Far From My Father’s House

She cupped her drink, listened to the creak of ice in her glass. He seemed to be thinking. Down below, the boy was moving steadily across the garden, trailing a dripping hose. A bird, compact and brown, darted past him and perched on the gate. It cocked its head, watching the boy, then took off again, skimming low across the darkening lawn.

‘I think there’s a nest.’ She pointed to a puff of bush hanging down from the wall. ‘I hear chirping. In the morning.’

He shifted on his chair, restless. ‘Off the record?’

‘Of course.’

‘The offensive’s started. They’re trying to keep it quiet.’

She turned her head a fraction to look at him, keen with interest.

‘People are streaming down from the mountains in their thousands,’ he said. ‘Tens of thousands.’

‘Are the troops in yet?’

‘Just heading in. You heard there were air strikes? Now they need boots on the ground.’

She nodded. It made sense. ‘They took their time.’

He grimaced. ‘Fighting your own people? Never an easy call.’

Tinny music sounded, distant at first, then closer. An ice-cream hawker, blasting a mechanical tune. The garden boy paused, lifted his head. Water splashed from the end of the hose onto the grass at his feet.

Finally the ice-cream hawker pedalled into view on his bicycle, a large plastic box fixed to the front of his bike. His sweat painted a black circle on his shirt where it stuck to his back. He turned down the lane opposite and the spell broke. The garden boy shifted, tugged at the hose and moved on to the last flowerbed.

‘Have you set up relief camps?’

‘Just one so far. Near Peshawar.’ He rattled the final shards of ice in his glass and tipped back his head to drink. His throat made a long, white stretch. ‘We’re trucking in relief as fast as we can but the lines keep growing.’

He turned and looked her full in the face. His expression was serious. She couldn’t tell if he were thinking about the refugees or about her, about the past. It was all such a long time ago. Somewhere below, the cook was banging pots and pans and calling to the boy. The smell of frying onions and garlic rose from the kitchen.

Frank looked at his watch and shook himself back into motion. He lifted his feet off the rail, downed the last of his drink and pushed his feet into his sandals. When he spoke again his tone was business-like.

‘I’m heading down there tomorrow. Come if you want.’ He nodded at her swollen face. ‘If you feel up to it.’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘I will. Thanks.’

He left abruptly. She watched from the terrace as he crossed to his car. The guard ran out to open the gates. Frank raised a hand to her through the car window, then backed and disappeared in a fading echo of engine.

She felt suddenly drained. Her head ached. The sun had almost set, casting a red mantle over the jagged line of the mountains. Male shouts swam through the darkness from a nearby patch of waste ground. Young men were struggling to play cricket in the gloom, their shirts barely visible.

She should go inside and file a piece to London on the protest, the violence. Her limbs were leaden. She should call Phil, her editor, and tell him about the trip to the camp. She should pack, ready to leave.

In a moment.

The ice in her drink slowly melted. She’d always thought of Frank as a young man, the way he used to be. Passionate and funny and slightly wild. This middle-aged creature, this raised ghost, was a shock. She was pleased, of course. But it was also unsettling, a reminder of the past and the path she might have taken.

The small boy who tended the neighbour’s goats was trailing back through the scrub, slapping at the goats’ hindquarters with a switch as they shoved and clambered and jostled in a tinkle of bells.

Across the path, an elderly man came shuffling out of his house and onto the veranda. He was dressed in white cotton, his feet bare. He settled himself heavily into a chair.

In the garden, insects were gathering in black clouds. Somewhere out in the wildness, beyond the guesthouse walls, cicadas tuned up and began to sing.

Chapter 3

After I saw the three strangers near the mosque and tore down their notice to keep for myself, everything went quiet. No one spoke of these strange new rules. Most of the men had beards anyway, even my Saeed who is only sixteen but already a man and adores me besides. Apart from fetching water and working in the fields and buying provisions and going to school, women and girls like me don’t have many places to go, even without it being forbidden. I kept the paper secretly under my mattress and only looked at it when I was alone. I knew the words by heart. When I whispered their name to myself: Faithful Soldiers of Islam, it seemed full of danger and also adventure and I imagined some excitement which might finally stir up my boring life in the village.

