by Peter Hobbs
At the edge of this area, at the entrance to the market on that side, where people came past, a fortune-teller had a table. A parrot perched on it, because it was believed that such birds knew the future. For a few rupees, the fortune-teller would lay out his cards and the bird would pick one. I thought nothing of it then, but I remember now how the bird was held to the table by a small plastic tie, fed through the table surface and pulled tight over one of its claws. If it is true they can see the future, then I pity them for their own. No living thing is meant to be caged.
Time slows in such circumstances. The days became endless, and illness or punishment caused them to be slower still. There were terrible nights that seemed to last for ever, nights when I would think I had slept, and then wake, either because of the heat or nausea, to find that only a few moments had passed. I would wake a hundred times in one night, the dawn no nearer. But in compensation for the horror of hours, the body also slows. My heartbeat weakened to a faint pulse. I withdrew into myself and my thoughts widened, expanding into the empty spaces. They came as slowly as the glaciers of the Hindu Kush descend from their heights.
In that first summer I lay on the floor in a torpor, barely breathing and dreaming my dazed thoughts. The air was so thick none of us had enough energy to move even a limb. Our mouths were dry and our heads ached. Memories of my family, and thoughts of you, tumbled together until I drifted, lost in them, without any sense of where I was. I spent hours and then days in that state, my consciousness submerged, not coming up for air. Over the years I would see how some of the prisoners retreated further into those places, leaving a little more of themselves behind each time. They became inhabited by some vacancy, as though some crucial part of them was gone, and I did not want the same to happen to me.
In time I learned to discipline my thoughts, to make my memories precise. I started by remembering the people I knew, calling them to me, imagining them standing above me. To see their clothes and their gestures, to hear their voices speak to me. I heard them say my name. My mother’s voice, calling me from the orchard. I thought of my father, his moustache beginning to grey, and the lines on his face creasing as he smiled. I conjured his farmer’s hands, grooved from work and dusted with earth, reaching down to lift me up, to pull me free from the chains.
There is a nakedness to imprisonment. No part of yourself can remain hidden. Our lives, our characters, are opened and stripped. But still, in the darkest times I pictured you stepping silently through the door, your feet treading easily among the bodies, too light to wake them. I fought to remember your face, and when it would not come, I remembered the feel of your head on my shoulder, your lips on my cheek. You were my last secret, the first pole of my survival, and I would not give you up.
And then, when the heat became unbearable, I would imagine the waterfall. I would remember how, following our lessons at the mosque, my friends and I would walk up to the road above the village, where a glacial stream ran. When the road was built, the workers cut sharply into the hillside, leaving a tall cliff. The melt water, coming down the slope, had worn into the rock face, creating a cleft with a pool at its base. On the hottest days the water was still icy, and well worth the long walk uphill.
I made that journey in my mind many times. I remember the bank at the edge of the village, how it took a short run up to reach its top. I felt in my chained legs the extra weight of those four or five steps, the sudden rise as we crested. I remember how the path looked from there, running up the hill, cutting first to the left, and then turning sharply and running to the right all the way up until it joined the road. How the dirt of its surface turned to shale higher up, which slid beneath our feet. I picture the mazri bushes growing on the hillside, spilling from the sandy soil. How as we neared the road our climb became a race, one of us at first walking a little faster to try to gain some ground, and then the rest of us responding, pushing at each other for position, beginning to run, as a group at first, but then the swiftest breaking away from those who were slower or younger, until whoever had most strength in their legs reached the top and stood on the road, looking down triumphantly upon those who had needed to stop to catch their breath. I can hear the quick, excited breaths of my friends around me, their half-shouts and laughter, I can feel their shoulders against mine, and on my hands I can feel the stones when I slipped and pushed against the ground to steady myself.
Having no brothers, I revelled in the company of my friends. I had no fear as a child; I was the bravest of us, the first to clamber onto the rocks, the first beneath the icy water to feel its weight beat on my shoulders. You will think me boastful, but how can you deny it, when I was brave enough to approach you, that day in the market?
I could not swim – I do not think that any of us had ever learned – but the pool was not deep, and if the waterfall pushed you beneath it, it was only to hold you for a moment against the smooth rock at the bottom, and then to release you, pushing you quickly into the shallows. Or we would employ the trick I had once seen my uncle perform, which was to tie his shalwar kameez tightly at the wrists, ankles and waist, and wade into the water. When wet, the baggy fabric kept air inside, and he could lie back and float easily, bobbing high in the water.
I do not feel brave any longer. That overconfident, sociable child has grown to be a guarded, solitary man. I cling to those memories of playing with friends because they are the last memories I have of childhood. The boy I once was is a stranger to me, and sometimes I wonder if terrible experiences are enough to change a person – I mean fundamentally to change a person’s nature – or if they merely subdue it, and it endures there beneath, and will reassert itself in time. I wonder if I will be recognised by my family. If those I love will still know me.
I think of my old friends often. Even in my freedom I have retraced that same journey many times, until the memory has become worn from use, and the features of my friends, like stones beneath a waterfall, have been smoothed into indistinctness. Sometimes in my dreams I see a glimpse of a familiar face, as though it were turning to me, but in a second it is gone and when I wake I cannot bring it to mind, no matter how hard I try.
