The Ink Bridge (26 page)

‘Splinter. Put down the bottle. This wax'll take everything,' said Merrick.

‘Everything's already bin taken. I lost my job cause of them two.' He pointed the lighter at Hec and Silent Boy. The taper was still burning. ‘Did you stand by me? No. You chose a bunch of reffos and a dumb teenager.'

‘Mate. Be calm. This isn't going to solve anything.'

‘I am not your
mate
, Hope. Once I coulda been. Once.'

‘Maybe we can start again. Maybe you can have your job back. Maybe we
can
be mates.'

‘Maybe. Maybe! Things are never going to be the same. And if they can't be the way they were, then they got no right bein at all.' He raised the bottle above his head. He threw it and it landed among the pallets of wax.

Merrick ran to the pallets and dived inside to try to retrieve the bottle. But it had broken and released its petrol. As the flame took, it sucked the air with it and became a living thing. It spread its blue calm over the bags of wax. Over Merrick. He didn't scream. The bags melted. Wax beads poured onto the floor. The tongues of flame licked at them. Consumed them.
Djinns
and wraiths danced to the ceiling. As the heat forced the group off the loading bay, Rudman rounded the Afghans into the van and reversed quickly away.

On the top of the container, Splinter fell to his knees. The fire was spreading towards him. He jumped to the loading bay, running to where they had last seen Merrick.

‘Mr Hope!' he shouted. ‘I'm sorry Mr Hope.' The heat was vicious. Wings sprouted on his shoulders. Fire swallowed his hair in a rush. Dragged him into its arms. And then he was a shadow. A hole. A memory.

The blackboard read:

It stops now.

It surprised Hec how neat Silent Boy's writing was. How his words curled and sung, how their serifs hung like angels.

Hec opened the door to his mum's old room but Uncle Massoud was in his bed. Silent Boy's mattress was still rolled against the wall. Massoud looked up from his pillow.

‘This is secret,
balē?
' he whispered.

Yes, this is secret. Everything is a secret. Everything and
always.
Hec closed the door and lay on his bed. He held his hook-shaped jewel to the light. The fisho had said that the dead were in that bone.

Dad woke him. It was daylight.

‘Hec, there's some guys from immigration want to talk to you. Said they want Massoud, too. That you could explain. What is all this? You need to talk to me, Hec.'

Hec got up and opened the door. Rudman and another officer were standing there. ‘You could be in a lot of trouble, Hector. We need Massoud, where is he?'

Hec led them to the bedroom. What did he care if they took Massoud. But the room was empty, the curtains blowing through the French doors.

‘Where is he?' asked Rudman's mate.

Hec shrugged. Rudman pushed him up against the wall and whispered in his ear, ‘You know silence is a very underrated quality in the young.'

‘Let him go,' said Dad from the doorway. ‘Let him go, or I'll call the police.'

Rudman held up his hands. ‘Just trying to do our jobs. Trying to protect your country from illegals.'

Hec followed them out to the car. Rudman stopped him with a hand on his chest. ‘You can't see him you know. He's going back.'

But Hec could see him. Silent Boy looked from the tinted windows. He pushed his hand on the glass and Hec placed his hand on top. And the window grew warm between them.

‘He wants you to have this,' said Rudman's mate as he handed Hec a pillowcase of papers.

Rudman said, ‘It's a bit of a read. I did a bit of editing on the later stuff. We got a copy. You can keep this one.'

Hec handed the fish-jewel to Rudman. Maybe it did have power, like the old fisho had said. Maybe it was a talisman. Maybe it would keep Silent Boy safe.

Rudman turned the teardrop pearl over in his hand. ‘This what he gets for all those words?' he asked. Hec nodded. ‘Poor trade,' said Rudman.

Then they slammed their doors and started the car. As they reached the end of the street, rain began to fall. It got heavier and heavier, but Hec just offered his face to the sky and stood still.

His dad yelled from the house, ‘Come inside, Hec.' But he couldn't. Eventually the drains blocked and the gutters backed up over the footpaths. And the street became a river and then an inland sea. And still it rained.

And out beneath the bridge, the old fisho crouched at the water's edge. And the drains carried it all to him. He bent to the water and listened.

part three
Across
the
Bridge

IN MY UPSTAIRS ROOM AT the Ariana Guesthouse, I open the journal my father gave me. There is so much blank paper, so many ruled lines. So many rules.

I don't know where I should begin, how to track the years between what happened with Omed and what is happening now. My pen is a crippled limb.

