Aliyyah

by Chris Dolan

  The ladder was near enough now for Haldane to jump up and catch hold of the end of it. His comrade, not far above, gave instructions through the loudspeaker. “One at a time, until each of you is halfway. Women first, then the men. You last, Captain.”

  Haldane pulled the leather and steel ladder over and placed the end so that it was just a step up for Aliyyah. But she seemed frozen to the spot. He had to lift her up, upon which she did put her foot on the lowest rung, but made no attempt to climb further. “Come on, Aliyyah. It’s perfectly safe. A couple of steps. I’ve got you. The soldier will take your arm in a moment.” The ’copter suddenly lurched and the ladder swung out. Aliyyah made no sound but he could see her stiffen. He managed to hang on to her. Then she turned and looked down on him and for an instant, the draft blowing her robe and veil and hair wildly, she seemed to him dead. Her eyes were open, staring at him, but as if she were seeing nothing. So frail and motionless, hanging in the sky, the moonlight turned her skin yellow and ancient, the green gone from her eyes, only the whites showing. Haldane almost cried out but he controlled himself, and decided it best that he get ahead of her on the ladder and pull her up rather than pushing from below.

  Just as he was level with her he saw a shadow rushing towards them from the ground. Duban. Screaming some words in his own language, he grabbed the girl’s ankle so that he and Haldane were hauling in different directions. “Let go you stupid old bastard!” But Duban put his arms round Aliyyah’s legs and hung on tight.

  “Captain. What the hell’s happening here?!” The soldier above was reaching down, almost falling out of the helicopter. The pilot tried to pull them all up, and Duban’s feet, Haldane could see, left the ground. In between them was the lifeless Aliyyah, now not holding on to the ladder, but stretched between them, swinging out into the draft, robes and hair billowing violently. He could no longer see her face. He could hear urgent talking above him, among the crew. The pilot dropped the craft down again, and Duban’s feet touched the ground. The moment they did, Ma’ahaba was upon him, pulling him away from Aliyyah and Haldane and the ladder. So that now they formed a ladder themselves, a human chain hanging from the sky.

  “Captain. This man’s screwing up the mission. Who the hell is he?” There were more words from above which he couldn’t make out, the ’copter jumped upwards again, and then the night was suddenly lit up. Haldane heard the retort of the gun a moment later.

  In that instant of light he saw the first splashes of red blood. “Aliyyah!” He screamed. But now she reacted and looked up at him, her eyes alive again but full of tears and dismay. She looked at the aircraft and then at him as if she had no idea what either of them were and how she was hanging perilously in mid-air.

  “The pilot tried to pull them all up and Duban’s feet … left the ground. In between them was the lifeless Aliyyah, … robes and hair billowing …”

  On the ground below, Duban and Ma’ahaba lay flat. He heard Aliyyah, under the growl of the engine, call both their names. Then she leaped from the ladder, staggering onto the hard earth below. He was just about to follow when he felt the arm of his comrade on his shoulder, and the snap of a safety harness being fastened to him. He yelled “No!” and tried to loosen the catch, but couldn’t.

  “Let me go!”

  His feet left the ladder and he swung below the slashing blades, felt himself being pulled up in jolts towards the cabin. The beam of torchlight swept to and fro over the scene below him. Aliyyah on her knees over the two still bodies. When the beam swept back again Haldane saw a bloom of crimson spread out over the clearing.

  Then he saw Duban get to his knees. Aliyyah looked up at him, and he thought he saw hatred in her eyes. The soldier above was hauling him in, but Haldane resisted, spellbound by that red flower unfolding. Springing, he now understood, not from the old man, but from Ma’ahaba, her head open and broken, her body still as stone.

  The Warrior Returns

  His limbs and his neck were aching again, though whether from the same wounds as before, he didn’t know or care. He walked along the lane he had not seen for so long, up the hill, and saw appearing at its end the house.

  His vision was blurry, as was his memory. Though he knew everything that had happened, could list them in order, it all felt artificial. Only the memory of Ma’ahaba lying dead, Aliyyah’s sharp eyes, and Duban waving his little fist, felt real.

