Jill McGivering

Far from my Father’s House

Dedication

For Nick

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Also by Jill McGivering

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

It was May and even here in the mountains, the heat was thick and heavy. I was out alone, fetching water, walking in an idle zigzag to and fro across the path, swinging the pail in my hand and feeling the heat prick my hair under my scarf. Down in the shadowy orchards, men were reaching for the first ripe peaches and plums of the season. Beyond them, a car wound its way down the narrow road to town, coughing up dust. When it disappeared, the broken silence mended itself as the heat settled.

I was practising a new walk, holding my back rigid, swinging my hips in a sashay the way the older girls did. I imagined Saeed watching me, as he sometimes would, keeping his distance but following me to or from school. I thought of his handsome face and dark eyes and placed my feet as neatly as a dancer.

A noise. I stopped. Banging. A faint sound. I stood and listened. Hammering. Clean and hard and out of place. It was coming from my left, near the mosque. I crept through the grass to crouch behind the high corner of a compound. I held my breath and peered around the wall to look.

Three strangers were standing on the path near the entrance to the mosque. They were banging a piece of paper onto a tree, fixing it with nails. Further down, three notices were already fluttering on other trees, pinned like butterflies. I felt a stab of pain, imagining they were living things, nailed to the wood and suffering.

The men were thick-set with dark turbans, bushy beards and grubby shirts. One was as old as Baba and had a crooked nose, as if long ago he’d been hit in the face. His stomach bulged under his kameez. He was standing back from the tree, giving orders. The other two, doing the hammering, were younger. One was handsome; his upper arms thickened into ropes of muscle as he wielded the hammer. There was something dangerous in the set of his mouth. His eyes were cool. A long gun was hanging from a strap, slung over his shoulders, and the metal glinted in the sunlight as he lifted his arm and the hammer blows fell. My stomach tightened and the breath stuck in my chest.

They worked their way further up the road, banging papers onto all six trees outside the mosque, one by one. Finally they walked back down the path to a battered pickup truck parked far below in the road.

The older man got into the passenger seat beside the driver. The handsome young man and his friend climbed into the open back and sat with their guns propped upright between splayed legs. They gripped the truck’s metal cage, their knuckles white, as it started to move, pitching them off balance. The handsome man turned to look up the path. I ducked back behind the wall, heart thumping. Had he seen me? When I dared to look again, all that was left was dust, hanging in the empty air.

I counted to a hundred, then walked down to the first notice and stood, trying to read the lettering. It had been written in black curly handwriting and copied by a machine.

By Order, it said. All music is contrary to the will of Allah and is henceforth forbidden. All shaving of beards is contrary to the will of Allah and is henceforth forbidden. All contact between men and women who are not close blood relatives is contrary to the will of Allah and is henceforth forbidden. All women and girls shall be confined to their compounds and not venture into public. Praise be to Allah! It was signed by a man whose name I didn’t know and underneath his name it said: Supreme Commander, Faithful Soldiers of Islam.

I looked up and down the path. No one. I set down my pail and gripped the two sides of the notice in both hands, tearing it off the tree. The paper ripped from the nails, leaving behind shreds that hung like skin. I held it against my face, tasting the paper with the tip of my tongue and breathing its strange inky smell. It was dangerous and disturbing and made me shiver. I smoothed out the creases against my thigh and folded the paper carefully in half, then in half again, and hid it in my pocket.

Chapter 2

The pressure was so intense that the crowd seemed about to burst. All around Ellen, ahead and behind, fists were punching the air, thrust upwards in unison by the rhythms of the chants. The voices were shrill, on the brink of screams.

‘Pakistan Zindabad!’ Long live Pakistan. ‘Freedom Zindabad!’ The shouting was led by a man in a black baseball cap. A megaphone distorted his words, punctuating them with explosions of static and piercing whines. Placards, dancing above the protesters’ heads, showed the mass-produced images of opposition politicians.

