The Last Kestrel

by Jill McGivering

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Right now?’ The water in the bucket was still moving, scattering shards of light.

  ‘Yes. It is most urgent.’

  She sighed, reached for her dusty towel.

  Najib led her to a corner of the compound and crouched there, his back to the mud wall. Goat droppings lay scattered at their feet. The stink of dried urine rose all around them from the earth. Ellen stood in front of him, looking down at his anxious face.

  ‘What is it?’

  Najib looked past her, his eyes darting, checking who might hear. His manner had changed completely.

  ‘That lady,’ he said. ‘The one with the cut leg.’

  ‘Hasina? What about her?’

  ‘She sends a message to you.’

  ‘A message?’

  Najib peered round again, as if for spies. His forehead was tight with tension. ‘She wants to do mission with you. Mercy mission. For villagers.’

  ‘A mercy mission?’

  ‘Yes. Taking some food, medicine and whatnot.’

  She rubbed her damp hands through her hair, already feeling hot again. ‘She should ask the soldiers. That’s nothing to do with me.’

  Najib was gently wringing his hands. ‘This is what I am telling her. But she wants you to go,’ he said. ‘Just ladies, she is saying. Not me even.’

  Ellen shook her head. ‘That’s not safe, Najib,’ she said. ‘I doubt they’d even let me.’

  Najib shrugged. ‘I told her that,’ he said. He pulled a face. ‘She is stupid lady. Peasant only. She knows nothing.’

  She looked at him closely. ‘What does she mean? A mercy mission?’

  ‘She says some ladies are hiding in a secret place. Without food, water. She thinks she knows where. They need help but they are afraid of the soldiers. She can’t go alone. The soldiers might hurt her. But you are not a soldier. Maybe, if you go too, this is possible.’

  She brushed sand off a large stone and sat down heavily beside him. ‘Dangerous.’

  Najib nodded. ‘Too dangerous,’ he repeated. ‘I told her that too. She says no, you are a strong lady. You aren’t afraid.’

  She kicked at the sand and loose stones at her feet, disturbing a trail of ants. ‘It’s not about being afraid,’ she said. ‘I’m just not sure it’s possible.’

  ‘Of course.’ Najib sat quietly for a moment. ‘Also,’ he said at last, ‘she is not a good lady.’ His voice was low, conspiratorial. ‘They are not a good family, I think. Not for trusting.’

  Everyone seemed determined to warn her about these villagers. She didn’t see what basis they had for being so suspicious. She thought of the women who’d taken the risk of coming back to their village, despite the soldiers, desperate for their pots and clothes. If they were out there in the desert, without shelter and scrabbling for life, it could be a strong part of her story.

  Najib pulled out a cigarette, lit it and drew on it quietly, blowing smoke into the cloud of small flies gathered round their heads.

  ‘That business with her husband,’ she said. ‘What do you make of it?’

  Najib wrinkled his nose in distaste. ‘He is stupid,’ he said. ‘He is making trouble for everyone.’

  ‘He seemed really frightened.’

  Najib nodded. ‘Very frightened,’ he said. ‘First he is loyal to Taliban. Now he’s a collaborator. How can he live here safely again? One day the soldiers will leave and the fighters will come back. Then – ’ he lifted an imaginary gun with his hands, looked down the sights and pulled the trigger – ‘bang! He is finished.’

  Ellen nodded. She remembered the strain in Abdul’s clenched hands. He had kept his eyes on his feet when he’d spoken to Mack. ‘You think he does have a son out there? A wounded son?’

  Najib shrugged. ‘Maybe. But I don’t believe him. Maybe he will lead the soldiers into some trap.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Najib pushed himself upright again and stretched out his legs. ‘So I will tell that lady that your answer is no.’ He looked pleased. ‘That is a good decision.’

  He bent down to rub his cigarette butt into sparks in the sand and bury it neatly under a stone.

  ‘Tell her yes,’ she said.

  Najib’s expression collapsed. He put a hand out towards her and opened his mouth to argue. She spoke again before he could.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone about this, Najib,’ she said. ‘OK? No matter who asks you. Promise me?’

  His face, as he nodded, was sullen.

  She found Hasina lying with her eyes closed, her crutches crossed at her side. The tattooed junior medic was unpacking a box of kit. She nodded to Ellen.