  The rest of the flight back to base was vague. He had been pushed into a seat by the crew and fastened down. He could still hear himself shouting, screaming, but could no longer remember his own words.

  Then there had been an inquiry, then the summary hearing. There were warrant officers, advisers, his own testimony, accusations made against him, the beginning of the court martial – all of it muffled sounds and images in his head, as though he had watched them on, or through, a screen. His every action had been studied, argued over, questioned, defended. From the moment of the crash… What had happened between the aircraft personnel that morning? Had Captain Thomas Haldane tried to help his fellows, Gunner Kane and Pilot Samson? How had he alone managed to walk free? Who had helped him and why? To all of these queries he tried to answer as simply and as honestly as he could, though his answers had sounded improbable even to him.

  More and more questions. An infinity of them. How had he managed to salvage the radio? Wasn’t it surprising that, while a craft as robust as the Wildcat had all but been obliterated, a simple radio had survived intact? And who had taught him to operate it? Whilst he was MIA, to whom had he spoken and what had he told them?

  “He walked along the lane he had not seen for so long, up the hill, and saw appearing at its end the house.”

  Between all the questions there were different places. First his own quarters and bunk, then a cell. Then a flight and a different cell, courtrooms. Had he briefed the rescue party correctly? His unit had expected more men, perhaps compromised allied fighters, perhaps prisoners of war. Instead, so far as they could ascertain, there were only two women and an elderly man. What was behind the scuffle that had impaired the rescue operation? Had Captain Haldane endangered the rescue mission and the crew’s lives by exposing them to an ill-prepared plan and enemy agents? Who had given the order to fire?

  Every morning and every night, before and after interrogations, he had pleaded for news. Could he speak to Aliyyah, the younger woman? The radio was still at the house – they could make contact. Was Ma’ahaba dead? All requests were refused, no information was given him. He was stripped of his post, dismissed. He had had a duty of care, had not followed procedures, had acted improperly in action. Thomas Haldane was cast out. Sent back to the world, dishonoured.

  And now he was walking, in a suit he had not worn for years that hung loosely round his shoulders and frayed at his heels. The hill up to the house seemed steeper and longer than he remembered it. And he felt so alone, under the weight of his longing, and his dread.

  Yet in his loneliness he felt them around him. The old man, the beautiful girl and, especially, Ma’ahaba. He thought he could hear them whispering to him.

  “The patient seldom understands the ways of the physician, my friend.”

  Aliyyah singing gaily: “Love awaits you! Love’s not grown in the garden, or sold in the bazaar. King or servant, the price is your head. O miser, a cheap price to pay!”

  And Ma’ahaba laughing. “To get what you want, you must first learn to live with what you fear.”

  He had no idea how much time had passed, but still he could not piece together what had gone wrong the morning of the crash. It all happened so fast. The blink of an eye. He had been told that little could be deduced from the crash site. The AgustaWestland Wildcat had been found, but in pieces, spread out over an area of more than three square miles. But of his colleagues no trace had been found. They had been awarded posthumous honours, both. But Michael Samson and Simon Kane had been obliterated. His comrades-in-arms lifted bodily from the world, launched, in infinitesimal pieces of matter,
into the stars. He felt now that something of them, too, remained, in the air, drifting around him wherever he went. Mick and Si, more present, even here at his father’s house, than he was himself.

  Opening the gate he thought he heard in its creaking the voice of Ma’ahaba: “The glory of the fall is never to land.” At the end of the driveway there was a light on in the study. The late summer trees hung heavily overhead, dripping rain on him. His father was sitting at his desk, as Haldane knew he would be. The son hung his head lower at the sight. The soldier returning home disgraced.

  And yet there was still some pride left in him, a shard of defiance. He had gone and he had fought. He had been vanquished, but had learned something. The soldier was not returning empty-handed. He’d seen hell and he’d seen heaven. He was a man of the world. Perhaps he had found love, and now he knew hate. The beauty and the torment would live forever inside him. He was returning full of holes, like the victim of action, of gunfire. Holes in him, for Ma’ahaba and Duban. He was bleeding invisibly, as if half his flesh was torn away, the absence of Aliyyah draining him. And more cavities, one for every question, a hollow for each unsatisfactory answer he had given, for the loss of comrades and companions. A chasm for the final ice-green of betrayal in Aliyyah’s eyes.

