The Last Kestrel

by Jill McGivering

  Najib put his head round the curtain. Abdul started and pulled his hand away from hers.

  ‘A woman is asking for you,’ Najib said. ‘At the gate.’

  They looked at each other. Behind the divide, the young soldier was starting to moan, stirring to life again. The nurses were speaking loudly to him.

  ‘Your sister-in-law, she says.’

  Najib was still standing there, awkward. He picked up the sticks lying by Hasina’s feet and handed them to Abdul. ‘The soldiers say you can go with her. To some other place. To visit.’

  Abdul was staring at him. ‘Visit?’

  Najib blushed. ‘Maybe’, he said, ‘another place would be more convenient for you both.’

  Palwasha led them through the village without a word, her back straight and angry. Her scarf trailed over her shoulder, stained with mud. Hasina swung herself along on her sticks, her arms now becoming raw where they rubbed her skin, with Abdul beside her.

  The worst of the day’s heat had passed but the air sat heavy on their heads. The soldiers, watching them from camouflaged corner towers and gun-turrets, swivelled to follow them with their weapons. Their heads were encased in helmets, their eyes hidden by goggles. Diesel fumes hung in the dust.

  They came to the end of the main street and turned down into the lane that led to Karam’s servants’ house. Palwasha picked her way along the hardened cart ruts. Hasina stopped and leaned against the wall to rest, her heart loud in her ears.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Abdul’s breath was hot on her cheek. His tension spread from his body to hers. ‘How is she here?’

  Hasina shrugged. She remembered Palwasha’s explosion of anger in front of the foreigners. Was this some trap they’d cooked up for her, for them all?

  At the entrance to Karam’s servants’ compound, a foreign soldier was standing guard. Palwasha walked straight past him without a glance. The scrap of land around the house had belonged to the servants’ forefathers. Barren land with sandy soil, rocks and no water. Even with irrigation ditches and hand-cut channels, corn failed there. The family had survived, for as long as anyone could remember, by begging work on richer men’s land. Now Karam was that richer man. His money had bought the chickens and two scrawny goats bleating by the shabby mud house. In return, the family tended his poppy and laboured in his own large compound.

  They passed the low compound wall and crossed the yard. Palwasha had disappeared. The figure of a man came into the doorway, half disguised by shadow. He was more thickset than the father of the family, Hasina could see that at once, with a large belly and proud shoulders.

  ‘Karam?’

  ‘Abdul brother.’ He stepped forward to greet them. The men embraced. ‘Come, sister-in-law.’ Karam gestured to a rush mat set along the shaded side of the house. ‘Sit and rest.’

  Palwasha emerged from behind the house with a bucket of water. It was a well-worn bucket, its plastic rim dented and scarred. She set it down hard and water sloshed out, drawing wet marks in the mud.

  ‘No cups. Nothing.’ Her voice was hard. ‘What did you expect?’

  The men cupped their hands together and drank first, then Hasina. The water was cool. It tasted of stone and of the earth. Better, she thought, than that bodiless water the foreigners brought. She drank again. Palwasha scowled round at them all and went into the house.

  ‘These are terrible times.’ Karam settled himself on the other end of the mat, slipping off his sandals and drawing his feet under him. He raised his kameez into a cotton tent with one knee and sighed. Abdul was standing a few steps away, his back half turned on them both. He was looking out over the barren piece of field as if his thoughts had flown down into the valley below. The silence stretched. A bird’s whooping call cut through the space between them.

  Karam’s face was haggard, his eyes sunken in his flesh. Hasina had never seen him look so wretched. She waited for Abdul to take the lead and speak. The silence lengthened. Abdul was just standing there, gazing into the afternoon glare as if dazzled by the sun. Hasina wanted to catch his eye, to call him to his senses. How rude he was being, standing when his brother had asked him to sit. What was he doing, acting so strangely? Was he deliberately trying to provoke him?

  ‘You are in my prayers, brother-in-law,’ she said at last. She clasped her hands together respectfully and dipped her head. ‘May Allah embrace your little ones and keep them always at His side.’

  Karam nodded his head without looking at her. He raised his hand to his forehead and brushed his eye with the side of his fingers as he brought it down again. He is trying to hide it, Hasina thought, but the death of the children, of his son, has split him in two.

