Fossey looked dubious.
‘I don’t need an answer today. Just give it some thought and get back to me.’ The minister beamed and signalled to the waiter for the bill. ‘I can manage a decent contract. Money isn’t an issue.’
‘It’s not a matter of money,’ Fossey lied. ‘It sounds like an interesting challenge, but I’d like some time to think about it.’
‘Not a problem.’ He pushed a card across the table. ‘Here. My chief of staff, Angela Tackberry, will handle everything, but any queries, give me a ring.’
Fossey and Layla had discussed it for several days, both knowing that in the end the money was going to make a difference. At first Layla had been set against the idea, but then conceded that, yes, they did need the money and maybe Fossey would be in a position to soften the government’s line.
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one.’
‘But you could try,’ Layla insisted.
‘I suppose.’
‘And we come back to Brisbane if it doesn’t work out?’
‘Of course.’ Fossey had no desire to spend the rest of his life in Canberra. ‘It’s not for ever.’
‘It had better not be.’
Up until the day the minister called, they had been a perfect combination and worked together with very little friction, giving each other space and freedom. And always trust. But, as he had discovered, there were good silences and bad ones.
It was in Canberra, or maybe because of Canberra, that Layla had started to really struggle with her own work.
‘I cannot call things by their right names,’ she had complained. ‘How do you convey the subtlety of context when the poet is being purposefully oblique, not for poetic reasons but political?’
‘Surely you can address that in the foreword? Or in notes?’ Fossey had replied.
‘No! The words must stand alone. Notes too easily become a crutch. Each time I have a problem I should just add a footnote?’ Her eyes blazed at him and he raised his palms and retreated, but Layla was not able to let it go.
‘And you’ll ask: why his poetry doesn’t
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!’
‘Layla, I don’t quite understand. That isn’t Faiz, is it?’
Her look was disdainful, dismissive. ‘Of course not. It’s Neruda.’ With that she had retreated to her study and shut the door.
The bitter irony in all of this was that silence had been such a strong motif in binding them together.
‘How will you be,’ he had asked long before, ‘when I need to concentrate on my work? Will you mind it that I am locked away in my own world, or spending hours at the computer?’
Her reaction had astonished him. She laughed long and hard.
‘What’s so funny about that?’ he asked, watching her closely. ‘You think I’m joking?’
It took several attempts before Layla had the laughter under control, but when she had composed herself she looked at him with so much love in her big black eyes that he felt shamed for even doubting she would cope with the way he needed to work. Then she explained that it had been her fear that he would be the one to complain at her requesting peace and quiet while she worked on her translations. ‘Sometimes, I just need silence. I search for a word … no, not even a word but the shade of a word, and I let the feeling of the word roll around in my head.’ She searched his face for a sign that he understood what she was saying and then, reassured, continued. ‘Sometimes, with my father, I would be on the edge of discovering a word or phrase and he would castigate me for being lazy. I don’t think he understood how hard it is giving language room to grow.’
‘How will I know when it is a different silence?’
‘Different? How?’
‘Like when you don’t love me.’ He smiled to show he was being silly.
But Layla’s mouth dropped and she lowered her eyes. ‘You will know.’
‘I will?’ Fossey felt suddenly as though the conversation had gone somewhere he had not intended.
‘Of course, Foss. I’ll be dead.’
She burst out laughing again and then clung to him. ‘You and I will have good silences, Mr Dutetre.’
In Canberra he had soon missed their closeness, and when Layla was out of the house he would pour himself a large scotch and settle into her chair. Feeling her around him. He noticed other things too. The usually well-ordered desk was a mess: books and magazines scattered everywhere, scraps of paper littering the desktop. Even her computer had small notes stuck to it. Bird-hunter? Dead veins with blood. Strangers to their voice. None of them meant anything to him. A bilingual copy of Neruda’s Las Uvas y el Viento lay on her chair, a sheet of notepaper marking her place. Fossey opened it and read what Layla had scrawled: Can be read as his reaction to exile, but the contract in poetry is the moment of interaction between the poem and the reader and unlike Neruda (even in translation) I’m not sure that with Faiz it is an equal contract.
