Chapter 7

ASSUMPTIONS

Mistakes and misunderstandings can occur between people of different cultures and belief systems if we don't remember the wisdom of Sohail. "Our normal is not your normal" he said. Neither, Charles is beginning to think, is it OK to assume that our way is necessarily the first choice.

Honestly, Charles had not given any thought to how other men might respond to Molly as a woman rather than as a soldier. Smurf he had never really considered to be serious competition, largely because Molly had made it pretty clear that she did not have romantic feelings for her fellow squaddie. Still, Charles was not entirely comfortable with himself when he recalled how dismissive he had been of Smurf's powers to have any pull over Molly's emotions. In retrospect he could see how supremely sure he had been of his own ability to charm Molly. Bloody arrogant was how he had been, actually.

Quite a lot of that had to do with his awareness that he had always been a man to whom women were easily drawn. He had noticed that power from quite an early age. Friends of his mother had commented when he was just a boy about his capacity to charm them with very little effort other than a flash of his startling brown eyes and a slow smile. Many a Bath matron had recognised that Charles had a latent sexual energy about him from an early age. Several had commented to his mum that she would need to keep an eye on her charming (and dangerous) boy as he grew through his teens. One or two of them hoped she would not do so and it was not clear who could be in the most danger should an opportunity for experimentation present itself. Charles or any one of the rare few "cougars", tacky and distasteful though that term might be, who had the honesty to acknowledge their uncomfortable attraction to this adolescent charmer could quite possibly ignite an entirely inappropriate episode, or ten.

His father, still with a good deal of pulling power with the ladies well into his fifties, recalled his own history littered with narrow escapes from seriously dangerous situations, including physical threats from angry husbands. Some of those episodes had the power to make him cringe when he recalled their slapstick-like qualities, rather like very bad television. Wanting to impress upon Charles the advisability of avoiding such unpleasantness and possible injury, particularly to precious parts of his personal anatomy, his father steered him in the direction of sport on the premise that wearing himself out on the Rugby field would be sensible. He hoped that his boy would find ways to negotiate the minefield of romance and relationships without doing too much emotional damage to himself or others. Expending excess physical energy in a blood sport such as rugby, boxing, perhaps fencing were all tried and true ways to wear oneself out, to expend excess testosterone.

Certainly at high school and University Charles had never wanted for female company and his treatment of some girls had been less than classy. If he were completely honest, he would need to acknowledge that he had often been arrogant and unfeeling towards Rebecca even before they met and married whilst at University. Their break up had been protracted and painful and he accepted that he carried a lot of responsibility for that. He understood now why she did not want to be in his company for more than a few minutes at a time and then only to deal with matters to do with Sam, their son. Time and distance from Rebecca had allowed him to see his part in their relationship breakdown and he was truly sorry for his role in it and for causing her unnecessary hurt.

Having developed the maturity to acknowledge his own flaws, Charles was determined that he was not going to create a similar situation with Molly. Above all, he wanted her to feel safe and secure with him and never, ever feel as if she wanted to not be with him. Never would he forget how his heart had lurched with sheer joy on that morning last month. She had knocked on his door, asking,

"Missed me?" Only then did he admit to himself the fear he had been carrying that she would not come back to him after this latest tour to Kabul. He had told her to go because she needed to do so. The waiting to see if his faith in setting her free would bring her back to him had seemed interminable.

"Charles. Where have you gone to?" Qaseem's soft voice brought him back. He had drifted away from the conversation with the Afghani as he recalled that day which was the first of the rest of his life.

" I was saying to you that other men may see in Molly the same things you do and that you need to show her such love that she will want to keep coming back to you. Because I think, Charles, that you will never cage her and other men may try to do so."

"I know she wants to do more with her Army career, Qaseem. Possibly some advanced medic training. Perhaps even study to become a doctor. She has talents she doesn't know about yet." Charles laid out for his friend the personal attributes he thought would take Molly further in her work.

The first thing that came to mind was her ability to relate to other people. Molly was an individual operator who could become a team player at a moment's notice if that was required. Certainly her competence in the field, her ability to think on her feet and her speed of reaction under pressure made her a very welcome part of any team involved in a military undertaking. Whilst she may not have had Sandhurst officer training, it was clear that Molly was a natural leader. Charles had more than once wondered what might happen for her if, indeed, she were able to get that training. His hunch was that she would be very successful and would climb the military ranks just as rapidly as he had. He was not sure how he felt about this recognition: unconsciously he crinkled up his forehead and scratched the back of his head as he considered what this might mean. Would she be a better officer than him? Quite conceivably so, he had to admit.