Ellen, at the edge of the crowd, straightened her headscarf and climbed onto a boulder for a better view. No sign of the other reporters. She ran her eyes down the human river of people, dividing the chaos of raised hands and wobbling placards into sections. She made a rough mental count of one portion, then multiplied it to judge the size of the whole protest. Four thousand people, certainly. Perhaps five.

She wrote a few lines, noting down some of the slogans and a short description of the man with the megaphone. She’d like to kick off her report with colour, if the editors gave her enough space. Something dramatic to grab the reader’s attention before she started to expand and give context. Her readers would need help making sense of it all. Further pressure on the Pakistani government. No. She needed to give a greater sense of rising drama. She tucked loose strands of hair back out of sight under her scarf, thinking, then added: on this already beleaguered Pakistani government. Around her, the shouting was reaching a crescendo. She should leave soon. The latest in a growing number of protests. Showing mounting public frustration, public concern, about the government’s handling of the current crisis. She paused. How many readers would remember what crisis? She added: of the government’s handling of its current battle against the threat from Islamic extremists. Too long. She went back and crossed out a few words.

She looked up. In the short time she’d spent writing, the dashes of riot police drawn along the edge of the demonstration had begun to solidify into lines. They were herding the protesters into a narrowing strip, hemming them in between the barricades down the centre of the road and the brick walls of the buildings.

She shook her head. She didn’t like it. She always kept an escape route in view when she covered protests, a quick way out if danger suddenly flared. Until this point, there had been successive alleyways and side roads leading off the road. They served as natural valves if pressure built up. Now, though, the wall running alongside the road was solid and the police lines were closing in. They were being funnelled. It was time to get out.

She put her notebook away and shouldered her backpack, then launched herself back into the crowd, trying to force her way, elbows digging, across the forward flow. Men turned towards her, their brown eyes stretched wide with curiosity and amusement. She was engulfed in the smell of raw sweat. The men looked rough and uneducated. Probably bussed into Islamabad just for the demonstration.

Someone whispered something in her ear. At the same time, a sweaty hand touched her arm, slid over her buttock. She twisted and at once the hand slid away. She glared into a rack of blank faces, then steadied herself and pushed her way forwards again. The pressure of bodies around her was building and she wanted to get out as fast as possible. She fixed her eyes on a young policeman with a neatly trimmed moustache and concentrated on battling towards him. His dark eyes were strafing the crowd. He had a riot shield in one hand, a raised wooden baton in the other.

Protesters, starting to feel enclosed, pressed ahead with greater urgency and beat their way forwards. They gave off the keen, hungry scent of growing panic. Ellen fought to keep moving, but was repeatedly knocked off balance by the men surrounding her. The communal chanting was ragged now, disintegrating into a cacophony of shouts and cries. Her cotton kameez felt slick against her skin, her back running with sweat under her backpack. Her headscarf slithered to and fro across escaping hair.

An elbow stabbed her in the ribs. She coughed, tried to catch her breath. Her lungs strained. She pulled at her headscarf to anchor it. Must keep moving. A heavy man barged into her, stamping on the side of her foot. She grabbed at his arm to keep herself upright and he shook her off, pushing past. Her legs started to shake. She must get out. All around her, waves of hysteria ran through the crowd. The men’s shouts became rough and wild.

She sensed something moving at the edge of the crowd and turned to look. The riot police were shuffling closer, narrowing the spaces between them until they stood shoulder to shoulder, driving the protesters back against the wall. A high-pitched police whistle sounded and the officers advanced as one, shields high, wooden lathis swinging wildly. More policemen jumped down from the meshed backs of riot vehicles to join in.

The men around her twisted, ducked and skidded as they tried to get away. She was trapped between them, squeezed so hard she could barely breathe. The defiant shouting had gone. Her ears were filled with cries of pain and the crunch of lathis striking bone.

She was swept sideways by a sudden surge. Somewhere the crowd burst out and the men rushed to the right, carrying her along with them. People had crashed through the barricades and were spilling out into the road and its haze of shimmering petrol fumes. Car horns blared. She was knocked against the side of a stationary car, then along the edge of a windowless bus. A row of tired faces stared down blankly from inside.

