Farhad and Soraya nodded, wide-eyed. Mahtab too. Suddenly she was more awake than ever in her life before. Dead. Her body stiffened. She would not let her breath make a sound as it left her body.
‘My brave, brave children.’ His hand was shaking as he pushed her hair back from her face and pressed his lips against her forehead.
They crept outside.
Mahtab could just make out the shape of the truck. Beneath a loose tarpaulin were what looked like a table and three wardrobes lashed onto the back with a stack of smaller furniture: chairs, blanket boxes and cabinets. Then there were sacks stuffed full and still more boxes. A man appeared, silent, out of the darkness. He lifted down a heavy sack of grain, held back the tarpaulin and pushed aside a wardrobe. A narrow corridor was revealed between two of the cabinets. Mahtab’s mother climbed up, squeezed into the space and disappeared. Farhad and Soraya were lifted up and Mahtab followed, feeling her way forward. It smelt damp and musty and led to an opening not much bigger than a tabletop. Their bodies bumped and brushed against each other as they settled into sitting positions. The wardrobe was pushed back into place and the tarpaulin dropped down. Their father and the outside world were gone.
Her mother pulled all three of them close. ‘God, send your prayers and mercy to the prophet Mohammed and all his followers.’ She kept her arms wrapped around the children as the truck moved forward slowly. Mahtab pressed her eyes tightly closed.
Now she knew why her grandmother had come into the bedroom the night before and sat watching her as she fell asleep, why Grandma bent and kissed her and then returned and did it again. When Mahtab opened her eyes, her grandmother took from her own wrist the bracelet of gold coins, linked with gold chain, and clasped it on Mahtab’s wrist. ‘So you will always remember,’ she said, and she slipped away.
Where were they driving? Down to the end of the street. She knew that part of the road. Then they turned to the right. That meant they were going past the bazaar and the shops where she used to go with Mum to buy the fruit and vegetables. When they could go out. So long ago now. Were people arriving, spreading out the trestles covered in golden apples, sweet yellow melons, grapes and mulberries? Then there was the open space and the Friday mosque with its tiles of sky-blue, its patterns of other blues and greens in bands broken by lines of gold. She tried to remember what came next.
She listened for signs that the day had started. Were there other trucks or carts around? Were people walking along the side of the road? She heard the squelching of tyres on gravel, the groaning of gears, and felt the thud of the truck’s wheel dropping into a pothole. Nothing more.
Mahtab shifted position and her shoulder struck the corner of a table but she made no sound. She felt her mother’s hand gently rubbing on the spot where it hurt.
‘Are you all right?’ her mother whispered.
‘Why didn’t we say goodbye to Grandma?’
‘She’ll understand.’
Farhad and Soraya were quiet beside her. They seemed to sleep but in the dark Mahtab couldn’t tell.
Gradually, faint slivers of light seeped through the walls of the truck. Above Mahtab’s head were planks of wood and on them were more sacks of grain. What if a bandit with a gun or a checkpoint Talib wanted them taken off and the furniture moved? What if they wanted to know what lay beneath? Her stomach muscles shivered. Her belly was a stone of ice, solid. Cold breath forced its way through her throat, her nose, her mouth.
‘Most of all they want money,’ Dad had said.
But what if he was wrong?
‘Can we talk?’ Farhad stirred.
‘Yes,’ said his mother, ‘but just quietly. This truck is so noisy that I don’t think anyone will hear us.’
Mahtab sat silent while Farhad began, ‘Will the men in black turbans get us in the mountains?’
‘No.’
‘Will they be in Pakistan?’
‘No.’
‘Will we ever see them again?’
‘No. Where we are going, we hope that there will be nothing nasty or bad that can ever happen to anyone again.’ Mum’s hand rested in his hair.
Nothing bad or nasty. No weeping and crying in the houses because someone has been taken by the bands of Taliban carrying guns and whips? No fear that the knock on the door will bring pain and grieving? No whispered conversations that were not meant for children: conversations of beatings and shootings, of disappearing, of hangings and stonings?
