Once again they hold each other’s eyes, breathing fast. He resists the urge to measure the distance between the glass window and the pistol with a quick glance — not wanting to alert the man to the gun’s presence. He reaches in just as the American swings the dagger through the window at his arm. The blade cuts through his sleeve without making contact with flesh, just as Mikal closes his fingers around the pistol.
He lifts it and brings it out and is now bending down to release the cub onto the ground. Lifting the flap at the tailgate he stands looking at him, the American with the knife raised in the air and eyes burning.
Mikal points the gun at the hand with the knife. He jabs the barrel and flicks the barrel towards the floor to indicate that the American should drop the knife. He does it three more times. Then he does it with his free hand: he has no index finger to point with, but he hopes the gesture is understood.
The man stands there.
‘Do you think I am joking?’ Mikal says as he climbs in, letting the flap drop behind him, and moves a step closer and pulls the trigger. The shot rings out across the desert as the bullet goes through the tarpaulin. He points at the dagger again and the man drops it at his feet. Mikal would have to move close to pick it up. ‘Kick it over.’ He makes a motion with his feet but the man watches him without obeying.
Mikal repeats the motion and jabs the air with the gun again and it’s then that he hears a voice from the other side of the tarpaulin. The American too hears it and looks to his left.
The sunlight from the bullet hole is like a brilliant lance in the enclosed space, dust floating in it in coloured hints and sparks.
Out there several other voices join the first one and Mikal slowly backs away towards the tailgate, hiding the gun in his waistband as he lifts the flap and climbs out to find himself facing a group of two dozen or so men, women and children. A loose gaggle of families, all on foot, some of the children naked, a few of them on their knees beside the pickup’s back wheel, talking to the leopard cub hiding under the vehicle.
‘We heard a shot,’ says a man, curiosity playing on his face amongst the points of perspiration. He has a large birdwing moustache, and a thin vertical line is shaved under the nose to keep the two halves of the moustache separate.
‘That was the pickup backfiring,’ Mikal tells him.
They are pilgrims from a village in the western Paharis, journeying overland to a sacred site for a blessing, and they tell him that they have been travelling for a week and that three more days lie before them, unless it rains in which case they’ll have to slow down. Mikal doesn’t know what to do as he listens, feeling adrift in confusion. He looks around. A man is peering in through the open front door. Mikal walks past him and gently closes the door, a quick glance towards the shattered window but there’s nothing to be seen there. Just the toothed line of glass along the rim. Filled with terror, he expects the tarpaulin to be slit with the dagger any time. ‘What kind of a shrine is it?’ he asks the man who spoke first.
‘It is the grave of a Taliban soldier,’ the man says. ‘A source of great energy in the ground.’
‘He was a great warrior and his grave is twenty foot long,’ a boy of about thirteen says. ‘The Americans killed him.’ He is carrying a basket covered with cloth on his head. The man motions towards the basket — which Mikal assumes is full of provisions — but when the man removes the cloth he sees that it contains hand grenades. ‘To be blessed at the shrine,’ the boy says. ‘Then we take it to Afghanistan and throw them at the invaders.’
Mikal doesn’t know how to extract himself from the situation. The pilgrim women seem about to set up camp beside the pickup. Preparing to make cooking fires. He wonders if he could just take his leave and drive away — but knows the American would reach in with the dagger and attack him.
‘They killed two of my sons,’ one man says. ‘The Americans. They are worse than Genghis and Halagu Khan.’
‘I am sorry,’ Mikal says.
‘Thank you.’ The man leans forward to give Mikal an embrace, a prolonged one to convey the strength of emotions. Afterwards he points to the canvas-covered back of the pickup. ‘Will you and your family eat with us?’
‘We have already eaten.’
‘The shrine is near Allah-Vasi. If you are going the same way maybe our women and children could ride in the back of the pickup.’
‘I am going in the other direction.’
Some children are stamping on the ground in the dust a few yards away. It is probably a scorpion or a snakeling.
‘It’s boxthorn,’ the man says.
Mikal nods. The despised plant. The Prophet Muhammad said, In the Final Fight between the Muslims and Jews, when a Jew hides behind a rock or a tree, it will say, ‘O Muslim, O Servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ All the trees will do this except the boxthorn, because it is the tree of the Jews.
‘I saw a nest of snakes here earlier,’ Mikal says, at last struck by inspiration. ‘Kraits.’ And it works. The word spreads through the group and immediately everyone gets ready to move on, the children being called closer in alarm, instructions given. Mikal bends down and scoops the leopard cub out from under the pickup and watches the pilgrims gather into a tight knot again. A small wizened woman goes past him, her face carved with deep wrinkles like tree bark, her eyes rheumy and her hair dyed a deep orange with henna. She stops and looks at him and says, ‘The Americans can take over this entire land.’ She pauses for breath and her head nods gently as though she is listening to a story. ‘They can have complete dominion as long as they promise to exterminate every man from it.’ She spits in the dust and adds: ‘They are a curse.’ And then she walks on to join the group. Mikal watches them leave, watches as a man breaks away and comes partway back to him. ‘Is there anything you’d like us to pray for at the shrine?’
Mikal shakes his head. ‘Just pray for the whole world.’
*
There wasn’t a single clink of the chains during the entire time he conversed with the pilgrims but now it starts up again, loud and constant. The man is standing up, working the dagger into the link of a chain when Mikal climbs in. He stops when Mikal raises the gun. Mikal makes him drop the dagger once again and with the gun pointed he leans forward and reaches out blindly — his eyes fixed on the American’s face — picks up the dagger and climbs out into the open.
He stands looking at the sunset. He goes to the front and reaches in without giving the broken window even a single glance and lifts a bottle of water and unscrews the cap and takes half a dozen deep gulps. He puts the dagger under the seat. He goes around to the back and studies the American who is standing exactly where he last saw him.
‘If he was angry with you before, wait till he discovers you stole his knife,’ he says.
The man looks at him.
‘Yes, I’m talking to you. And you broke the glass window in the pickup owned by his aunt’s husband.’
Tightening his grip on the 9 mm he climbs onto the bed and gestures for him to sit down, and then moves closer with his eye fixed on the free uninjured arm, beginning the process of securing him again, locking the ring around the free ankle. He gestures for him to put the wrist of the good arm into the ring and he obeys. Then he selects another chain loop and wraps it around the arm and the body three times so he won’t be able to reach in through the broken opening, going under the sling, and around the back. He ties the two feet together, winding a length of chain up the shins, not stopping until it is just under the knees. At some point the soldier decides not to make it easy for Mikal. Refusing to move, becoming a dead weight. Energetically passive. Mikal might as well be wrestling with a rock. He knows about these soldiers, their skills in using lethal force in complex and ambiguous conditions, the years of preparation. ‘Let’s show some care with the cast,’ Mikal says to him. ‘They’ll break Ghulam’s arm for putting it on yours.’ After he is fully bound up again, Mikal says, ‘We are almost there. I just need to find a way to bypass the toll booth and then we’ll be back in Megiddo.’ And he adds, ‘We’d better hope Fatima’s nephew isn’t waiting for us there.’