Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

He didn’t understand quite what it was that made Ahmed worry so much until after he’d embraced the nomad goodbye and promised that in happier times he’d return and together they would traverse Asia in a pickup without cabbages. Then the ship’s captain into whose charge Ahmed had delivered him took him to a wooden boat with a tiny motor, and when Raza asked if there was anywhere in particular he should sit the captain pointed to the wooden planks underfoot and said, ‘Beneath there.’

Raza laughed, but the captain didn’t join in.

‘Have you pissed?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Go on. Over the side of the boat. You’re not coming out until Muscat. And there’s no room for your bag down there.’

Raza clutched his knapsack.

‘There are holy artefacts in here. I swore to my mother—’

The captain made a dismissive gesture.

‘Just hurry up.’

While Raza emptied his bladder into the sea, the captain pulled up a section of the floorboards. Raza could hear voices beneath. How many people were down there?

Many. Too many. Raza looked into the bowels of the ship and all he saw were prone men looking up at him, more than one crying out — in Farsi and in Pashto — ‘Not another one. There’s no room.’

‘Go on.’ The captain pushed at his shoulder blades. ‘Get in. We’re late already because of you.’

Raza peered down. There was no space between one body and the next, the men laid out like something familiar, but what? What did they remind him of? Something that made him back up into the ship captain, who cursed and pushed him forward, into the hold, on to the bodies which groaned in pain, pushed him this way and that until somehow, he didn’t know how, he was squeezed into the tiny space between one man and the next and his voice was part of the sigh — of hopelessness, of resignation — that rippled through the hold. It was only when the captain slammed down the hatch, extinguishing all light, that he knew what the line of bodies made him think of — the mass grave in Kosovo.

In the darkness, the man to his left clutched Raza’s hand.

‘How much longer?’ the man said, and his voice revealed him to be a child.

Raza didn’t answer. He was afraid if he opened his mouth he would gag from the stench — of the oil-slicked harbour, of damp wood, of men for whom bathing was a luxury they had long ago left behind. The boards he was resting on were slick, and he didn’t want to know if anything other than seawater might have caused that.

When the boat set off, things got worse. The motion of the sea knocking beneath the men’s heads was a minor irritant at first — but, when they left the harbour and headed into the open sea, the waves bounced their heads so violently the men all sat up on their elbows. It wasn’t long before they started to suffer seasickness. Soon the stench of vomit overpowered everything else. The Afghan boy next to Raza was suffering the most, weeping and crying for his mother.

Raza closed his eyes. In all the years he had sat around campfires with the TCNs listening to their tales of escape from one place to another, in the holds of ships, beneath the floorboards of trucks, it had never occurred to him how much wretchedness they each had known. And Abdullah. Abdullah had made this voyage once, would make it again. Across the Atlantic like this — it wasn’t possible. No one could endure this. What kind of world made men have to endure this?

He placed his knapsack beneath his head and, lying down, lifted up the boy who was weeping and retching next to him and placed him on top of his own body, buffering the boy from the rocking of the waves.

The boy sighed and rested his head on Raza’s chest.

The hours inched past. No one spoke — conversation belonged to another world. By mid-afternoon, the hold felt like a furnace. Several of the men had fainted, including the boy, who was now a dead weight on Raza’s chest. But Raza didn’t attempt to move him. He thought, Harry would have done for me without question what I’m doing for the boy. Then he thought, Harry would have kept me from a place like this.

At a certain point it started to seem inevitable he would die in the hold. All he could think of was his mother. She’d never know he had died. No one would put a name to the dead piece of human cargo. So she’d keep waiting for news of him. For how long? How long before she understood that she’d lost one more person she loved? He whimpered softly, uncaring of what the other men might think of him.

When the boards lifted up and moonlight streamed in he didn’t understand what it meant until the captain’s head appeared.

‘Quiet!’ the captain warned in response to the ragged cheer that ran through the hold. ‘Raza Hazara, where are you? Come out. The rest of you stay here. We haven’t reached yet.’

Nothing in Raza’s life had felt as shameful, as much of a betrayal, as the moment when he identified himself as the man who was leaving. The boy on his chest, conscious again, clutched his shirt and said, ‘Take me with you,’ and Raza could only whisper brokenly, ‘I’m sorry.’ He reached into his knapsack, lifted out a bundle of hundred-dollar bills, and pressed it into the boy’s hand. ‘Don’t let anyone know you have this,’ he said, before crawling over the other men and holding out a hand for the captain to lift him out. For a moment he considered dropping the knapsack in the hold, but he knew there was something else he needed the money for so he looked away from the men in the hold breathing in as much fresh air and moonlight as they could before the boards came down again.

A small rowing boat was alongside the ship, and a voice emerged from it saying, ‘Raza Hazara? Hurry. The plane’s been delayed already for you.’

Raza climbed into the boat, but before he could sit down the man rowing swung an oar and knocked him into the water. He had barely enough presence of mind to throw his knapsack into the boat as he fell.

He emerged spluttering and bone-cold. The man with the oar held up a bag.

‘Clothes in here. Take those ones off. And use this—’ He threw a bar of soap at Raza.

Despite the man’s urgency to get going he allowed Raza a few moments to float, naked, in the cold cold water, looking up at the expanse of sky.

I will never be the same again , Raza thought. He watched his vomit-slimed clothes float away, holding on only to Harry’s jacket, and changed that to, I want never to be the same again .

On the rowing boat there was water and food and a shalwar kameez only slightly too big for him. It was as much as he could bear — any further luxury would have been repellent.

Near dawn the boat reached shore. There, another blue and gleaming pickup truck was waiting. This time Raza didn’t attempt to speak to the driver and armed guard inside. He kept thinking of the boy whose head had rested on his chest, and wished he’d given him Hussein and Altamash’s number. Dubai was not so far from Muscat.

Beautifully paved roads lined with palm trees led to a private airstrip. A plane was on the runway.

One of the guards from the pickup accompanied Raza up the steps and grinned as he opened the plane door.

‘Welcome to the zoo,’ he said. The sounds issuing from the plane were extraordinary.

Raza stepped in, cautiously.

A blue heron unfurled its wings, a white peacock snap-closed its fantail, macaws squawked, a baby anteater fell off its mother’s back and protested shrilly, African wild dogs bared their teeth, winged things flew about under a black sheet, meerkats sat up on their hind legs and watched. And to one side, a baby gorilla slept.

The guard pointed to the cage with the gorilla in it.

‘You’ll be travelling inside the monkey,’ he said.