Ahead of her, a scrawny young man fell and was sucked under in the wash of running, stamping feet. His face rose for a moment, blood trickling from his temple. She reached towards him through the crowd but he was too far away. He sank again and was lost. Beyond, a stout man swung the wooden pole of his placard and cracked it in two across a policeman’s head. Other officers in the line swarmed forwards, jumping on the man, pounding his head and shoulders with lathis and fists until his hair matted with blood.

Bitter smoke made her choke. A tyre was burning in the road, forming a puddle of melted rubber. The police line had collapsed. Everywhere men were throwing fists and kicks through air thick with shouts and splintering wood. She looked around, trying to find a way out. She was hemmed in on all sides. Distant sirens screamed the arrival of more police.

The crowd thickened again after the sudden rush of movement. Shock waves ran back through the crowd causing sudden compression. Ellen found herself trapped between two thick-set men. One fell back on her as he fought for balance. His fist caught her stomach. She couldn’t find the breath to cry out. The muscular man behind tried to claw through, heaving his way past. He grabbed at her shoulder and shoved her backwards. The sky wheeled, a ragged white emptiness far above. Her legs scrambled, were kicked from under her. Stumbling. Her hands clutched uselessly at the slippery cotton moving past her. She was falling, helpless to right herself, pressed down by the surge of bodies on all sides.

‘Ellie!’

She was hallucinating, she must be. Drowning in the noise, the chaos. A fist struck the side of her head and set her ear ringing. On her knees. A forest of legs. She must find the surface, get back on her feet. The men around her were a blur of kicking limbs. She put her hands to her head, shielding her face. A foot caught her hard in the ribs. Under. If she went under, she’d be trampled.

‘Ellie!’

Close. Urgent. A real voice? Her ears were deaf with stinging and shouts and blows. A foot caught her just above her eye, knocked her sideways, backwards into the crush. The legs around her blurred and shimmered.

‘Ellie!’

Louder. Still reeling from the blow, she managed to turn her head. A large clean hand was sticking through the swell at waist height. Reaching for her. She stared at it for a second, too stunned to move. A white hand with strong fingers and neatly clipped nails and long dark hairs above the knuckles. Beside her, a man slipped and his punching battle to stay upright forced a moment’s gap. She crawled on her hands and knees through the feet, the legs, the bodies, thrusting her arm out to grasp the hand. Her fingers locked around its wrist, firm and warm. The hand closed over hers, heaving her out and upwards as she clung to it, dragging her onto her feet, even as the waves of people crashed past her.

Her head was spinning, her eyes closed. She couldn’t speak. A strong arm was holding her upright, wrapped around her back and under her arm. She let her head loll into the curve of his shoulder, fighting dizziness. They were moving sideways together, his shoulder ramming through the crowd, steering them both. She clung to him, struggling to keep herself on her feet. When she tried to open her eyes the colours swam and shimmied, making her nauseous. She let them fall closed again. One eye was sticky, its lids starting to seal. He was dragging her on through screeching traffic and petrol fumes. She was too weak to stop him.

At last he lowered her with a bump onto a low wall. He was crouching over her, his arm still around her shoulders, his breath warm on her cheek. His body ran solid and safe down her side.

‘Ellie?’

She managed to part her glued eyes a crack. She was off the road now, looking back at a chaos of figures, some running, some crouching, dazed, on the central reservation, others curled on the ground, still and bloodied. Fresh police sirens, distant, started to wail. A young police officer was rushed past, carried by colleagues, his legs hanging limp, spilt blood stiffening his moustache.

‘Can you hear me?’

She forced herself to turn her head and looked into his face. It hung, eyes large with concern, in her vision. Him? She blinked, tried to swallow down the nausea, to focus. No. Impossible. She closed her eyes again, breathing thickly. A moment later, she tried again, forcing open her eyelids and peering at him. ‘Frank?’

‘Hey.’ His mouth broke into a smile, showing neat, whitened teeth. Lines fanned into cracks around his eyes. ‘Who’d you expect?’

