‘She was putting together belongings,’ Najib said. ‘Like her husband said to you.’
‘Why were the children there?’
Najib translated. His tone was cool. Ellen sensed his suspicion of this woman.
‘Playing,’ he said. ‘They hid in the house, she is saying. She didn’t know they were there.’
‘And who else was there?’
She watched Hasina closely as Najib asked the question. The green eyes were instantly wary.
‘No person.’
‘But someone threw grenades. Someone attacked the soldiers. Did she throw them? Or was there someone else there?’
Hasina’s face seemed to close. Her eyes became expressionless.
‘No. She says no person was there.’ Najib leaned forward to add in a stage whisper. ‘But maybe she is lying.’
‘So ask her again: who threw the grenades?’
‘She says she doesn’t know about grenades.’ Najib shrugged as if to say: what’s the point? You’re wasting your time.
The green eyes glared at her. Ellen held their gaze.
‘She doesn’t know anything,’ Najib was whispering. ‘She is just village woman. Not educated.’
Ellen opened her bag and brought out the bloodstained book she’d found in the cornfield by the house. She held it out wordlessly to show Hasina.
No need to ask if she recognized it. Hasina’s alarmed surprise registered at once. She grasped the book from her and brought it to her mouth to kiss. She ran her fingers over the dark stains along the side, as if she were licking them with her fingertips, tasting the blood. Ellen saw the confusion in her eyes.
‘That is Holy Qur’an,’ said Najib. He looked disapproving. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘At the house.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not good for you to take it,’ he said. ‘You are not Muslim lady.’
‘Ask her: whose is it?’
Hasina’s knuckles were white where she gripped the book.
‘Her husband’s, she says. It belongs to Abdul.’
Ellen shook her head. The woman was lying. She knew Abdul was all right because she’d just seen him. ‘So why does the sight of it upset her so much?’
Najib pulled a face. ‘I don’t know. Maybe she is very religious.’
‘Tell her I have photographs too. From the trunk. I’d like her to tell me who these people are. OK?’
Hasina had slipped the book under the blanket, still tight in her hand. Now she was shaking her head, speaking with passion. Najib shrank back a little, as if he were being scolded.
‘She is saying these are her photographs, her family,’ he said. ‘You must give them back.’
Ellen tried to soothe her with a low calm tone of voice. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course I will.’
Hasina had lifted herself onto her elbow, agitated. She turned to Ellen and glared at her as she spoke, fire in her eyes. Ellen remembered her weak attempt to spit at her when they were digging her out.
‘Maybe you should give her the pictures,’ said Najib. He seemed alarmed by her strength of feeling.
‘Of course. They’re hers.’ Ellen kept her eyes on Hasina, trying to quieten her. ‘No one’s disagreeing about that. I just wonder if she could—?’
A medic appeared, stony-faced. ‘What’s going on?’
Hasina was struggling to sit up, her drip knocking to and fro above her. Her face was contorted, words hurled like missiles.
The medic patted her on the shoulder, steadied the drip. ‘I think you’d better go,’ she said to Ellen.
‘She’s saying: where are the photographs?’ said Najib. ‘They are hers. This is what she is saying, over and over.’
‘Photographs?’ said the medic. ‘You can’t take pictures in here.’
‘I think perhaps you’d better give them,’ said Najib in a low voice. ‘She is very upset.’
‘I can see that.’ Ellen rummaged in her bag and handed over the few pictures she’d slipped out of the album. Stiffly posed family groups, set against mountains. Old-fashioned. Hasina and Abdul were in some, with others she didn’t recognize. ‘Ask her who these people are, would you?’
But Hasina had already snatched them from her and they too disappeared under the blanket.
‘If you want to see a patient again,’ said the medic coldly, ‘you’ll need my permission. Understood?’
As Ellen left, she paused and turned back for a final look. Hasina’s eyes were on her, strong and clear but with an expression she couldn’t quite read. Cunning or fear, or a mixture of the two?
