The Best Women's Travel Writing by Lavinia Spalding Page A

of surrender to my interrogators.
    Nafisa tilted her head toward me sympathetically.
    â€œYou think about this. When you are ready, you tell us your decision. Yes or no.”
    Back in the States, I hardly ever cried. Not at movies. Not at weddings. Rarely over a man, and only when he wasn’t watching. But I cried big, fat tears when I said goodbye to Nazo and Nafisa the next morning, before we left for the airport. Nazo nearly hugged the air out of me, which only made me cry more. The wet tears in my eyes, on my face, dampening Nazo’s black and white school uniform, my breath coming hard and ragged, shocked me. And I was doubly surprised, as I pulled away, to see Nazo’s own electric green eyes swimming and feel my own scarf damp with her tears. We both wiped at our runny noses and laughed.
    And then she was gone, late for school as usual.
    Nafisa approached next, leaning in for an embrace. Then she stopped herself, straightened up, and eyed me sternly.
    â€œSo,” she said. “Did you make your decision? What is your answer: yes or no?”
    My jaw dropped a bit, and I studied her face. Her gaze was unrelenting, but the corner of her mouth curved upward.
    â€œ
Nafisa
,” I said, feigning exasperation. I wanted to say, “I can’t marry your brother-in-law,” but I didn’t want that to come off as a rejection of him or, worse, of her and Nazo. And the truth was, my attraction to him was real, a constant ripple under my cool surface. “How about a first date?” I wanted to quip, but I knew the joke would be lost on her.
    â€œShould I ask him if he wants to marry you?” Nafisa offered.
    â€œNO!” I said, too loudly. “Please don’t.”
    â€œO.K., O.K.,” Nafisa said. She grabbed my hand with her slim, cool fingers. “But I would like you come back and see us, and if you married him, you could.”
    I promised to come back and see her and Nazo even if I didn’t marry him, and I felt myself getting choked up again. Then our driver pounded at the courtyard door and yelled something in Pashto. Nafisa’s eyes widened.
    â€œOh no,” she said. “The driver was in traffic. You are late for the airport! You must go now.”
    We let the driver into the courtyard and rushed the luggage into the car. As I hugged Nafisa I could feel the swell of the life growing beneath her loose-fitting clothes. I hesitated, feeling tears coming on again and wanting to say something meaningful in parting. Nafisa, eyes moist, shook her head and pushed me toward the waiting car door.
    A week after I returned from Afghanistan, I dreamed that Nafisa was teaching me how to pray. She appeared in my dream exactly as I remembered her in real life: heavy-lidded dark eyes, straight nose, and slightly downturned mouth. Calm elegance. Long black hair swept up into her
chador
.
    Sitting on my heels at Nafisa’s side, on a crimson patterned rug she had rolled out for me, I rehearsed the flow in my head—stand up, bend down, stand up, prostrate, kneel, prostate, stand up. “Don’t worry,” she murmured in her accented English, words clipped just so. “You will know what to do. I told you I would teach you.” Her voice comforted me.
    Dawn bathed us in its soft light, and we heard the call to prayer from a distant muezzin. I turned to Nafisa, searching her face for her promise:
you will know what to do.
    I woke up, groggy in the pre-dawn gray of Portland, alone in my small apartment. It was so quiet, and so beige. Gone were the plush red carpets and the sound of Nafisa and her family padding barefoot through the house, murmuring in Pashto to each other, whispering in Arabic as they prayed.
    I should have been grateful to return to American life, without daily power outages, limited clean drinking water, and NATO tanks rolling through the city. But I missed Nafisa and Nazo. And they had found their way into my dreams, which only made me