Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram

Mazdur Gul, the stonemason, whose name means labourer, and whose hands were permanently grey-white from decades of work with granite... Daoud, who liked to be called by the English version of his name, David, and whose dream it was to visit the great city of New York and eat a meal in a fine restaurant...

Zamaanat, whose name means trust, and whose brave smile concealed the agony of shame he'd felt that his whole family lived in hungry squalor at Jalozai, a huge refugee camp near Peshawar...

Hajji Akbar, who'd been appointed as the doctor in the unit for no other reason than that he'd once spent two months as a patient in a Kabul hospital, and who'd greeted my acceptance of the doctor's job, when I arrived at the mountain camp, with prayers and a little Dervish dance of joy... Alef, the mischievously satirical Pashtun trader, who died crawling in the snow with his back torn open and his clothes on fire... Juma and Hanif, the two wild boys who were killed by the madman Habib... Jalalaad, their fearless young friend, who died in the last charge... Ala ud-Din, whose name in English is shortened to Aladdin, and who escaped unscathed... Suleiman Shahbadi, of the furrowed brow and sorrowing eyes, who died leading us into the guns.

And in the centre of the assembly there was a smaller, tighter group around Abdel Khader Khan: Ahmed Zadeh, the Algerian, who died with one hand clenched in the frozen earth and the other knotted into mine... Khaled Ansari, who murdered the madman Habib and then walked into the lost world of the smothering snow ... Mahmoud Melbaaf, who survived the last charge like Ala-ud Din, unwounded and unmarked... Nazeer, who ignored his own wounds to drag my unconscious body to safety... and me. Standing behind and a little to the left of Khaderbhai, my expression in the photograph was confident, resolute, and self-possessed. And the camera, they say, doesn't lie.

It was Nazeer who'd saved me. The mortar shell that had exploded so close to us, as we ran into the guns, ripped and ruptured the air. The shock wave burst my left eardrum. In the same deafened moment, pieces of the exploded shell passed us in a hot metal blizzard. None of the larger chunks of metal hit me, but eight small pieces of the shrapnel smashed into my legs below the knees - five in one leg, and three in the other. Two smaller pieces hit my body-one in the stomach, and one in the chest. They tore through the heavy layers of my clothing, and even pierced my thick money belt and the solid leather straps of my medic's bag, burning their way into my skin. Another chunk hit my forehead, high above the left eye.

They were tiny fragments, the largest of them about the size of Abe Lincoln's face on an American penny coin. Still, they were travelling at such a speed that they took my legs out from under me. Earth, thrown up by the explosion, peppered my face, blinding and choking me. I hit the ground hard, just managing to turn my face aside before the impact. Unfortunately, I turned the burst eardrum to the ground, and the violence of the blow rived the wound even further. I blacked out.

Nazeer, who was wounded in the legs and the arm, pulled my unconscious body into the shelter of a shallow, trench-like depression. He collapsed himself, then, covering my body with his own until the bombardment stopped. Lying there with his arms around my neck, he took a hit in the back of his right shoulder.

It was a piece of metal that would've hit me, and might've killed me, had Khader's man not protected me with his love. When all was quiet, he dragged me to safety.

"It was Sayeed, yes?" Mahmoud Melbaaf asked. "Sorry?"

"It was Sayeed who took the picture, was it not?"

"Yes. Yes. It was Sayeed. They called him Kishmishi..."

The word swept us into remembrances of the shy, young Pashtun fighter. He'd seen Khaderbhai as the embodiment of all his warrior heroes, and he'd followed him everywhere, adoringly, with eyes he quickly cast down when the Khan looked his way. He'd survived smallpox as a child, and his face was severely pockmarked with dozens of small, brown, dish-like spots. His nickname, Kishmishi, used with great affection by the older fighters, meant Raisins. He'd been too shy to pose with us in the photograph, so he'd volunteered to operate the camera.

"He was with Khader," I muttered.

"Yes, at the end. Nazeer saw his body, at the side of Khader, very close to him. I think he would ask to be with Abdel Khader even if he knew, before the attack, that they would get an attack, and get killed. I think he would ask to die like that.

And he was not the only one."

"Where did you get this?"

"Khaled had the roll of film. Remember? He had the only camera that Khader give his permission. The film was with other things he let fall down to the ground from his pockets when he went from us. I take it with me. I put it in the photo studio last week.

They return the photos this morning. I thought you would like it to see them, before we leave."

"Leave? Where are we going?"

"We have to get out of here. How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," I lied. "I'm okay."

I sat up on the cot bed and swung my legs over the side. When my feet hit the floor there was a pain so excruciating in my shins that I moaned aloud. Another fierce pain throbbed at my forehead.

I probed with my blunt, bandaged fingers at a wad of dressing beneath a bandage that wound round my head like a turban. A third pain in my left ear nagged for my attention. My hands were aching, and my feet, swaddled in three or more layers of socks, felt as if they were burning. There was a painful ache in my left hip, where the horse had kicked me when the jets had torn up the sky above us, months before. The wound had never properly healed, and I suspected that a bone was chipped beneath the tender flesh.

My forearm felt numb near the elbow, where my own horse had bitten me in its panic. That wound was also months old, and it too had never really healed. Doubled over, resting on my thighs, I could feel the tightness of my stomach and the leaner flesh of my legs. I was thin, after starving on the mountain. Too thin. All in all, it was a mess. I was in a bad way. Then my mind came back to the bandages on my hands, and a sensation close to panic rose like a spear in my spine.

"What are you doing?"

"I've gotta get these bandages off," I snapped, tearing at them with my teeth.

"Wait! Wait!" Mahmoud cried. "I will do it for you."

He unwound the bulky bandages slowly, and I felt the sweat run from my eyebrows onto my cheeks. When both lots of bindings were removed, I stared at the disfigured claws that my hands had become, and I moved them, flexing the fingers. Frostbite had split my hands open at all the knuckle joints, and the bruise black wounds were hideous, but all the fingers and all the fingertips were there.

"You can thank Nazeer," Mahmoud muttered softly as he examined my cracked and peeling hands. "They were thinking to cut off your fingers, but he would not let them. And he would not let them leave you until they treated all your injuries. He did force them to help the frostbite injuries on your face, also. He had the Kalashnikov and your automatic pistol. Here-he asked me to give it to you, when you wake up."

He produced the Stechkin, wrapped in a coil of cheesecloth. I tried to take it, but my hands couldn't hold the bundle.

"I will keep it for you," Mahmoud offered with a stiff little smile.

"Where is he?" I asked, still dazed and drilled by the pain, but feeling better and stronger by the minute.

"Over there," Mahmoud indicated, nodding his head. I turned to see Nazeer, sleeping on his side on a cot similar to my own. "He is resting, but he is ready to move. We must leave here soon. Our friends will come for us at any time now, and we must be ready to move."