‘We’ll put him in the garage at the back of the house and lock the garage door,’ the man says. ‘You come and eat and afterwards you can feed him.’
*
‘He had the cub?’ Fatima asks. She and her sister are awake, preparing a meal for him. Mutton and peas are being heated in a pan. She spoons it onto a plate. He hears men’s voices from the other side of the wall, raised in argument as Fatima brings him a chapatti in a chintz cloth.
‘Yes.’
‘He must know what happened at the house.’
He nods and she goes back to the stove. ‘His fellow soldiers are probably looking for him,’ she says. ‘Do you think they could track you here?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The leopard’s grown a little,’ she says.
‘He has, hasn’t he.’
‘Are you sure it’s the same one?’
‘I checked. The dark spot on the inside of the left ear.’
As he begins to eat Fatima’s sister asks, ‘Will you let the American go eventually?’
‘There is a contact number in his rucksack,’ Mikal says.
‘I don’t want American soldiers near my home,’ the sister says. ‘They have killed one of my sons already.’
‘I’ll call them when I am far away from here.’
‘I don’t want you endangering my family,’ the woman says. ‘What if he brings other soldiers back here to arrest us and carry us all away?’
‘It won’t come to that. I’ll take him far away from here, he won’t be able to find his way back.’
‘For all we know they are following him right now,’ the woman says. ‘I’d go out there with the rifle right now if I thought his countrymen would invade my home to rescue him. They’ll kill us all.’
Mikal is sure that a similar discussion is taking place in the other room.
‘I promise I won’t involve you any further. And I am sorry about your son.’
The woman suddenly hides her face behind her hands and begins to weep, her shoulders and head bowed. Mikal stops chewing. Shocked, he becomes still as he listens to her. And then – just as suddenly – she absorbs her grief back into herself and stands upright. ‘How many chapattis will you eat?’ she asks, her voice uneven.
‘I have enough here.’
Fatima looks at him and then touches her sister’s back. ‘He’ll need two more at least.’
‘It’s not a problem.’
‘Thank you,’ Mikal says.
After he has eaten he goes out to the garage and sees that they have fitted a tarpaulin over the frame of the pickup’s bed. The back is now perfectly enclosed. A box of tough taut cloth. In places it is as resistant to the touch as plywood.
He lifts the flap above the tailgate and looks in to see that a strip of black cloth has been tied over the white man’s eyes. He opens the MRE with his teeth and sits down beside the soldier, mixing the chemicals in the sachets to heat up the sealed large piece of meat. Talking so he will know it’s him, touching the food to the white man’s lips until he opens his mouth. He tells the soldier he has eaten an American MRE in Peshawar where they were on sale for some reason, telling him how he has eaten shark meat on the edge of the Arabian Sea, a bird of prey, a butterfly.
‘If you can understand what I am saying please answer me. I beg you.’
The man of the house appears at the tailgate with a padlock and stands watching him.
When the MRE is finished he stands up and leaves and the man locks the garage.
‘Is there another key?’
‘No,’ the man says.
‘You’ll make sure no one gets out of the house during the night and informs the rest of the town?’
‘It’s a matter of our safety too,’ the man says. ‘We are just as concerned. Now go into the house and sleep. Fatima is making up a bed for you.’
*
Jeo and Basie come to him while he is asleep. He wakes up some time later unable to recall the details of the dream, lying there in the darkness of the room with his eyes open, and eventually he remembers that he had asked Jeo and Basie what it was like being dead. He struggles to recall the answer, and he is drifting back to sleep when a hand touches him in the darkness. He sits up just as a flashlight comes on in the room. It’s one of the cousins, standing beside his bed.
‘Would you sell him to us? I have been sent to ask you how much you’d take for him.’
‘He’s not for sale.’
‘In cash.’
‘I said he’s not for sale.’
The boy looks at him and nods. ‘We thought we’d better ask.’
‘You have my answer.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Aunt Fatima said they had imprisoned and tortured you.’
Mikal looks away.
‘You should want to lick his blood. He’s your enemy.’
‘Not like that, he’s not.’
‘He’d do the same to you.’
‘Then that makes me better than him.’
