Now Casa tells him, firmly, ‘Do not deviate from your instructions in any way.’
They enter a room below ground where on a shelf, lit by a small bulb from above, there are two square frames containing the calligraphed names of Allah and Muhammad, peace be upon him. Between them, in a glass box, is a mounted mongoose with its teeth sunk into the edge of a cobra’s hood, the serpent’s black length wrapped three times around the body of its adversary. A figure sits cross-legged on a bed in the dimly lit other side of the room. The Kalashnikov in his lap has a second magazine taped to the first. Casa deferentially presents Bihzad to him and takes a few steps back.
His power and authority within this group is obvious, and he addresses Bihzad in measured tones: ‘You have been shown what to do? You’ll press the button attached to the red wires and get out of the truck and walk away.’
‘It won’t go off while the children are still inside the school, will it?’
‘Do not doubt our word,’ the man says quietly but with an edge to the voice. Earlier Casa had said Bihzad was being given the honour of doing this for Islam and for Afghanistan. ‘Aren’t you troubled that boys are being brainwashed in there,’ Casa asks now, ‘and girls taught to be immodest?’
The man raises a hand towards Casa. A thin blanket is draped on his shoulders, open in the middle as though to expose his pure transparent heart. He must have been writing something earlier because there is ink on his fingers. ‘We have no remote controls, and the timers we have are not very sophisticated either. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had to involve you, would have just left the truck outside that school built and owned by Americans. Someone has to park the vehicle and set the timer going on site. The explosion will happen hours later. You must know that Allah and the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, will be greatly happy with you.’
Bihzad has been told how this operation is just the beginning, a demonstration to attract and obtain help for bigger things. The man in this basement room, once a great fêted warrior, cannot return to his native village, a place Bihzad has overheard being referred to as Usha. An enemy has appropriated power there, having accepted money and weapons from the Americans at the end of 2001 to help uproot the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But soon this enemy — these men called him a traitor to Islam and Afghanistan — would be made to regret everything, happy though he is for the time being because he has been given a place in the government of the province. A large-scale raid is being planned for Usha, a spectacular offensive to drive out that unbeliever and his American-paid fighters and bodyguards. There will be a war.
The building next to the school was their original target, a warehouse belonging to their great enemy, but they would be delighted to see the school reduced to rubble as well.
Someone from inside the school has informed them, Casa told Bihzad, that the school’s American owner is visiting, staying in the building for a few days. That is why they are keen to go ahead with this operation, unable to wait for the proper equipment to arrive. To kill an American would send out a big message.
Every American who dies here, said Casa, dies with a look of disbelief on his face, disbelief that this faraway and insignificant place had given rise to a people capable of affecting the destiny of someone from a nation as great as his.
The Americans too had blindfolded Bihzad when they took him to their detention centre at the Bagram military base, one of the many prisons they have established here to hold suspected al-Qaeda members. Someone had betrayed him to them in exchange for reward money. Night and day every prisoner cursed those Muslims — the munafikeen! — who had sold them to the Americans for $5,000 each. Though at one level everyone in there was happy because Allah had especially chosen him to suffer for Islam. There wasn’t a speck of dust in that place that didn’t make Bihzad want to scream — apart from anything else there was the constant fear that he might be transferred to Guantanamo Bay — but he had felt very close to Allah during those months, everyone spending every spare minute in prayer, the environment there much more spiritual than anything he has been able to find on the outside. Every day, his life shifting its centre, he slips into worldly longings and wants instead. May Allah forgive him but, the reward so alluring, he has even fantasised once or twice about approaching the Americans and telling them someone innocent in his neighbourhood is a member of al-Qaeda.
His main reason for agreeing to carry out today’s task is the money these people will pay him afterwards.
The smell of disturbed earth is intense around him, this airless sunken chamber.
‘Don’t forget that not only did the Americans imprison you, they caused your sister to die. This is how you’ll repay them,’ says the man. ‘She wasn’t your real sister though, right?’
‘No.’ They had met in an orphanage when they were children and he began calling her sister. He had always treated her as though she was.
From his pocket the man takes a folded piece of paper and hands it to Casa. ‘It’s a statement I have prepared,’ he says. ‘The statement that will be issued to television and radio after the blast. And, you’ll notice, I have decided to give our organisation the same name as the school. Building the New Afghanistan — I approve of what it conveys.’
He invites Bihzad to sit beside him and, taking his hand in his, begins to read aloud verses from the Koran — not always accurately, Bihzad notices. Muhammad, peace be upon him, had appeared in the dreams of many at the Bagram prison. And one night Christ had visited Bihzad, carrying the Koran in his right hand, the Bible in the left. When Bihzad made to kiss his forehead, Christ asked someone, ‘Who is he?’ Upon learning that Bihzad was a prisoner of the Americans, the great prophet came forward and kissed his brow. He apologised for the Christians who had incarcerated Muslims in various locations around the world. Bihzad was shaken awake at that point by the other prisoners: they had been brought out of their sleep by the concentrated fragrance issuing from Bihzad’s forehead. He told them that that was where Christ had placed his lips, and they wiped the scented sweat from his brow and ran it over their own clothes.
‘The desire to rid my country of infidels and traitors,’ the man says upon coming to the end of his recital and releasing Bihzad’s hand, ‘has made a fugitive of me. I would have loved to have carried out this task myself, but I cannot even step outside without fear of being apprehended, cannot even use a phone because the Americans are listening in and could send down a missile.’
Back at ground level, Casa says of him, ‘He skinned alive a Soviet soldier with his own hands before you and I were probably even born. It was done slowly to increase the suffering. They say it took four hours and he was alive for the first two. Apparently some parts are simple like skinning a fruit, others tricky. Around that time he had had his photograph taken whilst shaking Ronald Reagan’s hand, in whose infidel heart Allah in His wisdom had planted a deep hatred of the Soviet Union.’
As they walk out of the building Casa produces a set of keys. Bihzad understands they are for the truck, suddenly terrified more than ever, no strength in any of his muscles. He has to go through with this, he tells himself. Later he’ll go and talk to the Englishman, continue to pretend to be his missing grandson. Nodding sometimes vigorously, sometimes uncertainly, when the old man attempts to jog his memory. I do remember that. No, I have no recollection of that. The aged man must be rich — a doctor. He’d heard about the Englishman a while ago, and sent a message out to him saying he was his grandson Bihzad. He had been told that the missing child had a small scar due to an accident with a candle, and he had duplicated the burn on himself, the flesh taking a month to heal. The name is the only real thing he shares with the lost grandson.