The Prison
I grew accustomed to imprisonment – perhaps too much – to its rules, its systems. It became the only life I knew. Even now, it is hard to shake. The laziness that Alifa sees in me is not only tiredness, but also habit, deeply ingrained. I find it hard to stir myself to action, and I am nervous at the thought of change. I want things to remain as they are, without upheaval. My body shakes and my heart beats when I think of leaving here. There is too much that is unknown, too much that I cannot control.
I think I have told you that I had friends in prison. Men I liked, whom I talked with through the long days. I wonder if I will see them again. Sometimes there were other children, too, and my closest friend in the cell, for the months he was there, was a boy named Karim. He arrived in the night, and I was woken twice, first by the pulling of chains as he was brought in and locked beside me, and then again, a few minutes later, by a poking in the ribs.
‘Hey,’ he whispered, ‘if we’re going to spend time all cosy together, then we should get to know each other, no? You’ve got a lot to catch up on.’
I was years older than him when he was brought into the jail, but he seemed to have lived a hundred lives. I do not believe everything that he told me, as he had a gift for stories, the details of which sometimes changed with each telling. He claimed to have been all over the country, from Peshawar to Karachi, and indeed even to have crossed into India once, by accident, after he had fallen asleep on the roof of a train, and travelled halfway round the country before he found his way back. He said he had woken one morning to see the Taj Mahal glistening white in the sun, though he claimed to have had no idea which city it was in. ‘I couldn’t read the station signs,’ he said.
Yet some of Karim’s stories seemed more authentic than others, and gradually I pieced together the truths of his life. He was an orphan, come from
one of the refugee camps; his parents had been Afghanis. In Peshawar he had been a scavenger on rubbish dumps, searching for scraps of paper and plastic, goods that could be sold to recyclers for a few rupees. He had, in the end, learned to read and write a little, having attended a school in the city, run by an English church. But he was dismissive of his education: ‘All those classes? What a waste of time! The money was much better on the rubbish dump. I could earn three hundred rupees a day there.’
He had been arrested for pickpocketing – for belonging to a gang of thieves on the Peshawar streets.
‘You are a thief, then? I will have to watch myself with you.’
He gave me a disgusted look. ‘I am not in here because I stole anything.’
‘So, what then?’
‘Ah, I am just here because I did not give the police their cut. They were so greedy, man.’
In the hottest days, while I dreamed of waterfalls, he talked incessantly of food, until one of the other prisoners, growing painfully hungry, would shout at him, begging him to shut up.
‘I miss the ice cream,’ he said. ‘There is a shop near Qissa Khawani. You cannot imagine it. It makes my stomach ache just thinking about it.’
‘I have eaten ice cream. There was a trolley sometimes at the market in town.’
‘No, no. I have seen the stuff they sell in the country. It is not the real thing. They have so many flavours. Chocolate and mango and lemon. I can taste it on my tongue.’ Sometimes he would lick his fingers, and I did not laugh at him for it. He made it sound like the most delicious thing on earth.
And yet it was not his greatest passion, not beside movies. He could not believe I had never seen one.
‘But there are so many you must see!’
He would launch into lists of names of films that I could not follow, never mind remember. I am not convinced I actually need to see them, because often he would tell me the entire plot, tales of heroes and trusty sidekicks overcoming villains and rescuing their loves. I do not know how he remembered it all. The stories were sometimes so outlandish that I wondered if he were making them up on the spot. He would name the actors for me, tell me what they were famous for, do impressions of their voices. He would tell me that this one was a better singer, while another was a better dancer.
‘And which do you prefer?’
‘I like them both. But . . .’ and he would leap to the name of another actress, ‘. . . now we’re talking. I saw her on the street one day – no word of a lie – and I went and told her that I was a fan and that it would be an honour to be her guide.’
‘And did she accept?’
‘Of course she accepted! I spent the whole day with her.’
I confessed, once again, that I did not know who she was.
‘Ay,’ he said, ‘you have not even heard of her? What a country boy! You must be the only person in Pakistan. My stories are wasted on you!’
Yet he told them to me anyway. It is true I did not know the people he talked about, but he liked an audience, and in that cell I was the best he would find, the one who tired slowest of his improbable tales and constant chatter.
The prison affected him not at all. Perhaps he had been through worse. Perhaps some people are simply more resistant to the world than I. His spirit was undiminished, as strong the day he left as it had been when he arrived.
As he went he waved to me, saluted the other men. ‘See you later boss, I’m out of here.’ And he was gone from my life as quickly as he arrived.
I dreamed, once, that I was in a city, walking down a street with you, free in the evening sun. We seemed to know the place, to be at home there. Everything was peaceful and calm. I heard Karim’s voice calling to me, and we stopped, and turned to wait for him. And I introduced you both, and he began to tell you stories from the prison, stories he invented, and you looked utterly confused by him, unsure whether to believe him or not. The dream was so clear. I remember precisely the happiness I felt. Even now I can still feel the warmth of it, as though it were something I experienced. Perhaps one day I will come to choose that it was true, so that it will become a memory, and I will forget that it was just a dream.
