Anatomy of a Soldier

by Harry Parker

  ‘No? You want to see me try and take a piss? That pipe does it for me now.’ Tom smiled and sniffed.

  ‘They can do amazing things these days, Tom. And if anyone can get over this, it’s you. You’re the toughest bloke I know.’

  ‘I don’t feel particularly tough at the moment.’ He put me back with the others on a bedside table and wiped his eyes. He laughed. ‘Look at the state of me: not particularly brave.’

  ‘A cry will do you good,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t show any weakness in here. I need to set an example, but it’s such hard work.’ He wiped his eyes again.

  ‘I know, mate, you always were a stubborn bastard.’

  He stayed for a bit longer. Before leaving, he promised his friend they’d be out dancing together before he knew it. Tom didn’t believe him, but laughed. ‘That’s something that would sell tickets,’ he said.

  I stayed on the cupboard beside his bed for a while. A glass of water was put on me and left a ring. Tom never looked at me again, he just lay in the bed and measured time by the daily ward round, the yellow drugs dripping into him and the visiting hours after lunch.

  *

  They took Tom away in a wheelchair. His brother packed up all the things that had accumulated around his bed. He picked me up and looked at them dancing together in me then dropped me in a cardboard box with hundreds of letters and cards.

  23

  BA5799 pulled me out of the small pouch attached to the front of his body armour where I was kept next to a compass and a notepad. He was kneeling just off a path next to green bushes and reeds and his camouflage merged into the mottled shade. A field stretched out to his left, its young wheat a block of green before a strip of wall pink in the heat.

  He looked down, deciphered the information on me instinctively and fixed his position.

  I’m an aerial photograph taken from a satellite, depicting a network of ditches and walls. Most of me is covered in fields crossed with roads and bridges over blue rivers and paths that ghost into the desert. I show the shadows of walls and compounds. Each building has a round dot imposed over it and labelled with an alphanumerical indicator. A grid of northings and eastings is laid over all of it and each kilometre counts up and across me.

  He pushed me back down into the pouch, pressed a button and reported our location. He turned to the interpreter and asked if he was okay. The man reclined beside the path, his hands behind his head, and chewed a piece of grass. He grinned.

  BA5799’s men were waiting for him along the track and he beckoned to them. He stepped over the path and headed diagonally across the field, the crop scrubbing against his boots. He looked at the dried mud through the young leaves and tried to guess what was below the surface.

  It’s always someone else, he thought. It never happens to you. But he watched his boots press onto the ground and was scared. It was affecting him more often, as patrolling this land became routine. It held him now, each step bringing him closer – increasing the odds – until he’d taken one too many and he trod on the inevitable. But he couldn’t show any sign of it, couldn’t think about odds and chance. His men were following him and he spun around and watched them crossing the field.

  His radio emitted in his ear and the distraction was gone as he began to work out the best route into the village.

  It could never happen to him.

  He led his platoon down a track that cut through the first sparse compounds of the village, past windowless walls that each contained a family unit. A young man was standing on the next corner. He was peering around a wall with his back to us. BA5799 swept his arm down and the men behind him moved into cover. When he called hello in the local language, the man spun around in surprise. He was backing away so BA5799 pushed his rifle behind him on its sling.

  ‘Peace be upon you,’ he said awkwardly. And then he waved the interpreter up and they walked towards the young man.

  ‘Tell him we want to talk to him,’ he said.

  The young man’s eyes were heavy with mistrust. He wore a long green shirt under a sleeveless cream jacket and dirty trainers that were too big for him.

  ‘Ask him to open his jacket so we can check he’s not armed,’ BA5799 said to the interpreter.

  The man slowly parted the jacket and pulled up his long shirt, exposing his smooth stomach above loose trousers tied with a drawstring. He had done this many times before.

  BA5799 smiled and asked him his name and where he was from, then took the notepad from beside me and started to write.

  ‘He says his name is Mohammad,’ the interpreter said. ‘He says he lives some way from Nalay.’

  The young man flicked his head to indicate a direction.

  ‘Ask why he is north of Nalay,’ BA5799 said.

  ‘He is helping service the ditches for Kushan Hhan. He helps them at this time of year.’

  ‘I’ve heard of Kushan Hhan. He’s one of the Nalay elders. Find out if he’s still opening the school.’

  The interpreter spoke to the young man for a long time and became agitated.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ BA5799 interrupted.

  ‘He claims not to know much of Kushan Hhan or his business. But I do not believe him.’

  BA5799 felt for the young man. His furry top lip showed his age. He imagined him willing it to sprout into a proper beard so he could be respected.

  ‘This person is not good,’ the interpreter told BA5799, as the young man averted his eyes. ‘He is lying. Look at his shoes. He is dressed like a terrorist.’

  The young man shifted and then said something.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He says he needs to go back to work. I do not think there is any work. Only not good work.’

  So BA5799 called up two of his men and they searched the young man. He had a phone in a pocket and they said they had to take it from him. They put it in a plastic bag and gave him a slip of paper as a receipt with instructions on how to claim compensation.