  ‘Sly old bird, that one.’

  Ellen looked down at Hasina’s face. The muscles of one cheek were twitching as if she were dreaming. Her skin was relaxed, her fine wrinkles erased. She looked uncharacteristically peaceful.

  ‘Sly?’

  ‘She’s not that ill. I’d have her out but the boss won’t let us.’

  As soon as the medic moved on, Hasina’s bright green eyes snapped open and settled on Ellen. They were sharp with anticipation. The two women held each other’s gaze, then Hasina slowly smiled. She reached out a hand for Ellen to haul her to her feet. She walked stiffly, leaving the crutches behind.

  Ellen followed her to the deserted corner of the camp and watched her rummage through the kit piled there. Hasina started to lift roll mats and sleeping bags and scavenge through boxes.

  ‘Hey.’ Ellen kept her voice low. She looked round to see if anyone was watching. Dillon and Moss, the only soldiers in sight, were hunched over their clothes, pummelling and wringing. ‘Stop that.’

  Hasina was gathering plastic bottles of water in her arms. When she had five or six, she dumped them at Ellen’s feet. The second time she came back to her with bright plastic packets of army food. Brown biscuits in green foil, boiled sweets, small tubes of soft cheese and strawberry jam, cold sachets of ration meals.

  ‘They’ll notice, you know.’ Ellen frowned at her. ‘They won’t like it.’

  The third time, Hasina brought back a bulky medical kit and a pouch of field dressings. She pointed to Ellen’s rucksack. Her expression wasn’t beseeching or even inquiring. It was an order. Ellen shook her head, sighed. Hasina was sitting on her haunches, her shoulders raised like a vulture’s wings, her eyes sharp.

  The young guard on the gate was slouching against the wall, trying to squeeze himself into a thin line of shade. His face was pink with sunburn. He levered himself off the wall to stand up as they approached. Hasina had brought just one crutch, stabbing it into the sand in front of her as if it were a walking stick. She’d pulled her headscarf forward over her eyes.

  ‘We’re together.’ Ellen had slung the rucksack over her shoulder. She gestured back towards the house. ‘It’s OK. Major Mack knows.’

  The young private hesitated and narrowed his eyes. He looked past them towards the house. The area where the officers usually gathered, with camp chairs and table, was depleted.

  ‘I take full responsibility,’ she said. ‘Ellen Thomas. NewsWorld magazine.’

  He gave her a sullen look. The metal bolt screamed as the guard unfastened the gate, then locked it behind them.

  The mud roads outside were hazy with heat. Dust swirled in clouds as they walked. Ellen was very conscious of being without an armed escort. There were hidden military faces everywhere, guns swivelling as they tracked their movement. She put her hand on Hasina’s arm.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘maybe we should go back.’

  Hasina shook her off, her eyes contemptuous. She spat sideways into the dust, adjusted her headscarf and walked on.

  Ellen walked a step or two behind, hurrying to keep up. Hasina was lean and wiry, moving quickly despite her injured leg. She was looking straight ahead, picking her way deftly between piles of dried animal dung and loose stones. The earth fortifications and barbed wire, unfurled like giant rolls of tumbleweed
along the ditches, seemed invisible to her. The metal flashed with sun as they moved past.

  Ellen shrugged her rucksack into a new position, trying to spread the weight. It was rubbing her body in wet, sticky patches along her shoulders and down her back. Hasina, ahead, turned left and disappeared. Ellen hurried to follow. A narrow alleyway threaded its way between two compounds, slimy with rotting rubbish. Beyond, the lane contracted to a dirt track into a cornfield. By the time Ellen reached it, Hasina had been engulfed by the standing corn.

  The ground sloped downwards. The earth underfoot was slippery with dry undergrowth and uneven with clods. Small flies hung in a cloud of dots round her head, buzzing in her ears and nipping her neck. She was starting to pant. The corn stalks scratched at her arms as she pushed her way through, raising red weals. Sweat had formed a stinging glaze across her cracked skin. The rucksack was a dead weight on her shoulders.

  She was disorientated. Which way had Hasina gone? Blood banged in her ears. The stench of rotting vegetation rose from the ground. She started to push through the corn more urgently, not caring how much noise she made. The press of the corn around her made her suddenly claustrophobic. If she could only…

  Hasina was suddenly beside her. Where had she come from? Her hand was gripping Ellen’s arm. Her large green eyes were fierce. An ambush, Ellen thought. Betrayed. As she stared into Hasina’s face, noises broke through the field. The thud of boots. The dry crack of corn as bodies forced their way forwards. A low male voice.

