Читать книгу The Last Kestrel - Jill McGivering - Страница 9

Almost two weeks earlier

Late in the night, a sound woke Hasina. She opened her eyes with a jolt and listened. Abdul, her husband, breathed heavily beside her. The stale but comfortable animal smell of him filled her nostrils. The room was clotted with darkness. She eased herself off the cot and wound her long cotton scarf round her shoulders and head.

Outside, she poured herself water from the jug, drank a little, then wet the end of her scarf. The night air was fresh and earthy, after the breath-thick room. She crept round the side of the house, scanning the mud yard and the running blot of the low boundary wall. The goats stamped, moving nervously in a half-circle on their tethers. Beyond them, the field of standing corn stretched away in a solid dark block. She stood, hidden in the shadow of the house, and rubbed the damp tail of her scarf round her neck. Nothing.

She looked out across the land. She knew every stone, every ditch of this field as well as she knew the bumps and contours of her son’s body, of her husband’s body too. It was good land. It rose like a blessing out of the barren desert, green fields made fertile by the sudden appearance of the river. The soil had fed as many generations of her husband’s family as anyone could remember. Like the people, it struggled to stave off exhaustion. She ran her eyes along the raised ridge, looking for fresh signs of collapse. When the rains were heavy, the top layer could lift and run away with the torrents of water. Their carefully dug irrigation channels silted up and, once the rain stopped, they squelched through them, feeling the mud ooze between their toes, to sieve the earth between their fingers and pile it back.

But at this time of year, in the long stifling hope of rain, it was baked hard, a sunken square of land that they struggled to keep moist. The first crop of the year was long since harvested. The second crop–corn for themselves and poppy to sell to Abdul’s brother, Karam–was growing higher, day by day. She sniffed the air, tasting the health of the plants. The first harvest had been average. This second one held more promise.

She settled on a stone and rocked herself. Somewhere out in the desert, wild dogs were calling to each other. A low breeze was blowing in from the plains. She wrapped her moist scarf across her face, shielding her eyes from the lightly swirling sand.

Then she heard it. A tiny human explosion: a sneeze. She lowered the rim of her scarf. Someone was out there, hiding in the corn. She listened, her senses raw. After some time, a barely audible rustle, as if someone, deep in the cornfield, were shifting their weight.

She crept forward, one slow step at a time, feeling out the ground with each foot. She made her way, bent double, down the side of the field, balancing on the thin strip between the last planted row and the ditch. Every few paces, she stopped and listened.

Finally she heard breathing. Short, shallow breaths. She turned towards the centre of the corn and reached forward to ease apart the corn stems, as if she were parting a curtain. She let out a sudden cry. Crouched in front of her, looking right into her eyes, so close she could reach out and touch him, was a young man, a stranger, his head wrapped in the printed cotton scarf of the jihadi fighter. A brass talisman gleamed on a leather thong round his neck. It was in the shape of a bird, its wings spread and claws outstretched. The young man frowned. The thin moonlight caught the metal casing of the gun he held across his body, its muzzle a matter of inches from her bending head.

The three young men perched on the perimeter wall and lit up fat cigarettes. Hasina’s son, Aref, sat beside them, the only one without a gun propped against his legs. Hasina recognized the acrid smell of fresh hashish. Aref smoked too, when the cigarette was offered, but self-consciously. They were teasing him, laughing and calling him ‘little brother’. Such arrogance. Hasina wanted to slap their faces. They thought they were so clever, these boys with guns. They were nothing more than troublemakers, with their bullets and bombs. Whatever they called themselves, Leftists, jihadis, mujahideen. She’d seen so much death already.

Moving quietly, she poured water into cups and offered it to them. They reeked of stale sweat. She tried not to let her disapproval show. Even the poorest villager showed respect to his body by keeping clean.

As the young men smoked, she pulled Aref away and took him to the back of the house. His eyes were sullen.

‘Who are these boys?’ she said. ‘Why have you brought them to our home? Have you no respect?’

He scowled. ‘They are my brothers.’

‘Brothers?’ She stared at him. ‘How do you know them?’

Aref turned his eyes to the earth. ‘Karam Uncle,’ he said.

Hasina blinked. Karam? He had dark contacts, she knew that. Selling poppy to them had made his fortune. But fighters, like these?

‘You’ve met them before?’

‘Many times.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘I have trained with them.’ He lifted his hands as if he were aiming a gun at her. ‘You never knew, did you?’

