Children of War

by Martin Walker

  ‘At first they said he’d decided to leave with some friends, without saying where they’d gone. We were frantic. It was only when we said we’d call the police that they said he had gone with friends to study in Pakistan, to a madrassa. Even then they didn’t say he had gone jihad. We suspected it, of course, but we didn’t want to get him into trouble so we said nothing.’

  Momu’s voice broke off and he wiped a hand over his mouth before he spoke again. ‘I’m sorry, that was probably a mistake.’

  ‘The main thing is that he’s alive,’ said Bruno from the back.

  ‘Will he go to jail?’ Momu asked.

  ‘He might have to go to a hospital, somewhere where he can get treatment,’ said Bruno, avoiding the question. ‘They’re sending in a top man, a real expert, to treat him.’

  ‘But they’ll want to find out what he’s been doing.’

  ‘I think they’ll want to find out more about his autism, if it’s genetic or if something caused it,’ said the Mayor.

  ‘That’s what we thought, that it was the shock he had as a little boy,’ Momu replied. ‘We thought that with time and care and his family, he’d get over it. But he never did.’

  Bruno had not known the circumstances in which Sami had come to France, only that his parents had died in the civil war there in the 1990s. He was about to speak when the Mayor beat him to it.

  ‘So what happened to the boy in Algeria?’

  ‘You know about the war,’ Momu began. It had started when the Islamists won the elections in 1991, and the army intervened with ruthless efficiency to stop them taking power. The Islamists split and the most radical of them formed the GIA, the Groupe Islamique Armée, and began committing atrocities.

  ‘It was wholesale slaughter,’ Momu went on. ‘Thalit, Souhane, Rais, hundreds of villages where they killed everybody, raped pregnant women, cut off their heads. There wasn’t much interest in France until a monastery was attacked and some of your priests were killed.’

  ‘The monks of Tibhirine,’ said Bruno. He had seen the film that was made about the event. It had won the César, France’s Oscar for best film.

  ‘My wife’s brother, Nesrullah, was not a monk. He was a teacher in a poor village called El-Abadel in the Ouarsenis mountains, where he lived with his wife, his twin daughters and Sami.’ Momu’s voice was flat, empty of emotion, as he recounted the dreadful tale. Nesrullah’s wife was pregnant. It was the thirtieth of December, 1997, the first day of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, and the GIA had declared that anyone who was not fighting the regime was kafir, an infidel, deserving of death. They attacked four villages that night, to show how strong they were.

  ‘We had asked Nesrullah to come to France with his family. Teachers were always the GIA’s first target. But he would not leave. Sami was one of three people left alive in the whole village, each of them boys, each of them tied to a table to watch as their family was raped and slaughtered before their eyes, one by one. Sami was found there two days later, still tied to the table, his family’s blood drying on his legs and the heads of his mother and sisters lined up on the floor before him.’

  Bruno and the Mayor were silent. There was nothing to be said. Momu took a freshly ironed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes.

  ‘We heard what had happened the following week from another teacher who had known Nesrullah. He and his family were looking after Sami in their home in Algiers. I flew out and since Karim was already on my passport, I brought Sami into France as my own son, so he was here illegally. Then you helped to get him French citizenship. I never returned to Algeria. I never will.’

  *

  Sami was huddled into a ball when they saw him, squatting on the floor, face tucked between his knees and arms over his shaven head. He was dressed in an old and oil-stained set of military dungarees that looked as if the storeman should have thrown them out years ago. Momu went to him at once, knelt to embrace him and spoke quietly into his ear. Sami was oblivious at first, as though determined to shut out anything outside his own being. Then he seemed to recognize something in Momu’s voice and Bruno saw him open one eye and squint at his uncle. Then he slowly unwound. He ran his hands over Momu’s arms, then his face.

  ‘Abu, abu,’ he murmured. Father, father. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he embraced Momu and then lowered his head to rest his brow on Momu’s feet.

  The Mayor, the red ribbon of the Légion d’Honneur in his lapel, drew the airbase adjutant to one side, showed his ornate ID card from the Senate and said he would take care of whatever paperwork might be required. Bruno asked a hovering sergeant if he knew whether Sami had eaten and if they had a bathroom nearby and a towel. Momu had brought some clothes. Bruno, ever practical, had brought a baguette filled with cheese, some apples and a bottle of water.

