Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

He said quietly to the Egyptian, 'What are you doing here? Why are you with me? What is my importance?'

Hosni smiled and the shadows of the fire crackled across his face.

He blinked and Caleb saw the opaque gloss on his eyes.

'In the morning, perhaps…'

Inside the cool of the tent, the pain at last ebbed from Caleb's feet.

He knew so little. If the memories had crossed the chasm, he would have known more. He slept dreamlessly, his mind as dark as the night outside the tent.

The scream pierced the morning air.

Startled, Caleb looked around. He saw the guide, Rashid, loading the boxes on to the pack camels, with his son, Ghaffur. Fahd was clumsily folding the tents. Hosni kicked sand over what was left of the night's fire that the signs of it might be hidden.

The scream was terror, from the depths of a man.

He saw the Iraqi, Tommy. Tommy had never, not since they had set out into the desert, helped with the loading of the boxes or with folding the tents, as if that were beneath the dignity once belonging to him. Tommy had walked away after they had eaten the last of the bread baked the evening before. Once the work to move off had started, he had walked fifty paces, or sixty, from the camp and had squatted to defecate. That completed, he had sat apart from them and watched them as if he were not a part of them.

The scream shrieked for help.

As Caleb saw it, the Iraqi sat with his hands out behind him to support his weight, his legs stretched in front of him. He was rigid, as if not daring to move, staring down at the skin between his boots and the hem of his trousers.

The guide was the first to react. Rashid ran with a short, scurrying stride towards Tommy, and Ghaffur followed. Hosni looked into the distance, at the direction of the scream, but seemed unable to identify its source. Fahd scrambled to catch the guide but when he was at the Bedouin's shoulder, he was abruptly pushed away. Caleb went slowly after them, but hung back.

He looked past Rashid, gazed at the Iraqi. He stared at the eyes, which were distended, he raked over the chest and the open jacket and on to the trousers, still unfastened, and around the groin, then on down to the trembling ankles. Caleb saw the scorpion.

The sun, not yet high, fell on the scorpion's back, identified each marking on it. It was small, would have fitted into the palm of his hand. Its head was hidden in a fold of the trouser leg, but the tail was clear. It was arched over its back, and below it was an angry reddening swell with a puncture hole at its centre.

Tears rolled on Tommy's cheeks, his lips quivered. The scorpion was still, but the tail was up, poised for a second strike, and Caleb could see the needle at its tip. Rashid allowed only his son, Ghaffur, to come forward.

The man and the boy were at either side of Tommy's legs. Each knelt, then each edged slowly towards the legs, until they were within a hand's reach of the ankles and the scorpion. Caleb heard Rashid murmur to the Iraqi, but could not hear what he said. Then he spoke, with great gentleness, to his child. Caleb saw Ghaffur, so slowly, rock backwards and forwards, as if he prepared to strike with the speed of the scorpion. Father and son kept their bodies and heads low, almost to the sand, so that their shadows did not pass over the legs and the scorpion.

The father did not tell the son when or how, had trust in him, as though he knew his son's reactions and movements would be faster than his own, he would make a better strike than himself. The trembling spread from Tommy's head to his chest and hips; if he could not control it, if the creature were further disturbed, more venom would be injected into him.

Ghaffur's hand flashed forward.

Caleb gasped.

The finger and thumb, delicate, slight and unprotected, caught the tail half an inch from the poison tip… and then the boy was grinning and holding up the writhing little creature. The Iraqi seemed to have fainted. Ghaffur marched with the scorpion first to Fahd, who flinched away, then held it in front of Hosni's dulled eyes, then brought it to Caleb. The scorpion thrashed and its pincers, limbs, body and head crawled against Ghaffur's hand; small spurts of venom came from the needle tip. Caleb saw, momentarily, the pride on the father's face before the mask slipped back. The boy took the knife from his belt and, with a slash as fast as his strike had been, he cut the tail from the body. The scorpion fell at his feet, writhing, then the boy threw the tail and its tip carelessly over his shoulder.

Rashid used his fingernail to stroke the bitten wound.

The yellowish body and legs and the darker pincers of the scorpion were still, dead in the sand.

Rashid's fingernail stroked towards the centre of the swollen place, where the pinprick was, pushing the venom back from the extremities and towards the hole.

Rashid barked an instruction at his son.

Caleb followed Ghaffur. The boy returned to the camels, bent close to them and started to refasten the hobble ropes.

'What does your father say?'

'My father says the man is not fit to travel, that we will lose half a day before he is well enough to move. My father says we have to wait until he is stronger.. It is bad.'

'You did well with it.'

'Where you come from, are there no scorpions?'

Caleb grimaced, was guarded against the question. There had been scorpions at X-Ray and Delta, only once had a guard been bitten, many scorpions in the corridors and cages and the guards had stamped their heavy boots on them or the prisoners had flattened them with their sandals. He lied: 'I have never seen a scorpion before.'

The boy shrugged. 'It is easy to kill them… but we may lose half a day and that angers my father.'

Away across the sand, near the dune wall, Rashid had torn a strip of cloth to a bandage width and was binding it round the Iraqi's shin, just below the knee. He began again to stroke his fingernail across the swelling.

Caleb went to the Egyptian. 'We will lose half a day's march.

We cannot move until he has recovered. It was a revolting creature.'

'Any snake is revolting/ Hosni said, with bitterness.

'Yes, any snake.' Caleb stared at the dulled eyes, and knew.

'I did not see it well, I stayed back. I saw the boy take the head off.

Was it a viper?'

'I don't know snakes,' Caleb said. 'Last night I asked you – why do you travel with me? Why am I important?'

'Important? Because of where you come from. Think on it, where you have come from. They tell me you are not a believer – to us you are the Outsider. That is what you have to consider when you ask of your importance. Can you admit it, where you come from?'

'From the 055 Brigade – from Guantanamo.'

'And before you were recruited?'

Caleb took sand in his hands and let the grains fall between his fingers. Before the wedding and his recruitment was the darkness he had imposed. He remembered arriving in his suit, with Farooq and Amin, at the celebration after the wedding, and remembered the way that the Chechen had watched him, then set tests for him; everything before was in blackness. The next morning he had left – and he could remember it clearly – Landi Khotal before dawn; he had been told by the Chechen that he should forget his friends, Farooq and Amin. A pickup had taken him through the border and through the last of the narrow passes, and he had been brought to Jalalabad, and then straight on to the camp. At the camp, two days later, two postcards had been given him. The reverse pictures on the postcards had not been shown him, but he had read the words 'Opera House' and

'Ayers Rock', and he had written two bland messages that he was well – and on each he had written a name and an address, but the name and the address were now erased from his mind. A small, tired smile played on the Egyptian's face.