‘I shall take care of him.’ And Sohail smacked his fist into his hand.
I grinned at him. I knew he would rally. But my elation died as I watched him stand and move to the window, his head cocked to one side.
‘We may not be able to wait for tonight. Sunno!’
I heard the sound of a mullah on the loudspeaker from the mosque, his voice fanatical, rising in a crescendo to a screech at the end of every few sentences.
‘The mullahs in villages like this are masters at inciting the people,’ he said.
It sounded ominous in the sudden quiet of our dingy quarters and I could barely hear my own voice as I asked, ‘What’s he saying?’
‘Kill the infidels, kill Kumar’s son and purify the village of evil. Allah will be pleased with such devotion … He will bless this jihad …’ Then Sohail stopped, listening again. ‘There are other matters like that,’ was all he said then. I knew there was more he didn’t want to say. I looked over at Jasper. He was watching me, his mouth tightened.
‘How’s your arm feel, Jas?’ I went over to check and lifted the blanket that had been wrapped around him. I didn’t know what to look for but at least no blood was showing through the bandages. Then I stopped in surprise.
‘Jas! I thought the only jewellery you wore was your mum’s cross.’
He fingered it where it lay in the gap where his shirt was half off. ‘She let me wear it because I missed Dad so much. They’d had identical ones. Some teenage exchange they did years ago.’
I winked at him. ‘Then where did you get the wedding ring, Jas?’ It was strange I hadn’t noticed it before.
‘Wedding ring?’ His surprise was convincing. He looked at his hands, and there it was, on his injured one. It was obvious he hadn’t put it on himself.
‘I don’t know.’ He took it off and rubbed it, turning it over. He glanced on the inside and drew in a quick breath.
‘What is it?’ I was straining to see, and soundlessly he handed it over. I read the inscription inside: Joe, love Marie. I looked at him, eyebrows up. ‘So?’
‘It’s my father’s wedding ring,’ he said flatly. ‘One of the men here must have found it. I don’t think I can stand it—a guy wearing Dad’s ring all this time.’
I should have heeded the desolate tone in his voice but I was too excited by the possibilities. ‘Don’t you think it would be a good idea to meet the person? It must have been someone who came with the hakim, if not the hakim himself. I wonder why he would do it?’
‘Thought I’d die, I suppose.’
‘Or knew you were Western, and thought you might like it. They’d know the words were English maybe.’
‘Jaime, stop it! I can’t see the hakim. What would I ask? Oh, where did you find my father’s finger? Were there any other parts of his body lying around? Did you think to bury them?’ The old sarcasm and anger in his voice shocked me into silence, but only for a moment.
‘Jas, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’ But the ring had started a wild hope in my heart. ‘Just think, Jas. Whoever did that must be friendly. And we need a friend in this place. We might be able to bribe him to help us.’
Sohail watched us both. Then he spoke. It was the only time he ever interfered in a conversation between Jasper and myself. ‘She is right, my friend.’
Jasper kept silent. I could tell he was wrestling with his emotions, but I knew how difficult it is to fight feelings with more feelings.
‘Jas? You know something changed for you the other night. Just hang on to that, whether you feel it or not.’
Sohail said as if quoting a poem,
‘Let me forget the war and cruelty inside myself …
Only you can restore what You have broken;
help my broken head. I’m not asking for sweet pistachio candy,
but Your everlasting love.’
‘That’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘Did you write it?’
He smiled with his hand over his heart. ‘Nay, this is from our famous poet, Rumi.’
Jasper sighed heavily, as though blowing away his negative thoughts and found it hard work. ‘Okay. How do you think we could get the hakim back in?’
It was Liana who had the idea. ‘Act sick. You could call for the guard, Sohail?’
Sohail seemed only too pleased to have some plan of action. Sonya was at my elbow as I dripped water over Jasper to make him look sweaty.
‘What if it doesn’t work?’ she asked. ‘What if they do not truly care about Jasper and kill him?’
Jasper answered her. ‘We have to try.’
