by Claire North
“The Austrian king is weak, and his advisers are all cowards …”
The darkness grew thick; the power went out and the men milling around the room didn’t even sigh. Candles were struck, torches turned on, one man’s face glowed white as he continued working on a laptop. After a while, the commander came in, saw Charlie and seemed almost surprised that he was still there.
“Death?” he asked. “Come come come! Come follow.”
Charlie followed.
A night-time street, no lights behind the windows, the stars brilliant overhead. Charlie turned and felt cool air fresh from the mountains, heard the barking of dogs somewhere in the night, looked down and saw a few headlights moving along the road in the valley below.
The commander pulled on Charlie’s sleeve, annoyed at his slowness, and led him to a house. Here a woman, headscarf tied beneath her chin, five teeth left in her gummy mouth, grinned brightly at Charlie and gestured him inside. Up a creaking flight of stairs to a room that smelt of deodorant, a desk in one corner, clothes across the floor, an empty bed visible in the candlelight. The sheets were ruffled, disturbed, the room smelt of human habitation; but there were pillows, and the hour was late, so with a grateful smile Charlie curled up, still fully dressed, beneath the blanket. Three hours later, the teenage boy whose room it was came home, found Charlie sound asleep, cursed under his breath and crawled in next to the Harbinger of Death, who rolled over at the disturbance, but did not wake.
In the star-soaked night, War does not sleep.
War perches casually on a stool in an office in Damascus, picking seeds from a pomegranate as soldiers in fine brocade argue, argue into the night, and War smiles and says nothing except occasionally, perhaps, “Do carry on, gentlemen.”
And in the high mountains where the Kurds wait, are waiting, have always been waiting for a chance to make laws in their own language, War watches the moon rise with a boy who at last, today, was given a chance to handle a gun, and pats the lad on the head and says, “Tomorrow will be different for ever.”
In Lebanon, War whispers to the old fighters of Hezbollah, the grave men who once resisted Israel, and they listen in silence, knowing already the words the stranger speaks
for they are the same words, give or take a couple of names, that War speaks to the quiet, biro-twiddling Mossad men of Tel Aviv, a map spread out between them, a nervous city slumbering against the sea.
In the mountains north of Tehran, in the valleys where usually only the goats climb, War scrambles through the dark with the men in masks and night goggles, stops when they stop, raises his fist in command, spreads his fingers to give a direction, and scurries on, silent in the night.
War smokes a cigarette outside the West Wing in Washington, and inside their offices the staffers smell the fumes and wonder who’d dare, and a few nicotine cravers itch for their fix, and bow their heads back to the computer screens.
War takes the hammer off the man who has just nailed down the lid on the crate of Buk missiles and says, “How long does one of these take to get to thirty-five thousand feet?” and the man is ashamed, and doesn’t answer.
War rides with the tribesmen on the back of their pickup trucks, shooting bullets triumphantly into the sky
War murmurs softly in the dreams of the President as he sleeps, belly full, between silk sheets
War keeps watch on the borders of Kashmir, breath steaming in the cold
War squats on the edge of the jungle path and asks if this was the way the refugees ran
War cries freedom.
War sobs terror.
War has been summoned by so many people, so many men, strong men, men who were raised to be strong, so many have put on his armour and drawn his bloody sword, so many men have knelt down in the stained ground to whisper their imprecations to this ever-lasting deity, and of course, War is a sociable creature, he came when they called, but being summoned, it is very unlikely indeed that he will ever obey.
Famine and Pestilence are getting impatient now; they want a piece of the action.
Come join me, War replies. There’s plenty of room.
We’re gonna have a whale of a time.
Chapter 43
Charlie woke because the teenager he was sharing the bed with had somehow managed to take all the blanket.
For a moment, lying there, he didn’t know where he was. By the light of day the room was an alien, unfamiliar little coffin, strewn with a stranger’s clothes. By the light of day, he was in an unknown land with an unknown body pressed against his, and he jerked away suddenly, bewildered, and stared down at the slumbering boy next to him, and didn’t entirely understand.
