by Fin C Gray
Daniel put his arms around him and kissed his face with force, again and again.
‘Stop it,’ said Waqar. ‘People are watching.’
He pulled away and walked towards the security gate. Daniel stood watching him, aching to follow. Waqar walked through the gate, without looking back.
Chapter Nineteen
Then
The call to prayer began to push its way into his consciousness before the first weak fingers of light touched the rough cloth that covered him. Even after so many days, he still wasn’t used to the acrid smell of sweat and food-tinged gases that made their way into his nostrils from the sleeping bodies lying on mats that were scattered around the room like a disassembled patchwork blanket. Sleep had evaded him for many hours, and he glanced over at Waqar, who was just beginning to stir. He closed his eyes quickly and turned to face the wall.
‘Wake up, my brother. We must pray. Today is a momentous day for you, Dani.’
Daniel groaned and turned over again to face Waqar, scrunching his eyes, hoping to give the impression that he had just awoken. Waqar was grinning at him as he scratched his thick black hair. It was hard to get used to him with the long beard and the much longer hair. He’d said it was the look of the prophet, and it was his way of respecting God. Daniel’s stomach was churning, and he could feel a band of panic tighten in his chest. None of this felt right, and Waqar seemed different. There was a detachment to him that didn’t make sense after six months apart.
‘This day has come so fast, Waqar,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’m ready yet…’
Waqar laughed, stretching over to take Daniel’s hand. ‘No one feels ready the first time, dear brother. Allah will guide you. Allah will help me guide you. Together, we will make you ready. When this day is over and you wake tomorrow to pray anew, you will feel different. You will be different, Dani. Allahu Akbar.’
Words, just words. It was as if he was reeling them off a rehearsed script. Ever since arriving in Pakistan, he’d craved some closeness from his friend, a sign that he still felt the same about him. His feelings for Waqar had grown like bamboo in a rainforest; he couldn’t stop himself craving his company. Now he was here, he mostly wanted them to be alone together. Waqar stood up and pulled Daniel’s arm. The other men in the room were also stirring, and one opened the door, allowing the smell of something rotten to leak into the already rancid space.
‘Come, we must go to the well and wash,’ said Waqar.
They both picked up their prayer mats and headed outside into the softly rising light. The well thronged with men anxious to cleanse themselves in preparation for the first worship of the day. The sky, pulled apart by sinewy clouds, was beginning to turn a pale orange. Daniel gazed at it for a few seconds, wishing he could push back the sun and keep this day from dawning. There was almost a sense of safety in the dark. Here light always brought a vicious brutality with it.
After prayer, Daniel and Waqar went to one of the tables outside and joined the other men for breakfast. Mustard leaves and cornbread lay in piles on large tin plates, and everyone clustered around them, snatching as much as they could. Waqar split his portion in two and passed half to Daniel.
‘Come, Dani, you must eat,’ he said. ‘Today will be hotter than yesterday, or the day before, and you must be strong. We will go soon, and this will be our only food for many hours. Drink plenty of the water too.’
Daniel pushed it away, only taking a gulp from his cup of water. ‘I’m not hungry. I’ll be fine.’
‘Eat!’ Waqar’s eyes hardened as he thrust the food back at his friend. ‘Or I’ll make you.’
Waqar’s eyes fixed on him in a cruel stare; there was violence in them that Daniel had never seen before. Daniel forced some bread and leaves into his mouth and chewed quickly, swallowing them down with some more water. He tried to fight off an inexorable push of nausea that was spiralling up from his gut, but was unable to stop himself. He jumped up and ran over to a nearby bush where he vomited noisily, retching and gasping with each new spasm from his stomach.
Waqar came running after him. ‘You make me feel ashamed, my brother. Why do you do this?’
Daniel turned towards him. ‘Waqar, you think I can help it? That I can stop myself throwing up when everything in my gut says I must? I feel sick to the bottom of my soul. I’ve been vomiting since I got off the plane.’
‘You display your weakness like a badge. I brought you here. I vouched for you. I have spent the last six months convincing them that you are a good jihadi. You are making me into a fool. The others will gossip to the commanders about this.’
