Background and Relationships

Ahmed is remembered by Karla as a close friend, for a time her best friend and almost the brother she had never had. He came from Afghanistan after being wounded in the war and went to Bombay to recover. His injuries left his health permanently diminished. Karla says that they nursed one another and grew close through conversations about books, philosophy, music, art, and food. Ahmed had graduated in science from Kabul University and spoke excellent English; she remembers him as gentle.

The change in Ahmed’s life came when he met Christina, an Italian woman working for Madame Zhou. Karla had introduced them one evening at Leopold’s Beer Bar, where Christina arrived with Ulla; both women were then working at the Palace. Ahmed fell deeply in love with Christina. Her situation was not simply a matter of wanting to leave: the Palace was controlled by Madame Zhou, who had already resisted letting women go.

Ulla’s earlier departure had shown that escape could be achieved, but at a cost. Maurizio used his savings and a connection at the German Consulate to secure her release from the Palace, then put her to work to repay the resulting debt. Karla regards the arrangement as exploitative even while acknowledging that Ulla had been freed from Madame Zhou. Her departure encouraged Christina to seek a way out too. Madame Zhou, Karla explains, had been forced to let Ulla go but was determined not to part with Christina.

The Attempt to Free Christina

Ahmed went to the Palace late one night to confront Madame Zhou and try to secure Christina’s release. Karla was supposed to go with him. She had done business with Madame Zhou, bringing businessmen there for her boss, and believed the relationship might make Madame Zhou listen to her. But Karla was called away to handle what she understood to be an important contact, a job she felt she could not refuse. Ahmed therefore went alone.

The next day, Ahmed and Christina were found dead in a car a few blocks from the Palace. The police said that they had both taken poison, describing the deaths as a joint suicide. That account is what the authorities said; Karla’s recollection gives reason to question whether the couple’s deaths can be understood as a voluntary act. The evidence does not establish exactly how they died or precisely what happened between Ahmed’s arrival at the Palace and the discovery of the bodies.

Karla’s Belated Account

The deaths emerge in the narrative through Karla’s later conversation with Lin, after he asks her about Ahmed and Christina. Her response begins only after a long silence. She then recounts the history steadily, as if giving testimony, moving from Ahmed’s friendship and recovery to his love for Christina and the failed attempt to help her leave. That measured telling sets the tragedy against the emotional difficulty of disclosing it: the account is controlled, but not detached.

Karla’s sense of responsibility is inseparable from the night Ahmed went to the Palace. She had been expected to accompany him, had a connection to Madame Zhou through her business dealings, and thought she might be able to persuade her. Instead, work took her away, and Ahmed faced Madame Zhou alone. Karla does not say that her presence would certainly have changed the outcome; her account establishes the missed companionship and the choice that she continued to carry, not an alternative ending that can be known.

Madame Zhou’s Role and the Aftermath

When Lin connects Karla’s distress to an earlier encounter with Madame Zhou, through the metal grille during the effort to get Lisa Carter out of the Palace, Karla confirms that the exchange concerned Ahmed and Christina. She says Madame Zhou had told her what she did to the couple before they died and how she played with them. This is Karla’s report of Madame Zhou’s account, not an independent description of the acts or a full explanation of the deaths. In combination with the couple’s discovery near the Palace, however, it casts the police’s suicide explanation in a disturbing light and points to Madame Zhou’s cruelty as part of the story.

The revelation also explains why Karla had been crying during that earlier encounter: Madame Zhou had brought the deaths back into the present by speaking of what preceded them. In the conversation with Lin, Karla’s account becomes an act of disclosure, though it does not resolve every uncertainty. After telling her story, she asks Lin to tell his. The transition does not undo her loss or absolve her of the guilt she associates with leaving Ahmed to go alone; it places her testimony within a moment of reciprocal vulnerability.