Outside the bedroom window, a chicken clucked, an engine revved, a truck pulled up and passed by. The Harbinger of Death shuffled slowly to the furthest edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the sleeper left behind, picked up his bag and slipped out of the door.
The house was full of sleeping people. The sometime living room was spread with pallets and sleeping bags; even the kitchen floor had been given over to two teenage boys, lying together like lovers. Some slept with guns hugged close like teddy bears, others had sprawled out like pointed stars, toes upwards, arms wide, lips trembling as great snores rocked their bodies. Charlie crept to the door, found his shoes amongst a mass of muddy boots and hard sandals, pulled them on, stepped outside.
A man with a gun between his knees sat on an upturned wooden box, saw Charlie, nodded with his chin, and did not smile.
The morning sun burnt down from a near-white sky, flecked with brown on the edge of the horizon, and Charlie had nowhere really to go.
Breakfast: flat bread and instant coffee.
Men woke, men stirred, men went about their business. Some went about their business with great purpose. Others milled, and wondered perhaps what their business was. To protect this settlement, certainly, but from whom? Other militia men? The government? The rebels?
“We are on the side of reliable electricity and fresh running water,” explained one man, who had in a previous life been a roofer and who now, to his surprise, commanded twenty men. “We are on the side of good schools and proper healthcare.”
“And who is going to give that to you?” Charlie asked.
He shrugged. “We have to protect what we’ve got.”
A little later, he met the man who sold him a T-shirt for a football team no one had ever heard of from Aleppo.
A while after that, a girl, her face hidden by the veil, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, came over with her nine-year-old brother and asked if she could practise her English. She wanted to be a diplomat when she grew up, and travel the world. Her brother wanted to be an actor, and every time he said so, she hit him on the arm and hissed, “Don’t say such things!”
Her English was good, and they chatted until her mother caught them talking and, shouting, chased the girl away, glaring daggers at Charlie as he sat on a breeze block on the side of the street, waiting.
At midday, a car came barrelling down the middle of the road, spraying yellow dust. The windscreen was a half-circle where dirt had been scrubbed away, the engine ticked high in the heat. A man leapt out, a woman in owl sunglasses remaining in the passenger seat.
“You!” he exclaimed, in bright, merry English. “You are the Harbinger of Death?”
“That’s right.”
“My name is Qasim Jahani! I am the one you are looking for!” He raised his hands to shoulder height, and wobbled them back and forth in a straight line, like a man testing the strength of an imaginary piece of string. “Yaaaayy!”
They sat cross-legged in the shade of a pomegranate tree. Qasim, overgrown straight black hair, wide mouth, little bright eyes squished tight against a magnificent eagle-beak nose, dusty striped shirt and faded blue jeans, talked at runaway train speed.
“… and then I heard the Harbinger of Death, to see me, what have I done, I thought, I mean, I don’t think I’m ill—my wife is a doctor—she said you’re not i
ll but it’s the Harbinger of Death and maybe it’s a lie, maybe it’s a trick, someone playing a practical joke hahahaha, but it’s not, is it, you’re actually here to see me and so if I’m going to die—and I pray I am not—but if I am going to die I have to ask, do you think it is in a good cause?”
Charlie opened his mouth to answer, not sure, not really his field, but before he could speak, Qasim was off again.
“And then I thought maybe it doesn’t matter if it’s in a good cause or not, maybe this is just ego, ego ego ego, but why would the Harbinger come for me? Death comes for everyone but the Harbinger, does that make me special? I’m not sure I want that kind of special, not special in that sense, but here you are and you’re real, you’re strange but you’re definitely real and …”
He stopped again, as suddenly as he had begun, put his head on one side and said, “Will I be a martyr?”
