The Last Kestrel

by Jill McGivering

‘Try me.’

  She closed her eyes and tried to focus. Phil had the concentration span of a 3-year-old. She wouldn’t get long. ‘Something shady’s going on. A translator’s been murdered. One I used to work with.’

  Phil interrupted. ‘He wasn’t working for us when—’

  ‘No.’ She knew the way his mind worked. Legal liability. ‘He was with the army.’

  ‘So who killed him?’

  She paused. ‘I’m not sure. But there’s something else. A family. I’ve been on this big army offensive. They dug some dead kids out of a house they hit.’

  ‘The army hit?’

  ‘’Fraid so. Three young kids dead. A woman survived. I’m still piecing it together but I think her family has something to do with the Taliban. And with a recent suicide bomb.’

  Pause. ‘And what’s that got to do with the dead translator?’

  ‘Well, there might be a link.’ She sensed Phil’s confusion. She was losing him. ‘Between the suicide bomb and his death.’

  The creak of his office door. Footsteps. A man’s voice, low, too distorted for her to identify.

  ‘Hang on.’

  Phil’s voice became muffled. He was speaking brusquely to someone, his hand on the receiver. She waited, listening to the backdrop noises, thinking of the life of the office, the gossip and rivalries and intrigues, being played out so far away. Another world.

  Phil came back. ‘So what’s the top line?’

  ‘At worst, the impact of the offensive on this Afghan family, caught in the middle.’

  Silence. That, clearly, didn’t grab him. ‘But I’m hoping there’s something sexier. Some real dirt. I’m digging.’

  ‘I’m looking for a lead.’ Phil sounded grumpy. ‘Something hard edged, Ellen. Investigative. Forget the feel-good stuff. Heard it all before.’

  ‘How long can I have?’

  A rhythmical knocking. She knew what that was. He was bouncing his pen on the desk, calculating.

  ‘Tomorrow would be good.’

  ‘The day after?’

  He sighed. ‘Call me tomorrow.’ He was already bored; she could hear it in his voice. Just before the line was cut, he remembered to add: ‘And Ellen – keep your head down.’

  She switched off the phone and headed on, taking the path to the right towards the bombed house. Ahead and far below, the river was running lazily in the heat, shimmering as it twisted. Its banks were dotted with the squares of military vehicles. A flash caught her eye as an armoured truck moved onto the bridge and crossed to the far side.

  The stench of the decomposing goats greeted her before she entered the clearing, turning her stomach. The desert was already picking at their bones. Their carcasses were black with ants. She picked her way through the debris, looking without touching, hoping to find fresh inspiration in the fragments of broken furniture and trampled clothing. The innards looked bleached by the sun, their colours fading.

  She widened her circle and paced round the edge of the clearing. She stopped when she reached the flattened path into the corn where she’d found the bloodstained Qur’an. The broken stalks were still clearly visible. She thought of Hasina’s visit here, when she’d flattened herself on the ground as if imbibing its blessing. Now she understood why Hasina had reacted with such passion. The Qur’an must have belonged to her son: the sign she longed for that he was still alive.

  She lowered herself onto her hands and knees in the corn, imagining his escape. With his incriminating injury, he would be afraid of the soldiers but too weak to flee with the rest of the villagers. The brittle corn scratched her sunburnt skin. She turned over and sat quietly, hunched in thought, swatting every few moments at the tiny flies round her face. There was so much she still didn’t understand.

  A noise. Footsteps, then the approach of Afghan voices, speaking in Pashto. Men’s voices, low and secretive. People who didn’t want to be heard. She hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to stand up and reveal herself. Her heart was pounding. They might be angry if they stumbled across her and thought she’d concealed herself deliberately. Perhaps she could crawl forward through the corn, retracing the route Aref had taken, and escape before they found her?

  Too late. Corn was swishing against thighs and legs somewhere off to her right, boots thumping on dry earth. Two men were hurrying through the field and had almost gained the clearing. The sounds were already close and distinct. She lowered herself to her belly and tried to twist round in the narrow gap to see. Any greater movement and they’d hear. Anyone, she thought. They could be anyone. Even the remnants of the armed fighters Mack said they’d seen in the village. She froze, pressing herself into the ground and trying to choke back fear. Adrenalin was kicking her senses into life. She listened intently. The voices had steadied now. One was deep, the other younger and more timid. A voice, she realized, that she knew.