What a child, she thought. She saw triumph in his eyes. What would Abdul say? Those times Aref had disappeared for two, three days on Karam’s business. Was it for this? She wanted to take hold of his shoulders and shake him hard. Instead she reached for his hand. ‘Aref, these are not decent boys.’

‘Not decent?’ He swatted her away. ‘These men are fighting. Defending our land. Not decent?’

Hasina sighed. Beside them the goats shuffled and pressed, hot and pungent, against her. She thought of that face, so close to hers in the corn. He looked little more than a boy, but his eyes, hard and knowing, were old.

‘Where are they from?’

Aref gestured vaguely. ‘Beyond Nayullah.’

‘They should go home, Aref. Back to their families.’

Her son was looking at her the way some men in the village looked at their wives, as if women had no more brains than a goat.

‘They’re fighters. Not farmers.’ He spat out the word with disdain. ‘They’re fighting for Allah.’

Behind them, one of the young men let out a barely stifled laugh. She froze, frightened the noise would wake Abdul.

‘Bring them to the back,’ she said. She untied the goats and led them out into the clearing. ‘I’ll fetch food.’

She sat in the shadow of the wall and watched them. They bristled with tense excitement as they whispered and sniggered. They didn’t attempt to wash. They kicked the area clean of goat droppings and dirty straw and half sat, half lay on the mud. Once they’d pulled off their boots, they fell on the food she’d given them. Their long-nosed guns lay at their sides. Aref sat with his arms curled tightly round his knees, a look of devotion on his face.

What lives were these boys leading, fleeing across the desert as the foreigners advanced? The boys were settling to sleep now, their arms round their guns as if they were wives. Their faces had relaxed. Sleep was turning them to boys again. She imagined their mothers, lying in the darkness in small mud-brick houses like their own. She bowed her head and tried to pray for them, to beg Allah to give them His guidance and keep them safe from harm. But all she could see when she closed her eyes was the eager face of her own son, loyal as a dog at their feet.

When she woke at first light, the young men had disappeared. So had Aref. He must be guiding them off the village land. An hour or two, then he’d be back. She waited, listening for his step every moment as she swept and cooked. Morning passed. When she took food to Abdul in the fields, she stayed with him as he ate. Should she tell him? She read the exhaustion in his face and held her tongue. By mid-afternoon, she was desperate. She straightened her skirts and walked through the village to the grand compound of her brother-in-law, Karam.

Her sister-in-law, Palwasha, was lying on her side on a crimson carpet. It was decorated with geometric designs in black, yellow and cream. The colours were strong and bright. Abdul’s wealthy brother had sent his first wife back to her family for failing to bear children. Now he spoiled his second wife with costly gifts. Hasina pursed her lips. Before this, only the mosque had been decked with carpets.

Palwasha was pulling at her elder daughter’s hair, tugging it into tight plaits. Sima was grimacing. Palwasha’s wrists tinkled with bracelets as she flexed her arms.

‘I should never have come to live here,’ Palwasha said as soon as she saw Hasina. Her eyes, heavily circled with kohl, rolled dramatically. ‘I told Karam I would simply die. I’m a town girl. People should remember that.’ She looked sullenly at Hasina. ‘Why am I telling you?’ she said. ‘You never understand a thing.’

Hasina settled herself on the compact mud, some distance from the edge of the carpet. Palwasha talked such nonsense. The village women said her family had married her off to Karam because they were in debt.

‘Of course, sister-in-law,’ Hasina said. ‘Life here must seem very harsh to you.’

Sima squirmed, struggling to break free. Palwasha slapped her leg. Sima’s breathing juddered as she tried not to cry.

‘Primitive!’ Palwasha muttered. ‘You’re so right.’

She finished plaiting and pushed Sima away. The girl crept out into the compound to join her young brother, Yousaf, and sister, Nadira, chasing chickens and setting them flapping through the straw.

‘How are your good mother and father?’ Hasina spoke the ritual greetings politely. ‘Your younger sister? May Allah grant them good health.’

Palwasha didn’t bother to answer. A younger woman should show respect. It was Hasina’s due. But they took their status from their husbands. Abdul was just a farmer. Karam was rich.

‘The village is hard for you,’ Hasina tried again. She looked at the thick carpet under Palwasha’s thigh, the expensive brass pots and plates stacked in the corner behind her. ‘But perhaps,’ she went on, ‘in these troubled times, we are safer here.’