Mahtab shivered. She tried to stretch. Her back ached and her neck was sore. Grandma would be awake now. Mahtab saw her walking slowly room to room then eating her breakfast with Uncle Wahid, Reza and Rasheed. Aunt Mina would be there too. The usual start to the day. Were they wondering where the truck was now? Did they know where exactly the truck was going? In fact, where was the truck going? Mahtab tried to remember the maps she had seen. She knew there were fields and open space around the edge of the town – flat, fertile country, orchards and wheat-fields, easy to drive through. But soon there would be mountains. Huge mountains stretched almost the length of the country. She had never seen them but she knew from the atlas that Pakistan was on the other side. A long, long way on the other side.
Soraya pushed her head against Mahtab’s knee. ‘How long will we be in here?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mahtab. ‘A long time. Go to sleep.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Go to sleep.’
‘You can’t make me.’
‘There’s nothing else to do.’
Soraya grew quiet then but Mahtab couldn’t sleep. Her mind played over and over the conversations of the past few days. Uncle Wahid at first saying that they must not go and then changing his mind and saying it was the right thing to do. Aunt Mina, shaking her head and fighting to hold back tears. Grandma urging them on. And then there were her mother’s tears at night when she thought no one was listening and her father’s words: happiness and joy. She repeated them now, happiness and joy, happiness and joy. In the darkness they felt strangely empty.
She must have slept because she woke to the sound of the truck slowing to a halt. Had there been two bangs on the cabin wall? What was happening?
A door slammed. Boots crunched on gravel. The truck rocked as furniture was shifted and she heard her father’s voice. ‘Rest time. Stretch your legs. Come out and breathe some fresh air.’
They slid out like strange burrowing creatures coming from their holes to the surface. Their legs wouldn’t hold them up properly and they slumped against the body of the truck. Mahtab’s eyes hurt in the early-morning light. She squinted and turned away from the glare leaping from flecks of white stone.
‘We’re in the foothills of the mountains,’ her father said. ‘Soon we start really climbing.’
‘No sign of them?’ Mahtab’s mother shielded her eyes with her hand, gazing into the distance.
‘No. Not yet.’
Mahtab knelt with her mother and father, facing south-west.
‘In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds…’
The words, the rhythms were so familiar. It didn’t matter that she was not on the rug at home. Surely they would be all right.
They sat then in the shade of the truck and ate rounds of bread and kebab, dripping meat juice over their chins.
‘How far is Pakistan?’ Mahtab rolled the last piece of bread into a tube and bit into it.
‘Maybe two weeks. We’re not going by any main roads. We’ll criss-cross all the back ways to avoid people.’
‘So we’re not going to any towns?’
Her father shook his head. ‘Only when we absolutely have to. When our diesel runs low. And you will all stay hidden. We have enough food.’
Two weeks. Two weeks crouched and hiding, body rigid, waiting every minute for the two loud bangs that might come on the cabin wall. Two weeks of fear, of the ice stone in the belly, of holding your breath, of whispering, of blocking from your mind everything you kno
w or have heard of what they can do. They. Taliban. The whip-carrying men in black turbans. The ones who had been so cruel to her father, to Grandpa…
‘I don’t want to go back in there.’ Soraya buried herself against her mother’s legs. ‘It’s too dark.’
‘You have to, little one.’ Her mother crouched beside her and rubbed her back. ‘It’s the only way we can get to Pakistan.’
‘It’s too dark,’ she said again.
‘Come on, Soraya.’ Farhad took her hand. ‘We must be like Ali Baba and this is that special cave and we have to hide in here because the forty thieves might come back. They’ll never, ever find us here because it’s so dark and we’ll hide.’
‘And we’ll find the treasure.’
‘Can you remember?’ said Farhad.
‘Gold and silver,’ said Soraya. ‘Lots and lots of coins and carpets and cloth of silk and brocade.’
