He had the handle. In one swoop, he pulled out the knife and thrust it into the dark space above him. He heard a gasp and something push back against him. The hand on his mouth released, the one on his crotch retracted.
“Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!” Saleem yelled out.
Saleem could see the shadow move, stumble, and fall backward. The others had woken.
“What’s happening?”
“Who’s yelling? Everybody all right?”
“What’s going on?”
Saleem was on his feet. His eyes adjusted, and he could make out Saboor’s outline as he limped away, holding his left side. Saleem felt someone grab his arm and jumped back.
“Hey, hey, Saleem! It’s me, Abdullah! What happened?”
What happened? Saleem was not sure. Was this real? What had he just done? He felt numb, dazed. He looked down and could now make out the blade, still in his tight grip.
“Oh God. Oh my God. Oh God.” Saleem was crazed. “He was here! He was on me!”
“Hey, it’s Saboor! Saboor has been hurt!” Voices called out in the darkness.
“He’s bleeding!”
“What happened to him? Who did this?”
Abdullah was at Saleem’s side. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and flicked on a flame. The rusted blade glinted in Saleem’s hand. A drop fell from its tip.
“Did you stab him?” he whispered in disbelief.
“I. . I. . he was on me! His hands were. .”
The distant voices continued to call out. People were confused and panicked.
“He’s hurt. Someone should do something!”
Saleem’s fingers felt moist, sticky. He looked at his right hand.
“Saleem, stop! Where are you going, Saleem! Wait!”
Saleem’s feet pounded against the ground as he wove through small side streets and in and out of alleys. He stumbled and fell in the dark, tripping on loose stones. There was no mistaking the blood, now dried by the breeze, on his right hand. He could feel it. He could smell it, the metallic smell of life. Saleem remembered Intikal. He saw the bride’s brother, his clothes bloodied, his face twisted with pain.
Saleem wished he could run into his mother’s arms, bury his face in her shoulder, and listen to her soothing voice tell him that he had done the right thing. He wished his father had been sleeping beside him, so that Saboor never would have dared to come near him. But Saleem was also thankful that neither of his parents was here at this moment, to see their son, a fugitive in the night, blood on his hands.
CHAPTER 42. Saleem
SALEEM HELD THE ALUMINUM POT OVER THE MAKESHIFT STOVE, with its bricks laid out in a square, kindling burning within. The handle was hot and getting hotter. Flames licked the blackened bottom. Saleem wiggled his way closer to the fire. A chill in the air made his jacket feel especially thin.
The water was starting to boil.
“Is it ready yet?” Ali called out from inside.
“Yes, just now.” Ali came outside and looked inside the pot. He opened a tea bag and carefully let half its contents tumble into the pot.
“Take it off the flame now. I’ll get the bread so we can have our breakfast. It looks like it might rain later today. What do you think?”
Saleem slipped his sleeve over his hand and used the cuff to grip the handle. He ignored Ali’s last comment. Ali had said the same thing every day for the last two weeks, no matter what the appearance of the sky. Saleem hadn’t noticed on the first day, but on the second, when they were inside listening to raindrops pelt against the plastic tarp overhead, Ali again predicted that it would rain later in the day. Saleem thought he was joking but turned to see Ali’s face looking grim and pensive.
Ali had to be close to Saleem’s age, but he was much shorter. Saleem had spotted him when he found the Afghan camps in Patras and was drawn to him specifically because he seemed young and unthreatening. He was Hazara, a different ethnicity than Saleem. Had they been in Kabul, this would have mattered a great deal. In the refugee camp of Patras, where the men all ate and slept in the same squalor, it mattered very little.
The refugee camp in Patras was very different from Attiki Square. Attiki was a forsaken corner of a city, bordered by buildings and within meters of a normalcy. Patras was a shantytown — better in some ways and worse in others. Instead of cardboard sheets, thin blankets and shopping carts there were actual walls and roofs. One man had even opened a barbershop of sorts, having found a stool and some scissors. Thick tarps functioned as roofs for those who had not found sturdier materials. And the hundreds of people who lived here, mostly Afghans but some wandering Roma and Africans as well, made small stoves from stones and bricks to cook simple meals. The housing was better, but it was bigger and attracted more attention from the surrounding neighborhood. It was a blemish in their city, a place where vagrants huddled in desperate filth. Greeks didn’t know what to do with Patras — raze it to the ground or make it better because it was inevitable that the refugees would just come back.
Patras was supposed to be a transit point. Even before the Afghans, others refugees had come there en route to Italy and the rest of Europe. There was a long tradition of finding ways of sneaking across to Italy, either on trucks or cargo ships. Saleem had become one more person in that shared history.
He was a more seasoned traveler by the time he arrived in Patras. He’d been there for months now, probably having passed a birthday at some point but it was hard to know and even harder to care. The days and weeks had blurred in his travels.
I need to get out of Patras, Saleem thought as he watched the tea steep, the amber leaching from the leaves and into the hot water.
His mind shifted back to Attiki, as it often did during the day and even more inescapably in the nights. He thought of his last night there, Saboor’s heavy hand over his mouth, Abdullah’s astonishment to see the blade, and the way he’d run through the night to get as far away as possible. Saleem had washed the blood off his trembling hands and cowered in an alley until daylight. He had not said good-bye to anyone, not even Roksana. He hadn’t bothered to go back for his knapsack, since it held nothing more than a few extra clothes. He had boarded the first bus he could find to Patras, where it had not been difficult to locate the refugee settlement.
He wondered if Saboor was alive. It was not that he would have regretted killing him, but it mattered because it changed the definition of Saleem. Flesh wound or fatal wound — it would remain a mystery. Though he was far from Afghanistan, the war and bloodshed followed him still. Refugees didn’t just escape a place. They had to escape a thousand memories until they’d put enough time and distance between them and their misery to wake to a better day.
Saleem’s nights were tortured. He woke often and saw figures in the shadows. He was returned to his childhood, that time when the brain has matured enough to shape creatures and dangers from the dark. He was increasingly restless and felt his personality changing. People irritated him or scared him. There was little else they could do.
“Did you see Wahid’s leg?” Ali asked. “They stitched him up like a rice sack! He’s been limping around telling everyone it didn’t hurt, but I heard he cried like a baby when they did it.”
“Yes, I saw it.”
Wahid had been chased away from one of the trucks headed into Italy, and the metal fence he had scaled had torn into his shin. He’d been cared for by a paramedic from a humanitarian organization that had set up post near the camp. Wahid’s injury was not unique.