Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘O… kay.’

She pulled the car into a roadside stop amid fields of flowers, sprung from sodden earth. She looked around, and turned the engine off.

‘Did Mehmu look well?’

‘He did.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I like him. A lot, actually.’

She sobbed, suddenly, tears falling as freely as the raindrops that began to spatter the windows.

Just as quickly she recovered, dried her eyes, and began to open the bag of sandwiches.

She cried again, and couldn’t stop: something inside her was all of it, everything at once. I didn’t know what it was: I didn’t know her.

I saw the new-moon chips of nail polish near her cuticles, the bruise on her face, about the size of a man’s ring, the cuts on her own knuckles, the fragrance of fresh soap in her clothes, hand-washed in a hotel basin, the bag on the back seat, carrying essentials for a quick escape, and the quick escape she made every time her eyes detected that I might be looking into her, and not just at her.

But observation only took me to a tough, brave, devout girl on the run, who’s meticulous in her hygiene, but won’t clean the last coloured fragment of the girl she was from her fingernails. The why of her was still a mystery, because the why of anyone only comes with connection.

I felt helpless to console her. There were tissues in the bag. I handed them to her, one at a time, until the tears dried and the sobbing stopped, as the rain all around us stopped.

We got out and stood by the car. I tipped a stream of water from a bottle into her cupped hands, so that she could wash her face.

She stood there for a while, breathing air scented by white flowers, clinging to vines all around us.

We got back in the car, and I mixed a cigarette joint. She wouldn’t pass it back to me, so I mixed another. She wouldn’t give that back either, so I made a couple more cigarettes.

Minds floated free across fields of green velvet to memory’s greener pastures: that place, inside, where the soul is always a tourist. And I don’t know what memories danced for Blue Hijab, in those minutes, but for me it was Karla, turning and twirling, as she danced at the party. Karla.

‘I’m starving,’ Blue Hijab said. ‘And by the way -’

‘I know. If I speak a word of this to anyone, you’ll shoot me.’

‘I was going to say, thank you. But damn right. Pass me a sandwich.’

She started the car, and eased it out of the parking bay.

‘You don’t want me to take over for a while?’

‘I drive,’ she said, heading out onto the highway again, at speed. ‘I always drive. Give me a sandwich.’

‘What kind do you want?’

‘Give me one of those I-don’t-give-a-fuck sandwiches. You got one of those?’

‘A whole sack, as it turns out.’

She never spoke again on the trip. Sometimes she muttered zikr , phrases spoken in remembrance of God. Once, she broke into a chorus from a song, only to fade again in a few bars.

And when we stopped, before the road swerved into the entrance of the airport in Colombo, she simply turned the engine off and stared at me, in a continuation of that long silence, as strange as it was surprisingly sad.

‘ I-muh’sinina ,’ I said.

‘ The doers of good? ’ she translated.

‘You were saying it, while you were driving.’

‘Do you have a second passport?’

‘Of course.’

‘Get the first flight out that you can. Get home, as fast as you can. Do you hear me?’

‘Get home, as fast as I can. Okay, Mummy.’

‘Be serious. Do you need anything?’

‘You never told me how the mission was compromised.’

‘And I won’t,’ she said evenly.

‘You’re tighter with a story than a Reuters correspondent. Anyone ever tell you that, Blue Hijab?’

She laughed, and I was glad to see it.

‘Go. Now.’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I have something to give you. But if I do, you have to promise me something.’

‘What… something?’

‘Promise me not to shoot Mehmu… again. At least, not for something connected to me. I like the guy.’

‘I married the guy,’ she snarled. ‘But okay, okay, I won’t shoot him. I’ve already shot him twice, and he never stops whining about it.’

I took the small automatic from my pocket, took the spare shells from the other pocket, and handed them to her.

‘I think he wanted me to give you this,’ I said.

She cradled the small gun in her palms.

‘Mehmu, mehboob ,’ she muttered, then tucked the gun away into another of the pockets in the pleated curtain of her black skirt. ‘Thank you.’

I stood from the car, stooping to say goodbye.

‘He’s a very lucky man,’ I said. ‘ Allah hafiz .’

‘Much luckier, now that I pledged not to shoot him again. Allah hafiz .’

She drove away, and I made my way on foot up the entrance ramp to the airport.

In forty-five minutes I’d checked in. I was lucky, or Blue Hijab’s timing had been perfect. I only had an hour to wait.

I found a place where I could watch the people walking past, look at the faces, study the walk, see tension or empathy, lethargy or urgency, listen to the tenor of a laugh or a shout, feel a baby’s cry ripple through the hearts of almost all who hear it: a still moment in a public space, watching and waiting for the expression or cadence that writes itself.

A man came to sit beside me. He was tall and thin, with a bushy moustache and slicked-back hair. He was wearing a yellow shirt and white trousers.

‘Hello,’ he said out loud, and then changed to a whisper. ‘We should greet one another as friends, and go to the bar. I’m your contact here. It will look less suspicious if we’re having a drink.’

He offered his hand. I took it, drawing him in closer.

‘I think you’ve made a mistake, Jack,’ I said, holding his hand fast in mine.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Blue Hijab called, and gave me your description.’

I released his hand and we stood together, pretend friends.

‘Her description was perfect,’ he said. ‘She really studied you.’

‘Somehow, that doesn’t fill me with reassurance,’ I said, as we walked to the airport bar.

‘Hell, no,’ he replied, throwing an arm around my shoulder. ‘With Blue Hijab, it’s better to keep it to fuzzy recollections.’

‘What is it, with the communist connection?’

‘When you’re looking for fighters, the enemy of your enemy is a good place to start.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I can’t say any more than that.’

We talked the waiting minutes. He told me stories that might’ve been true, and I listened with what might’ve been belief, and then I cut him off before he started a new story.

‘What’s this all about?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nobody has an exit contact at the airport,’ I said. ‘And Blue Hijab said I was compromised. What’s going on?’

He looked me over for a while, and seemed to conclude that my patience was drifting toward a storm. It was a good call.

‘I can’t say anything,’ he said, looking away.

‘You can. And you should. What the fuck is going on?’

‘Going on?’

‘Is there a threat to me in this airport, or not? Am I in danger? Am I gonna get busted? Spit it out, or spit your teeth out.’

‘ You are not in danger,’ he said quickly. ‘But you are the danger. I was sent to watch you, that you didn’t do anything crazy.’

‘Crazy?’

‘Crazy.’

‘Crazy, like, what?’

‘They didn’t say.’

‘And you didn’t ask?’

‘Nobody asks. You know that.’

We looked at one another.