Then Baba said we should all go for a family picnic before the weather got too hot. It was already late May and even in the village the days were getting sticky. Higher up the mountain, there was a good place for picnicking. The grass was lush and springy alongside the stream, which came tumbling down from the peak. There was an old gnarled tree, even older than Baba and his father before him and his father before that. Baba used to tell how his parents took him there when he was a boy, along with all the Uncles who were also boys and even the blood Aunties who were still young girls like me and not yet married off to men in other villages.

Mama had been sickly since Ramadan last year. Baba instructed her not to fast. No one told me why but I knew because I’d seen it all before. She was sweaty and pale and moaned on her cot at night. I could tell she was dreaming about a new baby crying to be born and worrying that this baby, like so many of her others, apart from me and my big sister, Marva, would die before it ever saw day. All those months later, her stomach was as big and hard as a watermelon and to my mind that was the real reason Baba planned the day out, to lift her spirits.

The morning of the picnic, Marva was ill with fever and knife pains in her legs. Mama sat with her arms wrapped round her, her fat belly bumping them apart, and the two of them whimpered and sighed. I set to work massaging Marva’s legs until the pains eased and then I helped the Aunties to prepare the eatables, with fresh bread and tomatoes and all manner of chopped salads and a basket of first season plums and apples which I’d helped to pick from the orchard just the day before.

I am thirteen now but even when I was very young, I was forced to be responsible for Mama and my big sister both. Sometimes I feel that Baba and I are the real parents and my mama is just another girl, like Marva, and they both need looking after. As Allah has chosen, that’s the sort of family I have. Mama is sweet and gentle, it’s true. Marva says Mama was once so lovely to behold that when she went walking, birds fell out of the trees dead at her feet on account of craning to get a closer look.

But Mama lacks spirit. All those dead babies, one after another, have sucked her dry and left her as brittle as a dead reed and plagued by nerves, and even a rush of wind is enough to knock her right over and start her crying about some small thing or other. The Aunties say some women are born with character and some are born with beauty but very few have both. My mama was doled beauty.

Jamila Auntie is the other way about, plain but strong. She’s Baba’s first wife and Baba only married her because he hadn’t yet found Mama and as soon as he did, he took Mama as his new wife and forgot Jamila Auntie altogether.

As for my sister, Marva, she has an affliction. It is the wish of Allah for her to have withered legs on account of an illness she had as a little girl, even before I was born. I’ve told Baba that I don’t understand why Allah would want her to be stuck all day every day in our compound, pulling herself about on her belly like a snake, but he tuts and says, ‘Hush, Layla, don’t question the will of Allah. It is not for us to know everything and sometimes there are things we don’t understand but must nonetheless accept.’

Baba wears wire-rimmed spectacles and uses words like ‘nonetheless’ and ‘whatsoever’ because he is a man of learning. He teaches me everything, just as if I were a boy. He says that when the boys in the village shout after me in the street and call Marva names, like ‘crazy cripple’ and ‘freak of nature’, I must bear it with dignity and I must not shout back, even if I think of smart things to say, and I must not pick up sharp stones and throw them at their heads. That, he says, is not any way for a girl to comport herself.

Baba and the Uncles harnessed the donkey and loaded up the cart and Mama and the Aunties, carrying the youngest cousins, all climbed onto the back and sat, their legs hanging over the edge, as the donkey strained and pulled and complained until finally the struts creaked and the wheels turned and we all set slowly off up the steep hillside towards the stream. Girls like me and boys and men like Baba walked along behind.

The mountainside was still, the sky streaked with white cloud. The sun was hiding behind the rocky edge of the mountain, waiting to jump out and surprise us as we climbed further up. The boys ran ahead, whooping and playing chase and the girls walked in wavy clusters, holding each other’s hands and giggling into each other’s ears. I walked near Baba. The light breeze dusted off my skin and kept me cool and fingered the scarf around my face. With Jamila Auntie and Baba and the Uncles and their wives, the Aunties, and all the cousins coming and going, there were too many of us crammed into that compound and, despite its size, it was very shouty and bothersome to a young girl like me, who wanted a little peace and quiet sometimes, but was always shut up in the sweat and clamour of all those people.