‘Safer?’ Palwasha was picking at her polished nails. ‘May God help us! If I have to die, please, not here. That would be too cruel.’ She let out a sudden laugh.

‘The foreign soldiers are advancing, sister-in-law.’ Hasina proceeded carefully. ‘Have you heard? They’re already in Nayullah.’

Palwasha rolled over onto her back. ‘What does it matter?’ she said. ‘No one ever comes here.’ She is just a girl, Hasina thought, looking at her long body, stretched out, petulant, on the floor.

‘Besides,’ Palwasha added, ‘my husband has powerful friends.’ She sat up and crossed her legs carefully, as if posing for a portrait. ‘In another year, the foreigners will be gone. Then Karam and I will move to the city.’

Hasina breathed deeply. She rarely visited Palwasha nowadays. The girl had so few brains. ‘Sister-in-law,’ she said, ‘I am worried about Aref. Have you seen him?’

‘Aref?’ Palwasha’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why would he be here?’

‘To see your husband, perhaps.’

‘Karam’s not here.’ Palwasha frowned, her mood changing. She languidly stretched her legs, one at a time. ‘He’ll be back tonight, inshallah.’ She rose and left the room, leaving Hasina staring at emptiness.

In the evening, when Abdul had eaten, Hasina crept back to Karam’s compound. She had barely swallowed a mouthful all day. Her mouth was too dry, her stomach too twisted with fear.

She tapped on the metal gate. One of Karam’s men opened the inner door and peered out. She waited inside, her back pressed back against the wall, until Karam’s broad silhouette emerged from the house.

‘Sister-in-law?’

She bowed low. ‘Karam brother-in-law. I am so sorry to trouble you. But—’

‘Aref?’

She looked up sharply. ‘You know where he is?’

‘Of course. He is about my business.’

Hasina felt her knees buckle. ‘Your business?’ She held his gaze. ‘The young men. I saw them.’

Karam’s expression soured. ‘Some things’, he said, ‘should be left unspoken.’

She pulled her scarf across her face. Karam looked round, as if for eavesdroppers, before he spoke in a low voice.

‘Of course he has gone,’ he said. ‘It is his duty.’

She looked at the large compound, the servants, the animals. She knew where the money came from. From poppy. Karam was beholden to these fighting men. But Aref?

‘He is so young.’ She thought of his boyish face, his foolishness. ‘If anything happens to him…’ Her voice trailed off. What hope did these young boys have? She knelt before him and raised the trailing cloth of her scarf on the flat of her hands, beseeching him.

‘Go home to your husband.’ He turned away, embarrassed at her begging, and took a step back. ‘My brother needs to control his wife. Do I need to teach him?’

Hasina tried to steady her voice. ‘No, brother-in-law,’ she said.

Someone moved in the shadows behind her. The bolt on the inner gate slid back, inviting her to leave.

‘He has a chance’, Karam whispered as he pulled her to her feet, ‘to defend his people. To do God’s will. You should be proud.’

As she stepped through, the gate clanged shut behind her. Outside, she sank against the compound wall, her face buried in her hands, her scarf stuffed against her mouth to stifle the sound, and sobbed.

The night after Aref’s disappearance, she found no sleep at all. The night cries and howls outside were full of menace. Aref was somewhere out there, in a ditch or cornfield. Hungry. Afraid. Had they made him go, those boys? She turned onto her side and drew up her knees. Aref had looked so smug when he spoke of training with them. Training to fight? She wrapped her arms round her body in anguish. Had Karam really sent their boy to these hotheads? Recently, Aref had gone off on Karam’s business more often, sometimes for several days. Selling poppy, she’d thought. They hadn’t asked questions. But training with these foolish, fired-up boys? She moaned to herself. Beside her, Abdul stirred.

They had welcomed Karam’s interest in Aref. They had let him influence their boy. He had power and money. Abdul trusted his elder brother with his life. What would he say, if all this were true?

She twisted on her front, buried her face in her shawl. And now the foreign soldiers were waging war against them. She put her fist to her mouth. She was cold with fear. Abdul would never believe that Karam would put their son in danger. She must tread carefully. Allah alone knew how.

As soon as she saw first light, she got up. She tried to wash the exhaustion out of her body with cool water, then forced herself to start her chores. Abdul emerged, yawning, to find much of her work already done.