He sipped his scotch, replaced the note and, feeling guilty at having intruded into her space, resolved not to spy on her again.
For the first few weeks in Canberra Layla had fluctuated between explosive anger and total silence, to which Fossey reacted by drinking a lot more than was good for him. Then she began to freeze him out, spending more and more time immersed in a life online, logged into newsgroups and chat-rooms for hours each day. From what he observed, it appeared she had temporarily abandoned the poetry and was using the internet to reacquaint herself with her homeland. A map of Afghanistan was stuck to the wall and the web-pages she studied so intently were of Afghanistan’s ongoing history of misery and bloodshed. On her chair was the small red rug that had accompanied her since childhood.
Now, as he alighted from the bus in Adelaide Street, the storm that had been gathering all day unleashed itself on the heart of Brisbane. Lightning cracked overhead, then thunder so loud it rattled the plate-glass windows of the shops and hurt Fossey’s eardrums. He stepped into an arcade and watched as the first hesitant drops of rain were whipped away by a swirling wind that tore through the city like a mini-cyclone. Then the rain came with a vengeance. Within minutes the traffic was at a standstill as drivers struggled to see, their windscreen-wipers unable to deal with the downpour. There was something fascinating about watching a modern metropolis come to a stop in the face of such elemental forces. Fossey noticed that, unlike the frustrated drivers, the sheltering shoppers and office workers were smiling, enjoying the storm. Out on a pedestrian crossing a lone girl, bare-footed, danced in pagan delight, her flimsy tie-dyed dress clinging to her body. Fossey found the spectacle disturbingly erotic and watched as she circled slowly, hands and face extended to the heavens, eyes closed — soaked.
‘Be stinking hot again soon, darling,’ a woman behind him said cheerfully. ‘Bloody steam-bath.’
She was right. Ten minutes later, as the rain eased and the traffic began to flow, the sun broke through and the humidity was back worse than before. Fossey walked to the end of the Elizabeth Street Mall and found himself tagging on to a rather lengthy queue. The taxis were doing good business.
It took him quarter of an hour to get to the front of the line and when he did it was only to wait another five minutes before a cab pulled up in front of him.
‘St Lucia Campus,’ he said as he climbed in beside a hugely overweight driver.
‘Bloody weather,’ the man scowled.
‘I was enjoying the storm. I always find them exhilarating —’ Fossey began.
But the cabbie was having none of it. ‘Try being stuck on the bloody roads with dickhead hoons sliding all over the fucking place. See if you find that fucking exhilarating.’
‘Bad out there, huh?’ Fossey decided to take the line of least resistance, his mind al
ready trying to concentrate on the upcoming meeting. He glanced at his watch and realised he was now running several minutes late. Well, there was nothing he could do about it.
Finally out of town and beside the river at Coronation Drive, Fossey eased himself forward in the cab and took his wallet from his back pocket. ‘Can you pull over into the bus stop?’
‘You said you were going to St Lucia,’ the driver protested.
‘Changed my mind. Sorry.’
The driver glanced at him suspiciously. ‘I hope you got cash, mate. I’ve had nothing but fucking Cabcharge vouchers all day. I hate those bastards.’
‘I’ve got cash.’ Fossey produced ten dollars. ‘You can keep the change.’
For a moment he stood and looked at the road. If anyone had been following him, they would be well and truly stuffed. No U-turns permitted and not another place to turn off until the Wesley Hospital. Satisfied, he waited for a gap in the traffic and made his way over the road, which was now steaming and mauve — unexpectedly mauve. The storm had ripped through the huge jacarandas that ran alongside the river, carpeting the roadway in flowers.
