Red Birds

by Mohammed Hanif

  Momo is looking at Lady Flowerbody, he was expecting her to come but not with Doctor. ‘Where do you think you are going?’

  Lady Flowerbody shrugs, she is looking for another chapter in her book. ‘I just got a ride. I thought you wanted me to come. I heard the siren too. Basically just doing my job.’

  Mother Dear puts her hand on the steering. ‘Go on, Momo, we are not wasting time on people who don’t give us straight answers. We have work to do and we’ll take any help that comes our way but we won’t wait for any time wasters. Enough men have wasted my time, I don’t need one more.’

  CHAPTER 33

  Mother Dear

  You know why I am a really bad mother? I am a bad mother because most nights I lie awake and ask myself why we didn’t send Momo. He is the clever one, the devious one, a wily little man at fifteen. He should have gone but the older one said I am the older one. And I have unfinished business with them. I wonder what would have happened if Momo had gone instead. Then I have to stop myself. I am not just a bad mother, I am a monster. I have lost one son and now I am wishing I had lost the little one because he would have had a better chance of coming back. As if he deserved it more. As if this was experience. As if this was a game of chance that one could play better than the other.

  This can’t be left to chance anymore. Flowerbody tried to teach me to manage my grief. Managing your grief soon becomes a full-time, dead-end job. It’s like managing a small business that never makes any profit. Everyone has got their weapon. I had to choose. I am no good with knives, or daggers, guns are too loud. I used to chop wood when I was young, I was very good at it. There was a machete somewhere. It was rusting in the shed, I did clean it up, I sharpened it and kept it ready after Ali went. Just in case they tried something with Momo. Raising a son is like sharpening a weapon day after day and then waiting. Even when you have no appetite for weapons, you need one because you don’t know who might come after your child.

  A mother is mortally wounded when she gives birth. After that it’s only a matter of time before her sons drive her to her death.

  My father carved little objects out of salt slabs, first as a hobby, then as a small business. My salt craft, he used to call it; add a dash of pink into any material and it becomes a craft. And the salt from his mine already came with a splash of pink in it. He mostly made table lamps, sometimes shaped like a turtle, sometimes like a camel, and once a flock of doves holding each other up from their beaks, a circle-kiss of doves.

  For Ali and Momo sometimes he crafted little replicas of weapons, pistols, toy machine guns. They would go around the house shooting each other.

  Why have you given them guns? I said.

  There is a war coming, these kids have to learn to handle a weapon.

  But these are toy guns.

  We can sell these toy guns to tourists and with that money buy a little pistol and with that pistol rob a caravan and with that money buy bigger guns, and you will get to a stage where people will come and buy guns from you because they are scared of you.

  My father was like that. Momo gets his business brains from his grandpa.

  I am not starting an arms business, I said, but Father, can you actually make something that works? And he made me a dagger.

  This dagger.

  Does my dagger look decorative? It’s sharp. And the nice thing is blood doesn’t stick to it. It’s like the frying pan I have, with that shiny coat, not sticky, that my man got for me when he still used to get things for me. I have been saving my non-stick dagger for this day. There have been days I have been tempted. After all it’s made of salt, why not use it to make food? But I have always resisted the urge. I always told myself I was being a sentimental fool, saving a little slab of salt. But every irrational fool finds out, one day, that their irrational belief was a good investment for the future. What you have saved for sentimental reasons becomes your weapon on the day you need it.

  CHAPTER 34

  Doctor

  They think they are going to have a quiet chat, present their charter of demands and return home with their boy. I expect some casualties but not a whole lot. For me personally it’s a difficult choice to make; both sides are a bunch of criminals, they have all been robbing the earth blind. I’ll be happy if they all perish, but I have to think of the doctor’s oath I was told about. Not many people realize the dilemmas that medical professionals caught in such situations face. When the fatalities begin, as I know from experience will happen, whose side am I on? As far as I can tell I am the only medical professional on site. Lady Flowerbody flagged down my bike when I was leaving Camp. I thought she might want to assist me but she said she had her own work to do. I don’t blame her. Who wants to be a paramedic in a battle with ghosts?

