Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

Indoors, Raza sat on Harry’s camp bed, and picked up the book Harry had been reading. Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes . He’d said it was the only thing that could keep a man sane. Raza closed his eyes and leaned back into the scent of Harry Burton. He wanted to be home. Not in Miami — but in a Karachi of twenty years ago, which had long since disappeared as civic violence turned Nazim abad into a battleground and all Raza’s closest friends moved to other parts of the city or away to the Gulf or Canada or America. The house which Sajjad and Hiroko had bought with Ilse Weiss’s necklace had been torn down to make room for a more ‘modern’ construction.

‘You should change out of those clothes. They reek.’

Raza looked up at Steve, who had stepped inside, flinging Raza’s jacket on to the bed.

‘What’s the quickest way for me to get to New York?’ Raza asked. ‘Kim said they’d delay the funeral until I get there.’ Kim hadn’t said it — he had phoned his mother instead and told her what happened.

— But why are you in Afghanistan? — Ma, I’m sorry. I’ll tell you everything when I get there. — Raza, are you involved with this war? — I’m sorry, I’m sorry. — Shh, stop crying. No, cry. Cry all you need to. And come quickly. We’ll wait for you, of course. It’s what Harry would want. Oh Raza, how can he be dead? How will I tell Kim?

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not going anywhere. We’re going to interrogate every Afghan who entered this compound in the last twenty-four hours to find out who helped Harry Burton’s killer — and you’re going to sit there and translate every word that comes out of their diseased mouths.’

‘I’m an employee of A and G,’ Raza said, carefully placing Mother Goose on the bedside, next to Harry’s reading glasses. ‘You can’t tell me what to do. Come to think of it, I may be in charge of operations here now. I’m the seniormost employee.’

‘You may want to reconsider your attitude.’ Steve sat down on Raza’s bed. ‘I employ your employers. I’ve just been on the phone with them, in fact. They’ve given me operational control until they fly in a replacement. It’s really a dry run for them and me — if things work out well I’ll be taking over Harry Burton’s office soon. Next door to yours, I understand?’

‘I’ll draft my letter of resignation right away.’

‘That’s nice. But don’t forget the ninety-day waiting period before it comes into effect. If Kim Burton is putting Harry on ice until you get to New York, check she has enough ice to make it through to April.’

Raza closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall.

‘Please. You have other people here who can translate. Just let me go for the funeral. Harry was. ’ His voice refused to continue.

Steve stretched himself out on Raza’s bed, adjusting the flame on the lantern in the space between them so that shadows flung themselves across the walls and on to the ceiling.

‘Harry was the man I admired above all men,’ he said. ‘He never knew that. A visionary. And now what is he? A piece of rotting meat.’

‘Please let me go for Harry’s funeral.’

‘But the one thing he wasn’t a visionary about was the TCNs. I tried telling him. Sure, they’re cheap. And no one in their own countries cares what’s being done with them. But what do you do about the question of allegiance?’ He played with the flame control, shadows alternating between lurking and leaping. Raza could feel the sweat spread under his armpits, wetting the blood on his shirt into pungency. Steve turned to look at Raza. ‘That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m asking your opinion.’

‘They’re desperate for money,’ Raza said, pulling his legs up against his chest. What was Steve trying to suggest? That one of the TCNs had smuggled in an Afghan? ‘Their allegiance comes from their need to keep getting the pay-cheque. And their sense of brotherhood to each other.’ He closed his eyes. He could see himself behind the till of one of Hussein and Altamash’s supermarkets — scanning the barcode on a packet of milk, opening the cash register, answering customers’ queries about where to find the flour. It was an image of peace. He knew then he wasn’t just going to quit A and G; he was going to walk away from this whole life. It was nothing without Harry.

‘But you don’t need the pay-cheque, Raza Ashraf of Karachi and Hazara. You’re not one of the grunts who know their positions can be filled by a million other desperate rats if they mis-step even slightly. You’re the ageing boy wonder — the translation genius. You can name your salary in corporations around the world. And you certainly have no sense of brotherhood with anyone.’

‘My allegiance was to Harry. His family and mine—’ Again his voice cut out. When he had told Hiroko she had to break the news of Harry’s death to his daughter he thought of the American woman he had never met as his family, closer in some ways than Hussein and Altamash of Ashraf Stores, Dubai.

‘I was there, Raza. In Pakistan, nearly twenty years ago. When you sent Harry Burton from your house accusing him of being the cause of your father’s death.’

‘I loved Harry.’ He said it quietly, simply, the stark truth of it never evident to him until that moment.

‘Is that why you signalled the gunman to fire?’

‘I. what?’

Steve reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out Raza’s satphone.

‘And is that why you made a call a few days ago to a known supporter of the Taliban in Kabul?’

Blood and shadows everywhere. The Commander?

‘I didn’t know. ’

‘And am I really going to have to track down whoever called you from that PCO in Kandahar — Taliban HQ — just a few minutes before Harry died, or are you going to spare us some time and just tell me, Raza Hazara?’

‘I haven’t used that name in twenty years. I was a boy then.’

‘I was standing next to you, you lying filth. Just a few hours ago when the call came. I could hear the man on the other end of the phone. Raza Hazara. That’s what he said.’ Steve stood up, picking up the copy of Mother Goose as he did so, along with Harry’s satphone and the handgun from the bedside-table drawer. ‘Humpty Dumpty,’ he said conversationally and walked towards the door, book in hand. Opening the door, he pointed to the two contractors standing guard outside — they were the ones Raza had dismissed as ‘hired help’ just a few days earlier.

‘Could you give me my phone,’ Raza said, holding out a hand and then quickly withdrawing it as he noticed its tremble. ‘I need to call A and G — their lawyers should probably know you seem to be accusing me of something.’

Steve shut the door and walked back to Raza, vastly amused.

‘Do you really think A and G is going to get into a legal tussle with the CIA just when they’ve finally got what they’ve wanted for the last decade — a slice of government action? And over you?’

‘You have no evidence. I can explain the phone calls.’

‘Oh, you can explain anything, I’m sure. But here’s the bad news for you: I saw you signal the gunman and I saw you duck just before he opened fire. That’s sufficient evidence in my world.’ He put a hand on Raza’s shoulder. ‘I know what you’re all about. And I’m counting on your cowardice — tell me who else was involved before this gets unpleasant.’ He stepped back. ‘I’ll give you time to think it over. You’ll see sense.’

He left, quietly closing the door behind him.

There was a place in Raza’s mind where nothing existed but the practical application of selected facts — it was the part of his brain he used when reading reports or sitting in on A and G meetings in which it was manifest that his company was in business with murderers and thugs. That part of his brain had once allowed him to sit through a meeting in which a new client of A and G’s extolled the effectiveness of rape as a tool of war. Raza impassively translated every word he said. Afterwards, Harry had found him in the A and G Olympic-sized pool, swimming furious laps, and said, ‘I’ve made it clear I’m not getting involved with this contract.’ Raza replied, ‘Even so, I’m really quitting this time. Don’t think a raise will change my mind.’ Harry crouched by the side of the pool and placed his hand on Raza’s slicked-down hair. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, son,’ he said, and Raza stayed.