8
Hannah can smell the camels and hear the heavy splash when they piss. She leans against one of them, trying to follow the rhythm of its slowly rocking gait. She wants to be nothing more than sounds, smells, a creature moving forward mechanically, step by step. She wants to be absorbed into the munching calm of the heavily loaded camels.
Steffensen is walking in front of her. Every so often he turns around, which they all do. This brief glimpse, a moment’s eye contact, is their only form of communication.
Like the others, Steffensen is also wearing a patu over his head. He has sunken cheeks, and his usually carefully shaven face is covered with stubble. In the half shadow of his shawl, small flashes of light play across his glasses, and he squints.
Adam walks behind Hannah. They have to find some way to talk to each other. There’s so much unfinished business between them, so much that needs to be said and straightened out. She tries several times to make contact with him, but each time, one of the guards yells a warning at her.
They’re given rice twice a day, the second time with something indeterminate added, giving several of them diarrhea. In the mess tent, soap and disinfectant gels protected their insides. Now, Andreas, Sørensen, and the usually robust Viktor sit doubled over, their faces contorted in pain, on the desert sand. She can imagine how disgusting it must be to have to clean their dirty asses with their hands. Fortunately their kirtles are long enough to cover their rear ends, although Sørensen has a curry-yellow stain running down one pant leg.
Hannah’s period usually announces its arrival with cramps, which she confused with a stomachache the first time. Of course her mother was no help at all. This time she doesn’t get them. She’s squatting and peeing in front of a man pointing a Kalashnikov at her when she discovers she’s bleeding. As a soldier, she gets it that her guard can’t give her any privacy by turning his back. So the pig stands there staring at her. She avoids staring back, so there won’t be any misunderstanding between them. He hands her a water bottle, which she takes without looking at him. Soon the blood will be running down her thighs. Don’t Muslim men have some kind of a problem with menstruation? What the hell is she going to do?
She still has it in a deep pocket of the kirtle, the talisman, which she can finally use to satisfy something other than her sick longing when she buries her nose in it and tries to imagine she’s a bloodhound. Schrøder’s shemagh. She washes herself with her hand and then fishes the cloth up out of the kirtle’s pocket and carefully folds it so it will fit between her legs. She can’t exactly stuff it in like a plug. She was never given any underwear. She hitches up the baggy pants so they’re snug and hopes they will hold the cloth in place. Now and then she’ll have to rinse off the cloth and wring it out in water from the bottle. All while her guard watches. How much does he know about women’s anatomy? Is he married? He looks young. Around twenty. Her own age. Definitely a virgin. He’d be horrified if he understood what he was seeing. Or maybe he’d feel degraded and become so full of contempt and rage that he’d do something really awful.
With each step, she can feel the cloth. It’s almost symbolic, she thinks. I can’t escape Schrøder, even in the most intimate place.
A dangerous introversion has crept over her. They’re in a desperate situation, and she just wants to disappear—but she needs to do the exact opposite. She has to be constantly on alert, ready to seize any chance, and chances occur in the most unexpected ways. They have to do something. Adrenaline doesn’t just come rushing in on its own.
Yes, she agreed to Steffensen’s idea of passive cooperation with Schrøder, but nothing is happening. He’s left them in a state of complete uncertainty, and that uncertainty is dulling their senses.
She thinks about Natasja and her own advice to Adam. She has to get back up on that horse!
In a moment I’ll yell “stop,” she decides. Once I do that, we’ll all sit down together. Then the assholes can kick us, they can beat us, they can threaten to shoot us. But if they want us to go with them, they’ll have to tie our hands behind our backs and load us onto the camels. This can’t go on!
And just what do you think is going to happen then, asks a warning voice inside her.
They’ll shoot us. That’s her answer to the voice that she realizes is the last bit of reason speaking to her. They’ll shoot us! And fuck it! Fuck it all!
She stops suddenly. “Stop,” she yells. “Sit down!”
