Far From My Father's House

by Jill McGivering

  The dog looked up, startled by a sudden movement. It was alert, listening. Finally it dropped its snout and sniffed its way out across the waste. Plastic crackled under its paws. Ellen kept her eyes on its mottled head. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Some smart-ass journalist came in from Washington and blew it all up. That’s what happened. Made a stink about aid dollars going to criminals, all that crap.’

  Ellen dug at the dirt with the toe of her boot and made a dent. ‘And you got fired.’ A bottle top shifted and fell, revealing running ants. ‘You don’t think much of journalists, do you?’

  ‘Fourteen years I’d worked there. Not even severance.’ He paused. ‘I was doing my job. If I’d been high and holy about it, women and children wouldn’t have got food.’

  She thought for a minute. ‘So what’re you saying? It’s OK to do business with the Taliban?’

  He looked down at the ground, at the dents she was making. ‘No. But they’re trying me. That’s all. They think I’m the kind of guy who would.’

  The slow, steady rhythm of banging started out in the camp. Someone was hammering in a stave, starting the long work of rebuilding a tent. They listened to it and looked out over the plain. The sky was thickening.

  ‘I think I found your leak.’

  He looked sideways at her, barely turning. ‘You did?’

  She inclined her head, inviting him to follow her as she walked back through the shattered camp.

  They were deep in a litter of boxes and unpacked goods when Fatima walked in. Her headscarf was freshly starched, pinned into careful folds, and her clothes pressed. She stopped in her tracks and glared at Frank.

  ‘You cannot be here.’

  He didn’t reply. He was kneeling down amongst tins of cooking oil and bags of salt, checking off serial numbers. The barcodes had already identified them as missing goods.

  Fatima looked around, furious. ‘This is a place for women. You are shaming them.’

  Frank tipped another tin. Fatima hesitated, taking in the calm, methodical movement of his hands. He found the number and noted it down. She shifted her eyes to Ellen.

  ‘Tell him to leave.’

  She turned and walked away. Ellen heard her quick footsteps as she moved into the small room next door, then silence. She followed her through. Fatima was sitting stiffly in a chair, staring into space. She was dwarfed by the stacks of boxes around her.

  Ellen spoke softly from the doorway. ‘He came in the back way, Fatima. It’s OK. He hasn’t been on the ward.’

  Fatima spat out: ‘It’s not right.’

  Ellen stood for a moment, considering her rigid back and hard shoulders. She took a few steps into the room. ‘Did you hear about Doc?’

  Fatima didn’t respond. She was stony-faced, her lips forced together. There was no trace of surprise in her eyes. Her hands were clenched. Ellen nodded to herself. She knew what had happened.

  ‘They probably killed him because of the girls.’ Ellen spoke slowly and deliberately. ‘But what if they also know about the other thing, about him stealing supplies?’

  Fatima turned her head and glared at Ellen, then looked quickly away. She didn’t reply.

  Ellen took another step nearer. She was within reach of Fatima now, close enough to see the way her hands were trembling. ‘Plenty of people saw Doc hanging around here,’ she went on. ‘No wonder he could get hold of anything. He used to boast about it.’ Ellen’s eyes were on Fatima’s face. ‘What if they know about you too?’

  Fatima got to her feet in a rush and turned to face Ellen. Her clothes fell in neat pleats but her face was flushed. ‘You know what they pay me here? For the hours I work? I have children.’

  ‘I know, Fatima.’ Ellen thought of the girl and boy who studied so hard in Cairo. ‘But that doesn’t make it right, does it?’

  Fatima looked past her to the wall. She gave no sign of having heard. Her face was set and angry as if she thought the whole business of life was unfair.

  Ellen reached out to touch her arm. She shook it off.

  ‘Just leave,’ Ellen said. ‘Go, Fatima. Go home while you can.’

  Ellen watched her for a moment longer, then left and went back to join Frank in the next room. He was opening a new box, excavating layers of bagged rice and sugar. By the time they’d logged it all, Fatima had already disappeared.

