The village was a singularly unfriendly place and we experienced distrust and hostility from the few people we encountered. That night we slept under canvas in a field on the side of a hill three miles to the west of the village. I heard Sally crying.
A week later we found a house standing in small grounds of its own. It was near a main road, but screened from it by a wood. We approached it warily, but though we were met with some initial caution we were not turned away. The house was occupied by a young married couple, who offered to allow us to shelter with them until we could find alternative accommodation. We stayed for three weeks.
It was the first time I had seen Lateef frightened.
We were all tired after the events of the night and our nerves were stretched accordingly. Lateef, in particular, betrayed the stress he was feeling; unable to decide whether or not we should move on, he prowled to and fro clutching his new rifle, as if by releasing it he would have his authority undermined. The rest of us watched him uneasily, not liking the personality that had been revealed by this latest development.
I was occupied with my own doubts, for I found growing in me a feeling of alarm generated by our acquisition of the weapons. Already I had overheard one remark about forming an effective guerrilla organization against the Afrims. I had heard the phrase “black bastards” used on more occasions recently than at any other time, including the vengeful hours after the women had been abducted.
Lateef was at the focus of my fears, as well as the mood of the rest of the men. Now, as never before, there was a sense that our actions would be determined solely by him.
What it was in Lateef that occasioned my apprehension was the man’s apparent indecision. He was frightened himself: frightened to stay here in the camp we had made less than half a mile from the ambushed convoy, and yet not able to summon the courage to move on.
Both fears were understandable. To stay so close to the scene of the attack was to court discovery by any party sent out to investigate. But to move, laden down as we were with so many rifles, would be disastrous if we were seen by any of the participating military forces. It was the nature of Lateef’s position to direct us, and though we were at this moment looking to him for instructions, it was tacit that if he failed in his leadership we would replace him.
For the moment we stayed where we were, as by non-action we did at least have the semblance of decision.
With three of the other men I made an inventory of the rifles we now possessed. In addition to the ones carried by each of us, we had twelve crates. In each crate there were six rifles. There were also several boxes of ammunition. In all, the pile of weaponry was almost more than we could handle. We had loaded most of it on to our handcarts, but it was apparent that this could not be a permanent arrangement.
I glanced at the other men sitting in a ragged group among the trees, their new-found rifles close at their sides. I looked beyond them to where Lateef stood, lost in his own thoughts.
I felt that of all the men, I had come nearest to Lateef in recent weeks. In a while, I went over to him. He was not pleased to be interrupted, especially by me. I saw at once I had made a basic error of judgement, and realized I should have stayed with the other men.
He said: “Where the hell were you last night?”
“I told you what happened. I thought I saw someone.”
“You should have told me. If it had been the Afrims they’d have shot you.”
I said: “I thought we were in danger. I had my rifle and I was the only one able to defend us.” I did not wish to tell him the truth.
“We’ve all got rifles now. You don’t have to undertake hazardous missions for our benefit. We can look after ourselves, thanks very much, Whitman.”
The tone of his voice was not only bitter. It was impatient, irritated, distracted. His mind was on something else; my crossing to speak to him had only reminded him of the night before, it was not uppermost in his mind.
“You’ve got all the rifles you need,” I said. “What are you going to do with them?”
“What would you like to do with them?”
“I think we should throw them away. They’ll bring us more problems than they’ll solve.”
“No … I’m not throwing them away. I have other ideas.”
I said: “What are they?”
He shook his head slowly, grinning at me. “You tell me something. What would you use them for, assuming you could get away with it?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“Wouldn’t you barter them to other refugees? Or try to shoot down more helicopters?”
I saw what he was getting at. I said: “It’s not just the fact of having weapons. It’s that if everyone has them, instead of one or two people, the effectiveness is lost.”
“So while you were number one with the rifle, it was all right. Now that distinction no longer exists, it isn’t.”
I said: “I gave you my arguments for having a rifle when I first discovered it. One rifle represents a form of defence; complete arming constitutes aggression.”
Lateef looked at me thoughtfully. “Perhaps we agree more than I had thought. But you still haven’t told me what practical use you would put them to.”
I considered for a moment. I still had only one real motivation, however impracticable it might appear to be.
“I would try to do something about finding my daughter,” I said.
“I thought that’s what you’d say. It wouldn’t do any good, you know.”
“As far as I’m concerned, anything would be better than what we’ve done so far.”
“Don’t you understand?” Lateef said. “There’s nothing we can do about that. The best you can hope for is that they’re in an internment camp. More likely they’ve been raped or murdered, probably both. You saw yesterday what they do to white women.”
“And you can just accept that?” I said. “It isn’t the same for you, Lateef. That was my wife and my daughter that they took. My daughter!”
“It didn’t only happen to you. There were seventeen women taken.”
“But none of them were yours.”
Lateef said: “Why can’t you accept it like the other men have, Alan? There is nothing we can do to find them. We’re outside the law. Approach any of the authorities and we’ll be imprisoned immediately. We can’t go to the Afrims because first of all we don’t know where they are, and anyway we couldn’t expect them to admit that they’ve abducted our women. We’ll get no sympathy from the U.N. people. All we can do is continue to survive.”
I looked round angrily. “You call this survival? We’re living like animals.”
“You want to give yourself up?” Lateef’s tone had changed; he was trying to be persuasive now. “Listen, do you know how many refugees there are like us?”
“No one knows.”
“That’s because there are so many. Thousands of them … perhaps millions. We’re just operating in a small stretch of the country. All over England there are homeless people like ourselves. You said we shouldn’t be aggressive. But why not? Every single one of those refugees has an excellent reason for wanting to participate. But circumstances are against him. He’s weak. He has little food, no resources. He has no legal position. Err to one side and he is a potential danger to the military forces because he is mobile, because he sees the war being conducted; too far the other way and he becomes politically involved. You know how the government treats refugees? As secessionist fraternizers. Do you want to see the inside of a concentration camp? So the refugee does just what we’ve been doing: he lives and sleeps rough, he congregates in small groups, he barters, steals and keeps out of the way of everyone else.”