The office was brightly lit and chill with air conditioning. The cut above her eye was painful. The sheen of sweat on her skin found its way into scratches and made them sting. Frank had half-carried her across a short hallway and now she was sitting in a hard plastic chair, sagging backwards, her head propped against a wall beneath a giant corporate logo which read: FOOD 4 ALL. She closed her eyes. People rushed round her, fussing and exclaiming. Her head throbbed.

Frank was at her side again. ‘Mind if I take a look?’ He eased her head back with gentle hands, swabbing her face and eye. Cotton, cool and wet. A trickle of water ran down her cheek and the curve of her throat and she lifted her hand to it. A moment later, the lids of her puffy eye sprang apart, freed. His face was close to hers, his lips pursed as he concentrated, assessing her cuts and bruises.

His hair, dishevelled, was completely white at the temples. Beyond them, it was streaked with grey. Middle age had rounded out his cheeks. But his eyes were the same, as intense as she remembered. When he looked directly at her, she could still see the young man of twenty he had once been.

‘You’ll live.’ His expression was amused. ‘No real damage.’ He squeezed sticky white ointment from a tube and dabbed it over her eye, then shook two tablets into her hand and gave her a paper cone of water to swallow them down. ‘Sit there, would you? Five minutes and I’m done.’

She didn’t argue. A young woman brought her a cup of sweet, milky Pakistani tea. Two tea bags were stewing inside, strings thrown out over the brim like lifelines. She sipped it, looking round. FOOD 4 ALL’s offices were cramped, with temporary partitions and an air of chaos. Large colour posters on the walls showed images of needy children with big eyes and babies squirming in their mother’s arms. Cardboard boxes of supplies were stacked along a side wall: oral rehydration salts, blankets and high-protein biscuits. The mix of English and Chinese characters on the packaging suggested it was all from China.

A television on a stand in one corner flickered, its sound muted. A Pakistani news channel was interviewing its reporter live from the scene of the demonstration. They’d named the item Chaos in the Capital. The reporter was standing in front of a pile of smouldering tyres, making the most of the dregs of the violence. The black smoke rose calmly, almost wistful as it billowed and gently dispersed. The street behind was littered with debris – the remnants of trampled placards, a torn shirt, a lost shoe. She wondered how honest the reporter was and if he’d placed them there himself. Around him, the sun was already losing its power. Dark pools glistened on the surface of the road. Blood perhaps, or just oil. To one side, almost out of shot, riot police were clambering back into their vehicles and pulling away.

A written commentary ran across the bottom of the screen: Home Minister condemns violence, blames opposition for illegal protest. Opposition leaders slam police, label action heavy-handed. Three thousand demonstrators, say police. An underestimate, she thought. Scores injured, organizers claim.

Frank reappeared. ‘How’re you doing?’ He leant past her for his bag, a battered leather case thrown on its side. If someone had asked her what Frank smelt like, she would have thought them crazy. But now, as he bent close, a hint of his old, familiar smell caught her unawares, hit the pit of her stomach. Warm and floury, like crumbled biscuit, cut with a Christmassy spice. Aftershave, perhaps. She stared after him as he moved away without waiting for an answer, bag swinging from his hand.

He was finishing off his day, hanging around the doorway of each small sub-office, asking questions, issuing instructions. She sat quietly, watching him, glad to be still and adjusting to the sight of him again.

As he strode back to her, he winked and made her smile. ‘Come on, Ellie.’ He reached down and hoisted her to her feet. ‘Let’s get you home.

The guesthouse where Ellen was staying was just outside Islamabad and a welcome escape from the city. It was early evening by the time Frank drove her through the gates. Upstairs, in her room, she showed him where she hid her bottles of gin and tonic, pointed him to the small fridge for ice, and let him fix the drinks. They sat outside to drink them, side by side on the first-floor terrace, warming themselves in the mellow gleam of the falling sun. She rocked her glass against her face, cooling her swollen skin.

He slipped off his sandals and propped his feet on the rail. They were sunburnt, red with white stripes where the leather had been.

