Fourteen
The fire crackled softly in the hearth. Light fractured against the crowded bookshelves, sending restless shadows sliding across the worn leather bindings of Ivy’s poetry books.
Outside, a storm was claiming the village, mirroring her inner turmoil , snow and wind battering the windows like the questions battering her mind.
Jezreel lay curled up on the rug, his tiny body rising and falling with each peaceful breath.
Ivy moved about the kitchen, the calming aroma of cocoa mingling with the mouth-watering scent of savoury snacks cooking in the oven.
She tipped steaming cocoa into a mug and poured a large glass of red wine for herself.
Ivy retrieved the snacks and set them out on the coffee table and said a brief grace.
Before Omar selected anything to eat, she warned him off with a wry smile.
‘Not the sausage rolls,’ she said, her tone light, but her eyes intent. ‘You won’t like those.’
Omar sat stiffly in the armchair by the fire, his long fingers wrapped around a mug, staring into the dark liquid.
He looked distant, more so than usual, and Ivy knew the time for patience had passed.
She needed his story – the raw, unfiltered truth – directly from him.
Evasions and half-truths had built a wall between them, and tonight she would tear it down, brick by brick if necessary.
Whatever secrets he harboured, whatever pain lay beneath his careful mask, she would uncover them.
She couldn’t wait for him to volunteer what he clearly never would. Tonight, she would know.
The information from Helen burned in her mind but revealing it might make him defensive.
She began gently, ‘You don’t have to tell me everything,’ she said, settling into the chair opposite him.
‘But you’re carrying a weight, Omar. And I don’t think you should carry it alone. You have friends in Brambleton.’
At first, he didn’t answer, his eyes fixed on the fire. After a long silence, he let out a breath. ‘It’s not that simple.’
‘It never is,’ she agreed. ‘But you trust me, don’t you?’
Another silence. He nodded slowly. ‘I do.’
She waited, sensing the delicate balance of the moment, like a dream caught between waking and sleeping, its gossamer edges fraying at the touch of consciousness.
He set his mug down and reached for her glass of wine.
She watched, stunned, as he lifted it to his lips and took a gulp.
Then, just as shockingly, he plucked a sausage roll from the tray and bit into it.
‘I thought—’
He swallowed, then spoke. ‘I’m not a Muslim,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m a Christian.’
The revelation stunned her into silence.
She had assumed, just like the rest of the village, just like everyone who saw his dark skin and heard whispers of refugees, that his faith must match their expectations.
Even she, who prided herself on being better than the gossips, had painted him with the same lazy brush.
What other assumptions had she made? What other secrets lay hidden behind her own blind certainty?
‘Helen spoke to you. What did she say?’ he asked.
Ivy gulped. She didn’t just want the truth; she needed it.
But she hesitated – Omar would connect her private meeting with Helen to her suddenly demanding answers.
He already suspected the teacher had hinted at his past, and Ivy desperately wanted to keep his trust. ‘Helen said you were accused of being involved with drugs.’
‘I see,’ he said. He sighed and added, ‘when the water passes over your head, whether by an inch or a hundred reeds, it makes no difference.’
‘Meaning?’
‘It’s an old village saying. You know part of my secret; you might as well know it all.’ And then, the dam broke.
Omar began speaking, haltingly at first, but soon the words flowed, and his story unfolded in raw, painful detail. He had been granted asylum in England. On hearing those words, Ivy dipped her head in silent prayer – she had broken no laws protecting him. Neither had Fred.
‘Because of your religion?’ she suggested.
He shook his head. ‘No. Because I was an interpreter for your army.’
She gasped. ‘That’s why you speak such excellent English.’
‘Yes. People think you’re just translating, but there’s much more to the role than that.
You must be able to explain the implications of the words someone has chosen, so your vocabulary becomes extensive.
You must observe body language. Notice not just who is present, but question who should be there and isn’t. ’
He went on to tell her that when the Western forces had pulled out of Kabul, he had been away in the mountains visiting an uncle. ‘Everything moved so fast. I had no chance to get to the airport before the Taliban were in power.’
‘So, you were left behind?’
