Jill McGivering - The Last Kestrel

‘How are your good mother and father?’ Hasina spoke the ritual greetings politely. ‘Your younger sister? May Allah grant them good health.’

Palwasha didn’t bother to answer. A younger woman should show respect. It was Hasina’s due. But they took their status from their husbands. Abdul was just a farmer. Karam was rich.

‘The village is hard for you,’ Hasina tried again. She looked at the thick carpet under Palwasha’s thigh, the expensive brass pots and plates stacked in the corner behind her. ‘But perhaps,’ she went on, ‘in these troubled times, we are safer here.’

‘Safer?’ Palwasha was picking at her polished nails. ‘May God help us! If I have to die, please, not here. That would be too cruel.’ She let out a sudden laugh.

‘The foreign soldiers are advancing, sister-in-law.’ Hasina proceeded carefully. ‘Have you heard? They’re already in Nayullah.’

Palwasha rolled over onto her back. ‘What does it matter?’ she said. ‘No one ever comes here.’ She is just a girl, Hasina thought, looking at her long body, stretched out, petulant, on the floor.

‘Besides,’ Palwasha added, ‘my husband has powerful friends.’ She sat up and crossed her legs carefully, as if posing for a portrait. ‘In another year, the foreigners will be gone. Then Karam and I will move to the city.’

Hasina breathed deeply. She rarely visited Palwasha nowadays. The girl had so few brains. ‘Sister-in-law,’ she said, ‘I am worried about Aref. Have you seen him?’

‘Aref?’ Palwasha’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why would he be here?’

‘To see your husband, perhaps.’

‘Karam’s not here.’ Palwasha frowned, her mood changing. She languidly stretched her legs, one at a time. ‘He’ll be back tonight, inshallah .’ She rose and left the room, leaving Hasina staring at emptiness.

In the evening, when Abdul had eaten, Hasina crept back to Karam’s compound. She had barely swallowed a mouthful all day. Her mouth was too dry, her stomach too twisted with fear.

She tapped on the metal gate. One of Karam’s men opened the inner door and peered out. She waited inside, her back pressed back against the wall, until Karam’s broad silhouette emerged from the house.

‘Sister-in-law?’

She bowed low. ‘Karam brother-in-law. I am so sorry to trouble you. But—’

‘Aref?’

She looked up sharply. ‘You know where he is?’

‘Of course. He is about my business.’

Hasina felt her knees buckle. ‘Your business?’ She held his gaze. ‘The young men. I saw them.’

Karam’s expression soured. ‘Some things’, he said, ‘should be left unspoken.’

She pulled her scarf across her face. Karam looked round, as if for eavesdroppers, before he spoke in a low voice.

‘Of course he has gone,’ he said. ‘It is his duty.’

She looked at the large compound, the servants, the animals. She knew where the money came from. From poppy. Karam was beholden to these fighting men. But Aref?

‘He is so young.’ She thought of his boyish face, his foolishness. ‘If anything happens to him…’ Her voice trailed off. What hope did these young boys have? She knelt before him and raised the trailing cloth of her scarf on the flat of her hands, beseeching him.

‘Go home to your husband.’ He turned away, embarrassed at her begging, and took a step back. ‘My brother needs to control his wife. Do I need to teach him?’

Hasina tried to steady her voice. ‘No, brother-in-law,’ she said.

Someone moved in the shadows behind her. The bolt on the inner gate slid back, inviting her to leave.

‘He has a chance’, Karam whispered as he pulled her to her feet, ‘to defend his people. To do God’s will. You should be proud.’

As she stepped through, the gate clanged shut behind her. Outside, she sank against the compound wall, her face buried in her hands, her scarf stuffed against her mouth to stifle the sound, and sobbed.

The night after Aref’s disappearance, she found no sleep at all. The night cries and howls outside were full of menace. Aref was somewhere out there, in a ditch or cornfield. Hungry. Afraid. Had they made him go, those boys? She turned onto her side and drew up her knees. Aref had looked so smug when he spoke of training with them. Training to fight? She wrapped her arms round her body in anguish. Had Karam really sent their boy to these hotheads? Recently, Aref had gone off on Karam’s business more often, sometimes for several days. Selling poppy, she’d thought. They hadn’t asked questions. But training with these foolish, fired-up boys? She moaned to herself. Beside her, Abdul stirred.

They had welcomed Karam’s interest in Aref. They had let him influence their boy. He had power and money. Abdul trusted his elder brother with his life. What would he say, if all this were true?

She twisted on her front, buried her face in her shawl. And now the foreign soldiers were waging war against them. She put her fist to her mouth. She was cold with fear. Abdul would never believe that Karam would put their son in danger. She must tread carefully. Allah alone knew how.

As soon as she saw first light, she got up. She tried to wash the exhaustion out of her body with cool water, then forced herself to start her chores. Abdul emerged, yawning, to find much of her work already done.

‘I’ll go to the big market today,’ she told him while he ate. ‘I need spices. And my cooking pot is cracked. These village ones are useless.’

‘Cracked?’ He looked up. ‘But it’s new.’

Hasina spread her hands. ‘Why quarrel over a pot?’ she said. ‘Anything you need?’

He shrugged. He was already finishing his bread and tea. He dipped into his pocket and pulled out some crumpled notes. ‘Spend it with care,’ he said.

She waited until he had set off for the fields. She wrapped her best shawl around her head and shoulders, making sure her hair was properly covered, and picked her way along the edge of the fields, down the hillside towards the riverside track. Her body settled into the rhythm of the long walk to Nayullah.

The big market was held every week but she didn’t go often. It took a whole morning and, besides, they couldn’t afford to buy much. Today she’d needed a reason to walk. If she stayed in the fields all day, her worry would suffocate her. She looked out across the river, at the thick reeds breaking the water, the flies in a low black cloud on the surface. She’d bought treats at the market for Aref when he was a boy. Nuts and sweets in twists of coloured paper. Cheap plastic toys. How he’d loved them. She wiped off her forehead with the end of her scarf. Now where was he?

She lengthened her stride. The sunlight was bouncing sharp and clean off the water at her side. It was a blessing from Allah, the river. The land around it was green with ripening corn and low foliage. A lizard ran into the path in front of her, froze, then darted for cover. When she raised her eyes to look beyond the river, the desert softly shimmered in the heat, stretching away to the horizon, endlessly thirsty and barren.

A boy came slowly towards her, herding goats along the river bank. He was a gawky child. She nodded to him as he approached but he slid his eyes away, embarrassed. He clicked his tongue at the goats, slapping at them with a long switch. The goats knocked and stumbled against each other. They filled the narrow path and she stepped into the scrub to let them pass. For some moments, the air was suffused with the low tinkling of the bells at their necks and the thick pungent scent of hot goat.

She walked on, thinking. Since she could remember, there’d always been fear and fighting here and restless young men eager to kill. Her own family’s village had been razed by the Leftists when she was a girl. The baker and his wife tortured and killed. No one would tell her why. Their children, her playmates, had been sent around the village to grow up with cousins. Sad children, after that, with fewer friends. When would it end? She thought again of Aref. The way those young men had strutted like cockerels, all self-importance. Such foolishness.