‘Can’t smoke enough today, boss.’ From a pocket Adrian produced a box of cigarettes, a blue packet branded with the English word sky. Delicately, with thick, tanned fingers, he pulled one out and rapped the butt end against the box.
The azan had for a few seconds been solitary, and now it was joined by another starting up from the beginning, and a few seconds later yet another, until all around was a cacophony of competing calls, from loudspeakers large and small, mounted on poles and in minarets, near and distant, a chaotic and disassociated shrill.
Putting my hands over my ears, I said, ‘Noisy bastard mullahs. I’d cut their fucking throats, all but one.’
Adrian stood still, blowing smoke out of his nostrils and rubbing the stubble on his chin. ‘You might be the sarge but you’re lowering the tone. Sarge, do you know about the Night of Power? It’s suspicious, like a birthday for Muslims.’
‘Let’s not stand around,’ I said.
‘Sarge,’ Adrian acknowledged.
‘I think you mean auspicious.’
The sun was rising, a thin yellow glow spreading across a snowy summit. Between the peaks and our position several kilometres across the plain was a dry landscape of rock and brown earth, still dark and invisible in the shadow of the mountains, like a void yet to be sketched in. Gradually the fresh light brightened into a syrupy-yellow clarity that you could almost touch, as though Allah was saying, Here you go, lads, behold the earth. It brought a new smell too, replacing the pungent night-blooming jasmine: the smell of open fires and baking flatbread mixed with gas from engines — tuk-tuks, buses, taxis, Suzukis — starting up at the chowk in the nearby village. And it seemed that the smell came first, reminding me with a jolt, as I looked around as though for the first time, that in a few minutes it would be daylight. Already the air was warm.
Behind me I heard again the word ‘Sarge’. There was only Adrian and me, but it didn’t sound like him. The voice was low, summoned with great effort.
I turned. Adrian stood a few feet away, his gaze fixed on me. His cigarette dropped to the ground. Slowly, his face tightened. ‘Sarge,’ he said again, louder, his voice a sharp cry.
As though doing a calculation in my head, I traced back to the moment before he had dropped the cigarette, before he had called to me. Had there been a click of metal? At his perfectly still left boot a spark flared abruptly and worked its way around the rubber sole, like a small firecracker labouring under a great weight, and then, before either of us had time to avert our eyes, take cover or say another word, it died out. For what seemed like minutes we stood perfectly still. Adrian looked as though he was in great pain, his fists clenched at his sides and eyes now screwed tightly shut. I listened to the sound of his laboured breath.
I slid my rifle and daypack gently to the ground. I took one step forward and then, with one knee bent, my arms circling his waist, I summoned all the strength I possessed and heaved him off. I fell backwards to the ground, the great weight of Adrian landing awkwardly on me, although thankfully my helmet and shoulders took much of the impact.
Wriggling out from under the weight of Private Hartley, I stood up, picked up my rifle and rubbed my chin where Adrian’s helmet had struck me. Under the short beard it felt hot and raw but the skin wasn’t broken.
‘La ilaha il Allah’: the final azan came suddenly to a close. Adrian sat where he had fallen, his head bowed and his hands clamped over his eyes as though trying to block out the world. He rocked back and forth, muttering to himself.
‘That’s why Terry call it the Night of Power,’ I said. I could feel the after-rush of adrenaline pumping through my chest, and my hands trembled. Adrian looked up through a gap in his fingers. For the first time I noticed how closely bitten his fingernails were, reduced to thin arcs. ‘I understand it now. After all those years at the mosque I think finally I get it. Why they call it power. Terry say that for one night a year the Angel Gabriel mingles with us on earth, and tonight a Terry angel has saved your legs. Why not? Terry say anything is possible.’
Adrian stood up, wiping the tears from his eyes. He panted, the sweat dripping off him, and stared cautiously at the spot where he had earlier stood. ‘Was that an IED?’
‘It was just a fuse devoid of charge.’ I wiped my clammy brow. ‘I had a hunch. ’
He looked at me, his expression like that of a child, a mixture of confusion and disappointment.
I said, ‘It couldn’t have been an IED, it didn’t sound right.’
‘You know it can happen,’ he said, ‘when they fail to go off.’
‘You will find that the earth around it hasn’t been dug. It’s just a metal plate attached to a fuse. A warning.’
He shook his head. His chest heaved inside his body armour.
‘I’ll prove it.’ Before Adrian could react, I jumped onto the plate. Adrian fell backwards, shielding his eyes, and then peered out from behind his hands, his face fixed in horror.
I stood perfectly still on the plate and laughed. ‘Now, cunt, pick up your shit and let’s go, and don’t forget there’s a reason why I’m the fucking sarge.’
‘You daft bastard.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t have to know.’
I nodded. ‘Night of fucking Power. As kids at the mosque we’d stay up all night, rocking back and forth pretending to read the Koran, and every last one of us half expected to see the Angel Gabriel.’
With shaky hands he lit up another cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘That angel must be looking out for me.’
‘Anything is possible — on the Night of Power, they kept saying, anything is possible.’
Adrian said slowly, ‘I get it.’
‘This one year my mother pointed to the window and wailed like a banshee. Her eyes were bloodshot and tears ran down her face. Her headscarf was all torn and her hair was crazy, wild, and she turned to me and said, “Pray harder, you of all people, you really need to see for yourself.”’
‘Terry do that, don’t they,’ said Adrian thoughtfully, ‘pray hard.’
‘No fucking use,’ I said.
He threw his cigarette to the ground, stubbed it out under a boot. ‘What would you do if you saw the angel?’
I gave a sinister laugh. ‘Well, Gabriel is a man, so no use to me, but as you say, anything is possible.’
Adrian turned to me, in his eyes a mixture of incredulity and relief. ‘Really, for a second or two, really I thought I was goners.’
‘You’re right on one point,’ I said. ‘I have heard it can happen, when it’s not wired properly. There was a lad from Bravo Company who got charred feet. Went on bragging. Bad taste.’
‘I felt like crying.’ He looked down at the burnt boot. ‘I could get myself a new pair from stores.’
Crouching down, I retrieved a map from my daypack. I took a pen from my tunic pocket, one of those that could switch to six different colours. After finding our exact position on the map, I turned to Adrian, my pen poised at the ready. ‘What colour? Blue, green, black, red, orange or purple?’
Adrian laughed. ‘Red. no, black,’ he said.
‘Black it is. Black-Spot Hartley, I’m going to name it after you. I’ll take it to the lieutenant and he’ll get it copied back to HQ where they keep an archive and maps. How do you feel about that?’
He shook his head, raising a foot off the ground and staring at it. ‘No, I won’t change them — these ones are lucky.’