As he begins to eat Fatima’s sister asks, ‘Will you let the American go eventually?’
‘There is a contact number in his rucksack,’ Mikal says.
‘I don’t want American soldiers near my home,’ the sister says. ‘They have killed one of my sons already.’
‘I’ll call them when I am far away from here.’
‘I don’t want you endangering my family,’ the woman says. ‘What if he brings other soldiers back here to arrest us and carry us all away?’
‘It won’t come to that. I’ll take him far away from here, he won’t be able to find his way back.’
‘For all we know they are following him right now,’ the woman says. ‘I’d go out there with the rifle right now if I thought his countrymen would invade my home to rescue him. They’ll kill us all.’
Mikal is sure that a similar discussion is taking place in the other room.
‘I promise I won’t involve you any further. And I am sorry about your son.’
The woman suddenly hides her face behind her hands and begins to weep, her shoulders and head bowed. Mikal stops chewing. Shocked, he becomes still as he listens to her. And then — just as suddenly — she absorbs her grief back into herself and stands upright. ‘How many chapattis will you eat?’ she asks, her voice uneven.
‘I have enough here.’
Fatima looks at him and then touches her sister’s back. ‘He’ll need two more at least.’
‘It’s not a problem.’
‘Thank you,’ Mikal says.
After he has eaten he goes out to the garage and sees that they have fitted a tarpaulin over the frame of the pickup’s bed. The back is now perfectly enclosed. A box of tough taut cloth. In places it is as resistant to the touch as plywood.
He lifts the flap above the tailgate and looks in to see that a strip of black cloth has been tied over the white man’s eyes. He opens the MRE with his teeth and sits down beside the soldier, mixing the chemicals in the sachets to heat up the sealed large piece of meat. Talking so he will know it’s him, touching the food to the white man’s lips until he opens his mouth. He tells the soldier he has eaten an American MRE in Peshawar where they were on sale for some reason, telling him how he has eaten shark meat on the edge of the Arabian Sea, a bird of prey, a butterfly.
‘If you can understand what I am saying please answer me. I beg you.’
The man of the house appears at the tailgate with a padlock and stands watching him.
When the MRE is finished he stands up and leaves and the man locks the garage.
‘Is there another key?’
‘No,’ the man says.
‘You’ll make sure no one gets out of the house during the night and informs the rest of the town?’
‘It’s a matter of our safety too,’ the man says. ‘We are just as concerned. Now go into the house and sleep. Fatima is making up a bed for you.’
*
Jeo and Basie come to him while he is asleep. He wakes up some time later unable to recall the details of the dream, lying there in the darkness of the room with his eyes open, and eventually he remembers that he had asked Jeo and Basie what it was like being dead. He struggles to recall the answer, and he is drifting back to sleep when a hand touches him in the darkness. He sits up just as a flashlight comes on in the room. It’s one of the cousins, standing beside his bed.
‘Would you sell him to us? I have been sent to ask you how much you’d take for him.’
‘He’s not for sale.’
‘In cash.’
‘I said he’s not for sale.’
The boy looks at him and nods. ‘We thought we’d better ask.’
‘You have my answer.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Aunt Fatima said they had imprisoned and tortured you.’
Mikal looks away.
‘You should want to lick his blood. He’s your enemy.’
‘Not like that, he’s not.’
‘He’d do the same to you.’
‘Then that makes me better than him.’
And with that he lies down again. ‘Now I want to go back to sleep. I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow.’
The boy switches off the flashlight and Mikal hears him leave in the darkness. He gets up and bolts the door, looking out through the window and seeing the man of the house beside the garage door with the deer rifle. He tries to stay awake, his fear breeding images out of the dark, djinns and nightgrowths, but he falls asleep at some point. Either Jeo or Basie asks him if he is certain that he hadn’t wanted to shoot the two Americans by the lake — wondering if he had killed them intentionally — but the questioner disappears before he can answer. When he wakes the sun has risen and it is six o’clock and he stands up immediately. He passes the son in the corridor. The mark of bitter thoughts is on his brow and he neither returns Mikal’s greeting nor looks at him. There is a poppy bruise on the temple where Mikal’s gun connected last night — it is either not serious or he has left it untreated because he doesn’t wish to signal any weakness to Mikal. Almost everyone seems to be awake. Smells come from the kitchen, the women making parathas, churning lassi and frying eggs, murmuring as they work, it being too early to speak loudly, words disrupting the pure pleasure of living.
The main door of the house is still locked. The man is still there outside the garage, now with the snow leopard cub on his lap, the clear golden sunlight flickering on the pattern of the fur. The rifle leans against the chair.
Mikal walks out to him. The man puts a hand in his pocket and brings out shattered pieces of a satellite phone, large silver shards and fragments of broken plastic and torn sections of microcircuitry.
‘We discovered this on him. In the shorts he wears under his shalwar.’
‘I didn’t think to look there,’ Mikal says quietly.
‘I thought it best to destroy it.’ The man throws the pieces on the ground before him and sits looking at them like a soothsayer reading the future in the pebbles he has scattered. ‘We have cleaned him,’ he says, ‘taken him to the bathroom.’
‘What?’
‘Well, he soiled himself. So we had to change his clothes. He put up a great struggle.’
‘Give me the key.’
‘He’s fine. Go in and eat.’
‘Give me the key, uncle.’
‘Go in and eat.’
Mikal nods but doesn’t move.
‘I need to make a phone call,’ he tells the man eventually.
‘I have hidden the phone in case someone tries to call out. I’ll connect it for you after breakfast.’
‘Thank you.’ He imagines them at the house in Heer, the breeze and scents in the garden, the scratch of the broom as it sweeps fallen leaves from a red path. Naheed wiping the dew off the mirror above the outside sink, the flowers hanging overhead. Before the science of botany was established just three hundred years ago, he remembers Rohan telling him and Jeo when they were children, flowers in their infinite variety and lack of human order were said to be proof of God’s existence.
The young men watch him from a distance, from various corners of the house, gathering in groups here and there and withdrawing, and he makes sure not to meet anyone’s eye. As he eats Fatima tells him that the school will open at eight thirty and that the teachers should begin to arrive around eight.
At seven forty-five Fatima’s sister puts on her burka and her husband unlocks the main door and she goes out to the school to position herself outside the gate, to wait for the arrival of the English-speaking teacher.
Mikal enters the garage and approaches the back of the pickup and lifts the tarpaulin flap. The soldier, blindfolded, senses someone’s presence and moves his head. His arm is in plaster and is nestling in a triangular sling of white muslin that was once a flour sack. He is wearing a new set of shalwar kameez and there is a large saffron and black bruise on his forehead. Mikal feels he is watching him through the blindfold, perhaps through the round naked discolouration above the eyes. The street is just on the other side of the garage and from it comes the chatter of the schoolchildren arriving for a day of learning.