“Could you turn your head slightly?”
As she turned, a small triangle of light fell onto the shadowed side of her face, lighting up her closed eye, a classic chiaroscuro. I thought of you again, and our Sunday gallery expeditions to see the Dutch masters. Do you remember that January morning when we took our hangovers to the Wallace Collection and you rushed me past all those French pictures of bare-bottomed nymphs to the solid Dutch portraits?
After that visit you began your own series of portraits, playing with the light that poured through the windows of your studio and bounced back up from the canal. They were naked portraits, all shadows and skin, the only splash of colour a red scarf, a nod to the hat worn by Rembrandt’s son Titus in the painting we’d seen in the gallery.
It was when I refused to pose that you found Lara, sitting in a coffee shop around the corner from your studio. Lovely Lara, all pale skin and red hair, and young enough not to mind taking off her clothes in front of a stranger in the daytime. Lovely Lara, the politics student, who was lying naked on the couch when I turned up one afternoon with apologies and flowers, and who in no hurry put on a wrap and drank coffee, then later the rough red wine from a bottle you were given in payment for a job, and argued for hours about what she called the “industry of war”. Lovely Lara, who, the next time I was away, graduated from your studio sofa to our bed.
I’d always put up with your affairs, taking them as payback for my absence, for missing your openings, not being there on birthdays. I knew when you were in the midst of one: our own sex was different, closer, more intimate, as if we were making up for all that passion spent elsewhere, reassuring ourselves that we’d be all right in the end. Lara felt different, dangerous, right from the start.
As the camera shutter clicked, Leila flinched.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and lowered my camera.
“No,” she said. “Sorry. My fault.” Rashida’s eyes grew wide as she translated. “It was that noise when you pressed the button. And the camera focused just on me. Once my husband made me stand against a wall while aiming a gun at me. I thought I was going to die, so I closed my eyes and began to pray. When the click came, I thought he had shot me. He laughed and said, ‘The trigger is ready: I can shoot you whenever I like.’”
I put my camera down. “Leila, I’m so sorry. I would never have asked you to stand like that if I’d known. We can stop if you want.”
She shook her head. “No.”
I looked at her, trembling but defiant.
“All right,” I said. “But let’s try something else. Why don’t you sit on those cushions and I’ll start by taking some pictures of your hands, so you can get used to the camera. OK?”
As I played around with focus and light, Leila relaxed. We worked for the rest of the afternoon, the sounds of Kabul drifting through the window – children’s laughter, hawkers’ voices, the call to prayer – underlaid with the constant noise of roadworks. Despite the noise, our little room was calm. Leila was determined, ready to hold her poses for as long as I needed. Rashida translated and I took my photographs, trying to distance myself from what I felt, concentrating on composition, framing, light.
I focused on the contrast between the dark red of the rug that Leila was sitting on and the blue of her shalwar kameez against the whitewashed walls. Her damaged skin faded from brown to pink and back again in different parts. I wanted to show Leila as she was now, but I also wanted to hint at how she’d been before, to give a sense of what she’d lost.
I took profile shots, face-on shots and in-between shots, some with objects in the background, others without. I decided not to worry about making the photographs so very different to the one on the cover of Time, but just to concentrate on Leila and see what we came up with. And after an hour or two of changing poses and angles, something happened, the thing that I’d been waiting for. Suddenly the pictures came right – and I knew we had our shot.
Thirty
ELIZABETH WILLOUGHBY’S DIARY
19th March 1915
Robert is back. He turned up at the Pavilion without warning yesterday afternoon. It was a great surprise after the postcard I’d received from him on Monday – very different to his last one: army-issue, printed on cheap grey paper, with statements that one could cross out as applicable about being admitted to hospital or sent to the base or promising to write soon.
He had crossed them all out apart from one: “I am quite well.”
If Robert’s signature hadn’t been there underneath, I would not have believed it was from him. And of course the postcard had the opposite effect to what was intended, because I immediately started to think that he wasn’t well at all. All week, that one short sentence preyed on my mind. I kept the card in the pocket of my apron, bringing it out when no one was looking to study it again, as if I could squeeze out another interpretation. The words stayed stubbornly the same: “I am quite well”, nothing more, nothing less.
As the week wore on, my thoughts became darker. What would happen if he never came back? What would become of the future that we have been planning together? What would become of me? I am ashamed to admit it, but my feelings were more complicated than I might have expected. For so long I have been certain of how my life would unfold, but now I am not quite so sure. My conversations with Hari, his stories of other places, of political preoccupations, have given me glimpses of other possibilities.
And then, just as I was starting to believe that I might never see Robert again, I was told I had a visitor – and there he was, standing in the entrance hall.
“I thought you were dead,” I blurted out.
He looked at me, rather appalled. “Dead?”
I tried to explain that it was because of his postcard, then faltered as I realized how stupid that sounded.
He frowned. “What postcard? Anyway, here I am. Shall we have tea?”
We went to the Palace Pier. I had thought we might sit in the Winter Gardens, because it was blustery outside, and I worried that the wind might whip my hair into a mess, but when we arrived Robert asked if I would mind going up to the rooftop gardens, saying that he would rather not be closed in, and so I agreed to it.
