Burnt Shadows

by Kamila Shamsie

  ‘Why are you so quiet then?’ Raza asked.

  ‘I’m fourteen now,’ Abdullah said, leaning back vertiginously in his plastic chair. ‘My brothers promised when I was fourteen I could go to one of the training camps.’ Abdullah’s surviving brothers were all mujahideen, as had been the brother who died near the start of the war – the rest of his family was in a refugee camp outside Peshawar but Abdullah, at twelve, had left the camp on the back of a truck to Karachi, where a family from his village had taken him in, and the truck driver in whose company he’d travelled to Karachi had said, ‘Come and work with me,’ and so Abdullah had become a gun-runner between Karachi and Peshawar.

  ‘Really? When was your birthday?’ In Abdullah’s company Raza’s Pashto had become increasingly the Pashto of Kandahar, not of Peshawar.

  Abdullah shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know exactly. Some time near the beginning of summer.’ He ripped a piece off his naan and made a complicated gesture that Raza couldn’t make any sense of. ‘Afridi’s going to Peshawar next week. My brother Ismail said I should go with him, and he’ll meet me and take me to the camp. But I don’t know. You said once, there are other ways to fight the Soviets. Maybe I’d be more useful here, with Afridi. You can’t underestimate the importance of the supply line from Karachi.’ He looked imploringly at Raza. ‘Isn’t that so?’

  Raza chewed slowly on a large mouthful of kabab and naan. Ever since he’d started to spend time with Abdullah he’d hankered to travel as the younger boy did, heading all the way north through Pakistan in a truck, lying at night in the open-top container watching the stars, stopping along the way for chai and parathas and kababs, no parents to say what was and wasn’t allowed, just the open road, the shifting landscape, the thrilling knowledge of gun-running.

  Peshawar. Sajjad’s sister and brother-in-law lived there – Raza had last been to visit them years ago with his father. His uncle had promised to take him to the fort on his final day there, but rain had interfered with the plan. ‘Next time you’re here, we’ll go, I promise,’ his uncle had said – but that next time hadn’t come again; the Ashraf siblings of Pakistan gathered each year in Lahore instead, and mentions of return trips to Peshawar remained unfulfilled ideas.

  ‘Raza?’ Abdullah said. ‘I should tell my brother I’m needed to help with the supply line, shouldn’t I?’

  Here it was, Raza thought. The chance to bring the friendship of Raza Hazara and Abdullah to a close in a manner that it deserved, in a burst of adventure and camaraderie.

  He grinned.

  ‘What’s the matter, little boy? Scared?’

  Abdullah stood up, knocking the kabab out of Raza’s hand.

  ‘When was the last time you slit the throat of a Soviet?’

  The men at tables near by turned to watch, and Raza heard someone call out to Afridi.

  ‘Sit down,’ Raza said, reaching across to Abdullah’s plate and taking his kabab. The younger boy had reacted precisely as he’d known he would. He gestured to Afridi to say everything was OK. ‘Next week, you and I will go to Peshawar together.’

  Abdullah stared at him.

  ‘You’ll come to the training camps with me?’

  ‘Why not?’ Raza said. ‘A true Afghan doesn’t waste time with the CIA. He attacks the Soviets directly. I’ve learnt this from you.’

  Abdullah smiled his broad, joyful smile.

  ‘You and me together. The Soviets won’t stand a chance!’ He caught Raza in a wrestling hold and the two boys tumbled, laughing, to the pavement outside, where the men gathered around reached out hands to break their fall.

  ‘Walnut!’ Raza said, sitting up and brushing down his clothes. ‘I could have choked on the kabab.’

  Abdullah rested his weight on his elbows, unmindful of the pavement dirt, and continued smiling at Raza.

  ‘There’ll still be time for our lessons, won’t there? When we’re in the camp. You’ll still teach me?’

  ‘If you teach me how you can wrestle people twice your size and win.’

  Abdullah jumped up and pulled Raza to his feet.

  ‘This will be so much fun.’

