Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

But now even work was smeared by what was happening in the world. Earthquakes and floods were one thing — but to start having to calculate the effect of a bomb or an aeroplane, that was something else entirely. What size of plane? What weight of a bomb? If a man walked into a lobby with dynamite strapped to his chest? If chemical gas was released into the ventilation system?

‘It is not part of my job to imagine this!’ she had shouted yesterday at the architect she was working with.

‘The world won’t get more or less terrible if we’re indoors somewhere with a mug of hot chocolate,’ Kim said. ‘Though it’s possible it will seem slightly less terrible if there are marshmallows in the hot chocolate.’

‘I’ll go indoors soon,’ Hiroko said, patting her hand. ‘I’m sorry — I didn’t know you were going to run out of work to come here. I feel quite foolish now.’

‘Tell me what you’re thinking,’ Kim said, burrowing her hands into the pockets of her winter coat.

‘Fairy tales,’ Hiroko replied, watching the river rush past. A few degrees colder and it would freeze. Were there lovers or artists standing by ready to paint a beloved’s name under the ice? Hana. Her lost daughter. She glanced sideways at the woman standing next to her. ‘When Raza was young I didn’t want him to know what I had lived through but I wanted him to understand the awfulness of it. Does that make sense? So I invented all these stories, terrible stories. Too terrible to tell my son, in the end. I keep thinking of them these days.’

Kim nodded.

‘My father told me about them once. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘No. I wish now I’d told Raza. Told everyone. Written it down and put a copy in every school, every library, every public meeting place.’ She frowned, as though trying to unpick some minor knot of confusion. ‘But you see, then I’d read the history books. Truman, Churchill, Stalin, the Emperor. My stories seemed so small, so tiny a fragment in the big picture. Even Nagasaki — seventy-five thousand dead; it’s just a fraction of the seventy-two million who died in the war. A tiny fraction. Just over.1 per cent. Why all this fuss about.1 per cent?’

‘You lived it,’ Kim said. ‘Your father died in it. Your fiancé died in it. There’s no shame in putting all the weight in the world on that.’

It was the wrong answer.

Hiroko turned to her, face bright with anger.

‘Is that why? That’s why Nagasaki was such a monstrous crime? Because it happened to me?’ She pulled the gloves off and threw them at Kim. ‘I don’t want your hot chocolate,’ she said and stalked away.

Kim picked a glove off the ground and slapped herself with it. Hard.

‘Raza Hazara?’

Raza spun away from the group of Afghan men whose words he’d been translating, satellite phone pressed to his ear.

‘Raza Hazara?’ the voice on the other end said again.

Steve snapped his fingers in Raza’s direction.

‘I said, tell whoever it is you’ll call back.’

‘Who is this?’ Raza said in Pashto.

‘Are you Raza Hazara?’

‘Yes, yes. Who is this?’

Steve caught Raza by the arm.

‘You’re on company time here.’ He gestured towards the delegation of Afghan men who had come to pledge allegiance to the Americans. ‘Now tell them I’ll need some proof of their loyalty.’

‘Do any of you speak Urdu?’ Harry cut in. One of the men raised his hand quickly as if he were a student trying to curry favour. ‘Finish your call, Raza. I’ve got this.’

‘Make sure you get a percentage of his pay cheque,’ Steve grumbled.

‘Who is this?’ Raza said again, walking quickly away from the Americans and Afghans.

‘Ismail. Abdullah’s brother. Do you still have the pattusi I gave you twenty years ago at the camp?’

Raza leaned his weight against the trunk of the broad-leafed tree which grew in the compound.

‘Is Abdullah alive?’

‘Yes.’

Raza put one arm around the trunk and rested his head against it.

‘He said to tell you first that he’s sorry.’

For nearly twenty years Raza had imagined Abdullah felt betrayed by him — he had never returned to Sohrab Goth, never attempted to contact Abdullah through Afridi or any of the other Afghans he knew there. And it seemed inevitable that, when the reality of war made itself known to him, Abdullah would have seen that Raza’s greatest betrayal was in pushing him towards the camp instead of agreeing he should stay in Karachi. But here was Abdullah’s brother saying, ‘He knows that, whether or not you had a connection to the CIA, you came to the camp with him as a brother; and for twenty years he’s lived with the shame of knowing that in a moment of anger he told the Commander you were an American spy and had you sent away.’

Raza shook his head, hardly believing.

‘Why are you calling me? Why isn’t Abdullah calling?’

‘The Commander told me you had called, looking for Abdullah. He had your number. Raza Hazara, is it true? Did you work with the CIA?’

‘Why would any Afghan today admit having worked with the CIA?’ Something was wrong, he knew, but he didn’t know what answer he should be giving, how much of the truth he should reveal.

‘It was a different time before,’ Ismail said. ‘We believed they were helping us.’ Raza made a noise that could have meant agreement. ‘Please, I need to know. Do you have friends in America?’

‘Why are you calling me? Where’s Abdullah?’

There was a long pause. Neither man wanted to give anything away before seeing the other one’s hand — but Raza knew he had the advantage.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Ismail said. ‘Because my brother said I should. He said you would help.’

A few minutes later, Raza was sitting beneath the tree, satphone by his side. This country, this country . He looked up into the distant hills — already darkened into silhouettes in the early part of the long winter night — memory rather than sight providing him with images of coloured strips of cloth tied to the ends of long poles. Some bleached to whiteness, some bright as fresh blood, each marking the burial place of those who had died in some version of the war which had rolled across Afghanistan for over twenty years. Raza had thought he was one of the hundreds of thousands of people from around the world whose conscience had been buried in Afghanistan — his reaction had been to decide if he was numbered among the damned he might as well get paid for it. But here was his conscience, tapping him on the shoulder, offering him one more chance.

Seized with resolution, he sprang up and ran into the room he shared with Harry, plucked Harry’s satphone off his bed, and dialled a number stored in its memory.

‘Dad!’ Kim Burton answered.

It might have been all those times he’d heard her voice on the answering machine in Harry’s apartment; it might have been something else. But her voice was so familiar there was no question of addressing her as he would a stranger.

‘Hey, Kim. It’s Raza.’

‘Has something happened to my father?’

‘No, no, Harry’s fine,’ Raza said, stepping out of the room and looking towards Harry embracing the Urdu-speaking Afghan and the tribal chief just before escorting America’s new allies to the front gate of the compound.

He could hear her exhale in relief.

‘You guys really need another line of work.’

He smiled at the familiarity of the ‘you guys’.

‘How’s my mother?’

‘You should call and ask her that yourself.’ She walked away from the construction site, removing her hard hat so she could hear him better. There were traces of both Harry and Hiroko in his unplaceable accent. She’d always assumed he’d sound arrogant — instead there was something in his voice which said please like me!