‘Our flasks are all-but identical,’ Peta observed, wrapping her cold hands around her beaker and taking a tentative sip.
‘Yes,’ Beede glanced over, anxiously, ‘how odd.’
‘Why?’ she demanded.
‘I inherited this flask from my mother,’ he promptly evaded her.
‘Me too.’
‘Really?’ he deadpanned, ‘You knew my mother?’
She groaned as he withdrew a KitKat from the rear pocket of his rucksack.
‘But the Kurds are fundamentally a nomadic tribe…’ Peta quickly returned to their former subject, ‘so there’s nothing especially strange about…’
‘I know,’ Beede interrupted her. ‘He did seem very ill at ease, though – very uncomfortable – when I raised the subject of his father…’
‘His father was a Village Guard, you say, in a feudal Kurdish army?’
Beede nodded.
‘Well they’re a notoriously despised breed – even amongst their own…’
‘Yes. But that aspect of it didn’t seem to bother him. He said his father was a hero, that he was killed in service after stepping on a landmine. He was just a small boy at the time and yet he clearly remembered his father’s comrades bringing the body home. They’d stuffed a spare pair of trousers full of straw – to save the family’s feelings – but they hadn’t done a terribly good job of it. Gaffar said there was straw poking out from his ankles and his waist…’
‘That’s a grisly story,’ Peta conceded, ‘but why might it generate this tremendous fear of salad? A fear of straw, yes, or a horror of amputation, perhaps…’
‘He’s a fascinating young man,’ Beede expanded, ‘a boxer. Has the most astonishing presence, amazing posture…’
‘But is it only salad he’s afraid of?’ Peta demanded. ‘Not all vegetables?’
‘Just salad. Specifically lettuce. I think he’d probably be perfectly fine around a tomato – say – even a cucumber, at a push, but grew increasingly anxious in the supermarket because of the necessary physical proximity of these items with the one thing he was really phobic about…’
‘I knew a girl who was petrified of buttons once,’ Peta volunteered.
‘That’s apparently quite a common phobia,’ Beede nodded.
‘It was the thought of a button “coming loose” which terrified her…’
‘Really?’
‘She couldn’t even say the word, or write it down or type it…’
‘So how did she ever manage to raise the issue?’
‘She didn’t. It was just something I observed. Even as a child I had a powerful interest in detail…’ she shrugged.
‘Did she ever recover from it?’ Beede wondered, unwrapping his KitKat and breaking it in half.
‘Yes. She went into therapy eventually. We met at a school reunion about ten years ago and I interrogated her about it. She claimed that it was a complex phobia – the complex ones are much harder to resolve – because she wasn’t so much afraid of the buttons themselves as of what they represented. For ages the therapist thought it was a sexual fear…a fear of disrobing…’
‘No surprises there, then,’ Beede observed, cynically.
‘But after a while they discovered – following some bouts of deep hypnosis – that she’d swallowed a button as a baby. It’d become briefly lodged in her throat…’
‘Hmmn…’ Beede gave this scenario some consideration. ‘So you think it’s possible that Gaffar might’ve had an experience along similar lines?’
‘Well it’s not inconceivable.’
Beede frowned. ‘I have another theory,’ he said, ‘but it’s quite a strange one…’
He offered her half of his KitKat. She thanked him and took it.
‘In a spare moment earlier this afternoon I actually did a web-search on Sinjar and got some rather bizarre results…’
She bit into the chocolate and then frowned as she chewed. ‘This is soft,’ she said, grabbing the packet and inspecting it. ‘The sell-by date is February 1997.’
Beede ignored her. ‘Obviously there was all the run-of-the-mill stuff – political, geographical…But hidden in amongst it…’
‘1997,’ she repeated, snatching the remainder of the bar away from him. ‘I doubt even Pinch would risk something of that vintage…’
Pinch sat bolt upright in the back of the van, on hearing his name uttered.
‘In fact…’
Peta offered the chocolate to Pinch. Pinch sniffed at it, gently took it from her, and then devoured it, with relish.
‘Chocolate is bad for dogs,’ Beede idly observed as Peta rolled down her window and spat out what little still remained in her mouth.
‘Balls…’ she cursed, ‘I just dribbled it down the side of the door.’ She wound the window back up again. Beede took a few, quiet sips of his coffee.
‘So, hidden in amongst all the geographical stuff?’ she prompted him.
‘Yes,’ he unscrewed his Thermos and carefully topped up his beaker, ‘there was a ream of information about this ancient Kurdish tribe, this outlandish sect, known as the Dawasin…’
‘The what?’ Peta frowned.
‘The Dawasin, sometimes also known as the Yazidi, I believe – or Yezidi, the spelling varies on individual sites…’
‘I’ve heard of them,’ Peta butted in, ‘an ancient Kurdish sect. There’s a large community in Germany of all places…’
‘Apparently so, there’s several hundred thousand of them – in total – but one of their main populations was in Sinjar, until Saddam Hussein took it into his head to steal their traditional lands and cram them into collectives in the mid-1970s…’
‘Are they Moslem?’
