She dialled Frank’s room. He took a while to answer.
She said, ‘You’re not partying with Mr Khan and friends?’
Frank sounded guarded. ‘I may have made an appearance.’
She laughed. His tone said it all. He hated that scene as much as she did.
‘Give me one good reason,’ she said, ‘why I should ask you round?’
‘You only want me for my Scotch.’ He paused. ‘OK but it’s got to be quick.’ He seemed to be calculating something. ‘I’ve got to be somewhere soon.’
It was a mistake. She realized that at once. Again they were side by side in semi-darkness, sipping whisky and looking out at the night. But the mood was strained.
‘How was your day?’
He looked weary, his eyes dull with tiredness. He shrugged, putting on a show of cheerfulness. ‘Pretty good. He seemed happy enough. No mention of typhoid. How about you?’
‘OK. I got an interview with Khan.’
His eyes widened in surprise. ‘Thought he never gave them.’
‘I was lucky.’
‘Is that right?’ He smiled, looked into his drink. There was something brittle in the smile which she couldn’t quite read. He kept his eyes on his glass.
She waited for a moment but he didn’t speak. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘Just you always were . . . you know, focused.’ He shifted his weight and shrugged back his sleeve to look at his watch. ‘Not a bad thing. I’m just saying.’
She decided to let it go. He was in a prickly mood. No point starting an argument. She sipped her whisky. ‘Any news on the missing supplies?’
‘Not exactly. The warehouse seems tight. We got the same boxes going out as coming in. And the checks on deliveries to the camp seem OK.’
‘Do you think they’ve been tipped off?’
‘Could be that.’ He sighed and ran a finger round the rim of his glass. ‘Or maybe the leak’s further down. Inside the camp.’
She hesitated, thinking about the unloading she’d seen, the boxes being passed down chains of workers and sorted for distribution. It was all very public. Hard to see how a noticeable volume of supplies could disappear without anyone noticing.
‘So what next?’
His mobile phone was buzzing an incoming message. He drank off the last of his whisky and started to get up.
‘I’m sorry. I got to go.’
‘Everything OK?’
‘Sure. Just work. The usual.’ He was on his feet and heading for the door. She stood for a moment after he’d gone, her hand on the door handle, thinking. Something wasn’t right.
She opened the door and headed after him. He’d already disappeared. She turned and doubled back to the emergency stairs. She ran down the short flight to his floor below, confident she could cut him off before he reached his room. As she emerged into the corridor, she saw at once that it wasn’t empty. She pulled back to the stairwell entrance and concealed herself there.
A figure was waiting outside Frank’s room, pressed back into the shadows. A young Pakistani, broad-shouldered and strong. A dark cotton scarf hung in folds at his neck.
At the other end of the corridor, the lift doors swished open. Frank stepped out and walked towards his room. The youth stepped forwards, revealing himself to the corridor light. He had the face of a teenager who was straining to be a man. A light beard was growing unevenly. His skin glistened with a sheen of sweat. Ellen knew him at once. It was the same youth she’d seen at the camp, the young man who’d stood and stared at her when she was talking to Ibrahim.
Frank raised his hand in greeting, opened the door to his room and ushered the young man quickly inside. The door clicked shut. Ellen stood for some moments afterwards, looking down the deserted corridor at the closed door and thinking. She wondered why Frank had been so furtive about meeting the young man and thought how ridiculous it was that she felt hurt.
Chapter 12
The heat woke Jamila. The air round her face was stuffy and stifling. She expected to be in her own room, with its carved cupboard and worn cot, and for a moment, she was confused. There was banging. The crack of hammer on wood. Close in her ear. When she tried to move, her legs and back ached. She grimaced, then opened her eyes and looked around.
She was in a broad tent, a vast stretch of loosely pegged canvas, gaping at the sides. Forty or fifty people were lying in rows, squashed together. Hamid and the other men in the family had used their bodies to build a barrier around the women, penning them into one corner to protect them from strangers. Layla was curled in a ball, one arm encircling her mother, her chador in crumpled folds around her head. None of the women had ever before slept in the same structure as a man who was not their relative and they were all afraid.
