The Haha Man

by Sandy Mccutcheon

Late in the afternoon, when everything was nearing completion, Amir’s team took Basim to the small toilet block at the rear of the warehouse. They stripped him, then hosed him down. They found that the struggle had gone out of the young man and that it was more a case of holding him up than restraining him.

  Amir tossed them a towel to dry the boy off with. ‘Let him dress himself.’

  He turned to Karim. ‘What shall we do with his own clothes?’

  ‘Throw them away. He won’t be needing them again.’ Karim indicated the bin they had brought along. ‘Now, you and I should get changed. You can tell your men to go. They have half an hour to be in place for Ray.’

  Amir nodded and led his people back through the warehouse, went over their instructions carefully and farewelled them. He waited until the cars had departed, then stood watching the first spots of rain falling on the road. The area was deserted. Nothing moved but a lone gull winging its way inland. Darkness was coming. He shivered and returned inside.

  In the warehouse, Basim Sharifi, dressed now in a clean shalwar qamiz, was seated on a chair in the centre of the floor. Karim had also changed. For the first time since he left Peshawar he was in Afghan clothes, including a pakol, the flat Afghan hat made fashionable by the late General Masood, a cultural hangover from the days of Marco Polo’s visit to his homeland.

  Karim ran one of the ropes around Basim’s waist and knotted it at the rear of the chair, well out of reach. Next, he tied the boy’s ankles and pulled them back, attaching the rope to the crossbar underneath the chair. Finally, he arranged the front of Basim’s clothing over the rope around his waist.

  ‘How does that look?’ he asked, peering into the gloom towards the hidden cameras. His voice sounded hollow in the cavernous space. There only other sound was the rain on the roof high above him. It was about time. The weather had been vacillating all day. One minute threatening a storm and then appearing to clear.

  He turned back to Basim, who cowered away, and checked the microphone clipped on the inside of the boy’s shirt collar. He examined the small black transmitter attached to the back of the chair: its little red light was on. So the mic should be working.

  ‘Are you hearing me?’ he called. Again there was no reply.

  Suddenly the lights came on. Two shafts, beautifully focused: one illuminating Basim, the other an empty chair. Michael, who had spent a long time on the set-up, had promised it would look good, but nothing could have prepared Karim for this. There were other lights picking up the boy’s face, but with so little leakage that the rest of the vast warehouse simply vanished into blackness. The pallets with their deadly load were hidden in the shadows along the back wall. The office, torn down and rebuilt without windows in the far corner under the mezzanine, now merged into the shadows.

  There was a sudden spill of light as the door to this temporary studio opened and David’s head appeared around the frame.

  ‘Stunning. Apart from his hands, you’d never know he was tied up.’

  ‘I’ll untie them in a minute. What about the sound?’

  ‘Fine, but it would help if you could get him to say something.’

  Karim put his head close to Basim’s. ‘You hear that? You are going to be a star.’

  The boy’s eyes flickered hatred but he didn’t move.

  Karim looked back towards the office. The door had shut. He held the boy’s head with one hand and with the other ripped off the gaffer tape. The boy cried out and tried to bring his hands up to his face.

  The office door reopened. ‘We could hear that without the mic,’ David shouted.

  Philson moves around the gathering, chatting to people from a smorgasbord of nations, all here to see him. Praising and being praised in return. He listens to the speakers and enjoys tasty morsels of ethnic cuisine. Eventually he is invited to the podium where, in a relaxed and friendly way, he reassures the guests that their faith in Australia is not misplaced.

  A great success — he knows for he has done this a hundred times — a splendid evening. He takes a glass of orange juice. Glad to see that there are young people here, even if they do have coloured spikes in their hair. He smiles and thanks the young woman for the juice. Aware that he has a dinner function at eight-thirty. He calls his driver and says he’ll be outside in five. He thinks the driver tells him that it is raining, but what with the noise inside and the poor connection …

  Philson ladles out his farewells and moves to the door, the president of the multicultural association on his left, her husband on the right. It’s a photo opportunity and he wonders why his office didn’t organise the media.

