Hinterland: A Novel

by Caroline Brothers

  When he comes back he tells Aryan about the big fire in the old wood stove in the kitchen, the blue china plates in the dresser, the different things she has stewing on the hob. Aryan can tell he misses having a home.

  Sometimes the old woman asks him to peel apples, wash the fruit she intends to preserve, take potato peelings out to the pigs. They communicate through guesswork and gesture. In return she gives him food to share with Aryan – sometimes cheese and spinach pastries, small meat pies with peas.

  Always she sends him away again before the farmer comes indoors.

  Aryan isn’t sure what to make of it. Sometimes he is glad for half an hour away from his little brother; he knows the old woman’s company reminds Kabir of things Aryan steels himself against missing. But if Kabir is away too long, anxiety begins its slow ascent of his spine.

  Once, beating the mud off his shoes, Aryan looks up to see the old woman in front of the curtain. With an arthritic hand she waves to him, just once, and disappears. Aryan pauses, then crosses the yard.

  Inside, the old woman indicates he should wash his hands, and nods towards a chair. They sit around a sturdy wooden table peeling carrots and turnips and the potatoes they have dug from the fields. Aryan is surprised at the simplicity of the house that is not so different from some of those in the place where he was born.

  The silence is filled with the bobbing of lids on the stove and the scrape of the peelers as they expose the strips of colour hidden under the vegetable skin.

  Then the woman places a bowl of soup in front of them.

  When the farmer comes inside he halts in the doorway, staring as Kabir slurps from the spoon. He says something angry in Greek but the woman cuts him off with words that ring out like slaps.

  After that, they eat in the kitchen every day, leaving always before the farmer sits down with the old woman for his meal.

  Sometimes when they return from the fields they find she has changed the blankets in their room, or put newspaper inside the window frames to stop the wind getting in.

  Once, making their way back from the onion fields at dusk, they see the top of the truck with the green tarpaulin swaying down the corrugated driveway as it heads from the house towards the road.

  The farmer, bent over a cracked ploughshare, ignores them as they walk past.

  It is night when the shadows creep up on Aryan.

  Bad dreams must have woken him initially, but it’s the shivering that won’t let him slip back under the blanket of sleep. It begins imperceptibly at first, like ripples in a glass of water, tugging him awake. But soon it builds, and Aryan knows with a sort of inevitability that it will not be stilled. His teeth chatter, and in time, his whole body shakes with it. Terrors he can’t put any name to swirl like flying beasts with velvet bodies and whirring wings that brush against his face. Suddenly he is terrified of suffocation. His body has gone cold and not even the trembling of his limbs will restore his body heat. His mouth is dry and his face is suddenly bathed in sweat.

  Through the window pane he can see only four black squares of night. The world is in darkness and from his pallet the hills block out the sight of any stars.

  Aryan recognizes his demon fears; he starts to wonder whether they won’t make the entire journey with him. For a while it seemed he had shrugged them off, that they had abandoned him in the shimmering desert, in the stony mountains of Kurdistan, in the hamlet where they were marooned for weeks, hiding from the soldiers while they waited for a guide. In the boat that barely made it across the waters of Lake Van, where fear of drowning lapped at the overwashed sides. There were other demons to displace them then – hunger, the pain of blistered heels and beaten shins, the smugglers who abandoned stragglers by the way. Perhaps they were jealous or just indolent demons; where the going was hardest they left him mercifully alone; there, he fell fitfully asleep, exhausted by the toil of advancing.

  But as soon as they stop anywhere they catch up with him again; now, for the first time since Istanbul, the demons of immobility are back. They bore deep into his anxiety about all the days they are wasting; they undermine his resolve with doubt about the future; they gnaw at his strength of mind by rehearsing what it is they have fled.

  Where are they heading really? He and Kabir could be stuck in this place for ever. He has heard stories of the missing who are never found, the rumours of body-organ harvesters, child enslavers and prostitution rings. Though things look peaceful here, and there is no war in Europe, he is suddenly aware of how easy it would be to disappear someone who no one knew existed in these lands.

