Veil of Silence by K'Anne Meinel

he was clean, and he had an exuberance of energy to burn off.  Marsha let him for now, making sure he didn’t disturb any of the other passengers.  Her eyes looked about, scanning, watching for anyone she might recognize.  Leaning over to Pete, she asked in a low voice, “What was in that packet?”
    “Government documents identifying us as American soldiers.  It basically gives us VIP treatment since you and the children do not have official passports and Johann and I are undercover.  I listened to her conversation.”
    “You speak German?”
    He nodded before continuing, “So does Johann.  She was asking for directions and reading the documents to what I assume was her supervisor.  The supervisor had been alerted to watch for us and let us board first.  At least, that’s what I gleaned from her conversation.”  He smiled, showing even and white teeth.
    “What makes me so important?” she wondered, not realizing she said it aloud.
    “It’s what you know or might know that’s important,” he pointed out.
    She nodded.  She knew she was just a cog in the wheel.  She had been unable to give them much back in Kabul.  She knew they wouldn’t give her much leeway.  She just desperately wanted to get home, to feel safe.  She wanted to get far away from Zabi and his people…not all of them, just most of them.
    Marsha watched as the children ran around in the small area they had taken, away from others.  They were near enough to catch their flight and enclosed enough by the adult’s presence that the children could run off some of their exuberance.  They chased each other and Marsha shushed them when their noise got too loud.
    Finally, they called their flight.  When he saw the microphone being picked up, Pete had been on his feet urging Marsha and the children to follow along.  Scooping up Amir who was being a real wiggle-worm, he behaved like a typical father.
    “Moray?”
    Marsha looked down into the bright brown eyes of her daughter.  “Yes, my daughter?” she answered softly, demurely, as a good woman would.  It had been beaten into her to express these types of manners.  A good woman was modest, quiet, and subservient.  She hadn’t been able to throw off that cloak of behavior in any form, at least not yet.  She wondered if she ever would.  She glanced at her clothing and wondered if, perhaps, when she put the burqa aside, it would help her become the army lieutenant, now captain she mentally corrected herself, she had been.
    “Are we going on another…” she thought hard, trying to remember the word since she wasn’t familiar with it.  She ended up just pointing instead at the planes outside the terminal that were lined up on the tarmac.
    “Yes, my daughter.  That is a plane.  We are going on another one,” she explained.  She knew the children were tired of being cooped up in the little metal tubes, but there was no other way to get where she was going.  Their world had been turned upside down since the festival when she snatched them up.  She was sorry for that.  The terror was one they would have for a long time.  She herself felt the fear that at any moment Zabi and his men would snatch her back.  It would not go well for her if he found her.  She remembered the many beatings, rapes, and humiliation she had experienced at his hands.  He had seemed to enjoy it—dominating her, breaking this ‘American.’  She felt the fear of what he had caused within her and it began to turn to anger.  It had been many years since she allowed that anger.  He had thought he had beaten it out of her, but he was wrong.  She had, instead, buried it deep and it was now coming through the cracks; she could feel it bubbling up.  She used it to keep her from the fear, from worrying about those men finding her.
    Following behind Pete, keeping her head down, trying to appear less noticeable, she didn’t realize that just by her stance, her bearing, she was noticeable…almost