The Last Kestrel

‘Ellen Thomas?’ Someone was hissing her name into the darkness, through the lifted tent flap. The tone was more accusation than question. When she emerged, a young soldier was pacing outside, looking impatient. ‘The Major sent me. Follow me.’

He led her across the camp, then turned sharply right into a dim narrow corridor between hessian sandbag walls. Engineers corps, she thought. Build anything. He pushed open a plywood door and ushered her inside, down a hallway and into an office.

It had the dead smell of an underground bunker, ripe with dust and recycled air. It was poorly lit by low-wattage bulbs, strung on wires that were pinned in loops along the wood ceiling struts like Christmas decorations. An old air-conditioning unit was panting against one wall, making memos and notices on the board above it flutter and crack.

‘Ellen?’

A short, compact man rose from behind a desk and came forward to greet her. His gaze was direct, his eyes a surprising blue. Intense, she thought at once. Intelligent. He was muscular but the creases round his eyes suggested he must be about her age, forty something. His hair was blond and clearly thinning, the dome of his head glowing warmly in the mellow light, offset by arches of thicker growth above his ears.

‘Major McKay,’ he said. ‘But call me Mack. Everyone does.’

He pumped her hand, his fingers hard in hers.

‘Thought we’d lost you,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’

He nodded to the young soldier who bustled about at a water heater with polystyrene cups and powdered milk and handed them drinks.

‘Well.’ He folded himself onto a chair and gestured to her to sit too. ‘The famous Ellen Thomas. I’m honoured.’

‘I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed.’ The coffee smelt strong and stale.

He smiled, showing even teeth. Somewhere behind him, a clock was ticking. Civilizing the desert, she thought. War was surreal.

‘Read a lot of your stuff,’ he said. ‘Brave woman. Hope we’re going to pass the Thomas test here.’

She smiled back. ‘Not brave,’ she said. ‘I just report.’

His manner was confident. Yes, she thought, in a crisis, this was a man you’d trust.

‘Not sure I always agree with you, though.’ He tutted. ‘That piece on Basra.’

Oh no, she thought. A man with opinions on my work. She lowered her lips to her polystyrene cup and watched his face as he took issue with her argument on Iraq. His look was sharp. He was articulate, clearly. A good adversary. But a debate on Basra wasn’t what she needed right now. Iraq already seemed a long time ago.

She pretended to listen, nodding in increments and scanning the room. A war room. Shared and impersonal. Desks piled with folders and papers. Behind him, a flip chart with notes written across it in marker pen in a loopy, sloping hand. ‘What are we fighting for?’ read the heading, underlined. Then a list: Cathedrals. Real cider. Bangers and mash. Small cottages. Little old ladies in teashops. She wondered which young wags had brainstormed that and from which part of rural England they’d been plucked. She became aware again of the clock’s tick. Mack had stopped talking.

‘So what’s the plan?’ she said. ‘What’s this offensive?’

He paused, watching her, then got to his feet. ‘We’re about to take new ground.’ He drew her across to an area map tacked to the wall and used his pen as a pointer. ‘Here’s the camp, where we are now. Early tomorrow morning, B and C Company will move into position in this area of desert here.’ He pointed to a white space some distance north into the desert. No tracks were marked. The only roads snaked from the camp in different directions, to the south and west. ‘The Danes will provide backup here. The Estonians here. Once they’re in place, B and C Company will launch a fresh attack here. Crossing the river at this point. Into this area of the green belt.’

She nodded, taking in the distances, the contours. There were several villages marked in the target area, clusters of squares and dots.

‘How well fortified is it?’

He shrugged. ‘Pretty well. The enemy’s been dug in there for more than two years.’

They’ll have an established underground bunker system then, she thought. Carefully constructed traps.

‘Mines?’

‘Almost certainly.’

She looked again at the map, trying to imagine the terrain. ‘So you expect resistance. Probably a lot.’

‘We’re always prepared for contact with the enemy,’ he said.

‘Any estimate of timings?’ She pointed to the first village, high on a ridge above the river. ‘When do you think you’ll reach here? Noon?’

‘Depends.’ His eyes were thoughtful. ‘Depends how much resistance there is.’

She finished her coffee. She wanted to sort out her kit and repack for the field. Today might be her last chance to eat fresh food, shower and get some sleep.