‘I’ll go to the big market today,’ she told him while he ate. ‘I need spices. And my cooking pot is cracked. These village ones are useless.’

‘Cracked?’ He looked up. ‘But it’s new.’

Hasina spread her hands. ‘Why quarrel over a pot?’ she said. ‘Anything you need?’

He shrugged. He was already finishing his bread and tea. He dipped into his pocket and pulled out some crumpled notes. ‘Spend it with care,’ he said.

She waited until he had set off for the fields. She wrapped her best shawl around her head and shoulders, making sure her hair was properly covered, and picked her way along the edge of the fields, down the hillside towards the riverside track. Her body settled into the rhythm of the long walk to Nayullah.

The big market was held every week but she didn’t go often. It took a whole morning and, besides, they couldn’t afford to buy much. Today she’d needed a reason to walk. If she stayed in the fields all day, her worry would suffocate her. She looked out across the river, at the thick reeds breaking the water, the flies in a low black cloud on the surface. She’d bought treats at the market for Aref when he was a boy. Nuts and sweets in twists of coloured paper. Cheap plastic toys. How he’d loved them. She wiped off her forehead with the end of her scarf. Now where was he?

She lengthened her stride. The sunlight was bouncing sharp and clean off the water at her side. It was a blessing from Allah, the river. The land around it was green with ripening corn and low foliage. A lizard ran into the path in front of her, froze, then darted for cover. When she raised her eyes to look beyond the river, the desert softly shimmered in the heat, stretching away to the horizon, endlessly thirsty and barren.

A boy came slowly towards her, herding goats along the river bank. He was a gawky child. She nodded to him as he approached but he slid his eyes away, embarrassed. He clicked his tongue at the goats, slapping at them with a long switch. The goats knocked and stumbled against each other. They filled the narrow path and she stepped into the scrub to let them pass. For some moments, the air was suffused with the low tinkling of the bells at their necks and the thick pungent scent of hot goat.

She walked on, thinking. Since she could remember, there’d always been fear and fighting here and restless young men eager to kill. Her own family’s village had been razed by the Leftists when she was a girl. The baker and his wife tortured and killed. No one would tell her why. Their children, her playmates, had been sent around the village to grow up with cousins. Sad children, after that, with fewer friends. When would it end? She thought again of Aref. The way those young men had strutted like cockerels, all self-importance. Such foolishness.

As she finally approached the market, she quickened her pace. The stalls were spilling out along both sides of the dirt road and deep into the land behind it. She looked over the hawkers. That was someone she recognized, that farmer. Over there, another. Regulars from a nearby village. She’d bought from them since they were boys. Baskets woven by their wives. Clay pots. Vegetables and fruit. They were seated silently on the edge of the large cloths they’d rolled out over the dirt. Something about their stillness made her uneasy.

She walked further, past a fat row of dented trucks. The metalwork flashed with sunlight. More outsiders. Vegetables gave way to bales of used garments and second-hand shoes, hillocks of garish foreign plastic, buckets and bowls. The old men and boys who sat with these goods, cross-legged, their feet bare, were strangers.

Her head was starting to ache. A volley of cries from crackling loud-hailers. Cages of chickens squawked and clawed. Young men were cooking up snacks in pots, flipping them with flattened knives. The smell of frying oil hung heavy in the air. How Aref loved oily snacks when he was a child. What would those boys with guns give him to eat today?

A young boy, weighed down by a bulging bag, came running towards her. He stuck to her side, brandishing a plastic bottle of juice. He pushed it in her face, urging her to buy. She swatted him away. Across the road, a group of young men skidded to a halt on motorbikes, kicking up dust. They wore dark glasses and faded foreign T-shirts, cotton scarves tied loosely round their necks. They were whooping and showing off. They called out insults to a passing group of mothers and daughters. The young women pulled their scarves more closely round their faces. Hasina hesitated.

A sudden movement caught her eye, down beyond the market, towards Nayullah. There were men in the road, waving their arms and flagging down vehicles. The sun glinted on metal at their chests. She screened her eyes to look. Guns.

They were Afghans, not foreigners. They wore shabby uniforms, bunched in folds at the waist. There was a barrier in the road. They were stopping passing vehicles, forcing them to pull in to the side and be searched. At that moment, a motorbike came roaring through, two young men clinging to the seat. Behind it a battered pickup truck, open at the back like a farmer’s vehicle, was forced to a halt. Were the men in uniform asking the drivers for money? Who were they? She frowned. This was something new. It unsettled her.

