Worlds Apart

by Azi Ahmed

  Phillips crunched off the gravel, waving a dismissive hand at us. ‘Go on, piss off, the lot of you.’

  Relieved by his order, we walked back to our kit that was piled high on the track beside the jerry cans (large plastic containers holding water for refilling our water bottles).

  I scratched a film of filth off my forehead and hobbled over. I yanked my Bergen out from the bottom of the pile and dragged it towards a four-ton truck parked on the lay-by, wondering what the hell I was I doing here.

  ‘AHMED!’

  I swung round at the sound of Taylor’s voice and then searched for him amongst the recruits coming towards me.

  ‘Pick your fuckin’ handbag up, you stupid bird!’

  Frantically I slung the Bergen onto my back and bombed it, my webbing furiously swinging around my hips. Tears sprang to my eyes, making my vision blurred as I dodged a tree line of low branches that almost took my eyes out, then scurried down a grassy bank. My breathing was heavy – coming in sharp bursts, heart-attack style. My hip was also playing up, causing me to grind to a halt. Body folded over, I opened my mouth to heave something up but nothing came out.

  ‘While you’re down there do the eighty.’ Phillips came up behind me.

  I fell to my bony knees, the cold digging into the heels of my hands. One … two… But it was too much with the belt kit, and I crashed down on my face. I stared at a blade of grass sprinkled with dew. The smell of fresh dirt was strong.

  I prised my face off the ground as Phillips walked off, then staggered to the vehicle where most of the recruits were now inside.

  I stepped up, grabbed the steel bars and then tipped the Bergen inside, but didn’t have the energy to get myself over. Chin hooked over the tailgate and blinded by wisps of hair, I heaved my body up but my foot missed the metal ledge for a third time. Worried by how close behind Phillips was, I prayed, not just to Allah but to all the gods.

  Inside, the recruits watched anxiously. Sullivan stepped forward but stayed low so as not to be seen from outside. He dragged my Bergen to where his was placed then gave me his hand. Before I could reach for it, my body toppled over and hit the floor with a thud, shattering the silence inside. Nobody moved.

  ‘Ahmed,’ Sullivan whispered.

  I spun round and stared into his green eyes, then followed his gaze down to my webbing where a pouch had come unfastened and everything was hanging out. Frantically, I began thumping everything back in with my bruised knuckles. Meanwhile the rest of the recruits clambered in, pushing themselves into the left-over spaces. Digsby aggressively squeezed his Bergen on the other side of mine, passing a wink in my direction.

  ‘That last bit was murder!’ Digsby said, levelling up with Sullivan’s glare above me as I sat between them in a daze. ‘If someone had asked me my name or where I lived I would’ve have had no idea.’

  The truck started up with a jerk, tossing me onto Digsby’s smock. I pushed myself off and began coughing as a black cloud of fumes rose through the canvas flap.

  ‘I can’t get my head around you two.’ Digsby pointed at Becky then me. ‘You could be home baking cupcakes.’

  No one laughed, no one cared.

  I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, feeling the blisters set my feet on fire.

  It’s only pain, I told myself, only pain.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE HILLS

  THE FIRST EVENING we joined the lads for the hills phase, they were already stood in rank in the courtyard at the Chelsea Barracks. The numbers had gone down to 100 or so men and a couple of new faces were doing the hills phase again. Becky and I put our Bergens down in front of us and stood to attention. Adele hadn’t turned up, thank God, and finally my security clearance had come through.

  I should have been ecstatic about it but everything else in my life was going from bad to worse. Mum and Dad weren’t speaking to me. I didn’t blame them after my desertion when they came down to visit. I had got back to my flat and they had left a carrier bag of food outside my front door. I broke down in floods of tears; partly from the relief of getting through another arduous weekend of training but also because I felt terrible about my bad behaviour in the face of their good intentions. I phoned them straight away. Dad answered and when he heard my voice called Mum, which was normal, but this time I didn’t want it. I pleaded with him, telling him how sorry I was for not being home and asking whether they received my message and where they had stayed, but I knew they had ended up with the Croydon family. I tried to rescue the conversation by asking how the family was, which sounded odd as I had never asked about them before. Dad didn’t respond and instead handed the phone to Mum, which made it worse. I took a deep breath. Her voice became like one of those VHS tapes on fast-forward: it just went on and on saying how shameful it was for them not to be able to stay with their daughter. I tried to interrupt, apologising profusely, but it didn’t make any difference. A part of me wanted to put the phone down, but I knew this would only fuel the situation.