  She strained to peer low through the stalks. A dark shape moved across the front of the house. She raised herself onto her elbows and inched forward, pausing every time the corn around her crackled. Her forehead and temples were slick with sweat. When she came within a few feet of the clearing, she sank again to her belly and pressed her chin into the earth, trying to make herself as invisible as she could.

  Najib was facing her, his shoulders hunched. His words, tumbling from him in a nervous stream of Pashto, meant nothing to her, but she could tell by his tone that he was afraid. He was holding something in his hands, trying to push it towards the other man. She strained her neck to the side, struggling to see more. Najib turned and for a moment he seemed to look right at her through the corn. She closed her eyes and waited, listening to the thump of blood in her ears. Nothing. His nervous voice faltered and then continued with its pleading.

  When she opened her eyes again, Najib had moved forward towards the other man, his arms still outstretched. She could see now that the object in his hands was a cloth bag, cheaply made and bulging.

  The other man turned and paced back and forth, his hands striking the air. He was uttering only a few words but they were spat at Najib. She recognized the thick set of his neck and shoulders with a sense of the inevitable. Karam. His rounded hat was perched high on his head, his long cotton shirt tight across his back, the outline of his shoulders traced in dark, wet patches. Najib took a step backwards, his face stricken, his eyes fixed on Karam’s movements.

  When Karam finished and stood still, there was a tense silence. Najib’s face was pale and slick. It might have been an illusion, the shimmer of the hot air, but he seemed to be shivering. Ellen felt the sudden burn of cramp in her foot and clamped her teeth tight on her lip. She shifted her weight a fraction, trying to arch the muscle to stretch it out. A bird flew, crying, overhead.

  She looked again. Karam had vanished from her narrow field of view. Najib had crept a pace further to the right and fallen to his knees, holding out the cloth bag across the flat of his hands, as if he were making an offering at a shrine. His expression was strained almost to tears. As she watched, he set the bag on the mud, then lowered his head to the earth before it in an attitude of supplication or prayer.

  She strained to raise her shoulders and see a little more. A hand, Karam’s strong hand, moved forward towards the bag in a single decisive motion, swept it up and snatched it from view. His feet thudded on the mud as he left, pushing through the dry curtain of corn. She waited. Stillness settled back over the clearing. Najib was lying silent and prostrate, stretched out full-length in the dust, his back rising and falling with panting breaths. When he finally lifted his head and gazed after Karam, the emotion in his eyes was frightened relief.

  16

  The house looked deserted. The soldier was sitting on a rickety wooden chair. A looted chair, Hasina thought, stolen from a nearby house. She listened to his rasping breath as she walked past him, her head bowed and covered, and headed towards the building. On the far side, hidden from the path, Palwasha was sitting in the shade. She was staring out towards the valley, her eyes
blank. She jumped when Hasina approached her; she looked embarrassed.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Palwasha scowled up at her. Her eyes were red and sunken. She must be crying more for her children than she would admit. ‘Getting bored of your grand foreign friends?’

  ‘Sister-in-law.’ Hasina opened the bag she was carrying and showed its contents. Two chipped cups, tea and a small cooking pot. Given to her by that man from Kabul, Najib. They were too useful to refuse. ‘Shall I make us some tea?’

  Palwasha shrugged. ‘Tea?’ She gestured vaguely back towards the house. ‘If you like.’

  They squatted side by side, flicking off flies and watching the water boil. Palwasha made no effort to speak. Hasina took small sideways glances as she prepared the cups. Palwasha looked suddenly different to her. The ghost of the old woman she would become was poking through her face. The tops of her arms were starting to lose their fleshiness. Her lips were chapped and bloodless.

  They sipped the tea and looked out at the empty fields below. The low throb of a military engine rose distantly from the valley.

  ‘How our lives have changed,’ said Hasina.

  Palwasha grunted and blew across her tea.

  ‘Karam brother-in-law is away?’