  At the end of the afternoon, Ellen took a final walk through the camp, following the route the rampaging men had taken. The shelters looked storm-battered. She paused to watch a family, a young husband and a wife with a baby on her hip. They were working together, picking through the wreckage and setting aside what they could. Staves of wood. Coils of trampled rope. They were bolstering a corner of the broken tent, trying to find some privacy and shelter for the night to come. There was no anger in their faces, just tiredness and resignation.

  She crossed between the rows of tents and walked down the far side where there was almost no damage. Families there huddled together, their eyes averted. They seemed guilty that their homes were intact.

  She was thinking. She had to call Phil that evening and she wasn’t sure what she could offer. She’d promised a story about the Taliban diverting aid supplies for their own use. That had just collapsed. Phil would care a lot less now the thieves were a disgruntled nurse and a dead pimp. The Taliban probably killed Doc and they may have instigated the riot but she couldn’t prove it. She sighed. She’d have to file something.

  Her walk brought her up to the school. The woven walls around it had been ripped open. The panels were hanging, torn, from their struts. Inside, a frail, elderly woman was sweeping. Ellen tapped on the remains of the wall and the woman looked up, her eyes dull with fatigue. Ellen stepped into the compound and the woman bent back to the rhythmical hush of her sweeping.

  If someone had asked her beforehand, Ellen would have said there was nothing there to destroy. The school had so little to start with. Now she walked round the small space, staring. The tent which had served as a classroom had been knocked down. It lay in a crumpled heap of hessian and broken wood. Whatever books the men had found had been ripped into shreds. Scraps of paper, some cheaply printed with words and pictures, some plain, were drifting in confetti showers across the ground, gathering in the hollows.

  The blackboard had been smashed into pieces. She crouched down and picked up two fragments, trying and failing to fit them together. There were still faint lines of chalk on the black surface, the remains of letters. She wondered how they’d done that, which man had cared enough to stop and take the trouble to balance the blackboard on a bed of stones or wood and stamp so hard he made it shatter. She wondered how that made him feel.

  Here and there, pieces of chalk had been ground into the earth. They made circles of bright colour in the mud, a blooming flower of pink, several of white, one of vivid yellow. The yellow chalk was slowly bleeding into the edge of a puddle, bringing sunshine to the rainwater. Behind her, the old woman was still sweeping, drawing the debris into neat piles with strokes of her broom.

  She let the pieces of broken blackboard fall from her hands with a clatter, thinking of the rocks that had flashed black against the canvas wall of the medical tent as they’d crouched inside. The men could easily have forced their way in and smashed everything. The patients were such easy targets. They could have attacked them all. Instead, for some reason, they’d been called off, told to spare them. She couldn’t understand why.

  Chapter 20

  Ellen found Frank at the main entrance to the administrative building, inspecting the damage there. It was a sturdy brick rectangle without windows and hard to penetrate. The side door and the main entrance had both come under attack in the riot but the wood was sturdy, secured with chains and padlocks as well as locks.

  Frank was watching as a local workman gripped the edge of the door in one hand and eased it backwards and forwards, assessing the hinges. Its joints were rusty and gave a thin whine as the man forced them. It was a solid door,
two inches thick, with the darkened surface and sweet smell of old wood. Its flat front was pitted with fresh scrapes and gouges. The workman poked at the hinges with a screwdriver, then turned to give his verdict to Frank.

  ‘Door is very good,’ he said. ‘No problem. But with hinges, there is problem.’

  He stepped inside the building and pulled the door closed after him. There was a muffled banging from inside.

  Ellen waited. Frank knew she was there, she sensed that, but he was preoccupied. His face was tight with tension. The riot and the damage weighed heavily on him.

  She rubbed her eyes, looking without seeing. She hadn’t slept much overnight. For most of the evening, she’d been writing up a news piece on the riot and her sense of the shadow of the Taliban over life in the camp. Phil hadn’t exactly been delighted. It wasn’t a headline. When she’d phoned him, he’d been gruff.

  ‘Pull out,’ he’d said. ‘Need you back here.’

  Afterwards she struggled to sleep. She lay, listening to the drone of the air conditioning and watching the advancing green numbers on the bedside clock, and worried about Britta and the strange spread of typhoid and about Layla who had clutched her hand with such desperation as they drove back together from the police station.