And with that he lies down again. ‘Now I want to go back to sleep. I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow.’
The boy switches off the flashlight and Mikal hears him leave in the darkness. He gets up and bolts the door, looking out through the window and seeing the man of the house beside the garage door with the deer rifle. He tries to stay awake, his fear breeding images out of the dark, djinns and nightgrowths, but he falls asleep at some point. Either Jeo or Basie asks him if he is certain that he hadn’t wanted to shoot the two Americans by the lake – wondering if he had killed them intentionally – but the questioner disappears before he can answer. When he wakes the sun has risen and it is six o’clock and he stands up immediately. He passes the son in the corridor. The mark of bitter thoughts is on his brow and he neither returns Mikal’s greeting nor looks at him. There is a poppy bruise on the temple where Mikal’s gun connected last night – it is either not serious or he has left it untreated because he doesn’t wish to signal any weakness to Mikal. Almost everyone seems to be awake. Smells come from the kitchen, the women making parathas, churning lassi and frying eggs, murmuring as they work, it being too early to speak loudly, words disrupting the pure pleasure of living.
The main door of the house is still locked. The man is still there outside the garage, now with the snow leopard cub on his lap, the clear golden sunlight flickering on the pattern of the fur. The rifle leans against the chair.
Mikal walks out to him. The man puts a hand in his pocket and brings out shattered pieces of a satellite phone, large silver shards and fragments of broken plastic and torn sections of microcircuitry.
‘We discovered this on him. In the shorts he wears under his shalwar.’
‘I didn’t think to look there,’ Mikal says quietly.
‘I thought it best to destroy it.’ The man throws the pieces on the ground before him and sits looking at them like a soothsayer reading the future in the pebbles he has scattered. ‘We have cleaned him,’ he says, ‘taken him to the bathroom.’
‘What?’
‘Well, he soiled himself. So we had to change his clothes. He put up a great struggle.’
‘Give me the key.’
‘He’s fine. Go in and eat.’
‘Give me the key, uncle.’
‘Go in and eat.’
Mikal nods but doesn’t move.
‘I need to make a phone call,’ he tells the man eventually.
‘I have hidden the phone in case someone tries to call out. I’ll connect it for you after breakfast.’
‘Thank you.’ He imagines them at the house in Heer, the breeze and scents in the garden, the scratch of the broom as it sweeps fallen leaves from a red path. Naheed wiping the dew off the mirror above the outside sink, the flowers hanging overhead.
Before the science of botany was established just three hundred years ago,
he remembers Rohan telling him and Jeo when they were children,
flowers in their infinite variety and lack of human order were said to be proof of God’s existence.
The young men watch him from a distance, from various corners of the house, gathering in groups here and there and withdrawing, and he makes sure not to meet anyone’s eye. As he eats Fatima tells him that the school will open at eight thirty and that the teachers should begin to arrive around eight.
At seven forty-five Fatima’s sister puts on her burka and her husband unlocks the main door and she goes out to the school to position herself outside the gate, to wait for the arrival of the English-speaking teacher.
Mikal enters the garage and approaches the back of the pickup and lifts the tarpaulin flap. The soldier, blindfolded, senses someone’s presence and moves his head. His arm is in plaster and is nestling in a triangular sling of white muslin that was once a flour sack. He is wearing a new set of shalwar kameez and there is a large saffron and black bruise on his forehead. Mikal feels he is watching him through the blindfold, perhaps through the round naked discolouration above the eyes. The street is just on the other side of the garage and from it comes the chatter of the schoolchildren arriving for a day of learning.
He hears the front door being opened and looks out of the garage to see Fatima’s sister coming in with another, much slimmer figure. Her burka is tighter than the older woman’s, with long clean lines, and she has a leather handbag slung over her shoulder and her feet make clicking noises he hasn’t heard from the women in this house. Sturdy and purposeful, as opposed to the maternal and domestic shuffling that comes from the others. He watches them disappear towards the kitchen.
Five minutes later the man comes out to Mikal. ‘The girl knows English but refuses to speak to the American. She’s too afraid. She says they’ll cut off her tongue, or she’ll be killed outright.’