  She pulled a sour face. ‘I wonder you dare ask,’ she said, ‘after your husband’s behaviour.’

  Hasina clicked her tongue. ‘Husbands,’ she said. She kept her voice low and even. ‘Why must men always fight? We women manage our quarrels without shedding each other’s blood.’

  Palwasha gave her a wry look. ‘If I were wronged, I would shed more than just blood,’ she said.

  Hasina sipped her tea. The warmth was comforting. ‘You have the heart of a man,’ she said. ‘And the brains too.’

  Palwasha shook her head. ‘Karam acts so tough, like such a big man. But he cries like a baby. All night. He thinks I don’t hear.’ She scoffed. ‘Cries and pounds his chest, wailing for the children. Cursing the foreigners. Promising revenge.’ She gave a thin smile. ‘I will have revenge,’ she said. ‘If my husband fails, I will take it myself.’

  A bird swept low over the yard. They sat. The sun was hot. Light pounded the bald earth in waves.

  ‘Karam knows what Abdul has done.’

  Hasina looked up sharply. Palwasha hadn’t moved.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He knows.’ Palwasha carried on calmly sipping her tea. ‘He saw Abdul with the soldiers, riding in their vehicle with them.’

  Hasina heard blood thick and loud in her ears. Had he gone so soon? Before they could even talk, before she could try again to stop him?

  ‘He hid his face,’ Palwasha said, ‘like this.’ She drew her scarf over her nose and mouth, covering the lower part of her face, then let it fall again. ‘Did he really think we wouldn’t know him? He’s a fool.’ She turned to face Hasina, her eyes cruel. ‘You were a fool to let him. You want to lose him too?’

  Hasina put her hand to her mouth. The yard was rocking in front of her eyes. Palwasha was suddenly far away, her voice faint. She closed her eyes. A bang at her side. Her legs were burning, her skirt hot and sodden. She snapped her eyes open. The cup, fallen from her hand, was rolling on the ground beside her, the remains of the tea soaking in a dark splash into the mud. She pulled her skirt clear from her sore skin and fanned it.

  Palwasha was leaning in towards her. ‘Why is he doing it – turning traitor?’

  Hasina shook her head.

  ‘If you plead with my husband, maybe he can help. But why is he doing it? For money?’

  Hasina let out a cry. ‘Money? How can you think such a thing?’

  Palwasha shrugged. ‘Then what? What can the foreigners give you that’s worth risking his life, worth betraying his own people, his own brother?’

  Hasina thought of Aref, lying in his dark lair inside the ground. Her brain was exploding inside her skull. What parent would not give their life for their child?

  She put her lips close to Palwasha’s ear and whispered.

  ‘Aref,’ she said. ‘He is still alive.’

  When he first came back, Karam refused to speak to her. He turned away at once, wrinkling his nose as if she repulsed him and disappearing inside the house. Palwasha waited with her. Silence.

  ‘Perhaps I should leave?’

  Palwasha shook her head. ‘Wait.’ She got to her feet and followed Karam inside. Hasina heard their low voices murmuring through the wall. She should creep back to the foreigners’ camp, she thought. Just leave. Her head was so heavy. She wanted to lie down, to sleep.

  Palwasha came out. ‘He’s upset,’ she said. Her tone was more scornful than sympathetic. ‘I’ve talked to him. Go in and try.’

  The house was small and cramped. Hasina took a step inside the doorway and was engulfed at once by the darkness. The mud floor was cool under her feet. She stood still, listening and letting her eyes adjust to the gloom. She realized her legs were shaking. She was afraid of Karam, of his anger. Then she heard a sound. A noise she least expected. A stifled sob.

  She felt her way along the wall. Shapes were emerging in the blackness. A stool. A low table. Towards the back, a cot. A figure was lying there, hunched round into a ball, crying. Karam? She stopped and listened. The crying paused, as if he were holding his breath, listening too. Then another sob and it began again.

  She should leave. Her eyes were strained with staring into the darkness. The house smelt musty. The straw at her feet was dull and limp as she swished through it. A good sweeping, she thought. If Palwasha would let her, she could have this whole place—

  ‘Is it you?’ His voice was thick. Angry? She wasn’t sure. She stayed silent. A pause. He was breathing noisily. ‘Hasina?’

