Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

It had been, for Zeinab, a supreme moment.

She did not know how it might have been bettered… not if she had followed any pathway laid down for her by her mother and father, and gone from the little house and the little street and taken the PIA flight to Karachi and Islamabad, and the feeder to Quetta. Met the boy who was to be her husband, seen her parents haggle with his parents, endured an arranged match, gone through it, been fucked that night and hard because that was how his brothers and uncles would have urged him to be. ‘Dominate, set a tone…’ Fucked hard, oblivious to how she felt, and no protection. Nor if she had gone with a boy at the university – with drink or without drink – or a boy from her own culture, and him wanting a notch to scratch on a table in his room, or on a bedpost, hurried and fumbled. No chance of it being better if it had been Krait or Scorpion, or either of the men she had met in London, had done it with her in a car, on the backseat and her across whichever of them and pretending to be expert, and it hurting, and it being fast… The girls on the corridors of the Hall of Residence spoke of it usually as too quick, coming too soon for the men, not coming at all for them, and sometimes it was a reward they expected for buying dinner, for getting the cinema tickets, for the club entry fee. Like none of those. His hand moved, was gentle, explored again where it had been before. She took off what he wore, replaced it… she could not see her precious nightdress, bought to impress, chucked off the bed and on to the floor.

There would be a cottage, hidden away, remote, where sea birds shouted and the sea ripped at the base of the cliffs, and he would be there and a fire’s flames would flicker over the skin of her body and his chest, his legs… she would need that, to be hidden. When Krait or Scorpion, or whoever it was decided should have the rifle, that responsibility, and walk into the shopping mall, cocked the weapon, aimed it, fired with it, she would need to be far from the place… unless it were she who was chosen. And felt his fingers stroke the skin, and tangle nails in the hair, and ease again across her. Already she had been made a woman, was fulfilled. She pushed him back, was above him, and the pendant fell between her breasts. She lowered herself. Was supreme and had power.

Her phone fidgeted on the table at her side of the bed. He did not see it, did not respond as it shook.

It was good again, better than the first time. He was a useful boy, she thought she had chosen him well. They matched the other couple. The two beds made an orchestra. And she hurried him, tried to tire him, pushed for him to be faster, then to explode, then to sag in exhaustion, would need him to sleep. He called out her name, as if that proved his love… useful and well chosen, and his expertise growing, and her now – the first night – controlling. Then he would sleep.

As the fishing boat slowed, so the rolling increased and the pitch became – to Hamid – more awful. He had already been sick more times in the last hours than in the whole of his life. First he had been able to get to the side and vomit over it, and allow the spray to blister against his cheeks. Then he’d thrown up on the deck, and the last time his anorak was splattered with thin liquid, all that his stomach still held.

The boy moved cat-like behind his father. He was offloading fenders, putting them over the side of the small craft and then lashing the attached ropes to hooks. Hamid had only in the last few seconds understood why. In spite of the wind and white crests there was only faint cloud out and abroad that night. Traces of milky moonlight and views of star formations, not that Hamid knew one constellation from another. Now a section of the skies had lost those light pricks and there was a high wall close to them. He heard the shouts and, above the crash of waves around him, realised that a cargo ship – no low portholes as there would be on a cruise boat or a roll on/off ferry – was manoeuvring close to them. The captain shouted close to him, above the pitch of the waves, that he was trying to find a location where they might be able to use the sides of the boat as shelter. The wall towered over him, then they struck the hull, just above the waterline, and Hamid was thrown back, tossed away across the deck. He had lost feeling in his shoulder where the impact had been, but was revived by the water on his face. If the fisherman and his son had noted his collapse they showed no sign. The side of the fishing boat thudded against the freighter. Yells from above and responding shouts from the wheelhouse. A hatch opened, level with the soaked roof of the wheelhouse.

A man stood at the hatch, holding a package. Hamid thought him blessed with the nimbleness of an ape. Hamid had imagined that the matter he had been sent on, personal courier to Tooth, would be of great financial importance – many kilos of refined heroin or expertly cut cocaine. The boy came over to Hamid, grinned, then dragged him upright by the straps of the life-jacket. Grinned again, then speared him back across the deck. The package was thrown to him. It must have been taken by the driving wind. In a moment of desperation, Hamid jumped and his hands clasped at air, spray, then caught it, lost it, snatched again, missed. It soared over him, then down, and he lost sight of it as it dropped into the sea and splashed.

Hamid reached the side of the deck, could just – in the frail moonlight – make out the diminishing bubbles of the air trapped in the bag. He screamed. His voice was beaten back by the force of the gale, by the high side of the freighter as the hatchway was dragged shut, by the howl of the fishing boat’s engine each time the propeller end climbed high and out of the water. Hamid seemed to see that face… as clear an image as if the man, Tooth, stood beside him: flat cap, narrow brim, and under it the tinted glasses, and the wizened face and the thickened beard and the grey of the moustache which had the texture of his father’s shaving brush. Saw it, and shivered in front of it, and tried to explain. Not his fault. The fault of a seaman from a freighter, open hatch, perhaps losing his footing in the moment that mattered. Misjudging the distance, too much force; a sudden gust, the package evading him, going into the water. Had anyone who had ever failed him, ever shrugged at Tooth, ever expected him to understand that it was merely an accident, no blame due? If he came back and had failed – had been given an opportunity to succeed by a man of the legendary status of Tooth and had not taken it – then Hamid thought his future slight. He would be cut down on a dark street, perhaps in a week, perhaps a month. He could not have run, hidden, to escape Tooth’s anger. The thoughts cavorted in his mind. He looked back… he did not think the boy had realised the package – what they had come to collect on this shit night, in this shit weather – had not been caught. Nor his father, who had jerked the wheel and started to swing the rudder.

Hamid saw the package, the air in the bag almost gone, a pale faint shape, now a metre below the surface, and it was lifted in the swell.

He jumped. Had not intended it, nor regretted it. He could not swim. He went in and went under, then was forced back to the surface by the buoyancy of his jacket. The boy had a flashlight on him. At the bottom of the cone of light, where it was feeble and deeper than Hamid’s feet, was the package in the plastic bag. It was hard to contort his body, get his legs above his head, and kick, drive with his arms and power himself into the depth of water, to chase after it… It was hard, but it would be harder to survive when it was obvious he had failed Tooth… It was said of Tooth that in his youth he had always taken back full interest on a slight, chopped off hands or legs merely as retribution for disrespect. This would be worse, an example made… A boy in the project had been barbecued for lack of respect and he could remember the thunder of the igniting petrol tank and the blast of the hot air… He could not see. He groped right and left and felt the pain in his lungs, and was touched at the waist and snatched, and caught. His fingers clung to it, difficult to hold the slippery surface of plastic. He had no more air. He kicked.