Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

‘What kind of man do you think I am?’

‘The kind of man I am. Go on, what did you do?’

‘I spoke to her. As I have never spoken to an American woman before. I wanted her to understand something, I don’t know what, about being an Afghan here. About war. Again and again war, Raza. And then. Then, I don’t know. She started attacking Islam. They’re all, everyone, everywhere you go now — television, radio, passengers in your cab, everywhere — everyone just wants to tell you what they know about Islam, how they know so much more than you do, what do you know, you’ve just been a Muslim your whole life, how does that make you know anything?’

Raza put an arm on Abdullah’s.

‘Quiet, quiet. People are looking. Abdullah, Kim’s not like that. I know. She can’t be like that.’

‘She said heaven is an abomination because my brother is in it.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘You hear them now all the time. Talking about how they won the Cold War, now they’ll win this war. My brother died winning their Cold War. Now they say he makes heaven an abomination.’

‘You’re tired,’ Raza said, holding Abdullah’s hands between his own. ‘Come with me. The car’s outside. You can sleep on the plane. Today, Abdullah, you make the journey home to your family.’

‘New York is home,’ he said brokenly. ‘New York is my home. The taxi drivers are my family.’

Raza felt a curious sense of envy amidst his pity.

‘I know things are bad, but perhaps there wasn’t any need to run. Even now, it might not be too late. Kim and my mother will help. They’ll find you a lawyer. These things still matter, they must.’

‘You’re living in another world. My friend Kemal — he was picked up ten days ago. No one has heard from him since. New York now is nets cast to the wind, seeking for any Muslim to ensnare.’

His words made Raza turn reflexively to look out of the window. No nets, but there was a police car in the parking lot which hadn’t been there a few seconds ago, and two policemen talking to a redhead whose hair reached her jawline. The woman turned towards the window, her finger pointing—

Raza grabbed Abdullah’s shirt and yanked hard, ducking at the same time so neither of them could be seen from outside. He pressed his keys into Abdullah’s palm.

‘Go from the back door. The silver Mazda. Take it. Run. Trust me.’ He pushed Abdullah from his chair.

‘Raza, what—?’

‘For your son’s sake. Go quickly. Please.’ He picked up the baseball cap that had been resting next to his elbow and put it firmly on Abdullah’s head, handing him his jacket — Harry’s jacket — at the same time, and reached across to take the coat Abdullah had slung over his chair.

‘Allah protect you,’ Abdullah said, squeezing his hand, before walking very rapidly to the back door.

But not rapidly enough. The policemen had entered; one pointed towards Abdullah, the other shrugged and called out, ‘Sir?’ in his direction.

Raza stood up, wearing Abdullah’s grey coat, said ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ loudly enough to be heard. The diners seated next to him shrank into their seats; a man standing by the utensils picked up his child and held her protectively in his arms; someone called out to the policemen.

Kim Burton crouched beside a car in the parking lot, the side-view mirror allowing her to see the door to the restaurant without being seen. She didn’t want him caught, she didn’t want him to escape, she didn’t want to be responsible either way. When the policemen exited, Abdullah in his grey winter coat handcuffed between them, she felt both sickened and relieved.

And then she saw his shoulders, far too slight for the great bulk of the winter coat.

The policemen had identical grips. Each had hold of his upper arm with a pressure that was merely professional. One was left-handed, one right-handed, and Raza wondered if this had been a consideration in pairing them up. Did policemen, like opening batsmen, work well with a left-right combination?

Pellets of ice were falling out of the grey sky. Raza was glad to be outside, away from the atmosphere of terror replaced by thrill — the diners had witnessed something, it would be on the evening news, they would tell all their friends to watch.

A car in the parking lot was covered in snow; it would have been here since the previous night. He wondered if its owner had spent the night in the restaurant, hiding in the bathroom stalls until the closing-up shift departed, scavenging through the kitchens in the dregs of night, finding everything locked up save for condiments. Or perhaps someone was in that car — had been there for days, would stay there until the first spring thaw revealed the corpse of a man so defined by absence that no one noticed he was missing.

His head was down so she wouldn’t see his face. He wasn’t actually looking at the car, was only recalling he had seen it as he entered the restaurant and had paid it no attention then. All he was looking at now was ice melting at every moment of impact — with paving, with shoes, with the soil in the otherwise empty flowerbeds near the restaurant door. Annihilated by contact, any contact.

‘Wait!’ he heard her shout. The policemen stopped, angled their bodies towards her.

There was the spider, and there was its shadow. Two families, two versions of the spider dance. The Ashraf-Tanakas, the Weiss-Burtons — their story together the story of a bomb, the story of a lost homeland, the story of a man shot dead by the docks, the story of body armour ignored, of running alone from the world’s greatest power.

Still he didn’t look up, but the space between one footfall and the next told him she was walking towards him in large strides. No other sound in the parking lot; the zip of cars on the highway was backdrop — and hope. Abdullah should have left through the exit around the back, he would be on the highway now, using his phone to call John and set up another meeting place. But it wasn’t enough to be out of the parking lot, he needed time to get away, time in which no one would know they should be looking out for a broad-shouldered, hazel-eyed Afghan.

‘I need to make sure that’s him,’ he heard Kim say.

Raza raised his head and bellowed, ‘Chup!’, the end of the word half-strangled with pain as the policemen’s hands pressed down on his head, forced him to his knees.

He saw Kim Burton’s eyes refuse to believe what they were seeing. Blood rushed to her face and for a moment she looked angry, furious — Harry’s quick temper manifest in her — as though the world was attempting to play a trick on her which she didn’t find even remotely entertaining. Then she was reaching a hand out to him, and Raza’s body jerked away from her touch.

‘Stand back,’ he heard one of the policemen say.

Raza wasn’t sure she’d heard. She was staring at him as a child might stare at a unicorn or some other creature of legend whose existence she’d always believed in yet never expected to receive proof of.

In any other circumstance he’d be reflecting her expression back at her. In the twenty years since Harry had handed him marshmallows on the beach and said Kim was asking if he had a girlfriend he’d been imagining and re-imagining their first meeting. Now his mouth twisted at how far his imagination had fallen short.

His grimace brought her back to the moment. He saw her looking up towards the restaurant window, then at the winter coat. she took a step back. She would be wondering, he guessed correctly, if he had set her up from the beginning, from that first phone call from Afghanistan. Why had he recoiled from her touch and why had he said, ‘Chup!’ It was one of the Urdu words with which Harry most liberally seasoned his language — Raza would be aware she knew it meant ‘Be quiet.’ What did he think she was going to say? He saw Harry’s careful intelligence in her — looking at the pieces, trying to understand the picture.