Far From My Father’s House

Chapter 3

After I saw the three strangers near the mosque and tore down their notice to keep for myself, everything went quiet. No one spoke of these strange new rules. Most of the men had beards anyway, even my Saeed who is only sixteen but already a man and adores me besides. Apart from fetching water and working in the fields and buying provisions and going to school, women and girls like me don’t have many places to go, even without it being forbidden. I kept the paper secretly under my mattress and only looked at it when I was alone. I knew the words by heart. When I whispered their name to myself: Faithful Soldiers of Islam, it seemed full of danger and also adventure and I imagined some excitement which might finally stir up my boring life in the village.

Then Baba said we should all go for a family picnic before the weather got too hot. It was already late May and even in the village the days were getting sticky. Higher up the mountain, there was a good place for picnicking. The grass was lush and springy alongside the stream, which came tumbling down from the peak. There was an old gnarled tree, even older than Baba and his father before him and his father before that. Baba used to tell how his parents took him there when he was a boy, along with all the Uncles who were also boys and even the blood Aunties who were still young girls like me and not yet married off to men in other villages.

Mama had been sickly since Ramadan last year. Baba instructed her not to fast. No one told me why but I knew because I’d seen it all before. She was sweaty and pale and moaned on her cot at night. I could tell she was dreaming about a new baby crying to be born and worrying that this baby, like so many of her others, apart from me and my big sister, Marva, would die before it ever saw day. All those months later, her stomach was as big and hard as a watermelon and to my mind that was the real reason Baba planned the day out, to lift her spirits.

The morning of the picnic, Marva was ill with fever and knife pains in her legs. Mama sat with her arms wrapped round her, her fat belly bumping them apart, and the two of them whimpered and sighed. I set to work massaging Marva’s legs until the pains eased and then I helped the Aunties to prepare the eatables, with fresh bread and tomatoes and all manner of chopped salads and a basket of first season plums and apples which I’d helped to pick from the orchard just the day before.

I am thirteen now but even when I was very young, I was forced to be responsible for Mama and my big sister both. Sometimes I feel that Baba and I are the real parents and my mama is just another girl, like Marva, and they both need looking after. As Allah has chosen, that’s the sort of family I have. Mama is sweet and gentle, it’s true. Marva says Mama was once so lovely to behold that when she went walking, birds fell out of the trees dead at her feet on account of craning to get a closer look.

But Mama lacks spirit. All those dead babies, one after another, have sucked her dry and left her as brittle as a dead reed and plagued by nerves, and even a rush of wind is enough to knock her right over and start her crying about some small thing or other. The Aunties say some women are born with character and some are born with beauty but very few have both. My mama was doled beauty.

Jamila Auntie is the other way about, plain but strong. She’s Baba’s first wife and Baba only married her because he hadn’t yet found Mama and as soon as he did, he took Mama as his new wife and forgot Jamila Auntie altogether.

As for my sister, Marva, she has an affliction. It is the wish of Allah for her to have withered legs on account of an illness she had as a little girl, even before I was born. I’ve told Baba that I don’t understand why Allah would want her to be stuck all day every day in our compound, pulling herself about on her belly like a snake, but he tuts and says, ‘Hush, Layla, don’t question the will of Allah. It is not for us to know everything and sometimes there are things we don’t understand but must nonetheless accept.’

Baba wears wire-rimmed spectacles and uses words like ‘nonetheless’ and ‘whatsoever’ because he is a man of learning. He teaches me everything, just as if I were a boy. He says that when the boys in the village shout after me in the street and call Marva names, like ‘crazy cripple’ and ‘freak of nature’, I must bear it with dignity and I must not shout back, even if I think of smart things to say, and I must not pick up sharp stones and throw them at their heads. That, he says, is not any way for a girl to comport herself.

Baba and the Uncles harnessed the donkey and loaded up the cart and Mama and the Aunties, carrying the youngest cousins, all climbed onto the back and sat, their legs hanging over the edge, as the donkey strained and pulled and complained until finally the struts creaked and the wheels turned and we all set slowly off up the steep hillside towards the stream. Girls like me and boys and men like Baba walked along behind.

