‘No one deceived him, Mother.’
‘Yes, they did. He was half mad after Sofia’s death. You could have made him do anything.’ Tara brings the basket of green gourds to Naheed. ‘But I don’t want you to worry about the house. I’ll go to the mosque and ask the cleric to give me a talisman and we’ll pray …’
‘Pray,’ Naheed mutters. ‘Who listens to our prayers?’
‘How dare you talk in this manner? One or two prayers going unheard doesn’t mean none will ever be heard.’
‘One or two?’
‘Be quiet. It was praying to Allah that got me through my time in prison.’
‘It was Allah and His laws that put you there in the first place.’
Tara takes a step towards her. ‘Be quiet! Don’t you ever utter anything like that again.’
Naheed gives her a look of fury, her eyes swimming at her entrapment and yearning, and turns away.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yes.’
As they work in the kitchen both remain locked in their anger, both silent, though Tara’s lips move in soundless recital of Koranic verses.
After a quarter of an hour, and without looking up from the gourds she is cutting into wedges, Naheed asks, ‘What did Sharif Sharif want when he came to visit Father that day?’
‘Nothing,’ Tara says, though not immediately. ‘I told you it was just a neighbourly visit. Asking about Rohan’s eyes.’
‘Mother, please.’
‘He asked for your hand in marriage.’
Naheed puts down the knife.
‘He offered to pay for his eye operation in return.’
After minutes of further silence Naheed takes the bowl full of green and white pieces of gourd to the other side of the kitchen. Turning on the tap she submerges the pieces in water, to remain fresh until cooked. ‘One more thing,’ she says quietly from there.
‘Yes?’
‘Father says you’ve found someone for me.’
‘I have a boy in mind.’ And not having received a reaction from Naheed, she adds, ‘It’s the only way.’
Naheed smiles tensely, her eyes on the point of igniting. ‘It’s not the only way, Mother. There are a thousand other ways. I am tired of being afraid all the time –’
‘The world is a dangerous place.’
‘Let me finish, Mother. It was wrong of you to frighten me into destroying my child. It was wrong of you to frighten Mikal away. I don’t care what you have been through, but you should never ever frighten those younger than you with your own fears. Caution is one thing, but you filled me with terror. Just leave me alone please. Just take this world of yours and go away with it somewhere and leave us alone. All of you.’
‘What if –’
‘What if, what if. What if the world ends tomorrow?’
‘It could. The signs are there.’
Naheed comes and places her hand gently on Tara’s shoulder. ‘Mother, you can’t be
this
afraid. The world is not going to end tomorrow.’
23
Kyra and the six boys from the six houses of Ardent Spirit are discussing the St Joseph’s operation.
‘The siege will go on for several days,’ Ahmed says. ‘So we’ll need sacks of almonds to take with us for energy.’
The boy from Cordoba House has produced a precisely detailed diagram of the school – the height as well as the length of each wall is marked, the number of windows in each classroom – and it lies on the carpet before them.
It has been decided that each of the six young men will bring along just four trusted companions – as the Prophet had four companions. So in all twenty-four men have to be found. They have begun the search and made a partial selection. Some of them will be students at Ardent Spirit, while others are from outside, chosen for their commitment, strength and boldness.
‘Given the possible length of the siege,’ says the head of Mecca House, ‘each of us will have to take five or six rucksacks, containing spare ammunition, medicines, bottles of water in case the authorities try to kill us by poisoning the taps.’
‘May Allah reward him somehow,’ Ahmed says, ‘the guard who stands at St Joseph’s entrance has been very helpful in providing details of the building, of the routine and flow of the staff and student body.’ The guard is a devout man in his fifties, and said he knew what kind of suspect humans the St Joseph’s students would grow up to be. Over the years he had guarded the mansions of any number of Heer’s rich people, and he was repulsed by what he had observed – the indecency of the women, the abominable traitors’ talk, the superior attitude towards the unprivileged, the consuming of alcohol, the constant blasphemies – and he had lost his job several times for daring to speak up, or had abandoned it in shame for not having the courage to say what he wished.