10
The voices exhausted her. Their foreign words clattered like stones down a well. She had slept through the night, her body exhausted and drugged by their medicine. Now she was awake. The green material, strung round her, only shielded her a little from the sun. She lay, sweating, unable to move. Flies settled on her feet. Under the bandages, her leg ached. She was a prisoner.
Sometimes the camp was quiet. The soldiers’ voices fell silent. Somewhere outside the compound, engines droned. The doctor, that black man, came to her in the morning, bringing that man from Kabul to translate. Her leg was healing well, he said. He pulled the needles out of her arm and took away the empty fluid bags. When he smiled, his gums made a red gash in his dark skin. She must try to walk today. Perhaps in a day or two, she could go.
Go, she thought. Go where?
The women in men-trousers, their hair scraped back, came to check her temperature. They were shameless, their heads uncovered for all the men to see, their fingers thick as bananas. No man would marry them. They bent over her, pulling back her clothes and intruding on her flesh with wet cloths. The liquid smelt of lemons but it was false, hard scent, not of the earth.
A shadow came over her face and she opened her eyes. Sad brown eyes were gazing down at hers. A rough hand stretched down to touch her face, its fingernails black with earth. The fingers traced the contours, chin to cheek to hair.
‘I’m dreaming,’ she said. His kind face swam as her eyes filled.
‘Not dreaming.’ He stooped down close to her, settling himself at her side. He took her hand. ‘I have found you again.’
She was crying now, drowning in his familiar smell, of dust and of land. ‘Abdul,’ she said. He was squeezing her hand like a cloth, wringing it dry. ‘Abdul. I have had secrets from you. May Allah forgive me. Terrible secrets.’
He nodded. She could read in his face the knowledge of the dead children, his nephew and nieces, his blood. She pulled on his hand to make him lean in closer, so close his breath was warm on her neck.
‘I must speak to you of Aref,’ she said. ‘My husband, he is not in Kandahar.’
He sat silently beside her, his face close to her whispering mouth, as she told him the story of the boy fighters who had come to claim their son, about the suicide bombing and then her son’s return, crawling through the corn to find help, and escaping again to it, when the soldiers began their assault.
When she had finished her story, Abdul sat silently, his hands folded in his lap. He was still for a long time. Hasina lay watching him, exhausted by the effort of speech. Her mouth was dry.
‘They have buried the children,’ Abdul said at last. His voice cracked. ‘The house is gone.’
She nodded. ‘We must get word to Karam,’ she said. ‘They must be searching.’
The traitor from Kabul appeared round the canvas. Abdul looked at her, his face pale. Could this stranger have heard?
‘I am Najib,’ he said. ‘Major Mack wishes to speak to your wife.’ He bowed his head to Abdul, showing the respect due to an older man. ‘Perhaps it is better if you see him together?’
Abdul nodded. He helped Hasina raise her shoulders and fasten her scarf more closely over her head and neck. ‘I will speak,’ he whispered. ‘You stay quiet.’
The Major didn’t have a beard. He didn’t look wise. He crouched by Hasina’s knees as if he were about to milk a goat. If I kicked him, Hasi
na thought, he would topple right over into the dust. Now he was low, she could see the thinness of his fair hair. His scalp was pink and mottled. He was strong but not a man built for the desert. The conspirator from Kabul stood behind him, his hands folded at his groin, and translated back and forth.
‘Why was your wife in the house with the children?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t she leave? We issued warnings.’
Abdul inclined his head. ‘She went back to fetch our clothes and cooking knives,’ he said. ‘The children were frightened. Perhaps they followed her.’
The Major’s face was impassive. His eyes were ringed by white circles but his nose and cheeks had been burnt red by the sun. ‘Someone threw grenades at our men. Was it your wife?’
Abdul shook his head. ‘My wife is a simple woman,’ he said. ‘A village lady. What does she know of weapons?’
The Major was looking at Hasina, his eyes thoughtful. He would be a handsome man, for a Westerner, if he grew a beard. Behind him, the traitor shifted.
‘So someone else was there? A fighter?’
