Burnt Shadows Part 16

They had returned though when she was pregnant with Raza dreams angrier, more frightening than ever before, and she'd wake from them to feel a fluttering in her womb. But then Raza was born, ten-fingered and ten-toed, all limbs intact and functioning, and she had thought he'd been spared, the birds were done with her.

She had not imagined the birds could fly outwards and enter the mind of this girl, and from her mind enter Raza's heart. She had never truly understood her son's need for belonging, the anger with which he twisted away from comments about his foreign looks in truth, she had thought that anger little more than an affectation in a boy so hungry to possess the languages of different tribes, different nations but she knew intimately the stigma of being defined by the bomb. Hibakusha. It remained the most hated word in her vocabulary. And the most powerful. To escape the word she had boarded a s.h.i.+p to India. India! To enter the home of a couple she'd never met, a world of which she knew nothing.

She waved off Salma's words, whatever they were why didn't the silly girl just stop talking and walked down the street towards her home. He was her son. Her son. Like her, so intent on escape that nothing seemed impossible except staying put. She pushed open the door of her house, stepped into the vestibule and paused at the entry into the courtyard. The shadows of the neem tree fell exactly where she knew they would fall at this time of the morning; the emptied flowerbed surrounding the tree told her Sajjad had cleared away the remnants of the spring flowers and was preparing to plant zinnias and so summer had truly begun. And the zinnias would bring b.u.t.terflies. Somewhere during the course of the decades she had settled into this place, learnt to antic.i.p.ate not merely to react to its lengthening days, its s.h.i.+fting shadows.

She walked swiftly across the baking courtyard into Raza's room, and lay down with her head on his pillow. How often had Raza heard the story of his mother's great adventure from Tokyo to Bombay! Bombay to Delhi! She never told him what an act of desperation that voyage was, had always wanted to seem fearless, above all. Fearless and trans.m.u.table, able to slip from skin to skin, city to city. Why tell him of the momentum of a bomb blast that threw her into a world in which everything was unfamiliar, Nagasaki itself become more unknown than Delhi? Nothing in the world more unrecognisable than her father as he died. But she had always wanted Raza to know as little of all this as possible. So the story of Hiroko Ashraf's youth was not the story of the bomb, but of the voyage after it.

'Weren't you scared?' Raza had asked once of her arrival in India.

She'd smiled and said, 'No,' laughing at the look of wonder on her son's face. It was true enough. She hadn't been afraid. But only because she didn't allow herself to think of anything beyond the next stage of the journey.

And now her son was proving himself her son, and nothing could keep her from seeing everything that might happen next, and next, and next.

She lay with her arms around his pillow until she drifted to sleep. In her dream, Raza was speaking to an Afghan boy but the boy, although an Afghan boy, was also her ex-student, Joseph, the kamikaze pilot. 'Maybe I won't join the Air Force,' Joseph, who was also the Afghan boy, said. Raza sneered. 'Scared, little boy?' Joseph stood up taller, unfurling his black wings, and when he opened his mouth desiccated cherry blossom cascaded out, blank eting the dry soil of Afghanistan.

24.

The camp was more than an hour's drive from wherever they were before, on a mountain plateau which could only be reached via a dirt road that snaked from Pakistan into Afghanistan and back again. The single point of entry made it easy to guard against such inconveniences as occurred at the camp where Abdullah's eldest brother had trained a group of tribesmen taking a short cut stumbled upon the camp, which had to be moved to a new location the next day.

The driver of the jeep a man whose face was all beard and nose pointed in the direction of a narrow path winding along the mountain and said one of the Arab training camps was along there. He spat out the word 'Arab' as if it were a curse.

'But don't worry,' he said, turning to Raza with a smile that was unexpectedly boyish. 'Where we're going, it's all Pashtun. You might be treated a little roughly at first there are men in there who aren't happy about a Hazara entering our camp. But don't worry you're an Afghan and a Muslim and a friend of Abdullah's. You'll earn their trust.' He cuffed Abdullah, who smiled in return, and Raza understood only then that this was Abdullah's brother.

Raza heard the camp before he saw it. At first he thought he was listening to the sea he recalled ill.u.s.trated geography books with pictures of fossilised fishbones discovered on icy summits but then the roaring got louder and became gunfire.