  ‘Yes, brother-in-law.’ She didn’t move. If he jumped up, she calculated, she could reach the doorway and out before he could get hold of her. Her eyes were adjusting better all the time. A bucket standing there against the wall. Cotton clothes hanging from a nail on the side wall, the shape of a tall, thin person. A square crate or box.

  ‘Come.’ He was holding out an arm to her. It was waving in the air like the branch of a tree. He is stronger than me, she thought. If he hurts me, no one will protect me now. He sniffed and swallowed. She remembered the sound of his sobbing and walked forward. She knelt down beside the end of the cot and dipped her head to him.

  ‘Please,’ she said. He was sitting up now, taking her hands and folding them in his. His fingers were hot and wet. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘Help me.’

  She sat stiffly, waiting to see if he raised his hand to hurt her. Instead he bent his head forward over their entwined hands and started to sob again. His shoulders were shaking with his breaths. His hair, close to her face, smelt of block soap. His thick tears and mucus ran into their cupped hands and soaked her palms.

  She leaned forward, inching towards him little by little, alert to any sudden movement, and gently withdrew one of her hands from his. When she put her arm round him, he moved nearer at once, pressing himself into her arms, and let himself be comforted. She stroked his hair and rocked him, crooning in a low voice: hush, my dear, hush now.

  That night, Hasina couldn’t sleep. She lay on her back in the foreign soldiers’ camp and stared up at the night sky. After all the walking and climbing of the day, her leg was seized with a shooting nerve pain like toothache. She shifted, trying to get comfortable. Somewhere near her, a young foreign soldier was moaning in his sleep.

  Her head was aching. Thoughts were pressing down on her brain, too many thoughts. Was Aref sleeping now? The bunker would be hot and airless at night. There might be rats biting him, attracted by the stench of blood. Ants and flies crawling on him. He might be unconscious again. What if he’d run out of water, too weak to care for himself? She bit down on her lip. Somehow, she didn’t know how, she must get back to him but make sure she was never seen.

  And what of Abdul? He hadn’t come to see her. Was he away, sleeping somewhere distant with th
e soldiers as they travelled and searched? Or had something terrible happened? The place beside her, where he’d slept last night, was large with emptiness. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine his steady breathing, his familiar smell.

  Karam’s distress frightened her much more than his anger would have done. He had cried in her arms until he was limp. For his children, of course. But also for Abdul.

  ‘Why did he do it?’ His voice was hardly audible at first. ‘Why? My own brother.’

  She had thought at first that he was weeping about the fight and the vehemence of their falling out. ‘You can make it up,’ she said. ‘Hush now. Even the closest of brothers sometimes fight.’

  His eyes turned on her, red-rimmed and wide in the gloom. ‘Not that,’ he said. ‘Working with the infidels. So publicly. The fighters have eyes everywhere.’

  Her stomach turned to ice. ‘What will they do?’

  He shook his head, blew his nose on his cotton tunic. ‘I can’t stop it,’ he said. ‘How can I? They suspect me too. After all these years.’

  Her hand on his shoulder started to tremble. ‘But you’ve sacrificed so much,’ she said. ‘Your children. Your only son. Surely if you…’

  He shrugged. ‘I must lie low. We all must.’ He looked at Hasina strangely. ‘And you,’ he said. ‘You must quit the foreigners’ camp.’

  ‘Quit?’

  ‘Of course.’ He stared at her. ‘Leave them. Go into the desert and hide. If you stay with the soldiers, those people will kill you too.’ He gave her a hard look. ‘Especially if they find out about your son’s failure.’

  Hasina slowly withdrew her arm and sat back on her heels, her hands limp in her lap. So Palwasha had told him. He knew Aref was alive. Would he tell his friends? How could she take food and water to Aref now, knowing she might be watched? She might lead them straight to him.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said in a small voice, ‘we could all leave. Leave together and start again in another place.’

  Karam shook his head. His eyes bored into hers. ‘If they want to hunt us down,’ he said, ‘we can never hide. No matter wherever we go. They will find us.’