Then Sohail called to the guard to bring the hakim quickly. Vacant Eyes took one look through the dirty window at Jasper tossing and moaning on the bed and promptly disappeared. It looked as if they wanted Jasper alive, after all.
Sohail gave me the international thumbs up and I grinned. Afghans seem to thrive on action and danger; Sohail was almost glowing. The door opened then and Jasper kept the act up in case the guard came in too. Sohail’s job was to divert him, but just then a guttural voice from the ground barked out an order and Vacant Eyes quickly locked the door and left.
What happened then was another frozen-in-time moment when you can remember everything: people’s expressions, how they stood, what they said. Sohail’s mouth dropped open when he turned and saw who had come in the door. Liana and I watched, equally astounded. Sonya must have wondered why we looked so shell-shocked.
The man set down his bag and leaned over the bed where Jasper had his eyes shut, still moaning. The man felt Jasper’s vital points, and spoke at the same time. ‘Son, I thought you’d be all right.’ No one could have mistaken the anguish in that voice.
Sonya was glancing around, bewildered, just as Jasper instantly grew rigid on the bed. His eyes flew open, the disbelief in them making him seem crazed. For some seconds no one spoke.
‘Are you real?’ Jasper finally whispered. ‘Not a hallucination?’
‘Not a hallucination.’ The man smiled, and bit his lip the way I’ve seen Dad do to keep his face from folding up.
Suddenly Jasper flung himself into the arms of the older man. ‘I thought you were dead. They told me your van had hit a mine.’
How could I describe what that moment was like? Sonya began to catch on because her eyes watered like mine and Liana’s. Sohail’s whole stance was that of a man standing for a master.
After a while, Jasper let himself be lowered onto the bed. ‘I’d just got used to it. And finally when I accepted that you’d gone, I got you back.’
He laughed, but it was the hysterical laugh of the overwrought, and Joe Pembley glanced quickly at the door.
‘Son, you’ll need to quieten down. I’m a prisoner here, like you, and the only reason I’m alive is because I’m a doctor. These fighters will never kill a doctor.’
‘How did you escape the landmine? Or was that only a lie to keep me quiet?’
‘There was a bomb blast—the van I was travelling in swerved off the road. I fell out. Then it did hit a mine. That’s why you would have been told I was dead. Parts of the van were found. I was wounded, unconscious, and militants from the fort found me. I’ve been here ever since. This place is a fortress. No one else knows I’m here, and it’s impossible to escape.’
‘So why do they want me alive?’
‘The guard saw the cross. He’s seen mine. He’s not educated, so, in his logic, if one man has a thing around his neck and he’s a doctor, and another man has the same thing around his neck, he’s a doctor too. Welcome to the fraternity, son.’
Dr Pembley looked around at all of us then. Introductions were made for Sonya. He remembered me and Liana from school functions. And when he clasped Sohail in a hug, it was obvious there was a special bond between them.
‘The doctor work is elementary here.’ Dr Pembley was talking to Jasper again. ‘Cutting o
ut bullets, stitching, bandaging. I could teach you. It’ll be the only way you will survive.’ He turned to Sohail then, and said, ‘Sorry’ so softly, but I caught it. I knew why he said it — for Sohail there was no such hope.
Sohail spoke then. ‘The girls?’
Jasper’s father didn’t answer straight away, but he looked steadily at Sohail for some moments before he did. ‘They won’t kill them, not yet.’ Sohail shuddered—from fear on our behalf, or anger, I couldn’t tell. ‘Not all the men here are crazy,’ Mr Pembley added. ‘Some were forced to join to save their families. We can pray the girls are treated kindly.’
‘We have a plan, Dad. It mightn’t work, but at least we could try. Jaime thinks there might be an underground passage leading to a well and maybe to the outside. Like at Rohtas Fort.’
Dr Pembley considered it. ‘Yeah, I suppose it is possible. Many old forts had a well system built into them in the beginning so they’d be safe during a siege. They’ve been forgotten about now, I should think.’
‘That’s what we’re counting on, Dr Pembley,’ I broke in. ‘If no one knows, then they won’t think to look for us there.’
