The Last Kestrel. Jill McGivering

       3

       Almost two weeks earlier

      Late in the night, a sound woke Hasina. She opened her eyes with a jolt and listened. Abdul, her husband, breathed heavily beside her. The stale but comfortable animal smell of him filled her nostrils. The room was clotted with darkness. She eased herself off the cot and wound her long cotton scarf round her shoulders and head.

      Outside, she poured herself water from the jug, drank a little, then wet the end of her scarf. The night air was fresh and earthy, after the breath-thick room. She crept round the side of the house, scanning the mud yard and the running blot of the low boundary wall. The goats stamped, moving nervously in a half-circle on their tethers. Beyond them, the field of standing corn stretched away in a solid dark block. She stood, hidden in the shadow of the house, and rubbed the damp tail of her scarf round her neck. Nothing.

      She looked out across the land. She knew every stone, every ditch of this field as well as she knew the bumps and contours of her son’s body, of her husband’s body too. It was good land. It rose like a blessing out of the barren desert, green fields made fertile by the sudden appearance of the river. The soil had fed as many generations of her husband’s family as anyone could remember. Like the people, it struggled to stave off exhaustion. She ran her eyes along the raised ridge, looking for fresh signs of collapse. When the rains were heavy, the top layer could lift and run away with the torrents of water. Their carefully dug irrigation channels silted up and, once the rain stopped, they squelched through them, feeling the mud ooze between their toes, to sieve the earth between their fingers and pile it back.

      But at this time of year, in the long stifling hope of rain, it was baked hard, a sunken square of land that they struggled to keep moist. The first crop of the year was long since harvested. The second crop–corn for themselves and poppy to sell to Abdul’s brother, Karam–was growing higher, day by day. She sniffed the air, tasting the health of the plants. The first harvest had been average. This second one held more promise.

      She settled on a stone and rocked herself. Somewhere out in the desert, wild dogs were calling to each other. A low breeze was blowing in from the plains. She wrapped her moist scarf across her face, shielding her eyes from the lightly swirling sand.

      Then she heard it. A tiny human explosion: a sneeze. She lowered the rim of her scarf. Someone was out there, hiding in the corn. She listened, her senses raw. After some time, a barely audible rustle, as if someone, deep in the cornfield, were shifting their weight.

      She crept forward, one slow step at a time, feeling out the ground with each foot. She made her way, bent double, down the side of the field, balancing on the thin strip between the last planted row and the ditch. Every few paces, she stopped and listened.

      Finally she heard breathing. Short, shallow breaths. She turned towards the centre of the corn and reached forward to ease apart the corn stems, as if she were parting a curtain. She let out a sudden cry. Crouched in front of her, looking right into her eyes, so close she could reach out and touch him, was a young man, a stranger, his head wrapped in the printed cotton scarf of the jihadi fighter. A brass talisman gleamed on a leather thong round his neck. It was in the shape of a bird, its wings spread and claws outstretched. The young man frowned. The thin moonlight caught the metal casing of the gun he held across his body, its muzzle a matter of inches from her bending head.

      The three young men perched on the perimeter wall and lit up fat cigarettes. Hasina’s son, Aref, sat beside them, the only one without a gun propped against his legs. Hasina recognized the acrid smell of fresh hashish. Aref smoked too, when the cigarette was offered, but self-consciously. They were teasing him, laughing and calling him ‘little brother’. Such arrogance. Hasina wanted to slap their faces. They thought they were so clever, these boys with guns. They were nothing more than troublemakers, with their bullets and bombs. Whatever they called themselves, Leftists, jihadis, mujahideen. She’d seen so much death already.

      Moving quietly, she poured water into cups and offered it to them. They reeked of stale sweat. She tried not to let her disapproval show. Even the poorest villager showed respect to his body by keeping clean.

      As the young men smoked, she pulled Aref away and took him to the back of the house. His eyes were sullen.

      ‘Who are these boys?’ she said. ‘Why have you brought them to our home? Have you no respect?’

      He scowled. ‘They are my brothers.’

      ‘Brothers?’ She stared at him. ‘How do you know them?’

      Aref turned his eyes to the earth. ‘Karam Uncle,’ he said.

      Hasina blinked. Karam? He had dark contacts, she knew that. Selling poppy to them had made his fortune. But fighters, like these?

      ‘You’ve met them before?’

      ‘Many times.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘I have trained with them.’ He lifted his hands as if he were aiming a gun at her. ‘You never knew, did you?’

      What a child, she thought. She saw triumph in his eyes. What would Abdul say? Those times Aref had disappeared for two, three days on Karam’s business. Was it for this? She wanted to take hold of his shoulders and shake him hard. Instead she reached for his hand. ‘Aref, these are not decent boys.’

      ‘Not decent?’ He swatted her away. ‘These men are fighting. Defending our land. Not decent?’

      Hasina sighed. Beside them the goats shuffled and pressed, hot and pungent, against her. She thought of that face, so close to hers in the corn. He looked little more than a boy, but his eyes, hard and knowing, were old.

      ‘Where are they from?’

      Aref gestured vaguely. ‘Beyond Nayullah.’

      ‘They should go home, Aref. Back to their families.’

      Her son was looking at her the way some men in the village looked at their wives, as if women had no more brains than a goat.

      ‘They’re fighters. Not farmers.’ He spat out the word with disdain. ‘They’re fighting for Allah.’

      Behind them, one of the young men let out a barely stifled laugh. She froze, frightened the noise would wake Abdul.

      ‘Bring them to the back,’ she said. She untied the goats and led them out into the clearing. ‘I’ll fetch food.’

      She sat in the shadow of the wall and watched them. They bristled with tense excitement as they whispered and sniggered. They didn’t attempt to wash. They kicked the