‘Now,’ he was saying, ‘you need to have a think. I have to make it clear to you: it will be dangerous out there. We can’t guarantee your safety. You understand that? So you need to weigh up the risks against the gains. Of course, you’re a reporter. You’ve got a job to do. But you may think it wise to stay in camp tomorrow. I can arrange a briefing for you here. Then the following day we can review…’

She dropped her cup into the dustbin and turned to face him. He came to the end of his speech and paused. ‘Don’t feel,’ he said, ‘you have to give me an answer now. Think it over.’

‘I’ve thought,’ she said. ‘What time do we leave?’

3

Almost two weeks earlier

Late in the night, a sound woke Hasina. She opened her eyes with a jolt and listened. Abdul, her husband, breathed heavily beside her. The stale but comfortable animal smell of him filled her nostrils. The room was clotted with darkness. She eased herself off the cot and wound her long cotton scarf round her shoulders and head.

Outside, she poured herself water from the jug, drank a little, then wet the end of her scarf. The night air was fresh and earthy, after the breath-thick room. She crept round the side of the house, scanning the mud yard and the running blot of the low boundary wall. The goats stamped, moving nervously in a half-circle on their tethers. Beyond them, the field of standing corn stretched away in a solid dark block. She stood, hidden in the shadow of the house, and rubbed the damp tail of her scarf round her neck. Nothing.

She looked out across the land. She knew every stone, every ditch of this field as well as she knew the bumps and contours of her son’s body, of her husband’s body too. It was good land. It rose like a blessing out of the barren desert, green fields made fertile by the sudden appearance of the river. The soil had fed as many generations of her husband’s family as anyone could remember. Like the people, it struggled to stave off exhaustion. She ran her eyes along the raised ridge, looking for fresh signs of collapse. When the rains were heavy, the top layer could lift and run away with the torrents of water. Their carefully dug irrigation channels silted up and, once the rain stopped, they squelched through them, feeling the mud ooze between their toes, to sieve the earth between their fingers and pile it back.

But at this time of year, in the long stifling hope of rain, it was baked hard, a sunken square of land that they struggled to keep moist. The first crop of the year was long since harvested. The second crop–corn for themselves and poppy to sell to Abdul’s brother, Karam–was growing higher, day by day. She sniffed the air, tasting the health of the plants. The first harvest had been average. This second one held more promise.

She settled on a stone and rocked herself. Somewhere out in the desert, wild dogs were calling to each other. A low breeze was blowing in from the plains. She wrapped her moist scarf across her face, shielding her eyes from the lightly swirling sand.

Then she heard it. A tiny human explosion: a sneeze. She lowered the rim of her scarf. Someone was out there, hiding in the corn. She listened, her senses raw. After some time, a barely audible rustle, as if someone, deep in the cornfield, were shifting their weight.

She crept forward, one slow step at a time, feeling out the ground with each foot. She made her way, bent double, down the side of the field, balancing on the thin strip between the last planted row and the ditch. Every few paces, she stopped and listened.

Finally she heard breathing. Short, shallow breaths. She turned towards the centre of the corn and reached forward to ease apart the corn stems, as if she were parting a curtain. She let out a sudden cry. Crouched in front of her, looking right into her eyes, so close she could reach out and touch him, was a young man, a stranger, his head wrapped in the printed cotton scarf of the jihadi fighter. A brass talisman gleamed on a leather thong round his neck. It was in the shape of a bird, its wings spread and claws outstretched. The young man frowned. The thin moonlight caught the metal casing of the gun he held across his body, its muzzle a matter of inches from her bending head.

The three young men perched on the perimeter wall and lit up fat cigarettes. Hasina’s son, Aref, sat beside them, the only one without a gun propped against his legs. Hasina recognized the acrid smell of fresh hashish. Aref smoked too, when the cigarette was offered, but self-consciously. They were teasing him, laughing and calling him ‘little brother’. Such arrogance. Hasina wanted to slap their faces. They thought they were so clever, these boys with guns. They were nothing more than troublemakers, with their bullets and bombs. Whatever they called themselves, Leftists, jihadis, mujahideen. She’d seen so much death already.

Moving quietly, she poured water into cups and offered it to them. They reeked of stale sweat. She tried not to let her disapproval show. Even the poorest villager showed respect to his body by keeping clean.

