The Last Kestrel. Jill McGivering
does it look like?’ Palwasha’s eyes were blazing.
Hasina swallowed. ‘But where?’ she said. ‘Where will you go?’
‘Help me, won’t you.’ She didn’t look up. Hasina knelt beside her, rolling the carpets and stacking them by the door. Abdul must go too, she thought. She must make him.
As soon as they returned home, she packed a bundle for Abdul. Tin plates and cups and bread to eat on the road. From the threshold, she stood and looked back into the gloom. This was the house where she’d first come as a bride so many years ago. A good house. Not rich but honest. She looked round at the empty cots, the blankets, the wooden stools, the battered trunk.
‘You must go. Quickly.’ She pressed the bundle into his hand, propelled him towards the road. ‘Go now, with Karam and Palwasha. It’s better for us.’
She was urging him on, her hand on his broad arm. He stared down at her, his eyes bewildered. ‘But you,’ he said, blinking, ‘what about you?’
‘I’ll be right there, coming after you, won’t I?’ She tutted. ‘Hurry. I’ve got knives to gather and a pot and blankets and clothes. I need some time. But you must go ahead.’
His feet dragged as she walked with him to the main track. The road was already thick with travelling families, a swarm of villagers pulling carts, carrying infants, pots on their heads and bundles on their backs. Some led a donkey or goat.
‘See what they have?’ She gestured at the flow. ‘I need to prepare more things. Go with Karam. I’ll soon catch you up.’ Her whisper was urgent. ‘Husband, please don’t hesitate. Go.’
Abdul looked as lost as a small boy. ‘How will I find you?’ he said.
‘You’ll find me.’ She brushed her hand against his to say goodbye. ‘How could you not find me? I won’t be far behind.’
She stood to the side as he turned, reluctant and dazed, and was taken by the crowd.
She had to carry Aref to the house. His eyes rolled sightlessly in his head as she laid him out on the cot and stripped him. His body was hot, his limbs shaking. She took her cooking knife and hacked at the rags. Close to the wound, the cloth had fused with the flesh. She couldn’t cut it away. It stank. She washed down his skin with block soap and water and patted him dry with her shawl. She slid a blanket under him and wrapped it round, until he was cocooned. She boiled up sugary tea and lifted his head while she forced it, trickle by trickle, between his lips.
All night she stroked his forehead, fanned flies from his wound and murmured to him. Once, he woke abruptly, as if from a nightmare, and stared at her. His eyes were blank. His face was slippery with fresh sweat. She patted him, soothed him back to sleep.
When he woke again at first light, his fever had lifted. He was weak but he knew her and knew the place. She fed him hot tea and fragments of soft food. A hint of colour was returning to his lips.
A deep rumbling drifted in from the fields. She went out to the yard to look. A fleet of lumbering, metallic vehicles was pitching down the desert slope, making its way from the far ridge to the valley and the river below. The early morning light bounced off the sharp angles. She put her hand to her face. They were closer than she’d imagined possible. She heard a droning and turned her eyes to the sky. Aircraft were twisting there, turning sideways, one wing-tip pointing to the ground, the other to heaven, then righting themselves again with a rush. They dipped and screamed overhead. The foreigners, she thought. It had begun.
She ran back inside and forced Aref to sit, propped up against the wall.
‘Soldiers,’ she said. ‘You must go.’
He stared, his eyes dull. ‘Where?’
‘Anywhere. Go.’ She pulled his tattered, stained shirt back over his head, pushed his arms through the sleeves and watched him stuff his few possessions into its folds. ‘If these foreigners find you…’
He seemed ready to sink back onto the cot.
‘Hide in ditches, in fields.’ She tugged him to his feet. ‘Use the blessing of the land.’
From deep in the valley, the thick choke of an explosion. Hasina struggled to pull him out into the yard. When she let go of him, his legs buckled. He sank down the wall of the house to the ground. In the valley, black smoke was rising. An aeroplane dived, shrieking, from the sky, and swooped low over the hillside. She fell to the ground, covering her head with her shawl. A moment later, the earth shook. The blast deafened her.
She sat up. Aref was staring at her. Miserable and afraid.
Hasina looked at the pouch. ‘Those bombs you have,’ she said, ‘give them to me.’
His eyes widened. ‘They are not—’ he began.
She raised her hand as if to slap him. ‘Do as you’re told,’ she said.
Aref ripped open the stitching and eased out two metal objects. They were grey-green, rounded with straight metal levers.
‘You twist and pull this,’ he said, ‘then throw them. They go off like bombs.’
Hasina looked at the smallness of them in his hand. They were dull, unappetizing pieces of fruit. One was scored by a line of rust.
Another jet shot over the valley, cutting through the air. She clamped her hands to her ears. A moment later the hillside shivered. The yard trembled under her feet. She took the bombs from him. The metal was chilled and dirty.
‘Go,’ she said. ‘May Allah in His mercy protect you.’
He pulled himself to his feet, turned without a word and swayed across the yard, lurching at last into the corn.
The dense smoke of the foreign bombs blocked out the creeping vehicles, then, as it dispersed, they reappeared, always closer. Hasina pushed her way through the cornfield to the edge of the poppy below. The valley opened out before her. The foreigners’ vehicles drew a defensive circle alongside the river. Figures of men, in light brown clothes, were darting along the bank. Digging machines were throwing up clouds of dirt. Between the crash of falling bombs, she could hear the steady chug of engines.
What kind of men were these Westerners? She wrapped her arms round her chest and hugged her thin shoulders. May God protect us. She looked at the metal fruit in her hands. She must give Aref time to flee.
The soldiers made rapid progress. They slotted metal panels into a bridge and nosed them into place over the river with their machines. They worked without contest, their aeroplanes screaming overhead, deforming the face of the hillside with fire and pockmarks.
When the first men ran over the bridge, her stomach heaved. Her palms were stinging with sweat. She turned and fled back to the house. She dashed round the yard, picking up her old cooking pot and cooking knife and the large water pot. She took them with her into the house.
She pushed away the large stone, which kept the door to the house permanently open in summer and fastened the door shut from the inside. Once it closed, the house became black. She stood quietly in the cool darkness, listening to the bang of blood in her ears. The house smelt rich, of earth and family. My home, she thought. This is where Aref was made and born. She wondered how far from the house he had crawled and what hiding place he’d found.
Her eyes were starting to adjust to the thin light. It was seeping in from the back window, and from the near one, which gave onto the valley. She pulled a stool under the window and sat, looking out over the corn. Halfway up the hillside, there were shots. She swallowed, struggling to compose herself. Behind her a cry, quickly stifled.
‘Who’s that?’ She challenged the darkness. ‘Tell me.’
A scramble, a sob and a small figure crawled out from under the cot, catapulted across the room and banged into her knees. It pushed its head at her stomach, almost knocking the grenades off her lap.
‘You,’ she