Kiss the Dust

by Elizabeth Laird

  Suddenly she saw the boy’s head lying on the pavement, with the bullet hole in it. She shuddered. Perhaps heroism wasn’t all that great in real life. It was too quick and brutal and casual.

  The programme was finished. Tara hadn’t taken in a word. The news came on. She tried to concentrate. She hadn’t bothered to follow it very closely up till now. There was a clip of the President at a military parade, and a lot of loud music. It was funny, she’d never noticed it before, but every news programme showed the Iraqi army winning, and hundreds of Iranians being killed or taken prisoner. But if the Iraqis were always winning, why hadn’t the war ended years ago?

  She got up and switched the TV off. The house was unusually quiet tonight. When Ashti was at home he made enough noise for ten, even if none of his friends was visiting. And her father usually had several callers in the evening, who could be heard arguing and discussing in the formal sitting room near the front door that was reserved for Kak Soran’s guests.

  The air-conditioning hadn’t been switched on yet. In a few weeks’ time, when the blistering summer heat arrived, its continuous low hum would blank out any sound from the dark garden and city streets outside. But tonight Tara was vaguely aware of the noises of the cool spring evening. There was a distant rumble of cars and lorries from the main streets of the town. A loud, crackling radio was blaring out music from some open window not far away.

  What was that?

  Tara’s head jerked up. It sounded like shots. She’d often heard shooting after dark before, but Daya had always said it was just trigger-happy soldiers taking pot shots at stray cats. And there wasn’t only shooting either. Every dog in Sulaimaniya seemed to be barking. And the greyhound next door, that always scared her stiff when she went past the gates, was the loudest of all. She turned off the light, went over to the window and peeped out through the heavy blackout curtains.

  The moon had come up. It made the garden look all silvery and unreal. The big hound next door sounded absolutely frantic now. It was jumping up against the dividing wall, rattling its chain and barking its head off.

  Surely something else was out there? Tara peered forward, trying to see into the deep shadows by the wall. She was sure something had moved under the shade of the old almond tree. Yes! There it was again!

  Tara gasped and opened the curtain wider. There was someone there. He was bent double now, running from the almond tree to the big clump of bougainvillia beside the kitchen door. A strange man! In their own garden! It could be a thief, or even a murderer! And her father and Ashti were away in Baghdad. She and Daya and Hero were all alone.

  ‘Daya!’ shouted Tara, running out of the room. ‘Daya! Come here! There’s a thief in the garden!’

  Teriska Khan came racing out of her bedroom.

  ‘Are you sure? Quick! Bolt the back door!’

  They were too late. They burst into the kitchen to find that the man was in the house already.

  He was tall, lean and deeply sunburnt. He wore the baggy trousers, tight jacket and sash of a mountain Kurd. A turban was tied round his head and the fringe dangled over one eye. His left arm was roughly bandaged with a bloodstained rag, and the long loose sleeve was torn right up to his shoulder. He carried a deadly looking rifle in his right hand, and he was just putting it down on the table when Tara and Teriska Khan dashed into the room.

  When he saw them, the mouth under his drooping black moustache split open into a friendly smile, and he suddenly looked younger.

  ‘Hello, Teriska,’ he said. ‘And who’s this? Surely it can’t be Tara? If it is, she’s grown a lot since I last saw her.’

  Teriska Khan ran forward.

  ‘Rostam!’ she said. ‘They’ve hit you! Oh, my God, however did you get here? Tara, go to the medicine cupboard in my bedroom and get some lint and a bandage. Your uncle’s wounded.’

  3

  Tara pushed open the door that led to the narrow corridor at the back of the house off which the three bedrooms ran. Hero was standing by the door of her parents’ room. Her face was flushed, her eyes were puffy and her nightdress was trailing on the floor. She coughed, and Tara saw that her nose was running.

  ‘What are you doing out of bed?’ Tara said. ‘I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘I am asleep,’ said Hero indignantly. ‘I was in the toilet. I want a drink. If I don’t have a drink I’ll wake up. And I’ll start crying, and . . .’