  Hasina put her hand flat on the top of Ellen’s head, her eyes never leaving her face, and forced her quietly downwards into a crouch. They perched, stiff, on their haunches. Hasina’s hand was still pressing down on Ellen’s crown as if she were anointing her. Her damp skin smelt of the earth.

  The boots came closer. Ellen’s muscles were shuddering with the stress of the crouch. She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, willing herself not to move. Could these be Taliban fighters, so close to camp? Or soldiers? The memory flashed back to her of the blind scrambling in the ditch, just before the soldiers had bombed the house. Hasina’s house. The corn was trembling around them with each heavy step. The press of blood was painful in her chest.

  And then silence. Hasina’s hot hand stayed on her head. An eternity passed. Ellen opened her eyes. Hasina’s eyes were closed, her face straining with concentration. Listening. Calculating where on this piece of land the men might be. Finally Hasina withdrew her hand. She opened her eyes and gave Ellen an unexpected smile.

  They walked on. The ground twisted under their feet, turning for a while to the left, then sharply down, picking up a small trail through another set of fields. They left the standing corn behind. The further they moved from the river, the more lunar and desolate the landscape became. The backs of Ellen’s legs were slippery with sweat. Ahead, Hasina drove forward relentlessly, using her crutch as a third leg.

  Hasina turned abruptly to one side and threaded her way down a sharp slope, balancing her weight with her crutch. She was zigzagging into a small gully. Boulders clung to the sides. Ellen skidded as a rock beneath her feet suddenly gave way and went clattering down ahead of her. Its bouncing sent a ripple of echoes. Ellen paused, looking upwards. The slopes rising round them as they descended were steep and unforgiving. If anyone came to the rim, they’d be sitting targets. She hesitated, jamming her rucksack against the rock and sand and leaning backwards into it.

  Hasina had reached the bottom. She stood, hands on hips, and stared up. Ellen pushed herself forward off the side of the slope and started to climb down again, testing each foothold with care before she committed her weight, her eyes on her feet. At the bottom, she rested, legs splayed, on a boulder and drank water. Her rucksack sat on the ground beside her.

  Hasina was crouched in a corner, scratching at a clump of dead brushwood. It was piled behind a rock at the foot of the gully. She burrowed into it with her hands, then kicked away loose stones. Pashto words were tumbling from her, low and insistent. Ellen looked away, scanning the top of the hollow for movement. Suddenly there was silence. When she looked back, Hasina had vanished.

  The brushwood had concealed a square hole, the width of a man’s shoulders, set in the earth at ground level. Three sides were lined with weathered pieces of wood. Ellen climbed round the large boulder, less than a foot in front of it, to peer inside. She stretched out her hands to touch the wood. It was warm, alive against the stone. Inside the hole, deep in the blackness, she sensed movement. A scrabbling in the dirt. A thick animal smell rose to greet her, encased in stale air. She hesitated. Hasina must have crawled inside. Anyone going in would be defenceless, blinded by the darkness and framed by the sunlight. She went back to fetch her rucksack and dug out her torch.

  The beam was powerful but narrow, illuminating a thin cone of darkness. The hole marked the entrance to a short passage, a crawl space just big enough for a small adult to force their way through. The beam dispersed before the passage ended. No way of knowing how far into the earth it ran. She lifted the beam to the roof and craned her head upside down to examine it. A single staff was embedded in the mud, running vertically from the entrance into the interior. The earth round it was dull and settled, as if the whole structure had been there for some years. It didn’t look safe.

  She put the torch between her teeth and pushed her rucksack into the hole, then her head and shoulders. The heady smell of compacted earth was at once overwhelming. When her hips followed, they blocked out the remaining shards of daylight. All she could see now was the wavering light of the torch in her mouth, swinging pale and weak in front of her as she inched forward. The mud seemed to clamp itself round her body, a hand squeezing her flesh. She wriggled forward, then stopped to breathe. Panic was rising inside her in waves, threatening to suffocate her.

