When it came to freezing someone out, Layla was an expert. Fossey had known he would have to be the one to break the silence. He had spoken on entering the room. Nothing special, just his normal greeting. But as usual there had been no reply.
He had shifted his weight from one leg to the other, cleared his throat loudly, but still there was no response.
‘Layla …’
But the woman might have been cast in bronze; immobile, cold, her breathing barely perceptible.
He glanced at the image on the screen in front of her. The fifteen-second video clip was playing and replaying as it must have been doing for hours. What did she see, he wondered. He moved closer, knowing better than to touch her shoulder. Wanting to. Wanting to stroke the long dark hair and turn her face to his.
‘I bought lamb. I’ll make shoorba.’ There was no response. ‘You like that,’ he continued, trying to sound amiable. An ordinary conversation. God, how he longed for that. She hated Canberra; had never wanted to move from Brisbane. She hated his job even more. He wanted to say something reassuring, conciliatory, but knew she had won again, defeating him with her silence.
He tried not to look at the computer but the grotesque scene replaying drew him in. Demanded his attention. He shuddered and pulled himself away. ‘I’ll get the food ready.’ He turned a light on as he left the room, more for himself than Layla, knowing, as he had for months, that her darkness lay deep inside.
Returning from the kitchen with the shoorba, the Afghan soup, Fossey found Layla had moved from the computer to the couch, where she sat, eyes wide and angry.
‘Try and eat it while it’s hot,’ he said gently and placed the bowl on the coffee table.
As he turned away the video image on the computer caught his eye. It was still the same scene. A woman, enveloped in a pale blue burqa, was being led from the back of a pickup to the edge of a sports ground by two other women, also in full Islamic burqas, theirs a much darker blue. Within seconds of being forced to her knees, she was approached by a man in white robes and black turban. In an almost casual gesture he brought a rifle up and shot the woman in the head. A puff of dust in the dirt as the bullet exited her skull. For the last few seconds, the camera swung round the stadium to show that the woman’s death was being observed by several thousand people. Then it replayed from the beginning. Alive, then dead, alive then dead — endlessly.
Behind him, Fossey heard Layla stir and he turned back to find her glaring at the computer. She was trying to say something, but, choked with emotion, her voice emerged only as a cracked whisper. Straining to listen, he knelt and took her hand, relieved that for once she didn’t withdraw it. But it was just trembling flesh and bone, uninhabited.
‘Her name was Zarmeena. The woman had seven children. She was twenty-eight years old.’
‘It’s dreadful.’ He could think of no other words. Twenty-eight? The same age as Layla.
‘That’s the Ghazi Sports Stadium in Kabul. 16 November, 1999.’
He had waited for her to speak again, squeezing her hand and knowing all the time that he was the one doing the holding. ‘You mustn’t torture yourself watching …’ But she was gone again, sinking inside, drowning in herself.
Fossey had given up trying to justify his work in the department. At first he had fooled himself that Layla was just having trouble adjusting to life in Canberra, when, deep down, he knew that adjusting had always been one of her strengths. It certainly hadn’t been a problem for her in the United States where she grew up, or in Paris in 1995 where she had done her postgraduate work on Urdu and Pashtun poetry. Indeed, when Fossey and Layla had first met at a festival in Bordeaux that he was covering for Associated Press, it had been her vibrancy and sense of self-worth that so attracted him. Their decision to return to Australia had been a joint one, arrived at with a sense of mutual pleasure. He remembered her enthusiasm for taking Australian citizenship; her delight in the landscape, the new flora and fauna. Fossey remembered the wonderment in her eyes at seeing, for the first time, a kookaburra, a lorikeet or flying fox. The way she had screwed up her face when he introduced her to the distinctly Australian taste of Vegemite.
‘My home is in my head,’ Layla had said when they set up house in Brisbane. She was working on a new translation of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Fossey remembered joking that he felt cuckolded by the dead poet.