We took the little lift to the café, with its elegant archways and domes. I said to Robert that I felt as if we were in India already, but he seemed not to hear me, staring out instead at something on the horizon. When I repeated it, he turned sharply and said: “What?” His voice was oddly loud, so I told him it didn’t matter, aware that the few other customers who’d braved the winds were looking.
We ordered tea with sandwiches and cake.
“Was it ghastly?” I asked, after a while.
He looked at me for what seemed like a long time, then nodded.
“Yes, it was.”
“Will you tell me?” I said.
He gave a small, sad smile. “I’m not sure where to begin. The noise, I suppose.”
That was the worst part of it, he said, the shells exploding, the wailing, whistling sound as they came close, then the terrible, roaring crunch, the blast of falling rocks and earth, like solid rain. Sometimes he found it hard to believe that it would ever be quiet again. He tilted his head on one side, as if he were listening for something.
“There’s a sort of rumble in my ears that never goes.”
“Like the sea?”
“Not really. More sinister than that.”
As the waitress arrived with the tea and laid it out on the table, I listened to the waves swishing onto the shingle and the murmur of conversation around us, and I realized that no matter how hard I tried to understand and how much Robert tried to explain, I would never know what had really happened to him.
I sipped my tea, waiting for him to carry on, but he just kept eating his sandwich as if neither caring nor noticing how it tasted.
“I read about it in The Times,” I said. “They said it was a marvellous victory.”
He lowered his eyes and broke into a soft laughter.
&
nbsp; “Our victory,” he said, wrapping his hands around his teacup. “Well, if that’s what you can call moving forward a few hundred yards, then I suppose it was.” He looked up and stared into my eyes. “But the truth is, we lost twelve thousand soldiers.”
I put down my cake fork, speechless.
“The night before, we almost froze to death. Our men just sat there, saying nothing, not even shivering, waiting for the signal to attack. When we did, they fought as if they were possessed. It took less than two hours to capture the village. The shelling was so heavy that it opened up old graves in the cemetery. The church was gone, apart from one crucifix, an enormous one about eight feet tall, with Christ looking down from his cross as if he’d seen everything they’d done and wasn’t the least bit pleased.”
He shook his head, as if he were trying to rid himself of the memory.
“One of my Gurkhas came running out of the woods making a terrible noise, a sort of whoop. He was carrying a face that he’d sliced clean off with his kukhri. He was so pleased with himself, and I had to look at the horrible thing too and seem pleased, because my troops were there to win, and I was there to lead them.
“On the last night, when it was all over, all I could do was stand there, watching the stretcher-bearers moving through the fog, looking for the wounded, trying not to trip over the bodies that lay wherever one looked. The air smelt of blood and death, and rum from the extra rations we gave the men to help them fight. I just stood and smoked and asked myself if it was worth it.”
He gave a little hopeless shrug and looked out to sea.
I felt slightly nauseous: I had no appetite for the sandwiches now, and when the waitress came I told her to take them away.
Thirty-One
“There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” said Rashida one morning as we sat with our coffee in the Flower Street Café.
I was intrigued. Apart from the facts on her CV – twenty-two with a BA in journalism, fluent in English, Pashto and Dari – I didn’t know much about Rashida. She knew more about me from her Google searches, but I’d avoided any more personal conversations. I still hadn’t got the measure of what was acceptable to ask and what wasn’t. But if she wanted to tell me more, I was up for it.
“Great,” I said. “Just tell me where and when.”
That night she sent me a text. “Will come to guest house tomorrow 3 p.m.”
There was a party going on at Henrik’s flat, but I decided not to risk a hangover. I went to bed early instead with my computer and a DVD of Annie Hall, but my dreams were filled with scenes from a Bollywood romance that featured a dance routine in the Panjshir Valley, with a couple serenaded by grinning Taliban using their Kalashnikovs as microphones, and I woke up blinking and confused.
At three o’clock exactly, Rashida came up the path, dressed in a silk shalwar kameez and a chiffon headscarf edged with little silver discs.
“You look great,” I said. I was wearing my usual uniform of trousers and long shirt. “Should I change? Are we going somewhere special?”
She laughed. “It’s special to me,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter what you wear. I’m dressed up because it’s Friday – and because he likes it. I was wondering…”
She paused.
“What?”
“Could you bring your camera? I’d like you to take a picture of us.”
“Of course,” I said, even more intrigued.
Bazir drove deep into the city, south of the river, where the streets were narrow and dark. After a while he stopped the car and said something to Rashida.
“We’ll have to walk from here,” she said. “The car can’t go any farther. But we’re nearly there. It’s not far. Bazir will wait for us.”
She led me down a little lane, quiet in the afternoon heat and deserted apart from a small boy rolling a bicycle wheel along with a stick. As we passed him he stopped and stared, his mouth open.
Rashida smiled. “I love this part of the city. It reminds me of being a child like him.”