*
The prison changed, in later years. After they bombed America, and the war came, spilling over the mountains from Afghanistan. I wonder how far it will spread. There has always been violence here, but it is clear from listening to Abbas that it has worsened. I did not fully understand it, but the evidence was there for me. The prison became more crowded than it had ever been. It swelled with men of many nationalities. They came from Saudi Arabia, from Yemen. Some of them bewildered, lost, a long way from their homes. There were months when new men came every day, though many did not stay long.
Some were sold to the Americans as terrorists or insurgents. I am not sure any of them actually were. Some, perhaps, were soldiers, but many of those fought only because they were fed. And innocent men, too – or at least, men guilty of other crimes than fighting Americans – were among those taken. The Americans offered reward money for them, and did not seem to care who they were.
It would have been incomprehensible to me once, but perhaps it is not so hard to understand. Men sold their compatriots because of greed, or because it was a convenient way to dispose of political enemies, or those against whom they wished to revenge themselves. They sold them because the opportunity was there, and perhaps too because it meant they could fool the Americans, could take their money from them, as though this gave them some power over men who exercised so much of it in a country that was not their own.
I saw an American in the prison one day, or think that I did. It is possible I have imagined it, that I conjured the man in my dreams, from the stories that circulated among the prisoners. But I have the memory of a white man standing in the open doorway, dressed in khaki, and wearing sunglasses despite the shade of the cell. Beside him was a Pakistani man in a suit, and the two of them talked as they watched us. The American read names from a list, a short recitation, and the Pakistani man shook his head at each one.
It occurred to me that I might have been among those sold. It would not have been difficult to invent a story: I had been caught crossing the border; I was Afghani, Taliban, an insurgent. I was no longer too young for this to be plausible, and what would my denials matter? I can think only that I was spared because I was too weak. My scarred skin, the slightness of my limbs, spoke of someone who had been imprisoned for years. I still marvel at how thin my legs are; it is a miracle that they support me. No, even the Americans would not have believed I had fought, so I must have been worthless to my jailers.
I had been put in prison not to be punished, but to be forgotten. There had been no trial, no judgement, and perhaps there are no records. Ten years after I entered the prison, even the guards were new, and I knew no one from the time of my arrival there.
Abbas
When I wake this afternoon the home is quiet. I had been exhausted, as always, by the morning walk, and had slept through the worst of the heat. I am thirsty when I wake, and when I stand my head is flushed and dizzy. I go to fetch some water from the jar in the kitchen, and still can hear nothing. It is late; I have slept for longer than I intended, and I am sure that Alifa has returned from school.
The door to the study is open – Abbas keeps it shut while he works – and there is no sound of anyone within. I tap on the door, and, hearing no reply, look quickly inside for him. Sometimes he is absorbed in a book or paper and does not hear a knock. But he is not there. Before I turn to go, I register a blank space of wall, between two bookshelves, where a painting usually hangs. It is a small work, framed in wood, and held behind glass. A miniature, Abbas calls it. I know nothing of such things, but it seems very beautiful to me, and I have admired it before. In it a woman stands, one hand reaching up into a bush bearing fruit. With her other hand she has cast something to the ground – I cannot see what it is, perhaps a stone or seed or core. Her veil is a clear red, its edges lined with gold pain
t. Her sideways eye is green. The colours and the detail are wonderful. Each leaf of the bush has its own colour and shape.
I find them in the garden. They sit at the table on the terrace, the miniature laid flat in front of them. They have paper, and a set of paints, and Alifa is attempting to copy the picture.
‘Here you are.’
‘Yes, with the artist. Would you like to paint?’ he asks me. I am tempted, though I feel too old for such things. Abbas sometimes treats me as a child. Perhaps it is not unreasonable. Once, Alifa would have protested, but now her objection is only an act. She rolls her eyes as she does so, but still: she pushes a piece of paper in my direction.
‘I suppose he can have a go, too.’
It is hard to suppress a smile. These are small successes, but they bring me tremendous happiness. They have been worth the wait.
‘Thank you. But I will just watch, if I am allowed.’
It is clear that the lines of her version of the painting are imperfect, that the image of the woman is looser, bent slightly out of shape. But she has an eye for the work. Tiny details from the original appear on her paper without prompting from her father.
‘Slower, Alifa. There is no need to show off for our guest. Look at how her hand is turned, like this. Is this how yours is?’
She studies the miniature and makes the gesture with her own hand, and then corrects her painting.
‘There, you see it. Excellent.’
She shoots me a glance that is partly pride, and partly a plain message that she does not think I could do anywhere near as well. I have no doubt of it, and I bow my head to acknowledge her mastery, but she has already returned to her painting. She has such fierce concentration, while my own mind tends to wander. Even if I once owned such discipline, it is long gone.
It is such a pleasure to see father and daughter together. I will miss them terribly when I leave. As I sit and watch them I think of my sisters, sitting perhaps at some distant table with my father. Though of course my sisters are grown, and it is an idle, futile daydream.