  We had been issued extra kit for the hills and could feel the difference in weight. Three new trainers stood at the front of the ranks talking to the recruits. Briggs was the main man and stood in the middle. He was short, with a strong Liverpudlian accent, shaven head, very pale skin and light grey eyes. He noticed our movement in the back.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked in a high-pitched voice, almost like a girl.

  Thankfully, Becky did the honours. ‘Sir, we were asked to join selection,’ she announced proudly … too proudly.

  Briggs spun round to the other staff stood on either side of him, both towering over him. ‘Who said?’

  One of them stepped forward and whispered something in his ear.

  I saw Briggs’s eyes widen, then he exploded. ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?’

  With that, he stormed off into the main building behind us.

  Oh my … the colonel hadn’t even told him!

  I kept my gaze fixed in the gap Briggs had left between the other two trainers, my hands clenched tight behind my back. Minutes later, he was back, his face like thunder. I had never been so scared in my life.

  ‘Get your fuckin’ crap hats on!’ he screamed at us. ‘You’re not in the unit yet.’

  Becky and I looked at each other and suddenly realised we were wearing berets, the ones issued to admin people. All the other lads wore a khaki woolly hat. I had no idea what a crap hat was or why they were called that – but began rummaging through my Bergen for something that looked green and woolly. Finally, Becky brought out a balaclava that I guessed the lads had rolled up into a hat. I delved deeper into my Bergen to find mine. My hands were shaking as I put it on.

  ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he snarled, then turned back to the lads and carried on giving the orders.

  I could feel my face burning; not through humiliation, that feeling had gone a long time ago, but the thought of having him as my trainer for the many months ahead.

  The challenge on selection was no longer purely physical. We also had to learn to read a map. If you couldn’t work out the best route from A to B in the quickest time, it didn’t matter how fast you could run. A lot of the recruits, if not all, had been on trekking expeditions before. I didn’t even know which way to hold a map let alone relate contour lines to terrain or read a compass. How foolish of me to think the worst was over after the assault course.

  The journey down to Wales usually took around five hours, sometimes more, depending on the traffic. Some of the lads would sleep straight through but I couldn’t. I would look out of the window at the cars, my weapon squeezed between my knees. Becky and I always sat separately and there would always be an empty seat next to me until the coach was full.

  On the way down, we would pick up ‘C’ squadron in Bramley, ‘E’ Squadron would already be in the Brecon Beacons as they were based in Wales. The bus would stop a mile away from our basha area, our camp at the bottom of a steep hill. Staff would bang on the sides of the vehicle to shake us ba
ck to reality. It was cruel. Drowsy and with our eyes still adjusting to the darkness, we got out as quickly as possible into the cold. Blindly we’d search through the Bergens being thrown out by the lads in front. The one labelled ‘Ahmed’ would always be last.

  The first time I tried to put the Bergen on my back, it was too heavy to sling over my shoulder and when I did eventually get it on, I couldn’t reach down and pick up my weapon laid over my right boot. This isn’t working, I thought. If I wriggled the tips of my fingers forward to touch the weapon, the Bergen slid towards my head. How the hell was I going to do the training if I couldn’t even carry the Bergen?

  By the time I had mastered it and stood up, everyone had disappeared, including the bus. I looked around in a panic and then just caught a head torch disappear around the corner into the darkness. Quickly I moved forward, feeling a blunt pain shoot down the back of my knees. But I had to keep going otherwise I’d lose them.

  It took thirty long minutes to get where the rest of the recruits had already bashered up (set up shelter) and were getting ready to sleep. I dropped my Bergen and pulled out the poncho. Using a pen torch as an aid, I spread the sheet of waterproof flat out on the ground, suspended its corners around a tree trunk with paracord and elastic bungees, then stabbed a couple of metal pegs into the ground to hold it down.