Daniel pushed his hands against his head. No one had seen him, apart from Waqar. Why was he being such a cunt to him? Plenty of others had thrown up, and no one had even turned to look in their direction. This place was filthy; there were bound to be stomach bugs and the like. Back off, Waqar.
But he forced a smile. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll make you proud,’ he said. ‘We are joined forever. I’ll never forget the promise we made to each other. Together we are one.’
Daniel wondered if his eyes betrayed him the way that Waqar’s did. Waqar pulled Daniel close to him and kissed both his cheeks, gazing earnestly into his eyes. For the first time, Daniel felt he saw something of the man he’d held in the departures lounge at Heathrow all those months ago. Daniel felt his anger wane as he lost himself in that familiar velvety-brown stare. The closeness of his body caused a throbbing in Daniel’s groin; he wanted to pull him nearer and hold him, even if just for a moment. There had been nothing but coldness and remoteness since he’d arrived in this awful place. ‘Waqar, I lo—’
Waqar stopped him, pushing his long fingers against Daniel’s lips. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Come. We must go.’
The road from the encampment was makeshift and rocky. Daniel looked back at the armed men guarding the gates as the canvas topped open-backed truck he was in rumbled away from their stony faces. As they drove further away, he saw the camp gates open again and a small jeep appear, which followed them, remaining several thousand metres behind.
‘The infidel is in that vehicle,’ said Waqar. ‘I saw them put him in it before we left the camp.’
‘I know.’ Daniel kept his eyes fixed on the jeep, afraid to look at his friend. He felt sure the cruelty had returned to his eyes, and he didn’t want to remind himself that it even existed. It was for his own good, he knew that. There was no room for love in this awful place. He had to find strength from somewhere, and fast.
The mountains receded into a cloudless unforgiving sky, and in the near distance, heat vapours skewed the harsh brown landscape, making the day seem even more surreal. The fetid smell of stale sweat and flatulence, increasing with each hot kilometre, no longer assaulted Daniel’s nostrils; it was finally becoming part of the dark fabric of his new life here. He looked back into the crowded dimness of the truck and noticed, for the first time, two of the men clutching something long and thin, wrapped in burlap. Daniel quickly turned away from it and focused on the dusty road stretching far behind him.
Around midday, when only an edge of the shimmering sun was visible in the sky from the back of the truck, they ground to a halt, and a few seconds later the jeep following them stopped too. The driver of the truck jumped out of his cab with his prayer mat and everyone jumped from the back clutching theirs. Daniel was glad to escape the cramped sticky bleakness of the truck. They all knelt, facing east, and recited the Zuhr prayer. When they were finished, the driver shouted something in Urdu. Daniel knew enough by now to know that this was telling them they could have something to drink. One of the men pulled a large plastic canister of water from the back and everyone clustered around it. Daniel joined them, eager to quench his thirst. The water was thick and warm. The only thing in its favour was that it was wet. No wonder he felt sick half the time. Some of the men were splashing it over their faces, before being snarled at and told it was for drinking only.
‘We are about an hour’s drive from the p
lace now,’ said Waqar. ‘This day will be in your past soon, and you will look upon it as one that brought you closer to God, Dani. You will be overjoyed and never fear a task like this ever again.’
Daniel nodded. Waqar’s smile was soft, sincere, almost comforting, and he tried his best to return it, desperately hoping that Waqar couldn’t see the fear that was eating up his guts. His water cup quivered in his hand, so he grasped it with his other hand, trying to steady it. The jeep had stopped some distance further back. No occupants were visible. They must be at the rear of the vehicle, drinking their own water. That was as much as he wanted to think about them. He would see them up close soon enough. By then, his fear would be complete, consuming every part of him; he would have to find some way to control it. Whatever fear he felt would be nothing to the abject terror felt by the man in the jumpsuit, tied up in the back of the jeep. What was his fear in comparison to that? That poor bastard was in an unimaginable hell right now. And it would only get worse with each mile they travelled. When the driver called to them all to get back on the truck, he took a deep breath and tried his best to fight back the bile rising in his throat. Throwing up now would be noticed and would get Waqar angry again. He jumped back into the foul-smelling truck.