  Silence. Still Abdul didn’t turn to join them.

  ‘Palwasha is a fine wife, Thanks be to Allah,’ Hasina said. ‘I pray she will bear you more sons. Many boys as fine as Yousaf.’

  She thought of Yousaf’s large eyes, round with fear, when he pressed himself against her lap in the darkness of the house. Of Sima, always the mother of the group, hugging her brother and sister to her as they cowered against the wall, their ears filled with the crash of bombs on the hillside and the foreign shouts of the advancing soldiers. Nothing compares to losing a child, she thought. Nothing on this earth is as cruel. Aref, my Aref. Where is he now?

  ‘Sit!’ Karam was patting the mat beside him, calling out to Abdul. ‘I can’t offer you tea, brother,’ he said. ‘But we can sit together in the shade.’ He turned to Hasina. His tone was falsely hearty. ‘Our foreign friends will let me live like a servant, at least. Very generous, nah?’ He threw back his head and showed the long bearded stretch of his neck. ‘What crazy times we are living in!’

  Abdul turned to face them. He still hadn’t come to sit down with Karam. Silence pressed in. He seemed hesitant, deep in thought.

  ‘Brother,’ Abdul said at last. ‘I grieve for you.’ The tension in his voice made Hasina’s spine stiffen. She pressed herself against the wall of the house and tried to steady her breathing.

  Karam seemed oblivious. He inclined his head, pointed again at the mat for Abdul to sit. ‘You are thinking that I am angry with you,’ Karam said. ‘But I don’t blame you or your wife.’ He dropped his voice so low that Hasina could barely hear. ‘I blame them,’ he said. ‘And I will have revenge.’

  Abdul took a step towards him. His fists were balls at his side. ‘My son too is lost,’ he said. There was a coldness in his voice that made Karam look up.

  After a moment, Karam shifted his weight, tucking his legs under him on the other side and settling again. He gave a short cough.

  ‘Sacrifices,’ he said. ‘There are sacrifices a good-hearted young man is proud to make. A young man who brings honour to his family.’

  Abdul’s face was wretched. ‘But my son,’ he said. ‘Your own nephew.’

  Karam stretched out a hand. His eyes glinted with moisture. ‘Now we are both the fathers of martyrs,’ he said. ‘We must continue the fight.’

  Abdul didn’t move. Karam’s hand hung in the air.

  ‘All my life, elder brother, I have respected you. Obeyed you. Loved you without question.’

  Karam blinked. ‘Abdul, you have been—’

  ‘But you betrayed me.’ Abdul’s features were weighted by a seriousness Hasina had never seen before. She looked in consternation from him to Karam and back again to her husband. Abdul was standing tall and stern in front of them both. ‘You deceived me,’ he went on. ‘You taught my son wickedness and called it duty.’

  ‘Wickedness?’ Karam’s voice was uncertain. ‘How can—?’

  ‘You had no right, brother. How could you be so disloyal? Teaching my boy to become a murderer? And my wife a liar?’

  Hasina shrank back into the wall. Abdul, her sweet-tempered husband, denouncing her in such a way? Insulting his elder brother, who had such power and influence in the village? It was impossible. He was possessed by madness.

  ‘Abdul. Stop this.’ Karam was heaving himself to his
feet. He moved towards Abdul, his arm outstretched, and placed his hand clumsily on his brother’s shoulder. ‘May Allah be our witness, we have suffered enough,’ he said. ‘Brother, let us—’

  Abdul knocked the hand from his shoulder. ‘You are no longer my brother,’ he said.

  Hasina tried to get to her feet. Her leg collapsed under her and she fell back onto her side. Karam’s broad back was blocking Abdul from view. His hand swung and the sting of a slap rang out across the yard. Silence. The air seemed drained. For a long moment, nature seemed to pause all around them. She held her breath.

  The men fell on each other. They locked their arms round the other’s shoulders and clawed as each clutched his brother in the broad of the back. They staggered and clasped each other, swaying like a drunken man with two heads. Dust kicked up at their feet, lapping against their calves. The air was thick with panting and grunts. They wrestled on their feet. At first, neither made progress, their legs splayed and feet digging into the ground.