Charlie waited to see if the question was real, and when Qasim still seemed to expect an answer, he laid his palms face-up across his folded legs, took a deep breath and said, “Sometimes I am sent as a courtesy, sometimes as a warning …”
“We’re at war with our own government,” he chuckled. “Consider us warned!”
“… and sometimes I am sent for … for an idea, as well as for an individual.”
“An idea? What idea?”
“Well … I met a woman who was the last who spoke her language …”
“Ah! These things are precious!”
“And before that I was in the West Bank …”
“Terrible thing, the Israelis …”
“… with the previous Harbinger, shadowing her, her last job, and there was an Israeli orchestra playing with a Palestinian.”
“Ah. I see! Well, there are good Jews, people are people, it’s easy to forget that sometimes.”
“The orchestra was run by a conductor from Haifa. Once every week, the Jewish musicians would cross through the checkpoints to go to Ramallah. It was easier for the Israelis to cross than the Palestinians, security being what it is. They would meet in an old school hall, and sometimes the Israelis would bring new strings for a broken violin, or resin for the bows, but usually the Palestinian players were fine, they used the instruments of their fathers and their grandfathers, preserved against the years, and together they put on these concerts, for everyone of every faith, music for peace, music for …
“We were only meant to visit for a day, to give a copy of The Gulag Archipelago to the conductor. He was surprised, said he’d always meant to read it, but had never had time. He thanked us, me and Saga, asked if we enjoyed the work. Saga said yes, she did, but that sometimes there was a time to do something else, and that these things had to end, and that I was new, and loved music, and she was sure I’d do very well. ‘Ah, you love music!’ he said. ‘You must stay and listen to the concert!’ I wasn’t sure I was allowed, it was … but Saga said stay, stay, I chose you because you love music, that was the only thing that got you through the interview really, you should stay, listen. So I did. I felt like a child, being left alone by my mother, ridiculous really, but then …
“… I watched them rehearse, Sibelius, and—this will sound clichéd, I’m sorry, but I was—I was about to become the Harbinger of Death, I think maybe I heard something in it that was all about me, really, I mean, that’s what music is anyway, you hear yourself, but … it was music like nothing I had ever heard, from the first note to the last I felt it, in every part of me I felt it, and I should have left, Saga was back at the hotel already on the other side of the border, but I wanted to hear the concert. So I did. The school hall was packed, parents holding children on their heads, teenagers climbing up the walls to sit on window ledges. They began to play, and the room didn’t breathe, I don’t think I breathed, only the sound sustained us, that sound, and the first note where the orchestra all came in together, every section, every piece of it, I thought my body would tear in two, and there were people just crying, smiling fit to burst and crying, for what it was, for what it wasn’t—not Jew and Palestinian, just music and people. Words are made by history, we build them and they change meaning through time, but the music they played …
“Then a crowd of boys came to the door, maybe twenty of them, and they had beards and white robes and they started shouting through the door, haram, haram, this is haram, and they were shouting and screaming and the orchestra mostly drowned them out, but then they started to throw things, pushing and shoving—they were especially interested in the women, cursed them as whores—and the orchestra made it through the second movement and then it had to stop, because by now the whole back of the hall was moving, people pushing and shoving and shouting, just because of these kids, these stupid fucking kids who’d come.
“The musicians all talked together while some of the ushers, the men and women who’d organised the event, tried to get it under control, but someone fell, and their leg was broken, and a bigger crowd was gathering and the musicians realised that it probably wasn’t safe to stay, so the Jewish musicians snuck out the back and headed towards the border, leaving behind the Palestinian musicians, who of course didn’t have anywhere else to go. I watched it. I saw it all. There wasn’t order to the riot, there wasn’t any meaning, there was just shoving and pushing and shouting and running, people hitting other people for old grievances that had nothing to do with music, and eventually three or four of the angry boys made it round the back and found some of the Palestinian musicians, and they smashed their instruments, and kicked them on the ground, and then the police came, and they ran away.