‘Not long now,’ said Waqar. ‘Another hour, two at most. I remember this road when I too had this task to fulfil. You will prove to me and to the commander that my trust in you is warranted. I have complete faith in you, Dani.’
Sand blew up into Daniel’s eyes as he jumped down from the truck. There were several large dunes up ahead, and the sun beat with an unforgiving ferocity above. Waqar pulled two large rolls of canvas from the driver’s cabin and called to Daniel to help him unroll them. One was black and the other was white. There were poles attached to each, and when they were fully unravelled, Waqar forced his pole into the hot sand at an angle. The flag wafted gently in the soft breeze. He told Daniel to do the same with the pole he was holding, to form a cross with them. There were large calligraphic Arabic words printed upon the canvasses, with an image of two crossed scimitars beneath the script. Each flag was like a negative image of the other.
‘What do they say?’ asked Daniel.
‘This is the shahada,’ he replied. ‘It says that “There is no god but God. Mohammed is the messenger of God.”’
A few metres away, one of the other men positioned a camera on a tripod, facing the flags. As he did so, the commander, dressed all in black, called over to the jeep, which was now just a short distance away and had its engine still running. The noise of the engine stopped. One man got out of the back seat and pulled another man – dressed in an orange jumpsuit – from the same seat. He fell face down onto the sand. Daniel could see his hands tied behind his back, and there was the knot of a blindfold on the back of his head. Another man jumped from the vehicle, and each took one of the bound man’s arms. They dragged him, protesting, to the flags and forced him to kneel down in front of them, facing the camera. By now, he was sobbing, mumbling something unintelligible.
The commander approached the kneeling man and removed his blindfold, throwing it on the ground beside him. Another man untied his hands.
‘Please, please, don’t do this. I am here in this country to help your people. I’m a doctor.’
The commander slapped his face and forced a card into his trembling hands. ‘Face the camera and read this,’ he said in heavily accented English.
‘I, I, I need my eyeglasses to read it…’
Daniel could tell that this man was American, maybe from New York. His accent sounded like those he’d heard on American shows he’d watched with Tom, long ago, when his mother was alive. The man looked tall and distinguished, and his dark-brown hair was flecked through with grey. His face was covered in small cuts and both his eyes were black and blue. The commander shouted something in Urdu at the men who had dragged the American from the vehicle. One of them ran over to it and retrieved a pair of glasses from the back seat. He handed them to the commander.
Now the man began reading from the card. ‘I call on my friends, family and loved ones…’ He stopped and began to sob again.
The man in black struck him a second time and poked the card. ‘Read!’ Daniel stood with Waqar nearby and watched as the man read from the card, faltering often and crying at points. The commander, now wearing a black cloth over his face, leaving only his eyes exposed, stood beside the kneeling man. Every time the American hesitated or cried, he would strike him and make him start again. The trembling man spoke unconvincingly about American atrocities in Syria and Afghanistan and stated how his government should take responsibility for his death. When he finally managed to read the entire speech with no mistakes, Waqar gave Daniel a black cloth to put around himself.
‘Cover everything, even your eyes,’ he said. ‘You will be able to see through the cloth. And try to disguise your voice like I told you.’
Daniel remembered well what Waqar had told him and the many weeks of preparing him for this awful task. He had wielded the sword and taken the heads off so many stuffed resemblances of kneeling people. They reminded him of the guys that would be put on fires on Bonfire Night. ‘When the time comes, you will be able to do this with your eyes closed,’ Waqar had told him.
With trembling hands, Daniel wrapped the cloth around himself and wound the end of it several times around his mouth, nose and eyes. Waqar took him by the arm and led him over to the kneeling man who was now crying again. The commander moved out of the camera’s range, and Waqar withdrew a long, straight sword from the burlap wrapping. He laid it on the ground, went over to the man and replaced the blindfold over his eyes, tying it tightly at the back. Then he returned to Daniel and picked up the sword again.
‘It is time, my brother. Allah expects this of you.’ Waqar held out the sword to Daniel. ‘This will be no different to all the practices we did.’
