Second Mission

Samira peered briefly through the peephole, then threw open the door with relief. It was David, as she had hoped.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Rahman. You called.” He winked at her to soften the formal greeting. Apparently, he wanted to avoid any appearance of familiarity in case a neighbor was within earshot.

She quickly invited him in and said, “Samira.”

He raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“Just call me Samira.”

“Ah. Pleased to meet you. I'm David.”

I know, she thought. And I need your help.

She led the way into the living room. On the way, she rubbed her tired eyes. She had hardly slept the night before because of her worries. The situation she found herself in was too unfamiliar and bordered too closely on disobedience for her to find peace. But once she had experienced this freedom to inform herself unhindered and according to her own interests, she no longer wanted to do without it.

“How can I help you?” asked David. He had already sat down at the small desk and turned on the computer.

The quiet humming as it booted up sounded threatening to Samira's ears and at the same time promising, because it meant that the gateway to this fantastic world of the internet was opening again. She folded her hands in front of her body to suppress the trembling. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Can you please check the history to make sure that everything I looked at and read yesterday is really gone?”

“Yes, of course. No problem. Look, I'll show you how you can do it yourself in the future.”

She leaned forward and looked intently at the monitor. She came so close to him that he could smell her perfume. A sweet, heavy scent that he instinctively associated with the Orient.

“Here, see? There are still entries from yesterday. You should delete them all. Let's see how far back it goes.” He pointed his finger at the screen and scrolled down a list. “Oh, here. This is the first page you visited. And below that are the older entries, which are from your husband. Oh...” He fell silent and tried to scroll back up as quickly as possible.

“What is it?” Samira's suspicion was aroused.

“Uh. Nothing. It's not important.”

Then why did he blush?

“Can I see?”

“I don't think so. Maybe I should just delete it while I'm at it?”

“Would my husband notice if something was missing?”

“I don't know. Probably not. But maybe he would.”

She waved her arms defensively. “Then don't delete it! Everything has to stay unchanged so he doesn't get suspicious.”

“Okay. But promise me you won't look at what kind of pages they are.”

Now her curiosity was piqued.