They said to the guard that they needed the information in order to rob and vandalise the place.
‘Once we are inside the building,’ the head of Cairo House says, pointing to the drawing, ‘this line of trees along the south wall will restrict our view of the outside. The police and army could storm the school from that direction.’
Ahmed studies the drawing. ‘We need to do something about them.’
He gets up and walks to the window, looking out. He has been feeding tactics, strategy and vigour into the boys. While in the military he had developed a silencer for the AK-47 rifle, hitherto available to only a select few internationally, and he developed what he referred to as a ‘guerrilla’ mortar gun, of a type available only to some of the world’s most advanced military forces, so small it can be hidden in a medium-sized holdall. He had specialised in urban assault training, his ideas proving to be the most important element in the series of fearful guerrilla attacks on Indian barracks in Kashmir. In February 2000 the commandos of the Indian army had raided a village in Pakistani Kashmir and killed fourteen civilians, returning to the Indian side with abducted Pakistani girls, the severed heads of three of whom they threw back at Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistani guerrilla leader who crossed into Indian-occupied Kashmir the very next day with twenty-five fighters, to conduct a revenge operation against the Indian army in Nakyal sector, had been trained by Kyra. They kidnapped an Indian officer and beheaded him, bringing the head back to be paraded in the bazaars of Kotli in Pakistani Kashmir.
He has given every aspect of the St Joseph’s operation deep thought, and has just returned from a three-day visit to China, where he had gone to procure weapons and night-vision glasses. The biggest task was to clear them through customs in Pakistan. He had called an old friend, a captain, who is the President’s security officer. The captain came to the airport in the President’s official car and received Kyra at the immigration counter. In the captain’s presence no one dared touch Kyra’s luggage. So there are some in the army with their honour intact. He visits his old military comrades regularly and tries to shame them for their weak Islamic beliefs, for continuing to serve in the Pakistani army, and he is delighted on being told that some of them are thinking of leaving, like him. After St Joseph’s, he and several others will leave to fight and kill British troops in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.
‘So we need to do something about the trees along the south wall,’ he says, returning to the boys. ‘And we must purchase a camcorder – to film the beheadings.’
24
Yasmin comes into the assembly hall to find Basie standing amid the paper-wrapped angels. No movement within his body. His head lowered. She bolts the door behind her and walks up to him, making her way through the newspaper shapes.
At any given moment we are entangled in all the past of mankind. Our heads encircled by the echo of every word that has ever been spoken
. These words were written down in one of his father’s journals. Standing behind him she flattens her body against his, her arms around his waist. A moan comes from him, the most ancient of human conditions, and a shudder of grief that she absorbs into herself, the most ancient of exchanges.
He turns within the ring of her arms. ‘I want a child.’
‘Me too.’
It is as though he has not heard her. ‘I want a child,’ he repeats, the voice muffled.
‘Let’s go home.’
From the corridor come the sounds of the school having ended for the day, the din and hum of voices, snatches of intense high-pitched conversations. She leads him out into the corridor, into the current of children that parts and converges about them.
25
Mikal knows the Americans are about to execute him. What they have said is that he is being set free, but he knows it is a lie. They are about to execute him.
David Town, the interrogator, has informed him of his freedom through the interpreter. His chains have been removed, they have given him some money, and there is a new set of clothes – a pale blue shalwar kameez with a light jacket whose softness indicates it is quilted with feathers. He is being freed because the warlord who had betrayed him to the Americans has now himself been arrested. David said the warlord was firing on Western soldiers, attacking military convoys and installations, and then picking up random people to hand over to the Americans for reward. ‘He is in custody,’ David said. ‘Being held right here in the brick factory, awaiting transport to Cuba.’
But Mikal knows that these are lies. It is all preparation for his murder.
‘The freed prisoners are always dropped off at the place where they were picked up,’ David tells him as he walks out of the brick factory with him. ‘You are being taken to the mosque where we found you back in January.’ He points to the helicopter on the other side of the compound, the blades churning the dust into djinns. Ready to fly him to the wilderness and a shallow grave.