Abdul tutted. ‘If there had been a fighter, you would have found him,’ he said. ‘Just my wife was there, with the children.’
The Major’s voice became harder. ‘We know there’ve been militants in the village,’ he said. ‘We have photographs. We’ve been watching the movement here for some time.’
Abdul said nothing but Hasina smelt the tension in his body. He bowed his head to the ground. Somewhere outside the compound, a machine started up and the noise kept the silence busy. The Major’s eyes were searching, moving from his face to hers and back again. His red forehead had creased into a frown.
‘You’re lying,’ he said. ‘You’d be better off telling me the truth.’ Silence. He craned forward, reaching his body towards them. When he spoke, he made his voice soft again.
‘We are here to help you,’ he said. ‘To bring peace to the village.’
Abdul’s face broke into a slow, sad smile. ‘Peace?’ he said. ‘That is very hard for us to believe.’
They waited until the Commander had been gone some time before they dared to speak. Abdul leaned close to her, clasping her hand and whispered.
‘You must stay here for now,’ he said. ‘They say I can visit you. They’ve given me a paper.’ He pulled it out of his pocket to show her. It was a small paper, with black handwriting in their language. ‘See? I will come every day.’
He patted her hand. ‘You must get well enough to walk.’
He picked up a plastic bottle of water from the sand, half full. ‘Is this what you drink?’
She pulled a face. ‘Foreign water,’ she said. ‘It has no taste.’
He unscrewed the top and helped her swallow a little. Her lips were chapped.
‘You know where you are?’ he said. ‘This is Masoud’s house. The soldiers have made it into a camp. The whole village is the same. They sleep in all the houses, in the compounds; even in the straw with the goats and chickens.’
He stopped and shook his head in disbelief. ‘The corn is rotting in the ground. The animals are thirsty. What kind of men are these, who don’t know how to care for a donkey, a hen?’
‘Aref,’ she said. ‘You must look for him.’
He nodded. ‘Of course.’ He bent over to kiss her forehead. His beard scraped against the side of her nose. ‘May Allah bless and protect us,’ he said. ‘We must have faith.’
A little food. The heat of the sun. Her head aching. Her skin, thick and wet as a dog’s tongue. Sleep.
The next day, the uniformed woman came to her with metal sticks. She gestured to her to sit up and pushed her thick hands into Hasina’s armpits. She grunted as she heaved her, lifting Hasina upright and slowly lowering her weight onto her legs. Hasina stuck the injured leg, in its white bandages, forward into the dirt, afraid. The green screen of material swam in front of her eyes. The woman kept her grasp tight. She was talking to Hasina in her foreign language: short words, spoken loudly in her face as if she were a fool.
‘This is my country,’ Hasina said. ‘You should speak my language.’
The woman stared at her, not understanding. Najib came across and showed her how to use the sticks to walk.
‘You must practise,’ he said. ‘Build up your strength.’
‘Practise?’ She looked round Masoud’s compound, cluttered now with foreign soldiers and tents and hanging mosquito nets. The Commander was sitting in a chair close to the entrance to Masoud’s house, papers spread out across his lap. Her head was clearer. She swung the sticks and propelled herself forward.
‘I want to go back,’ she said. ‘To see my home.’
Najib looked shocked. ‘Too far,’ he said. ‘You’ll be too tired.’
She stared him out. ‘I need to see it.’
She practised walking as the foreigners ran back and forth, discussing her request in their own language. Najib’s face was pursed, his eyes anxious. She had embarrassed him, she knew that. Finally he came scurrying back.
‘You may go,’ he said. ‘The journalist will take you. And one of the soldiers. And I will come too.’
‘If that woman comes,’ she said, ‘tell her to cover her head.’
The state of the main street shocked her. She stepped out from the metal gate and stood there, leaning on her sticks, breathing hard. Not a villager in sight. The soldiers had driven military vehicles right against the walls of Masoud’s compound. Young men sat inside them, dressed in their sand- and mud-coloured clothes, helmets on their heads, dark goggles over their eyes, staring down their guns at her. Masoud was such a gentle man. What would he say to this?