  Tara picked her up. The mysterious uncle in the kitchen was probably bleeding to death. There was no time to waste on Hero. But nothing on earth would shake her once she’d got an idea into her head. If she wanted a drink she’d make sure she got one, or she’d scream the house down for it. And a screaming Hero was the last thing they needed tonight.

  She pushed open the door of her parents’ bedroom and put Hero on the big double bed. Hero lay back and began to finger the pink frill on one of her mother’s pillows.

  ‘A drink,’ she said, and an ominous whining undertone started to creep into her voice. Tara looked round anxiously. She didn’t want to go back to the kitchen. Hero would probably follow her, and then the fat would be in the fire.

  Then she saw a tray on her mother’s bedside table. Thank goodness! There was a jug of filtered water and a glass on it. She poured some out quickly and gave it to Hero, who took a couple of sips, then, to Tara’s great relief, lay back on the pillows.

  ‘Nice,’ she murmured, fiddling with the fringe again, while the thumb of her other hand crept towards her mouth. Tara watched her anxiously for a moment. Hero’s eyes slowly shut. The eyelids flickered as if she was trying to open them again, but the effort was too much for her. She was obviously asleep.

  Tara slowly let out her breath, and tiptoed over to the big cupboard opposite her parents’ bed. What was it Daya had wanted? Lint and bandages? There they were, on the second shelf. She’d take the lot while she was about it. She wouldn’t be surprised if the whole kitchen had filled up with wounded men by the time she got downstairs again. The world had turned topsy turvy. Anything might happen tonight.

  Teriska Khan met her at the kitchen door.

  ‘Did I hear Hero?’ she said. ‘Is she awake again?’

  ‘No. She’s gone back to sleep. She only wanted a drink. I didn’t tell her anyone was here.’

  ‘Good. We’d better keep her right out of this. She’s much too young to keep a secret. She’ll have to see Rostam in the morning, but she mustn’t know he came secretly in the night, and she mustn’t know he’s wounded. You’ve got to remember that, Tara. No one must know, not Leila, not the neighbours, not any one at all. There mustn’t be a hint, or even a look. If it got out that we’re sheltering a wounded pesh murga, who’s wanted by the police, God knows what . . . It’s a matter of life and death for all of us.’

  ‘Yes, Daya.’ Teriska Khan had never talked to Tara quite like this before. She sounded so serious, as if she was talking to another grown-up. Tara was nearly as tall as her mother now. She pulled herself up to her full height. Teriska Khan was looking straight into her eyes, as if she was looking for something there.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Tara said. ‘I really do understand. You can trust me, you know.’

  Teriska Khan smiled.

  ‘I know I can, darling. You’ve got the bandages? Good. Take them into the kitchen. The wound’s deep, but I don’t think the bone’s damaged. I forgot to tell you to get the disinfectant lotion too. I know exactly where it is. I’ll go and get it myself.’

  Tara stood outside the kitchen, screwing up her courage to go in. She’d never met this uncle before. She hardly knew of his existence. The only men she was used to were her father and Ashti. Other men, unless they were close cousins, never got past the guest sitting room near the front door. They certainly didn’t go into the kitchen and perch on the table, as this uncle had done. After a long moment, curiosity got the better of her and she opened the door.

  The kitchen was big, but Tara had the strange impression that her uncle filled the whole o
f it. It was so odd to see an unfamiliar man in the room. He was half sitting on the table, his short woven coat removed and one shirt sleeve rolled right up to the shoulder. On any other occasion, Tara would have felt completely tongue-tied, but the wound in her uncle’s arm, the bloody clothes on the floor, the bowl of red water and the gory smears on the pristine whiteness of the formica table made everything seem so extraordinary that she found her tongue at once.

  ‘Shouldn’t you go the the doctor?’ she said anxiously.

  Uncle Rostam didn’t even seem to be aware of the horrid red pulp on his arm. He laughed, and his teeth showed strong and white in his sunburned face.

  ‘Doctors might talk, little niece,’ he said. ‘Even Kurdish ones. Your mother’s a good enough doctor for me.’

  ‘But who are you? What happened? Who shot you?’

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I’m your Uncle Rostam. I’m a pesh murga. One of “those who face death”. Didn’t you know? Or has my cautious city brother kept me a secret from his children all these years?’

