He could have given his own name, or any name, but did not.
Caleb asked, 'Where do we go?'
Tommy cleared his throat and spat with venom at the floor. Fahd laughed shrilly, as if in fear. The elder, Hosni, said, without expression, 'We will be in God's hands. We are going into the Sands.'
Chapter Four
He was shaken.
Caleb had not slept well. The coughing, snoring and wheezing had prevented it.
Fahd stood over him, pulling at his shoulder.
It was still dark inside the room, but the light outside pierced the window where the plywood cover did not fit.
At the moment he was woken, Caleb had been in a restless dream world that nudged him to the limit of his memory, took him to the chasm, but would not let him step over into the void.
Hosni stretched and Caleb heard his joints creak. Tommy sat on his blanket and, without purpose, ran his fingers through his cropped hair as if that were his waking ritual.
They went outside for prayers. Fahd took the line for them and sank to his knees. The others followed. The first low sunlight caught the tips of the wadi's low boundary hills, and far beyond them was the Holy City, Makkah. He had said in the first training camp – near to Jalalabad, 'La ilaha ilia Allah, Muhammadiin rasoola Allah.' In old language, from back before the memory's void, he had known he said: 'There is no true god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.' He had said, facing the shooting range and the obstacle course, that he believed the Holy Qur'an to be the literal word of God, revealed by him, believed that the Day of Judgement was true and would come as God promised, accepted Islam as his religion, would not worship anything or anyone except God. He said the prayers taught him, and watched the others. Beyond his dream, where his memory did not go, there was no God. Hosni prayed quietly, as if it were a time to gather personal dignity. Fahd rocked forwards and backwards and his face contorted as if man's inability to match the demands of his God made an agony for him. Around Caleb were the whispers, mumbles and cries of devotion. He thought Fahd was the zealot, and marked it in his mind. There had been zealots in the trenches, and they were dead. There had been more zealots in the cages, and they were driven to insanity. Did Caleb believe the words he spoke soundlessly? He could not have answered. The prayers finished as the sun caught their faces.
He sat in the dirt against the mud wall and watched corridors of ants come to him, crawl over his ankle and pass on.
He was told they would move in an hour, was told transport would come.
The dream returned. Staring into the sunlight, his eyes were closed.
The dream was clear… the wedding. A veranda of wood planks in front of a small villa with white rendering on the walls, a garden with flowers, dried-grass lawns with chairs and rugs scattered among shrub bushes. Sharp in his mind. The bride was Farooq's cousin. The bridegroom was Amin's second cousin. Caleb was the Outsider. A feast. A celebration. Welcomed because he was the friend of Farooq and the friend of Amin, shown the hospitality that was true and warm. A feeling of liberation because he had made a great journey – but his memory no longer accepted where he had come from, from what he had been freed. He had been watched by a man sitting on a bench back from the veranda, among the shrub bushes, and who was dressed in a black turban, a long-tailed black shirt and loose black trousers. Guests came to the man and spoke quietly into his ear, and all who came near him ducked their heads in respect, but the man's one eye was fastened on Caleb.
He was only aware of the attention focused on him there, at the wedding party. He did not know that that attention had lighted on him when the message had come from far away to the town of Landi Khotal that Farooq and Amin were bringing their friend to this distant corner of the North-west Frontier of Pakistan. Could not know that, from the hour of his arrival, he had been observed, followed, tracked and noted. Neither could he have known that the interest he created in the days leading up to the wedding was sufficient for a message to be sent across the border into Afghanistan.
What was learned of him, and relayed in the message, had been enough for the man with the eyepatch and the chrome claw to have travelled to witness him at first hand at the celebration. A hawk's eye was on him, and he was in ignorance of it.
Once, when the bridegroom carried a tray of glasses filled with apricot juice to the man, the claw had hooked his elbow and pulled him lower. A question had been asked, the claw pointing at Caleb, and the bridegroom had answered it. Two Iambs had been killed for the feast, and a kid. Only the remnants turned on the spit over the fire of cut wood, but the scent of the meat drifted in the smoke to Caleb's nose – and the man watched him. As the dusk came, younger men drifted away and while Caleb struggled to be understood by the relatives from the village of Amin and Farooq, there were shots beyond the garden. The man came towards him. Farooq whispered in Caleb's ear that the man was from Chechnya, a hero of the war with the Russians, but Caleb knew nothing of any war. The man was at his side and reached down. The claw caught Caleb's arm and lifted him. No smile, no greeting, no warmth. Farooq had tried to follow, as if anxious about his friend, but had been waved away. The man from Chechnya led him to the fence that marked the extremity of the cultivated garden. Four men were there, with rifles. They fired.
The targets were a lentils can at the base of a dried-out thorn tree, and further back one that had held cooking oil wedged between stones, then far beyond, a fuel drum. Some bullets shook the targets, some caused little dust spurts near to them and the whine of ricochets. The man and Caleb could not speak, had no common language, but another came to Caleb's side and, with a guttural accent, translated the hero's words and Caleb's answers.
'Do you shoot?'
'I have never tried and no one ever showed me.'
'It is a gift from God, not taught. A man who shoots is a man who respects himself. Do you have respect for yourself?'
'I've never done anything of value to get respect.'
'A man who shoots well is a man who can fight. A fighter has supreme self-esteem. He is valued by his friends, trusted by comrades, loved.'
'I wouldn't know-'
'You would not know because you were never given the chance to be valued, trusted, loved… I was given such a chance.'
'To shoot?'
'To fight. I learned it close to here, against the Soviets. We ran, they followed us. We ran further and still they followed. We hid among rocks, they lost us. We were quiet as mice, they went past us. They stopped. We could shoot at their backs. We killed all of them – we killed all of them because we were fighters and born to it… and then we were valued and trusted and loved. Does my story frighten you?'
A great plunging breath. 'I don't think so – no.'
'It is precious to have self-esteem. Would you look for it?'
The breath hissed from his lungs. 'Yes.'
Caleb was given a rifle. He had never held a firearm. The translator had slipped away. He was shown, the sign language of the claw, how to hold it. The four men had stood back. Only Caleb and the Chechen had been at the fence. The whole hand had adjusted the sight. He had fired. The rifle stock had thudded against his shoulder. The can had toppled – his breathing had been steady. The sight's range had been changed. Caleb had seen the cooking-oil tin dance in the slackening light – his squeeze on the trigger bar had been constant. The sight had been altered. The fuel drum had rocked