Suddenly my phone rang, waking me up. Confused, I reached to answer it. “Hello?”
“Hello,” a heavily accented male voice said.
“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 Argun Manju,” 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. Warren continued snoring from the bed, oblivious.
“You refused my water and did not trust me in Samangan.”
“How did you get my number?” I reiterated.
“My nephew is on the internet site called Facebook, and he found your name. The rest, he said, was easy-peasy.”
“Why are you calling me?” I asked, growing scared.
“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, not sure what else to say.
“Good. Your friend, Warren, gave you wrong information.”
“What do you mean?”
“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 phon
e a moment, stunned. After waking up the laptop, I checked my email and saw thirty-two new messages, all about my story.
It had only been up for two hours, but thanks to the internet, it had spread far and wide.
I turned to look at Warren again, debating whether to wake him.
CHAPTER 38