9
“Stop!” Hannah yells again.
Their military training kicks in. They’ve been waiting for an order, some signal, anything that could tear them out of this feeling of helplessness that can’t be allowed to take hold. In a sudden rush of adrenaline, they step to the side and sit down in the sand. For a moment they manage to look at each other, a row of men and one woman in dirty kirtles with bright faces. It’s nothing more than a peaceful protest. They could be hippies having a sit-in, but they feel once again like a military unit. Their platoon has been amputated, wounded to its very core. Now they’re gathered together again. They’ve lost a lot of men, but they can still act. They bow their heads to protect themselves against the blows they know will come. Meanwhile they make themselves heavy and immobile.
Hannah doesn’t sit down. Her guard, eyewitness to her recent visit to the toilet in the sand, breaks her nose with the butt of his Kalashnikov. She takes two wobbly steps back and feels her knees shake. She doesn’t fall, though, because she refuses to fall. A blinding-white light prevents her from seeing the man who just struck her. Blood runs down her cheeks, along with her tears. I won’t cry, she thinks. It’s just the pain causing the tears. It’s a physical reaction. Just a bodily fluid.
She avoids bringing a hand up to her face. She doesn’t look down. She stares straight ahead, though she can’t see anything through her tears. Everything in her screams in protest. She wants to fall to the ground and roll up into a protective ball.
She prepares for the next blow.
It hits her right in the stomach. She doubles over, feeling the acidic, half-digested food rising up through her esophagus before she opens her mouth and vomits all over her boots.
I have to keep standing, she thinks. The effort to stay on her legs helps her to focus. The world hurts like hell, but at the same time, it’s painfully simple. Don’t fall. She doesn’t know anymore why she can’t fall. She just knows that she can’t.
The next blow doesn’t happen. Instead, she hears Schrøder’s voice yelling something in Pashto, followed by the sound of a punch. She tries to orient herself through the river of tears still streaming from her eyes. The guard that attacked her lies bleeding on the ground, holding his face in both hands. Blood runs down the back of his hands. They have something in common now—a broken nose.
“Is there something you want?”
Trying to blink away her tears, Hannah straightens up. Pain explodes from her broken nose, and her mouth tastes bitter. She swallows before she tries to talk.
“We have to talk—” Even she can hear it. She’s standing here, her face smeared with blood and light flashing in her field of vision, and it sounds as if they’re having a couple’s crisis. And maybe that’s exactly what we’re having, she thinks.
“You think it’s time for you to know what’s going on?”
“You have to let us go.”
“You’re absolutely right. I ought to let you go.” Schrøder stares appraisingly at Hannah, who’s so unprepared for the answer that she doesn’t know what to say.
“I certainly haven’t complied with the armed forces’ principles of communications. How do they go? We promote dialogue. We are approachable. We are trustworthy. We are here to understand. I think there are a few others, but they’re the ones we need right now. Okay, let’s start a dialogue.”
Hannah gives the men a sign that they should stand up. For the first time on their long march, they’re allowed to be together. They stand close, relieved by each other’s proximity. Their guards stand a f
ew meters away, their weapons ready to fire. “Let’s take a little break,” says Schrøder, waving them along as he steps out into the desert and away from the caravan. A few hundred meters out, he orders them to kneel. Hesitating, they immediately feel rifle barrels against their backs. Schrøder hands Andreas his camera and orders him to start filming. Schrøder’s tall figure towers over the half circle of kneeling soldiers. His kirtle flutters in the wind.
“I know you all hate me. And you have good reason.”
Hannah restrains herself. If she opens her mouth, she won’t be able to control what comes out.
“Are you working for the Taliban?” asks Steffensen.
“Good question.” Schrøder nods as if Steffensen is one of the brighter students in his class. “I work for myself. I take advantage of the chances I get. Today’s friends are tomorrow’s enemies.”