‘Can’t you persuade her?’
‘We are trying.’
‘What happened to his forehead?’
‘I told you. He struggled when we were cleaning him. Threw us around everywhere and got tangled up in the chains.’
‘I thought it might have something to do with what’s written on his back.’
‘It isn’t. But I’ll tell you one thing. He’ll pay for that piece of poetry if he is caught by someone out there.’
The man goes back into the house and returns a few minutes later. ‘She’s terrified. She is about to leave.’
Mikal steps out of the garage to see the girl hurrying across the courtyard, sobbing loudly inside her black burka. He moves towards her with one arm extended and says, ‘Sister, listen –’
But she gives a squeal at his approach and he stops.
The father unlocks the door and just as the girl steps out two of the servants make a dash for it and leave the house, pushing the man aside. High-pitched screams and shouts come from outside as the two escaping men crash into children. The man of the house scrambles up and locks the door once again.
Everyone is stunned.
‘They are afraid the Americans will raid the house and carry them off,’ says one of the other servants.
‘They will tell everyone in the bazaar,’ the son says. ‘In half an hour every man in Allah-Vasi whose honour, faith and manhood is still intact is going to descend on this house.’ He comes forward and strikes Mikal hard on the face. ‘Get out of here. Go.’
The father doesn’t say anything or reprimand the boy.
‘I’ll take him away.’ Mikal nods. ‘I’ll leave.’
Taking a cigarette lighter from his pocket and flicking it alight the son begins to burn a piece of paper with it. Only too late does Mikal realise that it is the American soldier’s blood chit.
‘We don’t want you bringing the Americans into this area,’ the son says, letting go as the flame creeps towards his fingertips. The last small piece of whiteness falls to the ground with the flame still attached. It is ash by the time it lands. ‘We are keeping the Kalashnikov and the bullet-proof vest and the dollars,’ he adds. ‘The tarpaulin isn’t cheap.’
‘You can keep the pistol for your protection, and also his food,’ the father says.
‘I want the snow leopard too,’ says the son.
‘The cub is mine,’ Mikal says as vigorously as he can.
The father looks at the son. Then at Mikal. ‘You can take the cub with you.’
Mikal turns to leave the room.
‘You said you needed to make a phone call,’ says the father. He points to a door. ‘The phone is through there.’
There is no answer from Heer. Mikal hangs up and dials a second time but again no one picks up.
Five minutes later he is easing the pickup out of the garage, the father walking beside the vehicle.
‘Where will you go?’ Fatima appears on the veranda.
‘I don’t know. I think I’ll go to Megiddo. Hide him in the house and go to the school there and try to find a teacher who speaks English.’
‘Just leave him in the desert and move on,’ the man says. ‘Go home. Do what other young men do, watch films and apply for jobs and quarrel with your sisters.’
‘He knows what happened to Salomi and to Akbar’s brother.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Fatima says.
‘No,’ says her brother-in-law, raising his hand in the air.
‘That’s not a good idea,’ Mikal says gently.
‘If I am in the vehicle with you, there will be less chance of you being harassed. They’ll respect a woman.’
‘Fatima,’ her brother-in-law says. ‘If they find out who he’s got tied up in the back, it’s not going to matter who he has sitting with him in the front.’
The leopard is curled up in his lap, yawning to show its pale pink tongue, the thick tail twitching in the air. Mikal has a large lunch tied up in a cloth on the passenger seat, along with three Nestlé bottles filled with tap water. There is a bottle of dark brown bitter-smelling oil for the American’s arm, though when he is supposed to rub it on he doesn’t know, since the plaster cast should stay on for days.
‘Be careful,’ the man says with feeling, just before letting him out.
‘Thank you, uncle. And I am sorry.’
‘I was thinking of letting them deal with him during the night. To save you from yourself.’
‘I know.’
‘Maybe I should do it right now.’
‘I’d better go, uncle.’
‘Fine. Stay off the road. Go through the desert and keep the Pahari hills on your right. It’ll take longer but it’s the safer way. When the road floods people often cut through the desert so it
can
be done. I have done it myself. And now I am beginning to think you should wait till nightfall.’