Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

‘I will. How’s the cohabiting going?’

‘We have a bump or two now and again. But it smoothes itself over.’ Between her and Hiroko ‘I don’t want your hot chocolate’ had become a line to laugh hysterically about within just a few hours of Hiroko throwing the glove at Kim. As if I was challenging you to a duel! Hiroko had said that evening over the dinner Kim had cooked as a peace offering. ‘I’m moving out into my own place next month, but it’s close to her.’

‘Uh huh.’ She could tell he wasn’t really interested.

‘I need to ask you a favour,’ he said. ‘It’s about an Afghan I used to know. A boy called Abdullah.’

‘Abdullah?’ Kim repeated. ‘That boy you went to the training camps with? Where exactly in Afghanistan are you?’ She looked around her at the tall buildings, the woman walking past in miniskirt and thigh-high boots, the men with yarmulkes stopped in front of a hot-dog stand with a HALAL sign painted across it, and thought he might as well be calling from another planet.

‘You know I can’t tell you that. Listen, Kim. You have to help Abdullah. He’s in America. In New York.’

‘What’s he doing in New York?’ Kim said, looking around sharply.

‘Cab driver.’

‘Of course.’

‘He’s illegal there.’

‘Again, of course.’

‘Some FBI guys came around to his apartment building a couple of days ago. He jumped out of the window when they knocked on the door.’ Across the compound a game of night cricket was about to commence on a makeshift pitch lit up with the headlights from the Humvees. Harry the only non-TCN involved, though some of the contractors were standing by, watching in bemusement as Harry called out to the other players in Urdu as he dragged over the wooden chair which served as wicket.

‘How do you know all this?’ She crouched to see into the driver’s-side window of the cab that had stopped across the street, as if it would be possible to recognise Abdullah the Afghan.

Raza had long ago learnt from Harry to reveal as little as necessary in any operation. As with Harry, the lesson had spilled over into his private life.

‘That’s beside the point. The point is, he’s terrified. He’s an Afghan who ran from the FBI. These days that’s the kind of thing your paranoid nation thinks is evidence of terrorism.’

She stood up straight, moved the phone from her ear and held it in front of her eyes, face scrunched in disappointment and outrage. Paranoid? The whole country was jangling with fear, and all the Raza Ashrafs of the world could do was sneer about it. And how did it become ‘your nation’ after he’d lived in Miami for a decade and was a green-card holder in the process of applying for citizenship?

‘Why did the idiot run? The FBI isn’t the INS. They don’t care if he’s legal or not. Tell him to just turn himself in and say he’s sorry he panicked.’

‘Say he’s sorry?’ He mimicked her tone and accent with disconcerting accuracy. ‘Did you really just say that? Have you read the Patriot Act? Of course they care if he’s legal or not. They can indefinitely detain someone with just minor visa violations if they have even the vaguest suspicions about them.’ In the pause that followed he said quietly, ‘OK, you haven’t read the Patriot Act.’

‘Why are we even having this conversation?’

‘He can’t stay in America now. And there is a way for him to get back to Afghanistan from Canada. So you need to get him across the border. They’ll never search a car driven by someone who looks like you. None of his friends in New York look like you.’

‘This is where I hang up.’ She ended the call, and then switched off the phone to prevent further conversational insanity before hurrying back to work. She was made uneasy about the idea of an Afghan who ran from the FBI, and made more uneasy to know she found such a thing suspicious. Damn Raza Ashraf. What right did he have to call her up and make her feel. caught out. Yes, he was just like Harry. Passing the buck and making you feel guilty for noticing it was counterfeit.

Part-way across the world, Raza was disappointed but unsurprised. Plan B then, he thought, as he watched the lazy shuffle that was Harry’s bowling run-up. He knew exactly what would happen when he told Harry he had to leave for New York — right away — to get Abdullah out. Harry would say he was being sentimental and idiotic. He’d also curse the ineffectiveness of the FBI, the ineptitude of politicians, the stupidity of stupid laws — but follow up by pointing out that Abdullah’s innocence would do nothing to help Raza’s case if he was found attempting to help a suspected terrorist. And then, when Raza refused to back down, he would say fine, he was going along, too — Raza didn’t look nearly all-American enough to cross the border without being stopped. Raza smiled, and stretched contentedly. It would be good to be back in America, no matter how briefly. He thought longingly of a high-pressure shower, and wondered if he owed Kim Burton some kind of apology.

Harry bowled an off-break, short of a length, followed by an exaggerated cry of pain when the batsman hit him for a four. Steve stepped out of his room to see what the noise was about. The ball landed near Raza, who held up a hand to the fielders to signal he’d retrieve it.

He was bending down to pick up the ball when he saw the movement up in the guard tower.

Harry was turned towards Raza, holding his hands out for the ball with a smile that anyone who had been loved by Konrad Weiss would have recognised, when the stranger in the guard tower swept his Kalashnikov from right to left as though it was his partner in a dance, and Harry fell in synchronised response, his shirt incarnadine in the bright lights of the Humvee.

Raza watched the mud lift off the ground in concentric circles, earth flattening around it. He was huddled in a crouch, arms raised against the rush of air, refusing to look any higher than the walls of mud rising an inch or so before collapsing back down as the chopper pulled itself away from earth, carrying two wounded contractors and the body of Harry Burton.

As the noise of the chopper muted in the distance, Raza heard the sound of a revving engine. The jeep carrying the bodies of three Pakistani Third Country Nationals was about to leave the compound, unescorted, headed for the border; the other jeep, with the unwashed corpse of the Afghan gunman tied to its bumper by his feet, would wait until sunrise before departing to drive around the surrounding terrain as a warning. The corpses of the two Bangladeshi TCNs were in a storage room, awaiting a decision on what was to be done with them in the absence of an embassy in Kabul to which they could be sent. And somewhere out of sight two men were digging a grave — Raza could hear the flump! of earth being turned over by shovels — for the Sri Lankan man without identity papers.

Raza stood, his clothes so stiff with dried blood they were resistant to the unfurling of his body. He made his way slowly to the jeep which had the Afghan tied to it, and raised his foot to feel the satisfaction of bone snapping beneath his heavy boots. But instead, he pirouetted to retch on the ground.

No one recalled seeing the Afghan before. In all likelihood he was part of the group of men who had come to pledge their allegiance to the Americans. He must have slipped away from the group and made his way to the watchtower where he garrotted the Sri Lankan guard. The tribal chief who had led the group of men into the compound insisted he had never seen the man — but he would say that, wouldn’t he, Steve had pointed out.

Raza unzipped his bloodied jacket and let it fall to the ground as he made his way to the room he shared with Harry. Had shared with Harry. The gunman seemed most intent on killing Americans — the TCNs who died were simply in the way as the bullets sprayed an arc from Harry to the other two contractors in the yard. But the other two had survived because of their body armour. Harry should have been wearing it, too — A and G’s policy specifically stated that all its employees who were provided with body armour should keep it on at all times. But it wasn’t cost-effective to provide body armour for the TCNs, so they had none — and Raza said he felt ridiculous sitting down with them for dinner around their firelit campsite if he was the only one bent over under the weight of protection, so he refused to wear it. And Harry said if Raza wasn’t wearing it, he wasn’t wearing it either.