  He laughed at the expression on her face, but the extra movement made him wince. He put his left hand up to his upper right arm, and Tara could see a strip of cloth tied so tightly above the wound it seemed to be biting into the muscle.

  ‘Oh, be careful,’ she said. ‘Look, it’s started bleeding again.’

  Helplessly, she watched the trickle of blood thicken as it ran down her uncle’s sinewy arm, then feeling a bit faint she looked away as Teriska Khan came back into the kitchen, a bottle of lotion in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.

  ‘Keep out of the way,’ she said to Tara, ‘and don’t touch anything. We don’t want the wound to get infected.’

  She went to the sink to wash her hands, and caught sight of a chink where the curtains hadn’t been properly pulled. ‘Pull them across tightly,’ she said to Tara, drying her hands. Rostam chuckled softly.

  ‘Hiding a fugitive’s a serious crime, sister-in-law,’ he said through gritted teeth as Teriska Khan began mopping up the blood with a piece of sterile lint. She didn’t answer but frowned down at the mess on his arm.

  ‘Do you think the bullet’s still in there?’

  ‘I – don’t – know,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Tara couldn’t look. She felt rather sick. How could Daya bear to poke and probe at it like that? And how could Uncle Rostam be so brave?

  ‘I’m sure there’s nothing there,’ Teriska Khan said at last, straightening up. ‘But it ought to be looked at by a doctor. It really needs stitching.’

  ‘No! No doctors! No hospitals!’ Rostam jumped off the table and stood, swaying slightly. Teriska Khan shook her head, but didn’t say anything. She dabbed some disinfectant ointment on to a dressing, put it gently on the wound, and tied a bandage round it. Then she loosened the tourniquet above the wound.

  ‘What about your old friend, Dr Mohammed Bakir?’ she said at last. ‘He wouldn’t betray you, or any other pesh murga. I know he wouldn’t.’

  ‘No!’ Rostam backed away from her, towards the door. ‘That’s just where they’ll look first, at all the doctors’ places. They know they hit me. The police are out like flies, buzzing all over Sulaimaniya. They must have had a tip-off from someone. They obviously knew we were getting a shipment through tonight.’ He frowned suddenly at Tara, and stopped talking. She frowned too. Uncle Rostam obviously thought she was just a little girl who couldn’t be trusted. He probably thought she was scared of a bit of blood too. She’d show him.

  Swallowing hard, she picked up the bowl of red stained water and threw it down the sink. Then she steeled herself to pick up the bloodstained clothes from the floor, and took them over to the sink too. She turned the tap on, and began to rinse them out.

  ‘If they had a tip-off . . .’ Teriska Khan said quietly, and stopped. Tara turned to look at her. Her mother didn’t usually say much, and Tara was used to reading her thoughts. Uncle Rostam seemed to do so as well.

  ‘They won’t know I’ve come here, I’m sure they won’t,’ he said. ‘No one saw me after I got away from the checkpoint on the Chuarta road. There’s no reason why they’d look for me here.’

  ‘Did they know it was you? Did they recognize you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  For the first time, Tara saw a shadow of doubt, a flicker of anxiety cross her uncle’s bold, confident face. Into the silence fell the distant, threatening whine of a police siren.

  Teriska Khan picked up the scissors and the unused lint.

  ‘Well, we’d better get ready, just in case,’ she said briskly. Tara felt her skin prickle with fright. She wanted to jump into the nearest cupboard, shut the door, and cower in the dark.

  How could Daya be so calm and brave? Tara had seen her cope with disasters before, like when Hero had been sick in a taxi, all over the driver, or when Ashti had collected millions of grasshoppers and let them loose in the kitchen, or when Auntie Suzan had been in that terrible car crash, but now here she was, practically operating on a serious gunshot wound, and proposing to hide a wanted man from the secret police.

  Teriska Khan turned Tara round, and propelled her towards the door.

  ‘Get on with it,’ she said in her usual matter-of-fact voice. ‘Take this bloodstained cotton wool and flush it down the toilet. And don’t leave it until you’re sure it’s all gone. I’ll get Rostam some clean clothes. Ashti’s shirts will be too small for him, but one of your father’s might do. Then when you’ve got rid of the cotton wool, come back to the kitchen and get every tiny bloodstain washed away.’