The mountainside was still, the sky streaked with white cloud. The sun was hiding behind the rocky edge of the mountain, waiting to jump out and surprise us as we climbed further up. The boys ran ahead, whooping and playing chase and the girls walked in wavy clusters, holding each other’s hands and giggling into each other’s ears. I walked near Baba. The light breeze dusted off my skin and kept me cool and fingered the scarf around my face. With Jamila Auntie and Baba and the Uncles and their wives, the Aunties, and all the cousins coming and going, there were too many of us crammed into that compound and, despite its size, it was very shouty and bothersome to a young girl like me, who wanted a little peace and quiet sometimes, but was always shut up in the sweat and clamour of all those people.

After we reached the place and finished our picnic, the Aunties sat bunched underneath the twisted tree, gossiping, and the older boys took off their sandals and waded in the stream, splashing rocks about, building a dam or some such and the toddlers, nearby on the flat grassy bank, tried to throw pebbles into the clear water and barely made a ripple, their judgement was so poor. Baba and the Uncles stood together by the water’s edge, looking up and down the stream and talking in low voices. I sat propped up against Mama, plucking at the tufts of grass under the tree and wondering, not for the first time, why other girls of my age were so silly and boys so stupid.

The strangers appeared suddenly as dark shapes against the rocks. They climbed sideways down the steep mountain towards us. Baba and the Uncles stiffened and turned to watch. The knowledge of their arrival moved through the Aunties, one by one, and they too turned to look and fell silent. Some pulled at their headscarves to cover their faces and others called to their children to come here, quickly. Mama tensed at my side.

There were four of them, all dressed like the other men I’d seen, in flowing black kameezes with rough woollen hats and thick beards. They looked full of purpose, closing the distance between us with sure strides. The sunlight flashed on long-nosed guns at their sides.

The men descended to the flat bank of the stream. Baba and the Uncles stepped forwards and greeted them politely, putting their hands on their hearts: Salaam Alaikum. Three of the men were young, strong boys with loose limbs and jaunty muscles. The fourth man was older. He turned and looked across at the girls and women as we shrank together under the tree. I knew him at once from his crooked nose. He was the same man who had brought the notices and ordered the men to nail them to our trees. His eyes were hard as if they had seen many terrible things.

The men spoke in low voices. Hamid Uncle, the head of the family, spoke first and then the stranger and then Hamid Uncle again. Mama’s leg, pressed against mine, was shaking. The men were still speaking, back and forth, and, although I couldn’t make out the words, I heard the threat in the stranger’s voice. The three young men standing around him cocked their guns and raised them as if they were planning to fire. One of the Aunties let out half a cry, then strangled it dead.

The stranger spoke again and, as he did so, one of the young men swung around and aimed his gun at the donkey, which was tearing up grass beside the stream, the only creature in our party unaware of the danger. A crack. The donkey crumpled, rolling its head sideways with surprised eyes, its ears flapping. Blood spurted from its side. It gave a high-pitched scream. After a moment, the scream faded and the donkey crashed onto its side and lay, shuddering. Its blood made a dark stain on the grass. The silence which followed was full of the memory of the scream. It was only broken when the young men laughed and the fourth man turned and scolded them until they too were silent.

I stared, shaking, at Baba and the Uncles to see what they were going to do. They just stood there and looked as the donkey stopped twitching. Its eyes were open and it looked as dead as if it had never lived. The fourth man turned away and led his fighters briskly on down the edge of the mountain towards the village. While they were still in sight, no one moved.

The picnic outing was over. The Aunties rocked the smaller children in their arms, crying with them. Baba and the Uncles went across to the donkey and Baba bent down and tickled the soft patch between its ears, the way he always did, and I knew he was saying goodbye.

In truth, it had been a bad-tempered animal which nipped us with its strong teeth when we children pulled its ears or climbed on its back for a ride. But it had been part of our household since I could remember and now it was dead and I had to bite hard on the inside of my cheeks to keep from crying.

Baba and the Uncles made pairs and lifted the shafts of the cart themselves and pulled the Aunties and children back down the mountainside. The toddlers cried and struggled and had their legs slapped to hush and keep quiet. Mama, her huge stomach pushing out beyond the edge of the cart, was pale.

I walked alongside Baba. His face dripped with sweat as he heaved the cart and his spectacles kept sliding forwards on his nose and I wished I could help him. I asked, ‘Who was that man? Why did they do that?’

