A Cup of Friendship Read Online Free PDF

help her feel more comfortable and prepare for the day the baby would be born.
    “Yazmina,” Sunny said to her. “ Sob bakhaer . Good morning. I hope you slept well,” she said slowly, in her halting Dari. “How are you feeling today?”
    Yazmina stood there, nervously, obviously not understanding.
    Sunny shook her head in frustration. Communication between them was still slow as they tried to find the Dari words they had in common.
    Jack looked up from his nearby table and spoke Waigili, the language of the Nuristani people, so fluently that he might have been from Nuristan himself. “Don’t mind her. She’s trying. She’d like to know how you’re feeling today.”
    Yazmina smiled, and answered in her language, “Very well, thank you, tashakur, ” then nodded and walked to the counter. As she put on an apron over her chaderi , Bashir Hadi was rubbing the copper coffee machine with lime juice, the best way to make it glow like the moon on a winter night, he had told her.
    The morning flew by. It wasn’t until the last customer had left, and Yazmina had swept the floors and left for her room to rest, that Bashir Hadi approached Sunny, who was at the counter on her laptop.
    “May we speak, Miss Sunny?” asked Bashir Hadi.
    Bashir was very serious, which worried her. “Of course,” she said, closing the computer and turning to face him.
    Bashir pulled a stool behind him and sat. “I enjoy my job here and I thank you for the opportunity you have given me—”
    “You’re not quitting, are you?” Sunny interrupted, her heart leaping into her throat. What would she do without Bashir? She’d come to rely on him so.
    “No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “But I am concerned. I know it was very busy today, but it won’t be busy this afternoon or tonight. Miss Sunny, we must talk about the money. The coffeehouse is falling behind, and—”
    “We always make it, Bashir Hadi, don’t we?”
    “But Miss Sunny, we need more money to keep the café safe. And you safe and your customers. You know what I’m talking about.”
    She let out a breath and looked out the window over his shoulder. Yes, the suicide bombings were on the increase and the kidnappings, too, yes, she knew. Just last month, a young man—a boy, really, from all accounts—strapped with an IED, an improvised explosive device, had blown himself up, and everything around him, two streets away. The ground shook and the front windows were shattered. Six people were killed. Everyone said it was lucky there weren’t more.
    Bashir Hadi continued, “We must deal with security issues. We need a safe room, a place for customers to hide, should we be attacked. We need to put up blast film on the windows so they don’t shatter and become weapons of their own. We were lucky last time. But what if the bomb had been only a little closer? We need to fortify the compound in every way. We need to stop putting guns in the closet and, instead, lock them up in storage at the entrance.”
    Sunny hated how that sounded like preparing for battle, but she had to face the truth. “Yes,” she said, “but I can’t afford it.”
    “I’ve been thinking about that. And maybe there is a way,” he said, raising his brows, a slight smile forming at the corners of his mouth.
    She looked at him closely, this lovely, trustworthy man, with his large, slanted dark eyes and warm face, his narrow frame and immaculate clothing. And, of course, his hard work that had saved her and the café more times than she could remember. Besides his running the place, and besides his dealing with the damage from last month’s explosion, there was the time, last winter, when the pipes burst. The time when a power surge had killed a coffee machine because they had had only one overworked generator and had relied on the city’s electricity. Getting the two extra generators that cost an arm and a leg. Keeping the bohkari , the wood-burning stove, working throughout the winter. Or