Red Birds

by Mohammed Hanif

  The same rules should apply here. You have to tell them to leave. You have to leave, I say. I say it politely. You have to say it politely. You can’t be aggressive with ghosts. It’s easy-peasy. They are not harmful per se, only if you annoy them. You can’t be rude. But you have to be clear. I might be a local but I am on a foreign contract. We are equals. I have never worked with these people directly but I know the type. If you tell them to, they will leave. It’s my experience that when you tell them to stop, they stop. There are laws, you know.

  I don’t believe in ghosts but here they are jumping from wall to wall, completely oblivious to local culture and traditions and absolutely no insight into the young Muslim mind.

  I did try to make Ellie a man out of a ghost, but it turns out he is a ghost missing another ghost. Now that’s an emotional complication I don’t want in my life. Relationships can be complicated but you can’t allow them to clutter your life. They probably deserve each other. When things get this complicated all you have to do is to say leave. You have to say it politely and firmly. You have to leave, I say politely and firmly.

  Who the hell are you? shouts their leader with the shiny head, waving his gun at my head. You have to be polite, I tell him.

  CHAPTER 51

  Ellie

  Mother Dear has her eyes on me. It doesn’t look like she wants to rescue me. She’s coming at me, I try to hide behind Cath, but I can see through her; she put up with me in life, now she’s putting up with me in death. Will there be a reunion, will she finally take me in her arms and forgive me?

  Slatter’s voice comes over the megaphone. ‘We will not shoot unless we are shot at. We respect all women, all children and animals too.’

  Suddenly he wants to negotiate. Just like that. People who want to negotiate are always the ones who haven’t got anything to offer. ‘If you are here to fight, fight. If you are here to take your little boy back, then come and get him.’

  CHAPTER 52

  Mother Dear

  He’ll want to negotiate. My man attended a workshop once about hostage negotiation and since then, faced with every situation in life, he starts by saying: We have two options. He insists on saying it when he doesn’t have even one option. Look at our options: That absconder Ellie who has been eating my food; can you trust a deserter? Somebody who deserts his own motherland, he’ll probably desert you for his next meal. Look at him, hiding behind his woman. That Mutt always follows the smell of the bone. Momo is the only brave one in this family. And he has got a gun and he can drive.

  I am a bad mother. All the things that mothers fear about their teenaged sons are the things I am finding reassuring. My boy with a gun and a jeep. I have to be cool as ice, like a mother who is on a mission to rescue her first son without losing her second.

  CHAPTER 53

  Momo

  There he is now, their shiny-headed leader, bouncing off the walls.

  He is gonna descend like a bat and I am gonna smash him like a bat should be smashed. He has his arms drawn to the sides, trying to fly like only a dead pilot can, the fucker thinks he can really fly. He is turning now. He has got a glow in his eyes. He is hovering above the floor now. OK, he can hover. But hovering is not flying. That’s like a peacock taking off for a fraction of a second.

  I am trying to train my gun on him, I am gonna pop his eyes first. And when I pop his eyes, I’ll make sure that they gonna stay popped. When I take aim and shoot, he is suddenly not in my sights. He is in my face, he is a whoosh in my ear. Oh, that stings. He just slapped me. You are dead. You can’t slap Momo and live to tell the tale. What if you go and tell someone that you slapped Momo and he just stood there with his sweet 16 and didn’t do nothing?

  The spirit goes out of me. You come to fight the fuckers, you bring your troops and you bring your M16. And they slap you in the face. They slap you in the face while everyone is watching.

  CHAPTER 54

  Mother Dear

  How dare he slap my son, how dare he? You can come here and you can build a Hangar and you can drop a bomb on my house and you can bring your aeroplanes and your dead girlfriends but you touch my son and you see what happens. Now he comes tumbling towards me and there is only one thing to do, plunge the dagger into his heart and plunge it again. You would expect a fountain of blood but the man with the shiny head disappears in a puff of red dust; a red bird comes fluttering out of the dust and flies towards the ceiling. There is already a swarm gathering near the ceiling. With the birds come long-forgotten memories; the boys’ insomniac cries in their childhood, piping-hot bread tasted in Kandahar, groping in the back of a yellow bus, dreams of brown beauties dancing in the desert, fat dads cuddling their babies and jumping on trampolines, ball games in the afternoon drizzle.