  Soon Abdul was being pressed backwards. His feet groped further behind him, trying to get purchase on the earth. Karam seized his advantage and pulled free an arm. He punched Abdul in the stomach. Abdul, winded, bent double, his own arms still locked round Karam’s neck, forcing down his opponent’s head. His knee flashed upwards, crunching into Karam’s lowered face. Karam let out a cry of rage.

  ‘Stop this!’ Hasina pushed herself forward onto her knees and, finally, up onto her unsteady feet against the wall. She cupped her hands and scooped up water from the bucket. She limped forward as the men twisted and turned in the dirt and threw it over them. The water erupted on the back of Karam’s head, sloshing down his neck and splashing along his thick, muscular arms. ‘Stop!’ she shouted.

  Neither man paid her any attention. Karam had wound his arms firmly round Abdul’s waist now, tearing him sideways as if trying to snap open his stomach and break his hips. He was the stronger, heavier man by some measure, but Abdul was the more furious.

  Sweat flew off in a spray of droplets across the yard as they grappled. They were both breathing heavily. Abdul’s foot flashed forward. He hooked his ankle round his brother’s calf, straining to pull it from under him and knock him off balance.

  When the men fell, the goats strained at their tethers, tossing their heads in fright, eyes rolling. Karam hit the dirt first. Abdul crashed, sprawling, half on top of him. Their heads bounced as they struck the ground. For a moment, they lay still, locked in their tight embrace. Hasina wailed, her hands at her face, shutting out the sight. Karam would kill him, that bear of a man. Abdul was half his weight.

  The men seemed to come to again. Karam moved first. He roared and raised himself, flipping Abdul over onto his back, pinning him to the ground and straddling him. He pounded his fist into Abdul’s chest, again and again. Underneath the thudding, there was a sickening crunch from the hollow of Abdul’s chest. Abdul let out a low moan of pain.

  ‘Don’t! Let him go!’ Hasina threw herself across the yard and seized hold of Karam’s arm. She latched onto it, trying to use her weight as a lever to hold it back. The yard span as Karam tossed her off and she fell, slithering across the dust, to one side. The impact left her dazed and winded.

  The distraction had given Abdul a chance to rally. As Karam turned, Abdul pulled his arm free and pressed his hand into Karam’s face, forcing back his head. Two fingers twisted deep inside his nostrils. His extended thumb strained upwards, stabbing at his brother’s eye.

  He will blind him, Hasina thought. She was too far away to stop it. Abdul’s thumb was jabbing into the soft tissue of Karam’s eye, his nail gouging. Allah forgive him. A trickle of blood was falling from Karam’s nose and climbing down Abdul’s straining hand. Karam’s head was pressed back as far as his neck would twist, his hands flailing forward. His neck will break, she thought. She stared in horror. All her senses seemed concentrated in her eyes. The image of the grappling brothers was seared into her mind as if the world had stilled to slow motion.

  The snap of a shot filled the yard. Tearing through them all. Deafening. Shocking. Hasina turned, feeling the fighting men slacken and look too in surprise towards the noise.

  In the yard, just visible at the corner of the house, the soldier who had stood guard at the compound entrance was facing them squarely. His fired gun pointed out over their heads like a salute. He shouted something. A command.

  Karam knocked Abdul’s loosening hand away and rolled from him. He pressed his hand to his nose. Blood was oozing through his fingers and staining the dust brown. Ants appeared from nowhere to feast.

  Abdul struggled over onto his side. He coughed, wincing as his chest heaved. A sticky mess of bloody saliva leaked from the side of his mouth. Water. He needed water. Hasina looked, exhausted, at the bucket. Too far away to reach.

  Karam and the soldier were exchanging foreign words. Karam’s voice was weary. The soldier sounded angry. A schoolmaster shouting at fighting boys. Abdul was still on his side, panting. His eyes stared out blindly at the sunlight. Abdul, you foolish, proud man. He was alive, God be praised. But now what? He lay in the dirt, breathing noisily, making no effort to move. He had fought his brother to defend his son. But at what price?

  Behind Hasina, a figure stirred. She turned to look. Palwasha was standing, watching them all from the darkness of the doorway. A thin smile was on her lips.

  ‘At last,’ she said to Hasina in a low voice, ‘we find our husbands are, after all, real men.’