As the young men smoked, she pulled Aref away and took him to the back of the house. His eyes were sullen.

‘Who are these boys?’ she said. ‘Why have you brought them to our home? Have you no respect?’

He scowled. ‘They are my brothers.’

‘Brothers?’ She stared at him. ‘How do you know them?’

Aref turned his eyes to the earth. ‘Karam Uncle,’ he said.

Hasina blinked. Karam? He had dark contacts, she knew that. Selling poppy to them had made his fortune. But fighters, like these?

‘You’ve met them before?’

‘Many times.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘I have trained with them.’ He lifted his hands as if he were aiming a gun at her. ‘You never knew, did you?’

What a child, she thought. She saw triumph in his eyes. What would Abdul say? Those times Aref had disappeared for two, three days on Karam’s business. Was it for this? She wanted to take hold of his shoulders and shake him hard. Instead she reached for his hand. ‘Aref, these are not decent boys.’

‘Not decent?’ He swatted her away. ‘These men are fighting. Defending our land. Not decent?’

Hasina sighed. Beside them the goats shuffled and pressed, hot and pungent, against her. She thought of that face, so close to hers in the corn. He looked little more than a boy, but his eyes, hard and knowing, were old.

‘Where are they from?’

Aref gestured vaguely. ‘Beyond Nayullah.’

‘They should go home, Aref. Back to their families.’

Her son was looking at her the way some men in the village looked at their wives, as if women had no more brains than a goat.

‘They’re fighters. Not farmers.’ He spat out the word with disdain. ‘They’re fighting for Allah.’

Behind them, one of the young men let out a barely stifled laugh. She froze, frightened the noise would wake Abdul.

‘Bring them to the back,’ she said. She untied the goats and led them out into the clearing. ‘I’ll fetch food.’

She sat in the shadow of the wall and watched them. They bristled with tense excitement as they whispered and sniggered. They didn’t attempt to wash. They kicked the area clean of goat droppings and dirty straw and half sat, half lay on the mud. Once they’d pulled off their boots, they fell on the food she’d given them. Their long-nosed guns lay at their sides. Aref sat with his arms curled tightly round his knees, a look of devotion on his face.

What lives were these boys leading, fleeing across the desert as the foreigners advanced? The boys were settling to sleep now, their arms round their guns as if they were wives. Their faces had relaxed. Sleep was turning them to boys again. She imagined their mothers, lying in the darkness in small mud-brick houses like their own. She bowed her head and tried to pray for them, to beg Allah to give them His guidance and keep them safe from harm. But all she could see when she closed her eyes was the eager face of her own son, loyal as a dog at their feet.

When she woke at first light, the young men had disappeared. So had Aref. He must be guiding them off the village land. An hour or two, then he’d be back. She waited, listening for his step every moment as she swept and cooked. Morning passed. When she took food to Abdul in the fields, she stayed with him as he ate. Should she tell him? She read the exhaustion in his face and held her tongue. By mid-afternoon, she was desperate. She straightened her skirts and walked through the village to the grand compound of her brother-in-law, Karam.

Her sister-in-law, Palwasha, was lying on her side on a crimson carpet. It was decorated with geometric designs in black, yellow and cream. The colours were strong and bright. Abdul’s wealthy brother had sent his first wife back to her family for failing to bear children. Now he spoiled his second wife with costly gifts. Hasina pursed her lips. Before this, only the mosque had been decked with carpets.

Palwasha was pulling at her elder daughter’s hair, tugging it into tight plaits. Sima was grimacing. Palwasha’s wrists tinkled with bracelets as she flexed her arms.

‘I should never have come to live here,’ Palwasha said as soon as she saw Hasina. Her eyes, heavily circled with kohl, rolled dramatically. ‘I told Karam I would simply die. I’m a town girl. People should remember that.’ She looked sullenly at Hasina. ‘Why am I telling you?’ she said. ‘You never understand a thing.’

Hasina settled herself on the compact mud, some distance from the edge of the carpet. Palwasha talked such nonsense. The village women said her family had married her off to Karam because they were in debt.

‘Of course, sister-in-law,’ Hasina said. ‘Life here must seem very harsh to you.’