  And so it was that a little over a week later, Raza was in a truck heading from Karachi to Peshawar. There was much he learnt in that three-day drive: he learnt that nothing in the manic quality of Karachi traffic could prepare you for truck drivers on narrow mountain roads; he learnt that when you’re in a truck filled with guns you can travel the length of the country without harassment from the military at checkpoints; he learnt to recognise cigarette burns on truckers’ palms and the backs of their hands as badges of their profession – testament to the nights they drove their vehicles and their bodies to the brink of what was possible, burning their own hands to ward off sleep; he learnt not to ask Abdullah or Afridi or anyone at the stops along the way if they knew anything about the ancient rock carvings they passed because he’d only hear that they were the work of infidels; learnt the beauty in bleakness as the mountains compelled him, by the sheer force of their presence, to look beyond barrenness; learnt that the closer he got to the Afghanistan border the less people gave him a second glance; learnt, through absence, the luxuries he’d taken for granted; learnt of the existence of muscles he’d never considered until hour after hour on the thin seat of a speeding truck awoke them, screaming in agony; he learnt most of all that he would miss Abdullah’s friendship.

  The Afghan seemed to have forgotten by now his earlier hesitation about joining the mujahideen – he spoke of it now with such fervour that Raza would find himself getting entirely caught up in the idea of the training and the brotherhood in the vast, thrilling playground of the north where the terrain seemed designed for boys to execute grand adventures. And then he’d remind himself of his plan, clear to him that night in the highway restaurant: to accompany Abdullah to Peshawar and then vanish.

  Really he’d just slip away and make his way to his aunt’s house. But to Abdullah it would seem like a vanishing. He wondered what the Afghan would make of his disappearance – would he suspect a failure of courage on Raza’s part, or would he think that, somewhere in Peshawar, that hub of espionage and jihad, Raza’s CIA affiliation had caught up with him. Raza hoped for the latter. Largely, though, he didn’t think of what would happen once he left Abdullah and Afridi – it saddened him too much. He didn’t know who he’d miss more – Abdullah or Raza Hazara, but he knew that there had been a richness to his life these last weeks which it had never known before.

  There were even moments, contemplating that richness, when he thought maybe he’d go with Abdullah to the camps for a while, maybe there’d be no harm in that. But that idea never lasted long. It was too much now, this sundering of his self, he told himself as explanation for why he couldn’t consider the camps for more than a few moments. Three days in the truck with Abdullah, three days on the road with his Afghan brother, and then enough. He squeezed his eyes tightly at the memory of how his students had lined up on his last day in Sohrab Goth, just before he and Abdullah climbed into the truck, each one of them presenting him with a memento – some handwritten notes in English, a tiny Quran, a pair of woollen socks, a clump of soil from Afghanistan, a decorative porcelain shoe. The voice that told him he was betraying them warred with the voice that said he had given them months of education which they would never have received if not for his charade, and those months were his gift to them, and not a commitment.

  ‘Wake up.’ Abdullah shook him.

  Raza sat up, rubbing the side of his face where it had been resting against the truck door as he slept.

  ‘Are we in Peshawar?’ he said, looking out of the windscreen and seeing only mud and pebbles – a path of mud and pebbles cut into mountains of mud and pebbles with a mud-and-pebble drop to the mud-and-pebble valley beneath. Somehow, it managed to be majestic. If you’re big enough, Raza thought, looking up at the mountains, it doesn’t matter what you’re made of.

  Abdullah laughed and half pushed Raza out of t
he door, on to the side of the road. The dust kicked up by the wheels of the truck was settling slowly, almost regretfully, in the stillness of the early-morning air. Raza swept his arm side to side and felt the stuff of mountains drift on to his skin. This clearly wasn’t Peshawar. Just another bathroom stop.

  He stepped on to the side of the road, untying his shalwar. There was so much nothingness around him. Beyond, he knew, were peaks of white and behind fertile plains but knowing this didn’t stop him from feeling he was on a barren planet where any mythological creature might be lurking – a Japanese tengu would be less out of place here than a boy from Karachi.

  When he turned back towards the truck, he saw Afridi leaning out from the driver’s seat, clasping Abdullah’s hand.

  Then the older man raised a hand in Raza’s direction.