She turned in from the street and picked her way down the narrow mud aisles between the stalls. The clamour flowed over her. Last time she was here, she’d bought boots for Aref. He’d be wearing those boots now. She looked round, trying to get her bearings. The second-hand shoe stall had gone. Everything looked different. The stalls seemed brasher, the shouting stallholders more aggressive. Other shoppers barged and jostled her, as some pressed their way forward, others forced their way past. Every time someone stopped to examine the goods, crouching down to turn over in their hands a plastic sandal or cotton scarf, they became a rock in the stream, damming up the crowd behind them.

Hasina began to feel light-headed with the noise, the heat and her lack of sleep. Through the crowd, she saw a face she recognized. A fruit-seller. An old man from a village near town. She pushed her way towards him.

‘May Allah bless and protect you,’ she said to him. ‘And all your family.’

‘And may He also bless and protect yours.’ He got to his feet, pushed his toes into his sandals. His cap was dusty. He moved to the side, clearing a small space at the side of his stall so she could step in from the thoroughfare.

‘So busy today,’ she said. She wiped her face with her shawl.

‘Yes, so many people.’ He gestured to her to sit, then turned from her to his goods. He had arranged a display of oranges in a carefully balanced pyramid, small misshapen pieces of fruit, picked too early in the season. He spent time choosing one, then sliced it open over the earth with his knife and handed her a piece to suck. The sweetness of the juice made her heady. He settled down, cross-legged, beside her, and smiled as he watched her eat, showing, through his grey beard, black stumps of teeth.

She sucked on the orange, pulling her scarf forward round her face. In front of them, the crowd streamed past. ‘How is business?’

The old man spread his hands. Hasina saw the bulging veins running along their backs. ‘Like this, like that,’ he said. ‘When the rains come, then it will be better.’

‘Yes, let’s pray for rain soon.’

They nodded. The fat man at the next stall began to shout through a loud-hailer, urging passers-by to stop and look. The rich smell of the orange cut into the stale sweat all around her.

‘I’ve never seen so many vehicles,’ she said.

The old man scowled. ‘And those new police, you saw them?’ He wagged his finger at her. ‘Thugs. The foreigners give them guns.’

Hasina felt the orange thicken in her throat. The policemen’s guns must be good then. Better than the country-made weapons of the fighters. She threw the orange peel behind her onto the ground, wiped her sticky fingers on her scarf.

‘So much trouble.’ She looked round. No one was close enough to hear. ‘More killing in town, I hear.’

The old man raised his hands to the sky. ‘Every day.’

They sat with their heads close, whispering in each other’s ears in the midst of the hubbub, as if they were sheltering together under a tree in a violent storm.

‘The foreign soldiers have built a camp in the desert,’ he said. ‘Just a few miles outside Nayullah. They’re trying to shake out all the…’ He paused, hesitating as he chose his word. ‘…the fighters.’

She nodded. ‘I heard.’

‘Every day they drive through the streets, big guns pointing everywhere, shouting at us all.’ He shook his head. ‘The children throw stones. Everyone’s afraid.’ He coughed, spat to the side.

‘First the Russians, now the Americans,’ Hasina said. ‘When will they leave us in peace?’

The old man tutted agreement. ‘Today, even people from town have walked out here.’ He paused, gestured about him with an outstretched arm. ‘People are frightened to go to market in town in case the foreigners come. How many are being killed?’ He lowered his voice to a murmur. ‘Killed or just disappeared.’

Hasina closed her eyes. She felt the ground beneath her sway and put her hand to her face. Her fingers, close to her nose, stank of orange. When she opened her eyes again, the old man was looking at her with concern.

She swallowed hard. ‘Will we ever see peace?’

‘We chased off the Russians. But it cost a lot of blood.’ He paused, looked away into the blur of the crowd. ‘All the bombing. My old body doesn’t matter. But the young people, the children…’ He sighed.

A passer-by stopped to examine the oranges. The old man got to his feet and invited him to taste one. The man walked on without speaking. The old man settled back. ‘These people,’ he said. ‘No manners.’

