Page 344 of 5+Us Makes Seven

Suddenly my phone rang, waking me up. Confused, I reached for my phone and answered.

“Hello,” a heavily accented male voice said.

“Hello? Who is this?”

I sat up, rubbing my eyes with the back of my left hand while I held my phone in the other.

“This is Abdul-lateef,” he said cheerily.

“Who? How did you get this number?”

“Please go slower. One question at a time.”

“Who are you?”

I stood up and walked over to my laptop on the small desk in my bedroom. Cooper continued snoring from the bed, oblivious to the world.

“You refused my water and did not trust me in Samangan.”

“How did you get my number?”

“My nephew is on the internet site called Facebook, and he found your name. The rest, he said, was easy-peasy.”

That’s scary.

“Why are you calling me?”

“I saw your article, and I have information you might want.”

“Yeah?”

“The hesitation again!”

“Look, this is awfully strange. I’m being careful.”

“You didn’t trust me before and look what happened. Will you trust me now?”

“Okay…” I replied, hesitantly.

I wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Good. Your friend, Cooper, gave you wrong information.”

“What do you mean?”

I glanced over at his naked body on the bed.

“Some of the names he gave were wrong, and I can prove it.”

“Prove it? How?”

“It’s not safe to discuss on the phone, as you know. You must come to Afghanistan.”

“I’m not sure…”

“Trust me,” he interrupted. “You can find me in Samangan. You know where.”

The call ended. I stared at the phone a moment, still stunned. After waking up the laptop, I checked my email and saw thirty-two new messages – all about my story. And it had only been up for two hours.