By the time Fossey turned into Park Road he was as hot and sticky as he had been before the storm. He was also beginning to feel extremely tense. There was a very big chance that he had misjudged the man he was to meet. Others had judged him and harshly so, but there was something in their email contact that had convinced Fossey the man was on the level. I am about to step across that line, Fossey thought. I am about to break federal and state laws and probably several international ones as well. But he was feeling dangerously out of step — dangerously sane.
It took him a couple more minutes to reach the coffee bar. He looked around and for a moment didn’t recognise the man waiting for him. They had only met the one time in Canberra and then briefly, but Fossey’s memory was of a pallid and sickly individual, whereas the man rising from his seat at the rear of the café looked fit and healthy. The highset brow was far less furrowed and the eyes, bright and shining, no longer as sunken and ringed as he had remembered them from Canberra. And the moment he felt the firm handshake and warm smile, Fossey knew he had made the right decision.
‘Nice to see you again, Ray.’
‘You too.’ Ray Gilbert beamed and pulled out a seat for Fossey. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I had to bring Walter along.’
The killing was as systematic as the hunting: three bullets then the throat slit and the genitals sliced off. With the women they removed the breasts. And everywhere among the living and the dead moved the Taliban. White robes and black turbans.
Karim Mazari should have been dead by now. Not only was he Hazara, but he and his family were on a list of prominent Hazara marked for execution. Fortunately for Karim and Mohammed Sarwar, the young Talibs who had captured them were from Kabul and didn’t recognise Karim. It so nearly might not have mattered. For a moment, as the Talibs raised their rifles, Karim had been struck dumb, but then he did the thing they least expected — he laughed.
‘God is great! The righteous sword has returned and now the Mongol Hazara will die.’ The words had an instant effect, not because of what Karim said, but because he spoke them in fluent Pashto.
The boys lowered their Kalashnikovs, and salaamed apologetically.
‘Are there Hazara here?’ The tallest boy pointed at the shack with his rifle.
‘We are Pashtuns,’ Karim said haughtily. ‘We may be poor but I would not employ one of those animals as my slave.’
‘Many of your brothers from Balkh have joined forces with us.’
The other boy nodded. ‘Together we will make this city halal.‘
‘Insh’allah.’ Karim moved away from the wall. ‘Now, can I offer you tea?’
The boys glanced at each other and then shook their heads in unison. ‘We have to report back to our commander. Peace be with you.’
‘And with you,’ Karim intoned and opened the door for them.
As soon as the Talibs had left, Mohammed Sarwar bolted the door and turned to Karim. ‘You are Pashtun?’
‘No, of course not.’ Karim switched back to Hazaragi. ‘But it was all I could think to do.’ He took the man’s hands and pressed them between his own. ‘I owe you a debt beyond repayment.’ This humble repairer of bicycles had saved his life.
‘No, sir, there is no debt.’ There were tears streaming down Sarwar’s face, leaving tracks in the grime. ‘The Talibs would have visited here sooner or later. I know no Pashto, and would be dead now if you were not such a scholar. My wife and children would be dead, left to starve.’
Karim laughed. ‘Then let us say we are brothers in the family of survivors.’
‘And may I know my brother’s name?’
‘Karim Mazari, son of Ahmed Khan the engineer.’
Mohammed Sarwar gave a broad gap-toothed grin. ‘Then I have risen up in the world to have a man from such an exalted family as my brother. Come, we will have the tea you so generously offered our enemies, and then I shall listen to the wind to see what lives in the city.’
Karim shook his head. ‘No, I must find a way to leave. My father was killed in the marketplace and my wife and children are at home on my father’s farm.’
‘Do not add loss upon loss. I grieve for your father, but if you attempt to go now you would make your wife a widow and your children fatherless. Karim, I have been watching. It is madness out there. The next time you may not have the luxury of speech to save you. There are many bullets that have no tongue to ask, nor ears to listen.’
The shock of the morning’s events had still not truly sunk in. But Karim didn’t need proof of Mohammed Sarwar’s words. The sound of gunfire and even occasional rocket and mortar fire was growing in intensity. ‘Then I thank you and will stay a while.’ Karim bowed slightly then laughed. ‘Maybe I can learn to fix a bicycle.’