His expression suddenly lightened as he remembered something. He reached in his pocket to pull out a grimy photograph. A cheap studio portrait, creased with wear. It showed a couple, uncomfortable in new clothes, posing stiffly with an infant. ‘See,’ he said. His face shone with pride. ‘I have a grandson now. Finally! After so many years of just girls. Praise be to Allah!’

‘What a blessing,’ she said. ‘I’ll pray he grows up safe and healthy.’

She got to her feet.

‘Pray he grows up safe,’ he whispered. ‘And not speaking American.’

She bought spices and, at a hardware stall, bargained for a stout cooking pot. She started back along the road. The cries from the market stalls were garish in her ears. Her hand steadied the pot on her head. The young boy, hawking his local juice, ran up again as soon as he saw her, pushing the bottles in her face. She fended him off with her free hand.

‘Have you no manners?’ she said. The boy paused, backed off a little. ‘Weren’t you taught to show respect?’ He took a step towards her again. ‘Well, weren’t you?’

She was punched in the back of the head. Struck hard. Pitched forward. Knocked down. A deep, resonant boom. Powerful as thunder. Her bones vibrated with it. Her face smacked into the ground. Deafened. Dust filled her eyes. Her mouth. A wave of sickness. Her limbs were shaking, drumming the ground in spasms. She blinked frantically, trying to see. She managed to lift her head. The broken shards of the pot were rocking from side to side in the road.

She lay still. She must breathe. The world must settle into place again. Alive. Praise Allah. She was alive. She closed her eyes. She was sinking. Her limbs were like stones. Still and heavy, held by the ground. She tried again to lift her head, to open her eyes. She was breathing now. The air stank. Petrol. Burning cloth. A stench of singed meat. Her stomach was convulsing. Around her, a blur of fast-moving shapes. People were running. Arms were waving in and out of clouds of dust. She could hear nothing. Was she dying? No. A pop. She was bursting up from the bottom of a well. Raw sound broke into her ears. Screaming. Men shouting. Feet beating on the road.

The soft tang of fruit pulp broke near her face. Rivulets of juice running in the dust. Bubbling as it sank into the ground, turning it to mud. The small boy. His bottles. Burst. She sensed him scrambling to his feet beside her. He peered into her face. His brown eyes wide with terror. A sweet boy. Like Aref. She shouldn’t have scolded. He was staring past her, back down the road, towards the market. Something there. What? She eased her head from the ground. Twisted her neck. Black smoke hung, thick and oily. A tall orange flame. A flame dirty with smoke, bent like a person staggering. She let her face fall back to the dust. Exhausted. Someone was tugging at her. A frightened voice in her ear. ‘Get up, Auntie. Get up.’ The boy.

Finally she managed to sit. She was in the road. In the way. People were crying. Hugging children. A man, running, stepped on her hand. His arms were brimming with shoes, snatched up from somewhere. A plastic sandal fell in the dirt beside her. Green. Shiny. How stupid, she thought. To steal an odd shoe.

The boy had run towards the smoke. Now he came running back. His face was contorted. He knelt in the dirt, took hold of her shoulders and shook them.

‘Get up.’ He seemed ready to cry. Why didn’t he leave her be? He was pulling on her arms. She got onto her knees, then to her feet. She stood uncertainly. Swaying. Her scarf was in folds at her neck, her head exposed. She lifted it back into place. She felt sick. Her head was dizzy with fumes, with noise. Maybe she should sink down and sit again. The boy, pulling at her, was agitated.

‘What?’ she said. ‘What now?’

He lifted his hand and pointed down the road to the wreckage. ‘The policemen,’ he said. ‘Look!’

She tried out her legs. They were shaking. She took a step. The boy buzzed about in front of her. She was intact. She was alive. He seized her hand and pulled her forward, down the road.

A ring of people had formed. A tight crowd. Men stood, silent with shock. Others draped their arms round shoulders and craned forward to see. Their arms and heads were blocking her view. The boy had crouched to look through the legs. She sank down beside him. The flame was burning quietly in a sheath of smoke. It was thin and dying, rising from a greasy heap of twisted metal. The fumes filled her mouth. The air was shuddering with its heat.

She twisted to see through the gaps. She could make out the mangled remains of vehicles. She couldn’t tell how many. Too many blackened parts. Many were blown some distance. They smouldered where they lay. Scattered fragments of metal, of glass, covered the surface of the road. Dark pools of oil, others of blood, stained the dust. Splashes of black and deep red against brown.