  ‘Look after each other. And don’t fight over that last Soviet.’

  ‘What? No, wait.’

  But his voice was lost beneath the roar of the engine, and then the truck was pulling away, leaving Raza and Abdullah in the middle of a vast emptiness.

  ‘Where did he go?’

  Abdullah looked at him in surprise.

  ‘To Peshawar, of course. My brother’s going to meet us near here. Come, we have to walk a little.’

  His words echoed strangely in the mountain pass. Raza looked down at his feet. There seemed to be heavy weights attached to them. It was clear he couldn’t move.

  ‘Come on, Raza.’

  Raza took a deep breath. It was OK. Somewhere during the few seconds when he’d considered joining Abdullah in the camps he had thought of an idea to get himself out. When he was ready to leave, he’d decided, he’d come to Abdullah with a look of anguish and say he’d just had a phone call from home, his grandfather was dying. This grandfather had been an early and, it now transpired, inspired invention: the sole surviving relative with whom Raza lived, in a little shack near the railway lines, away from other Afghan refugees, who the grandfather could not look at without weeping for the lost mountains of his forefathers.

  Of course he’d have no option but to leave the camp and return to his grandfather, promising to come back as soon as the old man was buried. It was his duty, after all, to lower his grandfather’s body into the ground and close his eyes while the mauvli by the graveside prayed for his soul.

  Yes, Raza thought, considering that plan again. Yes, that would work. And maybe – maybe he’d spend a day or two in the camps first. Listen to the mujahideen stories, learn to fire a rocket-launcher. He moved his feet forward towards Abdullah.

  They walked along the narrowing dirt road through nothingness for what seemed hours, the mountains providing no shadow at this time of day to protect against the harsh sun; then, as they rounded a corner, Abdullah pointed to something rising from the plains beyond – a range of low mountains, stretching on for ever. No – Raza looked again. Tents. A city of refugees.

  ‘It doubles in size every time I come back,’ Abdullah said, his voice quieter, more grave than Raza had ever heard it before.

  They kept walking towards the tent city but, just when Raza thought they were going to start to descend to the plain on which it stood, Abdullah sat down by the side of the path, which had widened again, his back to the tents, and said, ‘Now we wait.’

  ‘I want to see it,’ Raza said, nodding in the direction of the refugee camp. At this distance, all he could tell was that it was vast.

  ‘What do you want to see?’ Abdullah said sharply. ‘People living like animals? These places are the enemies of dignity. It’s good. It’s good that we should live there, like that.’

  ‘How is that good?’

  Abdullah looked over his shoulder towards the camp.

  ‘I was forgetting, Raza.’ He said it as though confessing the worst of crimes. ‘I went to Karachi, I saw its lights and its promise, even all the way at the edges in Sohrab Goth – and I was forgetting this. I haven’t been to the refugee camps in a year. Afridi always offers to stop when we travel up to Peshawar, but I tell him no, I don’t want to see it. I was forgetting why there is no option for me except to join the mujahideen. The boys growing up in the camps, they won’t forget. They’ll look around and know, if this is the better option that must mean our homeland now is the doorway to hell. And we must restore it to Paradise.’ He turned to Raza, his expression as adult as the tone of his voice. ‘Thank you, brother.’

  Raza looked from the camps to Abdullah, and for the first time saw the smallness of his own heart, the total self-absorption.

  ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘Before. When you said there were other things you could do. The supply line. Abdullah, that’s so important. All the boys down there’ – he waved his hands towards the tents – ‘they’ll all go to the training camps. Who’ll be left to look after the supply line? How will Afridi manage without you? The camps are no good without guns for the mujahideen to fight with.’

  Abdullah looked curiously at Raza.

  ‘Why are you saying all this now?’

  ‘I just didn’t see before.’ Raza stepped closer to Abdullah and put a hand on his arm. ‘You have the number of that friend in Peshawar who Afridi is staying with. You should call him as soon as we get to the training camp. Tell Afridi to come back and pick us up.’

  Abdullah looked at Raza as though he didn’t recognise him, but before he could say anything a jeep turned the corner, headed for them, and the boys held their hands against their eyes to guard against the pebbles ricocheting from beneath the wheels.

