The Last Kestrel. Jill McGivering
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Two days after the market bombing, Hasina dreamt of Aref and woke, wondering. It was late in the night. In the yard, the stars were strong, the moon almost fully grown. The shapes of the land shone in the half-light. The stones, the ditches, the corn, high as a man. The rich, earthy scent of it. Their home. Their land.
She went to sit on the large flat stone at the top of the fields. The mud was cold under her feet. She drew her shawl round her shoulders. The first chill of autumn. She tried to calm herself, leaning her mind into the scream of insects in the undergrowth at her feet.
The foreign soldiers were coming. Everyone said so. Where would she and Abdul go, if they were driven off their land? She shuddered. Impossible, she thought, that Allah, who had given them this land, this blessing on His people, would force them to leave it.
She closed her eyes. Images swarmed into her head, dancing and weaving. Aref’s presence. She could feel him. The warm scent of his body, first as a small boy, then as an awkward young man. This is my grief, she told herself. Grief is making his ghost rise and come back to me. She reached out her hands, imagining her fingertips on his skin.
A stick cracked in the corn. She kept still. Better to keep the dream, she thought, and be slaughtered where I sit, than to lose my Aref, my boy, a second time. The rustle in the corn grew louder, closer. Finally, she opened her eyes.
The air was silvery with moonlight. The noise was in the field, just a few metres from her. An animal, perhaps. Or the slow stealth of a person. Was that a low dark shape, crouching? She crept forward to peer into the corn.
His ghost was haunting her. She blinked. How fat he was, his stomach rounded. Then she made out the rags tied round his middle, stained with patches of black. When he raised his eyes, his face was pallid. The face of the dead. She stretched out her arms.
‘Aref?’
He lifted himself to his hands and knees and crawled towards her.
‘My Aref?’
He collapsed half at her feet, half across her knee. She buried her face in his neck, inhaling him. She patted him with fluttering hands, her fingers working him as if they were kneading bread. She took possession again of each hollow, each joint, each rib, each knob of spine, relearning his body for herself, the way she’d first learned it when he was put into her arms as a new baby, all those years before. He was moaning quietly. When her hands reached his face, her fingers were black and wet with blood. In stroking him, she smeared his cheeks, his chin.
She rocked him hard, encircling him with her arms to keep him safe. He lay, limp, and surrendered to her.
She expected the dream to end. When her arms began to ache, she pulled back her face to look. His forehead and cheeks were moist with sweat, his skin chilled. She lifted her fists and pummelled him in the chest.
‘How could you?’ she heard herself saying. His body was jumping, jolted by her hammering fists. ‘How could you leave me?’
He raised his arms and groped for her wrists. His grasp was weak. Her anger dissolved into weeping.
‘Aref,’ she moaned. ‘You precious fool.’
‘I need to hide,’ he whispered. ‘Just until I’m strong again.’
Hasina half dragged, half walked him along the ridge at the top of the fields, away from the village. Along the outer edge of their land, Abdul had dug an irrigation channel for flash floods. Now it was dry. She searched for the most hidden stretch and cleared away the stones there. Aref lay on his back in the channel, his eyes glazed. The earth sides were smooth and steep, as if he lay already in his grave.
Hasina cradled his head in her lap. She was afraid to look at his wound. The rags were matted together in clumps, fused with dried blood. When she tried to touch them, he pushed her hand away.
‘I could clean it,’ she said.
He shook his head.
‘What happened?’ she said. ‘Those boys. I know what they did. But you…?’
He looked embarrassed. ‘It didn’t work,’ he said. He gestured to his stomach. ‘The belt. It didn’t go off.’ He raised his head to look at her. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said. His tone was defensive. ‘I did it just the way they taught me.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course you did.’
He let his head fall back. She tried to imagine him with explosives strapped round his body, ready to blow himself into pieces. What he must have felt and what madness made him want to say ‘Yes’ to those crazy boys.
‘There was a flash,’ he said. ‘White light. Then burning round my stomach. I realized I was still alive, on my back in the dirt.’
His voice was trembling. Hasina took his hand and squeezed it.
‘How did you get away?’
‘I ran. I waved my arms and shouted. There was so much smoke, so much shouting, one more person didn’t seem to matter.’
‘And you hid?’
‘In the fields.’ He gestured to a cotton pouch at his side, bulging above the contour of his hip. ‘I have a weapon,’ he said. ‘A bomb.’
‘Let me take it,’ she said. She held out her hand. ‘I could bury it.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not for a woman.’
She looked again at the pouch. ‘Bury it yourself then,’ she said. ‘You’re safe now.’
He fell silent. ‘If they find out,’ he said at last, ‘they’ll call me a coward.’
‘No.’ Hasina stroked the hair from his forehead. ‘They will not find out. God has sent you back to me. He will protect us.’
His eyes had closed. She wrapped her shawl tightly round him.
‘You must stay hidden,’ she said. ‘Your father thinks you’re in Kandahar.’
‘Kandahar?’ He opened his eyes.
‘That was what Karam Uncle told him.’
He smiled to himself. ‘That would be good,’ he said.
‘Foolish boy.’ She kissed the tip of his nose. ‘Get well. Then we’ll talk of Kandahar.’
For the next week, Hasina nursed Aref every moment she could. When Abdul went to the neighbour’s fields to work, she scraped together leftover food and ran to find her son. She sat close to him while he ate. ‘You must get strong,’ she said. He pulled a sour face at the sight of food. ‘You must get well.’
He could only manage to stand bent double, his arm across his stomach. His wound ached, he said. Hasina saw the colours on the rags round his stomach shift as it bled. She saw the elderly man in him, pushing out through the young skin, and was afraid.
Hasina and Abdul were woken early by a strange sound. At first she thought it was Karam’s radio set. They went together into the yard. The noise grew, bouncing along the hillside. It was coming from beyond the valley, from the desert.
‘Some announcement,’ Abdul said. ‘Listen.’
An Afghan voice. A warning. Foreign soldiers were coming, it said. They must all leave. No one need be hurt. She groped for Abdul’s hand, limp at his side.
They found Karam’s compound in disarray. Men were rushing, stacking pots at the entrance. Palwasha was standing at the window, her hands on her hips, her face clouded.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ she called when she saw Hasina.