Schrøder lifts an index finger, and at this moment he resembles a blond Osama bin Laden, the one they’ve seen on video talking to his followers. “I know you all feel that you don’t belong here. You’d rather go home. And if that’s how you feel, you’re free to stand up and go. You came here voluntarily when you signed up for the war. If you stay, it must also be of your own free will.”
He looks at them with an accommodating smile. There’s a shamelessness about him that paralyzes them.
“But before you make your decision, I want to remind you why you ended up here. You’re here because you wanted revenge. If you go home now, you’ll never get another chance. Think of how embarrassing it will be when you return empty-handed. Your murdered comrades will haunt you every night. Right now your situation is not good. If it were a game, you’d have dropped down a few levels. But you can come back up again.”
He lifts his hands as if he’s inviting them to stand up and just go.
“You had some great days when your only thought was finding me. I’d like to help you remember how that was.”
Schrøder has a Neuhausen in a holster strapped across his shoulder. He takes it out and releases the safety catch. He quickly walks the five meters separating him from the kneeling squad. Hannah and Adam are next to each other. He hands Hannah the pistol.
“Shoot Adam,” he says. “If you don’t, I’ll shoot you. Adam or you. Your choice.”
Is he serious? Just a minute ago, he punched the guard who attacked her. Now he won’t spare her? Shoot Adam or live? Never. She doesn’t even have to consider it. Shoot Schrøder? Yes, screams everything inside her. She could point the pistol at him right now. But maybe it isn’t even loaded. It could be a bluff. But what if it isn’t? Shooting Schrøder will trigger their massacre. We’ll all die, she thinks. Which we all will anyway. She feels resigned.
“Do it!” says Adam.
“I won’t,” she says.
They stare into each other’s eyes. There’s so much they should have said.
Hannah is still holding the pistol. She stands up and hands it to Schrøder.
10
“Hannah, Hannah,” says Schrøder, shaking his head as if she’s been a foolish child. Taking two steps forward, he raises the pistol and fires directly into Adam’s forehead. Adam’s torso sways for a moment before falling to the side. There’s a black hole in the middle of his forehead. A 9 millimeter isn’t a large caliber, so a shot through the head doesn’t cause any dramatic effects, no blasted-open skull or bloody brain matter spraying all over the place. The exit hole is just as small as the entrance wound. If not for Adam’s open eyes, you’d think he had just fallen asleep.
Steffensen and the chaplain gasp. The others curse and yell at Schrøder. Dennis and Sylvester try to stand up but are stopped by the guards.
Schrøder puts his pistol back in his holster. “I didn’t have anything special against Adam,” he says. “It could just as easily have been any one of you.”
He points at the low ridge of mountains. “If you head that way, you’ll get home.” Then he points at the waiting caravan. “If you stay here, you have a chance for revenge.”
They’re still kneeling. They stare down at their laps, where their hands are resting passively on their thighs. Only Andreas was there when Schrøder let half of their platoon get massacred. The rest saw it on the screen. They found their comrades’ frozen bodies. Now they’ve seen it for themselves: not a soldier falling in the chaos of battle but a defenseless person shot right before their eyes.
Hannah is shaking uncontrollably; blood from her broken nose runs down into her mouth. She doubles over as if she’s been struck again in the stomach and lets out a loud moan. Then she falls forward. She hasn’t lost her balance—she just lets herself fall. Crawling over to Adam’s body, she lays her head on his chest. She’s still moaning oddly, an unbroken wail, as if her lungs no longer need oxygen.
In Schrøder’s arms, she used to make sounds as if someone with knowledgeable hands had finally tuned her properly. Now the strings of her soul break, one by one, and all that’s left is a ruined instrument.
“I can see you need a little time,” says Schrøder. “I’ll leave you all alone for a moment.”
He takes the camera from Andreas and then joins his men as they walk toward the caravan.