She sat heavily. The boy was pulling at her sleeve, pointing. She couldn’t look. The heat of the fire, the press of the men, was making her giddy. She tasted bile and tried to swallow it back. She put her hand to her mouth. ‘I’m sick,’ she said. No one was listening.

The boy was still tugging. She lifted her head. Through the legs and the shifting smoke, she made out figures slumped along the road. A policeman, his torso drenched in blood. On his side. A woman, her hair blackened with soot. Sitting. Bent over the shape of a child stretched across her lap. A man, staggering, his hands grasping the air. A boy, staring about him in confusion. A police radio, abandoned on the ground, suddenly sparked into life, pumping out voices from far away. She covered her eyes with her hands. Too much. How could this happen? The fading smell of orange was still on her fingers. Dizziness enfolded her in waves. She lowered her head to her lap.

The sounds swelled and faded and swelled again in her ears. She sat. She had to get home. How would she get home? She shifted her feet. The soles of her sandals stuck to the filth in the road. Two men beside her were talking in low voices. She opened her eyes, looked up at them. Their faces swam.

‘What happened?’ She didn’t bother with the customary greetings.

‘Bombs,’ said one of the men. ‘Maybe two.’ He gestured towards the debris. ‘Suicide bombers.’

‘Who?’ She had clasped his leg, digging her nails into his cotton trousers. ‘Who did it?’

He leaned back from her, his face closing. ‘Who knows?’

Aref. Could he be…? She crawled frantically into the crowd. Pushing herself forward through the legs like a dog. A young man barred her way with his foot. She knocked it away. She was nearing the front. Voices above. Men moved aside for her. Now the heat from the fire was scorching. She blinked, stared in disbelief. The horror. Soot-blackened corpses. Hair burned. Flesh swollen and bubbling as it cooked. A single arm, severed. Lying with its knuckles to the ground, fingers curling. Half a man’s body. A pair of trousers still clinging, drenched with blood, to the legs. She moaned. She couldn’t look. Her elbows gave way. Her face fell to the dirt. She was shaking too much to move.

Her mind was bursting. Images seared her eyes. Her throat burned with acid. Abdul. I must reach Abdul. She was sobbing, rocking herself. It wasn’t true. Couldn’t be true. Allah, in His mercy, would never allow it. Such wickedness. Such mutilation. She started to wail. A strangled sound. High-pitched with pain. She had seen another thing. Too terrifying to bear. Limp on the ground, blackened and pockmarked, a brass talisman. Still threaded on a scrap of leather. In the shape of a bird with its wings spread and claws outstretched.

A man was dragging her away, scolding her. The boy’s face was in hers, hovering with big eyes. The crowd around her was being broken up. A thickset man seized hold of her shoulders and propelled her forward, away from the flames, the bodies. He was stern-faced. Get away, he kept saying. Go home. The foreign soldiers are coming. Go! A mess of people tugged at her.

She didn’t know how she got home. She had a sense of running, stumbling, arms outstretched. Calling Abdul. Aref. She made it just inside the hut, then collapsed on the ground in the cool darkness. She flattened her palms against the mud, clinging to it. The earth was spinning out of control. Her stomach turned. Her body, exhausted, ached. She banged the flat of her hands against the ground. She dug her fingernails into the earth, scraping them along the smooth earth, and howled. Her eyes were already blind with weeping.

As she lay there, pounding the floor with her hands, all she could hear were the voices. A pitiful voice which refused to believe it. Maybe he’s safe. Maybe he wasn’t there. Maybe he said No and left them. Even as her mind tried to think this, a second voice was louder, tolling like a bell, saying: it’s over, it’s over, my boy, my Aref, he’s gone. The smell of burning flesh seemed to cling to her.

Her face was flattened against the mud. Cool against her cheek. Darkness. After some time, she didn’t know how long, she heard shuffling and whispering. A very ordinary noise. It seemed to drift down to her from across a vast divide. She lay still, trying to block it out. The noise grew louder.

A small hand brushed against her hair, tentative at first and soft, then a little firmer as it stroked. Another hand patted her back, light rhythmical taps, the way a child might bounce a ball. She let herself sob a little more, leaking tears and mucus into the wet mud round her face. The hands paused, stopped. There was whispering. She tried to ignore it, to shut out the world, to focus on her grief, her pain. After a few minutes, the hands started again to pat, to stroke.

