The Last Kestrel

by Jill McGivering

  Hasina held his gaze. ‘He is not the son of a traitor.’

  Karam nodded. ‘Of course I know that,’ he said. ‘But they will see things differently. You don’t know these men. They have no mercy.’

  Behind them, Palwasha appeared in the doorway, shaking out a scarf and folding it. Karam looked back, watching her. He waited until she had gone inside again before he spoke, leaning closer to Hasina.

  ‘He will die anyway,’ he said. His voice had fallen to a whisper. ‘Would you rather he died like a dog in the desert? In disgrace? Or with honour, as a precious martyr?’

  His eyes were on hers. ‘And you,’ he said. ‘If you are the mother of a martyr, they will honour you. Protect you. That too would give Aref comfort.’

  She closed her eyes. How dare he talk to her like this of martyrs and missions? Hadn’t he done enough? They should go, leave her. She would tend Aref. She would stop his foolish ideas. She would nurse him back to health and together they would escape this madness.

  ‘There is a way. Listen, sister-in-law. Listen with care. I can help him.’ His eyes were shining. ‘You must help him too. Don’t try to stop him. Do you really think you know better than I do? And than your own son? It is his will to do this. And it is Allah’s will.’

  He paused, remembering. ‘Those foreigners killed my son,’ he said. ‘My only son. Does that mean nothing to you?’

  She sat stiffly against the wall of the house as he poured his poison into her ear. The sun was low in the sky, falling quickly now, drawing streaks of blood through the clouds.

  Once Karam and Palwasha left, the foreign soldier came inside the compound. The thud of his boots made the ground shake. He started when he saw her, then pointed his weapon. He spoke to her, foreign words she didn’t understand, then spoke again into his radio. He squatted on his heels, studying her as she half sat, half lay against the house. She gazed into the distance.

  More soldiers arrived. An Afghan man was with them, a stranger, tall with a fat belly. ‘What are you doing here?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘You should leave. Go.’ He made shooing motions with his hands, herding a goat. ‘Get up. You can’t stay here.’

  ‘I can’t leave,’ she said simply. She made no effort to move. Let them carry her if they wanted. Let them shoot her. What difference did it make?

  The men talked, back and forth. A soldier spoke again to his radio. Answers crackled back. She closed her eyes. It was all untrue. She would sleep and wake and this nightmare would be over.

  A man’s hand gripped her arm, shook her. ‘Get up.’ The fat Afghan man. ‘You’re a stubborn woman.’ He had coarse features. Behind him, the soldiers were giving him orders. He pulled her to her feet and held her there at his side. His breath in her face stank of stale cigarette smoke. ‘Do you think these men want to waste time on you?’

  I have buried my husband. My Abdul. She opened her mouth to spit at him but her tongue was too dry.

  He was pulling her forward. ‘I’ve seen you, hopping around on those crutches. You’re not ill. You’ve got used to comfort, that’s all.’

  One of the soldiers kicked at the bundle lying beside her. The bundle for Aref that Karam had packed for her. She snatched it from the soldier, cradled it to her chest.

  The Afghan man was still grumbling. ‘They’re taking you back,’ he said. ‘Just for tonight. Then that’s it. You’re out on your own.’ He was walking beside her, his hand on her upper arm. His fingers pinched into her flesh. ‘You can look after yourself, like everyone else.’

  They marched her back to the compound between them, like a prisoner.

  She slumped against the compound wall, holding Karam’s bundle on her lap. He and Palwasha would be in Nayullah now. She ran her hands over her face, feeling the skull inside her slackening skin. She was growing older. Her husband was gone. She knew the fate of widows. Without the protection of in-laws or powerful brothers, they were outcasts, pathetic creatures who had to beg to survive.

  She wiped off her cheeks with her scarf. She wouldn’t be a burden to Aref. She wouldn’t accept the humiliation of being the object of pity amongst the women at the well, each thinking secretly to herself: Please, Allah, may that never happen to me.