With trembling hands, Daniel took hold of it and walked over to the American. He could see and smell that he had emptied his bowels in the orange jumpsuit. He was sobbing and pleading, ‘Don’t do this, please. Please, I have a wife and two sons. Please don’t let them see this.’
Daniel lifted the sword, closing his eyes against the sight in front of him. Chanting the words that Waqar had made him learn and repeat over and over, he swung it as hard as he could and heard the sickening crunch of metal on bone. There were no more words from the man. Just a hot, metallic-smelling silence that seemed to persist until a resounding chorus of ‘Allahu Akbar’ rang out from the assembled men around him. He kept his eyes closed. It was different – nothing like he’d imagined.
Chapter Twenty
Today, Friday
Tom shifts a little and calls out Daniel’s name in his sleep. Daniel pulls the dagger away from his father’s neck and feels bile rise in his throat.
‘You’ll never let go, will you? I wish you’d never met Mum. Never put me on this earth. I wish I never knew you, you worthless cunt.’
Daniel stands up and goes to Tom’s bathroom, leaving the dagger on the bed. He turns the tap on full in the marble sink and sticks his face under the rushing cold water. C’mon, if you can’t face this, how the fuck’re you going to do the big stuff, later? He returns to his father’s bedroom. Rufus looks content, still settled on Tom’s heaving chest. Maybe he thinks the snoring is how humans purr. Daniel slaps his father’s face lightly a few times. Tom is comatose. Daniel can do what he likes, and he won’t know a thing. Why the fuck should he be allowed to go into oblivion, knowing none of it? Feeling nothing? One thing is for sure: he’ll not be seeing Tom in Jannah; Tom will get the filthy purgatorial eternity he deserves. But he isn’t going to make it easy for him. Slicing his throat is going to be way too kind an exit for this pointless piece of shit. Let him suffer a bit longer. Let him see everything that he made possible. Let him witness the aftermath of what is to come. Let him crucify himself with doubt and self-recrimination.
But what to do? Tom can’t see the news, t
hinking that his beloved son has left without leaving a token of his hatred. Rufus adjusts himself into a circle on Tom’s chest. Shame for the poor cat to be left on his own and, even worse, for him to be a comfort to Tom after the fact. Daniel strokes the cat and whispers, ‘Inaa lillaahi wa innaa ilayhi raaji’oon. In English, Rufus, this means: “To Allah, we belong and to Him is our return.” We’ll meet again in paradise, Rufus. Waqar and I will look after you there. He waits for us there.’
Rufus purrs now. Is he enjoying his words and his touch? Daniel stands up and returns to Tom’s bathroom. He picks up a large towel and goes back. Man and cat still lie together, eyes closed. He places the towel over Rufus, surprised he doesn’t stir. With a quick motion, he scoops the cat up in the towel and wraps it tightly around. Rufus begins to struggle, but makes no sound. This was always Tom’s method of getting the cats into their transporter basket to go to the vets, so Rufus probably thinks this is what is happening. Daniel picks up the dagger and plunges it into the cat’s neck. Blood gushes over the hilt and the struggling stops. He places the bloody bundle back on his father’s chest and pulls the towel away.
Tom doesn’t move when he turns the cat on its back and slices it from the neck, down its belly to its tail. Warm blood gushes all over Tom, seeping into his underpants and the sheets. Daniel turns the carcass over and splays it over Tom’s chest – the head and wide lifeless eyes pointing towards his neck. Each of Rufus’s legs dangle over Tom’s ribs, blood and entrails leaking down his abdomen. Daniel gazes at the bloody mess for a few minutes. He remembers the American bleeding on the sand. Red satin, red walls, bloody knees, stained sheets, red sputum. The movement of Tom’s heaving chest gives a strange animation to Rufus’s carcass.
But this isn’t enough. One final detail will help make this even more horrific for his deserving father. He lifts the cat’s head up and hacks it off with the bloody dagger, sawing at the sinews and bones. The eyes are wide and green and already clouded over. As he places the head on the pillow next to Tom’s, he thinks of the American again; his neck cut was clean, straight, precise. Poor Rufus’s looks ragged and untidy, like a head pulled off a stuffed animal. The thought quickly passes, and he pulls open the mouth, making sure the dead eyes face his father.
