The setting is deliberately vague, partly because the area is so changeable and volatile and partly, to be honest, because the decision was made mostly on the basis of Ziva's known ability to speak Pashto and partly on the loving descriptions of the frontier/tribal regions of Pakistan/Afghanistan that I've been reading in Malala Yousafzai's autobiography.
In my head this is set somewhere in South/Central Asia, possibly in tribal/frontier lands, and definitely in the shadows of the Hindu Kush, but native Pashtuns and speakers of the language are widespread, and while I've read many, many books set in or around this area, it's a huge and varied bit of the world to which I've never been and about which I can't pretend to be remotely knowledgeable. All I can do is try my best and hopefully not offend anyone or write anything toooooo wildly out of place.
LAYLAH
The new girl was... different. Laylah hadn't been able to work out exactly what made her think that, but she was sure. Most of the people who came to work at the orphanage didn't make much of an impression. The women who ran it were fair but stern, and although many of the volunteers arrived with smiles on their faces and sometimes arms full of toys, by the end of the three months allowed on their visas, they looked as worn and grey as the permanent staff.
This new girl, though...
Laylah was nearly sixteen, and it was a source of great pride to her that she never let herself get attached to the volunteers, and that within days of their arrival she always knew, in her heart, why each person had travelled to this distant corner of the world. Some of them felt guilty - Laylah wasn't sure what for, but she could see it in their eyes, their desperate desire to make the children smile. Others worked as if they were trying to forget, or told stories from their own homes and their own scriptures, or were running away from something that hurt. Always, Laylah pronounced the new volunteers' intentions to the few other girls her own age within days of each new arrival.
This Ziva, though. Laylah could not decipher the look in her eyes. She was not even certain how old the woman was. Sometimes she looked no older than the sisters Laylah vaguely remembered from Before, not much older, perhaps, than Laylah was now. Certainly, Ziva was younger than the matrons who bossed her around, and whom she obeyed without question, even though sometimes Laylah thought she looked like she wanted to argue back. The volunteers who came here usually tried to change things, at least at first, and it surprised Laylah that Ziva seemed so meek. She didn't seem like a patient person, and Laylah saw her fingers twitch with irritation, but she never spoke out.
But at other times... at other times, when the day's work was done and Ziva was checking the dormitories, when she tucked a blanket round Laylah's pretend-sleeping form to keep out the bitter cold, Laylah would see an expression on her face that looked so old and so sad that she thought maybe Ziva was the oldest woman in the orphanage, after all.
Laylah did not like mysteries, and so she did not trust Ziva, even though her Pashto had an accent that somehow reminded Laylah of home, and her eyes were so kind and so deep when she smiled.
Laylah looked forward to the end of winter, when the new girl's visa would run out, and someone else would come whose motives she would be able to divine without difficulty.