'How are you supposed to keep this location secret?' he yelled above the noise.

Abdullah's brother Ismail shrugged.

'The echoes make it impossible to know where it's coming from.' He parked the jeep and pointed to a winding pathway. 'Follow that down. I'll be back later.' He reached into the back seat, picked up two grey-brown pieces of cloth and tossed one each at Abdullah and Raza. 'That's half your essential supply. The other half your guns they'll give you when you get there.'

'What's this for?' Raza said to Abdullah as the jeep reversed at great speed down the track. He held the square of cloth by a corner and it unfolded into a rectangle the height of a tall man.

'For everything,' Abdullah replied. 'Don't Hazaras have pattusis?' He walked towards the mountain path, a rapid motion of his hand urging Raza along. 'It's your blanket to sleep under, your shawl to keep you warm, your camouflage in the mountains and desert, your stretcher when you're wounded, your blindfold to tie over the eyes of the untrustworthy, your tourniquet, your prayer mat. If you're killed in battle you'll be buried in your bloodied pattusi the mujahideen don't need their bodies washed and purified before burial. We are already guaranteed heaven.' He smiled at Raza over his shoulder. 'But heaven will wait for us. No need to rush towards it, brother, so don't step so close to the edge of the path.'

Raza hopped back and pressed himself against the mountain. He hadn't realised how close he had strayed to the edge of the path in his intent perusal of the scene on the plateau below the cl.u.s.ter of tents, the unexpected livestock, the men with light s.h.i.+ning from their bodies. The creatures of this planet are part angel, he found himself thinking, before a closer view revealed each one of the men carried a Kalashnikov which reflected the sun's rays.

By the time they reached the plateau as hot and still as an oven Raza thought he might faint. It was not just the exertion of mountain-walking and the intensity of the sun which made his lips turn white and set his brain rotating. How could a man escape such a place? Even if he climbed back up the path undetected, where would he go from there? What had he been thinking? He had been so buoyed by months of living a lie that he thought he could control everything, and suddenly his own stupidity and arrogance was breathing hot on his face. He sat down collapsed, really on a rock, paying little attention to the men who came to welcome Abdullah and look questioningly at him.

He wanted his parents. He wanted his bed, and the familiarity of the streets in which he'd grown up. For no reason he could explain, he wanted a mango.

One of the men prodded him with his foot.

'Practising blending in with the scenery, my rock?' he said in a tone that was not unkind, just amused.

Raza looked up at the man's green eyes, which were examining him with interest, and all the stories he'd heard in his Muhajir neighbourhood about the proclivities of Afghan men for delicate-featured boys rushed back at him and immobilised him further.

'Doesn't he speak Pashto?' the man said, turning to Abdullah.

Abdullah slapped the back of Raza's head.

'Pashto is the only Afghan language he'll speak.' He related the tale of Raza Hazara and the vow he had made to put a warrior's mission between himself and his mother tongue. Raza, listening, tried to remember how to become the Hazara he pictured himself raising a Kalashnikov to his shoulder, but in the midst of these men for whom a Kalashnikov was something familiar enough to be casual with he saw his own posturing for what it was.

Abdullah bent down, a hand gripping Raza's shoulder.

'If you cry, I'll kill you,' he whispered.

Raza looked up at Abdullah, at the green-eyed man, at the mountains and the sky. Everything was s.h.i.+fting. He pressed his hands against the ground, felt sharp-edged stones cut into his skin as he propelled his body into a p.r.o.ne position, head pillowed against the rock on which he'd been sitting. His vision grew white at the edges and only the quickness of his breath kept him from throwing up. He had never known anything like this heat, this terror.

The voices around him were coming and going, staccato. Perhaps he wasn't here but in his room at home where the ceiling fan whirred and then juddered on each of its rotations, the juddering breaking up the flow of sounds that came in from the courtyard, causing approximately every third syllable of his parents' conversation to be lost.

Warm water splashed on his face and his eyes flickered open to see the green-eyed man pouring something out of a bottle into his palm and gently tilting his hand so the water slipped from it towards Raza. Abdullah kicked him again and the green-eyed man said something that Raza didn't understand because the ceiling fan was on again. And everything was slipping from his vision except those green eyes.

Uncle Harry, Raza thought, and then the green eyes closed and there was only darkness.

