Red Birds

by Mohammed Hanif

  I approve of being referred to as a young man, but nobody is gonna cast aspersions on my character. This young man is not gonna fall for a honey trap. When you are aiming high, nice-smelling tits are not gonna pull you down. I know how to prioritize. My aims are much higher than nice-smelling tits.

  ‘She is a consultant. She has been sent to assess the psychological effects of post-war adjustments that young people have to make to integrate with the changing world and their own evolving bodily needs.’ Father Dear knows he wants to slip in his philosophy about the importance of sex education.

  I shake my head in enthusiastic agreement.

  The plan you don’t fully understand is a revelation about to happen.

  Mother Dear doesn’t need consultants in this house. She doesn’t need psychological assistance to get a grip on her life. She doesn’t need folklore or any such sad-ass lectures to get her life–work balance right. She wants her son back. She wants to go to sleep watching him snore gently. She wants to pile more butter, more sugar on his bread. She wants to give a gentle tug on his trousers to hoist them up before he goes out. She wants to hear him banging at the door, barging in and shouting I am hungry. She wants to collect his shirts strewn on the floor and smell them before throwing them on the laundry pile.

  Father Dear does the only thing he knows will work with her. ‘She has contacts,’ he says. ‘She’ll help find information about him. The Hangar might be shut but she knows people in the Headquarters.’ I find it strange that he doesn’t mention Bro Ali by his name. Mutt raises his face to the sky and gives a long yelp, which is his idea of calling out an overdose of bullshit. He is not a very good observer of the human condition. He doesn’t understand human longings. He used to have some manners but he lost them all in the accident when his brains got fried. Now he is never gonna learn.

  ‘Of course, the process of rehabilitation can’t start till we recognize our losses,’ says Lady Flowerbody, showing her professional side, which means I’ll say anything you want to hear.

  Mother Dear is not impressed. ‘I refuse to recognize my loss. It will never be my loss. If you don’t give my son back, you’ll learn the meaning of the word loss. Your do-gooder families will burn. Your fragrant world will rot.’

  Flowerbody is frazzled and makes a noise. ‘I don’t want to be misunderstood. Managing expectations is part of my job.’

  Mother Dear is in no mood for misunderstandings or clearing them up.

  ‘So you mean that you don’t have anything to do with the people who took my son now? You work for them but you don’t know what they really do? You mean to say that there is one department that picks them up and then another department that is sent out to make us forget them? Are you here to make us feel heroic for losing our son?’

  ‘I am trying to help.’

  ‘How?’ Mother Dear demands. ‘First they bomb our house, then they take away my son and now you are here to make us feel alright.’

  ‘I know people who work specifically on cases where people disappear. Let’s admit that things happen on both sides. It’s very tragic of course, the loss of a loved one. I have access to some data. We can make a beginning.’

  Mother Dear approves of this beginning. ‘You’ll sleep out in the shack next to the main gate and you’ll not leave the Camp until my son is back.’

  CHAPTER 6

  Mutt

  The second worst day of my life started unremarkably. I woke Momo up early as we needed to begin our work on his Falcons for Ethical Hunting project. We were still in the training phase. Momo is big on capacity building. Momo had been training a kite to hunt. He thought that since a kite already looks and acts like a falcon, all it needed was a nudge, some motivation and some on-the-job training. He had been starving the kite to motivate her. Starving a scavenging bird for business purposes is something only humans can think of. And Momo goes around saying that my brains are fried.

  Momo sleeps in Bro Ali’s bed now, although I am not sure if he gets any sleep anymore. One gentle lick on his ear and he jumped out of the bed. When Bro Ali was around I had to wrestle Momo out of that bed.