Something landed on the mud beside her head, smooth skin rubbing up against her temple, nuzzling her. She lifted her head a fraction and opened her eyes. A pair of clear brown eyes were an inch or two from her face, full of worry and puzzlement.

‘Hasina Auntie?’ Sima asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

She closed her eyes again, let her head fall back to the wet mud. She could sense the other children as well. That must be Nadira who was patting her back and crooning nonsense in a low voice, as if she were soothing a favourite doll. Hasina could hear Yousaf too. He was out in the back, perhaps, talking to the goats, petting them and setting them twitching on their tethers.

Hasina tried again to lift her face. Her head was throbbing. She should just die here. Coming back to life was too hard, too painful.

‘We came to see you,’ Sima said. She reached in to Hasina and tried to wipe off her filthy face with her scarf. ‘To say hello.’

Hasina couldn’t speak. She let the girls prod her into a sitting position, rested her back against the cot. She looked sightlessly at the dead legs stretched out in front of her, worn out with running.

Sima tried to bend herself into Hasina’s vision. ‘Hasina Auntie,’ she said, ‘shall I fetch Mother?’

Hasina shook her head. May God protect her from that foolish woman. Sima disappeared. Hasina could feel the warm shape of Nadira cuddled beside her. She was still patting Hasina, now on the thigh.

Sima reappeared with a cup of water. ‘Drink this,’ she said. She pushed it into Hasina’s hands. ‘Water is very good for health. You’ll feel much better.’

She took the water and drank. It was cool and pure in her dirty mouth. I might get better, she thought suddenly. What if I were to survive and carry on without him? What an insult that would be. She fell to weeping again, her hands to her face. The small arms of the girls hung on her wherever they could find purchase.

The children stayed with her all afternoon. They crouched beside her, gazing at her with anxious eyes, until she finally stopped crying. Then, as she sat there, worn and indifferent, they started to prattle.

‘I like your house,’ Sima said. ‘It’s quiet.’ She pulled Nadira to her feet, took both her hands and started to turn with her. ‘There’s always someone shouting in ours. It’s too noisy.’

Hasina let her chin fall to her chest. It will always be quiet here now. It is a dead house.

The girls started to spin, bumping into the cots. They fell in a heap, giggling. Hasina watched them dully.

‘Will you tell us more?’ Sima said. She rolled onto her stomach and kicked up her legs behind her. ‘Your story. About the village and the children.’

‘Please, Hasina Auntie!’ Yousaf had appeared in the doorway. ‘No one tells us stories except you.’

Hasina, looking at him, thought of Aref. Aref’s face when he was a boy. The long lashes that veiled his eyes, the softness of his skin, his milky smell. She turned her face away from them. ‘There is no more story,’ she said.

Late in the afternoon, she took the children home. She heard Palwasha scold them as they went into the house, the slap of a hand on bare skin. Where had they been? Thoughtless creatures.

Hasina sank to the ground, there in the compound yard, her legs too weak to bear her. When Palwasha came out with strong sweet tea, Hasina left it sitting beside her in the dirt, steaming, until it was cold and wasted.

Finally Karam came out. He crouched beside her and put his hand on her shoulder.

‘I salute you,’ he said in a low voice, ‘precious mother of a martyr. May Allah bless you.’

Hasina didn’t look at him.

‘You shouldn’t have seen it,’ he said. ‘That was wrong.’ He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face. ‘You must keep this secret.’

She stared at him. What could he be thinking? How could she possibly…?

‘Remember the gossip in the village after the death of Masoud’s son.’ Karam’s eyes were stern. ‘He was a martyr.’ He paused. ‘But not everyone understood.’

Hasina did remember. People said the boy brought danger to the village. No one wanted their own sons to copy him.

Karam took her arm, pulled her roughly to her feet. For a moment, she thought her legs would falter. But Karam’s hand was gripping her, keeping her upright. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Say nothing.’

She stared, bewildered. How could she bear this loss in silence, alone, without the comfort of her husband? How was that possible? ‘But Abdul—’

‘I will tell him the boy has gone away. To Kandahar. For now, you must say nothing.’

He was propelling Hasina forward towards the gate. His grip cut into her flesh.

‘Abdul trusts me,’ he said. He turned her to face the compound gate, to leave. ‘You must trust me too.’ He opened the gate and half guided, half pushed her through into the road. ‘You should be joyful,’ he said. ‘Alhamdulillah. Thanks be to Allah.’