‘No. At least other Moslems don’t consider them so. That’s another big part of the problem…’
‘So what do they believe?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s all kept very hush-hush. But from what I can tell their faith contains elements of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. They hold the Bible and the Qur’an sacred, but they have their own holy book written by their own special prophet, Shaykh Adi. It’s called The Book of Emergence – I can’t remember the Kurdish title off-hand…’
She smiled. ‘I think we can forgive you that…’
‘They worship a fallen angel,’ Beede continued, ‘called Malik Taus. He’s also known as The Peacock Angel. They believe that evil is as much a part of divinity as good…’
‘How very modern of them…’ Peta quipped.
‘Yes. Although Malik Taus isn’t the devil, strictly speaking, because he repented his fall – for 7,000 years – during which time he wept seven large jars of tears which he used to put out the fires of hell…’
‘Gracious.’
‘And God isn’t an active presence, either. He created the world but then he withdrew. Shaykh Adi and Malik Taus control the world’s destiny now.’
He paused. ‘They’re fanatical purists. You can’t join or convert. You have to be born into the tribe.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they believe – and this is the really crazy part – that they’re the last remaining direct descendants of Adam’s line which hasn’t been besmirched by the sins of Eve…’
‘What?! How?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he shrugged, ‘but because they’re so pure – I mean racially – they’re insanely clannish and secretive. They never discuss or practise their religion openly, never marry outside of the sect, and if you leave the community for over a year then you risk excommunication, which means that your soul is effectively lost forever.’
‘Okay…’ Peta pulled a smallish, Tupperware container from her bag, prised open the lid and produced two home-baked rock cakes from inside. She passed one over to Beede. ‘…So how exactly does this relate to your friend?’
‘Well there was one fact which sprang out at me…’
He took a quick bite of the rock cake.
‘These are wonderful.’
‘Yes. They
’re one of Ann’s specialities…’
Peta took a bite herself.
Beede quickly chewed and swallowed. ‘The Yezidis actually believe that lettuce is evil.’
‘No!’ Peta almost choked on her mouthful. ‘That must be apocryphal!’
‘It’s always possible – I mean I gleaned this information on the net, after all. But from what I could tell, a hatred of lettuce, of salad, is a deep-seated part of Yezidi culture. Malik Taus hid inside a lettuce patch at one point and so lettuces are associated with evil and all Yezidis are extremely cautious around them…’
‘So you honestly think…?’
Beede shrugged. ‘It just struck me as rather strange, that’s all.’
‘But does – uh – Gaffar? Is that his name?’
Beede nodded.
‘Does Gaffar practise any religion that you know of?’
‘He’s a Moslem, a Sunni Moslem. But not an especially dutiful one. I get the impression that his mother is fairly traditional, quite devout. It’s possible that he might suspect something about his father’s past – I mean if I’m on even remotely the right track here, then I’m guessing that his father may’ve been raised among the Dawasin and then left the tribe at some point, travelled over to Turkey, converted, got married, started a new life there…’
‘But this is all speculation…?’
‘Yes. Entirely.’
‘Will you ask him about it?’
‘Perhaps. I’m not sure. I’m in two minds on the matter – it might not really be my place…’
‘Your place?’ Peta parroted. ‘How come?’
He just shrugged.
‘I mean isn’t the phobia sufficiently disabling to justify your involvement, whatever the consequences?’
‘It’s certainly quite bad. Quite extreme…But if he doesn’t know – by some strange fluke – well, the wider ramifications could be absolutely fascinating…’ Beede turned to look at her, his eyes glimmering. ‘Because what it would potentially mean is that this isolated young man had somehow sustained a kind of unconscious memory of this extraordinary and singular culture from his genetic past. A kind of mystical or spiritual imprint…’
Peta frowned. ‘He might’ve had clues. There might’ve been – what do they like to call it? – uh…A certain amount of leakage from the family in general…’
‘Of course.’
‘And something else to factor in,’ Peta continued, ‘is that this is a culture he can never fully regain, that he can never actually experience or have ready access to. If his father was excommunicated…’ ‘That’s also true,’ Beede nodded. ‘It does seem very paradoxical, very cruel in a way – to discover something so monumental about yourself which lives on, just out of reach, and can never be recovered.’
‘And especially hard to bear,’ Peta expanded, ‘when everything about our modern culture seeks to engage, to democratise, to convert…’
‘The Dawasin are certainly a bizarre anachronism,’ Beede agreed.
He smiled. ‘Gaffar’s such an amazing creature, though. Such a paradigm…’
‘How so?’
‘Well, because he’s been stripped of literally everything – his past, his home, his history, even – and yet there he stands, utterly unbowed, just readying himself, quite calmly, for life’s next big assault…’
‘You’re quite extraordinary,’ Peta murmured, shaking her head.