“I hid, frightened that if they found me they’d hurt me—I hid at the back of the upstairs viewing gallery, behind a curtain, can you believe? Actually hiding behind a curtain with two other people who had the same idea, but I watched through the gap in the middle and no one died—miraculous, no one died—but as the crowd was finally dispersed, as the police finally managed to bring back some sort of order, I stepped out of hiding and I saw Death. He was sat at the front of the gallery, feet up on the balcony’s edge, just watching it all, fingers folded, twiddling his thumbs. I saw Death, and Death looked round and saw me, and knew me, and looked away.
“The orchestra hasn’t played since. The Israelis advised the conductor that his life was in danger from ultra-Orthodox Jewish radicals who believed that he was conspiring with terrorists, and that soon there would be military operations conducted against Palestinian extremists and they wouldn’t be able to guarantee his safety. Some of the Israeli musicians tried to go back, but the Palestinians were told it wasn’t safe to be seen conspiring with their enemies. The conductor is retired now. He has plenty of time for reading.”
(In a flat in Tel Aviv, a man with greying hair turns the page of his book, and reads by the light of a desktop lamp. “The Universe has as many different centres as there are living beings in it. Each of us is the centre of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you, ‘You are under arrest.’”)
Charlie stopped talking, and for a while, the two of them sat in silence, the Harbinger of Death and the small, bubbling man from Syria. Then Qasim said, “What did your boss say? I mean—this Saga, not Death. What did she say?”
“Nothing. She was waiting up for me in the hotel bar. She looked at me, saw my face, and ordered vodka. We drank together, and then we went up to our rooms and slept.”
“That was it?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t say …”
“I think she knew what had happened. Not the concert, exactly, but … what I had seen. Who I had seen. I think perhaps she took me there because she knew I would stay for the music, and she knew that Death would come. Maybe it was a way of meeting the boss, without … I don’t know, really. I’m still very new to this. I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it after.”
Qasim nodded, then, quietly, “I think I would rather that I died than my words.”
Charlie hesitated, began an apology, sorry, I’m still ve
ry bad at this, I come here, talk about my troubles …
“No, no, not at all! I am interested in learning about Death! Death is all around us here, we all sense him coming nearer with every day, faster, nearer, it is good to speak of these things without fear!”
… yes, I suppose it is …
“Good that you are here, in fact! A Harbinger of Death, just a job, someone to talk to about these things, death, terror, the end. Have I told you about my ideas?”
Again Charlie paused. Technically, his duty was done. He had travelled into Syria; he had given Qasim his gift—a box of mousetraps, to which Qasim had exclaimed, “But there aren’t any mice!”—and now he could leave this strange, quiet place, where apparently war raged but no one seemed to know where, how or for whom, and go home.
This was the sensible course of action, but this was his first foray into chaos and he had come to honour the stories of those who lived within the maelstrom, so instead he blurted, “What are your ideas?”
Qasim, whose face had fallen during Charlie’s story, now brightened, sat a little straighter, exclaimed, “I am a poet!”
“I see.”
“For fourteen years I have been campaigning for freedom! Freedom, equality, justice, brotherhood. I also had to work as a cleaner to supplement my income, of course, but my heart has always been in the freedom of the people. You are from the West, yes, you take these things for granted? You are not frightened when someone makes a joke, you are not afraid that you have been overheard when someone speaks the truth. When something doesn’t work, you can complain about it, you can say ‘it is not good’ and you do not have to fear imprisonment or death, you have merely seen and expressed fact. Do you know how tiring it is, to live constantly in a lie? To lie to others as you say ‘yes, this is wonderful’ and to know that others lie to you? To live your entire existence knowing that if white is black, and sky is earth, well then this must be your truth, your new truth. It is like men are eagles and at birth we are told that eagles were destined to swim, and so we swim, gasping, drowning, desperate to fly but not seeing the sky. We will find a new path. We will make a better future.”