  He is ashamed to wish it, but suddenly he longs for his mother. He wishes he were as small as Kabir and could be enfolded in arms that would contain him, and calm him, and see the demons off into the wind.

  He can’t remember the scent of her any more, only that it was the same as her clothes.

  When dawn comes, Aryan has not slept. He feels ragged and wrung out. The night lies heavy upon him, thick as dew.

  The truck with the green tarpaulin starts coming by every second day, and parks on the shady side of the house. The driver talks to the farmer in Greek. Aryan sees his reptile eyes watching him over the top of their conversation. He fixes Aryan directly in his sights as he talks.

  Aryan hasn’t got used to seeing him. Even from a distance there is something that makes him recoil.

  The man smokes with the farmer while Aryan and Kabir bundle the sacks of onions into the truck; some of them are nearly as tall as Kabir. Aryan shudders under the driver’s stare, hoists the bags mechanically, hopes the tension in his stomach isn’t legible on his face.

  The days are hotter now. There is no shade in the fields where they work. At night they sleep fitfully, woken often by the drone of mosquitoes.

  One day, the driver approaches them where the furrows extend close to the house. He feels and feels in his loose trouser pocket, and then extends a small packet.

  ‘You smoke?’ he says to Aryan in English.

  Aryan doesn’t respond.

  With a smile and a fleshy hand the man proffers the half-crushed red-and-white packet, a cigarette protruding from the corner. ‘Smoke like a man?’ he says.

  Aryan’s eyes narrow. ‘No,’ he says.

  The driver is standing very close to him now, and Aryan’s mouth is dry. He can smell his odour of hair oil and sweat; the skin on the back of his puffy hands is dry and flaky and white.

  The man hesitates a moment, shrugs, and goes back to the truck. He doesn’t even check the tarpaulin before reversing out the gate. Aryan watches the top of the vehicle dip and sway over the potholes.

  Two days later, at noon, he is there again. He talks with the farmer while the boys load the morning’s sacks into the lorry. From the corner of his eye Aryan sees him climb into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Yassas!’ Aryan jumps when he hears the man’s too-loud voice. Kabir is dragging a sack towards the truck and the man is blocking his path.

  Two glass bottles of Coke glint in his dry, white hands. He is holding one out to Kabir. ‘Take,’ he says. ‘For you.’

  Though the mornings still start off cool, the middle of the day is hot and both of them are thirsty from the work. Kabir reaches for the bottle.

  ‘Leave it, Kabir!’ Aryan says.

  Kabir freezes in surprise. ‘Why?’ he says, hesitating, his hand outstretched.

  The man ignores Aryan and smiles at Kabir.

  ‘Just don’t!’ Aryan catches himself shouting. His own vehemence surprises him.

  ‘There’s one for you too,’ Kabir says.

  ‘I don’t care – don’t take anything from him.’ Aryan doesn’t want them to accept any gift from this man. He doesn’t want to feel they owe him anything. He doesn’t want them to feel the ties of obligation that gratitude inevitably brings.

  Kabir takes the bottle. The man whips out a bottle opener and, placing his heavy hand on top of Kabir’s, flips the cap off into the grass. His hand covers Kabir’s entirely; he lets it
linger there a long moment before taking it away.

  ‘And you?’ the man turns to Aryan.

  Aryan stands rigid as stone.

  The man waits for him to change his mind, then places the second bottle on the ground. He says something to them in Greek, smooths Kabir’s hair and cheek, and climbs back into the truck.

  Aryan’s bottle stands alone among the green onion leaves, glistening, erect as a statuette.

  There is a sound of wheels spinning on gravel as the truck pulls out into the road.

  ‘Why did you take that bottle?’ Aryan says.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Kabir says. ‘He just wanted to be nice.’

  ‘I told you not to.’

  ‘You’re not my father.’

  ‘That’s right, Kabir, but I’m all you’ve got. And I’m telling you: keep away from that man.’