  ‘Ahmed.’ Digsby approached me holding a notebook. ‘You’re on stag at zero three hundred hours.’

  I nodded and crawled into my sleeping bag under the poncho. Standing guard, keeping a watch for the enemy, in the middle of the night, meant no sleep. By the time you close your eyes it’s time to get up, then after the watch, when you’re about to doze off, its reveille, a signal to get up and start training. I curled up like an embryo in the sleeping bag. It was so thin, I could feel the uneven frosty ground pressing against my skin. A twig poked the side of my stomach but I was too tired to pull it out and didn’t want to risk the poncho collapsing on top of me. The wildlife kept me awake and the cold wouldn’t leave my bones. I was anxious about the training. All I knew was that we had an eight-mile run before breakfast, in army boots.

  I slept with my weapon by my side. We had to take it everywhere with us no matter what we were doing, be it sleeping, toilet or training. If we were caught without it, we were off the course.

  I said my prayers to Allah, asking for strength to get me through the training and tried to sleep. The woods were still. I could hear snoring. My eyelids became heavy and finally I was drifting off.

  ‘Ahmed.’

  I felt a kick in the ribs, then heard a recruit crunch off back to his sleeping bag. I opened my eyes and suddenly realised where I was and that it must be my turn for stag. Frantically, I scrambled out of my sleeping bag, the sharp air shaking off my drowsiness, then headed to the mouth of the woods. It was freezing. I was breathing puffy clouds. I rubbed my hands and began to pace up and down, keeping guard of the basha area. The hour went very slowly. I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was boring and I had to stay awake.

  I thought back to our colonel. He was a man of honour and he treated the officers and privates at the barracks alike. The recruits were a mixture of bankers, lawyers and surgeons, but this meant nothing to him – we were all equal and classless and all had a job to do. Also, I liked that the regiment’s success was not measured on financial profit, as success is in the corporate world, nor did the recruits get worked up about how much someone else was being paid. People’s mindsets here were focused on the bigger picture, the team spirit created by the bond of our uniforms.

  Daylight broke, the birds twittered in the trees and I headed back to my sleeping bag after stag. My battle with the cold continued to keep me awake. The lads started rustling around me, heading to the woods for a wee. It was 5 a.m. I unzipped the sleeping bag and struggled out, throwing the poncho to one side, which had collapsed on top of me.

  The training began with the eight-mile run. My feet were still recovering from the training back at the barracks, the skin on the back of my heels raw.

  I arrived last and joined the recruits who were sorting their breakfast out. I must eat, I told myself, rummaging through my Bergen. I had been given pork rations for breakfast but wasn’t allowed to eat them because of my religion. I’d had endless debates with friends in the past who would argue that pigs were in fact very clean animals and that by eating their own waste they should be seen as inherently self-contained and tidy. There was also the view that eating pork was only forbidden in Islam because pigs were difficult to raise in hot countries as they needed to drink a lot of water to survive. Then there was Jinnah, the Muslim idol who fought for Pakistan’s independence in 1947, who ate pork and drank alcohol. I once made the grave mistake of raising Jinnah with Dad as well as questioning whether Muslims would be allowed to have heart transplants from pigs if it was a matter of life and death. He looked away, trying to think of an answer, but I never got one.

  I watched the recruits from under a tree as I forced a cheese and onion sandwich down. I’d sneaked it into my Bergen back at the barracks when we were packing for the training. It was squashed because I had stupidly put it at the bottom and piled everything on top. It tasted sickly from the mayo and I could feel it heaving back up. I tried to keep it down by swigging cold water from my flask, which dribbled down my neck, sending a chill all over. I could taste the strong onions on my tongue mushed into the slimy texture. Why don’t I go and join them out there? They won’t tell the staff I was eating a sandwich instead of my pork sausage breakfast ration. But I was scared in case one of them did. I didn’t want to stand out or give them an excuse to get rid of me. I watched them light up the hexi burners and start cooking. I had never been on the hills, never been in the Girl Guides or slept outside as a kid. This whole world was alien to me. Everything was a struggle and I didn’t know how I was going to get through the morning, let alone the weekend.