  What are people if not the sum total of their memories?

  Instead of running away they are actually coming towards me, in a haphazard queue as if they are lining up at a shrine for a plate of rice and the blessings of a dead saint.

  CHAPTER 55

  Momo

  Mother Dear is using that dagger like a crazy mass murderer, how does she even know where the human heart is? She is gonna be taking them out one by one. One thrust of her dagger and a puff of red dust, no screams, just a flutter of wings and yet another red bird is released into the world. She is the destroyer. She is the liberator. I know what I am gonna do. I am gonna turn her into a one-woman private army and offer her talents to third-world countries, we are gonna become the world’s biggest protection racket. We can do coups in small countries, start rebellions in big nation states. We are gonna go global. But first things first. We are gonna find Bro Ali and get the hell out of here. Mutt should be leading the search, showing us the way, but there he is limping away, pretending to be an injured soldier.

  CHAPTER 56

  Mutt

  Ghosts are forever, you can’t shoot them with bullets. But does Momo listen? When he shoots their leader with the shiny head and misses, where does the bullet go? A stray bullet is still a bullet, a stray dog is still a dog. It’s not the time to make speeches but I do want to say to my fellow countrymen: if you learn to control your libido, if you learn to stand in a queue and if you don’t overeat, and don’t start shooting at anything that moves, you might achieve something in life.

  I know that reckless optimism is harmful for our intellectual health but there are moments when one’s defences slip and one is swept up on a crest of triumphalism. Mother Dear was doing a fine job with her dagger but Momo had to do his Momo thing. I have spent half my life asking the question that I am asking now: Why would you do that Momo, why? But it’s too late. Even a stray dog is a dog. Even a stray bullet is a bullet. It travels at the speed of 960 metres per second, it doesn’t matter if it was intended for me or not, I am certain it didn’t have my name on it; it doesn’t quite go through my heart but, as Doctor would say, it lodges itself in my chest – as if my chest was a rundown guest house and the 9-mm bullet a weary out-of-towner. In a more just world it could have hit my shoulder, or taken off my useless hind leg. But it’s destined to lodge in my chest, three-quarters of an inch away from my heart. God will judge us sinners on our intentions and not our actions and I am sure He’ll not judge Momo harshly. But I look at him and want to say: you son of a bitch.

  Now there’s a hush. No shooting, no ghosts butting their heads against the walls. Puffs of red dust everywhere. I think it’s the perfect moment to make our exit, say our farewells. Momo thinks it’s time for victory celebrations. He’s seen Mother Dear dispatch the ghosts, and he launches into a victory speech. My land, my people. One day he’ll make a fine businessman-politician and I wish I could be by his side. But he has to be careful with these guns. The man who only thinks in dollarized profit margins is suddenly talking about freedom and passion.

  ‘I’m not going to negotiate with my brother’s abductors. I am not going to negotiate with the bloodsuckers. I am gonna clean up this land, my land. I am gonna get rid of these ghosts for
ever. This Hangar will be bulldozed into the ground.’

  And my bleeding ass will be buried here. A pair of pale feet scurry past me. Ellie has avoided Mother Dear’s dagger as if he has still got one last thing to do. I give a faint yelp to warn Momo.

  But Momo is crouching now, his eyes towards the ceiling from where a single drop of blood drips onto his face. He smears it across his forehead. He seems beyond fear.

  CHAPTER 57

  Momo

  Something is gonna happen from above. There is a din on the roof like an army of drunk soldiers jumping up and down. Mother Dear has got rid of the ghosts on the ground but now there is another army on the roof.

  Where is my backup? What was I thinking? I am gonna get everyone on my team killed. Why am I here in the first place? Look for him and get out – but what the hell is going on up there on the roof?