Mikal looks up at the sky, feeling lightheaded and exposed to be under it after the prolonged period indoors. ‘Where’s Jeo?’ he asks.
Although the interpreter translates the question, it is as though David does not hear it. He continues to walk, looking straight ahead.
‘Where’s Jeo?’ He turns to the interpreter. ‘Ask him where Jeo is.’
But again there is no reaction.
‘What month is it?’
‘April.’
When they arrive at the edge of the dust being raised by the rotors, David stops. Two white Military Policemen are standing beside the helicopter, inside the churning dust, and David motions Mikal towards them.
‘I am not leaving without Jeo.’
David looks at the two MPs and they advance towards Mikal, one of them taking him by the arm.
‘I am not leaving without Jeo.’
‘Good luck with the rest of your life,’ David says, extending a hand towards him.
*
He looks out of the helicopter window as they begin their descent towards the mosque. No longer winter, the snow and ice are gone. The mosque is on the edge of a lake and the released water is full of movements.
Mikal knows both the MPs. One of them had put his gloved fingers into his mouth an hour ago to see if he was hiding anything under the tongue. The man wears a battle-dress jacket onto whose sleeves have been stitched cargo pockets taken from a pair of trousers. Over several days of interrogation David had convinced a severely wounded Arab prisoner – his wrists zip-tied to the frame of the gurney as he hallucinated – that this man was his father and they had extracted useful information from him.
From the beginning of January to April. More than three months during which Mikal was administered intravenous fluids and drugs against his will and was forcibly given enemas in order to keep his body functioning well enough for the interrogations to go on. Questionings from the CIA, FBI, MI5, MI6. Restraint on a swivel chair for long periods, loud music and white noise played to prevent him from sleeping, lowering the temperature in the room until it was unbearable and then throwing water in his face, forcing him to pray to Osama bin Laden, asking him whether Mullah Omar had ever sodomised him. Threats of deportation to countries known for torturing prisoners. ‘After they are through with you, you will never get married you will never have children you will never buy a fucking Toyota.’ Threats made against his family including female members, strip searches and body searches sometimes ten times a day, forced nudity, including in the presence of female personnel, threatening to desecrate the Koran in front of him, placing him in prolonged stress positions, placing him in tight restraint jackets for many days and nights, and in addition to all this there were the times when he was actually beaten for his ‘threatening behaviour’.
As they touch ground Mikal wonders if his murder will take place inside the ruined mosque, enclosed by the words of the Koran inscribed on the walls. The wind coming off the water has a smell like metal. Are the women and children who were left behind in January, after the men were picked up, still in there?
The two MPs climb out of the machine with him.
The three of them walk to where the rotor diameter ends, and there the two men stop, gesturing to Mikal to continue.
Keeping his eye on the mosque door ahead of him, he takes one step and then another, and then he smells it, the whiff of sulphur that is the unmistakable clue that a bullet has been fired. The noise of the rotors is too great so he doesn’t
hear
the gunshot. He holds his breath for a pearl diver’s minute. The sulphur intensifies and then he turns around and lifts the pistol from the hip holster of one of the Military Policemen, amazed at the freedom of movement in his unchained arms, amazed that his incomplete hands are now allowing him to place the pistol directly against the man’s throat and effortlessly pull the trigger. The air behind the neck balloons in a red mist. There is a small funnel of shockwave and in a frozen moment he sees himself reflected in the man’s American eyes. Next to Mikal in each eye is the reflection of the sun, the two placed side by side in each intense blue circle. He sees now to his astonishment that he has pulled the trigger a second time and now there is a bloody wound on the man’s breast. He swings the barrel towards the other man and shoots him too, the bullet entering the arm at the elbow and coming out through the wrist. He realises too late – his trigger pulled for the fourth time, the bullet travelling towards the white man’s face at point blank range – that someone is aiming at the helicopter from the mosque, that a hail of metal is coming towards them from the minarets, the sound lagging.