  Outside, the storm that has been lurking all day has finally broken. It is raining hard. The car pulls up, Rob Philson shakes hands, and ducks through the rain into the back of the car.

  The driver locks the doors. A comforting click. Standard procedure.

  ‘A short ride, Minister.’ The voice is soft, educated and somehow familiar.

  This is not his driver.

  ‘I don’t know … wha’ the fuck … ‘ he says — but his words are echoing oddly, slurred, distorted.

  There is nothing he can do.

  The car has pulled out and is weaving skilfully through the traffic. Philson looks round, eyes wild, beseeching someone to recognise him, to help him. But the rear and side windows are rain-slicked and the lights and faces on the sidewalk are crystalline splinters of colour.

  He turns to the driver but the man doesn’t speak again. Several times Philson tries to reason but something is inhibiting his speech. He mouths mutely. The juice … orange juice. Drugged? The anti-terrorism course leader’s voice comes back to him.

  ‘Don’t resist.‘

  Philson finds he is nodding stupidly. He will not resist.

  ‘Watch carefully for signs of where you are being taken.’

  He sits back and watches; they enter the city centre. Good, I can do this. But then they pause at the kerb for a moment. The locks pop — a millisecond of hope is dashed as two men scramble in. One on either side. Again the locks click. Shut. Less comforting this time.

  ‘Don’t resist.‘

  He doesn’t. Not when push him back in the seat. Nor when they wrap a thin blindfold around his face. He forces himself to breathe; deep slow breaths. Calm the mind, slow the pulse, he tells himself, as both race far beyond his reach. The drink he was handed … the spikey-haired girl, he thinks, as in a moment of clarity he knows his clarity is gone.

  The tyres whine and hiss on wet roads. There is traffic noise. The noise of … It takes a moment to remember. Yes. The noise of windscreen wipers is mesmerising … then, to his disappointment, they stop. The rain, gone as suddenly as it had arrived.

  His heart hurts and his doctor’s voice comes … ‘Take it easy. The last thing you need is a heart attack.’ The last thing.

  The fear is paralysing and he loses track of his thoughts.

  The car slows.

  He feels himself swaying against the men beside him. They are warm, alive. The car slows and a hand brushes his face gently as the blindfold is removed.

  The car has come to a halt in no-man’s land. There is just an empty blackness, in which crouches his fear. He has no weapon. Industrial, he tells himself. Warehouses … a road in need of repair. Cones of orange, but the lights are too widely spaced, leaving black voids on a roadway shiny … there may be light mist falling, or steam rising. It could be his eyes, or a trick of the light.

  There is a sharp click as the doors unlock. On either side of him the men get out. He watches them stop, turn and wait. He knows what they are waiting for.

  ‘Please get out, Minister.’

  The driver’s voice isn’t harsh. Yet its tone — is it contempt or pity? He is about to move when the driver turns, and he sees his face.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, it has been a while, hasn’t it,’ the driver says gently and indicates that the minister should get out.

  He stares at the man, pleading with his eyes.
Mercy. He remembers the man’s name.

  ‘I’m getting out, Mr Gilbert.’

  The man doesn’t reply and the silence hangs between them as tangible as razor wire.

  I am just going for a walk, he tells himself. Tries to stop the bile rising. A pain in the chest — he knows it is not just angina. Is this the moment? He steps onto the ground, which does not let him sink into it. It is damp and cool and irrefutably solid.

  Then he sees her. Perfectly lit; a figure standing in the centre of the road. Like Death on a ribbon of jet. His mind jolts and spins. The woman in the burqa walks towards him. Behind him the car’s lights switch off. He blinks, shakes his head. In an instant the world shifts and reconfigures itself. But still the woman walks slowly towards him. Through his head runs the collage of images — the Sura Star sinking, the dying Hazara boys, the suicide bombers, the angry faces behind the wire — and he knows that he has been judged. And from this judgement there is no appeal.