She looked out past his toes to the tips of Islamabad’s tallest buildings, just visible in the natural basin below. The tiles on the domes of the mosques glittered in the dying light. It was peaceful here, removed. She glanced at Frank. His strong Roman nose was more prominent than she’d remembered, the chin now soft with flesh.

‘So . . . ’ She looked into her glass. ‘Still do-gooding?’

‘You mean, actually making a difference to people.’ His tone was bantering but she sensed bitterness. ‘As opposed to stirring up trouble.’

She felt stung. ‘No fan of journalism then?’

‘Course I am. Huge.’

They sat in silence for a moment. She didn’t know what to say, where to start. Her mind was weighted by exhaustion. When she closed her eyes, she saw stamping feet, bloody faces trapped in the crowd. She’d been lucky to get out. She thought of his hand, reaching for her.

‘How come you were there?’

He didn’t answer for a minute, then threw back his head and laughed. It was a forced laugh, mirthless. ‘You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you? That I’ve been following you around the world, staking you out, waiting for a chance to save you.’

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t—’

He lifted his feet from the rail. For a moment, he seemed about to leave, then he rearranged his ankles and settled again, sipped his drink. ‘I was heading for the office, that’s all. Stopped to watch the fun. And there you were.’

‘There I was.’

His voice was the same. Lush and chocolaty and lazy with American vowels. It had seemed so exotic to her when they were students.

‘You look just the same,’ he said. ‘Haven’t changed a bit.’

She put her hand to her sore, battered face. ‘I’ve changed.’ He’d aged too.

Another silence. They were awkward together, unable to find the natural rhythm of a conversation, and that saddened her.

In the distance, a recording spluttered into life and the soulful notes of the call to prayer drifted across the fields. It seemed to carry the melancholy of the dying day. He too seemed pensive, listening to the gentle sweetness of the young man’s voice.

When it ended, she tried again. ‘You were in Africa, weren’t you? I saw you interviewed. South Africa?’

He nodded, stared into his drink. ‘Jo’burg for a while. Then Nairobi.’

‘All with the UN?’

‘Yep. Eighteen years.’

She thought of FOOD 4 ALL’s cramped offices. It was clearly a small agency. Nothing like the UN. ‘What made you leave?’

He replied as if he hadn’t heard the question. ‘I’ve read your reports, you know, in NewsWorld. Over the years.’

‘Really?’

‘Course.’ He grinned. ‘Afghanistan. Iraq. Beirut. You sure pick ’em.’

The screen door downstairs opened and slapped shut. The garden boy appeared. He connected the hose and started to water the flowerbeds, aiming the flow with languid movements. The soil blackened as the water pooled, bubbled and sank.

Frank lifted his glass and drank down his gin and tonic. No wedding ring. Still, that didn’t mean anything. Not all married men wore them. He probably had a wife back in the US. And a bunch of all-American kids. She thought of the ring she was wearing, her mother’s wedding ring, and wondered if he’d noticed.

He said, ‘How long’re you out here?’

‘Another few days maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve been covering the protests. But they get repetitive. I need something new.’

‘Like what?’ His teeth gleamed in a half-smile in the dusk as if he knew full well.

‘Like this government offensive everyone’s talking about. Against the Taliban.’

‘Ah.’ He sounded pleased.

She could sense that he knew something and was quietly enjoying the advantage it gave him. She pushed a little further. ‘They keep saying it’s imminent. But they’re taking their time.’

She cupped her drink, listened to the creak of ice in her glass. He seemed to be thinking. Down below, the boy was moving steadily across the garden, trailing a dripping hose. A bird, compact and brown, darted past him and perched on the gate. It cocked its head, watching the boy, then took off again, skimming low across the darkening lawn.

‘I think there’s a nest.’ She pointed to a puff of bush hanging down from the wall. ‘I hear chirping. In the morning.’

He shifted on his chair, restless. ‘Off the record?’

‘Of course.’

‘The offensive’s started. They’re trying to keep it quiet.’

She turned her head a fraction to look at him, keen with interest.