  If one from this side falls and within minutes one from their side falls, who do I save first? I am supposed to save lives without looking at the colour of the flag or even the colour of their skin. There is a personal risk here as well. Tending to one side or the other will immediately make me a target. I am woefully ill-equipped to deal with the kind of damage that’s about to happen here. People are scared of big battles, involving tanks and bombs falling from the sky, but it’s the small battles fought at close range that cause the most vicious damage to the human anatomy. A bomb will shatter you into a hundred little pieces and although it looks ugly the exit is relatively peaceful. Take a bullet in your gut and then lie there as other combatants trample on you and you’ll wish for that bomb that never fell. The battles are ancient, and the way they intend to fight is also not very evolved. The so-called enemy has bigger guns and even bigger food supplies. They also tend to hover above the earth instead of walking, a condition that I have observed but not treated. I don’t believe in the paranormal and I am not going to start believing now. I am a doctor not a sorcerer. And I am definitely not a negotiator.

  My personal beliefs shall not interfere with my duties. I personally believe that the human race is completely expendable. It has turned raging oceans into deserts and deserts into wastelands. My personal feelings can’t come into it. I have a job to do and later I’ll prepare a report. Get on with killing each other, you morons. The earth will be a happier place without you. Look at their idiocy now. Mother Dear has suddenly appointed herself the leader. The power struggle that is destroying this planet. She is standing in front of Momo blocking his gun. Momo is trying to take aim and avoid his mother’s head at the same time. My work is about to begin. I am wearing a white coat, for additional clarity I have tied a white bandana around my head. Hey you all, who fight this morning, know that I am here not to fight but to manage your wounds. The fewer bodies, fewer limbs lost, less work for me. Get on with it, talk if you want to talk, fight if you want to, finish each other off. Be quick about it, doctors need their lunch break.

  CHAPTER 35

  Mother Dear

  He is scared. Maybe my man uses his own fear to control me, to keep me chained to the stove. I have got nothing against the stove, it feeds me, it feeds my family. He tells me they have gunship helicopters that can see in the dark, and they have big scary dogs on very heavy iron chains that will devour you when unchained. He wants us to be grateful because we are alive and we have food. Sometimes he hints that even Ali might be better off without us. He says things like: They have air conditioning, you know. And real beef. And biscuits with lemon cream.

  My Ali loved those lemon-cream biscuits.

  Can you trade your son for his own happiness? Will you give him away for his own security?

  First he used to say our Ali is on active duty. I say what about working hours? Weekends? Independence Day holiday? What kind of job? Why can’t he write a letter? When my husband lies, he looks me in the eye.

  ‘It’s a secret job. When armies work in strange lands, they need help, local knowledge, interpreters, it’s all official. All confidential. All paid up. Sometimes there are delays in payments but they do pay up.’

  But why doesn’t he come home? />
  Last year my Ali would wake up from a nightmare and sneak into my bed and hug me. Now he is a fully paid-up, official secret.

  ‘Have you met with him? Have you seen him? Can you bring him back for a little while?’ I found it hard to believe and still do that my man has become a child-trader. Did he know when he was sending him away or was he just careless?

  I try to hold Momo back sometimes. He is always looking at the door, always pretending that he has got to go somewhere more important, do something urgent. Learn to sit still, Momo, listen to my story. You have to listen. Remember when you punctured Ali’s football and he hit you and I hit him? I shouted at both of you.

  Father Dear wouldn’t come home for days, after the Hangar shut down. He was scared. He was scared of you. He is still scared that you’ll kill him one day. When men run out of words they want to kill. Or at least start thinking about killing each other. I see blood in your eyes. You say these are dollar signs. You blame everything on your Father Dear. But sometimes I suspect you might have inherited your father’s love for white people. It’s a disease. I know you can say that love is a disease anyway but I can tell you love of white people is a special kind of disease.