It was four days before Karim Mazari left the house of the bicycle repairman, Mohammed Sarwar. In that time he grew to like the man and his family. Sarwar had lived for a time in Kabul but fled the city as the Taliban approached, leaving behind his house and all that he possessed. Here in Mazar he had started again and now, though still poor, was slowly building his small business. His wife, Meena, was a silent presence who, seemingly content to make tea and prepare meals, only spoke when Karim addressed her. Whenever her two small boys did not require her attention she would seclude herself in a tiny room on one side of the house.
Karim’s time in England had made him think about the treatment of women in his country, but since his return he had become accustomed again to the way things were here. Now, though, he found himself pondering what Meena must think and feel during those hours alone. He thought too of his wife, Saara, and their children, Danyal and Halma. He longed to be with them.
Though the gunfire had continued until late on the first day, the quiet that descended was an eerie calm, the bullets replaced by rumours. The Taliban troops were still combing the city, targeting predominantly Hazara neighbourhoods, though some late-night whispers spoke of the Tajik and Uzbek communities also being visited. In some cases the Talibs were being aided by informers or local Pashtun forces and particular families were raided. In every case the result was the same — all male members of the households were killed.
Late on the night of the second day of the Taliban takeover of Mazar, a friend of Mohammed Sarwar’s crept into the courtyard with the news that a new governor, Mullah Manon Niazi, had been installed. Several times during the day he delivered speeches at mosques throughout the city, urging violence against Hazaras in retaliation for the killing of Taliban prisoners in 1997, criticising them for being Shia and urging them to convert. With a glance at Karim the man added that the mullah had warned citizens they would be punished if they protected Hazaras. ‘His speeches are being broadcast over and over on the radio,’ the man said.
Mohammed Sarwar fetched a battered transistor radio from the house and together the three men squatted in the courtyard to listen. Sarw
ar fiddled with the tuning until the disembodied voice of Mullah Niazi emerged through the static.
‘Last year you rebelled against us and killed us. From all your homes you shot at us. Now we are here to deal with you. The Hazaras killed our force here, and now we have to kill Hazaras. The Hazaras deserve no mercy; they are not Moslem, they are Shia. They are kofr. From all true believers we expect loyalty, but if you do not show your loyalty we will burn your houses and we will kill you. You either accept to be Moslems or leave Afghanistan. If you run from us, wherever you go we will catch you. If you go up, we will pull you down by your feet; if you hide below, we will pull you up by your hair. If anyone is hiding Hazaras in his house he too will be taken away. What Hizb-I Wahdat and the Hazaras did to the Talibs, we will do worse. As many as they killed, we will kill more.’
The following morning Karim and Sarwar set out to see what was happening in the city. They only got as far as the end of the laneway. As they turned into the first major road a man ran past them, his face contorted with terror. Behind him, an old man was shuffling along with the aid of a walking stick. Seconds later a Datsun full of Taliban came down the street and, from inside the car, a soldier shot the fleeing man. The vehicle turned and came slowly back along the road to where the old man had stopped. They shot him and drove off. Unseen, Karim and Sarwar returned home.
Later in the afternoon, Meena, concealed in her burqa, ventured out to purchase some supplies. At first Sarwar had forbidden her to leave but Meena, uncharacteristically forthright, argued with him. ‘You want us to starve to death in our own home?’
‘I don’t want you killed.’
‘Even those animals wouldn’t harm a woman.’
Reluctantly Sarwar relented and spent the next two hours fretting over his decision.
Just when he was convinced they should set out to find her, Meena slipped back into the courtyard carrying bread, lamb and vegetables. She also had news.
‘There are only three kinds of people on the streets: Talibs, women and bodies. A woman from Karte Bokhti told me that the Taliban surrounded the streets and searched every house looking for Hazaras and …’ For the first time Meena looked directly at Karim. ‘They say there are dozens of bodies on your uncle’s tomb.’
The Haha Man Page 4
