Azadeh Pahlavi sat next to the window of the 767–300 wide-body aircraft, her eyes wide in anticipation, and her hands fidgeting nervously on her lap. She peered out the window, and then glanced over to Amina, who was watching her intently, evidently taking great pleasure in the look on her face.
The two women had the seats next to the left window. To Amina’s right were an aisle, then four seats, another aisle, and two more seats on the far right. The cabin was crowded, and several languages could be heard as the business travelers and tourists talked among themselves. The 767 was high, still above thirty thousand feet, but it had begun its descent into JFK, and the air grew more turbulent as the plane passed through a thin layer of frozen cirrus clouds. Multiple rows of small television screens in the backs of each seat showed the aircraft’s flight progress, direction, and altitude. Thirty-one thousand feet. Heading west by southwest. One hundred thirty miles from the U.S. border.
One hundred thirty miles from freedom. One hundred thirty miles from her new home.
Eight thousand miles from her people. Eight thousand miles from everything she had ever known.
Azadeh turned and smiled nervously. Amina leaned toward her, bending over her seat to peer out the window. All she could see were white clouds and dark water a long way below. No land was in sight—no dark ribbon of coastline, no sandbars, no white tops, nothing. But, looking west, she could see the water turn a slightly different shade, the tint changing from almost black to deep blue. Sitting back, she smiled at Azadeh. “It won’t be long now,” she said.
Azadeh nodded anxiously, twisting her fingers together.
“Pretty exciting, isn’t it.”
Azadeh nodded again in awe but didn’t reply. She had grown progressively quieter since the flight had taken off some seven hours before, lifting off from London’s Heathrow airport in the dark of night. Now she was almost silent, trying to take it all in. Amina studied her young friend. She recognized the racing emotions from the look on the girl’s face. Azadeh was nearly sick with equal amounts of excitement and dread.
The young Iranian smiled weakly and the older woman took her hand. “I’m so excited for you,” she laughed.
“Thank you, Amina. Thank you for everything.”
Amina nodded.
Azadeh thought quickly of Sam. “One day I want to thank the soldier too,” she said.
Amina didn’t answer. She knew that was impossible. Azadeh picked up the small cup of lemonade on her fold-down tray and sipped, puckered her lips, and sipped again. “It’s so sweet,” she said, placing the cup back on the tray. Amina watched her intently, not wanting to miss a single expression on her face.
Watching Azadeh, she remembered why she had dedicated her life to saving lost girls, the reason she worked as hard as she did: the excitement, the new pleasures, the feeling of awe. And it all started when she watched their looks of excitement as they approached the United States.
So, though she tried not to stare, it was hard to take her eyes off of Azadeh. She wanted to see it, the smile of anticipation and excitement that even the fear couldn’t hide.
The moments passed. The aircraft descended, breaking below the clouds. Azadeh continued to look out the window. Suddenly she reached over and grabbed Amina’s arm. “I can see it!” she whispered. “I can see the United States!”
Amina gripped Azadeh’s fingers tightly as she leaned across the seat. There, far in the distance, a thin ribbon of dark blue land and white surf was barely coming in view.
Ten minutes passed. Azadeh kept her head glued to the window, though she squeezed tighter now. “Oh my,” she gasped as the city passed by.
The aircraft turned, a few thousand feet above the ground. Azadeh gawked until the outline of the city filled the entire oval window. It was an incredible sight: deep canyons of buildings so thick and tall, it looked like a dream.
Azadeh fidgeted anxiously as the beautiful buildings passed by, just a few miles off the left wing. It seemed as if the tops of the buildings reached almost up to the aircraft. The Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges, gray steel structures spanning the East River, were crowded with multicolored vehicles, large buses and trucks, and a subway. The river shimmered, catching the slants of the sun that slipped through the partly cloudy skies. Central Park slipped under the wing, a huge rectangle of green among the enormous buildings, a contrast of nature among the workings of man. Several of the tallest skyscrapers had their tips shrouded in a low bank of clouds, a transparent layer of silver that was illuminated from the top by the sun.
Azadeh peered down silently, and then turned back to Amina. “It looks perfect,” she said.
Amina shook her head. “No, Azadeh, it isn’t perfect. There are problems, you will see that, but I believe it is good.”
* * *
The two women moved through U.S. Customs without incident. Azadeh noted the cautious looks cast her way, but she didn’t mind them; Amina had warned her to be ready for intense examination. The security situation in the United States had changed things for many immigrants, especially those from Arab-speaking or Muslim countries. It was the reality. They would deal with it. Still, the scrutiny was a fraction of what Azadeh had expected. Inside her own mind, she had prepared herself to be questioned, taken into a small room and threatened, forced to sit under a bright light, perhaps even beaten if she did not answer correctly. But nothing like that happened. After they had passed through the last control booth and into the airport concourse, Azadeh looked around anxiously.