Born in Kabul in July 1973, just two days before Mohammed Daoud Khan’s coup abolished the monarchy and proclaimed a republic, Layla had remained in Afghanistan until she was six years old. In 1979, with the arrival of 80,000 Soviet troops, her father, Dr Abdul Khaleq, abandoned his position at Kabul University in favour of a lecturing post in comparative religion at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, a position he held until his death in 1998. The journey from Afghanistan to America was not an easy one; they’d left in a hurry and taken only the bare essentials. Somehow in the rush, the photographs of her mother, who had died two years before, were left behind. Now Layla’s only links back to her homeland were a book of children’s verse and a small faded square of carpet, a salachak, her childhood rug.
Still, Layla Khaleq had enjoyed an idyllic small-town childhood where, as the brochures liked to put it, the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains. She had done well at school and college, though in her first year at university there was some short-lived disagreement between her and her father over her choice of career. She was drawn to literature and, while her father urged her to consider something ‘more practical’, her sheer determination to study the poetry of her home country as well as that of Pakistan and India won out in the end. In pursuit of her goal Layla mastered Urdu and added it to the armoury of languages in which she was proficient: her native Pashto, English and French. When she finally completed her Master’s degree on the work of the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, there was no one prouder than her father.
That same year she was invited to give a paper at a writers’ festival in Bordeaux. It was at that festival she met Fossey. They were married a year later. And were happy until …
When the phone call had come, it took several seconds for Fossey Dutetre to recognise the deep voice. ‘Robin Philson?’
There was a chuckle at the other end of the line. ‘Fossey? You suffering memory loss?’
‘Minister Philson?’
‘So they tell me.’ The laugh now sounded slightly forced. ‘But I was calling in an unofficial capacity.’
‘Sorry, Minister, I was —’
‘Foss, for Christ’s sake stop being so bloody formal. I know this is short notice, but I’m in Brisbane for the next couple of hours and I was wondering if we could get together?’
‘I’m not doing anything,’ Fossey replied and agreed to meet in a Park Road café within the hour.
Fossey and Rob, both from Victorian farming families, had been fellow boarders in McMeckan House at Melbourne’s Scotch College. They had a lot in common: rugby, girls and top marks at school. It was only after their senior year that their paths divided. While Fossey, distracted by the Vietnam moratoriums and more than a little dope, had plunged unsteadily into an arts degree, Robin Philson had sailed through law and accountancy with no other distraction than Liberal Party politics. As Rob completed his degree, Fossey was still sobering up and wondering if they would re-admit him to Monash for another year. By the time Fossey eventually completed his degree and set out after a career in journalism, Rob had made the decision to abandon legal practice and have a tilt at parliament. He was elected at his first attempt.
It had been many years since they had met, and if it hadn’t been for the government car, Fossey might not have recognised the man who emerged. Robin Philson had always been big. At six foot three he had been the tallest boy in McMeckan and a good three inches taller than Fossey, but now that height was carrying a fair amount of weight. On television, the immigration minister came across as strong and solid, but in the flesh there was more than a hint of age. The man walking towards Fossey was stooping slightly, the
hair, long since grey, was receding and the weight sat on him like an ill-fitting suit. The jowls, while not fat, were full and loose. The eyes, still bright and penetrating, appeared set further back — retreating. The pallid skin and the bags beneath the eyes suggested a man who had been carrying too big a burden for too long.
There was obviously no confusion from Robin Philson’s perspective. His eyes panned across the café and settled on Fossey before he had time to rise from his seat in greeting.
‘Fossey! I can’t tell you how good it is to see you.’
The handshake was firm and genuine. The look in Philson’s eyes, it seemed to Fossey, was almost that of relief. ‘Minister …’ he began.
‘Don’t you listen? Deo patriae litteris, means more than all that formal bullshit.’