His eyes grew distant. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘That must have been very frightening, to see your world crumbling around you, see the people who you trusted, abandon you to save their own skins. That was not our finest hour.’
‘What could you do? You British were America’s pawns. When they pulled out, you had to follow. You couldn’t stay there alone.’
‘You must hate the Americans.’
He shrugged. ‘No. They did what they thought was right. America couldn’t stay forever.
They believed what they were told – that the new regime was strong enough to survive without them.
’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Those of us on the ground, we knew they were wrong. I was painfully aware of how the regional tribal system operates in Afghanistan. I knew the regime would crumble.’
‘That’s very philosophical of you.’
He closed his eyes, and a long sigh escaped his lips. ‘I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.’
‘We should still have done more to protect people who risked their lives to help us. It was obvious the Americans were getting out too quickly. They should have delayed, allowed more of you to escape.’
‘That would have required trusting the Taliban. Trust is difficult to rekindle once the flame goes out.’
Ivy gave a wry laugh, thinking how true that statement was. ‘What did you do?’
‘When they took control again, they started hunting us down. We had been promised safe passage, but it never came. I reinvented myself at a charity training teachers – the Fowler Foundation, FF as we called it, and buried myself in work. And no one questioned my background. The Taliban didn’t want to upset aid donors, so they left us alone. ’
As he spoke of his work, it was obvious that it had been his passion.
But over time, he said, he started suspecting the charity was being used as a cover for something sinister.
When he raised concerns about discrepancies in the finances, payments for shipments that didn’t appear to have been made, with invoices that looked oddly fabricated, his fears were dismissed by the local manager.
But Omar couldn’t let it go. With the help of a friend in accounts, Farid, he dug deeper and discovered large payments to a supplier, listed as marine supplies .
‘I couldn’t work out why we’d need any of those for teaching. I couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t let money donated for a decent cause end up being misused. I suspected it might be bribes to the Taliban.’ He looked at Ivy, his eyes seeking acknowledgement that she agreed.
‘But what could you do?’ she asked.
‘There was only one thing I could do. Farid and I started to dig for evidence, we knew it was risky, but—’
‘Risky! You were taking on the Taliban!’
‘Yes. Someone saw me in the accounts department and must have guessed what I was doing. Farid had a reason to be there; I didn’t.’
Shortly afterwards Omar was accused of drug smuggling.
‘I couldn’t risk being taken in for questioning, with my background I would just disappear.
It wasn’t only me I was worried about. I didn’t want someone to suspect I had help, for suspicion to fall on Farid.
And sometimes the Taliban extend revenge to include the families of people they brand as traitors.
And my sister Laila, the one I showed you the picture of – she was an interpreter too. ’
Ivy didn’t want to interrupt but couldn’t help herself. ‘A female translator – that’s brave.’
‘Yes, but we both believe strongly that the Taliban are not the right people to be ruling our country.’ Ivy rose, fetched the bottle of wine and another glass, then poured one for Omar and topped up her own.
She took a sip as she examined the man sitting across from her.
Omar was only thirty, but his eyes carried the weight of an older man –someone who had seen too much.
She tried to imagine how terrorizing it must be to feel the ground beneath you crumble, to watch trusted systems transform into a labyrinth of suspicion where every word, every gesture could be twisted against you.
Where the world was not your friend, but an unblinking eye ready to devour your future with ruthless indifference.
But then, she didn’t have to imagine. On a much smaller scale, this had happened to her.
She had blown the whistle, and the institution she loved had betrayed her.
But where her punishment had been exile from the life she’d known, Omar’s had been exile from his beloved homeland.
The Church had taken her future; his government had tried to take his life.
Her burden, heavy as it had seemed, suddenly felt light.
She didn’t want to push, but neither did she want him to stop.
‘Tell me,’ She asked gently, offering him the space he needed.
Omar exhaled sharply, as if he had been holding his breath.
‘The day I left Kabul,’ he began, his voice tight, ‘I knew I would not return. Working for the British Army, I was a traitor in the Taliban’s eyes.
The night after I was accused of being involved in drug smuggling, a friend called. He told me to run.’
Ivy swallowed.