  He helped Momu to raise the youth, who towered over them both as he stood to his full height of almost two metres. They took him to the bathroom, stripped him of his dirty clothes and got him into the shower. He was frighteningly thin. Some scars on his back were ridged and old but others were more recent, still scabbed over. His feet were like clubs, covered in hard calluses as if he had gone barefoot on rough ground for months or perhaps years. They helped him dress in the loose tracksuit that Momu had brought. His feet were too swollen for the espadrilles Momu had provided, so the sergeant brought back the army boots Sami had been wearing. When he took the baguette and wolfed the first mouthful he seemed to recognize the man who had given it to him.

  He stopped eating and stared at Bruno, and took in Bruno’s police uniform, looked at his face again. Through a mouthful of cheese and bread, he said something that sounded like ‘Bruno?’

  ‘It’s me, Sami. Bruno from the tennis club.’ He mimed tossing a tennis ball into the air and serving it. Sami’s face broke into a first smile.

  ‘There’s a note here from the medical orderly who was with him on the flight,’ said the orderly officer, and handed an envelope to the Mayor, and a box of pills. ‘These are the sedatives he was given. Now he’s all yours.’ He saluted the Mayor and departed, leaving the sergeant to see them off the base.

  ‘Is it true what they said, that he was a muj?’ the sergeant asked Bruno quietly.

  Bruno shook his head. ‘From what I heard and those scars on his back, I think the poor bastard was some kind of slave, whether for some warlord or for the mujahedin, I don’t know. But thanks for all you’ve done, and now we’d better get him home.’

  ‘There are a lot of rumours about this guy, according to one of the escorts who brought him down on the chopper. Apparently all during the flight he just rolled himself into a tight ball on the floor.’

  ‘Rumours, rumours, that’s the military for you,’ Bruno said, grinning and shaking hands with the sergeant. ‘At least, that’s how it was in my day. Maybe you could put the word around that whatever happened back in the bled, he was under duress. You saw the scars and the psychological state he’s in.’ Bruno used the old army slang word for a war zone.

  ‘Understood,’ said the sergeant, returning the handshake. ‘Don’t worry about the boots. Let him keep them, I’ll fix the paperwork, but I don’t think I’ll be able to fix the rumours.’

  Bruno took the front passenger seat as they drove back, leaving Sami and Momu together on the rear seats. Sami’s eyes scanned the cars and houses they passed as they navigated the Bordeaux suburbs and headed for the autoroute that led to Périgueux. Were these scenes somehow familiar to him, Bruno wondered, or had the years in Afghanistan overwhelmed the memory of the towns and landscape where Sami had grown up? So far, he had spoken only the Arabic word for father and something that sounded like Bruno.

  They passed vast rows of vineyards, grape-pickers busy among the vines, and road signs for Pomerol and St Emilion. These were villages whose wines summed up for Bruno something at the very heart of France, but he doubted whether they would make any impression on Sami. There would have been no alcohol in Afghanistan, and while Momu liked his g
lass of wine, Bruno doubted whether Sami had ever been served it when Momu and his wife raised him.

  Bruno remembered what a quiet boy Sami had been, even when he was being given a normal upbringing in St Denis. His skin was relatively pale and he’d looked like any other skinny French boy in jeans, T-shirt and trainers. He went to school and collège with the rest of his age group. He had never been bullied. Karim, who called him his little brother, had seen to that.

  But Sami had never been accepted, never brought into the boys’ rituals of sneaking cigarettes behind the toilets, raiding the apple orchards and playing impromptu soccer games beside the town campground. Bruno grinned at the memory of all the kick-abouts he had seen, and of the age-old rule that if you kicked the ball into the river, you had to get it out, whatever the temperature.

  Momu and Karim had given Sami as normal a boyhood as they could, Bruno recalled. Karim would take him fishing and looking for birds’ nests, and cycle with him on Saturday mornings to the kids’ showings at the cinema in the next village. In the summer, Momu had taken Sami to the beaches around the big bay at Arcachon with the rest of the family and up to Paris to see the sights.