  Momo thinks that I had a moral compass before the accident with the electricity pole in which my brains got fried. In his book – and I say that figuratively, as the boy has no interest in books of any persuasion – I was a morally upright Mutt before the accident. Now I am just another depraved beast. He also thinks I have become a thief. A laughable allegation. Why would I steal? I take what I need. That’s all there is to it. I don’t own safe houses and lockers, I don’t borrow and I don’t lend. Do I have a godown full of bones somewhere? Momo has turned an embarrassing incident into a justification for my continuing character assassination. The same Momo who used to say his Mutt has more guts than any warrior who walked this land. The same Momo who used to say not only am I his best friend but his only friend. That I am better than family because he had not chosen his family. He might have wanted to say brother but couldn’t because that might spark off a conversation about his real brother and people would ask Did your dad really sell your brother? For how much? What if he decides to sell you one day?

  On a still, dusty day when the sun couldn’t decide if it wanted to shine bright or sulk all day, the kite arrived. A slightly injured kite, not in any critical danger I must say, with one broken wing, landed in the courtyard. She was obviously looking for something to steal but Momo was all over her as if she was a long-lost lover. Mother Dear ignored it. He is a good boy, learning to take care of the injured. If a boy can care for a stray injured bird, that boy might one day learn to care for his long-suffering mother as well. Sad mothers are made of compulsive, reckless optimism.

  But oh, the human duplicity. Whenever I hear the word ‘care’ or ‘compassion’ on Momo’s lips, I can see dollar signs in his eyes.

  I can tell when Momo has a business plan. I circled around the little filth-eating scoundrel with a broken wing from the avian world. I tried to tell Momo that maybe it looks like a falcon from a distance, but it’s no falcon at close quarters. It’s a sad specimen of scavenger, something that you’d get if your average crow spent a few amorous moments with a below-average vulture, a falcon’s poor cousin. But Momo already had a plan. And you can’t tell Momo anything when he has got a plan.

  He once saw a convoy of Arab sheikhs with six Range Rovers and a hooded falcon. They had come for a hunt, and although they didn’t find anything to hunt Momo says he saw with his own eyes that they fed their falcons minced beef and, he swears, chocolate bars too. So Momo got this idea that if he could train this kite to hunt, he could sell it to the sheikhs when they come around next hunting season. Momo was thinking that he would trade this misery on wings for a Range Rover Vogue. Because Momo remembered that two of the Range Rovers in the convoy were empty. He is at that tender age where he doesn’t understand the concept of backup vehicles. He doesn’t understand the concept of backup anything.

  Not that Momo cares. Not that he listens. He went rummaging through his mother’s closet looking for things that he could use as hoods for the kite’s eyes. He was convinced that all it takes to turn a scavenging filthy bird into a royal falcon is a pair of hoods. His mother’s undergarments were too big for the kite’s tiny, hungry eyes so he decided to use his I Heart NY cap.

  I have said this before and I’ll say it again. Momo is Momo and he’ll do what he wants to do. Momo is quite attached to his cap. He is attached to me too but a boy this age can be attached to more than one thing. When he wears this cap he feels that he is the king of the Camp. As far as I am concerned, cap or no cap, he is the king of everything he surveys. As soon as he puts it on he starts to smell like cherry blossoms, which is the smell of conquering-the-world-then-on-to-Mars type of overconfidence.

  So I pissed on that cap.

  I am not the kind of Mutt who will do his business everywhere. This is my house and you don’t go around pissing in your own house. But I was sitting there keeping an eye on this nasty little pi
ece of shit from the birdie world. It was squirming under Momo’s cap, trying to get out, whimpering like a sick puppy. What was I supposed to do? I did it to prove to Momo that this kite was no falcon, if it couldn’t even defend itself against a Mutt’s piss, how was it going to hunt other birds? Also the kite was practically asking for it. Really it was not the I Heart NY cap that I pissed on, I have the highest regard for the cap, the cap is crucial to maintaining our status in the Camp, but that stupid kite wanted to be pissed on.

  It was almost an act of mercy.

  Having fulfilled her sick desire, I panicked. I was forced to hide the cap, like an amateur criminal who thinks that he can just wipe off surfaces and nobody will notice that there is a body on the floor.

  And now Momo thinks I am a thief.

  You hide a soiled cap because you are slightly embarrassed after a compulsive act of compassion, and you are called a thief. You think you can turn scavengers into hunters by keeping their eyes hooded and you are a genius.