‘People are streaming down from the mountains in their thousands,’ he said. ‘Tens of thousands.’

‘Are the troops in yet?’

‘Just heading in. You heard there were air strikes? Now they need boots on the ground.’

She nodded. It made sense. ‘They took their time.’

He grimaced. ‘Fighting your own people? Never an easy call.’

Tinny music sounded, distant at first, then closer. An ice-cream hawker, blasting a mechanical tune. The garden boy paused, lifted his head. Water splashed from the end of the hose onto the grass at his feet.

Finally the ice-cream hawker pedalled into view on his bicycle, a large plastic box fixed to the front of his bike. His sweat painted a black circle on his shirt where it stuck to his back. He turned down the lane opposite and the spell broke. The garden boy shifted, tugged at the hose and moved on to the last flowerbed.

‘Have you set up relief camps?’

‘Just one so far. Near Peshawar.’ He rattled the final shards of ice in his glass and tipped back his head to drink. His throat made a long, white stretch. ‘We’re trucking in relief as fast as we can but the lines keep growing.’

He turned and looked her full in the face. His expression was serious. She couldn’t tell if he were thinking about the refugees or about her, about the past. It was all such a long time ago. Somewhere below, the cook was banging pots and pans and calling to the boy. The smell of frying onions and garlic rose from the kitchen.

Frank looked at his watch and shook himself back into motion. He lifted his feet off the rail, downed the last of his drink and pushed his feet into his sandals. When he spoke again his tone was business-like.

‘I’m heading down there tomorrow. Come if you want.’ He nodded at her swollen face. ‘If you feel up to it.’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘I will. Thanks.’

He left abruptly. She watched from the terrace as he crossed to his car. The guard ran out to open the gates. Frank raised a hand to her through the car window, then backed and disappeared in a fading echo of engine.

She felt suddenly drained. Her head ached. The sun had almost set, casting a red mantle over the jagged line of the mountains. Male shouts swam through the darkness from a nearby patch of waste ground. Young men were struggling to play cricket in the gloom, their shirts barely visible.

She should go inside and file a piece to London on the protest, the violence. Her limbs were leaden. She should call Phil, her editor, and tell him about the trip to the camp. She should pack, ready to leave.

In a moment.

The ice in her drink slowly melted. She’d always thought of Frank as a young man, the way he used to be. Passionate and funny and slightly wild. This middle-aged creature, this raised ghost, was a shock. She was pleased, of course. But it was also unsettling, a reminder of the past and the path she might have taken.

The small boy who tended the neighbour’s goats was trailing back through the scrub, slapping at the goats’ hindquarters with a switch as they shoved and clambered and jostled in a tinkle of bells.

Across the path, an elderly man came shuffling out of his house and onto the veranda. He was dressed in white cotton, his feet bare. He settled himself heavily into a chair.

In the garden, insects were gathering in black clouds. Somewhere out in the wildness, beyond the guesthouse walls, cicadas tuned up and began to sing.

Chapter 3

After I saw the three strangers near the mosque and tore down their notice to keep for myself, everything went quiet. No one spoke of these strange new rules. Most of the men had beards anyway, even my Saeed who is only sixteen but already a man and adores me besides. Apart from fetching water and working in the fields and buying provisions and going to school, women and girls like me don’t have many places to go, even without it being forbidden. I kept the paper secretly under my mattress and only looked at it when I was alone. I knew the words by heart. When I whispered their name to myself: Faithful Soldiers of Islam, it seemed full of danger and also adventure and I imagined some excitement which might finally stir up my boring life in the village.

Then Baba said we should all go for a family picnic before the weather got too hot. It was already late May and even in the village the days were getting sticky. Higher up the mountain, there was a good place for picnicking. The grass was lush and springy alongside the stream, which came tumbling down from the peak. There was an old gnarled tree, even older than Baba and his father before him and his father before that. Baba used to tell how his parents took him there when he was a boy, along with all the Uncles who were also boys and even the blood Aunties who were still young girls like me and not yet married off to men in other villages.