“That’s it,” Amina told her.
Azadeh shook her head. “Nothing more?” she asked in disbelief.
“Nothing more. You are here. You are a free woman, Miss Pahlavi.”
Azadeh shook her head again. No interrogation. No religious police. No threats or violent hazing. No comments on the inadequacy of her white scarf or the immodesty of her knee-length black dress. No questions of her father or the whereabouts of her husband. No questions of her intentions, her religion, where her allegiance lay. She glanced down at her thin sandals, and then placed her hand to her breast. “I can’t believe it’s over. My heart is beating like a hammer,” she laughed to her friend.
“Come on, Miss Pahlavi. Let’s get something to eat.”
“No, please not now. Can we do the other first?”
Amina hesitated, and then glanced up and down the concourse. Crowds of people jammed the corridor, most of them dragging wheeled suitcases behind. Eighty feet to their right, the concourse opened into a huge open area with bars, restaurants, fast-food spots, luggage shops, newspaper stands, bookstores, expensive clothiers, even a small sporting goods store. Amina took two steps forward and craned her neck, looking for an exit sign.
Azadeh touched her shoulder and nodded. “Exit,” she said.
Amina turned toward her. “You can read that?” she asked in surprise.
Azadeh nodded.
“That’s very good, Azadeh. You’re going to pick it up very fast.”
“My father insisted I learn English. It was difficult, and illegal, but I remember some of what he said.”
“You remember much more than some of it.”
Azadeh switched to English for the first time. “I remember some. But it comes faster now.”
“Good,” Amina said, switching to English, too. She glanced at her watch. Five hours until their connecting flight to Chicago. She nodded to the end of the concourse. “Come on,” she said.
Azadeh led the way, almost running, and Amina had to rush to keep up. The two women left the concourse and walked out of the main airport building to where dozens of yellow taxis were waiting in line, trapped against the curb by the flow of heavy traffic. Amina was directed to the first cab in line, and she and Azadeh climbed in.
The driver was Pakistani, and when he saw Azadeh’s scarf, he looked back with a friendly grin. “Salâm,” he said happily, showing a brown, tea-stained smile. Azadeh nodded shyly, and Amina answered in Arabic. The two talked a moment as the driver pulled away from the curb, but Azadeh didn’t pay any attention, her eyes wide in wonder as she looked around.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked them.
“Battery Park,” Amina said.
The driver glanced back, smiling widely again. “That is good,” he said.
The taxi drove through the mass of traffic moving in and out of JFK, hit the Van Wyck Expressway heading north toward Queens, turned west on the Long Island Expressway, and then south, following the East River, on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway through the very heart of Brooklyn. Azadeh caught a glimpse of the enormous docks along the shore of the river and she couldn’t help but think of the docks at Bandar–e Būshehr. She remembered the many times she and her father had taken the bus down to the port city, and for a moment she was transported back in time. She remembered walking along the ancient docks, feeling the salt air, smelling the brine and rotten seaweed. She felt a sudden surge of homesickness and took a deep breath.
Twenty minutes later, the taxi stopped in Battery Park.
Amina bought tickets for the ferry and they stood in line for fifteen minutes. When the triple-decker ferry arrived, they went through security, hurried to the top deck and moved toward the bow of the boat.
A great statute loomed before them, growing grand and tall as they sped toward it through the water, its patina a resonating green against the blue-and-white sky. Azadeh kept her eyes on the Statue of Liberty, the one symbol of America that was known throughout the world. The statue held an arm high, not merely confident, but defiant, a book close, protecting it in the other arm. At its feet, the broken shackles lay, the metal rings torn in two.
Amina leaned toward her and repeated the words of the poem.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp,” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Azadeh listened carefully, considering the words of the famous poem. “Say it again,” she asked Amina.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp . . . .”
Keep your mullahs, your landowners, your shahs and religious police, Azadeh thought. Keep your grand officers of society, your rich and powerful. Give us your human trash, those whom you hate, those who you chose to cast out, and we will take those wretched souls and create the greatest nation on earth. We will take your destitute and homeless, and build the freest nation in the history of man.
Azadeh knew that she was one of the masses, homeless and tired. She was poor and, like the others, she had yearned to be free.
She was part of that wretched refuse: she had been left to die.
Yes, she was outcast.
But now she had a home.
She started to weep.
Her father would have been so proud.
Raule stood at the ticket counter, shifting his weight anxiously from one foot to the other. He smoked, keeping an unending chain of French cigarettes in his mouth. It would be a long flight, nonsmoking, and he had to stoke up before he got on the airplane. While he waited for the ticket agent, he pulled another cigarette from the black-and-white carton and stuck the brown filter in his mouth.
