the handbook,’ ” he said, then looked up at her with an interrogator’s gaze. “Is this a personal female item?”
“It’s a reminder,” she answered, her heart rate accelerating further. Now she felt like the spy Kasli accused her of being.
“To do what?”
“To not forget the handbook.”
“What handbook?”
“First aid,” she said. “A handbook on first aid. Now if you don’t mind . . .”
The officer leaned back and, shaving a mustache of sweat with his finger, looked at the ceiling and sighed to show that his forbearance was not infinite. “Miss Hardin, it is known that you are married to a commander in the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. It is therefore important to know what your business is here. Now, if you don’t mind, you will tell me what it is.”
Quinette could only stand there, struck dumb.
“Aviation. She works for us.”
She and the officer turned as one. Mary English swaggered through the door and up to the desk and clasped the man’s hands firmly in both of hers. “We’ve been expecting her, and we’d appreciate it if you expedited the paperwork.”
His fingers folded quickly over Mary’s offering and as quickly slipped it into the desk drawer. It took him only a little more time to issue Quinette her visa and return her things.
Outside, Mary said, “The Archangel radioed us last night that you’d be coming in. We figured you’d get hassled. The word’s out on you. Sorry I was late. Hop on.” She slapped the backseat of a Kawasaki.
Quinette climbed on, laying her straw carry-bag in her lap. “The word’s out on me?”
“You are shit on a log and persona non grata to a lot of people in Loki,” Mary answered, kicking the starter, and they roared off, the motorcycle throwing a rooster-tail of dust. They sped by a UN gate and the compounds of the independent NGOs, each with its flag flying bravely, and finally through the gate into Hotel California, Quinette’s old home. Everything looked so familiar, and she somehow thought that this should not be so, that all of it should have changed because she had.
Walking across the compound, she neared the wall-tent she’d shared with Lily and Anne and felt a pang of nostalgia. The front flaps parted, and Anne came out, on her way to work.
“Anne! How are you?”
Her old friend looked her up and down and none too favorably. “Fine and how are you?” she said in a tone almost hostile in its indifference.
“Well, I—there have been a lot changes—”
“Good to see you again. I’m off.”
She walked away. An outright insult would have been less hurtful than that frigid reception.
“That’s what you meant, shit on a log, persona non grata?” Quinette asked.
“Shit on a log to the do-gooders,” Mary answered. “It’s uncool to marry a rebel commander. You’re persona non grata to the UN people. They’re the ones who alerted immigration to be on the lookout for you, maybe just to harass you, maybe because they suspect what we’re up to. They also sent around a notice that you’re barred from flying on UN planes, or any independent airline flying a UN mission.”
Hearing this made her as uneasy as seeing her picture on a wanted poster in the post office, but uneasiness swiftly morphed into a kind of outlaw’s pride. She regarded the aid workers, shuffling papers, drinking coffee in the mess, with scorn: play-it-safers with return tickets, who would never suffer the ordeals or experience the triumphs of a passionate devotion to a cause, to a person, to anything.
“Well, I had no intentions of flying on UN planes,” she said.
“Yeah. They’re just making a point. You’re not a neutral party anymore. You didn’t marry a man, you made a political statement. You’ve taken sides, in just about the most public way possible.”
“Seems to me you and Wes and Doug have done the same thing.”
“We aren’t public about it. We keep it as quiet as we can.”
They came to the tent Wes and Mary shared and sat on bamboo and rattan chairs under the grass-roofed shelter. Mary produced two Cokes from a cooler. Quinette took one sip and, indulging in the forgotten delight of an ice-cold drink, finished half the can in a single gulp.
“So what about you?” she asked. “Do you think marrying him was uncool? That I’m some kind of girl-guerrilla with a knife in her teeth?”
“Nope. You might be crazy, but I understand that because I’ve done something crazy. Wes has asked me to marry him, and I said yes.”