Only the young Auntie with the gunshot wound was nowhere to be seen. Late last night, her husband had finally agreed that she might be treated by the doctors. She had looked close to death. Her face was white and bloodless, a fruit sucked dry.
Hamid had argued with the husband, as he decided whether to let her go into the care of the foreigners. If you don’t give permission, Hamid had said, she will die. But if I do, the husband had replied, she may be dishonoured. That was worse.
It was no small thing for a man to put his wife into the hands of strangers and the argument persisted for some time. In the end, a compromise was reached. He accompanied her and, although he couldn’t enter the female medical tent himself, it was agreed that he could sleep at the entrance, to see for himself that no other man shamed her with his presence.
Jamila straightened her crumpled kameez and the chador on her head and shoulders. She climbed over the sleeping bodies and ducked under the tent flap. Outside, the air was warm but fresher. The light was soft with early morning.
At the gate, four officials from the camp were directing two local workers as they set up plastic tables and chairs. The officials looked like local men but they were dressed like Westerners. Their caps had stiff peaks which shaded their eyes. They set out cardboard files and papers on the table and an ink stamp. A rat streaked past them to a nearby ditch and plopped into the water, breaking the greasy sheen on the surface.
Outside the gate, on the no-man’s-land of the open plain, several hundred people saw the officials and their tables and rose wearily to their feet, gathering their belongings into bundles and forming a ragged queue. They were scruffy and exhausted, the washed-up remains of the people they had walked amongst as they came down from the mountains. They stood, waiting, with stooped shoulders. It was a patient group but one without dignity. That is where we’d be now, Jamila thought, if I hadn’t moved quickly.
She turned her back on the waiting crowd and looked down past the tents. The land was barren, left vacant because it was impossible to farm. There were no trees, no shrubs and no rocks or gullies. Nothing gave relief from the heat of the sun. This was not, she thought, as Allah intended His world to be.
The camp was stirring into life. A queue was forming at two standpipes. Water was clattering into buckets and basins and its spray was soaking the surrounding mud. Passing feet churned it to paste. There was a short queue too in front of an oblong shack which was raised on a wooden step and buzzing with flies. The stink told Jamila what that was for. A necessary. Jamila turned away. How can we live here? Such a dirty, exposed place, surrounded by labourers and uneducated men with prying eyes.
She picked her way briskly along the narrow path between the tents, conscious of every unwashed male body which brushed against hers, of every man who raised his eyes to look at her. It was impossible to keep the young girls of the family here. They would be shamed, humiliated. They must demand a secluded place, somewhere separate. Her family had status. They owned land. Surely the foreigners would understand that.
On all sides, people were stirring, emerging from their tents. A young man stooped over a bucket, washing himself. Further on, she passed a standpipe where a boy was pumping water. His friend plunged his h
ead under it, rubbing block soap through his hair. A young boy, skidding around a corner, barged into her, almost knocking her down. She opened her mouth to scold him but he was already gone. She limped towards the queue for the standpipe, waiting for the chance to wash her face and feet and dampen her chador to keep herself cool.
‘Jamila Auntie?’
She turned. The wife of her young cousin, Old Auntie’s granddaughter, was hurrying towards her.
‘I knew . . . I knew it was you.’ She was usually such a shy girl but she opened her arms and embraced Jamila. ‘You are here too. And your family with you? Praise be to God.’
Jamila clung to her. It was such a blessing to see a relative amongst so many strangers, a face from the old order, from home.
‘When did you arrive?’
‘Last night only. And you?’
‘Yesterday morning.’ The girl’s lip trembled. ‘We had to wait for so long in the heat of the sun to get into the camp. Grandmother is so weak. You must come to her.’
Jamila stared. How could Old Auntie have managed such a difficult journey?