It had been years since Fossey had heard the Scotch College motto and, despite his ambivalence towards his old school, he felt himself react. It surprised him because, once out of Scotch, he had never returned. Even being just on six foot hadn’t been enough there to save him from the constant teasing that his name evoked. And though he could take most things, for some reason the name-calling had really got to him.
Fossey had been named for his grandfather. No, to tell it more accurately he had been named by his grandfather. None of which would really have upset him if he hadn’t come across one side of what was obviously a heated correspondence between his father and Grandpa Fossey. On a weekend at home, when his parents were out of the house, Fossey had taken the opportunity to rifle through his father’s desk. Not with any malicious intent; more out of the curiosity that every child has about their parents’ secrets. At the back of a side drawer he had come across a small tin which contained a bundle of letters tied with, of all things, a brown shoe-lace. Why, he thought years later, did such a small detail embed itself so firmly in his memory?
In one of the letters, Grandpa Fossey stated very firmly that he would have no debate about the issue, but — and to this day, Fossey could remember the exact words — if the child is not named after me then you can kiss your inheritance goodbye. That you think the name is ‘stupid’ and would be a weight around the boy’s neck is unforgivable. It is my damn name and I’m bloody proud of it.
Fossey had been mortified. So it wasn’t just the kids at school who thought it stupid, his own father did too. Mind you, his father had never called him Fossil, Follicle or Fussy. But he had paid the price for his father’s inheritance right through school, and the irony was that it was the inheritance that paid for his education. In any case, he had avoided the old boys’ association and decided that those years of walking up the broad drive to ‘The Hill’ had exposed him to enough grand trees and beautiful, well-manicured but sterile gardens to last a lifetime. His gardens, he liked to think, were wild and fecund.
‘Sorry, Rob,’ he said lamely and gestured to the empty seat. ‘You’ve risen in the ranks since we last saw each other.’
Philson shrugged. ‘The higher you go, the less air to sustain you.’ He glanced around and signalled to a waiter hovering by the door. ‘What are you having?’
‘Straight black.’
‘Good. I’ll have the same.’
Fossey caught himself wincing at the manner in which the minister addressed the waiter. It was not something that came with the job, Philson had always been ‘superior’. As a prefect at Scotch he had been a stickler for the rules and, as far as Fossey could recall, had taken pleasure in disciplining the younger boys who breached them. He remembered many occasions on which Philson had gated boys for several weekends for being out of bounds or for uniform infringements. For his part Fossey had turned his back on the ‘born to rule’ attitude their old school had engendered — but no, he thought now, it isn’t strictly true, I’m rewriting my own history to fit what I believe now. To be truthful, during his time at Scotch he had enjoyed the feeling of being a cut above the state school ‘plebs’ and the ‘great unwashed’, those with whom his father had once scoldingly informed him he belonged.
‘We are buying you an education, not a place up the social ladder,’ he had admonished whenever he felt Fossey was getting ideas above his station.
As usual, his father had been right and after leaving university Fossey drifted inexorably away from his old school friends and opted for the more relaxed and egalitarian crowd he came across as his career in journalism developed.
‘You’ve been doing some fine work.’ Philson smiled. ‘I’ve followed your progress over the years.’
‘It’s just a job —’ Fossey began, but Philson cut him off with a dismissive wave of his hand.
‘Rubbish. You’ve got great style and a really good analytical mind. A rare thing in journalism these days. You’re a cut above the tabloid muck-rakers, that’s for sure.’
‘Well, I still enjoy it, which is a blessing.’ It was true. He had not become jaded like many of his contemporaries, still deriving great pleasure from hunting out a story, assembling the pieces and crafting it into an article.
‘You’re back in Australia for good now?’ the minister asked.
‘Seems so.’
‘And how is Layla?’
Careful, Fossey cautioned himself. Rob has been doing some digging. Layla’s name had rolled off his tongue as though he was one of her friends. Why? What on earth did the minister want with him? He tried to think of him as ‘good old Rob from Scotch’, but there had been too much water under the bridge since those days. ‘Layla? Fine.’