  As I said, Momo is Momo and he is a genius.

  I had every intention of sticking by him. If he says there is an enemy army on the other side of the mountain I yelp, yes people, listen up people, there is a huge army on the other side of the mountain. I say it with conviction even when there is no army, not even a single soldier, not even a mountain in sight.

  I hid the cap because I wanted to avoid a mega Momo tantrum. And I believed then, and I believe now, that hiding things doesn’t make you a thief. Here’s a list of things that I have hidden and you decide if it makes this humble Mutt a thief.

  The carcass of a cat who died accidentally.

  A bullet pouch from the now defunct Central Ammunition Depot at the Hangar, from when natives were allowed in.

  A key ring with a compass and two rusted keys.

  Lady Flowerbody’s nail-polish remover.

  And, of course, our beloved I Heart NY cap.

  Momo went ballistic. Called me a Mutt.

  I am not the type to get upset when called a son of a bitch. But Momo had forgotten his manners. All over a stupid cap. I was only trying to save him from his silly plans. Arab sheikhs wouldn’t be sheikhs if they started giving away their backup Range Rovers in exchange for a half-blind kite with a fetish for golden showers. This is not how distribution of wealth works in post-war economies.

  For a few moments it seemed Momo had seen the folly of his ways as he reached for his football. Whenever Momo’s business plans come apart he reaches for his football. And he kicks the ball so hard, and straight to the sky, that it disappears for a long time and only comes back to earth when everybody has forgotten that there was a ball kicked towards the sky. It always comes back of course because whosoever lives up there in the sky is not into catching balls lobbed at them. But you have to pretend that the kicked ball is not returning to this earth and when it does you have to rejoice, act completely, crazily, surprised. You also have to try to get to the ball before Momo does and after a little bit of dribbling let him take it.

  This is how Momo deals with the trauma of losing his dream. This is how most grown-up men deal with their grief: by shoving a ball into a hole or hitting it hard. It was quite obvious to me that the nasty little bird was out of a job. With Momo’s peak soiled, there was going to be no hood for her eyes, she was not transforming into a royal hunter, she was about to return to a life of scavenging from garbage dumps.

  And our Momo was not getting a shiny Range Rover anytime soon. I was fine with that. There is nothing wrong with our Jeep Cherokee. The boy needs to resist his unreasonable, consumerist urges.

  But I underestimated Momo’s love for his cap and his lust for that vehicle.

  It’s a regular enough cap with a red little heart on it, nothing that one should get sentimental about. Momo has taken a beating from Dad Dear for wearing it backwards, a scolding from his mother for putting that filthy thing on his head and taunts from his former school mates for wearing the headgear left behind by dead white men, but Momo has never parted with his cap.

  And then he found the hidden cap while the ugly little bird sat there fluttering its one good wing and sharpening its beak on the floor. Momo sniffed the cap. He is not a good sniffer but even he couldn’t miss my stamp on it. And if there was any doubt, the ugly bird fluttered its wings again and sprayed Momo’s face with my nectar.

  ‘Mutt,’ Momo spat out the word like it was a bitter almond.

  I watched as the ugly bird lifted off the ground and hovered for a bit as if testing its injured wing, then took a slow, lazy flight. Ugly bird, clumsy flight. Out of our lives, good riddance. I looked towards Momo, expecting some appreciation for having exposed this fraud on wings.

  Momo picked up the ball and went into the courtyard. I followed him, looking up at the sky, encouraging him, yes, that is the positive attitude we need around here, kick that ball into the sky and let’s forget that stinky little cap, Mother will wash it like she washes everything that’s soiled or smells of grief.

  He was standing there, daring me to come and get the ball. Let’s put it all behind us, he seemed to be saying; let’s play. He wasn’t in a hurry to kick the ball, he was holding it in one outstretched hand, as if kicking the ball would be the final proof that Falcons for Ethical Hunting had gone kaput. I could smell danger in the air (which smells like tea about to boil over), but what possible danger could lurk in our own courtyard? There was me, there was Momo and there was the football. I looked towards the sky, clear and blue and waiting to receive the ball. And then it happened.