  The rain was now just a fine mist swirling beneath the orange street lamps. But the temperature had dropped. Far off, she thought she could hear thunder, but most likely it was traffic noise from the city. The notion that the city sprawled away on all sides seemed ridiculous — there was nothing but this road. I can do this, she repeated, mantra-like.

  Ahead of her the man faltered, unsteady, frightened. Don’t worry, she thought, I will take care of you. She reached him and put her hand out, touched his arm.

  ‘I will take care of you.’

  ‘I’m Robin Philson,’ he said, as though reassuring himself.

  ‘Yes.’ Rabia guided him gently towards the building.

  ‘I’m the minister …’ His voice caught in his throat and he coughed. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’

  ‘My name is Rabia Balkhi.’

  ‘I am the minister,’ he repeated. Then he stopped and began to turn as though pulled in another direction.

  ‘Yes, you are the minister,’ she said softly, her head by his face. ‘And I have been sent to look after you.’ She watched as his eyes screwed, as he tried to see through the veil of the burqa, seeking her eyes, seeking reassurance.

  ‘That’s good,’ he mumbled.

  She allowed her hand to slip down to Philson’s elbow and guided him forward again. He was compliantly docile. But she had to get him inside before the drug began to wear off.

  ‘I have someone who wants to meet you,’ she said as they approached the door. It swung open and the minister hesitated. Then, though there was no step or sill, he lifted his foot and stepped cautiously into the warehouse. A strong pair of hands gripped him and pulled him into the darkness.

  ‘Wait here,’ said a male voice. ‘Your turn will come soon.’

  Philson tried to say something — about a meeting he was due at — but he could no longer remember.

  Then a hood was slipped over his head and everything went black. In some far-off place people were talking, but he knew he had to wait. It wasn’t his turn.

  ‘You will be given one last chance to work with us,’ Karim told the boy. ‘After that I am afraid we will have to dispense with you.’

  The boy remained silent. His hands lay free and still in his lap.

  ‘So be it.’ Karim lifted the boy’s chin up. ‘I want you to meet someone.’ He twisted Basim’s head in the direction of the door, then, withdrawing his hand, stepped back out of the light. ‘Basim, this is Rabia Balkhi. Rabia is your last chance.’

  Basim blinked, confusion melding with his fear as a woman in a pale blue burqa glided silently out of the shadows. She moved like a mirage, floating against the blackness; around her shimmered a faint glow, like an orange halo around the moon. No, he told himself, do not weaken. This is no djinniyeh sent to seduce me from the true path. It is only a woman.

  For what seemed like a long time she stood and looked at him; a powdery blue statue, insubstantial. Then she came closer and sat in the chair opposite, and suddenly she was very real and something inside him cautioned that this woman was to be feared.

  ‘I am Rabia.’

  She spoke so quietly he had to strain to hear her voice. He couldn’t place the accent — it was foreign, almost American — and despite his resolve to ignore her, he found himself listening intently.

  ‘I want to talk to you about dying.’ She held up a hand to indicate that he shouldn’t interrupt her, even though she knew he had no intention of speaking. ‘I admire you for wanting to die for your cause. I honour the martyrs who have gone before. I honour those who will follow. I pray that their rewards are beyond reckoning, and that they may find peace. Insh’allah.’ She paused and held one hand out in front of her above her head. ‘I see the soul of the shaheed, flying to paradise.’ Her hand moved slowly from side to side. ‘It is a green bird, flying in a purple sky.’

  He watched as her hand painted the picture: the bird circled then folded its wings and settled slowly onto the blue water of her lap.

  ‘But what if there is more than one bird? Is the sky big enough? Does one bird attack the other, and push it off its course? No, Basim.’

  She waited again, watching his eyes, knowing that he was still a long way from capture.

  ‘You have flown into our sky, Basim. But you were not to know. Your friends could not have known either, for it was a secret. And now I am going to share the secret with you and show you that we can share the same sky.