Mama had been sickly since Ramadan last year. Baba instructed her not to fast. No one told me why but I knew because I’d seen it all before. She was sweaty and pale and moaned on her cot at night. I could tell she was dreaming about a new baby crying to be born and worrying that this baby, like so many of her others, apart from me and my big sister, Marva, would die before it ever saw day. All those months later, her stomach was as big and hard as a watermelon and to my mind that was the real reason Baba planned the day out, to lift her spirits.

The morning of the picnic, Marva was ill with fever and knife pains in her legs. Mama sat with her arms wrapped round her, her fat belly bumping them apart, and the two of them whimpered and sighed. I set to work massaging Marva’s legs until the pains eased and then I helped the Aunties to prepare the eatables, with fresh bread and tomatoes and all manner of chopped salads and a basket of first season plums and apples which I’d helped to pick from the orchard just the day before.

I am thirteen now but even when I was very young, I was forced to be responsible for Mama and my big sister both. Sometimes I feel that Baba and I are the real parents and my mama is just another girl, like Marva, and they both need looking after. As Allah has chosen, that’s the sort of family I have. Mama is sweet and gentle, it’s true. Marva says Mama was once so lovely to behold that when she went walking, birds fell out of the trees dead at her feet on account of craning to get a closer look.

But Mama lacks spirit. All those dead babies, one after another, have sucked her dry and left her as brittle as a dead reed and plagued by nerves, and even a rush of wind is enough to knock her right over and start her crying about some small thing or other. The Aunties say some women are born with character and some are born with beauty but very few have both. My mama was doled beauty.

Jamila Auntie is the other way about, plain but strong. She’s Baba’s first wife and Baba only married her because he hadn’t yet found Mama and as soon as he did, he took Mama as his new wife and forgot Jamila Auntie altogether.

As for my sister, Marva, she has an affliction. It is the wish of Allah for her to have withered legs on account of an illness she had as a little girl, even before I was born. I’ve told Baba that I don’t understand why Allah would want her to be stuck all day every day in our compound, pulling herself about on her belly like a snake, but he tuts and says, ‘Hush, Layla, don’t question the will of Allah. It is not for us to know everything and sometimes there are things we don’t understand but must nonetheless accept.’

Baba wears wire-rimmed spectacles and uses words like ‘nonetheless’ and ‘whatsoever’ because he is a man of learning. He teaches me everything, just as if I were a boy. He says that when the boys in the village shout after me in the street and call Marva names, like ‘crazy cripple’ and ‘freak of nature’, I must bear it with dignity and I must not shout back, even if I think of smart things to say, and I must not pick up sharp stones and throw them at their heads. That, he says, is not any way for a girl to comport herself.

Baba and the Uncles harnessed the donkey and loaded up the cart and Mama and the Aunties, carrying the youngest cousins, all climbed onto the back and sat, their legs hanging over the edge, as the donkey strained and pulled and complained until finally the struts creaked and the wheels turned and we all set slowly off up the steep hillside towards the stream. Girls like me and boys and men like Baba walked along behind.

The mountainside was still, the sky streaked with white cloud. The sun was hiding behind the rocky edge of the mountain, waiting to jump out and surprise us as we climbed further up. The boys ran ahead, whooping and playing chase and the girls walked in wavy clusters, holding each other’s hands and giggling into each other’s ears. I walked near Baba. The light breeze dusted off my skin and kept me cool and fingered the scarf around my face. With Jamila Auntie and Baba and the Uncles and their wives, the Aunties, and all the cousins coming and going, there were too many of us crammed into that compound and, despite its size, it was very shouty and bothersome to a young girl like me, who wanted a little peace and quiet sometimes, but was always shut up in the sweat and clamour of all those people.

After we reached the place and finished our picnic, the Aunties sat bunched underneath the twisted tree, gossiping, and the older boys took off their sandals and waded in the stream, splashing rocks about, building a dam or some such and the toddlers, nearby on the flat grassy bank, tried to throw pebbles into the clear water and barely made a ripple, their judgement was so poor. Baba and the Uncles stood together by the water’s edge, looking up and down the stream and talking in low voices. I sat propped up against Mama, plucking at the tufts of grass under the tree and wondering, not for the first time, why other girls of my age were so silly and boys so stupid.

