Nadeem Aslam - The Blind Man's Garden

Now Kyra says, ‘When you speak to the representatives of the government you must tell them you are unhappy about it.’

‘He said it is up to the journalists.’

‘The government is controlling them, making sure the news doesn’t gain the attention of foreign news agencies. You must insist. Tell them you will be compelled to martyr a child if they lie again.’

‘We must have Father Mede. The Western press will not be interested unless he is here.’

‘They are saying they can’t find him. Are you sure he is not hiding somewhere inside the school?’

‘We have looked everywhere.’

‘And you don’t have Basie either. I have been trying to get past the cordon to see if his car is parked at his usual spot outside the school. I’ll try again.’

*

You will say that the hostages here in this school are Muslims. But we know what kind of Muslims they are. We know that they and their kind approved of the destruction of the Taliban regime. Anyone over the age of thirteen who takes up arms against Islam can be erased. Any Muslim who approves of the West’s actions in Afghanistan, and follows it into this Crusader war by providing material or verbal support, should be aware that he is an apostate who is outside the community of Islam. It is therefore permitted to take his money and his blood, as worthy of death as any American general with his braided glory …

*

The library door opens and the two women enter, or rather one of them is led in roughly by the other.

‘I wish to leave, brother Ahmed,’ says the one whose total commitment he had doubted. ‘You’re traumatising children. You said we were on our way to attack a government building.’

‘Sister, we have had this conversation twice already,’ Ahmed says quietly.

‘What about the children being traumatised in Afghanistan?’ the other woman says. ‘And this is a government building. These people are all instruments of the state.’

The doubting woman listens to Ahmed as he explains once again. In movement, thought and gravity, he is older than his countable years, his point of view rooted firmly, and at times all his gestures seem to be ritual gestures.

‘I don’t want any part of your death-laden victory,’ the woman says after he has finished speaking. ‘I don’t want to stay.’

‘You cannot leave.’

‘I will not watch Muslim blood on Muslim swords.’

‘You cannot leave,’ Ahmed says, raising his voice by a fraction. ‘We need to hold the children here until the white man is given to us.’

‘Most of these children are not innocent,’ the other woman says.

‘And those who are?’

‘You must believe me when I say that I too am upset about the innocent children. But I feel that Allah is asking us to sacrifice them to prove our love to Him, as He asked Ibrahim to cut the throat of his son to prove his obedience. With these few wounds we will heal Islam.’

‘You are comparing yourself to a prophet? Do you think you are sane enough to make these big decisions? You are half mad because of what you saw in Afghanistan, because your companions were captured or slaughtered.’

‘Take her away,’ Ahmed says, ‘and keep an eye on her.’ After they are gone the head of Cordoba House comes in.

‘What did the commissioner say on the phone just now?’ he asks Ahmed.

‘He was insisting yet again that they don’t know where Father Mede or Basie are, that they have no influence over the Americans to ask them to release captives, or withdraw from Afghanistan, that America is too big and too wounded at the moment for Pakistan not to obey it.’

‘We mustn’t lose faith or hope. I came in here to ask you to come and look at what is happening outside.’

They walk to a room that has a window looking out to the front of the building. A cleric has been brought in, in a van that has a loudspeaker attached to its roof. It has been driven as close to the school as possible. The man is quoting verses of the Koran against harming the innocent. He talks in minutes-long spasms and says that the passages of the Holy Book that do condone jihad have to be read in the context of the times in which they were revealed to Muhammad. ‘A verse in the Koran reads, The nearest in love to the Believers are those who say, “We are Christians.”’ He continues and once Ahmed has endured enough, he orders for the guns to open fire onto the van, onto the sickness of spirit emanating from it, and it drives away very fast towards the nuclear mountain, the tyres skidding and the terrified cleric calling for Allah’s help through the loudspeaker while telling the driver to drive faster.

*

Basie watches Naheed from the other side of the hall, as she and a female teacher take a dozen children at a time to the bathrooms. The children are exhausted and hungry and are not even allowed to drink water. When Basie takes the boys to the bathroom he lets them drink and tells them not to get any drops on their clothes and not to speak about it.

Later she walks towards him in the corridor, becoming more familiar with each step. Her eyes are downcast, and he stares at her until she realises he is looking at her. To begin with there are no words between them during this encounter: it is late afternoon but for some reason it feels dark as though light has rejected the place. Homesick for lost assurances, the children are falling asleep in clusters, the limbs going limp. The hands are holding onto fistfuls of each other’s clothing and the place feels somewhat calmer, almost hushed.

‘How are you?’ he asks eventually.

She nods, barely outlined, the face wearing the great stain of this experience, but unconsumed by the desperation he has seen in others.

‘Did Jeo know about you and Mikal?’

Her gold eyes look at him in silence for a few moments. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I wonder. Do you think that’s why he went off to Afghanistan?’

She is leaning against a wall. ‘So you know about Mikal and me?’

He nods.

‘Who told you?’

‘You did. Just now.’

‘It was before I was married to Jeo.’

‘OK.’

‘I think he’s alive.’ A sense memory of him pulses in her blood.

‘When this is over we’ll go and search for him.’

She gives a nod and looks around. ‘Basie, where are the Christian, Shia and Ahmadiya people they took away?’ They were thirty or so, and they were removed from the hall with the words, ‘Go out and start digging your graves.’

‘I don’t know.’ Seeing her jaw harden, he adds, ‘You won’t cry, will you?’

She shakes her head.

‘I’ll keep telling myself I must get through this so we can go look for Mikal.’

‘I’ll do that too,’ he says.

She wants to experience a simple feeling — laughing with a neighbour or washing her hands, complaining to the vegetable seller that one of the aubergines he sold yesterday had had a caterpillar in it.

‘Basie, one of the terrorist women —’

‘Don’t say my name.’

She nods, shocked at her mistake. He has thought several times of revealing himself, to induce the terrorists to release the children, but he fears the English teacher who lied about him being absent will be punished. Recovering, she says, ‘One of the women doesn’t agree with all this. I have spoken to her to see if she might be willing to help us, if I and the other women teachers plan something.’

‘What are you doing?’ A hooded figure shouts at them from the other end of the corridor and Naheed quickly walks away towards the bathroom. ‘Who told you you could wander around?’

As Basie turns the corridor to the assembly hall a terrorist appears and touches his shoulder and quickly passes him a handful of sweets, whispering, ‘For the children. I didn’t know we were coming to a school,’ he says. ‘This has nothing to do with me.’