  ‘Yes, Daya,’ said Tara, trying not to mind how bloody her fingers were getting as she picked the bits of saturated lint off the table. ‘But what’ll we do if they do come? Where can you hide him?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you,’ said Teriska Khan. ‘The fewer people who know the better. Now, don’t worry. They’re not likely to come here after all.’

  A few months earlier, Tara’s father, Kak Soran, had paid a fortune to have the kitchen completely done up. Tara never went into it without admiring the polished marble floor, the dazzling white paintwork and the rows of electrical gadgets. But tonight for the first time she missed the old kitchen, with the brick coloured tiles that used to be on the floor, and the old wood-effect formica surfaces.

  No one had had the sense, when they were planning the new kitchen, to think how impossible it would be to clear away the evidence of a wounded man. It was easy enough to wipe a cloth over a drop of blood on the shining stainless steel sink, but even after several tries, you could still see the smear left behind. And however hard Tara scrubbed and rubbed at the stains on the floor, she couldn’t seem to make the freshly washed part look exactly the same as the rest of it, which her mother had gone over that morning. It just looked different. And when she thought she’d finished, and got rid of every trace, she found a whole new set of bloody red fingerprints on the back of the chair which her uncle had been gripping while Teriska Khan was cleaning his wound.

  Tara was just working over these when she heard something that made her flesh come up in goosebumps. A car was coming down the quiet street towards the house. They were here! They’d come for him! And she and her mother would be arrested too, tortured perhaps, even shot! She couldn’t move. She felt rooted to the spot. Then she remembered something her father used to say to Ashti.

  ‘A Kurd never shows he’s afraid,’ he’d said.

  Tara took a deep breath, and forced herself to make a final cool inspection of the kitchen. She was just about to rush out when she caught sight of her own hands. There was a red streak on her own wrist! Her heart gave a sickening lurch, and she darted to the sink to wash it off. Then she heard the car stop outside the house, and one, then another door slam, and she tore off to warn her mother.

  Teriska Khan was coming out of the bathroom, wiping her hands on a towel.

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ she said.


  ‘Daya! There’s a car! It’s stopped outside. There are people getting out. I heard the doors slam!’

  ‘It’ll be Soran I expect. I thought he’d be home hours ago,’ said Teriska Khan. ‘Is the kitchen finished? And you’ve got rid of the cotton wool? OK. Now in case it’s not your father, remember, no one’s been here all day except for your cousin Latif who called earlier this evening. When he realized your father hadn’t come back from Baghdad, he went away again. Got that?’

  She’d hardly stopped speaking when a man’s voice called out,

  ‘Teriska, Tara – where is everyone? I’ve got a surprise for you.’

  Tara felt she was waking up from a nightmare. Her father was home at last.

  ‘Baba!’ she shouted, and ran towards the front door.

  Kak Soran had put down his briefcase and was unwinding the scarf from his neck. He grinned broadly at her.

  ‘You all seem very quiet this evening,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me Hero’s asleep already? What’s the matter with you? Look who’s here!’

  He stepped sideways, and Tara saw, beside Ashti, a short person all dressed in black, from the scarf that completely covered her white hair to the hem of her ankle-length dress.

  ‘Granny!’ she said, and ran over to give her a hug.

  Everyone was talking and laughing at once.

  ‘I had no idea . . .’ said Teriska Khan.

  ‘Well,’ Granny said comfortably, ‘Soran finished his business early and came to see me, and said why didn’t I come up here for a week or two, and Suzan seemed a lot better and said she could do without me for a bit, so I thought I would. He only gave me half an hour to pack my things though.’ She still had her arm round Tara, who was breathing in the well-remembered smell of camphor and cinnamon that always seemed to cling to Granny’s clothes.

  ‘What’s for supper?’ said Kak Soran, striding towards the kitchen. ‘It’s been a long drive.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, good heavens!’ said Teriska Khan. ‘I forgot all about your supper!’

  ‘What?’ Kak Soran looked astonished. He was used to a perfectly run household, to an endless supply of beautifully ironed shirts, and delicious meals ready whenever he wanted to eat. In all the years they’d been married, Teriska Khan had never forgotten to cook his supper before.