Nadeem Aslam - The Wasted Vigil

David moves towards that door, taking the others with him, their weapons drawn. He pushes at the door but it won’t yield so he slams into it with his shoulder.

‘Wait. I am getting James on the phone for you.’

But David is already through the door.

Casa is on his back on the floor in the centre of the room, his legs being held by an Afghan man, his chest pinned down by the knees of an American who also grips his hands. Another American, beside Casa’s head, is holding a blowtorch, its blue jet directed into Casa’s left eye. This young man straightens up on seeing David, and just then James comes in through a door on the far side of the room. Casa’s mouth is open in a twisted soundless scream, that eye erupting black blood. The boy with the blowtorch stands up with a glance towards James, the blue fang-like flame briefly touching Casa’s hair so that a patch of it catches fire with a crackle. It goes out by itself, reduced to wandering scarlet points. The smoke rising threadily into the air.

And now suddenly the other two have released Casa, and Casa rises, covering with one hand the absent eye, but he cannot stand up and, lurching sideways, hits a wall after three faltering steps.

James, the features perfectly composed after the briefest of initial frowns, walks towards David and stands facing him.

The blowtorch, still on, would explode were David to fire a bullet into it.

No words from anyone until David says, ‘Tell them not to go near him.’

‘Put the gun away, David.’

‘Did you fucking hear me?’ His voice like a canine’s bark.

Casa is bowed on the floor, as he has seen him many times during prayers, but this is pain and a groan is now coming from him. There is a short length of rope tied to one of his ankles.

James, without turning around, flicks his head to the right and the men move to that side of the room. His jaw muscles working. Holding David’s gaze he says, ‘He confessed he is with Nabi Khan.’

‘Bring that thing near me and I’ll confess to that.’

‘No, you wouldn’t, and neither would I. And he came up with Nabi Khan’s name by himself. We didn’t suggest it.’ He takes a step towards David. ‘He can bring us to Nabi Khan — and Khan will tell you where your son is. Think about it.’

‘You think you are going to get away with this.’

‘He told us the exact details of the raid that was promised in the Night Letter. The exact date. It’s next week — next Thursday. He said Nabi Khan wants to take his time with the attack, that he had said, “We mustn’t rush history.”’

‘James, are you listening to me? I am going to have you all arrested for this.’

‘Gul Rasool is in the government,’ one of the Americans says.

‘He’s not in the United States government.’ He feels faint as though someone has decanted a pitcher of blood from his body.

‘He’s in the government the US installed here,’ says the Afghan who’d been holding Casa.

James raises a hand to silence his companions. ‘I did what needed to be done, David. These people have been trained in how to survive interrogation techniques. For some of them true jihad starts at capture. So we have to be extreme, go beyond their trained endurance. I am just searching for our country’s enemies, David. It’s nothing personal against this man.’

‘Nothing personal? You are holding a flame to his eye.’

‘It’s not between him and me. It’s between them and us.’

They don’t need to watch jihadi DVDs to become radicalised: they’ll just watch the evening news on the TV — with things like these being reported.

‘And when I say us I include the majority of the Afghanistanis, who want to get shot of sons of bitches like these. I include the majority of the world, not just Americans.’

‘Have you any idea how much damage you have done us by your actions here tonight?’

‘None, if you keep quiet about it.’

To the side of him Casa makes a lunge towards the open door. David hears sounds of a scuffle from out there. If he had died they would have buried him somewhere under cover of darkness? No one would have been any the wiser.

‘Tell them to let him go,’ he tells James.

‘No. He could run off and warn Nabi Khan. And I want to know what else he knows.’

‘You know all this is illegal?’

‘Illegal? This is war, David. You’ve been looking into the wrong law books. These are battlefield decisions.’

‘Tell them to let him go. You do not have the authority to do this.’

‘Suddenly you are an angel.’

‘Whatever I did or did not do, I was an employee of the government of the United States.’

‘How do you know I am not?’

‘I intend to find out. This is not over.’

He looks at the others. The long thick veins on the arms of the one holding the blowtorch are like cables or tubes that feed the blowtorch, the instrument a part of him. And David sees that on his white T-shirt is printed the sonogram image of a few-weeks-old foetus. A black rectangle filled with grainy strokes. His future child back in the United States, no doubt.

He turns and leaves the room with James following. Casa is on the ground out there, in the rectangle of light falling from the door. And when they release him and James moves forward to lift him to his feet, Casa makes to stab him in the face with the canoe maker’s awl he has produced from the folds of his clothing, the barb as thick as a porcupine quill moving past James’s shoulder. James wrenches it out of the weak grip and steps away.

‘They are the children of the devil. They have no choice but to spread destruction in the world.’

‘He is the child of a human, which means he has a choice and he can change.’

James throws the spike into the darkness. ‘Just look around you, David. Look at the devastation all around you. These people have reduced their own country to rubble and now they want to destroy ours.’

‘Where’s the girl, James?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She’s missing.’

‘Wasn’t us. Must be the fellow countrymen of this man, the people you are so keen to protect. Do you know what is probably being done to her by them right now?’

When Lara said she was very brave to have taken on the responsibility of the school, the girl had replied, ‘I pretend I don’t exist. It’s easier to be courageous that way.’ As Zameen used to say at the Street of Storytellers.

Casa has stood up and begun to stagger away, trailing that bit of rope.

David now moves in front of James to block direct access to Casa, just in case. There are only a few inches of space between their faces, the eyes staring at each other. The gap widens as David backs away in Casa’s direction. ‘This is not over,’ he says firmly.

Like lightning arriving a few beats before the roll of thunder, James’s face tenses and his eyes flash and then the noise of his rage comes out. ‘We are not responsible for this. If he is half-blind or if he dies of his wounds — it’s not our fault. And those hundreds who died by chance in our bombing raids, and those who are being held in Guantanamo and in other prisons — none of it is our fault. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and their Islam are answerable for all that. We are just defending ourselves against them. This is not over? You bet.’

David turns his back to him and looks for Casa. His ruined face. The water in the eye gone, the colour too turned to smoke and ash in the cindered socket. He glances around but there is no sign of him. Occasionally when he is in Asia he visits the site where Zameen’s death took place, on the outskirts of Peshawar, around where she possibly lies buried. The first time he went he felt her presence there, a hint of her like an unevenness in a sheet of glass. Has she been accompanying him since, the unanchored dead? Before leaving he had bent down and picked up a handful of earth from the ground and closed his fingers around it and he took it with him to the USA. This is among the few things that can be said about love with any confidence. It is small enough to be contained within the heart but, pulled thin, it would drape the entire world.