  ‘They’ve come to take us to the training camp. And, Raza, don’t be such a city boy. There are no phones there.’

  23

  The morning of Raza’s departure from Karachi, Hiroko woke with the dawn azan as was her practice. She loved to hear the echoes of Arabic dropping gently into the courtyard like a lover stealthily entering a home, undaunted by the knowledge that today again his beloved will turn him away – her rejection of him so oft repeated, so tenderly repeated, it becomes an expression of steadfastness equal to his. But that morning, as she listened to – and felt – Sajjad’s gentle snores against her shoulder, some quality of stillness about the house had her lifting her husband’s arm from her waist and slipping out of bed.

  Raza’s bedroom door was open. Nothing unexpected there. It was hot enough now for the need for cross-ventilation to override any desire for privacy that a seventeen-year-old boy might have. Even so, she quickened her pace across the courtyard.

  When she saw the note on his pillow, written in Japanese, she knew something was very wrong. What could he be doing that required him to leave the house before dawn and of which he knew his father would so strongly disapprove that it was necessary to leave it to Hiroko to find a way to deliver the news to him?

  She read the note, and seconds later she was shaking Sajjad awake, translating the Japanese for him without any thought to softening its blow.

  Please don’t worry about me. I have gone away for a few days with my friend, Abdullah. We are going to travel through Pakistan. There is so much of this country I haven’t seen and Abdullah has friends everywhere who will look after us. I will bring back presents for both of you. Soon I will be a serious university student and there will be no time for such holidays, so don’t be angry with me. Raza.

  To her amazement, Sajjad seemed entirely unconcerned. If anything, he was mildly amused.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be a seventeen-year-old boy,’ he said, yawning as he reached for the mole just above her cheekbone, clicking his tongue in irritation when she moved back and wouldn’t let him touch her. ‘You know if he’d told us he was going you would have asked a million questions. Where will you go, who will you stay with, who is Abdullah, what does he do, why don’t you ask him to come over for dinner first, what is his family’s phone number, what are the phone numbers of his friends you’ll be staying with, which clothes are you taking with you –’ He sat up in bed and pulled his wife down next to him. ‘In the m
eantime, you overlook the fact that, for the first time in many years, you and I are living alone together.’ He kissed the mole lightly. ‘It’ll be like when we were first married.’

  ‘You are as silly and irresponsible as your son,’ she said, half-heartedly trying to disengage the arms around her waist. ‘Who is Abdullah?’

  ‘There was some boy called Abdullah at school with him, wasn’t there? There must have been. Abdullah – everyone knows an Abdullah.’

  ‘Everyone knows an Abdullah,’ she echoed, shaking her head in disgust. ‘Who knows what company your son is keeping, where he’s going, and all you can say is everyone knows an Abdullah.’

  ‘Don’t you trust your son?’

  ‘I trust my son. I don’t trust Abdullah.’

  ‘But you don’t know Abdullah.’

  ‘Exactly. So why should I trust him?’

  Sajjad covered his ears with his hands.

  ‘Nagasaki, Dilli, Karachi. No matter where you women grow up as soon as you become mothers you all start using the same logic. If it makes you happy, ask some of his old schoolfriends. Ask Bilal.’ As she stood up briskly, he caught her arm. ‘Not now. It’s just sunrise. You can’t wake people up at this hour.’ But she shook him off with a look he knew there was no point in arguing against.

  Just a few minutes later, she had let herself in through the side gate of Bilal’s house and was tapping on the kitchen window, where she knew Bilal’s mother, Qaisra, would be making her morning cup of tea following the dawn prayers. Over the years, the friendship between their sons had extended into a friendship between the mothers.

  ‘Bilal’s not here,’ Qaisra said, when Hiroko told her why she had come calling so early. ‘He stayed at the hostel overnight, working on some project with two other college boys. Or at least that’s what he told me. God knows what they do now they’re out of school and think they’re grown men.’ She handed Hiroko a cup of tea. ‘But he’s never talked about an Abdullah. And, you know, our boys, they don’t see each other so much any more.’