  She twisted onto her side, dabbed at the sweat on her forehead and neck, wrapped her arms round her middle. Aref must be saved from himself, from Karam and his own foolish ideas. She imagined him, lying hunched on the floor of his earth burrow, hungry and thirsty. How he must be suffering. She brought up her hand and stroked her own cheek, thinking of his. She’d longed so much for her boy, after all the lost babies, the grief. Her own dear Aref. She let her face loll against the ground and closed her eyes.

  My son must live. Blessed Allah, You made me a mother. How could I not do everything in my power to keep my son alive? To restore honour to his name and give him a second chance? Her body shook. May Allah forgive me, she whispered. A trail of saliva oozed from the side of her mouth to the ground. As she tried to flick it away with her tongue, she caught the taste of the sand, gritty and harsh. She swallowed it down. Blessed God, please give me the courage to do what I have to do.

  24

  Ellen had never been so glad to see the compound. She sat in the sand, her back against her rucksack, her eyes closed, while a young soldier, under orders from Mack, boiled water for tea and cooked up rations for her. Her nerves were raw. All she wanted to do was crawl into her sleeping bag, have a nip of vodka and sleep. She wrapped her hands round the mess mug of tea and sipped. Sleep, she knew, would be impossible for a long time yet.

  Hasina was back in the compound too. A lonely figure, sitting on her haunches against the wall, close to the gate. It was an area they all avoided, spiky with dried split poppy and pungent with dung. She had folded in on herself like a penknife, her spine crooked, her head sunk in her hands.

  Ellen thought of Hasina’s collapse at the graveside and the way the strength had leached from her as Abdul’s body was lowered into the earth. Without a husband, Ellen knew, life would be hard here. Being taken into Karam’s family might be more curse than blessing. There was no question what a burden she would be. She thought of the unknown women in faded burqas who sat hunched by the side of the road and begged.

  Hasina’s headscarf was limp, her hair sticking out from under it in matted strands. On her lap, a tattered cloth bundle lay like a dead child, protruding beyond her thighs.

  She had leaned forward, rocking herself gently as if to dull pain. It was a steady, rhythmical keening.

  Ellen pulled herself to her feet and went across to sit beside her. She put her hand on Hasina’s bony shoulder. When she slipped her arm further round across her back, Hasina moved sideways into the fleshy pad of her shoulder. Ellen pulled the headscarf forward again where it had slipped back.

  They sat quietly for some moments. Hasina’s rising breath was stale and fetid and her skin had a greyish hue.

  ‘Aref,’ Ellen whispered to her. ‘Your son. He’s very ill.’ Hasina raised her head at the sound of her son’s name. She couldn’t have understood the words but she did respond to Ellen’s tone. The green eyes fixed on her, then she reached out to grasp Ellen’s hand, plaiting her calloused fingers into Ellen’s long ones and folding them together.

  Just before dusk, Mack came striding across to find her. His eyes were lively.

  ‘Tea?’

  She followed him across the compound to the building, past the growing military village of bedding rolls and mosquito nets. His shoulders were squared, his uniform taut across his back. Twin lines of sweat lay like wings along his shoulder blades. She thought of the relief she’d felt when she’d seen him getting out of the vehicle to save her. She’d been right. He was the man you wanted around in a crisis.

  The comms room smelt of stale cigarette smoke and feet. Mack’s young assistant was sitting at a low, makeshift desk, pen in hand. He got up as Mack led her in, shuffled his papers into a pile and left. Mack fussed over polystyren
e cups and hot water, dunking tea bags. He pulled out a chair and motioned her into another.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you came back.’

  ‘Unfinished business.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’

  She looked at his broad, open face. His lips creased into a smile. She looked past him to the sprawl of papers on the main table, weighted with stones. She lifted her cup to her lip.

  ‘I’ve heard some serious allegations,’ she said. ‘About you.’

  He laughed. ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’ He was sitting back in his chair, one leg crossed over his knee. His position was relaxed but she sensed his alertness.

  ‘I knew Jalil,’ she said. ‘He was straight. Always. And loyal. I don’t believe for a minute he was mixed up in something crooked.’

