Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

The ice was falling into her auburn hair, splinters winking as they dissolved. For a moment, he wavered. All he needed to do was allow her to say what she had been about to say when he stopped her. She had only to say, ‘That’s not him,’ and they would let him go. And then — a bead of melted ice trailed down her face, following the route a tear might take — he and Kim Burton would finally sit down face to face, to talk about Harry, to talk about Hiroko, to talk about everything.

But he would not do that to Abdullah. Not this Raza Konrad Ashraf — not the one who had lain in the hold of a ship bearing the weight of an Afghan boy, not the one who had floated in the dagger-cold sea looking up at Orion, promising himself he would not be as he was before. Every chance, every second, he could give Abdullah he would.

He looked once more at the snow-covered car, the desolation of it, and wryly considered this new heroic persona he was trying to take on. Truth was, he didn’t have the temperament for this kind of running anyway; they’d catch him soon enough. Perhaps arrest Bilal, or his mother, or anyone else who might be termed accomplice. Kim Burton, too, if she walked with him out of this parking lot. What a gift, then, what a surprising gift, to be able to say the moment when freedom ended had counted for something. Finally, he counted for something.

‘Is it him?’ one of the policemen said.

He looked straight at Kim.

‘Hanh,’ he said very softly. Hanh. Yes. Say yes.

He saw her decision, though he didn’t know how or why she had come to it.

‘Yes,’ she said.

The men nodded and lifted Raza to his feet. Her expression became frantic as she heard the jangle of his handcuffs.

‘I don’t know that he’s done anything wrong. He just looked suspicious. My father died in Afghanistan a few days ago. I’m not coping very well. There’s nothing he’s done wrong. Please let him go.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the policeman said in the tone of voice men reserve for women they decide are hysterical. ‘We’re just going to ask him a few questions. And I’m sorry about your father.’

They walked Raza past Kim as they headed to the car. The look on her face was one he knew he’d never forget. No matter what happened to him, what anyone did now, what they said, how they tried to break him, he would remember — as if it were a promise of the world that awaited if he survived — Kim Burton’s expression, which said, clearer than the words of any language, ‘Forgive me.’

He would have. If it were in his power he would have taken her mistake from her and flung all the points of its gleaming sharpness into the heavens. But he knew it didn’t work that way. He could only try to convey, in that final instant before they dragged him away — in the dip of his head, the sorrow of his smile — that he still saw the spider as well as its shadow.

By the time she was speeding down the West Side Highway — every traffic light turning green at her approach, the river lit up with Manhattan’s liquid reflection, the sky that glowing orange which passed for darkness on cloudy nights — Kim Burton was no closer than she had been six hours earlier in the parking lot to understanding what had transpired that afternoon, both in the restaurant and in her own mind.

In one moment she saw Abdullah as the innocent. What had he said after all to warrant sending the law after an illegal Afghan? That he had sat in a car which might have driven over teddy bears? That Hiroko was to be honoured for assuring her son a place in heaven? That those who defended their nation against attack were heroes? In the next moment he was a threat, seeing virtue only through the narrow prism of his religious belief, conferring martyrdom on those who attacked Americans. It was necessary to allow the experts — those involved with threat assessment of a kind that was not part of her experience — to speak to him, to make the decision she wasn’t competent to make.

In that first moment, she was grateful beyond measure to Raza, that deus ex machina, long waiting in the wings of her life for the moment when he could enter with a flourish and interpose himself between her misguided intentions and their fulfilment. He would be fine, of course. She had concluded this before she even reached the border, once she was able to brush away the awful tension of the parking lot and consider the plain facts. Of course he would be fine. There wasn’t any question of that. However bizarre his behaviour, there was nothing illegal about it, or about his presence in Canada. The policemen need never know he had helped Abdullah escape; they’d merely conclude that the American woman was paranoid, seeing a threat in every Muslim.

But in the next moment she was so angry she had to pull over — more than once — to collect herself. He had allowed Abdullah to escape. And now there was nothing she could do without exposing Raza as an accomplice. And how had that become the line she couldn’t cross? This was the part that confounded her the most, made her want to rip the windpipe from Raza’s throat. There had been such a surprising gravitas to him, such an urgency and knowing in his eyes, that she had done what she never otherwise did — suspended her own judgement, and complied.

She missed Harry. She missed Ilse. She missed the world as it had been. Abdullah’s voice in her head said it had never been.

When she entered the Mercer Street apartment the total darkness within told her Hiroko was asleep already. Kim had driven all the way back to the city instead of stopping in the Adirondacks as had been her original plan purely so she could tell Hiroko what had happened, but now it felt like a reprieve to be spared that tonight.

She switched on the floor lamp, and Hiroko was sitting upright on the sofa, looking at her.

‘Where’s my son, Kim?’

‘God, Hiroko. You scared me.’

‘I called you. Many times.’

‘My battery died.’ For some reason it seemed necessary to extract her phone from her pocket and hold it out as proof.

‘Such a strange thing happened this afternoon.’ Hiroko stood up and walked over to the window. ‘Omar called and asked me to come downstairs.’

‘Who’s Omar?’

‘Omar!’ Hiroko snapped, turning to glare at Kim. ‘You’ve been in his cab at least a dozen times.’

‘Sorry. Of course.’

Hiroko continued to look at her for a moment, and then resumed staring down at the lights strung across the Williamsburg Bridge like stars too curious about the life of New York to keep their distance, her voice returning to its tone of neutrality.

‘When I went downstairs he handed me his phone and said it was Abdullah. I thought he must have lost my number. Why else would he call Omar? But it was because he thought my phone might be tapped. By the CIA. As part of their investigations into your father’s death.’

‘What does Abdullah know about my father’s death?’ Her mouth had some trouble forming the words.

‘Only what Raza told him.’ She opened the side window, breathed in the slicing wind. ‘He is running, Kim. Just as I said he was. He’s been running since Harry’s death. But not for the reason I thought. He’s running from the CIA. They think he was involved, that he planned it.’

‘Planned what?’

‘Harry’s death.’ The wind rattled the pane, blew in a light scattering of snow.

‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’ When Hiroko didn’t respond, Kim raised her voice. ‘Does your friend Abdullah think my father’s death is something to joke about?’

‘He was calling to ask if it would help Raza or hurt him if he turned himself in. He said he saw you talking to the policemen before they took Raza away. Why was that, Kim Burton?’ She closed the window, sealing the two of them into a dimly lit room. ‘Could you explain?’