Baba glanced down at me and his expression was sorrowful.

‘His name is Mohammed Bul Gourn,’ Baba said. ‘He is a very dangerous man and I pray God you will never see him again.’

My hands tightened into fists at my sides. ‘But why did they shoot our donkey?’

Baba was panting. The strain made deep lines in his face as if he were already old. ‘Don’t ask so many questions, Layla.’

I stopped. Other people had said that to me since I was a little girl, Jamila Auntie and the cousins and the other Aunties and even Mama but never Baba; Baba had never said such a thing. He and I were explorers, he used to tell me, searching for knowledge. I stared after him, shocked and hurt, as he and his brothers and the laden cart rumbled on.

Chapter 4

They drove from Islamabad to Peshawar. Ellen sat in the back of the four-wheel drive beside Frank. In the front, the local driver was sitting low behind the wheel, a round cap on his head, a brown blanket trailing from his shoulders.

She was eating her way through a packet of stale biscuits, spraying crumbs and picking them laboriously off her trousers. Frank was trying to pour steaming chai out of a Thermos flask without spilling it over his thighs.

Her face ached. The bruising had bothered her all night. Now she was full of painkillers which made the passing landscape seem remote and a little blurred. Islamabad’s city traffic, the overladen carts, brightly painted lorries and crowded motorbikes, had fallen away. The motorway stretched ahead, almost empty. They’d set off at dawn when the sun was little more than a shy red glow. Now it had whitened, burning dew off the grass and making the wheat fields shimmer.

Frank’s phone rang. She smiled. The ringtone was a phrase from a Rolling Stones track. The music ran on in her head even after he’d answered it. She followed it until she reached the chorus and the title came back to her, carrying memories of sweaty student bars and tables sticky with spilt beer.

He’d lodged the plastic cup of milky tea between his knees to take the call and she reached across and took it for him. His jeans were worn at the knees and crumpled. They ended in heavy boots. He seemed to be confirming arrangements.

Almost as soon as he finished, the phone rang again. It was a long call. Frank’s voice was soft, dotted with mantras of ‘absolutely’ and ‘understood’ and ‘that’s all you can do’. Afterwards he took back the cup of cooling tea and turned to the window, presenting her with a hunched shoulder.

‘Everything OK?’

He didn’t look round. His fingers were tight round the rim of the cup. Finally he said, ‘Not good. They sound overwhelmed.’

He drained the cup and held it out so she could refill it for herself. His lips were pursed. They both kept their eyes on the flow of steaming tea from the Thermos.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. He didn’t reply. He seemed distant, preoccupied.

The driver started to fiddle with the car radio. The silence was filled with bursts of white noise and high-pitched music. She drank her tea, trying not to swallow the black specks circling at the bottom.

‘You want an apple?’ Frank pulled one out of his bag and rolled it to her along the seat.

A car veered in front of them and the driver was forced to brake, pumping the horn with the heel of his hand. The sun was hard on the windscreen, burning streaks of light across the tarmac.

She bit into the apple, still thinking about the strains on the camp. ‘You got funding?’

He gave a snort. ‘I just spend money we don’t have. Then the guys in head office curse the hell out of me and run in circles trying to fill the holes.’

‘Have they launched a special appeal?’

‘Not yet.’ He shrugged. ‘It hasn’t made the news yet. But they say a rich Brit might help out. Hasan Ali Khan. Know him?’

She nodded. She knew of him. ‘Quentin. Quentin Khan. That’s what he calls himself in London.’ He was a middle-aged Pakistani. Vastly rich and now part of the London smart set. ‘Made a fortune in transport. Lorries and ships.’

‘That’s him.’

‘And he’s giving money?’

‘I guess. They’re talking to him.’

They were slowing down, approaching the row of booths that signalled the end of the toll road.

‘Good.’ Frank nodded ahead. ‘Our guys.’

Two trucks of armed police were waiting at the side of the road, just beyond the booths. As their own car emerged from the barrier, one truck slid out into the traffic in front of them and the other slotted in behind. They were open-backed. Policemen were sitting in two rows down the sides, rocket launchers across their knees and guns upright between their legs.

The young policemen at the ends of the seats were staring down at her through the windscreen. She adjusted her scarf, making sure her hair was properly covered. One, with a shaggy beard and long loose face, looked forlorn. His opposite number was much younger, all designer stubble and bulging biceps. His eyes were hidden by dark sunglasses.