After we reached the place and finished our picnic, the Aunties sat bunched underneath the twisted tree, gossiping, and the older boys took off their sandals and waded in the stream, splashing rocks about, building a dam or some such and the toddlers, nearby on the flat grassy bank, tried to throw pebbles into the clear water and barely made a ripple, their judgement was so poor. Baba and the Uncles stood together by the water’s edge, looking up and down the stream and talking in low voices. I sat propped up against Mama, plucking at the tufts of grass under the tree and wondering, not for the first time, why other girls of my age were so silly and boys so stupid.

The strangers appeared suddenly as dark shapes against the rocks. They climbed sideways down the steep mountain towards us. Baba and the Uncles stiffened and turned to watch. The knowledge of their arrival moved through the Aunties, one by one, and they too turned to look and fell silent. Some pulled at their headscarves to cover their faces and others called to their children to come here, quickly. Mama tensed at my side.

There were four of them, all dressed like the other men I’d seen, in flowing black kameezes with rough woollen hats and thick beards. They looked full of purpose, closing the distance between us with sure strides. The sunlight flashed on long-nosed guns at their sides.

The men descended to the flat bank of the stream. Baba and the Uncles stepped forwards and greeted them politely, putting their hands on their hearts: Salaam Alaikum. Three of the men were young, strong boys with loose limbs and jaunty muscles. The fourth man was older. He turned and looked across at the girls and women as we shrank together under the tree. I knew him at once from his crooked nose. He was the same man who had brought the notices and ordered the men to nail them to our trees. His eyes were hard as if they had seen many terrible things.

The men spoke in low voices. Hamid Uncle, the head of the family, spoke first and then the stranger and then Hamid Uncle again. Mama’s leg, pressed against mine, was shaking. The men were still speaking, back and forth, and, although I couldn’t make out the words, I heard the threat in the stranger’s voice. The three young men standing around him cocked their guns and raised them as if they were planning to fire. One of the Aunties let out half a cry, then strangled it dead.

The stranger spoke again and, as he did so, one of the young men swung around and aimed his gun at the donkey, which was tearing up grass beside the stream, the only creature in our party unaware of the danger. A crack. The donkey crumpled, rolling its head sideways with surprised eyes, its ears flapping. Blood spurted from its side. It gave a high-pitched scream. After a moment, the scream faded and the donkey crashed onto its side and lay, shuddering. Its blood made a dark stain on the grass. The silence which followed was full of the memory of the scream. It was only broken when the young men laughed and the fourth man turned and scolded them until they too were silent.

I stared, shaking, at Baba and the Uncles to see what they were going to do. They just stood there and looked as the donkey stopped twitching. Its eyes were open and it looked as dead as if it had never lived. The fourth man turned away and led his fighters briskly on down the edge of the mountain towards the village. While they were still in sight, no one moved.

The picnic outing was over. The Aunties rocked the smaller children in their arms, crying with them. Baba and the Uncles went across to the donkey and Baba bent down and tickled the soft patch between its ears, the way he always did, and I knew he was saying goodbye.

In truth, it had been a bad-tempered animal which nipped us with its strong teeth when we children pulled its ears or climbed on its back for a ride. But it had been part of our household since I could remember and now it was dead and I had to bite hard on the inside of my cheeks to keep from crying.

Baba and the Uncles made pairs and lifted the shafts of the cart themselves and pulled the Aunties and children back down the mountainside. The toddlers cried and struggled and had their legs slapped to hush and keep quiet. Mama, her huge stomach pushing out beyond the edge of the cart, was pale.

I walked alongside Baba. His face dripped with sweat as he heaved the cart and his spectacles kept sliding forwards on his nose and I wished I could help him. I asked, ‘Who was that man? Why did they do that?’

Baba glanced down at me and his expression was sorrowful.

‘His name is Mohammed Bul Gourn,’ Baba said. ‘He is a very dangerous man and I pray God you will never see him again.’

My hands tightened into fists at my sides. ‘But why did they shoot our donkey?’

Baba was panting. The strain made deep lines in his face as if he were already old. ‘Don’t ask so many questions, Layla.’

I stopped. Other people had said that to me since I was a little girl, Jamila Auntie and the cousins and the other Aunties and even Mama but never Baba; Baba had never said such a thing. He and I were explorers, he used to tell me, searching for knowledge. I stared after him, shocked and hurt, as he and his brothers and the laden cart rumbled on.

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