  ‘Why should I?’ Kabir says. ‘At least he’s nicer than you.’

  ‘Just listen to me.’ Aryan’s voice is angry. ‘He is not a good person.’

  ‘What would you know?’ Kabir is shouting back. ‘He only wanted to give us a present.’

  ‘You don’t know the first thing about him.’

  ‘Neither do you!’

  ‘No,’ Aryan said. ‘But I’m older than you and I don’t trust him.’

  ‘Why do I always have to do what you say? You never want us to have any fun.’

  ‘It’s not about fun,’ Aryan says.

  ‘Well I’m keeping my bottle.’

  ‘Do what you like then,’ Aryan says.

  ‘I will,’ says Kabir. ‘And I’m having yours too.’

  Kabir snatches the lone bottle from the ground, shoves it in his pocket, and sits down some way from Aryan with his back to a fence post.

  There are things Aryan can’t tell Kabir. There are things Aryan can hardly bear to think about himself, but they are so indelibly inside him now that they have become part of the way he reacts before thought can intervene, part of the wounded place that was opened up inside him before he had the words or the knowledge to fight.

  It had happened when they were still living in Afghanistan. There had been an older cousin who had shown an interest in him, taken him fishing on the lake in his taxi on the days when there was no school, taught him how to knot ropes and sharpen knives. Aryan had loved the sense of adventure, and the way it made him feel special, and the manly things he learnt that he could show off to the other boys.

  But after a while his cousin stopped taking him straight home from their expeditions.

  ‘I just have to pick something up here,’ he’d say, turning off the rutted road. But there was never any house, and never anything to pick up.

  In the beginning Aryan didn’t understand what was happening. It felt strange at first that this burly man would sometimes paw his hair or his face, or put his big scratchy hands on his chest beneath his shirt. Aryan didn’t like the feel of his skin or the smell of his animal sweat. But he had no words for what he was doing, or what it made him feel, and if he just ignored it, he thought the man would eventually lose interest. Instead, his explorations continued.

  The first day he went too far, they had driven a long way from anywhere, and Aryan’s cries and his seven-year-old’s attempt to fight off a grown man had simply made his cousin laugh. But when Aryan managed to wriggle free, and took off across the land, the cousin roared after him and caught up with him and pinioned him and took off his belt and whipped him, and spat out at him that struggling would make things a lot worse.

  To Aryan, what happened next was unspeakable, and had no name. He had never felt pain like it. The rocks digging into his ribs and the side of his face where the man was holding him down were nothing in comparison to the tearing. But he also felt something give way in his heart. In the place where trust had been there came both shame and a sort of wordless fury; where he once felt sure of himself he felt mistaken, that he had somehow brought this upon himself, that in some major sense he had failed.

  Afterwards, Aryan bled for a week every time he relieved his bowels. ‘He slipped on the rocks by the lake,’ his cousin had told his father to explain the bruising. If he breathed a word, his cousin had said, he would receive a belting that would make the last one seem like a tickle.

  And so Aryan kept silent, and endured when avoidance failed. But he hated his cousin with the livid emotion of childhood, and was glad when the fighting made his whole family move away.

  Two days later Aryan is stooped over the onion furrows, digging the papery brown spheres from the earth. They have reached the far end of the field, and are working close to a stone wall. He calls to Kabir to fetch more sacks.

  It is a while before he realizes Kabir hasn’t replied.

  Aryan stands up and leans on his fork, stretching out his back. He looks around. Kabir is nowhere in sight. Nor is the truck that rolled up in the mid-afternoon.

  Aryan hurries to the edge of the field, wondering if Kabir has wandered off to the latrine. ‘Kabir!’ he shouts. The warm air reverberates with his call, but no voice answers back.

  Anxiety blinds him. Aryan leaps over the furrows to the wall, pushes himself over the top of it and tears into the next field. The farmer is wiring seedlings to stakes.

  ‘Kabir, Kabir, where is he?’ he says between gasps for breath.

  The farmer looks at him sideways and straightens till his singlet stretches taut across his paunch.

