Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘He’ll ask questions, if I disappear from the road. Let me handle this.’

I got out of the car, and jogged back to Horst.

‘What’s going on? Who’s that with you?’

‘I’ve just heard,’ I said breathlessly. ‘Fighting has started again. I’m getting the hell out of here. You want a ride back to the hotel?’

His eyes narrowed, as he looked north on the deserted road.

‘No, see, I think I’ll hang around. You go. It’s okay.’

‘I don’t like to leave you like this, when it’s getting dangerous.’

‘No, no, I’m fine. I’ll go see what’s happening at the checkpoint. You go on.’

He fumbled with the camera, and offered his hand. I shook it.

‘Good luck,’ I said.

‘Same to you. And do me a favour? Since you’re going, keep this to yourself for as long as you can, okay?’

‘Not a problem. Bye, Horst.’

He was already walking away, preparing his camera.

Click-clack.

When I got back in the car, I saw that Blue Hijab had a pistol in her hand. She was pointing it at me.

‘All good,’ I said.

She drove off at speed, one handed. She was changing gears with the hand that held the pistol, and making me nervous enough to flinch as she nudged the lever violently with the heel of her hand.

‘What are you two, sweethearts?’ she demanded. ‘Blah, blah, blah. What did you tell him?’

‘What he wanted to hear. Are you going to shoot me?’

She seemed to consider it.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What did you tell that man? Whose side are you on?’

‘Your side, I hope. And if you shoot me, you’ll put a hole in one of the passports.’

She swung the car into a clearing that became a parking bay amid the trees. She turned off the engine, and put both hands on the gun.

‘You think this is funny? I’m dragged from a cover that I’ve worked on for two years, to pick you up at the hotel, collect the stuff, and drive you to the airport.’

‘A cover? What are you, a spy?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Aaah… okay, who are you again?’

‘I find you on the road, alone,’ she said, staring enigmas at me. ‘Then you stop to talk to a stranger. Convince me this isn’t a mistake, or by Allah I’ll put a bullet in your head, and strip the gold off your body.’

‘If you know your Holy Koran,’ I said, ‘it should be enough for me to give you the number of a verse.’

‘What the hell?’

‘Two, two hundred and twenty-four,’ I said.

‘The Cow,’ she sneered, giving the name of the verse from the Koran. ‘Are you trying to make a point about me? Are you saying I’m fat?’

‘Of course, not. You’re… curvy.’

‘Cut it out.’

‘You started it.’

‘Back to the verse, smart guy.’

‘If you’re not a Muslim, and you’re gonna learn a few verses from the Koran, verse two, two hundred and twenty-four, is a nice place to start. And make not Allah’s name an excuse in your oaths against doing good and acting piously - ’

‘- and making peace among mankind ,’ she finished for me, smiling for the first time.

‘Shall we do this?’ I asked, beginning to wrestle out of my jacket.

She put the gun in a pocket of her skirt, opened the back door of the car, and began to pull the back seat upright.

There was a hiding place underneath, behind a false cover. When I handed her the vest, she did a thorough check of every pocket and each passport.

Satisfied, she put the vest into the hiding place, and concealed it with the snap-fit cover. The seat clicked back into place, and we got back in the car.

‘We’ll stop at the hotel,’ she said, driving off. ‘You have to check out. We need you to be a ghost from here.’

‘A ghost?’

‘Shut up. We’re here. Go inside, get your stuff and check out. I’ll put petrol in the car, and meet you here in fifteen minutes. Not a second more.’

‘Do you -’

‘Get out!’

I got out. I ran the steps, entered the reception area and heard my name.

‘Mr Davis!’

It was Ankit, the night-and-day porter, standing in a bay window. He had a tray in his hand.

‘I saw Blue Hijab,’ he said, as I approached him, ‘and thought you might be needing this.’

I took a long sip of the long drink.

‘They don’t call you The Complete for nothing, Ankit.’

‘One strives to please, sir. Your things are with me at the desk. You need only sign the register, when you’re ready.’

‘Let’s do it now.’

‘You’ve got a six-hour drive ahead. I’m here, if you want to take a minute to freshen up.’

When I returned, Ankit had refilled the drink, and there was a packet of sandwiches, some water, and two bottles of soft drink beside my backpack on the counter.

I gave him a small roll of money. It was about five hundred American.

‘No, I can’t take this,’ he said. ‘It’s too much.’

‘We may never see each other again, Ankit. Let’s not part fighting.’

He smiled, and put the money away.

‘The snacks will keep you going, and this might help, if things get… a little tense… with Blue Hijab.’

It was a dime of hashish, and a packet of cigarettes.

‘I should smoke hash, if things get tense with an armed, angry woman?’ I asked, accepting the gift.

‘No,’ he said. ‘ She should.’

‘Blue Hijab smokes hash?’

‘Loves the stuff,’ Ankit said, packing the drinks and food into my backpack. ‘It’s like catnip. But save it, for as long as you can. She gets mean when it runs out.’

A car stopped hard outside. The horn sounded three times.

‘You should imagine that she’s Durga, the warrior goddess, mounted on a tiger, and behave accordingly.’

‘How’s that, exactly?’

‘Be respectful, devoted and afraid,’ Ankit said, wagging his head wickedly.

‘It’s been a pleasure, new-old friend. Goodbye.’

I turned at the door to see him smiling and waving. I looked back at the car to see Blue Hijab, jabbing a finger at me, the engine of the car revving.

We roared out of the driveway and onto the main road, heading south toward Colombo. She leaned forward in her seat, her arms taut and her knuckles white.

After ten minutes of listening to her teeth grinding the pepper of her temper, I decided to make conversation.

‘I met your husband, Mehmu.’

‘ This is how you break a serene silence? With mention of my bloody husband?’

‘Serene? I’ve seen more serenity under interrogation.’

‘To hell with you,’ she said, but she relaxed against the seat, drained of rage. ‘I’ve been… tense. And I don’t want to get any tenser.’

I wanted to say something funny, but she had a gun.

She drove well. I studied her style for a while as she passed trucks, slowed for temporary barriers, and hit sharp corners. I love being driven by a driver I trust. It’s a rollercoaster, with fatal risk.

The windscreen was a bubble, moving through space and time. Tree shadows arched over the car as we passed, trying to comfort us as the forests ended and fenced houses became beads and baubles on another chain of civilisation.

‘I shot a man, yesterday,’ she said, after a while.

‘A friend or an enemy?’

‘Does it make a difference?’

‘Hell, yeah.’

‘He was an enemy.’

We drove in silence, for a while.

‘Did you kill him?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Could you have killed him?’

‘Yes.’

‘The mercy outweighs the shame,’ I said.

‘Fuck you,’ she said.

‘All that cursing isn’t exactly in line with Islam, is it?’

‘It’s in English, it doesn’t count, and I’m a Muslim communist,’ she said.