The foreign woman had emerged from the compound and was walking ahead, following just behind a soldier. The two of them paused at the end of the street, waiting for her. The soldier crouched low and trained his gun round the wall.
Hasina pushed herself forward. The street was otherwise deserted, apart from the parked vehicles and a bewildered wandering goat. There was evidence of soldiers in every compound, every house. Eyes watched her from tank turrets that slid in their sockets, following her, as she passed. Compound corners were covered with thick nets, spread out like spiders’ webs. The life of the village had been snuffed out. No chatter, no gossip. No children, no women. Only foreign fighting men. By the time she reached the corner, the foreign woman and the soldier were already some way ahead.
Hasina’s arms were starting to ache. She stopped often, wiping down her face with her scarf and shifting her weight on the sticks. Najib buzzed at her side, telling her it was too much, she should go back and rest. She swatted him away.
Her breath quickened as she took the winding track from the main street down to the house. She stumbled, setting stones bouncing and one of her sticks clanging to the ground.
‘Slowly.’ Najib picked up the dropped stick and handed it to her. ‘You’ll fall.’ The soldier behind them stopped too, keeping a careful distance. She set off again, her eyes to the ground as she rounded the final corner and picked her way down the slope to the back of the house.
She smelt the change before she saw it. A thick odour of stale dust, with a sour note of decay. She had been told the truth but she stared, just the same, in utter disbelief. One wall was still standing, the interior exposed like innards. The decorated mirror her mother and father had given them as a marriage gift. Her best red scarf. To one side of the heap of rubble, their trunk, dented. Its lid was standing open. They’d looted it, of course. Broken belongings had been piled to one side. Blue-painted sticks from the stool. The battered cot she and Abdul had shared from the day they married so many years ago. Her cracked cooking pot and ladle. All picked over by these foreign vultures.
The foreign woman had stopped at the edge of the clearing and turned back to wait. Her pale eyes were on Hasina’s face. Nothing moved.
Beyond the house, the land stood lush in the strong morning light, the corn shining as if it were aflame. She saw where boots had trampled down the crops and t
he ragged scar in the boundary wall where the small bomb had exploded, scattering mud.
Najib was at her elbow, his breath hot on her cheek.
‘Madam,’ he said, ‘let me help you.’
When she had rested, she asked where the journalist had found Aref’s copy of the Holy Book. They led her to the far side of the clearing, to a crumpled path that stretched out into the corn, pointing away from the house and the valley, across the fields. Hasina handed Najib the sticks and lowered herself to the earth, her legs trailing behind her, until she was lying with her body and face pressed against the ground. She filled her lungs with the deep rich smell of dust and vegetation, moving her arms above her head as if she were swimming through the corn. She rubbed the dirt into her hands, embracing the field. Let them watch. She laughed into the ground. Aref had been here. She could smell him. No blood. No sign of struggle. Just her boy, crawling this way to make his escape. He was alive and he was out there. Wherever he was, she would find him.
11
Ellen threaded her arm under Hasina’s shoulder, lifting the hot, damp cave of cotton at her armpit. The bone was light, hollow as a bird’s, and almost fleshless, riding on Ellen’s own as she took her weight. Hasina’s breathing was shallow against her ear. The sun was high overhead now, making their skin slippery as they clung together.
At the junction with the main street, Ellen saw a stretch of broken wall and lowered Hasina onto it. She stood back, rotating her shoulders and kneading the tight muscle. Frank had dropped to one knee, tense, pointing his weapon down the track. Najib was hanging back, watchful, his face anxious. She dug water out of her pack, tipped Hasina’s head back and trickled some into her mouth. It spilled from the corners and ran in rivulets down her chin and throat.
The air reeked of petrol, wrapped in fine clouds of dust and the noise of a heavy engine. Further down the street, thickset Danish soldiers were working a mechanical digger, churning the dirt and piling it along the verge as fresh defences. Hasina’s head had sunk to her chest. Ellen wondered how long it was safe to let her rest.
The Last Kestrel Page 12