‘Dad?’ Jasper leaned forward. ‘Can you get back in here, later on? Tonight—on pretence of checking me out again, and we’ll try it? Sohail found what might be part of a passage.’
‘I suppose so.’ Dr Pembley ran his fingers through his thinning hair. ‘Seeing you again gives me new hope. Perhaps it’ll work, perhaps not, but anything will be better than sitting around watching what happens to you kids.’
In a few more minutes, Vacant Eyes arrived to take Jasper’s father away. No doubt he was congratulating himself on finding another healer for he actually swaggered as if Jasper’s recovery was all his doing.
We tried to plan what could happen if this or that eventuated. I was scared—only a fool wouldn’t have been—but it was exciting too. Liana’s eyes shone at the miracle of Mr Pembley’s appearance. Sohail had the buoyed-up look of a leopard before a hunt; Jasper was itching to get on with it too. Even Sonya entered into the planning, her spirits reviving.
Sohail did give us one sobering thought. ‘You realise that if we are caught doing this, it will be worse than if we did not. We will be punished twice over.’
None of us said anything, just stared at him until he smiled.
‘Accha, it is good. Only I had to warn you. Now we are ready.’
27
Jaime
At the time of afternoon prayers, we were woken abruptly from our dozing by the door being dragged open. Since Jasper’s breakfast, we’d had nothing else to eat and my head felt like a spinning blade on a helicopter. My little sister, Elly, would have complained of malnutrition long before. Jasper struggled to sit up when he saw his father coming through the door. Just before he reached Jasper’s bed, he turned and spoke to Vacant Eyes. I don’t know what he said but the guard promptly left and locked the door.
‘How did you manage that, Dr Pembley?’ I asked.
He smiled ruefully. ‘It’s not who you know, but whose life you’ve saved that matters in a place like this. That man tries to be grateful—most of the time. Now,’ his tone became brisk, ‘you must get yourselves together. Quickly. Here’s a shirt for you, son, and put the vest on again. We can’t wait for tonight. There’s movement in the fort that doesn’t include your wellbeing. Especially not Sohail’s.’
He took out some Afghan sweets. ‘Eat these. They’ll raise your blood sugar, if nothing else.’ I popped the sugar-coated almonds in my mouth. Dad used to buy me those when I was a kid. He called them ‘nuckle’.
‘Good.’ Dr Pembley gave the smile of a doctor about to take blood. ‘Now, where is this passage you think you’ve found?’
Sohail moved to the dimmest corner of the room and pulled up the trap door. We all stared into the black hole that yawned below us. I tried not to think what might be down there—spiders, snakes—just concentrated on the task ahead.
Outside, from the ground, we heard a burst of machine gun fire and Sohail stood up to face Dr Pembley. I could see the worried determination in the doctor’s face and a weary sort of excitement in Sohail’s.
‘Now!’ snapped Jasper’s father. ‘There’s no time to lose. ‘You first, Sohail, then the girls.’ I could see where Jasper got his managing ways from, but just then, I didn’t care. In times like that, someone always takes charge, and the people who do it best seem to know it’s their role.
Jasper staggered off the string bed and his father moved to help him, but Jasper waved him off. ‘Let’s just get down there.’
Sohail had found footholds in the tunnel—old rods of wood that had been set into the mud and stone walls at half-metre intervals—and he directed Sonya and me on how to use them. I tried to squint past him but the shaft plunged into darkness. One false move could mean death, or at least a broken leg.
‘Be careful,’ came Sohail’s whisper, the sound of it an eerie echo in the confined space of the shaft.
By the time Jasper managed with his good arm to drop down into the shaft, I could hear the chilling sound of a mob gone wild. Chanting voices were raised to a feverish shouting that gradually became a roar—‘Allahu Akbar, God is great’—as men called upon God to help them fight. I glanced up as Jasper found the first rung. Then I heard a new sound, like pounding on the walls of the fort. I hung on tighter to a rung. It felt as if the whole tower was shaking.