  If he had kicked that ball in an actual football match Momo might have become some kind of champion footballer, the kind who have shirts and shoes with their names on them. But this was our own courtyard, the silly kite was hovering in the sky, Mother Dear was cooking in the kitchen and working her rosary. I was still looking skywards when the ball hit my hind leg. All the air went out of my lungs and not even a little yelp came out of my mouth. There was no time for any evasive action. I jumped after the ball hit my hind leg with the force of a cannonball tearing through a state traitor. I heard the crack, but my Mutt instincts and my eternal love for Momo made me jump. I was too slow to respond and I landed on the same leg that had just snapped. That’s double stupid.

  I smell blood. My own. I don’t feel any panic, I am not thinking of my future life as a lame Mutt. I am not thinking of houseflies and cats tormenting me for the rest of my life. I am thinking of Momo.

  Yes, my leg is fractured and I am dying of hunger and thirst and shame but if someone was to walk up to me and ask me Mutt, what happened, did you break your leg? I’ll tell them, yes but what’s really broken is my heart.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ellie

  The wind howls around me. It seems a million dead soldiers are cursing their enemies, their enemies’ mothers. There is Colonel Slatter cupping his balls and giving the sky a finger. There’s that other Purple Heart, hero of Kandahar, doing somersaults on the sand as if it was his local park. Here’s an army of dead fellow soldiers come back to claim their medals and back pay from Mother Nature. Their dead faces have never been seen on TV, only their cuddly family pictures, not their torn limbs, not their ghoulish demented grins from battles won and lost far far away; here they have come back for one last group photo with me. Or maybe they are missing their own mothers, their lovely fiancées. I am way past missing Cath. I can barely remember Cath, her little taunts, her whispers.

  I listen to the howling wind and try to decipher its message. I can hear voices, tribes on the march, yelping their war cries and trying to scare me. I can hear my own dead comrades shouting at me, giving me directions, warning me not to take the route I am taking. As if I am following a fucking map. As if I am scared of the enemy. I am beyond fear. Not in a soldierly, slogan-raising kind of way but because I have already drunk the contents of my bladder and discovered there is no nourishment under that sand. What is there to be scared of when you have consumed the contents of your own bladder and you are s
till thirsty? I have chewed wires from my Strike Eagle’s fuselage and only got stomach cramps. I have sniffed the empty fuel tank and got no high.

  The wind dies down for a bit, like a fever subsiding for a few minutes and then coming back. It reminds me of my Cath, who had tormented me but waited for me to return from missions; my Cath with her shiny hair, who had loved me and held me when I screamed Mors Ab Alto in my sleep. Between that moment of calm remembrance and the wind going apeshit again, I hear a distinct yelp. It isn’t the whining of the desert wind, nor an imaginary crackle of more things tearing off my plane, nor the muted sounds of my rockets exploding in Mosul, Kabul, and cities that I am likely to mispronounce even when I am questioned about them in the afterlife. It’s an almost human cry. Almost. A short burst of anguish and then a wail which promises to go on but is drowned out by the howling of the wind. I stand up in the wind, my hands clutching my stomach, my flying suit zipped up to my neck, sand grinding in the remotest parts of my cranium.

  I try to figure out which direction the sound has come from.

  The desert yelps at me again and this time there is no mistake, it isn’t human anguish expressing itself, but nor is it the elements in the desert sympathizing with my condition. My dead colleagues may live forever in their loved ones’ hearts but they are dead for every other purpose. I prick up my ears, I start to walk. The wind has slowed down and is whispering now.

  I remember a half-forgotten fact from somewhere, from my high-school geography or from some TV channel: Arabs have ninety-nine names for their god and one-hundred-eighty-eight names for desert sand. But I can’t come up with even one. Were these Arabs whispering their god’s name? I hear a weak moaning from behind the mound of sand and start to walk. I am halfway up the hillock when my legs collapse.