Nadeem Aslam - The Wasted Vigil

‘HELLO, DAVID.’

James has returned to the house. The first cold stars of dusk were visible singly and the sky still blue only minutes ago, it seems, but night descends fast in the East. The birds were still airborne but then suddenly their sounds disappeared as the darkness sealed their way.

‘I thought I’d come and see how everything was.’

‘Come in. Stay.’

‘I must go back soon, though. We have to stay ready for the assault promised in the Night Letter, stay sharp especially during these hours of darkness.’

A quarter-century of warfare: a period during which some vultures in Afghanistan have developed a taste for human flesh — whenever there was a dead animal with a human corpse next to it they’d ignore the animal.

Lara has forgotten a cup of tea on the table and David has been intermittently sipping the cooling liquid.

‘Did you know C-4 explosive smells like lemons?’ James says, indicating the cup. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘I think Casa is out there …’

‘I have been thinking about him.’

David looks into his face for a moment then lets his gaze slide off. ‘There’s nothing to think about. Marcus, if he can, takes in people who are in need. He arrived a few nights ago.’

‘The night the shabnama was posted?’

American fears are huge.

‘I understand the need to be vigilant, James, but …’

‘I am sorry, it’s just that he has a wound on his head and several of the alarm guns around Gul Rasool’s house had gone off the night of the shabnama .’

‘I am aware of all that. But let’s leave him alone, he’s doing just fine.’

David has gone to stand at the threshold. Between two cypresses is stretched a spider’s half-completed web like a story left unfinished by the storyteller. James joins him and they walk out into the garden, slowly beginning to circle the house as they talk. Entering and then emerging from the orchard.

‘I didn’t mean anything much by what I said about him. But this is how al-Qaeda sleeper cells operate in the States. They are like ghosts in front of you, unseen …’

‘James.’

‘Of course, you know.’

Some of these al-Qaeda men may marry into American families and have perfect camouflage as law-abiding citizens, living inconspicuously near the scene of their future operations.

Regretting the harsh tone, he smiles at James. ‘In 1953 listening devices were found in the beak of the eagle in the great seal of the United States at the Moscow embassy.’

‘There you go,’ the younger man laughs. ‘Al-Qaeda hiding in the mouth of the Golden Eagle. It’s simple — use the laws, freedoms and loopholes of the most liberal nations on the planet to help finance and direct one of the most violent international terrorism groups in the world. They want to do to the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore what they did to the Buddhas of Bamiyan.’

‘Do you know about the rumours in Usha concerning that girl we have staying here with us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me.’ The cranes are there at the lake’s edge; he sees them in his mind’s eye, heads drawn back like the hammers of guns.

‘This afternoon in his Friday sermon the cleric denounced her as a —’ He throws up his hands. ‘Apparently she has a secret lover who was seen outside her house one night — on the night of the shabnama . People are full of anger and disgust at her.’

‘She’ll be safe here.’

‘Good. Who knows what they’ll do to her if they get their hands on her? Make sure to lock the windows and doors at night. We’ll also keep an eye on this place.’

What would they do to her? Christopher said he was shocked in the early years at what the Afghan guerrillas were prepared to do, at how brutal they were, what complete disregard they had for life. The United States and the CIA had wanted courage, but the guerrillas had given them cruelty. ‘Yes, we are using their bravery to our advantage,’ he would say, ‘but I would not suggest half the things they are doing, am disgusted by a third.’

They have completed a circumambulation and are now back at the kitchen door, light arrowing out into the darkness from it. Before entering David looks back into the gathering darkness, into the rustles and other sounds of foliage. The breeze. Or are people advancing towards the house from several directions, as when the king is under threat on a chessboard?

‘I have to tell you that Gul Rasool thinks the girl might be involved with the people who put up the Night Letter. It could have been them outside her house that night.’ And seeing the look on David’s face, he leans back in his chair and looks around. ‘He was just wondering, that’s all.’ He nods towards the photograph on the shelf and, in a changed tone, more considered, says, ‘So your Zameen grew up in this house.’

‘I miss your father, you know, James. Missed him back then too, and you and your mother.’

‘If we catch Nabi Khan I won’t forget to ask him about what happened to your son. Bihzad.’

‘So he told you everything.’

‘Over the years, yes. He never talked much, as you know. Was hardly ever there with us, the work keeping him away. He talked constantly about wanting to see you during his last days but there was no finding you. You were in the will, but that had been there for a very long time. After the doctors said there was no hope and we brought him home to die, he wanted one of your photographs framed and placed on the bedside table next to the pictures of the rest of us. He could never deal with the fact that’ — he lowers his voice further and looks towards the corridor, towards the door to the garden — ‘he had to let the woman be put to death by Gul Rasool, but he said that at the time he saw no alternative. He thought she was working for the Soviets.’

David lifts the spoon out of the cup and places it on the table. ‘What?’

‘She was working for the … I thought Dad had discussed it all with you. You don’t know this?’

‘Discussed what with me?’

‘He thought she was a spy for the Communists. That she was lying to you.’

‘Christopher told me he thought she was just someone who had been sent by Gul Rasool to plant a device to kill him. He told me at the World Trade Center in 1993 that he didn’t know who she was, that that was why he allowed her death to take place.’

‘No, he knew exactly who she was, knew she had a relationship with you for some months. Her behaviour aroused suspicion, so he assigned someone to watch her — he never doubted your own loyalty, not for a minute — and eventually he had her followed. She regularly met a Communist. A young Afghan man. When Gul Rasool wanted to kill her that day Dad was just … relieved she’d be out of the way. Relieved or glad, whatever’s the word.’

‘He said had he known she was the woman I loved he would have done everything in his power to save her.’

There is a pistol taped to the underside of the kitchen table. An act of precaution by him.

‘I am sorry, I thought you knew all this.’ The young man has an intense stare now, the pupils almost vibrating as he looks at David.

‘He lied to me.’

‘I thought you knew all this.’

‘Who was the man she met, the Communist?’ Though of course he knows the answer.

‘It was the man she loved before she met you.’

The man David thought had died in the Soviet bombing raid on the refugee camp.

‘An investigation into him was already under way when Zameen died — why was she meeting him? He was questioned after her death. He said they had once been in love but that she was now with another man. He didn’t know anything about you — not even your name, certainly not your nationality. She wouldn’t tell him. He supposed she saw him in secret so the new guy wouldn’t think she still had feelings for him. She helped him financially a few times. They were both from the same place, here, Usha, and she felt connected to him because of all that she had lost. She was not a spy after all. But Dad didn’t find that out until after she died and the Communist was picked up for questioning.’