‘Do we need them?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. They offered.’ Frank grimaced. ‘There’s a lot of Taliban around. The roads aren’t secure.’

Peshawar had always had a bad reputation. She’d first come some years before to write about Afghan refugees who’d spilt over the border to escape the Taliban there. She remembered driving through the bazaar, a dusty, colourless array of stalls selling piles of plastic toys and cheap cotton clothing. Men with shaggy beards and woollen tribal hats had stopped to glare in through the car windows. The metal noses of guns glinted at their sides. She’d wanted to stop, just for a moment, to buy a hookah pipe for her father. The driver refused, wagging his finger.

‘Not safe for ladies,’ her translator explained. ‘Very bad place.’

As traffic forced the car to a walking pace, a man with deeply lined skin had stooped and put his face to the glass, squashing the tip of his nose against the window. His palm pressed beside it in white flattened pads of flesh. His eyes found hers. They were cold and threatening. The car shuddered and jerked forwards and the man stumbled, left behind. The butt of his gun rapped against the glass. That was Peshawar a few years ago. By all accounts, it was worse now.

The convoy veered off the road and bumped down a long track onto mudflats, a raw landscape of cracked earth criss-crossed with ditches. Off to one side, boys were struggling to launch a homemade kite in the still air, running and whooping as it bumped along the ground behind them. Inside the car, the air was metallic, cooled and filtered by the air conditioning. She could imagine the heat and stink waiting for her outside.

‘That’s it.’ Frank pointed.

A shanty town of coloured plastic and squat white tents was looming on the plain. Ellen straightened up so she could see through the windscreen. She felt her senses quickening as she judged the scale of the camp and thought of ways to describe the terrain. The camp was sprawling but it was dwarfed by the bleak, featureless mudflats which stretched in all directions. She could see why this great expanse of land hadn’t already been settled by local people. There were no natural features to provide shelter, not even rocks or scrub. Far beyond, obscured by cloud, a range of mountains rose, jagged, on the horizon.

They drove closer. A tattered group of several hundred people was waiting in front of the camp’s gates. They were standing with drooping shoulders, bundles, baskets and bags piled at their sides. Ellen looked into the faces as they drove past. An elderly woman was sitting in the dirt, her cheeks sharp with bone. She looked exhausted, too listless to raise her eyes to the passing vehicle. A girl, about five years old, was lying motionless in her lap. Her small belly was distended, bulging beneath a grubby kameez. Her stringy hair had faded from its natural black to the colour of straw. Malnourishment, Ellen thought. She looked at Frank. His mouth was set, his shoulders tense.

The camp’s perimeter was defined by a wire fence. A small group of men was extending it, a youngster balancing long wooden staves on his shoulders while a pair of older men, stouter and fatter bellied, worked beside him. They had unrolled a drum of metal mesh and were hammering it into place on a fresh post.

The car drew up at the gate. Frank rolled down the window and spoke to the security guards. Their uniforms were baggy, their AK-47s battered and slack in their hands. One of the guards bent to stare in at her and she shielded her bruised face with the edge of her scarf.

Just inside the fence stood a small, single-storey building in sand-coloured brick. A broken flagpole rose from its roof. It looked old but solid in the sea of tethered white canvas. Several large tents, the size of small marquees, sat beside it.

They swung through the gates and off to the left, to an open sweep of ground close to the brick building. They stopped behind a garishly decorated truck, painted green and ornate with flowers and slogans. A confusion of eager young men was crowded round its back, shouting and jostling as they unloaded sacks of rice. Ellen eased herself out of the car, aware of the ache in her limbs. The heat reached in and sucked the moisture from her mouth.

Frank was besieged at once. Two dark-skinned men rushed over to talk to him. A smartly dressed Pakistani man pushed between them, interrupting and competing for Frank’s attention. Ellen watched them. Frank put a calming hand on the man’s arm and silenced him, making him wait his turn while the others spoke. Frank’s face was composed as he listened. He has more presence, she thought, than he had as a young man. More authority.

Someone touched Ellen’s arm from behind. She turned. A young Western woman with strands of wavy blonde hair springing free from her headscarf. Her eyes were a striking green, the irises ringed with black as if they’d been first drawn, then coloured in. She looked at the cut above Ellen’s eye. ‘Shall I put a dressing?’

