There was a little garden in front of us, and I pulled him into it. Gradually his breathing calmed, and the colour came back to his cheeks. I took his hand and asked if he was all right, to which he said: “I thought I was back in Piccadilly Circus.”
“What?”
“Not that one. We used to name different parts of the trenches after London streets so we knew where to meet each other: Hyde Park, Oxford Street, that sort of thing.”
When I asked what on earth had made him think of that, he said it was the streets, that their narrowness reminded him of the trenches. “It was as if they were closing in on me. I couldn’t see the sky.”
I waited, wanting to hear more, trying to understand.
“It’s nothing,” he said eventually. “Just one of those things one must put up with.”
It didn’t seem like nothing to me, but I sensed there was no point in saying so, and we walked back to the Pavilion in silence.
After lunch, I was going about my duties when I noticed someone sitting with two of the patients, talking intently: an older man, well-dressed, with a large moustache and small, wire-rimmed spectacles. Plenty of retired military men come to visit the patients, but this one didn’t have the air of a colonel or a brigadier, and I was immediately curious.
I approached the little group and introduced myself. I was astounded when he got to his feet and said: “Rudyard Kipling, at your service.”
For a moment I faltered, then said: “Rudyard Kipling? The writer?”
His eyes twinkled behind his spectacles. “Indeed.”
I immediately told him that I was going to live in India soon, and how much I enjoyed his books, that they were really all I knew of the place.
“Oh, don’t believe in everything you read,” he said, with a smile.
I laughed, and asked him what he was doing at the Pavilion, and he replied that he had enormous admiration for the way that our patients were prepared to lay down their lives for Britain. It had been, he said, both his duty and a privilege to talk to them. His son was the same age as some of the men, and about to enlist. He hoped that he would acquit himself as well as they had done. I was amazed to hear that Mr Kipling lived not far away from Brighton, in Burwash. I had imagined him in a bungalow in the foothills of the Himalayas.
On my way back to the Pavilion, I bumped into Robert, who was helping some patients with their letters. I thought the news of our special visitor might cheer him up, and indeed he was impressed to hear about Mr Kipling and asked me all about it, seeming very interested in what I had to say. Encouraged by his reaction, I asked him about his men’s progress, and what they had said in their letters.
“They talk about the things that one would expect,” he said. “How their wounds are healing, how well they are treated at the Pavilion, the battles that have brought them there, that sort of thing. They are rather prone to exaggeration on some fronts. One of them put in a cigarette card with his letter, a copy of a portrait by Joshua Reynolds, saying to his friend that he can procure the lady easily and send her to his village if he wants! Another said – I remember it exactly – ‘The ladies here are very nice and bestow their favours freely. But contrary to the custom in our country, they do not put their legs over the shoulders when they go with a man.’ Priceless, isn’t it?”
He let out a hearty laugh, then saw my face.
“Do you know what you’ve just said?” I snapped. “Or who you’re talking to?”
“What?” He blinked, as if I had surprised him.
“I’m not going to repeat it, but Robert, I am worried about you.”
He lit a cigarette.
“I’m perfectly well,” he said, and turned away.
I was angry with Robert after that, as I seem so often to be these days. Since his rudeness to Hari, I had wanted to invite Hari to tea to make up for it, but resisted, knowing that Robert wouldn’t like it. Now I went to seek him out.
Hari looked rather taken aback when I asked him, but I carried on regardless. We could go to the Winter Gardens, I said, but he said he had a better idea: he knew of a tearoom in Kemptown that served Indian food.
“Would you like to try it?” he said.
Entirely aware that no one I knew would approve and, in my new, cross mood, not caring a bit, I said that I would.
The tearoom was set back a little way behind St George’s Road. I liked it as soon as I set foot inside. It was just one room, simply furnished, rather dark. At first glance it was thoroughly English, with chequered half-curtains up at the windows and prints of Sussex views on the walls, but there was something different about it, which after puzzling for a minute I realized was the smell – a warm, exotic sort of smell, like the one that comes from the Pavilion kitchens, of spices and frying and India.
We took a table at the window, and soon a waitress came to take our order. I told Hari to decide for both of us, and he asked the waitress for a string of things that I had never heard of.
Our tea arrived quickly, accompanied by three plates, one piled with some triangular pastries, another with puffed rice topped with crispy vegetables and the last one with some white, spongy-looking dumplings.
“Try the pastries first,” he said. “They are called samosas.”
“I recognize the name,” I said. “You told me about them before.”
Cautiously, I bit into one, trying not to drop crumbs, which was not easy. It was delicious, stuffed with vegetables and spices, but with an aftertaste so hot it made me cough. I tried to hide behind my napkin, as Hari called for a glass of water.
The puffed rice, which he said was a Bombay speciality, was much easier to stomach, tasting slightly of fruit. He told me that they sold them at the beach, in paper cones, so one could eat them as one walked along the sand.
The best, Hari said, he had saved until last: the white balls, called roshogolla.
