Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

Harry cleared his throat uncertainly behind the two women and Kim winked at Hiroko.

‘He’s so not ready to hear it,’ she said.

Hiroko stood on tiptoes, as tall as her sensible old-lady shoes would allow, and kissed Harry’s cheek, watching the blush spread across it to reveal just how rare such gestures of affection were in his life.

‘Come to China with me,’ she said, taking his arm.

Kim watched Harry carefully modulate his gait to keep time with Hiroko’s without making it evident that she was slowing him down and suddenly she knew that they would go to Delhi. Harry, Hiroko and she — and Raza.

Kim had never met Raza Konrad Ashraf — his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it trips to see Hiroko never coincided with her more frequent sojourns in New York — but he was framed on the mantel of the Mercer Street apartment and in every third sentence out of both Hiroko and Harry’s mouths, so perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that he sometimes made his way into her dreams. He would appear in the strangest situations, his presence never a surprise.

They’d probably drive each other crazy when they met, she thought. It was clear that Raza was just another version of Harry himself. Their two personalities a collision waiting to happen. She found herself smiling at the prospect, lagging behind Harry and Kim as they neared Chinatown, her mind in Delhi already.

Harry was glad for the distance between his daughter and him, so he didn’t have to feel her bristling disapproval as he said firmly, in response to Hiroko’s question, ‘Of course Raza’s not in India or Pakistan. I promised you I’d keep him out of danger, didn’t I?’ Harry made many promises but that one to Hiroko was among the few he had tried his utmost to keep. As far as possible he ensured Raza stayed in the sterile world of Arkwright and Glenn’s Miami head office, translating his way through client meetings and contracts and emails and wire-tapped conversations. But Afghanistan was different — the first time A and G had been contracted by the US military, an opportunity that had the shareholders giddy with prospects both short-term and long. And Raza Konrad Ashraf, the translating genius who had once passed himself off as an Afghan, was an asset too great to be left behind.

Hiroko was unsure how to raise her next question. It concerned a matter they’d never discussed since the day they stood together over Sajjad’s corpse. To allow herself a moment to decide how best to broach the subject she slowed and looked at the faded poster pasted on to the heavily graffitied wall of a loft building. It consisted of a picture of a young man and the words: MISSING SINCE 9/11. IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ABOUT LUIS RIVERA PLEASE CALL.

Hiroko thought of the train station at Nagasaki, the day Yoshi had taken her to Tokyo. The walls plastered with signs asking for news of missing people. She stepped closer to take in the smile of Luis Rivera, its unfettered optimism. In moments such as these it seemed entirely wrong to feel oneself living in a different history to the people of this city.

‘You must still have friends in the CIA.’ The question tumbled out of her mouth.

‘Everyone’s doing their best to make sure both sides back down, Hiroko,’ he said, understanding precisely why she had asked the question.

It was an answer she trusted more than any assurance that there wouldn’t be nuclear war. She patted his arm and turned away from Luis Rivera, though Kim who had come up to stand next to her remained staring at him.

As she entered the higgledy-piggledy streets of Chinatown, pushy and cantankerous in a way that made the ‘attitude’ of the rest of Manhattan appear amateurish, Hiroko recalled the thrill of coming here for the first time and discovering so many vegetables she hadn’t seen since Nagasaki. She still remembered some of the Chinese names for produce her mother used to buy in the Chinese quarter — and recalled, also, Konrad Weiss’s invented names for the vegetables he didn’t know: pak choi was ‘windswept cabbage’, a lotus root sliced down the centre was ‘fossilised flower’. And ginger, which Sajjad used to eat copiously, dipping sticks of it into achaar as a snack, was ‘knots of earth’.

Harry stopped beside a squatting man moving three dead fish around on the sidewalk while other men around him gesticulated and called out. Some magic trick, some betting game — he was determined to work it out. It gave Hiroko the opportunity to look at the cardboard boxes filled with fruit and vegetables in front of a cramped store. She pointed at the green-yellow spheres in a box and found herself saying, ‘Hong xao,’ — a word she hadn’t uttered since Nagasaki. In Urdu it was ‘bair’. She had no idea what the English name was.

Nagasaki. She touched her back.

‘Is that bair?’ Harry said, making her smile at this nephew of Konrad’s.

He had disappeared from her life for years after Sajjad’s death before arriving at her home in Abbottabad in the early nineties to say he had quit his previous job (even then he didn’t utter the name of his former employers), now he was in private security — a glorified bodyguard, really — but the business needed translators, so he was wondering how Raza might feel about coming to work with him. It didn’t occur to her whether she should forgive him or not for lying to her and Sajjad — he was a Weiss and he was offering Raza a chance to escape the soulless pit that was Dubai. And of course, he said, of course Raza wouldn’t be in the path of bullets.

A few minutes later, Kim, Hiroko and Harry were settled on a bench in Columbus Park, Kim uncertainly twirling between her fingers the fruit with unappealing scent which her father and Hiroko were eating with the relish of nostalgia.

‘If you’re moving to New York you should live around here,’ Harry said.

‘Here? Why?’ She looked around, trying to imagine what about this neighbourhood made her father picture her in it: was it the wrinkled twins in baseball caps playing Chinese chess on the bench opposite? The women pulling coats closer to their bodies as they bent over mah-jong pieces? The blind man caressing in long-slow strokes the air between him and the woman who was looking straight at him as she sang, high-pitched and mournful, accom panied by men with weeping stringed instruments?

‘Just,’ Harry said. If he told her that anyone wanting to strike America again was unlikely to do so in Chinatown she’d just say his line of work made him paranoid. But she turned to look at him, and confusion left her expression, replaced by understanding. There was a tiny smile — acknowledging his concern — and then, a nod.

It bothered him, the nod. She shouldn’t understand fear sufficiently to know what he was thinking. He recalled how she had stiffened, earlier on their walk, at the sight of a dark-haired man doing something with his shoes. He had laughed then, said, ‘He’s tying his laces, Kim, not detonating a bomb,’ but now he couldn’t see it as amusing. In the valleys of Afghanistan, fear was necessary; he’d been trained how to use it. But what did Kim know of moving through the world with fear at your back? Weapons in the hands of the uninitiated, he thought, understanding now what it was about this new New York that made him so uneasy.

‘I told Hiroko we’ll stay together in Gran’s apartment until I decide where I want to live,’ Kim said. She bit into the green-yellow fruit and tried to pretend she enjoyed its bitter taste.

‘We both think the other one needs looking after,’ Hiroko explained. She looked at the half-eaten fruit in Kim’s hand. ‘That’s not ripe,’ she said. ‘It must taste horrible. Why are you eating it?’

Kim spat the fruit out into the tissue Hiroko handed her.