  The soldier had gone but the two brothers did not speak. Karam had crawled to the mat in the shade. He had soaked a cloth in the bucket and was sitting with his head tilted back against the wall of the house, the wet cloth pressed to his nose. When he moved forward to dampen the cloth again, Hasina saw the red puffiness of his swelling nostrils. Abdul’s fingermarks were raised in weals and rising bruises on his skin, seared into his flesh like burns.

  Hasina was afraid to speak to Karam. She must get Abdul safely away from him. Who knew what his brother would do to avenge himself? He had been insulted, his honour compromised in front of his wife. Hasina was light-headed. She could never have imagined such a thing. Never had she seen her kind, mild-mannered husband say so much as a cross word to his elder brother. He had never raised his fist to anyone, not even her.

  Her hands shook as she wet the end of her scarf and wrung it out over Abdul’s head. The cool water ran in rivulets down his face, meandering from nose to chin and dripping from his flesh into the dust. He didn’t raise a finger to wipe the water away. His eyes were dull, looking out into nothingness. His breath was rasping. She ran her fingers over his limbs, his back, his chest, feeling for injury. He winced when she touched his ribs but her hands came away clean, not bloody. She sat, cradling his head in her lap and shielding him from the sun and watched him rest, fearing for what was to come.

  As the sun grew weak, they staggered back to the compound. Karam had gone wordlessly inside the house. Palwasha was nowhere to be seen. Abdul moved by shuffling, bent over with his arms across his chest. His face was pale, his skin moist with sweat. At the gate, a young female soldier barked at them through the inner metal gate. Hasina could smell her nervousness.

  ‘A doctor,’ Hasina said. She pointed to Abdul. The young soldier raised her gun. Abdul slumped forward against the wall. ‘Please. He needs a doctor.’

  That night they lay side by side inside the medical corner of the compound. Abdul’s chest was cleaned and bound tightly with a bandage. His breathing was thick and wet. The doctor had dismissed his injury as bruising when he examined him. Najib translated for them. Heavy bruising, he said, but no bones seemed to be broken. Abdul needed a good night’s rest and water and he would soon recover. He could stay here with his wife for just one night and no more.

  No one had asked them what had happened. Najib had been short with them. He repeated the doctor’s words but didn’t add any of his own. Hasina could see the suspicion in his eyes. He was wary of them both.

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nbsp; Now a light breeze was blowing sand across the surface of the ground. Hasina wrapped her scarf round her face to protect her eyes. She listened to the background music of the desert. The clatter of insects, the distant howl of dogs. Somewhere inside the compound, chickens were squawking as they settled to sleep. The foreign soldiers were talking in low voices, laughing. Someone struck a match.

  She closed her eyes and tried to imagine she was safe inside their home. Instead of the stony sand, she was lying on their cot. Abdul’s weight beside her was setting it creaking. At the end of the cot stood their wedding trunk. On the side wall, wisps of moonlight, creeping in through the window, passed across the surface of the mirror like ghosts. The lumps of stools were dark rocks. And Aref, of course. Aref was there too, his breathing light and young, barely audible beneath his father’s. Twitching and turning on his cot as he dreamed. He had always had vivid dreams, ever since he was a—

  ‘Hasina.’

  The whisper was so low that she wasn’t sure at first if she had heard it or imagined it. Aref? Her head, half in sleep, was full of shadows. She lay rigid on her back, her eyes closed, afraid to move and dispel the phantom. Where was she?

  ‘Hasina.’ The voice brought her to her senses. Abdul, of course. They were in the soldiers’ camp. She opened her eyes and turned on her side towards him, stretching her fingertips to touch his skin. The bandage swelled his thin chest.

  ‘I’m here.’

  His fingers touched hers. He was straining to turn towards her. She could hear the pain in the catch of his breath. She moved closer to him and he put his mouth against her ear. His breath was hot and moist.

  ‘I am going to tell them,’ he said. ‘Tell the foreigners.’

  She drew back, trying to see his face. His skin shone pallid in the darkness. She was instantly afraid. ‘Tell them?’

  ‘About Aref

  .’ ‘No!’ Too loud. She put her hand to her mouth. They would hear her. That traitor was everywhere, spying on them. She must be careful. She put her face against his and whispered. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Husband. Don’t say such a thing.’