Ellen smiled. ‘It’s nothing. I’m fine.’ She put out her hand. ‘I’m Ellen Thomas, NewsWorld.’

The young woman nodded. She was wearing the stiff white coat of a doctor. Ellen sensed that she’d been waiting for her. Frank must have warned her that a journalist was coming.

‘I am Britta.’ Her handshake was firm. ‘I’m the medical in charge here, working for Medicine International. Perhaps you’d like to see the ward for ladies?’

Her accent was lilting. Swedish, Ellen thought. Or Finnish. She looked across to Frank. Several more men had gathered round him now, pressing to be heard. He was standing patiently, the tallest amongst them, his hands slightly raised as if he were conducting the men’s voices.

Ellen turned away and followed Britta. They traced a circle round the chaos of the unloading bay. Young men were staggering, bent double under sacks of rice, carrying them out from the back of the truck. At one side of the clearing, they tipped the sacks over their shoulders, letting them fall, slap, raising a cloud of dust, onto the pile growing there. The air was thick with shouts. Britta led her past the vehicles to the entrance of one of the giant tents which stood nearby, close to the brick building.

The sun was filtering through the canvas roof, making the light inside dappled and soft. They had entered a women’s ward with two rows of field beds, about twenty in all, tightly packed together. Ceiling fans whirred overhead, battling to clear an oppressive bodily smell of stale breath and vomit and urine all papered over by disinfectant.

A young Pakistani girl, wearing a dark purple salwar kameez, was at the far end of the ward, washing a patient. The patient, a middle-aged woman, sat, hunched inwards, holding onto the girl’s shoulder for support. Her back was bare, the skin glistening. The young girl was sponging down her thin shoulders. Her movements were brisk and rhythmical. The water splashed in a plastic bowl on the bed as she dipped and rinsed her cloth. She looked up as they came in and nodded to Britta, glanced at Ellen with shy eyes, then lowered her head again to her work.

Britta had walked to the first bed and was waiting for her there. An elderly woman lay on her back, her eyes closed. Her left arm was bandaged and raised.

‘Gunshot trauma,’ Britta said. ‘The elbow is fractured. Malnutrition and fever also. Many of these ladies are not strong.’

The old woman’s skin was puckered and deeply wrinkled. Her veins were raised into transparent channels of viscous purple. Her mouth was slightly open, her lips cracked. A fly settled on the woman’s forehead and started to walk across it. Ellen raised her hand and wafted it away. The woman did not stir.

Britta had already moved on to the next bed. This patient was a girl, perhaps seven or eight years old. A drip, connected to her right arm, clicked as it discharged fluid.

She gazed up with dull eyes as Britta laid her hand on the girl’s head, stroking her hair as she talked.

‘Many of them are already sick when they arrive,’ she said. ‘This girl has typhoid.’

A revolting sulphuric smell of decay hung around the bed. Ellen turned, looked away down the ward. She tried to distract herself, to close her nose to it.

‘She is weak,’ Britta was saying, ‘but there are no complications. And she’s young. In a day or two . . .’

The girl’s hand was lying inert on the sheet. The fingers were thin, the nails square and bitten. Britta was talking about dehydration but Ellen was only half-listening. She should take the girl’s hand. Reach out and hold it. Pat it, at least.

Britta went to the foot of the bed to consult the notes there. The hand on the sheet lay motionless, waiting. The ward was silent around them. The only sounds were the swish of the ceiling fans spinning overhead and the low mechanical hum of medical equipment.

Britta straightened up, turned and walked on. Ellen followed, conscious of the girl’s eyes staring unseeing at empty air.

A young woman was lying twisted on one side. Her eyes were closed. Her cheekbones and chin protruded, sharp and angular under a thin coating of flesh.

Britta lowered her voice. ‘As well as medical problems, we have also the trauma. Many of these people have seen terrible things.’

‘In the fighting?’

‘Of course. But also before it, in their lives under the Taliban. The violence and the terror.’

The young woman’s legs were curled up into her body. Her fists made tight balls at her chin.

‘What can you do?’