Dr Pembley pulled the trapdoor shut above him, and the noise from the ground lessened. ‘Hope this looks normal when the guard comes back to get me. That is, if he’s got time to come with all hell breaking loose out there.’ No one answered. I felt like asking about the bagging that was on the floor; there would have been no way to hide the trapdoor again, but negotiating those rungs took up all my energy.
Finding each rung in that heavy blackness wasn’t as easy as it sounded. The air was musty and stale, smelling five hundred years old, and those pieces of wood were so far apart. Each time I let go with one hand to reach down to the next, I was scared I’d miss or that they’d fall. If they were anything like the air I breathed in, they were probably rotten.
Just then, as I reached down, I felt something give slightly. I froze; the wood was loose. Then it broke away from the wall. I still had hold of the one above me, but I screamed as the dislodged rung came right away and fell past Sonya and Sohail. With an ugly thumping noise it thudded onto the bottom of the tunnel. At least there was a bottom, but I didn’t have time to be thankful about that, dangling from one piece of wood that for all I knew might go the same way.
‘What’ll I do?’
Sohail’s voice rose like a genie in a bottle. ‘Find the crevice from where it came. Dig your fingers into it. Our people do not need pieces of wood to climb down mountains—nor do you.’ I knew he only meant to urge me on, but really!
‘You can do it, Jaime.’ That was Jasper. ‘Just pretend you’re a goat and put two hands on the next rung down. Then you’ll have stretching room to find the crevice.’ Gradually, I began to breathe easier as I found another foothold, and felt dumb for panicking. Jasper was free with his advice for a person with only one good arm to use and I wondered how he was managing. Probably using his wounded arm more than he should be.
‘It is not far now to the end,’ Sohail called from the bottom of the shaft and soon we were all there with him, on level ground. Dr Pembley had a small torch and the dank and mouldy walls of the passage glistened in its light. Water must have seeped across the uneven floor because I felt, before I heard, the squelch when I walked.
‘Ugh!’ Sonya grabbed my arm at a scuttling sound. ‘There must be rats.’ I wished she hadn’t said that.
‘I think we’re quite a few metres below ground level.’ Dr Pembley helped us think of better things than which life forms shared the space with us.
‘Now we have to find the well,’ I prompted, ea
ger to be out of that part of the tunnel. A sewer couldn’t have smelt much worse.
‘Single file then,’ Dr Pembley suggested. ‘You first again, Sohail.’
We all kept close to each other; even the thought of disappearing into a side passage in a place like that was terrifying. The floor steadily sloped downwards and, whenever we heard that scurrying sound, we moved closer together—for Sonya’s sake, of course.
‘Hie!’ Sonya suddenly cried out as a rustling and squeaking thing flew at her head.
Jasper swung his good arm up to ward it off. ‘It’s okay—only a bat.’
‘Only!’ the poor girl shrieked. She moved in closer to Jasper as I fell back to walk behind them. I wondered if maybe he was sorry for all the things he’d said about Sonya. He didn’t seem to mind her using him as a protective wall. The old Jasper in the village would have pushed her away.
Sohail called out from ahead. ‘We have found the well!’ He sounded as if he’d just taken the first steps on Mars. We milled around in awe. The ancient underground well stretched out before us, shining in the faint light from an open shaft fifty metres above us.
‘It’s huge,’ I whispered. ‘Like an underground swimming pool.’
The late afternoon sunlight filtered down, making little sparkles of radiance dance like fairies’ wings on the still surface. Looking up, I could see tiny, fluffy clouds gliding across the sky. It wasn’t until I focused on the shouts and automatic fire from the surface that I remembered why we were there.
‘It is very high,’ Sohail said in wonder. ‘We must be a long way underground.’
‘I vote we sit awhile. Can we?’ I directed the question to Dr Pembley, who glanced at the passage behind him, then smiled at me.
‘I don’t see why not. A rest would be good, eh, son?’
Jasper only grunted.
‘We could never climb that high,’ Sonya lamented, gazing up at the small circle of light above. ‘The walls are too smooth.’
‘We shouldn’t have to,’ I explained. ‘There’ll be other passageways that lead to the surface, outside the walls, I hope.’
The War Within Page 14