and out of the country, but the presence of the two journalists was an unexpected complication he hadn’t counted on. … a complication that weighed heavily on his mind. One he may have to respond to sooner or later.

  We’re late,” Kevin said as they hurried to their rented house. “I’d like to get my hands on the son-of-a-bitch that stole my camera. I’d beat the bloody hell out of him.” He grabbed another camera from the equipment case and checked to see if it was fully charged. “Do we have anything to eat around here? I’m starving.”

  Arianna rummaged through her bag and found some bread and cheese. She broke off a hunk of cheese and laid it next to the bread on the table. “Dinner is served.”

  “Boy, this is barely edible,” Kevin said, peeling off one moldy end of the cheese. “Don’t we have anything else to eat?”

  “Maybe some peanut butter,” Arianna replied, digging deeper in the bag. “It’s going to be slim pickings until we get out of here.”

  “Well, this will have to do, then” Kevin said as he made a sandwich. “I just hope this guy shows. He was all about the money, but maybe he decided to take our down payment and run.”

  “I believe he will be there,” Tarique said. “I trust him.”

  Kevin gobbled down the food and washed it down with warm bottled water. “Ah, that hit the spot,” he said and punctuated his satisfaction with a belch.

  “You are such a pig!” Arianna looked at him and shook her head. “Just get your camera and let’s go. And try not to lose it this time, okay?”

  Kevin shot her a dirty look. “Very funny. Cut me some slack, okay? It’s been a very long day, and it’s not over yet.”

  “Okay. Sorry. You’re right. Hang in there. We’ll get through this together. ”

  THE GROUP breathed a sigh of relieve when the local contact was at the meeting place. He led them to the other side of town to a hut that looked similar to the one they had rented. Made of stone and devoid of any modern amenities, it was the home of the villager’s sister.

  “This is Turilla. She has agreed to talk to you,” the man said as he led them into the house.

  The young woman had a gaunt look and sallow skin that had not seen the light of day in quite a while. Her teeth were rotted or missing and a nasty looking rash partially covered her body. In this country, no man other than a woman’s husband could touch her. Most of the doctors were men, so Turilla, like most women, was forced to go without needed medical and dental treatment.

  “My sister is a widow, so she now lives with me. Without my help, she would be begging on the street,” the man said.

  Arianna removed her burqa and smiled at the girl who seemed shocked to see an American woman under the veil. “Turilla, my name is Arianna. I am a journalist,” she said as Tarique interpreted. “We are here to do a story about Muslim women and life under the Taliban rule. You do not have to fear us. We will make sure anything you tell us is kept a secret in your country. We will never use your name, so I’m hoping you will answer some questions for me.”

  Turilla waited for the translation and then, looked at her brother who nodded his approval.

  As Kevin filmed, Arianna began asking the woman questions. She wanted to know everything about her life—education, marriage, children… her dreams for the future.

  “Do you think you have been treated unfairly because you are a woman?” Arianna asked in the middle of the interview.

  “Yes,” she answered through Tarique. “Always, as well as every woman I know. We have no freedoms. No life. Under the Taliban rule, it is as if we don’t exist.”

  Tears began to form in Turilla’s eyes as she poured her story out. It was as Arianna suspected. The life of a Muslim woman in Kervistan was very dismal. They hated their lives but felt trapped with no way ou
t.

  “It is very oppressive under the Taliban regime. Girls used to be able to go to school, but now, not even that is available to us. We have nothing. Nothing!” Her tears of despair were beginning to turn to anger.

  “Maybe this would be a good place to end,” Tarique said, feeling Turilla’s growing anxiety. “I believe you have enough information, Miss Arianna. We should stop now, yes?”

  Arianna agreed. She could see it was painful for the woman to discuss this any longer. “Do you know of any other women who would agree to share their story?” Arianna asked.

  “There is another woman I know… Fadia. She lives far outside the village. My brother knows her and can take you there, but you must never let any of the men of the village know that we have spoken with you. Please, do you promise?”

  “I promise, Turilla,” Arianna said, giving her a hug. She pulled out a handful of rubles and gave them to her. “Please, take this money. I just hope you find happiness somehow.”

  “Thank you,” Turilla said. “You are a good person and very lucky to be born in the USA. Please be safe in my country. There are those who are treacherous. Be careful.”

  “I will,” Arianna assured her. She slipped back into the burqa, and the group started back to the village.

  “I fear we may have stayed too long,” Tarique said. “It is against local custom for a woman to be out so late, even in the company of her husband. Let us hurry.” However, as they came around the corner, their worst fears were realized. A group of men were gathered at the street corner.

  Arianna’s pulse quickened. A sense of foreboding came over her. It was late. She was a woman, and she knew she was in trouble. They tried crossing on the far side of the street, but the men spotted them. As soon as they saw Arianna, they began to question Tarique about why the woman was out so late. He tried to offer an explanation, but no one seemed interested in what he had to say. One man took out a switch and began beating on Arianna.