‘Open Sesame,’ said Farhad, and their father held the tarpaulin back so they could all enter the dark space.
‘Close Sesame,’ Soraya instructed as she pushed herself back against the bulky form of her mother.
Darkness again. Now Mahtab felt the truck climbing higher and higher. She leant back against a wardrobe. Farhad is right, it is like a cave. It’s as if we are inside the Earth except that we are bouncing along, hitting potholes and skidding along bits of the surface of the road. She then imagined the Earth doing that – bouncing through space, hitting whatever would be the equivalent of a pothole, bouncing around stars and planets – and she found herself giggling.
Her mother had begun to tell the story of Ali Baba again. She told of the poor man in the forest cutting wood for a living. He sees a great group of horsemen coming towards him and, fearful, he climbs a tree to hide. He realises that there is a huge rock nearby and the horsemen, who he decides are robbers, stop in front of this rock and their leader utters the words ‘Open Sesame.’ The rock rolls aside and reveals the opening of a cave. The robbers take into the cave all their bags of gold and silver coins and then they come out and go off in the direction they came from. Ali Baba waits for some time and then he decides to try and enter the cave. He utters those magic words, ‘Open Sesame,’ and the rock flies open and shows that there in the large cavern, lit by holes in the roof, are sacks and sacks of treasure.
‘Tell me again what the treasure is,’ whispered Soraya.
‘Gold…’
Two loud bangs on the wall sounded between them and the cabin.
Mahtab stiffened, snatched her hand up over her mouth.
No sound. Don’t make a sound.
The signal.
A checkpoint.
Taliban.
She froze.
The truck’s gears ground slowly down and stopped.
She heard the doors open and she pictured her father and the driver getting out. She heard them step away from the truck. Then muffled words.
She pressed her eyes tightly closed. Farhad’s hand gripped hers.
‘When you are very scared,’ her grandfather had said to her once, ‘count backwards from a hundred. By the time you get to zero, the worrying moment may have passed.’
One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six… Had her grandfather done this when the Talib smashed through the door of his office and dragged him out? Ninety-five, ninety-four, ninety-three… Had he done it when he stood there and heard their accusations? Ninety-two, ninety-one, ninety… And had he done this when they raised their whips and struck him and then their guns and shot him dead? What number was she up to? The voices were continuing. Were they arguing? Would the soldiers not let them through? What story was her father telling them? Would they believe him? Would they know of that time when he was taken before? Of her grandfather?
Boots clomped around the back of the truck. Stones were kicked aside. Something slapped against a tyre. A kick? A swipe from a whip?
A shadow passed in front of the narrow slit that let the sliver of sunlight through.
Mahtab held her breath.
Think of the numbers. Which was it again? Eighty-nine, eighty-eight, eighty-seven …
Soraya stirred. She stretched away from her mother and the tiny bracelet on her wrist scraped against wood. To Mahtab, it sounded as if wild horses were dragging chains across the bare ground. Her mother felt inside her robe and taking a cube of sugar, pressed it to Soraya’s lips. This was the sign they’d arranged: suck quietly on the sugar and don’t make a sound. She passed one each to Farhad and Mahtab. Even as she rolled the sugar around her mouth, Mahtab felt the sound of grains on her teeth was deafening. Surely they could be heard.
The truck doors slammed. The engine started. Her father’s feet stomping against the floor set up a vibration that blocked the shaking of the truck. Mahtab felt her whole body go loose. Every muscle had been tense, tight, and now it was as if the wind had suddenly died and she was a kite dropping lifeless to the ground.
Her mother squeezed her hand. ‘Thank God, thank God, we are saved, this time.’
Mahtab wanted to giggle, to speak of anything, to fill the space they were in with words, any words. She looked from her mother to her little sister and brother.
Tears filled his eyes. As they streamed down his cheeks, he pressed his hand to his mouth and was silent.