  Wood crashed close by and she turned to look. Four workers in fluorescent tabards were sifting through wreckage, clearing away splintered remains and torn plastic sheeting and throwing the debris into a pile for collection. Their movements were weary.

  She took another step forwards to get Frank’s attention and nodded towards the door. ‘They didn’t get in, then?’

  He grunted. ‘They tried.’ He pointed to the gashes in the wood. ‘Knives.’

  She raised her eyes and looked at the square corner of the building against the sky. The dun bricks oozed confidence. Colonial. Victorian, maybe.

  ‘Why would they bother?’

  ‘Put a lock on a door and rumours start.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve heard all sorts. That I keep thousands of dollars in here. Guns. Gold.’

  The chain which secured the door lay coiled at his feet. He picked it up. ‘Rumours,’ he said again. ‘Too many people with not enough to do.’

  She looked past him to the mountains. The mist was hanging low on the ridge, engulfing the peaks and softening the horizon into a blur of grey cloud.

  ‘I’ve got to leave tomorrow. Back to Islamabad.’

  ‘OK.’ He gave her a quick glance. His expression was guarded. ‘You got what you need?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Frank, I need a favour.’

  He didn’t reply, just weighed the chain in his hands. His eyes were fixed on it but she knew he was listening.

  ‘I want to take Ibrahim to see this so-called suicide bomber. Adnan. To confirm who he is.’

  He stooped and set down the chain. It clinked as it settled on the stone step. His hands were dirty with flaking rust and he brushed them against his trousers, leaving dark streaks. ‘What good will that do?’

  She hesitated. ‘Well, it would mean he’s properly identified. And if Westerners are there, taking an interest, it might worry them.’

  ‘Westerners? In the plural?’

  ‘The police guy knows you.’ She shuffled her feet in the dirt. ‘Come on, Frank. He’s innocent. I’m sure of it. You should see him.’ She paused. ‘It wouldn’t take long.’

  There was a further pause. The workman opened the door and stepped out, screwdriver in hand. He seemed about to speak, then sensed he was interrupting something and stopped, looking from Frank to Ellen, waiting.

  Frank said, ‘He’s probably been transferred to Islamabad by now.’

  ‘But in case he hasn’t.’

  Frank looked at the workman. They both wanted to carry on their conversation about the damage to the door. Frank hesitated and dragged his eyes round to Ellen. ‘And you’re leaving tomorrow. So when are you thinking we’ll do this?’

  ‘Any time today.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Ellen. I’ve got a lot to do here.’

  ‘Please, Frank.’

  The workman was watching them both closely. For a moment, the activity in the camp seemed suspended. Even the four workers clearing away the debris seemed to pause and listen.

  ‘All right.’ Frank sighed. ‘But give me a few hours at least.’

  He pointed at the chain and the workman picked it up. The links clanked as he fed them through the metal hoop of the lock.

  Finally, in the afternoon, Ellen met Ibrahim at the entrance gates. He had Layla at his side. Her face was pale, half-covered by her scarf.

  ‘She wishes again to see her relative,’ he told Ellen. ‘They are like brother-sister.’

  The driver, one of Frank’s team, rushed to open the doors as soon as Frank arrived. He settled Frank into the front seat, then ushered Ellen, Layla and Ibrahim into the back. As he moved to take his own place, young boys crowded around the car, pressing their noses to the tinted windows. They laughed and jostled, shouting questions: ‘Hello!’ ‘What your name?’ ‘What place you come?’

  The driver revved the engine and the boys ran, shouting and waving, alongside the car, banging it with the flat of their hands as it gathered speed and finally shook them off.

  The car bounced and rocked across the uneven ground. Ellen clung to the roof strap. Frank switched on the air conditioning and it started to grind. The afternoon was hot and humid. The sun was bleaching the mud plains and bouncing in shards off the water-filled ditches which crossed them. The mountains shimmered in the haze.