‘Glad to hear it. Bright girl, from what I hear. Mind you, I never thought you’d marry an American.’
Fossey imagined how Layla would have reacted to being called ‘girl’. Or ‘an American’. And what was it that Philson had heard about her? Which brought him back to why. Instead of responding, Fossey nodded and sipped his coffee. Philson had been a politician too long and Fossey felt as though he was being subjected to some weird version of the handshake and baby-kissing routine. Why was it that so many of these men fell into the patterned inflections of insincerity?
‘I’ve got a proposition for you.’ The minister pushed his coffee cup away and wiped his lips with the napkin. ‘I’m looking for an advisor to help me with a rather tricky policy area.’
‘I’m a journalist —’ Fossey began.
‘Someone with journalistic skills and an understanding of Islamic culture.’
‘Not my area —’
‘Hear me out.’ Philson folded the napkin and tucked it under his saucer. ‘You’re a journalist and a bloody good one at that. You also have a grasp of Islamic issues. I read the articles you wrote last year on Iraq and the role of the Baath Party and, while I didn’t agree with all of your conclusions, it was a fine series. Your piece on the Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan was first rate and nobody has come near covering Syria, Iran and Iraq’s breaches of the 1972 biological weapons convention as well as you have.’
‘Thank you, but —’
‘The point is, you did it without stereotyping those regimes. You were fair and equitable while sheeting home blame where it was deserved and not ducking the hard issues.’
‘Rob, that’s all very flattering, but I don’t see what it has to do with any policy stuff you’re involved with.’
The minister looked at him for a moment. ‘Don’t you? You must be aware of the drubbing I’ve been getting in the media. No matter which way I turn on the matter of illegals I get criticised. The far right think I’m left of Lenin and the left think I’m to the right of Ghengis Khan. The Islamic Council scream that I’m anti-Islam and the Jewish lobby accuses me of letting in a bunch of fundamentalist criminals.’
‘A no-win situation,’ Fossey agreed. It was true. The minister had been copping bad press from every direction, but particularly in regard to illegal immigrants. Fossey wasn’t too certain he agreed with the minister’s stance, but he wasn’t about to voice his opinion at this point.
‘I’m getting a lot of flack from assorted welfare and advocacy groups over the
refugee issue. And as far as most of the non-Islamic ethnic groups go, every damn queue-jumping illegal is taking the place of a legitimate applicant under the family reunion scheme.’
‘Sure, but I don’t see —’
‘I need someone to run damage control. The situation has got to the point where I need a dedicated person with credibility in Islamic affairs who can spot a problem before it develops and craft a response that doesn’t offend cultural sensitivities.’
Fossey laughed. ‘You mean a spin doctor.’
The minister frowned. ‘No,’ he said slowly and emphatically, ‘I don’t mean a spin doctor. I mean someone who can get a more informed level of debate happening in the community.’
Oops, wrong thing to say. Political sensitivities, it appeared, were as touchy as cultural ones. ‘But surely people in DIMA are better placed to orchestrate something like that?’ He found it hard to believe that the minister’s own department — the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs — didn’t have someone who could fill the role.
‘Fresh ideas, Fossey, that’s what I’m after. Somebody who can think outside the square.’
‘I don’t know…’ The idea was tempting. He wondered how he would feel running a line as tough as the government’s, but decided he could probably cope with it. And, he reminded himself, it could be the answer to the problems that confronted him. Not that he had any illusions about the task being easy, but having a regular income would be a real bonus at the moment, especially with the new mortgage. ‘Won’t bringing in an outsider put a few departmental noses out of joint?’
Philson laughed heartily. ‘Bound to. But that’s my problem. Don’t you worry about that side of things. I’ll set you up so that you’re quarantined from departmental politics.’
The Haha Man Page 3