  The young man glanced at the paper. It meant nothing to him and he was frightened. They let him go and he walked away, turning back and staring at the soldiers. The interpreter was annoyed and said they should have arrested him but BA5799 told him that a pair of trainers, a phone and a bit of attitude was not enough evidence; they would send the phone in for forensics.

  He pulled me out and wrote with a permanent marker on my laminated surface. Many traces of ink were still on me: report lines, boundaries, named areas of interest and the codes of past operations, with new information written over them. He slotted me back next to the notepad and walked farther into the village.

  BA5799’s men spread out around the crossroads. They stood and knelt in pairs by oil barrels or in doorways, slipping into shadows and covering the market. The local people watched them. Some went about their business as if his men weren’t there, reaching under awnings to inspect green-blue melons or buying eggs from piled trays.

  Under the awnings, shopkeepers crouched on mats beside their goods. Farm tools were stacked behind them and bags of crisps hung from wooden posts above piles of sweets, spices and cans of fruit. They grew cautious as BA5799 walked forward, his antenna and the following interpreter marking him as the leader.

  BA5799 looked at his watch and started talking to them. Some ignored him but others spoke. One gesticulated up the road and complained about the craters. When would they be fixed? The produce could not get through. And BA5799 told the interpreter to say they planned to do it soon. Others smiled and joked and a few said that bombs from his planes had burnt their crops. BA5799 told them to come to the base for compensation, but they said it was too dangerous to be seen going there.

  Children gathered in an alley, having heard the foreigners had come. They sniggered and hid behind one another. A little girl waddled up to a crouching soldier and asked, wide-eyed, for food. She motioned to her mouth. He said he couldn’t help but she didn’t understand and kept begging. Another soldier smiled and took out his camera. The children
lined up for a picture and looked serious, then craned over each other to see as he turned the digital display towards them. When they saw themselves they ran away laughing.

  BA5799 needed information about the balance of influence. He asked them about the insurgents, but they all replied there were none here; they were good people and wanted a peaceful country. He asked them if they’d seen any men digging mines into the roads near the village, but they said they knew nothing about it.

  He took me out and noted something down after one conversation. And then the atmosphere changed and no one was willing to talk any more. BA5799 looked up the road and saw a group of men standing around a motorbike, watching. He thought the young man from earlier was among them but couldn’t be sure. Those in the market drifted away and a shopkeeper began to lift his produce inside, then rolled up his sunshade.

  BA5799 looked at his watch and decided it was time to move on. His men emerged from their cover and followed him out of the village. He wanted to get a strip of trees between his platoon and the village, so he took me out and traced his finger across my surface to work out the safest route back. He sent a message to the camp reporting his location and intentions. In the operations room, a small blue sticker labelled B30 was moved across a map pinned to the wall. That map was identical to me.

  *

  They walked back to the patrol base that was marked near my centre in blue. He used a metal detector to lead them over a bridge and then they cut across a field. He looked at me once more to report his location but soon he could see the camp and didn’t need me any more.

  When one of his men said he’d seen movement behind us, BA5799 commanded a team to go static and protect the rest of the platoon. He stayed with them, focusing on a motorbike in the distance before we collapsed back to safety.

  When they were all back in the camp, BA5799 removed his helmet and sighed. He was hot and thirsty and went to get some water, where he met a man who asked him how it had gone. He took me out and described the patrol, hovering a pen over my grid lines, and talked about the suspicious young man, the atmospherics in the market, and how they’d been followed by a motorbike as they returned.

  And then the camp was attacked.

  ‘Deep joy,’ BA5799 said, put me away in my pouch and jogged for cover.

  24

  My warps were strung vertically on a loom. Three women worked on me. They hooked out my upright threads and knotted dyed wool to them, cutting away the loose ends with a flick of a knife. They threaded weft horizontally to hold me together and banged me down with a heavy comb to compact my knots. I slowly grew up from the ground.

  Sometimes the women talked but for most of the day they were silent. They checked a design on the wall, matching red, orange, ivory and deep blue to its tiny squares and knotting the colours into me.

  My deep crimson pattern of encircling leaves and stepped diagonals piled up until, on the forty-second day, I was finished.

  My fringe was cut from the loom and the women were paid. I was taken across the road, placed in a drum and spun so wooden battens beat me and settled my pile. I was dragged out and men pulled me flat and I was shorn with electric clippers that cut my threads short and sharpened my pattern. A hand checked the smoothness of my soft surface and two boys laid me out on the floor, soaked me and pushed brooms across me. Soap foamed through me and my colours shone.

  I was hung and dried. Two weeks later I was folded, covered in plastic and stacked with others on the back of a truck. I was driven from the village and into the green valleys, through mountains along a road that clung to the rock and weaved a course down the steep spurs and finally onto flat plains. The truck stopped in a city that night and the driver sat with others by a fire and drank. And then we drove on west across a desert, past villages and camel trains, burnt tanks rusted and scrawled with graffiti and convoys of white lorries.

  The road became congested and the traffic shimmered around us as we crept forward. In a town crowds thronged around administrative buildings and queued in lines that blocked the street. Some had purple dye on their right index fingers and were excited.

