Refuge by N G Osborne

won’t be able to shoot straight.
    “Have you known my daughter long, Mr. Matthews?”
    “No, just stood next to her on the bus.”
    Aamir Khan’s cup hangs in the air. Tea splatters over its side and into the saucer.
    “That is all?”
    “Well I suppose I chased after her last night. She’s so beautiful…”
    Charlie clamps his mouth shut.
    Shit, why did you say that? To her psychotic father of all people.
    Aamir Khan’s cup and saucer slip from his grasp and crash onto the table. Charlie jolts back in his chair.
    Run!
    Aamir Khan reaches inside his jacket. Charlie flings out a hand.
    “Don’t shoot.”
    The lounge goes quiet. Heads turn in their direction. Aamir Khan’s hand returns with a handkerchief and he begins mopping up the spill. Charlie flops back into his seat.
    “Mr. Matthews, were you under the impression that I came here to kill you?” Aamir Khan says.
    “Kind of.”
    Aamir Khan laughs.
    “Oh, Mr. Matthews, you have already spent far too long in this city.”
    “So that’s a no?”
    “No.”
    “That’s a relief.”
    The waiter returns with another cup, and this time when Aamir Khan brings it to his lips, his hands tremble less. Charlie realizes that Aamir Khan was as nervous as he was.
    “My daughter, you maybe intrigued to know, considers her beauty a curse,” Aamir Khan says. “She’s remarked more than once that she would exchange looks with the ugliest woman in Peshawar if offered the chance.”
    “That’s crazy.”
    “Trust me your reaction on seeing her is not uncommon. I have received over thirty proposals of marriage, once I even had two on the same day.”
    “Any you liked?”
    “I do not know if liked is the word I would use, but there have been a number that would have been advantageous.”
    “Well she’s still got plenty of time.”
    “Noor’s twenty-one, in Afghanistan that practically makes her an old maid.”
    Charlie says Noor’s name over and over in his head.
    It’s as beautiful as she is.
    “So what’s her deal?” he says.
    “She wants to go to university.”
    “That’s not possible here?”
    “Not for an impoverished female refugee. No, it is perverse, but she has more hope of obtaining a scholarship to an American or European institution than one in this country.”
    “And how’s that going?”
    “In the last four years we have applied to thirty-one institutions and fourteen so far have sent back rejection letters.”
    “So she’s still in the game with the other seventeen.”
    “No, they just never bothered to reply. There is an old Afghan proverb, Mr. Matthews, that says a river is not contaminated by having a dog drink from it. No, the river’s greatest danger comes from its source, for if that dries up a river becomes no more than a ditch.”
    “I’m sorry, but I’m not following you, Aamir.”
    “Hope is the source for all human endeavor, Mr. Matthews, for without hope no one would embark on anything. I fear Noor is losing all hope.”
    Aamir Khan pulls on his sleeves and forces a smile.
    “I have a simple request, Mr. Matthews. Meet with my daughter.”
    Charlie is so surprised that he doesn’t answer.
    “I have done all I can, taught her everything I know, but I am a relic of the past. I do not know the current trends, the new ways of thinking, I am not aware of the latest technologies or the modern day vernacular. These are things you could imbue her with and in the process help her escape her present situation.”
    “Hate to break this to you, Aamir, but I don’t think talking to me is going to get her very far.”
    “You would be surprised. If there is one thing I have learnt it is that Westerners like to be around Afghans who speak and act just like them. Those are the ones who get ahead and get out. I have accepted my fate, Mr. Matthews. I am going to live out my days in these camps, but I will not accept that fate for my youngest daughter.”
    “Where would we do this?”
    “Your house if that is not too much trouble.