  Layla was squashed between Ibrahim and Ellen. She sat hunched, her head bowed. She looked thin beneath her salwar kameez and the veins at her temples bulged. Ellen wondered if she knew about the murders and about how much damage the riot had caused. She leant past Layla to speak to Ibrahim.

  ‘Did you hear about the girls’ school?’

  He nodded gravely and his round hat bobbed. ‘Very terrible.’

  ‘They destroyed everything. They’ll reopen it, I’m sure, but it’ll take time.’

  Layla didn’t respond. Her thin hands clasped each other in her lap. The school must have been her only escape. Ellen thought of the day she’d met Layla there, how confident and proud she’d seemed. Now that too was gone.

  The driver turned onto a track which snaked back and forth through a series of old brick arches under a wider, more modern road above. It was a cut through to the main road, a dark dip where the earth was rocky. As he pressed on, navigating with care through piles of scattered rocks, light glinted off to one side. Ellen turned to look. A car, its metalwork caved and battered, had shot out from one of the arches ahead and was careering towards them at high speed. Its engine strained. Thick black clouds streamed from its exhaust. They’ll ruin it, she thought, crashing through the gears like that.

  A young man was at the wheel. His light brown kameez sat neatly on his shoulders. His eyes were wide, focused and intent. He was coming right at them. Frank let out a shout. He grabbed at the steering wheel with one hand and pressed the other back against the car door, bracing himself. Ellen saw his fingertips turn white and bloodless on the plastic.

  The driver too tugged at the wheel, his shoulders twisted sideways. There was squealing then a deep shudder from the car as he stood on the brakes. The car started to swerve but too late. The crumbling brickwork of the arches flew past the windows. The young man’s face, staring, seemed to hang in slow motion as he smashed headlong into them. In that second before impact, Ellen grabbed Layla and pulled her flat across her lap. They were flung forwards together, clasping each other, striking the back of the front seat. They banged heads, then fell in a heap in the footwell.

  Silence. Utter stillness.

  Ellen’s head hurt. It was bent forwards, too heavy to move. She felt a rush of fear. Then the moment passed and she breathed and the world again came crashing in.

  Men were shouting. Warm air pressed in around her body as doors were wrenched open. The
car rocked from side to side. She froze, head down, too stunned to move, listening to the chaos of sounds and feeling Layla still pressed against her, hot along her side. Frank’s voice, alarmed, gave a single shout: ‘Hey!’ The driver murmured in Pashto, begging or praying. The sting of a hard slap. She sensed that the front doors were open and the men were being tugged out of the car. A crunch and splitting of flesh. Hard breathing. To the right, movement at Ibrahim’s door. His voice rose too in Pashto, angry, resisting. A sound of blows, a crack of something hard on bone, a splintering.

  Ellen found the strength to lift her head. She pulled at Layla, struggling to get them both back up into the cushion of the seat. The effort exhausted her and she sat for a second, her eyes closed, feeling very sick. Her forehead ached. When she put her hand to it, her fingers came away sticky with blood.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw a second car to the side of them. Its doors hung open. More men had sprung from it. Ibrahim was on the ground, curled round, his arms wrapped round his head. Two men were kicking him. One struck his back. The other was kicking his stomach. His body was taut, shrinking from the boots. The driver was slumped in the dirt nearby, motionless. She twisted, trying to find Frank, but pain stabbed in her neck and she grimaced and let her eyes fall closed again.

  The door beside her was snatched open and male hands reached in, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her out, off the seat. She fell to the ground with a bang, winded. Her legs were left behind, caught up in the edge of the seat, in the metalwork of the car. She opened her mouth to shout but the sound wouldn’t come. She was gripped by a nightmarish slowness, by terror. Her arm was crushed awkwardly under her body and she struggled to right herself, to draw in her legs. A man grabbed her hands and forced them behind her back. Something rough cut into her wrists.

  A sack was forced down over her head and tied. It smelt of dirt and mustiness. It was tied too tightly. She strained her neck, trying to make a fraction more room so she could breathe. The cord gripped her throat. She started to shake, clammy with panic. When she blinked, her lashes scraped the sacking. She strained to see. She could barely make out the dark shapes moving in front of her.