Read Online A Cup of Friendship by Deborah Rodriguez - Free Book Online Page A

much in five months as Sunny spent each week.
    When she and Halajan returned to the coffeehouse, Sunny would enjoy emptying the bags onto the counter before putting the items away. They would open the chocolate and finish the Mountain Dew in one sitting.
    Sunny was like that. She got very excited about things, which made Yazmina feel uncomfortable. At home, she and Layla could laugh and cry, but never in the presence of their uncle. She hadn’t been able to help feeling uncomfortable sitting at the table the previous night in the café with Jack and Bashir Hadi. To sit together like that was something Yazmina had never done before. And they were drinking wine! Everything in Kabul was foreign. Everything was uncomfortable and everything was wonderful—except Layla wasn’t with her.
    She put on her clothes and sighed deeply at the plain dress she wore. At the Mondai-e, there were clothing shops with dresses and shalwaar kameez es that looked like they’d fray if you sneezed on them. Nothing like the ones made by Sharifa, the woman back home who had taught Yazmina how to sew the loveliest garments by her own hand out of fabric she herself had embroidered and embellished with beads and shells and old coins. Someday, Inshallah , she dreamed of being able to sew like Sharifa. Someday, she thought, looking out her window to the rising sun, she would sew in the colors of that sky. A dress in a pale orange. What a sight she would be. With golden bangles on her wrist. And shoes of real leather. And her eyebrows threaded and her hair strung with beads under a scarf of the finest silk, like the ones Sunny wore.
    She’d want to share it all with Layla.
    Ahmet opened the car door and watched Yazmina climb into the backseat. She was completely hidden under the burqa, but as her hand reached out to close the car door, the sleeve slipped up her arm, revealing her narrow wrist. It was brown and slender. His mother climbed into the backseat after her, and he slammed the door with a little too much strength. He had other things to do than act as her driver, but it was going to rain and how could he be a good son and let her walk through the muddy streets? Rain or not, he felt that two women should always be accompanied on the streets of Kabul, even though his mother often felt otherwise.
    He got into the driver’s seat, shut and locked his door, and adjusted his rearview mirror, seeing Yazmina behind him. He turned and locked her door, too. Behind the mesh of the burqa, he could make out her stunning green eyes—or imagine them there. Where did she come from, he wondered, where was her family, why was she alone? He’d seen no signs of her entertaining customers, which confused him, for she had to be a prostitute—there was no other reason for a woman as beautiful as she to be without a husband. And if she had one, where was he? Ahmet had heard of women leaving husbands who beat them or worse, which was something he swore he’d never do, but that was the husband’s prerogative, was it not? And it was the wife’s duty to endure. There was only one reason she could be excused to have left him: if he was dead.
    He told himself to pay attention to the crowded streets as he headed toward the Masjid-e Haji Yaqub, the mosque where he frequently prayed, not because it was more righteous than praying on his own rug in his own room, but because the mosque was so beautiful. He loved its blue tiles from Herat, and the acacia trees that framed the patios. It was the mosques of Kabul that were its proudest achievements.
    As if Muhammad were laughing from above, when he passed the mosque he would have to turn onto Butcher Street, the ugliest in all of Kabul, where animals were slaughtered right on the streets, their carcasses left to hang in the sun. He made sure the windows were up, the vents closed, so that the stink of entrails and blood wouldn’t permeate the car. At the end of the street was a roundabout, and past it the wide road with the