  Parade was at 6.55 a.m. for a 7 a.m. start. It was 6.50 a.m. and I was still stuffing my sleeping bag in my Bergen. I fought back the tears. Everything fitted fine before leaving the barracks. Becky offered to help but had to leave or else she too would get in trouble. I finally arrived on parade three minutes late and stood to attention at the back, wriggling my toes around in my soggy socks.

  ‘Ahmed, what time is parade?’ Briggs asked.

  ‘6.55, sir.’ I replied quietly.

  ‘And what time is it now?’

  ‘6.58, sir.’

  He didn’t have to say any more, it was a given. I dropped to my hands and knees, with the Bergen still on my back, and started the press-ups with everyone around, still stood to attention. The shooting pains were back and my feet were stinging.

  ‘What do you call them?!’ Briggs screamed. ‘Take your fat arse and start running and don’t stop till I tell you.’

  I looked up at him from the press-up position, not because he said I had a fat arse. I followed his finger over to some foggy hills in the distance then got up and ran after it, kicking up clumps of sheep manure on the way. Before I knew it, the rest of the recruits were behind me and then overtaking.

  We were all now heading to our first rendezvous point (RV) across the mountainous terrain to practise using a compass and reading a map. I’d never seen an Ordnance Survey map before, never held a compass and had no idea how to use them. My pace of learning was much slower than the rest of them, who had trained in the outdoors for many years.

  Later we navigated with a map and grid references. We crossed a number of checkpoints, at each of which we were given another six-figure grid reference to memorise and get to. There was no knowing when the last checkpoint would be. Sometimes the terrain would be marshy and come up to my waist, at which point I’d get worried that if I carried on it would swallow me up like quicksand and nobody would ever find me again. The river crossing was pretty lethal, too, especially if you dropped your Bergen in the water – you might as well go home if that happened.

  My shoulders burned the first t
ime I took off the Bergen. I could feel the rawness tingling beneath the cold material from the straps rubbing over a 48-hour period. At first I tried sticking plasters on my shoulders, but they just peeled off within seconds. Then I tried bandaging my shoulders up, which made me look like the Michelin man and I was unable to move my arms around. Finally, I had no choice but to try to cushion the straps in some way; a couple of sanitary towels felt-tipped in green ink and stuck on the inside of the straps did the trick.

  One thing I didn’t consider on the hills was the strong wind. It scared the hell out of me when I walked along the edges of mountains and cliffs. I worried that the wind would tilt my Bergen the wrong way, and being so light I would follow it down into a valley.

  By the end of the weekend, I was a broken woman. The journey back to London was quiet in the coach; we were all too exhausted to speak. Not to mention we had a lot to do when we got back, including ‘sort our shit out’, as Briggs put it. That meant cleaning our weapons, which took ages. My weapon always seemed to be the muddiest, because I had used it as a walking stick when my legs were about to give way going up a mountain, but never in front of a trainer.

  Our coach driver looked like Les Dawson with a white shirt pulled over his big belly. He had faded green tattoos on both arms and would stand outside his vehicle watching the muddy uniforms walking towards him, then refuse us entry until we changed into dry kit.

  ‘Ahmed! Both your legs are the same size as one of my six-year-old daughter’s!’ Briggs shouted as we got changed by the motorway lay-by. A cackle of laughter followed from the other trainers but I wasn’t fazed, just relieved he didn’t comment on my hairy legs. The coach would carry a terrible whiff from the lads. I don’t know what they put in these ration packs but these guys stank.

  I stared out of the window at traffic passing on the motorway and let my mind wander because I couldn’t sleep. Training with the lads wasn’t easy, especially the Welsh ones from ‘E’ Squadron. Their faces blurred into one another except for one in particular who stuck in my head. I didn’t know his name but he was tall, had a freckled nose and such a strong Welsh accent I could hardly understand him. Every time the training staff was around, he would make condescending remarks about me, a bit like Adele had on female selection.