  I look up in exasperation and there he is. Bro Ali is hanging from the ceiling like a human chandelier, and when I see him my first reaction is thank God, I found my bro. My second thought is what in God’s name is he doing up there?

  He is in a slightly delicate situation. They have got him tied up from three sides. His arms spread out, they have got him strung up in mid-air through a system of chains and pulleys. Even from seventy feet down below I can tell that he is alive. I hope Mother Dear doesn’t look up. I don’t want her to see her firstborn in this state of utter helplessness. My first instinct is to take a shot at the chains holding him; OK, maybe I am not such a crack shot, but my sweet 16 has got a telescope. I put my eye to it – I don’t look at Bro Ali’s face, that would make me lose my concentration – but before I can pull the trigger and set him free from the chains that hold him, my Jeep Cherokee gets airborne. There is a giant metal jaw that descends from above and is clutching it now, the metal jaw is connected to heavy chains, and as I look up, midway between the Hangar’s ceiling and my sorry airborne ass is a giant crane and Ellie, sitting in it, is working its metal jaw from above and is pulling me towards him, up, up, up. The jeep is swaying dangerously in the air. Below me all I can see are clouds of red dust. I catch a glimpse of Mutt, hiding in the crane box, yelping madly at a pair of pale feet.

  I can expect anything from my best mate, stupidity, greed, definitely greed, all kinds of perversion, but I never thought he had a treacherous bone in his body. After this is over I am gonna teach him a lesson. I am gonna teach him how to be loyal.

  But now, suspended in mid-air, I am gonna be learning a lesson or two.

  I am going up, up, up. I pass Ellie, he is grinning like a benevolent ghoul and when I pass by him he waves at me as if saying hullo.

  On second thoughts he is probably saying goodbye.

  Now I am level with Bro Ali’s feet. His feet are chapped and dirty as if he hasn’t worn shoes for a few months. But his feet are not tied. Now the jeep floats up slowly, so that I can see Bro Ali’s face. Doesn’t seem he has had much time for showers either. But he seems well fed though. And he seems to have no time for pleasantries. ‘Why did you have to bring Mother Dear? And why has she coloured her hair?’

  ‘It’s just henna,’ I say. ‘It’ll wear off in a few days.’

  ‘And she has got her rosary,’ he says. ‘I thought you were going to steal it?’

  ‘I did. She got another one.’ Bro Ali is not listening to me. It seems he is talking to himself.

  I want to reach out and touch him. He once showed me where the human heart is by taking my hand and putting it on the right side of his chest. I want to reach out and put my hand on his ribcage and feel if it still beats like a drum. ‘See, this is the drumbeat that keeps us alive,’ he had told me. ‘A very subdued thud thud.’

  Does he remember the rains; does he remember the first ever frog that we caught and tried to put on a leash and take for a walk; does he remember how I stood up to Mother Dear when he brought a half-dead baby Mutt home; does he remember our races, the races that he always let me win, and later when he couldn’t beat me even if he wanted to?

  I wonder if Mother Dear can see up from down below. Her two boys perched in mid-air, my palm on Bro Ali’s heart. It’s still. I wait and wait but there is no beat.

  ‘They think I am one of them. I am not.’

  This is what happens when you underestimate your enemy. Who are the people who say I am not mad? The mad ones. Who are the people who say I swear I am not lying? Those who are lying.

  Am I looking at my brother or his ghost? I have had a useless upbringing. I know everything about safe sex, I can feel the pulse of the financial markets, but I know nothing about how to tell a ghost from a not-ghost.

  ‘I am learning to fly, look at my wings. How am I doing? Just a little more time and then I am out of here,’ he says.

  ‘Why did they do this to you?’ I ask.

  ‘They think I brought down their planes. They think they had to shut down the Hangar. They think I am a traitor.’

  ‘Did you bring down their planes? How did you do that? You can’t bring down a plane with a transistor.’ I am in awe of him.