  But listen, Momo, your father wasn’t always like this. He was the son of a chief. People would come around asking for bootleg sugar and petrol. He was quite the smuggler. One day he said, ‘People are always coming to do business with me, sometimes to pay their respect, you better start covering your head.’

  I said OK, I started covering my head. It became a joke between us. I would see him and I would cover my head, and I would giggle and he would come and give me a squeeze and then go away to do his business. I was covering my head and becoming respectable, but I still had to bring water from the pond. And then one day I forgot my dupatta at the pond, it can happen, it’s a piece of cloth not your body part. I approached the house and there was a group of men loitering around waiting for your father, the smuggler in chief, to show up. I reached for my dupatta and it wasn’t there. What could I do? I didn’t want him barking at me in front of these strangers so I took off my shirt and covered my head and marched right on. What had I got to hide? Everyone has arms, right? And he told me to cover my head, which I was covering with my shirt.

  Everybody looked down as I approached the house and there was a sudden hush and prayers being murmured as if they had seen the devil himself, then he emerged and yanked me inside hissing and puffing, and tried to beat me with clumsy hands. I kicked him in the shins.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, you idiot?’

  ‘Look, I am covering my head.’

  ‘But look at yourself.’

  ‘There is nothing to look at, I am wearing an undershirt, OK, my arms are exposed but you never told me to cover my arms. And what’s wrong if my arms are showing? My head is covered. Isn’t that where all your honour lies? Or is it in my arms, tell me for once.’

  I realized that day that I am stuck with a confused little husband. Here’s my man who will go around licking the boots of every white man he can find, who will grovel in front of an office file, yearn for an insulting cable from his Headquarters, but my exposed arms bring him shame.

  Now he is coming with us, sitting here in the same jeep. I didn’t ask him to. Momo went and told him the only thing that’ll make him get off his lazy ass: that white soldiers have returned, that the gates of the Hangar are open again. He doesn’t ask why everyone else is coming along. He can see it in our faces. He knows when to shut up.

  I don’t object to him coming with us. He can watch.

  CHAPTER 36

  Mutt

  All myths. All lies. Folk wisdom is nothing more than the accumulation of centuries of prejudices and fear. Global security is nothing but social engineering through job creation. First build a facility, then man that facility, then hire more people to protect that facility, then hire some dogs to protect those guards, then hire more men to destroy it, then start dreaming up reconstruction contracts.

  I am ahead of the pack, on a little reconnaissance mission. Or maybe Momo is using me as a bait to lure them out. But I get to have the first look. Barbed wire is cleared from the main gate. They are expecting us, they are facilitating us. I also expect a welcoming party. From the inside, the Hangar looks like an abandoned shopping mall. Big shuttered gates. Boarded-up offices. Half an aeroplane hanging from the ceiling. Murmurs, echoes of murmurs, people in shadows, shadows within shadows. People inside are no better than file-pushers of yore. Look at them now; their feet are not inverted. Sniff, they don’t smell like the insides of the coffins. I should know, I have smelled all sorts from inside and outside. They smell like nothing. They have been left behind. They were serving their God and country and then they were suddenly forgotten. They are dead but they don’t know it. Because nobody has bothered to put them in flag-draped coffins, fly them home, march them through the streets, nobody has given them state funerals, celebrated their sacrifices, named little country roads after them. They have just been forgotten.

  If they were not heathens, they would be called martyrs. They need to keep the war going even when it has ended.

  They have good taste in food though. Can you remember when was the last time you tasted a good, authentic pancake? Me neither. They have got mountains of pancakes and pools of maple syrup. I am not complaining. They are setting up positions around a buffet for the dead and I set up a position under a table with the maple syrup. I am not a combatant. I signed on to the mission after I was promised a strictly non-combatant role. I have always been a logistics guy anyway. I’ll stay here near this mountain of pancakes and try to figure out who needs what. In this fog of war sometimes people don’t know what they want.

