Baghlan Boy

by Michael Crowley

  Salma came out from behind a skip in the alley. ‘Did you get my passport?’

  ‘I have it. I’ll look after it for you. No one will ever own you again. Come with me.’

  She held his hand as they ran up the street. A war waggon sped past the junction ahead of them. The sky to the east was stained with smoke. When they got to the boat, Farood was relieved that no one had risen from their bunks. He shushed Salma and led her to his cabin, waking Misha from an anxious sleep.

  ‘Fuck, you brought her here?’

  ‘You want me to leave her out there? They’d just take her back or put a bullet in her.’

  Farood’s words left Salma shaking for a moment.

  ‘The captain ain’t going to be pleased, bro,’ added Misha.

  He jumped down from the top bunk; Salma turned her face away to the wall. He went to urinate; Farood closed the closet door behind him.

  He told Salma to sit on his bunk and sat beside her. ‘He’ll be fine. I’ve known him for a long time. The captain will be fine. He’s a nice man.’

  Misha pulled on his clothes. ‘Best that you go and tell him, Farood, before he finds out. We have to go and buy some fuel, are you coming?’

  ‘No. Take someone else, I’ll stay here, mind the boat.’

  Misha laughed at Farood’s pretence at loyalty. ‘Then you better keep the gun,’ he said, and left.

  Farood and Salma laid side by side. He only realised he’d been shaking when he stopped. He knew that what he had done was wrong – all of it – the killing and the smuggling. But how else could he return to help his mother and sister? He had been wrongly imprisoned in England, tricked by Khalid and by Sabana. He had escaped and could never go back there, yet he had to repay and protect his family. Karam had left them, long ago; they needed him more than ever. What he had done was also right.

  Sleep enclosed him, held him fast. His teeth were clenched, his breathing shallow. He dreamed of his father, sitting in a darkened corner of their hovel home, scowling at him. He was a boy again, his father tossing crusts across the room at him, before lifting himself up with a stick and leaving. He was alone in the shadow of the room, waiting – no one came. Where was his brother, his mother and sister? He went outside – the village was empty; in the distance, for the first time in his life, he could see the sea, swirling like a whirlpool.

  The pounding of the engine woke him. He shielded his eyes from the light he had left on, and saw that Salma was gone. The boat was heaving forward. He opened his cabin door and listened; there were voices from the galley. He knew that if she had been put ashore his anger would not be tolerated by the others, that he was little more than a migrant passenger himself. But he was beginning to seethe all the same. He called out her name. Then he opened the galley door and saw her laughing, sitting between Misha and the cook.

  ‘Salma, I told you to stay in the cabin.’

  His tone could not dampen the room’s cheerfulness. Misha, his arm resting on the back of her chair, admonished him with a smile.

  ‘She was hungry. You rescue someone, but you don’t feed them. What kind of hero are you?’ And Salma laughed again. ‘They are looking after me. Alex is a good cook. If you don’t mind what the food tastes like.’

  Alex let out an exaggerated laugh and put his arm around Salma from the other side. Farood despised the pretence of her innocence.

  ‘You spoken to the captain yet?’ asked Misha. Farood shook his head. ‘Well, you should.’

  Farood walked round the table, held forth a hand. ‘Salma, come back to the cabin, I have some things I need to explain.’

  ‘But I was going to teach Alex how I cook rice.’

  Alex put on a serious expression. ‘Yeah, man. We’ve got a cooking lesson here. Go tell the captain what we’re up to.’

  Farood grabbed Salma by the wrist. As she stood and tried to squeeze past Misha, Alex moved round the table and clutched her other arm. Farood put the flat of his palm into his face and pushed. Alex rocked back and rushed forward. They were head to head.

  ‘Hey, hey!’ shouted Salma.

  The galley door opened; it was the captain. Farood and Alex stepped away from each other; Salma looked nervously at the man in the doorway.

  ‘Welcome aboard,’ said the captain to Salma. ‘Best keep out of everyone’s way. Misha, go to the wheel room. Farood, come with me.’

  The captain’s cabin was noisier than Farood’s. He had a desk with a laptop and two crud-covered windows. There was a row of books on one of the windowsills. The room smelled of feet and antiperspirant. Beneath his bed was a swollen rucksack.

  The captain pushed off his boots and dumped his feet on the table, toes twitching inside his socks. ‘Farood, you rescued this girl, brought her on board. You wanted to do a good thing. They were keeping her in some house?’

  ‘They were using her. I’m trying to help her find her father.’

  ‘Good job we’ve moved on, they would’ve come after her and cut us to pieces. And you’re trying to keep her for yourself, Farood, which is okay, but I don’t want a girl on this boat. She’s already trouble. We’re going over to the government side. They will look after her.’

  Salma was standing at the sink in his cabin, gazing at the mirror. ‘What did he say?’ she asked meekly.

  ‘We’re going to the government side. It’ll be safer there. You should be careful of that cook, Alex. He seems friendly, but he can switch. Best if you don’t leave the cabin.’