  ‘You and I, we share the same faith and the same dreams. You and I also share the same enemies. And what you and your friends did not know was that, long before you arrived, we were planning to strike our enemies down. We have sworn to give our lives for this. We have trained and prayed so long for the day when we will give our lives and bring death to our enemies. Yet you have come and, like a robber, stepped into our house and begun to steal our belongings. You strike at the enemy we wish to kill, and have no thought that we are on the same side.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’

  Rabia had to steel herself against reacting. It was too soon. The boy’s voice was firm and clear, as if he was entering conversation with an equal — yet it was too soon. She ignored him; returned to the path she had so carefully rehearsed in her head.

  ‘If you steal our enemy from us, you steal our right to be martyrs. You rob us of the right to fly in that purple sky. You should remember that if you die here, tonight, your soul will not fly to paradise. Only those who die a martyr’s death can have that hope. If you die here it is because you have failed. You will die like a robber, a bandit, a dacoit. Your family will know you have betrayed them; your brothers will curse you and you will wear that curse through eternity.

  ‘But if you join us, then you and I together shall become shaheed. There will be two green birds, Basim, and I pray for that.’

  Rabia waited for him to respond but he stuck to his silence. She rose slowly to her feet. ‘I am so sorry that you will not join me.’ She turned and walked away.

  Basim wanted to speak but his tongue felt thick, his mouth dry. He screwed his eyes shut, trying to rid his head of the image of this temptress, this genie. When he opened his eyes she was in league with the air, which was parting to let her slip away.

  ‘Wait …’ His voice a whisper in the dark.

  She paused, now only a glimmer in the vast distance between him and hope.

  ‘How can I trust you?’

  The silence hung suspended between them, fragile as gossamer yet tightening with the strength to halt her in the act of vanishing. It vibrated, resonating, expectant.

  She didn’t turn, but her voice — no longer soft, but sharp-edged, bright, like shards of shattered crystal — cut across the space between them. ‘I will give you your enemy.’

  Basim, swallowing, allowed himself the thought — that he might yet fulfil the promises he had made. His spirit rose and he flexed his legs and strained against the ropes. Deliverance, if it was to come, would have to be through this woman — Rabia. He mouthed the name … Rabia.

  A
noise. Suddenly alert, he listened and it came again: the scuffing sound of shoes on the concrete floor. Basim craned as far forward as he could and hunted the space. The woman was returning, carrying two small glasses now. Orange juice. She placed one of the glasses on the ground beside the empty chair then stepped away.

  From behind her appeared two men dressed in traditional shalwars. They were leading a figure in a dark business suit. A man, solidly built, walking tentatively. The man’s face was covered with a black hood.

  A prisoner being led to execution?

  ‘Sit him down,’ Rabia said and the men took the prisoner’s groping hand and guided it towards the chair. They seated him and then stood either side, close, as though to keep him from falling.

  He’s been drugged, Basim thought.

  ‘Here is the gift I offer you,’ Rabia said. ‘If you refuse my gift, I can do nothing more to save you.’ She handed him the orange juice.

  He took a sip and felt relief as it cooled his throat. It had been twenty-four hours since he had eaten or slept and the juice was like nectar. ‘Why should I be interested in this man? I have killed many already.’

  ‘This one is special. I could have killed him myself by now.’

  ‘Special, what makes him special?’ Basim was annoyed, suspecting that she was playing with him.

  ‘I will show you,’ Rabia said. ‘And then you shall tell me if he is special enough for you.’

  Rabia stepped in front of the man, removed his hood and dropped it to the floor. She stepped to the side. Basim gasped.

  ‘God is great,’ he whispered.

  There was no mistaking the man sitting in the chair, even with the strip of gaffer tape across his mouth. ‘It is him. It is this Philson. The immigration minister.’

  ‘Does it please you that I have brought you this gift, Basim?’

  ‘What will you do with him?’

  ‘This man has locked away my people. He has imprisoned children behind razor wire in the desert and forced women and children into unseaworthy boats in order to be reunited with their husbands and fathers. He has turned the people of this country against us. For those crimes I will kill him for you.’