  We then arrived in a large city, where I was unloaded into a warehouse and waited.

  *

  Weeks later, a man pulled me from the stack and I flopped on the concrete floor, spiralling dust up into the air. He pulled out others and threw them down next to me. Another man knelt down and ran the flat of his hand over me. He studied the others and then he chose me. They discussed whether payment should be made in the new currency or dollars.

  I was folded and taken out by one of the men. He put me on a cart with rubber tyres and a pony pulled us out of the city into the fields. We stopped by a high, long compound wall that shadowed the road. The driver stepped down from the cart and knocked on a tall, black gate. Kushan Hhan opened the door and greeted him and came out onto the road to look at me. He was pleased and put his arm around the man in thanks.

  He called over two boys who were out in the field, running as fast as they could, trying to make a kite fly, and laughing.

  ‘Faridun, this is Noor Hhan,’ Kushan Hhan said, introducing the driver. ‘We are working together on a new venture.’ He put an arm on the boy’s shoulder and pointed at me. ‘Look what he has given me.’

  ‘It is wonderful, Father,’ Faridun said.

  ‘It is from the north,’ the driver said. ‘It is a very fine carpet.’

  ‘My father says the best carpets are from there,’ the other boy said.

  ‘It is a generous gift,’ Kushan Hhan said. ‘Now, Faridun, can you and Latif take it into the house, please? I need to speak with Noor Hhan.’

  ‘He is a handsome boy, Kushan,’ the driver said as the boys lifted me up.

  ‘He should be working, not playing with his friends. He’s nearly a man.’

  They watched the boys take me through the gate into a courtyard. It was an oasis of green and colourful flowers, many the same red as me. Water trickled down a channel and clear white stone paths cut between pergolas and wooden frames of lush vines. Tulips and herbs scented the cool air. The boys stepped up onto a veranda and into a clean painted room and put me down on the floor.

  ‘Where do you think?’ Latif said, pulling me along by a corner. ‘Here?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Faridun said. ‘Mother will know where to put it.’ He had his hands on his hips and looked down at me. There were two other carpets in the room around a small gas stove and a few bowls. To one side was a low table and cushions. ‘Shall we fly the kite again? We could use my new bike to get more speed.’

  ‘I want to try first.’

  ‘It was my idea and it is my bike,’ Faridun said and ran out.

  *

  The family had meals together, sprawled on me and the cushions around the room. Some of them slept on me and they all walked on me. The children learnt to crawl and took their first steps across me. Sometimes the family celebrated and the men danced to music, their bare feet jumping up and down on me as they leapt in a circle and clapped.

  I stayed in that room and every few months I was taken into the garden, held up while the dust was thumped from me and then returned to the endless pattern of daily existence as the family revolved around the house. Rains came and the garden cycled through the seasons outside.

  A few times a year, men gathered around me to discuss the land and irrigation and what crops to grow, to argue about the government and the governor. Kushan Hhan led the debates. He sat on me and tea was brought out for his guests as they talked.

  One summer, gunfire and explosions sounded in the distance. When the men now met they talked about the arrival of the foreign soldiers and their helicopters. They argued over the sale of a compound at the edge of the village where they had erected new watchtowers and walls. Their voices deepened as they discussed the shadow of the old government and the men who came from the mountains to fight the soldiers.

  The family noticed the changes too. Whenever gunfire could be heard crack
ling in the distance they hid in the corner of the room. But this soon became normal: now they listened to work out how far away the danger was and often continued what they were doing.

  Kushan Hhan’s meetings grew strained and he worked hard to lead the men through the suddenly painful discussions. The fair division of water into the ditches of their fields was no longer the most important subject. Now the balance of power across the land had split them. Many blamed the foreigners and told Kushan Hhan that everything had been fine before they came, so why were they here? And what of the constant explosions?

  Kushan Hhan urged them to stay calm about this foreign presence: it was for the good of the country. But some said that a good country would do nothing and that the fighting was ruining them, scorching their fields and stopping trade. He told them that the foreign soldiers needed time to bring peace.

  That same night, Kushan Hhan sat cross-legged on me with his family all around him and watched Faridun eat his soup. He was now old enough to fight, to be caught up in it, and Kushan Hhan prayed he was leading his people in the right direction.

  *

  One afternoon after the next harvest, when the days were getting hotter, Faridun came home limping and with a bloody lip. Kushan Hhan brought him over and they sat down on me.

  ‘What happened, my son?’ he said.

  ‘There was a checkpoint on the way back – I could not avoid it,’ Faridun said. ‘I am sorry, Father. They took your fertiliser.’

  ‘Was it a government checkpoint? Did the soldiers hurt you?’

  ‘It was some of Hassan’s men, I think. One of them was from the mountains.’ He licked his swollen lip and looked down at his cut ankle. ‘Latif was with them.’

  ‘Aadela,’ Kushan Hhan called into the next room, ‘can you bring some water and ointment please? Faridun is hurt.’

  ‘Why, what happened?’ she said, coming in. ‘What have you done now, Faridun?’