“They’re made from cheese and semolina, cooked in syrup. Close your eyes and drop one into your mouth.”
His description did not sound particularly appetizing, but I did as he said. Immediately, sweet juice ran down my throat: a heavenly, sticky mess. When I opened my eyes, Hari was looking at me, smiling.
“Did you like it?” he asked.
I nodded, dabbing at the corners of my mouth with my napkin.
“Delicious,” I said. “Quite unlike anything I’ve tasted before.”
His smile grew, and he said he was glad, and he hoped that I approved of his choice.
“It’s marvellous,” I said. “And being here is marvellous too.” I hesitated for a moment, but then decided to say it. “It means a great deal to me that you see me as your friend.”
Looking pleased, he said that it meant a great deal to him too, but added that he didn’t want to cause any trouble.
“Trouble?”
He nodded, and said quietly, “Your reputation.”
Suddenly I noticed that sitting at the other tables were other Indians, some of them with their friends, but others with the sort of Brighton ladies that Colonel MacLeod had been so keen to discourage. I remembered how Robert had agreed with him, and felt a flash of defiance.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said, taking a sip of tea. “Now, tell me, how did you come across this tearoom?”
He lit a cigarette and said that someone from the Kitchener had told him: a fellow Bengali, Gautam Dath, a sub-assistant surgeon.
“Not the one who tried to shoot Colonel Seton,” he added with a smile.
One day Gautam Dath had gone into the tearoom and struck up a conversation with the owner, Mr Johnson. Business had slowed down since the war began, and Gautam Dath, who was the son of a successful Calcuttan businessman, had suggested that Mr Johnson might try selling Indian snacks. There were plenty of officers at the Kitchener and the Pavilion who would come there to eat. Gautam Dath had sent down a cook from the Kitchener to teach Mr Johnson how to make them. Word had quickly spread, and business was soon thriving.
“It must have been a blow w
hen Colonel Seton decided to keep his staff locked up in the Kitchener,” I said.
Hari nodded, but then added rather mysteriously: “Yes, but there are ways of getting out.”
We did not stay at the tearoom much longer, as Mamma was expecting me home, but what little time we had there was delightful. It had been a world away from the formality of the Winter Gardens, and all the better for that. I could not help comparing it to the time that Robert and I had sat on the rooftop, eating sandwiches and discussing the horrors of Neuve-Chapelle. Sitting in the tearoom with Hari had, instead, been fun.
Thirty-Five
After weeks spent following up my letter to the Ministry of Justice, I found out that the Ministry of the Interior had taken over responsibility for Badam Bagh and that I needed to write to them instead. I wrote. I pleaded. I chased again and again, and eventually they gave me the precious signature at the bottom of my letter.
After that, I had to make my way to the Central Prisons Department, to sweet-talk someone called General Jamshid into counter-signing. The first time I went he wasn’t there. The second time he was too busy to see me. But the third time he was there, and signed the grubby piece of paper.
A few days later, Rashida and I went to the prison.
“Do you know what Badam Bagh means?” Rashida asked on the way.
I thought about it. “Something about gardens? Like the Bagh-e Babur?”
“Jo-jan, you’re learning our language!”
“Not sure about that,” I said, smiling. “Anyway, what does it mean?”
“The Almond Orchard.”
“Wow! In England we usually just call prisons after the place where they’re built. Wormwood Scrubs. Pentonville. Holloway. Not quite as poetic.”
“We’re a very poetic people,” she said, smiling back.
The car drew up outside a wall topped with rolls of razor wire. We got out and approached the makeshift guardhouse that leant against the prison wall. Around it stood men in uniforms smoking, their guns slung over their shoulders. We showed our papers to one of them, who nodded and led us through a door in the flat metal gate.
There, behind a fence, stood a white three-storey building. Washing hung from every window, bleaching in the sun. As we walked over to yet another gate, I saw that the fence, too, was stuffed with pieces of clothing, tucked in there to dry. Beyond the fence were children playing in the scrubby grass and women hanging more laundry on makeshift lines.
Inside, the corridors echoed with chatter, bursts of laughter, slamming doors. We were shown to the office of the prison commander, who was sitting behind a desk piled with documents held down by paperweights.
I showed him the letter.
“I’d like to talk to some of your prisoners – and, if they’re willing, take some photographs.”
“It’s not possible today. They are busy.”
“Busy?”
“Yes. Come back another time.”
“But—”
Rashida coughed. I had come to know Rashida’s coughs and their different meanings. This one was to tell me to shut up.
“All right,” I said. “We’ll come again tomorrow.”
By the end of the week, I had got to know the commander’s office well, particularly his paperweights, a collection of snow globes from around the world. Just as I was starting to wonder if they were bribes from previous journalists, and if I should go to the bazaar to buy one, his mood suddenly changed and he said we could go in.
We were shown around the prison by the head guard, dressed in a grey prison-issue trouser suit and – to my surprise – no headscarf.
“We are proud of our prison,” she said. “Many journalists have visited, even the BBC.”
