“Well, they’ll certainly assemble all of us for the video.”

“The what?”

“The video they’re going to make to show the world that they have us and to announce their demands. It’ll be all over the Internet by midday tomorrow.”

“Oh, God, I can’t believe this is happening. My mother will die!”

“I hope not,” says Sonia. “Mothers are often tougher than you think.”

“But what will they demand?”

“Hard to tell. Probably something like the release of prisoners held by the Pakistanis and Americans.”

“Will they do that? I mean, trade us for the prisoners?”

“They might get some of their people released by the Pakistanis, but meanwhile they have the whole world watching. Terror is essentially public relations. Also, they’ve got one of the richest men in America; that might be the reason we were lifted in the first place. Craig is worth a lot of money alive, so I suppose that’s a consideration.”

“If they just want him for ransom, why don’t they let the rest of us go?”

“Because we’re all useful as hostages. They can make a threat-we’ll kill one of the infidels every day until you do what we want-and they get to make videos of the executions. There’s a vast audience out there for videos of Muslims murdering Westerners; it’s a recruiting tool for them.”

“So they are going to kill us!”

“Possibly, but we’re not dead yet. A lot depends on who these people are. Islam is a very decentralized religion. Anyone can call himself a mujahid, a holy warrior. The movement attracts lots of people, from the sincerely religious to the insane or just bored kids looking for action. In the West they race cars drunk or knock off convenience stores. Here they become mujahideen. At the edges they blend into simple bandits, which this part of the world has always been famous for, but I don’t get the message that our guys are like that.”

“Why not? They certainly seemed brutal enough when they shot down Hamid and his boys.”

“Oh, well, brutal is the base coat in these parts. They kill very easily. What I meant was, are they sincerely religious? Are they moved by some kind of moral impulse?”

“I don’t see how you can put moral impulse together with murder.”

“That’s because you’re not from around here. The fact is that we’re being kept in what to them are quite comfortable quarters, we’ve been fed decent food, we haven’t been molested. I think they’re trying to make a point: Americans and Pakistanis torture people, but real Muslims don’t. That’s a hopeful sign. It means they may be looking forward to releasing us, so we can tell the world how well we’ve been treated, in contrast, for example, to Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. On the other hand, a prize like Craig is going to draw attention from every mujahideen group in the Northwest Frontier, from the Taliban, and from al-Qaeda itself. Our fate may not be in the hands of the group that captured us.”

“But what do we do?”

“We could wash your hair,” says Sonia with a grin. She reaches into her garments and flourishes a tiny tube of green gel.

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. We happen to have plenty of water and a basin and shampoo, which may not always be the case. And you want to be pretty for your close-up tomorrow. Seriously, take off your shirt.”

She does so and Sonia washes the filth, dried blood, and dust out of the long golden hair, and then uses a comb from another of the many pockets to pull the knots from its shining length. She dries it with her dupatta and then, to Annette’s surprise, cuts off a wide length of the material with the scissors of a Swiss Army knife (drawn from yet another pocket) and ties it around Annette’s hair.

“There!” she says, when she has it right, “you look like a good Muslim wife.” She pauses and cocks her head, thinking. “I don’t suppose you’d consider converting?”

“What, to Islam? Seriously?”

“Yes. It would give them an immense propaganda victory if the bunch of you did, I mean besides me and Amin, who are already believers, and it would almost guarantee your survival.”

Annette considers this proposition for a few moments and then says, “No, I couldn’t in good conscience, and I’m sure Porter would feel the same.” She laughed. “If they kill me I guess I’ll be a martyr to the faith. That will surprise them back in the Friends Meeting in Cannondale, Missouri. I don’t think they’ve had one recently.”

“Well, it was just a thought,” says Sonia. “By the way, speaking of martyrdom, I wanted to tell you how splendidly you behaved back on the trail, backing my play with Dr. Schildkraut.”

“Oh, that! I can barely recall why I did it. It was a sort of spasm of… I don’t know what. Toxic charity, maybe. I just couldn’t bear to see them shoot that nice old man, or stand by while you were being so brave. To be honest, it surprised the heck out of me. I mean, I’m used to what most people would call hardship, with our work and all, but as a matter of fact international peace work’s not really that dangerous. It’s not like we’re actually throwing our bodies between warring armies, although maybe that would work better.”

As she speaks she is taking off her shoes, high-topped sneakers, and her filthy socks. Her bare feet are dirt-stained and bleeding.

She says, “Do you think I could soak my feet in that basin?”

“Sure. That’s what it’s for, more or less.”

Annette does so and groans. After some silent minutes, she says, “This is so-well, strange. I mean, we’re chatting together like we’re in an airport, the words and the intonations… Why aren’t we gibbering or using some other kind of, I don’t know, more elevated language?”

“That’s an interesting question,” Sonia says, and then laughs. “Speaking of conventional phrases. But it turns out that people who are grounded and secure don’t change very much under stress. That’s what being grounded means. The frauds tend to fall apart and the tough guys, too. In the Korean War, they found it was the well-brought-up middle-class kids who resisted the communist torture best, not the ones from the slums, whom you’d have expected to be tougher.”

“Oh, in that case I’m going to be fine,” said Annette, and laughed too. “I assume you were nicely raised too-you’re unbelievably cool about all this.”

“As a matter of fact I had a terribly traumatic childhood. But afterward I sort of reraised myself.”

Annette seems about to ask for an expansion of this statement but checks herself. “So are we completely helpless at this point? Does it all depend on what kind of people are holding us?”

“No, not completely,” Sonia answers. “Do you know what Stockholm Syndrome is?”

“Where the prisoners start sympathizing with the captors. Patty Hearst.”

“Yes. Well, it works the other way around too. We’ll see if we can make that happen. With God’s help, of course.”

After that, they both take to their charpoys and fall into instant exhausted sleep.

Sonia, however, has always been an early riser, and the events of the past days have not changed that. Dawn is just dribbling through the slats of the shutters when she slides out from under the quilt, performs her ablutions, and, searching under her charpoy, finds what she expects, a worn but clean prayer rug. She prays the two raka’ah of the dawn prayer, the Fajr, and then goes to the door, intending to knock on it to summon the guards. But she hears voices in the hallway outside and instead places her ear against a crack in the rough boards. She recognizes one of the voices and listens with interest.

More footsteps outside and the door lock squeals open. A guard enters and looks around. Sonia sees it is the boy, Patang, from the incident on the trail. He backs out and an old woman in black enters. She deposits a tray with naan and tea on it, picks up last night’s tray, and leaves without a word.

Sonia awakens Annette and they eat and drink. They have barely finished when Patang returns with another guard, also masked, this one with a bushy dark beard sprouting out from under his ski mask. Both are armed with Kalashnikovs. Patang says, “Come,” and the two women leave the room.