Harry Parker - Anatomy of a Soldier

After queuing and showing his documents he sat in a lounge and crossed me on his other ankle. Men slept bent over rucksacks and with earphones in. Few of them spoke. Some lay on the floor with their combat jackets wrapped around their heads against the strip lights. Eventually men in blue uniforms came into the room. A man wearing a lumi-vest walked out among the rows of seats.

‘Sorry for the slight delay,’ he said, ‘there was a problem with the airframe. We will begin boarding now.’

‘Halle-fucking-lujah,’ someone said as they stood up.

He walked out of the terminal in the single row that crept forward. All the men around were quiet, their uniforms new and undusted as they fed up the stairs ahead into the aircraft. He sighed and scrunched his toes up in me. There was no possible alternative, he thought, no going back.

Green trees tossed in the damp wind beside the runway. He bent down and touched the ground beside me and then I stepped up onto the metal stairs.

On the plane, the boots of other men lined up under the seats in front of me. He couldn’t sleep and leant his head against the window and watched the tops of the clouds. An unwanted stream of thoughts and recollections drifted over him, only connecting as reminders of what he was being propelled away from.

After the flight, we descended aluminium steps out onto the runway. I felt the heat of it on my sole and the air vibrated and merged the black tarmac into the sky.

I am a desert combat boot. I have BA5799 written on my tongue and he walked me across the tarmac towards a city of white tents and cream hangars, floating on that shimmering desert mirror.

I was made carefully on a wooden table with buckled legs that rested against a dry mud wall. I was made by two men silhouetted in moonlight from the doorway behind them and the jaundiced beam of a torch placed on a shelf cut into a wall. Their bodies arched over me and sweat glistened on their temples.

They cut open a bag and weighed fertiliser on old mechanical scales. They soaked cloth in petrol. Fumes slipped around the table and one of the men sneezed. They mixed the cloth with the fertiliser and then wrapped this part of me in a plastic sheet and then more tightly with black tape.

This was my beginning but I was not yet complete.

They made two others like me, scooping more fertiliser from the bag with a metal cup, weighing and wrapping it with the mix of petrol-soaked rags, until three of us were placed in a row along the side of the table — three parcels of potential energy.

The men went through the door and stood in the blue moonlight. They lit cigarettes that hovered by their sides and arced up to their lips, illuminating their faces. They called a man over and said he needn’t bother to keep watch, there was no one around. He joined them and accepted a cigarette, slinging his rifle over his shoulder so he could smoke freely.

They began to argue.

‘Not one of them worked. We spent three nights making them and we watched for weeks as the infidel walked over them — nothing,’ one of them said. His lips disappeared as he pulled on his cigarette. ‘We used the same mix that you have here.’

‘I had the training,’ another said. ‘Every single one I made worked. I was blowing holes in the snow all winter. And we have the new equipment from over the border. They will work, Latif. God willing, they will work.’

‘Maybe it was the altitude, Aktar, or the mix you used—’

‘Enough, Latif. Hassan chose me. I went to the mountains.’ He dropped his cigarette and rotated his boot on it. ‘Paugi, go and keep guard. We should finish,’ he said and walked back inside towards me.

The men loomed over the table again. They took two strips of thin metal and attached a wire to each one, then spaced them apart between two wooden blocks, so they were parallel to each other, and wrapped it all in plastic. They did this three times.

‘These are good, Aktar,’ one man said. He crouched down level with where I was on the table and gently pushed down on the metal until the strips touched.

‘Yes, they will work.’

‘They’re better than I have seen before. Firm enough to stay separate under the weight of a dog — or wet soil — but with the weight of a man—’

‘Yes, it is a balance.’ He took it from under the man’s hand and slid it next to me and started to attach wires to the end, twisting with pliers.

This was the next part of me.

He placed a battered white polystyrene cube on the table, pulled it apart and removed one of the six metal rods that stood upright in holes.

‘We’ll place these in now.’ He bent closer and pushed the rod into the mix of my insides. The man’s tongue wrapped up over his lip as he concentrated. He left the end of the rod protruding and taped cautiously around it. He then attached the wires and crimped them on with the pliers, joining my two parts.

‘We can attach the battery just before we dig them in,’ he said.

I had more potential now. I was ugly and homemade, but I was complete — one part round, the other long and thin, both wrapped in plastic and tape and joined by a thin wire.

‘You need to handle these carefully, Latif.’ He pushed the white box with the five remaining vertical rods across the bench. ‘When I was in the mountains, another student held one of these in his hand,’ he said, pulling a rod out, ‘and the heat of a lamp made it go off. I remember his wrist with nothing on the end — and his look of shock. Hassan was angry because the boy hadn’t listened. The next day he was gone.’

‘They can go off just like that?’ the younger man said, looking down at the silver rod in his hand.

‘He was unlucky. But yes, they are volatile.’

When the other two were also complete, the men tidied up the table and put their equipment into a rucksack. They lined us up on the floor next to the bag of fertiliser. One of them took the torch, which flickered weakly, and swept the beam across the room and under the table. Then he stepped outside and pulled the wooden door shut behind him.

*

I stayed there, latent. And each day a thin line of dust-flecked light seeped slowly across the room and passed over my plastic skin, warming me.

Eventually, when it was dark, the door opened. They were the same men and one of them placed a bag on the table.

‘And he definitely said he was going to come?’

‘Yes, he said he would be here. I spoke to him after prayers.’

‘I will have to tell Hassan about this. He will be punished.’

They lifted me onto the table and checked my construction. The man’s hand felt my connections, gently pulling on the wires to make sure they were still firm. He put me in a bag, and then the other two were placed on top of me.

‘Take that trowel, Latif. And the water container. I will carry the bag. Have you got the batteries?’

‘Yes.’

‘We will do it just as we talked about. Are you okay?’

‘Yes, I think so. At least there is no moon.’

‘It will be a long night. One on the Nalay road, one by the bridge on the aqueduct and the last one we will try and get close to their camp. Hassan thinks this will be our best chance. We should go.’ Then the bag lurched and pressed around me as it was shouldered. It swayed as the man walked.

Twice he jumped and the bag banged against his back. Then he stopped and they whispered.

‘Why are we waiting?’

‘Sshhh.’ There was a silence and we were still. The thump of the man’s heart and the rise and fall of his breathing passed into me through the sack. ‘I thought I saw someone. Are you okay?’

‘How much farther?’

‘Not far.’

He started moving again and after a while we stopped and the bag slumped against the ground. There was the sound of scraping and the clink of metal on stones. The bag opened and a hand reached in. The first of us was taken out.