‘Not so much.’ Britta stood for a moment, looking down at the young woman. ‘We simply don’t have the capacity.’ She seemed hollowed out, eaten by exhaustion. Ellen sensed eyes pulling at Britta from all around, a soft, relentless tug of need.

‘Is there somewhere we could go?’ Ellen nodded towards the back of the ward. ‘To talk.’

At the end of the tent, a canvas flap covered an exit. Britta held it back and they passed through. The area beyond was partitioned by hessian walls into a series of small rooms the size of cells. The clicks and whirrs of the ward were muted.

The first room had been converted into a makeshift office. A table in one corner was piled with files and papers and a battered laptop. The space around it was dominated by piles of roughly stacked cardboard boxes. Ellen moved inside to look at them. Each box was identified by a printed sheet of numbers and a barcode.

She turned to ask Britta about them. A short, stocky woman in her thirties appeared right behind her, blocking the entrance. She was holding a metal basin in her hand and, like Britta, she wore a buttoned white coat. Her skin was dark and her hair completely covered by a neatly folded and pinned hijab. She stared at Ellen.

‘How can I be helping you?’ Her accent was clipped. Her eyes, a deep brown, were overshadowed by thick black eyebrows which almost met above her nose.

‘It’s OK, Fatima.’ Britta’s mild voice rose from behind her. ‘This is Ellen. She’s with me.’

Fatima looked again at Ellen, opened her mouth as if to speak, then hesitated and closed it again. Ellen stepped forwards and offered her hand. Fatima’s fingers were stubby and strong.

‘I’ve just arrived,’ Ellen said. ‘I’m a journalist, with News-World.’

‘I am Fatima, chief nurse here.’

Britta squashed between them into the small room. ‘My right-hand woman.’ She put her hand on Fatima’s shoulder. ‘Fatima is from Egypt. I am from Denmark. We are mini-United Nations here, isn’t it?’

Fatima looked up at Britta, allowed herself a half-smile, then nodded to Ellen and turned on her heel, pushing past the canvas curtain back into the ward. Britta waited until the canvas had fallen back into place.

‘We are both a little nervous.’ She steered Ellen further forwards to the final cell at the end of the row. It too was partly filled with stacked boxes. Beyond them a stretcher was lying on top of a trestle. The stretcher bore the long, lumpen shape of a woman’s body which was loosely covered with a sheet. The sunlight, pressing in through the canvas, touched the surface of the cloth, giving it a luminous sheen.

‘We are only just here and already this is our fourth death. When you came, I was just filling the paperwork.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

The stretcher was narrow. One arm had fallen free and hung loose down the side. The hand was slightly curled as if it were groping blindly for something even in death. The skin of the fingers was slightly yellowed, the fingernails ragged and etched with dirt.

‘What was the cause?’

‘Typhoid. Many of them came off the mountain with fever and diarrhoea. In cramped living conditions like this, typhoid spreads quickly. We have antibiotics,’ Britta sighed, ‘but sometimes it’s already too late.’

‘Are they being vaccinated?’

‘We try.’ She clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Hygiene conditions here are very bad. Water contamination will become worse soon, when the rains come.’

Ellen stood for a moment, looking at the covered body. Britta turned and withdrew. Ellen followed her out through the back of the tent, blinking in the full glare of the sun. She adjusted her headscarf, tugging it forwards to shade her forehead and feeling the prick of sweat in her hair.

Britta was standing quite still outside, her arms by her sides. She had turned away from the tent towards the mountains. Her shoulders were tight with tension. If she lets every death affect her like this, Ellen thought, she’ll drown.

Ellen pulled a bottle of water from her bag and drank. The mountains in the distance were stark but beautiful, a row of teeth biting into the landscape. They seemed more dignified than the dirty mudflats in front of them which were already filling with tents and makeshift shelters. The air rang with the toc-toc-toc of men banging in stakes for tent ropes and sticks which could form a rough frame for stretched sheets of plastic. The dry air crackled with static. Soon the torrent of the monsoon would break. When it did, this whole basin would flood. Disease would spread quickly. Including typhoid.

Britta turned to face Ellen. She wore a falsely cheerful smile. ‘Because of the Taliban, we couldn’t reach these people in the mountains. Now we can give vaccinations.’

She paused and the smile faltered. She’s still young, Ellen thought. She needs to harden if she’s going to survive in a place like this.