  Mack nodded, watching her. ‘I liked him too. Fact is, we may never know.’

  Outside a young soldier’s voice rose, calling to a colleague, then a piece of machinery crashed.

  ‘So tell me. What are these allegations?’ His tone was cordial but she could hear too an edge of impatience, an early warning that his willingness to be friendly had a limit.

  She kept her eyes on his. ‘That you killed him. Because he found out too much.’

  His eyes became dead, blank spaces for an instant. Then he gave a short laugh and half turned away. ‘Honestly,’ he said. ‘If that’s—’

  ‘That the suicide bomb was your idea. A strategic move. Use the deaths of a few Afghans as a weapon and turn people against the Taliban.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ He spoke too sharply. He uncrossed his leg in a single angry movement and twisted in his seat, turning his shoulder on her. The atmosphere had shifted and changed. ‘That’s absurd.’

  She looked down into the swirling foam of dissolving milk powder which was rising and falling on the surface of her tea. She steadied her breathing. She thought of this man she had come to admire, a man with such ability. She was seized by sadness. She opened her mouth to speak, then quietly closed it again. She thought of his passion to protect his men, a passion which, it seemed, had brought his own destruction. The silence stretched, separating them.

  Finally he got to his feet. He was holding his body stiffly. ‘That’s not even worth a response,’ he said. ‘As for you, you should be careful what you say.’

  He turned, his face hard with anger, and walked quickly out. She was left, staring after him, her tea cooling in her hands. So, she thought, Karam was right. She was so heavy with disappointment, she couldn’t find the strength to move. She sat silently in the deepening shadows, staring across the debris of military maps and memos into the rich golden light slanting obliquely through the square mud window to the floor.

  25

  That night she lay on her back in the cocoon of her sleeping bag and tried to think, as the soldiers around her grunted and snored. The drama of the minefield had bought her another day with London. Even Phil wasn’t heartless enough to turn the screw so soon after a near-death experience. But tomorrow really would be the end. She had to file something. The question was: what?

  She realized she’d clung to the hope that Mack would convince her; that he’d prove in some way that Karam was lying. In fact his abrupt denial had only confirmed to her what, at some level, she’d already known. But what could she file? She had no evidence. Mack knew that. Phil would never print such serious allegations against an army officer, based on the word of one Afghan. She knew now what Mack had done. But she couldn’t touch him.

  Finally, giving in to sleeplessness, she crawled out of her sleeping bag, pulled on her fleece and boots, tucked her shampoo bottle in her pocket and walked.

  The compound was silvery in the moonlight. The guard on the main gate was slumped forward over his weapon, dozing. She walked round the edge of the walls, past the shit pit, past the well, towards the back of the compound. A small group of officers was sitting together in front of the building, lit only by the glowing cigarettes in their hands. Five or perhaps six solid black outlines against the mud wall. Their voices were a low murmur, breaking occasionally into laughter which they quickly suppressed.

  She looked up as she walked. There was an ocean of stars above. The night sky was spectacular, clearer here than she’d seen anywhere in the world. She remembered something Jalil once said. ‘In Afghanistan, when it is hot and we cannot sleep, we go onto the roof. The stars comfort us.’ They had stopped at a roadside tea-stall during a long road trip one night and stared at the beauty above. ‘They are Allah’s way of saying sorry,’ Jalil had said. ‘Saying sorry for the sorrows of Afghanistan.’

  She stood back and looked up at the roof of the compound building. The front section was dotted with military antennae but the rest was deserted. It would be cool up there and quiet. There were footholds cut into the mud bricks by the open stove and she scaled them. The wall was rough against her hands as she pulled herself up, pricking her palms with fragments of embedded straw. A soldier, standing guard along the compound wall, tipped his head to watch her as she climbed, then lost interest and looked away.

  She picked her way along the narrow gully between the undulating mud domes of the roof. When she reached the middle, she arched her back and leaned into the pillow of the slope and the thick, forgiving mud.

  The stars above were stabs of light in the blackness. As she stared into them, she felt herself tipped upside down, weightless. The stars became white holes, falling endlessly into the darkness. She pulled out her shampoo bottle and sipped the vodka, feeling warmth and numbness enter her blood.