  Thirty-Six

  Sirte, Libya

  They journeyed for another day and a half, close enough to the coast to view the features – the faces of towns, the condition of the buildings. Often the plumes of smoke gave it away. Their course took them past Benghazi into the Gulf of Sidra. A mile off from Benghazi, the captain could pick out a tank on fire and a crowd of people on the beaches. At Sirte, he could see coloured fishing boats lined up on the quay and cargo ships in the harbour. There were some gutted buildings, but none burning. There were government soldiers at the harbour, one with binoculars looking back at him. The captain steered a course.

  When they moored an officer with a pistol drawn boarded the boat, accompanied by two young privates. They went through the boat, speaking Arabic, and the captain ordered Farood to summon Salma to interpret.

  ‘He says it doesn’t look like you’re doing much fishing.’

  ‘Tell him we’ve come to take people to safety,’ said the captain.

  Salma explained, and the army officer shared a joke with the other soldiers.

  Salma smiled. ‘He says you don’t look like the Red Cross.’

  ‘You can tell him we rescued you.’

  The officer’s face toughened; he had Salma explain that he could provide the captain with passengers for his boat.

  ‘He wants us to come with him.’

  They crossed a deserted dual carriageway. It was midday and cloudy. They were led down a street of whitewashed apartments and shuttered shops. Everything closed, but not scarred like the last town. New balconies gleamed desolate as show homes. They crossed another main road and before them lay the carcass of a street, a disembowelled bus obstructing its junction. Where the street before was whitened, this was all ash, as if volcanic lava had passed through. Halfway up, a bombed water main had flooded the street. The soldiers splashed onward through the middle; the others clung to the sides. The patter of distant small arms fire could be heard, which had been out of earshot off shore. At the other end of the street, the edge of the scorched ground was oddly abrupt – within yards they were in a park between some young trees dignifying a path. A child’s coat was draped over a climbing frame; a pair of sandals waited on a bench. Across the park, a line of palm trees in front of a three-storey building which betrayed the frenetic quality of a hospital.

  Farood, Misha and Salma were ordered to wait in the foyer with the two soldiers
, the captain to follow the officer down the bustling corridor. The foyer was a procession of men on crutches, levering themselves back and forth, watching the haemorrhaging arrivals wheeled through the front doors. A man was hurriedly scooped out of an ambulance and placed centre stage, the two bloodied ambulance workers jogging back to their impatient vehicle. The man’s shirt had been pulled up to his chest, showing a lower torso that was only blood, as if all his lower body had been peeled. Farood’s eyes moved to the football shirt and wondered if it was any English team. Nurses plugged lines into his arms. The man was conscious yet silent, repeatedly trying to lift his head and failing.

  Misha would not look and pulled at Farood’s arm. ‘Fuck this, bro. Being an agent in a warzone. I didn’t sign up for this. Waste of time.’ He hurried outside and started kicking the wall with his heels.

  A group of three women medics came into the foyer from behind fire doors, women with headscarves, speaking English, like English people. They ferried the butchered man away.

  ‘Maybe I should offer to help here,’ said Salma.

  Farood looked at her, annoyed; she read it as disbelief. ‘I could clean up or something.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Can I have my passport now?’ she asked.

  ‘Later.’

  The deeper the army officer and the captain went into the hospital, the greater the density of patients. All rooms, all enclaves, were places for the burned and the mutilated, on beds, stretchers and mats. Opposite an empty room with a blood-soaked floor, the captain and the officer entered a children’s ward. Two small boys, five or six years old, shared a bed. One had both eyes bandaged, the other held his hand while they shared a chewy stick. The captain listened to the officer consult with a nurse. She pointed out three children; the officer marched into a room next door, quickly counted out some others. In a third room, a room of leg injuries, a senior doctor, in age and status, reached out to shake the captain’s hand, who hesitantly gave his.

  ‘How many can you fit on your boat?’

  ‘People like this?’ asked the captain.

  ‘Yes, I’m expecting you to take the injured, not the medical staff. ’

  ‘Not many.’

  A flash of disapproval crossed the doctor’s face. ‘You will be paid,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe thirty,’ negotiated the captain.

  ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘A thousand dinar.’

  The doctor winced in resignation. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘The officer will have them taken to your boat and see you are paid. You’re taking them to Italy, yes?’

  The captain nodded; the officer smiled, understanding he had brokered the deal.

  ‘Doctor, could you explain to the officer here, that the girl I left out front is not travelling with us? Is there a refugee centre somewhere?’

  ‘Try the university.’

  The captain and the army officer moved quickly back through the hospital; when the captain reached the entrance, he kept walking, signalling Farood and Misha to follow him. When Salma began to hurry after them, the officer held her back.

  ‘Farooood!’ Her cry did not turn his head.

  He walked back to the boat with Misha and the captain, the captain putting them in the picture. ‘We’re taking the sick to Italy. Not so much the sick as the maimed. Children as well.’

  ‘How much they paying us, boss?’ asked Farood.

  ‘Not enough, I can tell you.’