The strangers appeared suddenly as dark shapes against the rocks. They climbed sideways down the steep mountain towards us. Baba and the Uncles stiffened and turned to watch. The knowledge of their arrival moved through the Aunties, one by one, and they too turned to look and fell silent. Some pulled at their headscarves to cover their faces and others called to their children to come here, quickly. Mama tensed at my side.

There were four of them, all dressed like the other men I’d seen, in flowing black kameezes with rough woollen hats and thick beards. They looked full of purpose, closing the distance between us with sure strides. The sunlight flashed on long-nosed guns at their sides.

The men descended to the flat bank of the stream. Baba and the Uncles stepped forwards and greeted them politely, putting their hands on their hearts: Salaam Alaikum. Three of the men were young, strong boys with loose limbs and jaunty muscles. The fourth man was older. He turned and looked across at the girls and women as we shrank together under the tree. I knew him at once from his crooked nose. He was the same man who had brought the notices and ordered the men to nail them to our trees. His eyes were hard as if they had seen many terrible things.

The men spoke in low voices. Hamid Uncle, the head of the family, spoke first and then the stranger and then Hamid Uncle again. Mama’s leg, pressed against mine, was shaking. The men were still speaking, back and forth, and, although I couldn’t make out the words, I heard the threat in the stranger’s voice. The three young men standing around him cocked their guns and raised them as if they were planning to fire. One of the Aunties let out half a cry, then strangled it dead.

The stranger spoke again and, as he did so, one of the young men swung around and aimed his gun at the donkey, which was tearing up grass beside the stream, the only creature in our party unaware of the danger. A crack. The donkey crumpled, rolling its head sideways with surprised eyes, its ears flapping. Blood spurted from its side. It gave a high-pitched scream. After a moment, the scream faded and the donkey crashed onto its side and lay, shuddering. Its blood made a dark stain on the grass. The silence which followed was full of the memory of the scream. It was only broken when the young men laughed and the fourth man turned and scolded them until they too were silent.

I stared, shaking, at Baba and the Uncles to see what they were going to do. They just stood there and looked as the donkey stopped twitching. Its eyes were open and it looked as dead as if it had never lived. The fourth man turned away and led his fighters briskly on down the edge of the mountain towards the village. While they were still in sight, no one moved.

The picnic outing was over. The Aunties rocked the smaller children in their arms, crying with them. Baba and the Uncles went across to the donkey and Baba bent down and tickled the soft patch between its ears, the way he always did, and I knew he was saying goodbye.

In truth, it had been a bad-tempered animal which nipped us with its strong teeth when we children pulled its ears or climbed on its back for a ride. But it had been part of our household since I could remember and now it was dead and I had to bite hard on the inside of my cheeks to keep from crying.

Baba and the Uncles made pairs and lifted the shafts of the cart themselves and pulled the Aunties and children back down the mountainside. The toddlers cried and struggled and had their legs slapped to hush and keep quiet. Mama, her huge stomach pushing out beyond the edge of the cart, was pale.

I walked alongside Baba. His face dripped with sweat as he heaved the cart and his spectacles kept sliding forwards on his nose and I wished I could help him. I asked, ‘Who was that man? Why did they do that?’

Baba glanced down at me and his expression was sorrowful.

‘His name is Mohammed Bul Gourn,’ Baba said. ‘He is a very dangerous man and I pray God you will never see him again.’

My hands tightened into fists at my sides. ‘But why did they shoot our donkey?’

Baba was panting. The strain made deep lines in his face as if he were already old. ‘Don’t ask so many questions, Layla.’

I stopped. Other people had said that to me since I was a little girl, Jamila Auntie and the cousins and the other Aunties and even Mama but never Baba; Baba had never said such a thing. He and I were explorers, he used to tell me, searching for knowledge. I stared after him, shocked and hurt, as he and his brothers and the laden cart rumbled on.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.