  He’d been enrolled in the tennis club, and took part in Bruno’s rugby training sessions, content to run up and down the pitch but never passing the ball nor making any effort to catch it when it was passed to him. But he’d enjoyed place-kicking and became good at it, putting the oval ball at different spots around the pitch and then booting it through the posts from thirty and forty metres. There had even been talk about bringing Sami onto the team for that one skill, which seemed to guarantee three points for every penalty against an opposing team and another two points for each try he converted. Place-kickers could win matches on their own, but most of them would at least take part in the rest of the match. Sami never would.

  Bruno had been watchful as Sami approached puberty, wondering what the inevitable storm of hormones might do to the boy. But while Sami grew tall and the occasional words he uttered showed that his voice had broken, puberty seemed to have little effect upon him, except for enhancing his fascination for all things mechanical. He dismantled and repaired the toaster at the tennis club and fixed the mechanism of the spits they used to roast lamb and wild boar. He’d spent hours at Lespinasse’s garage, at first just watching the cars being serviced and overhauled. Then Lespinasse had given him tasks to do and declared Sami to be a born mechanic. He promised that when Sami left school there would be a job for him.

  Maybe he should remind Momu of that, Bruno thought, but Sami needed to heal before a full-time job could be considered. There was also the threat of the thugs from Toulouse and the Brigadier’s various ploys. Karim would be vital to Sami’s recovery, and perhaps meeting Karim’s children would help. And maybe this psychologist, Deutz, could prove useful.

  The car radio was playing quietly, tuned to the Périgord station of France Bleu with its local news. As the bulletin gave way to music, Sami leaned forward from the back seat, shrugging off Momu’s arm, and gestured for Bruno to increase the volume.

  ‘It’s Mozart,’ said the Mayor. ‘One of the piano sonatas.’

  Bruno and Momu exchanged glances. Bruno raised his eyebrows, hoping Momu would understand that he was asking if this appreciation of Mozart was new. Momu shrugged, as if to say it seemed new to him. Sami’s face was rapt and his long, thin fingers were beating time on his thigh. Bruno increased the volume and Sami settled back comfortably into Momu’s arm, his eyes closed, a calm smile on his face, his fingers still keeping time.

  The Mayor leaned across from the wheel and popped open the glove box. Bruno pulled out a stash of CDs and picked out one of Horowitz playing Mozart. He waited until the music stopped on the radio and then inserted the disc. Momu grinned happily and nodded his head firmly at Bruno, who resolved to buy Sami some Mozart CDs.

  Bruno felt his phone vibrate with the brief tremor that signalled an incoming message. He checked the screen and saw it came from the Brigadier. ‘Targets in Toulouse. Security in place. Call me,’ it read.

  Bruno decided to wait until the journey was over to call, but he used the email system to send a brief word of gratitude to Zigi at his distant army base: ‘Sami home safe. Big thanks, bigger drink.’ Whatever Zigi would be drinking, he’d earned it.

  ‘You haven’t told me where I should be going,’ the Mayor said as the car approached the junction where the road forked to St Denis or Les Eyzies. ‘Momu’s place, the Gendarmerie or what? Is security still the issue?’

  Bruno asked him to pull in at the next lay-by, called the Brigadier, waited for the green light on the phone that told him the conversation was secure and began by asking if he thought it safe to return to Momu’s house.

  ‘No, that’s why I wanted you to call. I want this low-key for the moment, nothing official, but I don’t think your Afghan boy and his family should go back to a known address. We’re watching Toulouse and I have a security team heading for St Denis but the family could be at risk. Do you have any suggestions?’

  ‘If there’s a budget for it, we could get one of the empty tourist gites,’ Bruno replied. ‘Somewhere in a nearby commune, remote but a place we can secure.’ Secure was a relative term, he thought, when the opposition had a sniper’s rifle and a scope that could secure a kill at eight hundred metres.

  ‘Funds aren’t a problem. Arrange some place with decent mobile phone reception, then rendezvous with my people at the Gendarmerie at six this evening and take them out there. I want you to stay with the family full-time. Wear civilian clothes but be armed. I’ll call you at seven.’ He rang off.

  Bruno thought about the number of rooms that would be needed. A pool and tennis court would help Sami’s recuperation. If possible he’d like an internal courtyard that a sniper could not see. He called Dougal at Delightful Dordogne, an agency for villa rentals, telling him this was confidential police business. He needed a place to safeguard an important witness and he wanted it from tonight.