  When he looked up again, his father was no longer at the window, alarming Haldane more than he had expected. But he returned a moment later, helping the soldier’s mother to the window. She still did not look old which made her sickness all the more cruel. But she seemed to see him. Perhaps she even knew, somewhere deep inside, who this bedraggled young man was. In her eyes was that glow, as if she saw the world differently, perceived what Haldane could not. But still she stared a notch or so above his head.

  His father held her tight, and the two of them stepped close to the window pane, as though he was making sure his sight wasn’t deceiving him. His ageing face full of wonder. Haldane struggled up the last rise in the hill and saw dad open his arms to him, and hoped it was a gesture of joy, not in the son’s defeat, but in his return.

  Acknowledgements

  Bewitch us to death

  with gods and beasties,

  tall wifies’ old lore.

  Fairy tails.

  Makie-uppie places, greater than this.

  Thank you, Robert Louis Stevenson, for “Olalla”. And for “Isle of Voices”. The story of “Olalla” has intrigued me since I read it as a teenager, and is the inspiration for Aliyyah.

  Jekyll and Hyde is in here too and lots more of Tusitala’s yarns. Books and stories come out of the books and stories we’ve read and heard. In this case there are too many to mention. One Thousand and One Nights has been a passion for almost as long as Stevenson. Stories to keep the morning at bay, hold back the terrors of the night. Marina Warner’s work on Arabian Nights and fairy tales helped me hugely.

  Thanks to Anthony Grayling’s The Good Book, itself a compendium of thousands of books that preceded it. And holy books – the Bible, Qur’an, Tanakh, the sutras and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I’m not claiming to have read them all cover to cover, but have dipped into them all over the years. Duban would say that my eye was directed, but in truth every now and then something simply chimed with me and made its way, in one form or another, into this wee creation here.

  Thanks too to other writers, particularly Scottish ones, Spanish-language ones, and in this case those from Jewish and Islamic traditions. Lorca and Di Mambro, Rumi and Márquez, Dylan and Saadi and Cohen.

  More particularly still, those I’ve talked with and who gave me ideas, often without their knowing it. For one, Allan Cameron – also my publisher, editor and friend. In praise of the garrulous indeed! He is that kind of magpie writer and thinker, forever finding shiny facts and fictions and sharpened stanzas, and seeing the connections between them. Rosemary Goring for years of talking books. Paul Cuddihy for encouragement and wit and songs. J. David Simons for opening up a new dimension in the writing of this. There will be others. Lots. Perhaps you’ll spot them. Words and thoughts and ideas I’ve read and heard and discussed and that have stayed with me, nagged at me.

  And thanks to friends. Liam and Eddie, and all that magic talking in Spanish bars and restaurants after long days cycling up hills. Thanks to Fergal who, if he isn’t already, should be keeping a tally of my thefts.

  And my best friend of all – we share books, thoughts, and now a long history together. All my books are as much yours, Moira, as mine. And to my family, those who went before, follow on, and those with whom I walk in step. As Ma’ahaba says, stories and dreams – we need to do something with them.

  My Scotland exists in the minds of others,

  a long night’s journey

  through impossible passes

  to panoramas of dreams and perhapses.

  Other books by the same author:

  Potter’s Field (Vagabond Voices, 2014)

  Redlegs (Vagabond Voices, 2012)

  John Lennon. The Story of the Original Beatle (Argyll Publishing, 2011)

  An Anarchist’s Story. The Life of Ethel MacDonald (Birlinn, 2009)

  Ascension Day (Headline Review, 1999)

  Poor Angels and Other Stories (Polygon, 1995)

  Copyright

  © Chris Dolan 2015

  Published on 29 May 2015 by

  Vagabond Voices Publishing Ltd.

  Glasgow

  Scotland

  ISBN: 978–1–908251–49–7

  The author’s rights to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 have been asserted.

  Cover design by Mark Mechan

  Typeset by Park Productions

  The publisher acknowledges subsidy towards this publication from Creative Scotland

  For further information on Vagabond Voices, see the website:

  www.vagabondvoices.co.uk