  ‘I am a man of peace.’ He winks at me and makes a V sign. ‘It was human error. I only fiddled with some frequencies. And they came tumbling down.’ He flutters his arm like a bird coming down for a landing.

  ‘Does Mother Dear know?’ he asks.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Does she need to know?’

  ‘She misses you. Every day.’

  ‘She has you.’

  He flutters his arm, like an exhausted bird who has flown for days and is about to reach his destination.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘One gets used to it.’

  It seems we’ll have to get used to it too.

  ‘Will you do something for me?’ he says.

  This sounds like one of his trick questions. I nod and grab him around his waist, an awkward hug. He once taught me how to hug and judo-tackle in the same move.

  ‘You have to close my eyes,’ he says. I look into his eyes, they are wide open. I can see two Momos reflected in them. ‘Do it gently,’ he says.

  I tighten my grip around his waist. He doesn’t judo-tackle me.

  On my way down, I notice that Ellie has disappeared and Mutt is sitting by himself in the crane box, whimpering, with one paw raised, as if saying, be steady, you are carrying a very heavy weight.

  CHAPTER 58

  Mother Dear

  He is deserving of all praise, all poetry, because my sons are descending, coming to me. He is the One, the most merciful and the most full of venom, the brilliant author of our life stories and the abrupt ender of them, the creator of the last fish in the ocean, the maker of the largest net to catch it, the creator of coincidence and maker of certainties as big and as frozen as Mount Everest, the most charming of the snake charmers. The saviour. The saviour.

  They are hugging each other like two lost brothers meeting, like two angels floating towards me. Ali looks at peace, Momo worried, pained, probably already thinking that when Ali comes home he’ll become the younger brother again. My Momo was always a worrier.

  He could have given me just one son. But He gave me two. He is the most generous of them all.

  CHAPTER 59

  Mutt

  Sometimes a bullet lodged three-quarters of an inch away from your heart can give you all the clarity you need in life. I can see what is now and I can see what’s beyond. Momo has finally seen the light. He has found Bro Ali and is carrying him down to his mother, but he has found him not in any state to go back. This is not the end. Only humans can believe that a boy with a home-made radio brought down their planes. This is their way of keeping the war going.

  Right now, I have the urge to put my Momo on a retractable leash and take him for a very long, aimless walk, because he is unbearably sad. He is also scared like a child who has lost his mother’s favourite heirloom and goes on pretending that he has put it somewhere safe. The scared child who has failed his exam, doesn’t go home because he has lost his sc
hool bag as well and is now afraid of going home because he is now also late, and with every single minute that he delays his return he is digging himself into a deeper hole. Shadows are lengthening, birds are going wherever they go at night, and Momo can’t move his feet. His heart is a dread multiplier in overdrive. He can’t go to Mother Dear and tell her that there’s no point looking, let’s go back home. He can’t even say that Bro Ali is in a better place or we should go home and wait because one day he’ll return, like a boy who goes out into the world and returns home fourteen years later, having become a man, same but different. Momo doesn’t talk like that. Momo doesn’t think like that.

  I am up here in the crane box, a heap of red dust at my feet; I can’t wield a dagger but my teeth are fine. I am going down now, my stomach in my throat, my heart pumping in slow motion. The lights might be fading now but I know I am going home. I’ve had a long, eventful life, but only one image sticks: I am a puppy fighting an army of vicious cats and Bro Ali takes me from the street, nestles me in his lap, covers me with a little blanket and feeds me goat milk from a baby bottle. I can smell Momo’s own childhood on that baby bottle. I hope we’re going home.

  CHAPTER 60

  Mother Dear

  Does anyone have any doubts about the fact that He is the most merciful, the joiner of separated ones? My sons come to me hugging each other. Mutt is walking behind them, a bit slow, a bit thoughtful; it’s not like him to not jump up and down and take credit for everything. I take them into my arms. Momo squirms, he was never a big hugger. And I have to laugh at this, Ali is fast asleep. He used to go to sleep in the middle of studying his books, doing his homework, sometimes still chewing his pencil.