Chapter Twelve

Again with the delay.

Abigail's flight was still listed on the board, but she had now been more than twelve hours at the airport, and the sign said "Delayed" which was more information than the counter agents had.

Various surges of passengers for flights to Dubai, Jeddah, Kabul, Sharjah, Riyadh, Bangkok. London not yet. Maybe not ever.

That's foolish, she reminded herself. It will just mean she makes the flight tomorrow; a flight left Islamabad pretty much every day late morning, then flew with the sun to make it to London before dark. Who knows what storm, what typhoon, what mechanical error had stalled her designated flight. She had spent so much time watching clouds for oncoming weather systems, seen so few rainstorms or thunderheads, struggled forward through so many windstorms alway blowing against the direction she or her mule was heading, that she'd forgotten the usual, everyday challenges of moving planes around the globe. But it was coming back to her.

Tapping around a bit on her phone, the bright spiral swirl of a storm across the eastern Mediterranean became as much of a reason for the delay as she wanted to know, along with the still vivid wonder at how she, a woman with little or no technical understanding, could poke with her finger at a slice of glass and plastic and summon up images from deep space and of the earth's surface in all her wonder.

A click, and weather systems vanished; a tap, and the last book she had been reading on her phone swung into view. "David Copperfield," for some reason. She had read a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, which along with who knows what other data had led her phone to suggest that she wanted to read Dickens' masterwork and semi-biographical narrative. She'd left David with the Murdstones, as she recalled.

Looking at her phone as the page of a book, a magenta ribbon suddenly appeared across the top of the white screen. An incoming call, from an unknown caller, the number from Dusseldorf, Germany. Hmmm, she thought, and tapped the ribbon to answer and held the phone to her ear.

"Abigail, yes?"

"Ah, yes. Yes you are. Hello, Abigail."

It was Kyle's voice, the voice of Sulaiman al-Idris. Her . . . quarry? Her goal these last three years, the point of her journey, the hook for so many stories never written, the motive force behind all the ones that had been.

"Hello, Kyle. Should I call you Kyle, or...?"

"No, Kyle is fine. Although I understand your Urdu is getting quite good."

"Thank you. Your English is still just fine, but I imagine you've learned more than Urdu these last few years."

She could hear him smile through the connection. "Yes, I surely have. And I'm flattered to learn my old classmate has been seeking me. You are a journalist these days?"

"That's right. Your . . . your picture, Kyle. The one that had you against a blue sky, with that old green sweater on?"

"I've seen the photo. Still have the sweater."

"That's where I learned your Islamic name, and you looked . . ."

"Happy?"

"Yes."

"I am."

The silence was actually filled with the faint hums and buzzings of a satellite call. Abigail broke it by saying "I assume you are not calling me from Dusseldorf?"

Again, the smile was palpable across the circuit. "That would be correct. And I regret that we can't talk very long. You don't seem to be with intelligence services, but those agencies could be tracking you, to see if you lead them in their ineptitude to contacts like me."

"All the more reason for me to appreciate your reaching out to me. I've been looking for you to meet, and ask a few...."

"We will never meet. I am sorry to say that, but it must be so."

"And this call?"

"A courtesy. A friend of a friend had a capacity, and your number, which you left so considerately all across the Hindu Kush, was already in hand. I wanted to thank you for your interest, and apologize for not welcoming you to my land. You have come far, and what you have written, has been fair."

"And you have come far, Sulaiman, Kyle. You are no more at home here than I am, are you?"

"Ah, that is where we must part." For a moment, she thought he was hanging up, then he went on. "I never felt at home in high school, as you knew. College was worse. But there was something out there for me, and when I heard... forgive me, I cannot be candid. It is not you I mistrust. But there was teaching, and a vision, and a world where I could find a place. Here, I am at home, and striking at that which would give me no home. You know this, I think. But you cannot accept it, and are at home nowhere."

"That's not quite true, Kyle. I wander, but in a way my world allows, and your world...."

"You are not happy with your place as a woman. You are intelligent, and discontented. This is hard."

"Are you married, Sulaiman?"

"Are you making an offer?" he chuckled.

"No, asking a question as a reporter."

"Yes, a reporter. Of course. I am married."

"Once?"

"Perhaps my candor, again, cannot be complete. But I am not unfamiliar with the struggles of intelligent women. In fact.... no. I wanted to call, and thank you for trying to tell my story. My story is, I am at peace, and that is why I am happy."

"Yet you are a man of arms."

"The world is not at peace, and that holds me back from complete contentment. That is true. But my heart is in submission to Allah, and my work is in keeping with his will. Insha'Allah."

Abigail's mind tumbled about as she tried to think what her next question should be. So many questions, and so many obvious points of hesitation. She asked "Is your work still ongoing?" and immediately cursed the awkwardness of what she'd meant to try to learn.

"My work on this earth continues to my last breath, as God wills. May you find your peace, my friend of youth." He seemed to be wrapping up the conversation.

"Can I call you at this number later with new questions?"

"Alas. This number will do you nor anyone else any good. It is a tool to be laid aside after this use. If it seems right, I may call you again, but please let my former homeland and antagonistic people know: I am well, I am at peace, and I bear no one person any ill will. In Allah is peace. Good bye."

The silence was distinct, and final. She clicked off her phone, and sat back, realizing she'd been sitting forward on the very edge of her seat in the CIP lounge. Leaning back, and making a conscious effort to relax her still bowstring tight back muscles, she looked into the facets of the chandelier overhead.

Light, sparkling, and reflected, springing from a bulb deep within the assembly, and bouncing from surface to surface to the point of relative freedom where it shot towards her eye, and into her brain saying "light." So was this call. Kyle, Sulaiman, could have been in the Arrivals lounge of the Benazir Bhutto Airport just a few dozen feet away, or he could have been in the Swat Valley of Afghanistan. The signal that gave their conversation light and life had bounced from satellite to ground station through a course that meandered who knows where until reaching a node in Dusseldorf where it reached out to ping her phone's system, and to the device in her pocket, through which she heard sound waves melted down digitally and remade time and time again . . . but still carrying the intonations of a witty, sardonic, often wistful boy in the drama club back in high school.

And like a light switch across the room being flipped, the breaking of the signal meant an end to the connection. For now. What she knew for certain was that whatever she wrote about this conversation would ultimately be read by him, and would be part of what determined whether or not they would ever talk again.