I am twenty-two. I should know these things by now. Even back in high school I learnt the basic rules of journalism – how to tell a story without wasting words. Three years of uni just drummed it home. But I am jammed up here. The words are caught inside me.

The dust has already settled on the page, it makes the pen grab at the paper. I write:

Who: Omed and Hec.

What: The story of two silent boys.

Where: Afghanistan: the most dangerous country on earth.

Why: To find out what happens next.

How:

How? I leave some room and skip to the next page. As I write, the ink spills from one word to the next like blood.

Kabul is full of dust and light. It is a ghazal, played loud from a yellow taxi. Its heat is a burqa. It is a kite. It is a dog-possessed beggar, running on all fours between the traffic. It is a pole of bright balloons sold to passing cars. It is a torn street, a pakul hat, a boiling samovar,a fistful of worn Afghani banknotes, kabob smoke, Mazari melons, car horns, shoeshine boys, kids with burning tins of herbs demanding coins.

And now it is me. Me in the chaikhana, eating naan. Me sweating in the midday heat. Me second day in, another victim of propaganda from the long War on Reason and Tolerance. I am scared of long beards, and scarves wrapped around faces. What are they hiding?

The red and green Farsi script screaming from billboards shouts to me: Fear me! I am the other! I am different! I am dangerous! I am militant!

It's like I have walked into a 3-D movie without the glasses that bring it to life. I am seeing two versions of reality – my own, laid on top of Kabul – and everything feels slightly out of focus.

Under the TV playing an Iranian soap are an old man and his wife. He is in a ragged turban, a white beard, a dirty green shalwar kameez. She is slowly swallowing handfuls of qabli pulao, rice with raisins and grated carrot. Her secrets are swallowed by her burqa, The hem is torn. They are from the Provinces. Him with his plastic bag of pills and herbs, his glass of chay sabz: green tea, sticky with sugar. They are wasting time, waiting for a bus to take them home.

I am back in my hotel room and the power is out. Outside, the generators of Kabul kick in. But not here. Faisal is stoned, lying in the kitchen, on his bed, dreaming of his wife and kids in the camps in Pakistan. I have renamed this hotel Fawlty Towers (and sometimes Farty Towels). If Faisal is the Dari-speaking Basil Fawlty, then Ghulam Ali is the Manuel. He laughs and smiles when I ask for breakfast, brings tea when I hope for jam. The only words he knows in English are, Good maarning, and he uses them often. There are no Sybil and Polly here; this is a man's place. Its rooms are filled with Turkish electricians and engineers heading to Kunduz and Jalalabad on contracts. Testosterone and kabob is on the menu every day.

Eventually, the heat forces me from the room. Even with the windows open there is no oxygen. Dust covers everything. It is part of the air. In the evenings when the winds come, you inhale particles of Kabul with every breath. My teeth crunch as I bring them together. My lungs are muddy.

In the garden, Ghulam greets me.

‘Good maarning.' He bows and smiles and shakes his head from side to side. It is hard not to like him, even in the heat of late afternoon.

‘
Chay
?' I ask, hopefully.

‘
Chay sabz
?'

‘Yes,
chay sabz
.' Is there any other?

Ghulam smiles and walks backwards from the room, he is carrying a broken toaster and the cord leaves the room last.

I sit down on the plastic garden chair and look at the hills. Mud houses hang from the rocky slopes. I have heard they are getting higher every year as the refugees return. The government has lost control of the building permits, but the residents promise to leave when they are asked. It is this politeness that most astounds me. They have to carry water up there every day in goatskin bags and old oil containers. But the kids are on the roofs flying kites. They are just tiny diamonds, fifty metres up.

A girl opens the glass door and comes straight up to my table. ‘May I sit here?' she asks. There is a white scarf wrapped around her hair, so light it could be mist.

‘Is it ok?' Her hand is on the back of the chair.

‘Sure, sure. Sorry, I was just thinking about something.'

‘That's ok.' She slips into her seat and smiles.

My mind is spinning its wheels, trying to get traction on a thought. Any thought.

‘So what brings you to Kabul?' she asks.

I wish I had a cool answer and was cooler. I wish I really knew why I was here. It is easy to write:
To find out what
happens next,
on a fresh page, but what does that mean?

‘I'm a writer. Well, I'm a journalist. But I'm here to write. When I say writing what I mean is not-journalism.' Sometimes I think a year of not talking has permanently welded shut my speech-centre.