  She closed her eyes and tried to force her muscles to relax. She was losing her grip on the torch. Her hands, jammed by her sides, couldn’t reach it. She tried to inch forward but her hips seemed stuck in the dirt. She kicked her legs like a drowning swimmer, her feet flapping against the earth.

  The torch fell sideways out of her mouth. The beam arced and settled on a patch of mud a few inches ahead of her, to the right. It illuminated a large spider, threading its way round a rock. Ellen closed her eyes again and forced her breathing to settle. She lifted her chest on her hands and rammed her upper body forwards again. The earth seemed to be sweating with her, tight and close. If she made it too slippery, she thought, the tunnel might collapse. She would be entombed here, absorbed by the desert.

  For a moment, nothing moved. Then, in a sudden rush, her hips skidded free and her head shot forward, a protruding rock grazing her cheek. Her chin overtook the torch, her neck extinguishing the beam and plunging her into blackness. Her eyes spangled lightning rods of yellow and green. She sniffed. The air had changed. The dank closeness of the tunnel was shifting. The air had a new note; not fresh, but somehow fuller, as if the tunnel were opening up at last. She inhaled gulps of it, drawing it deep into her lungs, then summoned all her strength and pushed forwards, nudging the torch in front of her with her nose and pushing the rucksack ahead of it all with the crown of her head, like a seal with a ball.

  The scrape of her shoulders along the earth filled her ears. Now she was moving again, in jerky, frantic movements, propelling herself forward, slithering and dragging her lower body. All she could think of was escape, of being free of this claustrophobic grave of a tunnel and being able to breathe again without the weight of the cool dark earth crushing her chest.

  Her rucksack went first. It rocked, then tipped forward into nothingness. A crash as it hit the ground a second later. Air rushed in behind it. Her head was the next to plunge free of the tunnel. She opened and closed her mouth, trying to taste the new darkness. She was being squeezed out by the earth. The torch, knocked forwards, had already fallen. The beam had gone out. The blackness around her became total, stuffing her mouth and eyes. Her shoulders came close behind, until sh
e hung, arms trapped under her, her upper body free of the tunnel and dangling into space. She slithered out in an ungainly forward roll, her hands finally free, groping for the floor. She lay, panting, on cool sand. Relief ran up and down her limbs in numbing waves. The air was moist and close but instinctively she could taste oxygen. Better air. She could sense it.

  She was lying, curled on her side, relishing survival, when she realized what she could hear. Her body stiffened. Breathing. Close by. Human? Animal? The hairs on her neck rose. She wasn’t alone. She spread her fingers and sieved through the sand and stones round her body, searching. Her fingertips finally knocked against the smooth plastic of her torch and closed round it. She pointed it away from her body and snapped it on.

  The beam fell at once on the figures huddled in front of her. Hasina, dishevelled, her headscarf crooked on her head, was sitting against a mud and rock wall, her legs tucked under her. The upper body of a young Afghan man was stretched limply across her thighs. His eyes were closed, his cheeks hollow. His face was pallid and moist with drops of sweat. Hasina’s eyes stared, wide in the torchlight, with the fierceness of a cornered animal. She was cradling the young man’s head in her lap. Her fingertips stroked the contours of his face. Ellen ran the torch down the young man’s body. His cotton tunic was grey with dirt, smeared with patches of filth. His feet, a set of fine bones held together by cheap rope sandals, were twitching, fluttering weakly against the sand like the wings of a dying bird.

  Hasina’s son. Of course. Ellen’s apprehension turned to a sense of triumph as, in a moment, a pattern that had been blurred suddenly shifted and sharpened into focus. No wonder Hasina had been desperate to pursue her so-called mercy mission. It was not a group of stranded village women who needed food and water so urgently, but her own son. Ellen nodded to herself. She couldn’t make out the whole puzzle yet but she sensed that this youth was key.

  Hasina crawled forward and fell on the rucksack, pulling out water, food. She sat, supporting her son’s head, and dribbled water into his mouth, drip by drip. Ellen studied the contours of his face. The remnants of a handsome young man beneath the pale mask. She wondered how long he’d been lying here without food or water. Had his parents known this all the time? She frowned. Why had Abdul asked the Major for help in tracking him down? It could have been a bluff, of course. An attempt to lead the soldiers as far from his hiding place as possible. But if that were so, what did they stand to gain from it? Hasina was struggling to bring her boy back to life. Her concentration was intense.