It irritated him that he’d had to come down to Kuwait to get on a flight to Kirkuk, but it was far easier to make the two-hour drive to Kuwait City and then fly to northern Iraq than to chance the four-day, life-and-death adventure of trying to make his way north in a car.
It had been a long time since the liberation of Iraq from Hussein, but the country was still a far cry from safe. Since the United States had pulled out most of their troops, things had only gotten worse. It was clear now that it would be many years before the nation’s infrastructure was put fully back in place, if indeed that could ever happen. There were too many gunmen, too many bombs, too much confusion as to who was in charge—the government or the insurgents who fought against their fellowman.
The Kuwaiti ticket agent typed a moment, and then looked up at Raule with a disinterested stare. “Sir, it appears that all of the flights into Kirkuk are completely booked for the next week or so. I apologize, but you are traveling without any notice, and the flights in and out of Iraq are always very full.”
Raule knew he would have to pay the bâj. The only question was how much it would be. He decided to start out low. Who knew how many flights he would be on for the next couple of weeks? He nodded to the ticket agent, and then slipped a twenty-euro bill across the white counter. The attendant slipped the bill in his palm, then turned back to his screen and hit a few keys.
“Mr. Raule,” he continued after tucking the bill into his vest pocket, “it looks like we might have something—maybe tomorrow afternoon.” He didn’t look up, but continued to stare at his screen.
Raule slipped fifty euros across the top of the counter and the attendant typed again, hardly missing a key as he reached up and pulled the money down again to his vest pocket. “Good news, Mr. Raule, it looks like something just opened up on the 12:15 P.M. flight. It is in coach, however. Is that acceptable to you?”
The attendant looked up and waited, measuring the French U.N. officer. If Raule demanded first class, then the attendant would bump Raule again. No way would the attendant let this guy into first class for a mere seventy euros.
But Raule didn’t hesitate. “Coach is fine,” he said in remarkably good Arabic.
“Fine, sir.” The ticket agent continued typing, holding Raule’s U.N. passport in his left hand, then looked up and said, “Mr. Raule, I see you have requested follow-on travel to Baghdad and Pakistan. You realize, of course, that it will be very difficult to book these flights. Travel is fairly restricted in and out of Pakistan, and I’m not sure even your U.N. papers are going to be enough to get you there.”
Yes, Raule realized that, and he smiled sarcastically. He had been working on the travel arrangements for more than a week, and this wasn’t the first time he traveled in this part of the world. “Can you do it?” he demanded.
The agent shook his head. “I’d suggest putting your travel itinerary on request when you get to Kirkuk.”
Raule huffed as he placed his suit bag next to the counter. The agent started tagging his bag.
Yes, Raule thought as he watched the agent, he was aware how difficult the travel arrangements would be, but the truth was, that was the very least of his concerns. Trying to find Azadeh would be far more difficult than arranging a flight to Pakistan.
And he had a lot of work to do before he even knew where he would be flying to next. He knew that the man who had taken Azadeh had bought his forged documents from a black market printer in southern Kirkuk. (It hadn’t been difficult to determine the origination point of the documents; the U.N. had seen enough of the forgeries to trace them fairly easily now.) And though he suspected the printer wouldn’t help him, he felt like he had to try. So he would climb on a flight to Kirkuk, track the printer down, ask a few questions, be rejected, then go on his way, knowing nothing more after the trip than he knew right now.
Where would he go after that? He really didn’t know. The stranger who had taken Azadeh had mentioned a small town in western Pakistan. He figured he would likely start there, not because he was overly optimistic but because he lacked a better plan.
The truth was, he knew Azadeh could be literally anywhere. Once she had been taken from Khorramshahr, she could have been smuggled to a dozen locations in the world: Asia, the Middle East, Europe, even the United States.
He frowned at the irony.
Who did he think that he was? Some kind of special super agent? An undercover spy? This wasn’t the movies, this was real. He was no hero, and certainly no superman.
He looked at his worn-out, brown suit and rubbed his thin knee. He was none of those things. He was a mouse of a man who had spent his entire life pushing papers from one steel desk to the next. From one U.N. assignment to another, it had been the same thing. He had never shot a gun, never interrogated anyone, and never investigated so much as a misplaced marker. Yet here he was, seeking to locate a young woman who had been taken from his refugee camp and now could be anywhere.
He shook his head in frustration. What were the chances of success? Maybe one in a thousand. Maybe much less than that.
But once Raule discovered that the American who had taken Azadeh had left behind a bitter enemy in Iraq, his mission would turn out to be a bit easier than he had though