When he regained consciousness, he found he'd been moved; his pattusi was a pillow and the mountain itself a provider of shade. There was a bottle of water next to him and he drank greedily, propped up on one elbow, before lying down and falling asleep, every emotion pushed to the side by exhaustion; his body finally registered the toll of days of sleeping in the cramped cab of the truck or on a bed of Kalashnikovs in the container portion, woken up by sharp braking or breakneck turns before he could reach the point of dreaming.

Later, much later, there was a sandal knocking against his ribs. Abdullah seemed to have decided that the only way to separate himself from the shame of this fainting creature was to treat Raza as though he were an animal.

Raza was awoken by the first kick but kept his eyes closed. When the second kick landed, his hand grabbed Abdullah's foot and, twisting it, knocked the younger boy to the ground. Abdullah scrambled to his feet, but it was too late by then three mujahideen sitting near by, chewing their niswaar and entering a pleasant intoxication, were already laughing at him.

'Your friend has given you a bonus lesson for the day,' one of the men said. 'Never a.s.sume a man is incapable of striking back simply because his eyes are closed.'

Abdullah walked away without responding, and now it was something other than exhaustion that made Raza curl himself up and retreat into the safety of sleep again.

The next time, it was the green-eyed man who woke him up, shaking him by the shoulders and pointing towards the setting sun. Raza sat up, not understanding.

'You've slept through two prayer times already,' the man said. 'Come, stand up. You may not be a Pashtun, but you're still a man. Enough of this.'

Raza clambered to his feet, which was not easy to do with all the heaviness that seemed to weigh on each limb and on his heart. He watched the man pick up a fistful of dirt and rub it over his hands and arms before scrubbing his face with it. Camouflage, Raza thought.

'We're like the first Muslims, in the deserts of Arabia,' the man said, running his hands through his hair, and Raza saw he was performing his ablutions.

Nodding, Raza mimicked the man's actions, trying not to think of his mother putting aside a pile of ash for him each day when he had worked in the soap factory. He had not realised, until now, that it was a gesture of love. No, he couldn't think of Hiroko. Or of Sajjad. To do so was to feel loneliness rise within him, stronger than terror.

When Raza had finished scrubbing his feet, the green-eyed man gestured him towards the prayer s.p.a.ce next to one leafless tree with branches the colour of the men's pattusis where all the occupants of the camp were lining up in rows. Guns hung, like metallic fruit, from the tree's branches. Raza saw that most of the men were younger than he was, some younger than Abdullah even. The setting sun dulled all the sharp edges of the world, everything aglow or in shadows. It was cooler now, and silent. All at once, Raza saw the beauty in the moment and it was with a true sense of reverence, such as he had never felt before, that he laid his pattusi on the ground and stepped on to it. Abdullah turned to look at him and the two boys nodded and smiled shyly at each other as though they were both on their way to meet their future brides and recognised something of their own emotions the tangle of exhilaration and fear in each other's eyes. Raza Hazara woke up, looked upon the world, and found it extraordinary.

The man leading the prayer recited 'Bismillah' in a voice that carried across the mountains. Even the sky here was different to anything Raza had seen before, stained in unusual hues of violet.

He felt the words of prayer enter his mouth from a place of pure faith. He had occasionally felt this before, but never so intensely. More often, prayer came to him from his mind, as memorised words with little meaning attached. But in that moment, though he still didn't know the literal translation of what he was saying, he found meaning in every muttered syllable of Arabic: Lord, Allah, let me escape this place, deliver me, deliver me Lord, Allah, let me escape this place, deliver me, deliver me.

And following that thought was this one: Give these men Your blessing Give these men Your blessing.

After the prayer ended, Abdullah came to him and slung an arm around his shoulder.

'You made me angry,' he said. 'Maybe I said something I shouldn't have.'

'You didn't say anything,' Raza said. 'You only kicked.' He tapped his toes against Abdullah's ankle to signal forgiveness.

'No, not to you. To him.' He pointed in the direction of a very tall man, who was looking at Raza with his arms crossed over his chest. 'That's the Commander. You have to go and talk to him.'

'About what?'

But Abdullah was walking away, not looking at Raza.

'Just go and talk to him.'

The Commander jerked his head sharply and Raza found there was no option but to walk over to him.