‘Old Auntie, here?’
The girl’s eyes brimmed. ‘They carried her. My husband and his brother by turns. Strapped on their backs.’
Jamila struggled to believe it. The girl seemed unable to say more. Instead she took Jamila’s hand and led her through the noise and dirt and chaos, down a long narrow corridor between shelters. Inside, dark shapes were moving against the plastic which was made semi-transparent by the sun.
At the far end, the rows broadened out. They were some distance now from the entrance to the camp, with its medical tents and trucks. Here some larger families had staked out their own compounds, rough patches of mud bordered by partitions of sticks and sacking. Inside each, there were two or three tents.
The girl pulled at one of the partitions and led her inside. A row of children sat, dull-eyed with sleepiness and fatigue, along a plank on the mud. Little Syma was there, her baby brother crawling on the ground beside her, along with some of her cousins. Jamila greeted her but she hung her head and looked away. Beyond them, there was a tent made of plastic sheets stretched over sticks. They ducked inside it.
It was hot. The plastic hugged the heat to itself and made the air in the tent sweat. Jamila stood, her head bent against the low roof, letting her eyes adjust. The tent was filled with a low rasping and with the odour of dirty bodies.
She started to make out shapes. Bedding was strewn across the floor, mats and discarded blankets marking the places where the women of the family had slept, pressed together, side by side. Only one mat was still covered by the long low shape of a body.
Jamila crept forwards and sat beside her. Old Auntie was on her back. Her eyes were closed. Her yellowing skin was stretched tightly across her bones, the chin, nose and cheekbones standing out, unnaturally sharp. Her mouth was half-open. Her lips were dry but tracks of dried moisture glistened at the corners. Jamila lifted her hand and fanned away the flies.
‘Is there a doctor?’
The girl looked embarrassed. She put her mouth to Jamila’s ear to whisper.
‘The fighters say these foreign doctors are murderers. They shame the women and then kill them. Old Auntie refuses.’
‘Can she drink?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Fetch water. Let me try.’
Jamila lifted Old Auntie’s shoulders into her lap. Her bones were frail and fleshless. She had no more weight than a baby. Her head lolled on the stalk of her neck and settled against Jamila’s knee.
When the girl came with the water, Jamila dipped her finger in the cup and ran it around Old Auntie’s mouth and lips, cleaning them. She dipped the end of her chador into the water and let a little drip into Old Auntie’s mouth. Her throat shuddered but she could barely swallow. Her eyes stayed closed. The tent was filled with the rattle of her lungs. It was a pitiful sound, obscuring everything else. Each breath was a hard-won battle.
‘Leave us,’ she said to the girl. ‘Leave us alone for a while.’
Jamila sat quietly, stroking the old lady’s face and listening to her fading struggle for life. She remembered her own grandmother who died when she was just a girl. Years later, she had been by her mother’s cot when she had died, at home in the village. Once Old Auntie was gone, that whole generation of elders would have passed, all their stories and their wisdom gone. It was a sad and lonely thought.
The breathing was becoming more protracted and painful to hear. With each breath now, Jamila thought: This is the last, no, this.
The girls reappeared, black outlines in the white light of the entrance, three granddaughters come to pay their respects. One of them was waddling with child, as if her birth time had almost come. Jamila beckoned them all inside to wait with her. The final moment came with a low rushing sigh, as Old Auntie’s lungs, which had laboured for so long, collapsed and became still.
Jamila closed Old Auntie’s mouth. For a moment, the silence inside the tent deepened. The world outside was full of noise, coming muffled through the plastic sheets. The steady hammering of wood, water splashing, the pounding of running feet, the squeals and shouts of children playing.
The women set the body on a mat on the mud outside and covered it with a blanket. They wailed, tore at their chests and lamented, sitting around the body to mourn. Women from neighbouring tents heard the commotion and came to join them, weeping alongside the bereaved, sharing grief for a woman they had barely met.