  At least I know, she thought. I know what happened. I can tell Jalil’s family a little more. That he was killed for trying to do the right thing. For refusing to go along with something he knew was wrong. It isn’t justice, she thought, but it may comfort them.

  But what could she write? Hardly a thing. She couldn’t even explain the link between Karam’s money and the military. Mack would deny it all. She sipped again at the vodka and watched the stars start to blur. Whatever watered-down version of the truth she managed to concoct, she was in trouble. Phil would be furious. The silence and solitude of the Afghan night seemed safe compared with the explosion she could expect back in his office. She let her head loll back against the roof and spin with the stars.

  Mack, she thought. You fool. Just when I thought I’d found a man worthy of respect. She sighed and closed her eyes, twisting her mother’s ring round and round on her finger. The feeling of weightlessness took her again, dropping her through the night sky.

  She must have dozed. The breeze was cool and gritty on her cheek when she came to. Her neck and spine, stretched back against the curving roof, were stiff and her mouth dry. She pushed herself upright and kneaded her shoulders. Something had woken her. It was darker now, the moon obscured by drifting cloud.

  She crept closer to the front of the roof to get a clearer view of the compound below. Three men, officers, were still sitting together in the darkness. A single cigarette glowed. At the gate, the guard was slumped to one side, asleep. But something else down there was moving. More shadow than person. A stooped Afghan figure, draped in cotton, making its way stealthily across the sand towards the building below.

  The figure was short, moving with its shoulders forward, holding something across its chest. The camp was silent in sleep. She craned forward to see more clearly. She felt a sudden chill. Her instincts about this moving shadow made the hair on her neck prick and rise.

  She looked back along the narrow gully. She could pick her way to the far end of the roof and climb down. But that would take time and the figure was moving quickly. Instead, she twisted her body round and lowered herself onto her stomach, wedged into the sharp angle between the two rising domes. She shuffled further forward on her knees and elbows, the rough surface grating her skin. Within a few minutes, she’d positioned herself at the very end, pinned between the slopes and hidden by their contours from the people below. If she raised her head, she could watch wit
hout being seen.

  The figure was almost across the compound now, keeping to the deepest shadows and gliding weightlessly. It was approaching the area where the last few officers were still sitting. Ellen saw it raise a pale hand and pull the scarf more closely round the face. Hasina. Of course. It struck her at last. She hadn’t recognized her. She was walking with such silent intent and barely limping. Skimming across the earth like a spirit. The bundle of clothes was cradled in her arms. As Ellen strained to watch, Hasina paused, looked around as if taking her bearings, then moved forward again.

  In front of the building, one of the seated officers paused and turned his head. He was alert, listening. Ellen craned forward, straining to see in the low light. She heard the blood in her ears, the low hum of a night breeze across the surface of the roof. The man waited.

  The cloud, making its slow path across the sky, dissolved a little and the moon lit him more strongly. Mack. The pale skin of his throat and face gleamed. The muscles in his face were taut, as if all the energy in his body had flowed to them and were concentrated there.

  He pushed back his chair and got to his feet in a single fluid movement. Now he stood, listening and peering into the darkness. Hasina had disappeared. Ellen craned her neck to look down into the shadows. She must be there, right below her, pressed back against the wall of the building. Had Mack seen her? She couldn’t tell.

  He took a step towards the wall. Ellen saw something shift in the blackness. Hasina, still some yards from him, had moved forwards. Mack was gesturing to her now, his hands outstretched, palms turned upwards in a gesture of appeasement. Hasina stopped. The bundle filled her arms. She stood, facing him. Her frame was rigid with tension.

  He took another step towards her, his hands reaching out, and light ripped through the blackness. The world turned white. The shock of the gunshot, magnified in the silence, bouncing off the curves of the roof and crashing into her ears, made Ellen reel. She clutched at the edge of the roof, blinded by images fringed with light. The rounded top of the wall. Her own hand gripping the curving mud. She blinked, refocused.