‘Me?’ He turned to look at her, surprised.
‘You’ll happily spend a night tramping around the woods,’ she informed him, tartly, ‘in freezing mid-winter, on a doomed quest to find a lost friend. You’ll search the web trying to unlock the secrets of a random Kurd’s psyche, but when it comes to your own flesh and blood, your own son…’
‘That’s hardly fair,’ Beede snapped.
‘Why not?’
Beede glowered down at his rock cake. He felt a strong urge to throw it at her, to clamber out of the van and disappear, but it had started to rain – huge, round drops which smashed down in a thousand, mean little rabbit-punches on to the windscreen.
‘Why not, Beede?’ she repeated.
SEVEN
She didn’t return for over forty minutes. After two he took out his phone to check his messages. He sent a quick text to a client and a quick text to Gaffar. He put his phone away again. He carefully inspected his hands. He frowned. He chewed off the jagged tip of a broken thumb-nail. He inspected his hands for a second time. He stopped frowning. He took out his phone. He re-checked his texts. He read a perplexing message from Kelly which simply said, I 4give U –
Eh?
He debated ringing her, decided against it and texted her instead (uh…Thanx, I think…).
He looked at his watch –
Late
– then gazed around the kitchen. His eye alighted on his mug of sweetened milk. He took a small sip of it and grimaced. It tasted strange. Rich. Thick. And there was a dense skin on the top. He ran a tentative finger along his upper lip then stood up, walked over to the sink, poured the eggy-milk down the plughole and washed out his cup.
Once he’d completed this task he noticed the dirty pan – how the milk had burned into a glutinous, brown mess on the base of it. He grabbed hold of it, found a scouring pad, some detergent, and scrubbed away, assiduously, until all the burned milk was gone –
Good
He placed the pan on to the draining-board, rinsed out the whisk, then set about cleaning the top of the hob – where the milk had boiled over – shining it up to a perfect finish with a small piece of kitchen towel.
He leaned against the oven, with a sigh, and gazed around the room. He took out his phone. He held it in his hand, scowling, swore under his breath, and shoved it away again. He inspected his watch. He went and sat back down, then stood up, as if intending to go, but didn’t move. He cocked his head and listened –
Silence
He frowned. He inspected his watch. He glanced around him. He picked up the book by the doctor about his antsy-looking daughter. He sat down. He flipped through it…
Then the letters started to arrive. Slowly at first, then more and more frequently. All of them in Arabic. The Foreign Office had translated them, as best they could…
‘She was a lovely girl,’ said one, ‘with a huge soul, a generous spirit…’
‘When she smiled,’ said another, ‘the world always felt like a better place.’
Kane snorted and tossed the book – contemptuously – back into the box. He pulled up his hood (like a sullen teenager), then crossed his arms and gazed around him.
Hung over the back of a nearby chair were three, tiny child’s socks, none of which matched. And on the table just in front of them? Something he hadn’t noticed before –
A scarf?
A shawl?
He reached out and grabbed a hold of it (it was a scarf. A long, grey scarf. Soft. Knitted) then closed his eyes and pressed it to his face. It smelled of cloves…
Yes…
– and of chestnuts, and of winter – of old charcoal smoking in a brazier. It was still damp. He frowned. Something was tickling his cheek. He opened his eyes and looked down –
Mud.
Flecks of mud…
He carefully picked them out of the grey fabric, one by one, then rolled the scarf up, into a tight ball, to see how small he could make it –
Pocket size?
No –
Too big.
He grimaced and pressed it to his face again. He buried his nose into it, burrowed into it and stayed there for several minutes. It was then that he saw –
Huh?!
– the goose wings. Clear as day. In his mind’s eye…
Eh?
– and he was busily engaged in fastening them together –
Are those my hands…?
– with some twine –
Twine?
?!
– then slinging them over his shoulders, with a guffaw, and tying them into place –
Just like Icarus
– before starting to climb.
Climb?
The sound of running water distracted him from his reverie. He opened his eyes and glanced up at the ceiling. There was a crack. A long crack, which extended virtually the entire…
What’s she doing up there?
He frowned –
Showering?
He stared down at the scarf again, bemused. He hesitated for a moment and then pushed his face into it for a second time.
Soil
He saw soil. And it was French soil (he was certain of it). And he was scooping up this soil with his hands and he was slowly, carefully, piling it inside his shoes. His boots. His tiny, hand-made, exquisitely stitched, ludicrously pointed boots…
Then there was a rumbling –
Eh?!
He definitely heard a rumbling –
Almost a…
He opened his eyes. He saw the dog. She was standing (as best she could) on the kitchen tiles in front of him and she was growling. She was baring her teeth at him.
‘Hey…’
He leaned down towards her to try and calm her. She continued to growl. Not at him, he soon realised…
Darkmans Page 59