Old Auntie’s grandson, Jamila’s young cousin, came running through the camp. He stared, bewildered, at the wailing women and the covered corpse. Jamila drew him to one side.
‘You must find an imam,’ she said. ‘The people in charge of the camp will help. You must tell them.’
He stared at her, distraught. A stranger, to wash Old Auntie’s body and bury her? It was wrong.
Yes, it is wrong, Jamila thought. Old Auntie wanted to be buried with her brother in our own earth.
The young cousin’s face was wretched. ‘The soldiers were coming.’ He was stuttering. ‘What else could we do?’
‘It is Allah’s will.’ She reached out a hand and touched the boy’s shoulder. ‘Praise be to God in His Wisdom.’
On her way back through the camp to Hamid and her own family, Jamila felt assaulted by the tumult of people. The crowd was thick. Men of all ages were pushing their way along the narrow paths, forcing her to move aside into small gaps and crevices. At the standpipes, young men stood, chests bare, soaping and soaking themselves, spray wheeling from their wet hair. The girls stood apart with empty buckets and bowls, waiting their turn.
A thin, sallow man approached. A girl was trailing behind him. She had crumpled, cheap clothes and her young face was dirty with make-up.
‘Salaam Alaikum.’ He smiled, showing crooked teeth.
Jamila pulled her chador closer round her face and turned away.
‘Too good for this place, nah?’ He stopped and peered at her. ‘Which place are you from?’
She tried to push her way past him but he blocked the path.
‘No need to be afraid.’ His breath smelt of rotten food. He spoke low in her ear. ‘I’m a businessman. Anything you want, you come to me. Anything. Understand me?’
The young girl was staring at the ground, uninterested. Her eyes were lifeless.
‘I have no business with you,’ she said. She shoved him with her shoulder and managed at last to force her way past.
‘Doc,’ he called after her. Boys nearby turned to look. ‘People call me Doc. Don’t be a stranger. I am a friend.’
Jamila went back the following day to visit her young cousin and his family. She took a small parcel of rice, sugar and cooking oil to offer them, salvaged from their family ration. The women were gathered together, still softly weeping and lamenting. The men sat, eyes glazed, raw with the memory of the burial.
The camp officials had made space for Old Auntie in their new, small graveyard.
They had found a mullah to conduct the ceremony. But everyone felt guilty. It was a poor leaving.
Jamila spoke first to the young male cousins and then to their wives. They were crammed together in one corner of the piece of mud around the tents. No one would sit near the spot where the body had lain.
Finally she went to talk to Syma. The girl was sitting silently on a piece of wood, cast afloat in the mud, her legs drawn tightly to her chest.
‘Syma?’
The little girl didn’t even look up. Her eyes were fastened on the ground, her face flushed. Jamila lowered herself to the mud beside her and put her hand on her forehead. She was too hot. The tufts of hair sticking up round the girl’s face were slick with sweat.
‘You were there at Great-grandmother’s funeral,’ she said. ‘I saw you. That was a very brave thing to do.’
Syma didn’t react. Her shoulders were tight and hard.
‘Do you remember Great-grandmother’s stories?’
She shook her head, petulant. Jamila went on, trying to lace her voice with comfort.
‘Of course you do. She was always telling stories. About strange animals and foolish people. You should try to remember them as carefully as you can. Tell them to your little brother. Tell them to your own children, after you’re married.’
Syma sat silently. She wouldn’t raise her head but Jamila knew she was listening.
‘Life is a big wheel,’ Jamila said. She brushed the little girl’s damp hair off her forehead with the flat of her hand. ‘Always turning, never still. Old people get older and then they die and go to Paradise and they leave space for young people. For babies like your brother.’
Syma scowled at her brother, sitting on his bottom and scratching at the dirt.
‘This is a blessing. We must accept it. It is God’s way.’
They sat, side by side, without talking, for some time. Jamila had never known Syma be so quiet.
‘Are you sick?’
The girl didn’t answer.
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