Sima squirmed, struggling to break free. Palwasha slapped her leg. Sima’s breathing juddered as she tried not to cry.

‘Primitive!’ Palwasha muttered. ‘You’re so right.’

She finished plaiting and pushed Sima away. The girl crept out into the compound to join her young brother, Yousaf, and sister, Nadira, chasing chickens and setting them flapping through the straw.

‘How are your good mother and father?’ Hasina spoke the ritual greetings politely. ‘Your younger sister? May Allah grant them good health.’

Palwasha didn’t bother to answer. A younger woman should show respect. It was Hasina’s due. But they took their status from their husbands. Abdul was just a farmer. Karam was rich.

‘The village is hard for you,’ Hasina tried again. She looked at the thick carpet under Palwasha’s thigh, the expensive brass pots and plates stacked in the corner behind her. ‘But perhaps,’ she went on, ‘in these troubled times, we are safer here.’

‘Safer?’ Palwasha was picking at her polished nails. ‘May God help us! If I have to die, please, not here. That would be too cruel.’ She let out a sudden laugh.

‘The foreign soldiers are advancing, sister-in-law.’ Hasina proceeded carefully. ‘Have you heard? They’re already in Nayullah.’

Palwasha rolled over onto her back. ‘What does it matter?’ she said. ‘No one ever comes here.’ She is just a girl, Hasina thought, looking at her long body, stretched out, petulant, on the floor.

‘Besides,’ Palwasha added, ‘my husband has powerful friends.’ She sat up and crossed her legs carefully, as if posing for a portrait. ‘In another year, the foreigners will be gone. Then Karam and I will move to the city.’

Hasina breathed deeply. She rarely visited Palwasha nowadays. The girl had so few brains. ‘Sister-in-law,’ she said, ‘I am worried about Aref. Have you seen him?’

‘Aref?’ Palwasha’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why would he be here?’

‘To see your husband, perhaps.’

‘Karam’s not here.’ Palwasha frowned, her mood changing. She languidly stretched her legs, one at a time. ‘He’ll be back tonight, inshallah.’ She rose and left the room, leaving Hasina staring at emptiness.

In the evening, when Abdul had eaten, Hasina crept back to Karam’s compound. She had barely swallowed a mouthful all day. Her mouth was too dry, her stomach too twisted with fear.

She tapped on the metal gate. One of Karam’s men opened the inner door and peered out. She waited inside, her back pressed back against the wall, until Karam’s broad silhouette emerged from the house.

‘Sister-in-law?’

She bowed low. ‘Karam brother-in-law. I am so sorry to trouble you. But—’

‘Aref?’

She looked up sharply. ‘You know where he is?’

‘Of course. He is about my business.’

Hasina felt her knees buckle. ‘Your business?’ She held his gaze. ‘The young men. I saw them.’

Karam’s expression soured. ‘Some things’, he said, ‘should be left unspoken.’

She pulled her scarf across her face. Karam looked round, as if for eavesdroppers, before he spoke in a low voice.

‘Of course he has gone,’ he said. ‘It is his duty.’

She looked at the large compound, the servants, the animals. She knew where the money came from. From poppy. Karam was beholden to these fighting men. But Aref?

‘He is so young.’ She thought of his boyish face, his foolishness. ‘If anything happens to him…’ Her voice trailed off. What hope did these young boys have? She knelt before him and raised the trailing cloth of her scarf on the flat of her hands, beseeching him.

‘Go home to your husband.’ He turned away, embarrassed at her begging, and took a step back. ‘My brother needs to control his wife. Do I need to teach him?’

Hasina tried to steady her voice. ‘No, brother-in-law,’ she said.

Someone moved in the shadows behind her. The bolt on the inner gate slid back, inviting her to leave.

‘He has a chance’, Karam whispered as he pulled her to her feet, ‘to defend his people. To do God’s will. You should be proud.’

As she stepped through, the gate clanged shut behind her. Outside, she sank against the compound wall, her face buried in her hands, her scarf stuffed against her mouth to stifle the sound, and sobbed.

