Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

In the morning, when the doctor had given him the strength to stand and when the woman had supported his first hobbling steps – as hesitant as when the chain shackles had been on his ankles at Camp Delta – he would go to the guide, take the rifle from him, arm it, and do what was necessary to prove to the dead, to Hosni, Fahd and Tommy, that he was not weak.

He drifted back towards sleep.

He was at peace, because the strength had not deserted him. He felt no shame because he would not have recognized the man he had been before. He was his family's man.

'Tell me about him.' It was not a request from Lovejoy but an instruction.

They were at the table alongside the one at which Lovejoy and the American had eaten. Farooq's father had taken their order and Parooq had served them. They had eaten slowly, then lingered over I heir coffee as, around them, the restaurant had cleared, and father, son and other waiters had wiped down the tables and tilted the chairs. The shadows had closed on them and only their tablecloth, cups and empty glasses were lit. Lovejoy could play polite and could play domination. When the last customers had paid up and gone out into the wet night, when only they were there, Lovejoy had raised his hand and snapped his fingers imperiously for attention. The father had hurried to them. Lovejoy had said, 'We can do this here or we can do it down the road at the police station under anti-terrorist legislation. We can do it comfortably here or we can do it after they have spent a night in the cells. I want to talk to your son and to your son's friend, Amin. If you try to bluster me with lawyers sitting in, it will be straight down to the police station. You do it the straight-forward way or you do it the difficult way… and my colleague and I would like more coffee. Thank you.' The friend had been sent for, looked as though he had been roused from his bed.

The young men, Farooq and Amin, had shivered as they sat at the table beside them, and Farooq's father had hovered at the edge of the light before Lovejoy had waved him away. He played domination. He was brusque to the point of rudeness because that was the lactic he had decided on. He could hear, very faintly, the slight squealing howl of the turning tape that was on the American's knee, hidden by the tablecloth. His companion's arm was stretched out, lying, apparently casually, on the cloth but close to where the young men sat. The microphone would be inside his cuff.

Lovejoy said, 'I want only the truth. If you lie you'll be going straight to the cells. If you are honest with me you will sleep in your own beds after I've finished with you… I start with you, Amin. Tell me about Caleb Hunt, tell me about him before you went to Pakistan, everything about him.'

The response was hesitant and frightened.

He learned about the jubilee estate of houses built to com-memorate the first fifty years of Queen Victoria's reign and how .

Asian families lived in all the homes of ten streets, but there was one street of terraced houses where four white families lived. He heard about a white schoolkid who had first walked to school with Asian schoolkids, and moved on with them to the Adelaide Comprehensive.

'Caleb was our friend. We didn't have other white friends, just him. But, then, he didn't have white friends – we were his friends. He stood by Farooq when he was bullied. Didn't make any difference, skin colour. Most of the kids at the Adelaide didn't have Asian friends. We kept to ourselves, but Caleb was with us.'

Lovejoy felt that he peeled away layers of skin.

'We had scrapes, nothing much,' Amin said. 'We had trouble – graffiti and sometimes a car radio, and there'd be fights – but he was with us, not the skinhead bastards. We did everything together. Yes, we messed about, we had fun – but not bad trouble. We didn't go into his house. He wasn't happy with that, or his ma wasn't, but he came to our house. We left school and it was different then.'

Lovejoy probed. How was it different?

'I went to college, to get the A levels for a law course. Farooq came here to work for his dad, and Caleb went to the garage. It started about a year later, after I'd got the A levels and I was waiting to go on and do the law bit. We started up again, but we were older, more aware. I mean, you go to the mosque and sometimes there are guest imams and they tell you about Afghanistan and about Chechnya, about all the places where Islam is and where it's fighting against oppression, and he used to take Fridays off. He wasn't a Muslim, no.

If we went to a mosque in Birmingham, where he wasn't known, then all he had to do was follow us, do what we did and listen. You see, we'd changed. I suppose when we were kids, Farooq and me, we'd rebelled against the Faith. We smoked and drank alcohol, thieved a bit – but we finished that. He came on board with us, did what we did. We were the only friends he had and it was like we were his family, not his ma. We did the evenings together, and if there was a big imam speaking in Birmingham we'd collect him from work and we'd drive down in Farooq's car. We heard about the war in Afghanistan, and saw videos of it, and there were more videos of Chechnya and what the Russians were doing to Muslims. Please, you have to believe me, Farooq and me just listened and tried to be better Muslims and have more faith – but he'd come out of the mosque, Caleb would, and he'd be all tensed up. He was most tensed when he'd seen a video of fighting.'

As each layer of skin came away, Lovejoy thought he came nearer to the hidden, reddened mass that held the poison.

'He used to say he was so bored, used to say that was real excitement, doing fighting. Yes, we'd talk about it, but didn't take it serious. He hated it here, that's what he told us. He was coming from nowhere and going to nowhere. It all happened quick. We'd heard this imam speak about Afghanistan and the need for fighters there, and a couple of guys had gone up, gone forward, at the end of the talk. They weren't boys we knew, and afterwards Caleb said they were the lucky ones, because they were going to get real excitement.

I didn't think anything of it, what he'd said. A couple of days later my father had the invitation to this wedding. I suppose we talked about it. We must have told him that Farooq and me were going, and he was all crestfallen, like he was shut out of something he wanted.

I suppose we talked about where we were going, the mountains and a wild place… Farooq said that he could come with us, why not?

Farooq said he could carry our bags, joked it. It was just two weeks.

He really wanted to come.'

Lovejoy said, 'Thank you, Amin. Take it up, Farooq, and only the truth.'

'I never saw him so happy. One day he'd wear his own clothes, next day he'd borrow ours – my top and Amin's pants. He liked to walk with us round the street-markets in Landi Khotal. It's chaos there. It's noisy, dirty and smelly, and Caleb said it was fantastic.

People knew who he was. Family people knew he wasn't Muslim and knew he was white – didn't seem to make a difference because he wasn't white, not strong white. He merged, he blended. Best thing about him was that he was humble. He said we were lucky, luckier than we knew, to have family like we had – he'd sit down with our family at meals and eat what was put in front of him, and he struggled to learn words, to say how grateful he was. I'd never seen him smile so much, be so happy. But it was coming to an end.'

'The wedding, and then the flight home – then back here?'

'The day after the wedding we were due to get the bus to Islamabad, then the evening flight out. That last day, the wedding, he . was all subdued. He wore a suit, a clean shirt and a tie; it was like he was making a statement that he was going home, and we talked a bit in the taxi going to the wedding, but he hadn't much to say – I remember that. At the wedding, inside our family there, all the men knew that Caleb was a stranger, that he didn't belong to our family – however much he'd been welcomed, he was outside our family. I didn't see it at first, the interest in him. It was only when he was called over… '