  8

  Dougal’s suggestion of Le Pavillon Placide in the neighbouring commune of St Chamassy was perfect. It was not a single house but a complex of old farm buildings built on three sides of a square with a stone wall and arched gateway protecting the fourth side. A terrace with tables and benches and a large herb garden filled the closed courtyard. Bruno took a room in the main house where Sami and his family would stay and assigned an attached house to the security team. A separate barn at the rear, probably used to dry tobacco in the old days, served as a garage and shielded one side of the swimming pool. The pool house shielded another side, with a lean-to and a horse trough outside. It must have been a stable and hay was still stored in one of the stalls. This gave Bruno an idea. He could patrol the perimeter more quickly and perhaps arouse less suspicion on horseback.

  They stopped first at Bruno’s home, where he changed into civilian clothes, packed a small suitcase and his hunting guns and loaded Balzac and his gear into his Land Rover. The Mayor took Momu and Sami to the Pavillon at St Chamassy, where Dougal met them with the keys. Bruno drove his Land Rover to the Mairie, took his police pistol from the safe and called Fabiola to check that she’d be free to exercise the horses with him. He picked up Momu’s wife, explained the situation and helped her pack. They spent over a hundred euros at the supermarket buying food and another thirty on Mozart discs. Dougal had told him there was a sound system at Le Pavillon. Bruno took a roundabout way to get there, using quiet roads where he’d see if he was being followed.

  The Mayor, whose own hunting dog had been the mother of Bruno’s old hound, Gigi, was a better shot than Bruno. They shared out the weapons discreetly in the garage. The Mayor took Bruno’s old military Lebel rifle and began to clean and oil it even though Bruno, who took care of his weapons, had done so the previous weekend.

  ‘I have to go and pick up the Brigadier’s security guys so I’ll leave you on guard,’ Bruno told him.

  ‘I’m trying to think of the last time a Senator
of France was armed on active duty,’ the Mayor said, a twinkle in his eye. He was evidently enjoying himself. ‘Should I give Momu the other shotgun?’

  ‘I’d tell him where it is, but let’s keep the guns out of sight for the moment. I don’t want to worry Sami or Dillah.’

  After her joyful reunion with Sami, Momu’s wife Dillah was already clattering pans in the kitchen, Sami and Momu were sitting and watching her cook when Bruno left for the Gendarmerie. The two waiting security men introduced themselves as Gaston and Robert. They usually worked together, they told him, and they had the full kit in the four-by-four; weapons, infrared scanners, high-beam lights, Kevlar vests and an extra walkie-talkie for Bruno. He explained that he would be bringing his horse to Le Pavillon later, along with a doctor to check Sami’s condition. At St Chamassy he showed them around, introduced them to the Mayor, Momu and the family, and gave them the large-scale map of the locality he kept in his Land Rover. Then the Mayor drove Bruno to Pamela’s place, where he found Pamela and Fabiola waiting and the horses already saddled.

  This evening, there were no arguments about Pamela being allowed to ride. He explained Sami’s return and the security arrangements and suggested he and Fabiola ride to Le Pavillon, barely three kilometres away as the crow flies, on bridle trails and forest rides they knew well. Bruno strapped Fabiola’s medical bag to the pommel of her saddle, kissed Pamela and they set off.

  ‘What can you tell me about this young man?’ Fabiola asked as they walked the horses through the paddock to the lane. ‘All I know is that you said he’s been in Afghanistan and he’s somewhere on the autistic spectrum.’

  ‘He looks half-starved, and he’s been whipped, both in the past and recently. He was heavily sedated when they flew him here. He curled up into a ball and refused to respond until he saw Momu. But then he recognized me and he seems devoted to Momu and Dillah. And I learned today that he likes Mozart.’

  Bruno went on to describe what he recalled of Sami’s boyhood in St Denis, and the trauma of his family’s slaughter in the Algerian civil war. ‘We have no idea what happened to him at the mosque in Toulouse, nor how he got to Afghanistan. I think he must have gone barefoot a lot. His hands are thin and his fingers delicate but his feet look like sides of beef. From his hands, I don’t think he was a fighter. Weapons and combat tend to roughen them up.’