  The first one to walk in is Ellie. Clever of Momo to send in one of their own first but perhaps way too clever. He’s probably got nothing to offer us.

  That man is not only a thief and an absconder, he lacks any kind of self-confidence or conviction. Lady Flowerbody thinks he needs therapy and a pep talk. No. He needs a life but he can’t get one now. I can see through him. His nametag has turned neon. One used to wonder what happens to people when they die. So this is what happens, they eat pancakes. I wouldn’t be complaining.

  They have all got their nametags in neon. They are worse than ghosts. They are fashionable ghosts.

  These are lost souls looking for a way back into life, looking for that golden sunshine back home. They want their military ranks back, they want to collect their gratuity cheques, they want to go home and start stalking their girlfriends who they hope are already unhappy with their new lovers and are ready to take them back. They had trained themselves to be brave, they were ready to lay down their lives for their God and country but they didn’t know that bravery comes with high noise levels and then an abrupt silence that lasts forever. You can’t be brave when you are dead. And then promptly forgotten.

  It’s the eternal human folly, hankering after things that are lost. Mutts don’t want their youth back, we don’t go through life thinking about that bone that we misplaced somewhere.

  Let’s not underestimate them though. Lest we forget, they don’t know they are dead.

  CHAPTER 37

  Mother Dear

  I am still not sure about him, my man, the man sitting behind me in the jeep, the man pretending to be not here. He wasn’t like this, not this devious, not so slippery, not like the last sliver of soap in your hand. He begged for my hand on a moonlit night; he was on his knees after waking me up by throwing pebbles at my window. I thought he wanted to sleep with me. I let him in. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with a boy wanting to sleep with me. I could always say no, but it was good to hear.

  ‘Do you want to sleep with me?’ I asked him, but he stood and stared.

  ‘I want to have babies with you,’ he said, ‘I want to marry you and then I want us to live in our own house.’

  ‘But you are the son of the Chief, you can marry anyone you want.’ Everybod
y knew that the Chief used to beat up his children with a whip if they played with other children and sometimes he beat up other children if they were foolish enough to accept his children’s offer to play with them.

  He said that he had run away from the house because he was whipped after refusing to join a hunt. Why wouldn’t a man join a hunt? I should have seen the beginning of that slippery slope right then. He had father issues. Who doesn’t? But if your father is a cruel idiot must you become one too? These are the conversations he was having with his father: ‘If you don’t hunt, what are we going to eat? That deer is not going to slaughter itself and turn into kebabs.’

  ‘I told him we’ll eat grass,’ he told me as he tried to hold my hand. I let him, but I should have guessed right there that he took pride in his idiocy, his passive stubbornness.

  ‘What’ll the deer eat then? There is never enough grass for them. You might be the runaway son of a chief, but you are not a real prince who can refuse to eat anything he doesn’t want to.’

  ‘We’ll go and live in the desert, away from my father’s house so that we can enjoy our freedoms.’

  ‘I would very much like to enjoy my freedoms but who is going to pay for these freedoms? Who will feed us?’

  ‘I’ll join USAID,’ he said. ‘My English is very good.’

  ‘What is USAID? What is English?’

  He didn’t bother answering but I knew that my own father was right; the war was coming. And what comes after war is USAID. So we lived on rations of tinned beef and complaints about logistical delays. The man who could have been a small-time prince became a petty bureaucrat. My family gave me their blessing but now they wouldn’t even send me salt. They have probably run out of it too.

  CHAPTER 38

  Momo

  My land. My people. And here they are refusing to go away. What’s their excuse to be here? Why can’t they just give us our man and take theirs? What do they need that sky-high roof for? Look at those massive beams. They built this place as if it’s going to last forever. They think they are going to last forever. I want to tell them you got killed, now you are gonna stay killed. It doesn’t matter whether you died bravely or left this world shitting in your pants. White or brown, dead is dead. I take a peek inside the Hangar to assess the situation.