The Commander said nothing, just grabbed him by the neck and pushed him into a tent. Once more Raza recalled all the stories about Pathans and their proclivities, and then he saw there was another man in the tent, not a Pathan at all. A small man, darker than anyone else in the camp, with a clipped moustache, who was fastidiously wiping his hands with a pink tissue.

'That's him?' he said in unconvincingly accented Pashto to the Commander, who nodded and stepped out of the tent, leaving Raza alone with the other man.

'Name?'

'Raza.'

'Father's name?'

Raza Hazara hadn't mentioned his father's name in years. He would not utter it until the last Soviet had been driven out of Afghanistan.

'Sajjad Ali Ashraf,' he said.

'He's Hazara?'

'No. His family is from Delhi. My mother's j.a.panese.'

The man raised an eyebrow and sat back.

'The name of the American you were with at the harbour?' he asked, switching from Pashto to Urdu.

'Harry Burton.'

The man shook his head in disgust.

'How can we work together with such little trust?' he said.

'I trust you,' Raza blurted out, and the man laughed unpleas antly.

'Who are you? What do I care if you trust me or not? Harry Burton, Harry Burton.' He shook his head again. 'I've never met him, but I know the story. Do you know the story? When he coloured his hair, wrapped a chador around him and thought this meant he could enter one of our camps without word getting back to us that the CIA had been where their own government has forbidden them to go.'

Uncle Harry?

'Give him a piece of advice from me. Say the CIA needs to give its agents lessons in walking. Americans walk differently to everyone else. I can spot one as far away as the horizon.' He held out the tissue, and Raza automatically stepped forward, holding out his hand to take it. This seemed to please the man. 'So why have they sent you? You seem completely incompetent.'

'No one sent me.'

'You only make things worse by lying,' the man said mildly. 'You've already admitted you work for the CIA. Now what's the point of saying they didn't send you here?'

'I can leave if you want,' Raza said, and then wanted to hit himself for the idiocy of the statement.

The man's laughter seemed more genuine this time.

'Yes, I want. Go back to your Mr Burton and tell him we can't afford to be spying on each other. It's enough that I have to spend all my time mediating between Afghan commanders and politicians whose hatred for the Soviets is eclipsed by their hatred for each other and their hatred for each other eclipsed by their hatred for our Arab brothers who have come to fight in this jihad. It's too much. I've had an upset stomach for months now because of it.'

'I'm really sorry,' Raza said.

This time the man's laugh was unmistakably filled with humour.

'I don't know what the CIA thinks it's doing with someone like you. Do you have any money?'

Raza reached into the pocket of his kameez and pulled out a fistful of rupee notes.

'Here, sir.'

'Now I know you're just playing the idiot.' The man smiled. 'You're coming with me. This minute. I'm taking you to a train station. That money should be enough for a ticket back to Karachi. And, Raza Ali Ashraf, if ever again you try something like this you won't find me so forgiving. Tell Harry Burton there are limits to what every friends.h.i.+p can endure.'

'Yes, sir, I will,' Raza said. As he followed the man out of the tent and up the mountain road towards the jeep that would carry him to a train heading home he kept looking up into the sky, overcome with grat.i.tude for the unparalleled blessing of an answered prayer.

But he was only halfway up the road when he heard his name and Abdullah came running after him.

'Where are you going?' he said.

Before Raza could answer the man turned towards Abdullah and held up a hand of command.

'He's coming with me. Go back down.'

But Abdullah didn't move.

'Is this because of what I said?' His eyes opened in horror and he reached out and caught Raza's sleeve. 'No, I didn't mean it. He's not with the CIA. He's come to fight with us. He's an Afghan, he wants to be a mujahideen. That's all he wants. I was angry, so I said some lies about him.'

'Go back down,' the man repeated, the tone of his voice making Raza s.h.i.+ver. But still Abdullah didn't move.

'You can't send him away. He's come here to fight with us. That's the only reason he's here. I lied. I'm telling you, I lied.'

The man looked placidly at Raza.

'Move,' he said mildly.

Raza gently detached Abdullah's hand from his sleeve, unable to bring himself to look at the younger boy, who had fat tears running down his cheeks.

'I'm sorry,' Abdullah whispered. 'Raza Hazara, brother . . .'