One after the other, the soldiers stand up. The desert awaits them. They can go west, a group of unarmed men in a country where everyone has a weapon and looks suspiciously upon strangers. They’ll probably be killed along the way. Maybe a few of them will make it. Chance alone will decide whether they live or die.
The chaplain bends over Hannah and helps her stand up. Her blood-smeared face is swollen.
“Why didn’t you shoot him?” asks Dennis hysterically.
The chaplain pushes him hard in the chest. “Leave Hannah alone!” he yells. “Don’t you understand? If she’d shot him, we’d all be dead right now!”
“So what?” screams Dennis.
Møller slaps him. “You need to calm down!”
Dennis holds his cheek. His eyes are wild. Then he lunges at the chaplain. Viktor grabs him in an armlock from behind. “We all need to calm down now,” says the sergeant.
For a moment they all stand there confused. Steffensen, Camper, and Karlsen take off toward the caravan. Grabbing the neckband of Dennis’s kirtle, Viktor shoves him along. Sebastian, Gustav, and Mathias are right on their heels. Andreas looks undecided at first, but then joins them, along with Simon.
They’re stopped by the chaplain. “We can’t just leave him lying there!” he yells. They all stop. “We’ll never get him home,” says the chaplain. “We’ll have to bury him here.”
Viktor and Sørensen start clearing the area of bushes and removing stones before they dig the hole for Adam’s body. The others join in. It’s difficult work. The desert’s plants are as hardy as the people who thrive in its desolation. They sweat beneath the sun while their bloody hands pull thorny growths up out of the ground. They work in silence. The concentration staves off their tears. It won’t be a deep grave, as they can only use their hands.
Dennis, Sylvester, Simon, and Karlsen carry Adam over to the grave. He hangs between them like one of the wounded they used to carry on a stretcher. The chaplain has closed Adam’s eyes; he was shot only a few minutes ago, so he looks as if he’s sleeping.
They stand around the open grave where they’ve laid Adam with his hands folded over his chest. The chaplain recites the graveside ceremony: “For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” The words have never seemed truer, a ruthless judgment disclosing the banality of life.
Viktor went home once with a previous squad for the burial of some comrades. As he and the other soldiers stared down into the black rectangle, he felt a connection to the dead. “For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” Yes, the dead go home. They lie in a cemetery resembling a garden, a reflection of a well-organized life, where questions about death never seem threatening and the dead are in the minority. A friend has died, but he’s going to rest in a landscape everyone knows; there’s still
some continuity.
Now they’re standing in the middle of a distant desert, a dirty group dressed in strange garb, speaking a language only they understand, refugees on Earth. To die riding a wave of adrenaline in the middle of battle is nothing, but this kind of death is unbearable.
The chaplain’s voice breaks. Dennis is the first to start crying, followed by Sørensen and Sylvester, and then the rest. With folded hands, they kneel down again, as when they were digging. In gentle movements, like children building a sandcastle on the beach, they scrape sand and stones back into the hole. Death lives here now. Gravel falls onto Adam’s eyelids, and no one brushes away the grains of sand. They can still make out the contours of his body. And then he’s gone.
Hannah had stopped weeping, but as they rise from the grave, she starts again. She doesn’t even try to control it. She feels that if she screams loudly and long enough, she can scream herself to death.
The chaplain tries to put his arm around her, but she pushes him away. Helpless, the men gather around her. Suddenly they notice movement from the caravan. A dozen women start heading toward them. When the women are about fifty meters away, they let out an unexpected scream, as if responding to Hannah. It’s not as wild and desperate as hers, but more controlled, with its own undulating rhythm.
The men step back as the nomad women form a tight circle around Hannah. They put their arms around her and scream with her, and she falls into their rhythm. It’s no longer a scream signaling utter despair but a thousand-year-old sorrow for all those the land has seen murdered.
As one, with Hannah in the middle, the women walk back to the caravan. The men follow at a distance.
Their march into the unknown continues.
The First Stone Page 37