The Ink Bridge (10 page)

When his brother, Wasim, was young, he was a follower. No matter how Omed and Zakir twisted through the poplars, Wasim would find them. They would hear his sobs behind them in the wheat alleys, from behind boulders and bombed tanks. And when they returned home, Wasim clutching at the tails of Omed's kameez, Omed would be scolded.
Look
at your brother. Why is he wet? His pants are torn.

Wasim couldn't leap the streams on the handle of a shovel. He couldn't make it to Anwar's cave or over the two-plank bridge that led to the bazaar. He was too little.

The lights of Kuala Lumpur were bright. Too bright. If Omed climbed to the top of these buildings would he see the Koh-e Baba? He knew the distance he had travelled, but the mountains of Afghanistan were high.

Omed felt Puravi's hand on his shoulder. ‘I must go now my new friend. I will take you to your hotel, but I must warn you, the men who you come with from airport, they are not good men. I have seen them before. Be very caring of yourself.'

At the front of the Coliseum Hotel, Puravi allowed the taxi to creak to a halt. Omed shuffled some money from his pocket.

‘No, my friend.' Puravi pushed his hand back. ‘This is my pleasure surely enough. Remember the bridge, how it is for crossing and reaching. Remember me when you are far away. Remember my luck and remember yours.' He reached over Omed and flipped open the door.

‘My friends have gone to arrange transport.' The Snake took a long drag on his cigarette, it crackled and spat clove sparks into the room. He'd had no opium since leaving Lahore. He was sweating, yawning, shivering. Omed thought he may die and it filled him with hope and dread at the same time.

‘We are going to Indonesia, but it is too risky to fly. Our passports are cheap. If you had given me more money, I could have bought better ones.'

The Snake batted at some unseen thing with his palm.

‘So we will take a boat. We can easily get into a port where the people checking have lazier eyes and emptier stomachs. They can always use a little money.

‘To travel, it is necessary to grease the wheels. Today we go to Melaka. We will meet my friends there. They are arranging a boat.'

While the Snake was organising a car for Melaka, Omed sat in the tiled bathroom and unpicked his coat. Slipping several hundred dollars from their hiding place, he carefully restitched the lining.

The Snake returned sweating, clawing at his clothes. With him was a small Chinese man who had a statue of the Buddha in jade around his neck. Omed remembered the stone Buddhas and how quickly the Talib turned them to rubble. He saw the slice in Zakir's head, the dark blood and flies. And felt the terrible weight of Zakir on his chest as the dust had spilled over them.

‘We should go,' said the Snake, snapping Omed back into the moment.

At the rear of the hotel was the Buddhist's car. Three longhaired boys in black T-shirts were leaning on the bonnet and the man pulled out a few small notes and handed them over.

‘
Jaga Kereta
,' the Buddhist said, watching them lope back down the street. ‘Car guard. They say the money is for them to guard our cars, but it is more so they do not scratch.' He shrugged as if to say,
What can I do? It is the only way
.

The Buddhist spoke English, but his accent was hard to understand. It was fortunate that the Snake spoke little other than Dari and some Urdu. He would need Omed to translate. They were like two leeches, living off each other and hoping to be the last one alive.

Omed's father had insisted that he learn to read, write and speak English. He pestered the few tourists that came to Bamiyan, to practise with his son. They sat with their long hair and torn clothing, listening as Omed had talked. ‘Allo meesta. Waatees yar naam? Ma naam ees Omed. Woodju laak tea? I am gooboy.'

‘It is the language of the world,' his father told him. But Omed had argued that he never wanted to leave his country, his family and friends. The world outside was of no interest. What use was English in a country filled with so many languages of its own? His father had pointed to a butterfly outside their window. ‘Do you think a caterpillar knows that one day it will need to fly?' he asked. So many wise sayings. So many words.

The streets of Kuala Lumpur were busy with trucks and buses and bikes and people. Everyone was going somewhere and where the noise of traffic thinned, the shrill rattle of insects rose. Indian men scuttled down roads on motorbikes laden with plastic bags of bread. Families of Muslims with clean felt hats and white headscarves rode scooters to morning prayer. Chinese taxi drivers shouted at each other from cars swarming like flies over the carcass of the road.

The sun roared over everything, beating down on children playing in the deep gutters, bouncing off white buildings, tearing at the scabbed backs of dogs. When they reached the highway and the rain came, it was not in light drops, but in fat balls that burst on the windscreen like jackfruit. The rain drummed so heavily that they had to slow so the driver could see the way. He clicked his tongue and swore at the skies in Chinese as the car planed like a boat down the highway that had become a river.

In Melaka, they drove past the old red buildings and to the dock where bundles of wood and slabs of heavy rubber lay waiting to be loaded. The port was full of plastic bottles and sticks and smelled like a toilet.

The Snake seemed unsure of his directions. By now he was twitching violently and retching. They stopped and asked a group of small boys, who pointed to the end of a wharf where an old boat was tied. Omed pulled out some notes and paid the driver. Only after the man kissed his Buddha for his good fortune and drove off, did Omed realise he had paid in American dollars what he should have paid in Malaysian ringgit.

This was the first boat Omed had seen up close. When he was a child they would make little boats from paper, floating them out onto broad puddles, or down the streams between the wheatfields, until they became too heavy with water and sank.

Omed knew trucks and buses, where the dangers lay: from landmines, bad driving and poorly made roads. But the ocean was a cold and unfamiliar highway they could slip beneath and be lost forever. Omed had never learnt to swim. Like learning English, it had seemed a foolish pastime. Afghanistan was a country without knowledge of the sea.

The man with the sunglasses and his friend with the limp hurried across the deck. They grunted their greetings before helping Omed and the Snake over the narrow plank and onto the boat. Everything stank of diesel. Wet ropes were coiled like huge snakes against the cabin. They were introduced to an Indonesian man named Malik who was bent over an oily motor. He pointed to an empty spot on the deck and went back to his business.

Without notice, the Snake's friends jumped off and the engine coughed awake. They nosed out of the harbour as night tugged at the corners of the sky.

The lights from shore winked, smaller and smaller, before being clenched in the tight fist of the night. They passed small fishing boats with petrol lamps and saw the huge ghost-shapes of cargo ships bellowing into the swirls of fog. The sea was as dark as a bullet wound. The boat's bow dipped in and out, scooping handfuls of water onto the deck. Omed sat and shivered under the starless night, fearing the cabin, where the Snake was sitting shivering, crying, smoking. Where he would be trapped when the boat edged under the ocean.

About two hours after leaving, one of the boat crew brought Omed a package of rice and a plastic cup of water. The man opened a hatch on the deck and shone a torch below. Then he threw packages of rice into the hole.

Omed crept over and stood beside the man, peering into his torch beam. The whites of a hundred eyes flashed. Sheep, he thought at first; then, cows. But slowly Omed recognised a hand, an arm cradling a human baby, the highlighted curve of a human cheekbone. This ship was a cargo ship and it was exporting live humans.

The hold was a tangle of bodies – human on human – and the heat rose from them like a breath of hell. The sourness of their unwashed skin escaped into the night air as packets of rice rained down on their heads.