It reminded me of backstreets in Naples, houses so close they almost touched, strung with washing lines between them. Here, though, there was no laundry strung out for people to see: clothes far too intimate a thing to be exposed.
At the end of the lane, the road widened. A high wall stretched around a corner, and we followed it, staying in the shade. Eventually we came to a gate with a man asleep on a stool.
“Ghulam,” said Rashida.
The man twitched and jerked awake, launching into what sounded like an apology, but Rashida quickly stopped him, and he opened the gate.
It was like stepping into another world – a secret garden spread out around an old, crumbling house. Terraces folded down from it, leading to a sunken lawn surrounded by flower beds filled with roses. Fruit trees stood in a little orchard to one side of the house.
“It’s beautiful,” I said to Rashida.
She smiled. “This is where I come to think.”
I could see why. The clamour of Kabul had magically vanished: the only sound was the cooing of turtle doves that flitted around a dovecote in a corner.
“Come,” she said. “He’ll be waiting.”
I expected her to take me up to the house, but instead she led me through the garden, past more flowers, to a pergola that again reminded me of Italy, dripping with white grapes. There, sitting in a fraying wicker chair, was not the boyfriend I’d expected, but an old man. His face was aristocratic, angular, with the same green eyes as Rashida, his hair the same white as the prayer cap perched on top of it.
“This is my grandfather, Amanullah Rahmani,” said Rashida. “Grandfather, this is Jo.”
“How do you do?” he said in perfect English. He gestured towards another chair. “Please, sit.”
It was wonderfully shady under the pergola, a relief to be surrounded by green leaves, the harsh sunlight filtered and tamed.
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked. “Some coffee, perhaps?”
It was the first time I’d been offered coffee in Kabul instead of tea.
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll get it,” said Rashida, and began to walk towards the house. Her grandfather watched her go with soft eyes.
“Your garden is beautiful,” I said.
“We Afghans are very particular about our gardens,” he said, smiling.
I thought of the dustiness of Kabul, the harsh winds, dirt packed hard underfoot. “Really? Isn’t it very difficult to garden here?”
“Precisely. That’s why we need them. We’ve been very good at it, ever since the days of Babur.”
“Babur?”
He looked at me over his spectacles. “The great conqueror, descendant of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan?”
“Please, tell me,” I said, feeling rather ignorant.
“Well,” he said. “Where to start? He came from the Fergana Valley, in what is now Uzbekistan, arriving in Kabul in 1504. At first he killed so many people that he made towers out of their heads, but he came to love the city so much he stayed for more than twenty years. One of the reasons he loved it was the flowers that grew on the hillsides – the vineyards, the orchards. He called it ‘paradise on earth’. Eventually he went to India and founded the Mughal dynasty, but he never loved India like he loved Afghanistan. His body was brought back here to be buried. You should go to Bagh-e Babur in the south of the city to see his grave, in the gardens he built. They’re worth a look. They inspired the rest of Asia.”
“Ah,” I said, remembering. “I went, I think, ten years ago.” Faisal had taken me to a broken place, filled with smashed terraces and uprooted trees, weeping as he told me how he used to go there for picnics as a child.
“Well then you didn’t see it at its best. Gardens don’t flourish in war. Ask Rashida to take you. They’ve been rebuilt. They’re beautiful again.”
He looked around with satisfaction at his own terraces.
“This garden was planted by my grandfather, more than a hun
dred years ago. Your country was trying to invade us at the time, I believe.”
I flushed. “I’m sorry—”
He made a gesture with his hand. “My dear, this house is a survivor. It has seen so many wars, resisted so many invasions. The British, the Russians, the Americans. The mujahidin, the Taliban. There will undoubtedly be more.”
I looked up at the low white villa, an ageing beauty of a house, its windows shaded against the afternoon sun.
“You see that one there?” Amanullah pointed to a pillar on the veranda, split in two. “That was the Russians in 1979. And that missing corner, on the left? The mujahidin, five years later. But they never got the garden.”
“I’m glad.”
“So am I.”
Rashida returned and sat on the remaining chair. “Akram is on his way.”
Sure enough, a minute or so later another man, almost as old as Amanullah, came across the garden with a tray. None of us spoke as he laid things out on the table: a slightly chipped white porcelain teapot with a pattern of yellow roses, three matching teacups, a little silver jug, a sugar bowl with tongs and two bowls, one filled with almonds, the other with shiny red mulberries.
“These are from the garden,” said Amanullah. “The first of the season. I hope they’re to your liking.”
“I saw your trees,” I said. “I thought they were apple.”
“Some of them are,” he said. “We also have pomegranate and quince. And mulberry bushes in their own special corner.”
He leant over, picked up the teapot and poured steaming coffee into the cups.
“Milk?” he said.
I nodded.
“Sugar?”
“No thanks.”
He put three lumps into his coffee and two into Rashida’s.
“My wife loved the gardens too. She liked to fill the house with fresh flowers. Do you see that room with all the windows – there at the end towards the orchard? That was her gulkhana, her flower room, where she used to sit in winter to take the sun. Would you like to see some photographs of the gardens as they were?”
“Yes please.”
The Repercussions Page 13