‘She has nothing to do with your enemies,’ he hears himself say plainly and in a clear voice to the retreating backs of the Americans.
He squares himself but they don’t even stop, let alone turn around.
‘You sound very sure,’ says James, continuing. ‘You know someone who might?’ With his index finger he traces two quick loops around his head. Casa’s bandages.
LYING BESIDE THE STONE FACE he moves his fingers absently on the floor, where the few remaining panels of a stained-glass window are casting discs of coloured sunlight from above, the red with more heat dissolved in it than the blue. Then darkness falls and he climbs up and sits motionlessly on the bunched-up hair at the top of the Buddha’s head, the bun that sticks out sideways because the head is horizontal. His feet dangling in empty air. What did he expect? What other thoughts did he think would arise in her mind towards him, after his hostility towards her yesterday? She has shown him who he is. He doesn’t want to be that. He jumps down and takes a notebook and pen from the alcove. Climbing back up with them he opens the book in the middle. Two large empty pages. A faint scent from them as when someone has cut into a fruit near by. He waits until the darkness is perfect around him and then, having also removed his clothes and cast them onto the floor, he begins to write, beginning at the top right-hand corner of the right page and intending to stop upon getting to the bottom left of the facing page. Sentences about himself. The truth. He can only say it in the dark. Even his eyes are closed as he arranges the small words on the paper. But it is difficult to write like this, and so, after only half a dozen lines, he moves towards the lamp that rests higher up, against the top rim of the large stone ear. When he lights it he sees that the pages are still blank, that for some reason the pen had held onto its ink. He knows the reason. Allah doesn’t want him to. Nothing but indentations can be seen in the yellow light. He moves his fingertips over the phantom words. This is the second sign, the dream of the gazelle being the first. Or is it the third? Hadn’t Allah arranged for her to spend last night in the house, the night he needed to embrace a female, the final touch in his preparations for martyrdom? Allah is telling him what is expected of him. He knows not to flick or shake the pen to get the ink flowing. He continues to write however — no pigment, just pressure — until both pages are filled and several more. Finishing, he rips them out and folds them carefully — thinking as he goes that the Englishman would not be able to do this as easily with his one hand — and not knowing what else to do with them he drops them into the stone pit of the ear and extinguishes the flame. Words that can’t be seen. A silent cry, and an ear that can’t hear. Nothing but the maelstrom of his breathing in the darkness now.
‘HELLO, DAVID.’
James has returned to the house. The first cold stars of dusk were visible singly and the sky still blue only minutes ago, it seems, but night descends fast in the East. The birds were still airborne but then suddenly their sounds disappeared as the darkness sealed their way.
‘I thought I’d come and see how everything was.’
‘Come in. Stay.’
‘I must go back soon, though. We have to stay ready for the assault promised in the Night Letter, stay sharp especially during these hours of darkness.’
A quarter-century of warfare: a period during which some vultures in Afghanistan have developed a taste for human flesh — whenever there was a dead animal with a human corpse next to it they’d ignore the animal.
Lara has forgotten a cup of tea on the table and David has been intermittently sipping the cooling liquid.
‘Did you know C-4 explosive smells like lemons?’ James says, indicating the cup. ‘Where is everyone?’
‘I think Casa is out there …’
‘I have been thinking about him.’
David looks into his face for a moment then lets his gaze slide off. ‘There’s nothing to think about. Marcus, if he can, takes in people who are in need. He arrived a few nights ago.’
‘The night the shabnama was posted?’
American fears are huge.
‘I understand the need to be vigilant, James, but …’
‘I am sorry, it’s just that he has a wound on his head and several of the alarm guns around Gul Rasool’s house had gone off the night of the shabnama.’
‘I am aware of all that. But let’s leave him alone, he’s doing just fine.’
David has gone to stand at the threshold. Between two cypresses is stretched a spider’s half-completed web like a story left unfinished by the storyteller. James joins him and they walk out into the garden, slowly beginning to circle the house as they talk. Entering and then emerging from the orchard.
‘I didn’t mean anything much by what I said about him. But this is how al-Qaeda sleeper cells operate in the States. They are like ghosts in front of you, unseen …’
‘James.’
‘Of course, you know.’
Some of these al-Qaeda men may marry into American families and have perfect camouflage as law-abiding citizens, living inconspicuously near the scene of their future operations.
Regretting the harsh tone, he smiles at James. ‘In 1953 listening devices were found in the beak of the eagle in the great seal of the United States at the Moscow embassy.’
‘There you go,’ the younger man laughs. ‘Al-Qaeda hiding in the mouth of the Golden Eagle. It’s simple — use the laws, freedoms and loopholes of the most liberal nations on the planet to help finance and direct one of the most violent international terrorism groups in the world. They want to do to the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore what they did to the Buddhas of Bamiyan.’
‘Do you know about the rumours in Usha concerning that girl we have staying here with us?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me.’ The cranes are there at the lake’s edge; he sees them in his mind’s eye, heads drawn back like the hammers of guns.
‘This afternoon in his Friday sermon the cleric denounced her as a —’ He throws up his hands. ‘Apparently she has a secret lover who was seen outside her house one night — on the night of the shabnama. People are full of anger and disgust at her.’
‘She’ll be safe here.’
‘Good. Who knows what they’ll do to her if they get their hands on her? Make sure to lock the windows and doors at night. We’ll also keep an eye on this place.’
What would they do to her? Christopher said he was shocked in the early years at what the Afghan guerrillas were prepared to do, at how brutal they were, what complete disregard they had for life. The United States and the CIA had wanted courage, but the guerrillas had given them cruelty. ‘Yes, we are using their bravery to our advantage,’ he would say, ‘but I would not suggest half the things they are doing, am disgusted by a third.’
They have completed a circumambulation and are now back at the kitchen door, light arrowing out into the darkness from it. Before entering David looks back into the gathering darkness, into the rustles and other sounds of foliage. The breeze. Or are people advancing towards the house from several directions, as when the king is under threat on a chessboard?
‘I have to tell you that Gul Rasool thinks the girl might be involved with the people who put up the Night Letter. It could have been them outside her house that night.’ And seeing the look on David’s face, he leans back in his chair and looks around. ‘He was just wondering, that’s all.’ He nods towards the photograph on the shelf and, in a changed tone, more considered, says, ‘So your Zameen grew up in this house.’