"Charles, I think we should get back on track with the real reason behind this conversation between you and me. Sohail, what Molly and you need to do to be at peace with what happened to him."

"You're right, Qaseem. I still find it all very confusing, though I'm beginning to see how wrong the assumptions I made about the man were…"

The Afghani raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement of Charles' admission.

"Getting back to what Molly had to say might be the way to go. I was just remembering a conversation she and I had about the day you had the FOB Olympics, just before she went on leave.

For some reason she called it the Cocopops day – that is one of your English breakfasts in a box? Molly said she was eating this breakfast outside, near the shower block, when Sohail and Ali walked past. Sohail muttered in Pashto and when I asked her what it was, she came up with some words though she said she wasn't sure if she was saying them "proper like."

Smiling at the memory of dipping his spoon in Molly's breakfast that morning and teasing her about her willingness or not to let Sohail do the same, Charles waited to hear the soldier's words. According to Qaseem, it was likely that what Molly had heard was something close to "There she is. She looks at me as if I am the enemy," when he translated it. Of course, at the time she had no idea what he was saying so she didn't think about it, just called him a rude name under her breath and forgot about it.

Charles remembered how easy it had been to assume that the tall, taciturn Afghani was part of the enemy. Now he knew that the truth was exactly the opposite, he was beginning to understand the tragic playing out of the last days of Sohail's life. He would need to give some thought to the soldier's words that day. Why on earth would it matter to him what Molly thought of him. Very odd…

Unbidden, the incident during which Molly had pleaded with him to allow her to treat Bashira's injured eye came back to him. He recalled how overbearing his behaviour had been and how he had told Molly that she was not endearing herself to him by attending to the girl, who should have been treated at a local hospital. Sohail had been agitated at the physical closeness of the girl to Molly. It seemed the ANA soldier could eventually bear it no longer pulling the girl away from Molly even before the treatment was finished. He probably didn't hear the girl pass on to Molly a warning about not going to the mountains.

Had he been worried that Bashira might be under instructions to harm the medic? Charles wondered whether there might have been rumours around about the girl being trained to carry out a suicide mission. They had all noticed her constant presence whenever the troops were on patrol outside the garrison gates. Certainly, the passivity of Bashira when eventually she revealed the suicide vest in the village square suggested a sort of silent resignation to her fate: it would seem to her that Molly had not followed her warning and others had already died.

Now that he knew Sohail's family story and could understand at least some of the motivation for the soldier's actions in the FOB, Charles felt a dull shame at his own willingness to believe the worst of the other man. No wonder Sohail had reacted so vehemently when they had visited his tent. But he still felt there was something he was missing, now that he knew that assuming Sohail to be Taliban could not be further from the truth.

"Charles, I have told you of the respect the ANA soldiers had for Molly and their admiration for her bravery. Everything about her was in conflict with what they had been told about lazy, indolent, impure Western women. And they would not have been human if they had not noticed that she was a very attractive young woman. After all, they were seeing far more of her than they were used to seeing of their own girls. There are strict rules and serious punishments for those who don't obey the religious rules when unmarried people are brought together, even by chance.

It is not permitted for them to eat together in public. They cannot touch, even by accident…''

James was taken back in a flash to the ANA tent in the FOB, He was hearing Sohail's incredulous "The female?" when it was suggested that he give Molly a cup of chai. He heard again his own comment that British men allowed women to drink tea and mentally cringed when he heard how patronising that was to women, anyhow. And once again, he saw Sohail carefully place the full cup on the table just out of Molly's reach. So that there was no chance that their fingers might touch. If that happened, the consequences for both of them would be dire. The big Afghani had not been insulting the tiny British medic, the female, at all, Charles realised.

Qaseem interrupted his train of thought. In the distance, thousands of miles away in Kabul, the muzzein was calling the people to prayer.

"I will need to talk to you again tomorrow, Charles. This link will break in two minutes for prayer."

"Of course, Qaseem. I've got a lot to think about. Our, or more precisely my lack of awareness of Sohail's culture and the rules he had to live by…. I think that's something we never gave much thought to, always thinking we were right and sometimes that we were better than the local people. Totally insensitive a lot of the time. Bloody arrogant!"

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Charles. Sohail summed it up. 'Your normal is not our normal,' he said. I think when we start to really understand that, then we can truly work together.

Please give my best wishes to Molly Dawes. Tell her I think of her smiling green eyes and her funny Cockney talk every day."

To those of you who leave such encouraging reviews, sorry about the delay. Real life can be a real pain when all I want to do is write. Please keep on commenting. I do appreciate your feedback.