The night after Aref’s disappearance, she found no sleep at all. The night cries and howls outside were full of menace. Aref was somewhere out there, in a ditch or cornfield. Hungry. Afraid. Had they made him go, those boys? She turned onto her side and drew up her knees. Aref had looked so smug when he spoke of training with them. Training to fight? She wrapped her arms round her body in anguish. Had Karam really sent their boy to these hotheads? Recently, Aref had gone off on Karam’s business more often, sometimes for several days. Selling poppy, she’d thought. They hadn’t asked questions. But training with these foolish, fired-up boys? She moaned to herself. Beside her, Abdul stirred.

They had welcomed Karam’s interest in Aref. They had let him influence their boy. He had power and money. Abdul trusted his elder brother with his life. What would he say, if all this were true?

She twisted on her front, buried her face in her shawl. And now the foreign soldiers were waging war against them. She put her fist to her mouth. She was cold with fear. Abdul would never believe that Karam would put their son in danger. She must tread carefully. Allah alone knew how.

As soon as she saw first light, she got up. She tried to wash the exhaustion out of her body with cool water, then forced herself to start her chores. Abdul emerged, yawning, to find much of her work already done.

‘I’ll go to the big market today,’ she told him while he ate. ‘I need spices. And my cooking pot is cracked. These village ones are useless.’

‘Cracked?’ He looked up. ‘But it’s new.’

Hasina spread her hands. ‘Why quarrel over a pot?’ she said. ‘Anything you need?’

He shrugged. He was already finishing his bread and tea. He dipped into his pocket and pulled out some crumpled notes. ‘Spend it with care,’ he said.

She waited until he had set off for the fields. She wrapped her best shawl around her head and shoulders, making sure her hair was properly covered, and picked her way along the edge of the fields, down the hillside towards the riverside track. Her body settled into the rhythm of the long walk to Nayullah.

The big market was held every week but she didn’t go often. It took a whole morning and, besides, they couldn’t afford to buy much. Today she’d needed a reason to walk. If she stayed in the fields all day, her worry would suffocate her. She looked out across the river, at the thick reeds breaking the water, the flies in a low black cloud on the surface. She’d bought treats at the market for Aref when he was a boy. Nuts and sweets in twists of coloured paper. Cheap plastic toys. How he’d loved them. She wiped off her forehead with the end of her scarf. Now where was he?

She lengthened her stride. The sunlight was bouncing sharp and clean off the water at her side. It was a blessing from Allah, the river. The land around it was green with ripening corn and low foliage. A lizard ran into the path in front of her, froze, then darted for cover. When she raised her eyes to look beyond the river, the desert softly shimmered in the heat, stretching away to the horizon, endlessly thirsty and barren.

A boy came slowly towards her, herding goats along the river bank. He was a gawky child. She nodded to him as he approached but he slid his eyes away, embarrassed. He clicked his tongue at the goats, slapping at them with a long switch. The goats knocked and stumbled against each other. They filled the narrow path and she stepped into the scrub to let them pass. For some moments, the air was suffused with the low tinkling of the bells at their necks and the thick pungent scent of hot goat.

She walked on, thinking. Since she could remember, there’d always been fear and fighting here and restless young men eager to kill. Her own family’s village had been razed by the Leftists when she was a girl. The baker and his wife tortured and killed. No one would tell her why. Their children, her playmates, had been sent around the village to grow up with cousins. Sad children, after that, with fewer friends. When would it end? She thought again of Aref. The way those young men had strutted like cockerels, all self-importance. Such foolishness.

As she finally approached the market, she quickened her pace. The stalls were spilling out along both sides of the dirt road and deep into the land behind it. She looked over the hawkers. That was someone she recognized, that farmer. Over there, another. Regulars from a nearby village. She’d bought from them since they were boys. Baskets woven by their wives. Clay pots. Vegetables and fruit. They were seated silently on the edge of the large cloths they’d rolled out over the dirt. Something about their stillness made her uneasy.

She walked further, past a fat row of dented trucks. The metalwork flashed with sunlight. More outsiders. Vegetables gave way to bales of used garments and second-hand shoes, hillocks of garish foreign plastic, buckets and bowls. The old men and boys who sat with these goods, cross-legged, their feet bare, were strangers.

Her head was starting to ache. A volley of cries from crackling loud-hailers. Cages of chickens squawked and clawed. Young men were cooking up snacks in pots, flipping them with flattened knives. The smell of frying oil hung heavy in the air. How Aref loved oily snacks when he was a child. What would those boys with guns give him to eat today?