  ‘Who?’ he says.

  ‘My brother, Kabir.’

  ‘He went with the driver to get more crates,’ the farmer says. ‘They’ll be back soon.’

  Aryan turns in a circle, scans the horizon, throws his open arms to his sides.

  ‘Kabir,’ he yells with all his lungs. The scarred and empty hillsides swallow his cry.

  It is nearly nightfall before the truck returns.

  Kabir is belted into the front seat. His face shimmers white through the windscreen. Tear stains streak his fat cheeks.

  The driver greets the farmer with a cheery smile. ‘Here’s your working man back again,’ he says. He starts to unload the empty crates.

  Aryan is nauseous with anxiety and relief.

  Kabir undoes the seatbelt and slides stiffly out of the truck. He cannot speak and there is no light in his eyes. He refuses to meet Aryan’s gaze.

  In their outhouse, Kabir turns his back to his brother and doesn’t want to sleep anywhere near.

  ‘Kabir,’ Aryan says. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  Kabir is silent. But tears or the beginning of tears are smudging his charcoal eyes.

  ‘Did the driver hurt you?’ Aryan says.

  Kabir says nothing.

  ‘Come here,’ Aryan says.

  His brother doesn’t move.

  So Aryan goes to him and puts his arms around his brother’s rigid frame. Kabir’s whole body is trembling, and in that involuntary reaction, Aryan suddenly knows that his instincts were right.

  Kabir doesn’t turn to him when he speaks. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he says.

  ‘I tried to warn you,’ Aryan says. ‘I didn’t know for sure.’

  ‘You didn’t warn me. You just said not to take the bottle.’

  ‘I had a bad feeling about him, that was all. I tried to make you listen.’

  Kabir lets out a sob.

  ‘He was too strong, Aryan.’ Whatever else he is about to say is drowned out as the round shoulders heave.

  Aryan looks at his brother, taking in as if for the first time how small he is, the ridges of his backbone under his grubby T-shirt, the baby down on his cheeks, the thick unruly hair.

  He is so used to having him beside him that Aryan sometimes forgets he is still a child. A knot of misery rises to his throat. He has failed to shield the one person left to him in the world to protect.

  ‘Kabir,’ he murmurs. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  Kabir does not respond.

  That is when Aryan decides. ‘I don’t care how we go. But we are not staying here any more
,’ he says.

  Kabir takes a deep breath.

  ‘What about the truck?’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know whether there is any truck, Kabir. Maybe they never intended to send one. Maybe they never intended to pay.’

  Aryan counts the days tallied in his notebook. Seven months. Apart from that one payment, there have been no wages and no onward journey. He feels weak at the thought of how much time they have lost. Soon he will be too old to go to school. He doesn’t know how, yet, but they will be gone before what happened to Kabir can happen again. He is angry, like he was angry once before, and his anger will carry them out like a lifeboat.

  The farmer is fixing a fence on the far side of the land. The driver with the fleshy hands hasn’t shown up this time; a younger man has driven the truck in his stead.

  Aryan sends Kabir into the truck and passes the sacks and crates of onions up to him, one by one. When the last one is loaded he clambers aboard, then rearranges them to make a space, like the dens he and Zohra used to build with rugs and cushions and the table in the house in Afghanistan.

  ‘Make yourself small,’ he tells Kabir. ‘Don’t make a sound.’

  He pushes his brother into the gap and crouches low beside him in the niche. In his pocket he has two heels of bread that he has saved from the last two mornings.

  The driver pulls the canvas taut and tightens the ropes without seeing them. The engine revs. He honks his horn once to let the farmer know he is on his way.

  ‘Yassas!’ the farmer shouts back from the field.

  It is almost too easy. Aryan has no idea where the truck is going, but at least they are on the move. Kabir looks like he is under water in the green tarpaulin light.

  ‘Will the puppies be all right?’ Kabir whispers.

  Aryan feels a pang. But they could not have taken them.

  ‘They’ve still got Not-So-Old Dog to protect them,’ he says.