After about twenty minutes the truck stopped again. This time there was no banging or warning noises from her father. He came to the side of the truck and pushed aside the tarpaulin and the furniture.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Stretch-your-legs time again.’ He pulled Mahtab down by her feet. ‘How are you? Are you all right?’
She tried to stand but her legs wouldn’t hold her. She fell against the back of the truck as her mother slid out and collapsed in a heap on the ground.
The air was fresh and cold. Mountain peaks disappeared into cloud. Patches of snow, only metres above them, lay as if carelessly tossed there by a passing traveller. Mahtab stared. One day Grandpa had taken down a book and shown her a picture like this. ‘This is our country too,’ he’d said. ‘One day you may see it and know that not everything is in the towns or in villages. There are wild and beautiful places out there.’
The wind whipped the burqa over her mother’s shoulders as she balanced, unsteady. She drank quickly from the water flask. ‘How much did that checkpoint cost us?’
‘A lot.’ Dad frowned. Then he grinned, a sight Mahtab had not seen for a long time. ‘But not everything. We have enough for the next one. Now it is time to pray.’
Chapter Three
THEY CLIMBED HIGHER and higher. One moment Mahtab was thrown back, her body resting against one of the wardrobes, Farhad and Soraya on top of her. Then the truck would level out for a few minutes and they would become upright again. Slow motion.
‘It’s as if we’re stuck inside an elephant,’ Mahtab hissed to Farhad. ‘It’s having trouble getting up this mountain.’
‘No. It’s a dinosaur,’ he said. ‘Plod, plod.’ And he leant forward and marched his hands up and over Soraya’s legs, her shoulders and her head. They stuffed their hands inside their mouths to stop their giggling. They could walk more quickly than this. They lurched and swayed around bends as tight as the point of a star.
Mahtab settled back. Her stomach suddenly heaved and floated and then curled in upon itself. She sealed her lips as tightly as a judge’s death warrant.
All the next night they drove in darkness. Higher and higher still. They wrapped their arms tightly around their bodies against the bitter cold. They breathed clouds of white air. The man drove and then her father drove and then the man drove again. They stopped and climbed down and stumbled behind rocks to relieve themselves, their fingers so frozen that buttons and zippers were almost impossible to undo. Then back again, closing out the stars and the still night air as their truck bumped and lurched its way over the rutted road.
Soraya and Farhad slept. Mahtab too, although she felt that every pothole and gouge in the road jerked
her eyes open and reminded her of where she was: hidden in darkness, fleeing. Nothing else existed, no home, no outside world of houses and people, not even stars and the moon.
For ever, darkness.
Morning came but brought no change. Still the truck edged its way higher and higher. Mahtab had been awake for some time when they stopped and climbed down in the pale sunlight for some breakfast. She bit into a crisp golden apple brought from the tree at home, and leant back against a rock. Her mother and father sat close to each other, whispering, and they were joined by the man, the driver, Jamal.
Farhad took the paper bag that had held the fruit. He bunched it tightly and then dropped it on the road and kicked it towards the rocky ground that stretched above them. He cried out and raced after his paper ball, kicking it back to his father, who tossed it in the air and then flicked it to his son. Farhad dribbled it back to the group, laughing as his mother and father smiled. Jamal clapped and for a moment Mahtab felt the muscles in her face relax and her body lighten and she too lifted her hands and joined in.
For days their lives continued this way. Driving only on the minor roads, some of them little more than narrow, potholed paths fit only for donkeys, the truck with its strange cargo journeyed across the country.
On one occasion, Soraya pushed her face towards Mahtab and whispered, ‘Farhad told me there are wolves and when I go outside they will eat me up.’
‘He’s teasing.’ Mahtab cuddled her sister. ‘Dad would never let anything bad happen to you.’
‘A bad thing happened to Grandpa.’
‘That was different. That was in the city.’
Was it different? Could Dad save them from danger? From wolves? From human wolves?
Other times Soraya pressed her body into their mother and whimpered. ‘I’m freezing, Mumma.’
Mahtab's Story Page 2