  ‘Boss,’ said Misha. ‘If we’re bringing injured people, no one in Italy will give us any trouble. We’ll be heroes, won’t we?’

  At which the captain suddenly halted, looked hard at them both, in what they weren’t sure was praise or disapproval.

  ‘Boys, when we get back, we clean the boat. When they bring us the half-dead, I want them to see us swabbing the deck and sterilising the galley. We’re the Red Cross from now on.’

  The patients arrived on the back of an army lorry. The captain and the officer carried them down; the quay became a ward. The officer said in Arabic he would fetch some more and it was understood. The captain touched the officer’s sleeve and said in English he wanted his money and was also understood. Alex the cook and Misha began carefully leading and carrying the patients aboard, Misha taking the hand of the small boy who held the hand of the other with both eyes bandaged. With the second lorryload the officer brought along an English nurse, who paraphrased the officer’s remarks.

  ‘He says to take them to a harbour, not to put them on some beach from the dinghy. And he wants the children below, not on the deck overnight.’

  ‘Does he? Ask him if wants to come with me,’ said the captain politely.

  Farood had been assigned to clean below decks. He had finished the galley which, like everywhere else, smelled of engine oil, but also vegetable oil, and was mopping around the narrow passage outside the captain’s cabin, when, without much forethought, he tried the door handle and found it open. He went in, not to clean but to go through the side pockets of the rucksack under the captain’s bed. In each pocket, there were rolls of notes in different currencies: euros, US dollars, Libyan dinar, Turkish lira. He took it all – the US dollars and the euros in each shoe, the rest in his pockets – then he went up top.

  ‘Finished cleaning down below, boss. What do you want me to do now?’

  ‘I want you to go back to the hospital in the lorry and make sure they don’t bring back more than another ten. If he thinks I won’t leave sick children behind, he’s wrong.’

  Farood jumped in the front passenger seat next to the nurse, smiled and asked her, ‘A friend of mine, a girl, was at the hospital this morning, and the soldiers sent her away. She wasn’t sick.’

  ‘To the university, probably, behind the hospital.’

  *

  The horizon was leaden. He could smell the fuel, feel it in his eyes even when he looked at the ground. He went to the university’s main hall. It was like so many halls he had lived in himself, from Pakistan to Paris; a terminal, a place where people’s lives had been delayed, with no clues given for departure. There were several hundred in the main hall; Farood took to the stage, and although he did not notice Salma, she made her way to the front.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  He sat down, legs off the edge of the stage, and lifted her up beside him. ‘I’ve come to give you this.’ He presented her passport to her.

  For a moment, she expected him to leave.

  ‘There is a bad fire outside,’ he said, merely for the sake of conversation.

  ‘The soldiers are saying the rebels have set fire to an oil field.’

  ‘Then they can’t be far.’ He was unsure of what to suggest.

  ‘They’re saying that a French ship is on its way here, from Benghazi – maybe we could get on it,’ she said, like a proposal.

  When the lorry returned to the boat with the last patients and no Farood, Misha questioned the nurse.

  ‘He has gone to find the girl from this morning. At the university,’ she said, waving her hand behind herself.

  The captain shouted to his crew, ‘We’re not waiting for him,’ before shaking his head at Misha, as if to say, ‘You did everything you could.’

  Thirty-Seven

  Baghlan Province, 2013

  It was a meal for five, but they had neither the pans nor the bowls to feed that many. Farood had given his mother five thousand Afghanis and promised there would be more, but she was not about to waste it on pots when there hadn’t always been food to put in them. This was her brother’s house near Pol-e-Khomri. She had taken Yashfa there after Karam had left to join the Taliban. Her brother had been a coalminer since Soviet times. The Russians had dug the mine, built the houses and the shower block. After they were driven out, the mine collapsed, the showers became a dribble and the empty houses were plundered for
their breeze blocks. Her brother came home one day to find part of one of his walls had been scavenged. He had patched it with mud bricks but was wary of leaning against it. The uncle threw the remaining handful of coal grit onto the fire, which flickered rather than burned. He was a man without teeth and his skin was grey like a wolf’s. They were eating steamed dumplings, filled with garlic and chives, in a lentil gravy. Farood and Salma shared a bowl, as did Yashfa and her mother.

  Farood and Salma had been in Baghlan province for the past ten days. They had driven in from Pakistan, having flown there from Italy, where they’d spent December in a refugee camp in the Sicilian port of Catania. When Farood asked to be released to go to Pakistan, the authorities were confused but eventually agreed. Before they left, Farood bought a ring off another refugee, a little large for Salma’s finger. He told her it was a gift; he told his mother they were married. Salma resisted the burka and often even the headscarf. The uncle glowered through the dark at her, occasionally cursing, occasionally lowering his eyes to his bowl. Farood was tired of berating the old man.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ he sighed.

  It was January; there was a dusting of soft snow but no drifts or ice. A goat came into the house, scratching its head on the bricks near the fire. They sat on blankets, laid upon a mat, which was laid upon concrete. It had been ten years since her son had left in an agent’s car; when she saw him, she sang and then they all prayed, facing the raging winter sun.