“How many prisoners do you have?” I asked.
“A hundred and twenty-five. Plus their children – there’s about forty of them.”
“Why their children?”
“They were born here. There’s nowhere else for them to go.”
“And what are the women’s crimes? Why are they here?”
“Some of them are in for smuggling drugs, murder, attempted suicide-bombing. Others for moral crimes. Come. See.”
We walked along the corridor, passing through a series of gates that she unlocked with a key hanging from a huge, old-fashioned loop. Small children loitered in doorways, watching us with big, kohl-rimmed eyes, clutching stuffed toys.
The head guard left us in one of the cells, instructing another guard to keep an eye on us. The women were having a beauty session, threading eyebrows, painting each other’s toenails.
I looked around the room. An empty bookshelf stood against one of the walls. Four bunk beds were squeezed in at right angles; the women had attached scraps of material across the lower bunks as makeshift curtains.
I’d expected the women to be shy, but they weren’t.
“Hi,” I said to the woman doing the threading. “I’m Jo. What’s your name?”
Rashida began to translate.
“Shahzada.”
“And can I ask you why you’re here?”
She looked up and grimaced. “I ran away from home.”
“Why?”
“My husband liked young boys more than me and brought them to the house. When I complained, he beat me. My neighbour helped me escape to my sister’s house. My husband called the police and told them I’d committed adultery. I was four months pregnant and he said the baby was the neighbour’s. They gave me fifteen years.”
“Do you think he really thought the baby wasn’t his?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter: it’s what he said. My neighbour ended up in prison too. I feel very bad for his wife and children.”
“What happened to the baby?”
She pushed forward a small boy holding a toy giraffe. “I had him here. It was a difficult birth. I almost died.”
“Has your husband been to visit you?”
She laughed. “No! But I prefer it that way. I don’t want to see him ever again. I’ll stay here with my boy—”
The guard interrupted. “They have a bad attitude,” she said. “All of them.”
The women turned on her, their voices angry.
“It’s true,” she said. “Ask that one what she did – go on.” She pointed to a sweet-looking girl, very young. “Gulpari, tell her!”
“What did you do?” I said.
She sighed. “I killed my husband.”
Although I did my best to hide it, I was shocked.
“What happened?”
“When we first married, he was always kind, but after a long while we were still not blessed with children. We prayed, we even went to the Band-e Amir Lakes in Bamyan Province so I could let the water heal me. But nothing worked. My husband changed. He said he was ashamed to be married to a sterile woman, and he started to beat me. Afterwards he would go out and not come back for hours. I only asked him about it once – he broke my arm. Soon after that, he kicked me in the stomach. The day after, I started to bleed. I had been pregnant, but I lost the baby.
“One night, when he had gone out, I took a poker back to where we slept and kept it next to me. When he came back and fell asleep, I took it and smashed it down on the back of his head – once, twice, I can’t remember how many times.
“I slept well that night, because I knew the next day he wouldn’t hurt me. When morning came, I ate some food and drank some tea, then waited for someone to come. At the trial they said I was mad, but I wasn’t. I just wanted him to stop.” She gave a little shrug. “So here I am.”
“And now?”
“Now, nothing. Prison’s not so different. Here I have to ask permission to do some things, but I had to ask my husband permission for everything. And I couldn’t leave the house, either, not without him—”
She stopped abruptly. I felt someone behind me – someone, from the look on the other women’s faces, to be reckoned with. I turned to see a large woman with piercing blue eyes. Her arms were cover
ed in rough-looking tattoos. She said something to Rashida.
“She’s asking why we’re here.”
“Tell her it’s to take their pictures.”
The woman said something else, moving her hips suggestively. The others laughed.
“She wants to know if you’re going to make them into movie stars,” Rashida said.
“Sorry,” I said. “Not this time.”
The woman said something else.
“She wants you to take her photograph.”
“What’s her story?”
“She killed her husband too.”
“And what had he done to her?”
Rashida asked the woman, who laughed.
“Nothing. She just didn’t like him. They had an argument and she stabbed him.”
“Is she sorry?”
When Rashida asked her, the woman snorted, and I knew the answer.
I realized I had no idea what I was going to do with these women or their photographs. Leila had wanted me to use her to show the world what was going on. I doubted they would feel the same.
One of the others spoke, smiling. “She’s asking where your husband is,” said Rashida.
“I haven’t got one,” I said.
The woman said something that made them laugh and clap their hands. Even Rashida smiled. “They said that you are like them.”
I smiled too, feeling as if the shoot might go well after all.
Blue Eyes flicked her eyes towards me and asked Rashida another question.
“She wants to know if you have any cigarettes.”
I’d never smoked in front of Rashida – it seemed somehow unladylike. Don’t laugh, Suze, it’s true. It’s just not done for women to smoke in Kabul, unless they’re very poor or very rich or a prostitute, just like it wasn’t for Elizabeth. On the other hand, I wanted them to like me. If I could gain their trust, the photos would be better.
The Repercussions Page 15
