Akram's War Read online

  I said, ‘It couldn’t have been an IED, it didn’t sound right.’

  ‘You know it can happen,’ he said, ‘when they fail to go off.’

  ‘You will find that the earth around it hasn’t been dug. It’s just a metal plate attached to a fuse. A warning.’

  He shook his head. His chest heaved inside his body armour.

  ‘I’ll prove it.’ Before Adrian could react, I jumped onto the plate. Adrian fell backwards, shielding his eyes, and then peered out from behind his hands, his face fixed in horror.

  I stood perfectly still on the plate and laughed. ‘Now, cunt, pick up your shit and let’s go, and don’t forget there’s a reason why I’m the fucking sarge.’

  ‘You daft bastard.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t have to know.’

  I nodded. ‘Night of fucking Power. As kids at the mosque we’d stay up all night, rocking back and forth pretending to read the Koran, and every last one of us half expected to see the Angel Gabriel.’

  With shaky hands he lit up another cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘That angel must be looking out for me.’

  ‘Anything is possible – on the Night of Power, they kept saying, anything is possible.’

  Adrian said slowly, ‘I get it.’

  ‘This one year my mother pointed to the window and wailed like a banshee. Her eyes were bloodshot and tears ran down her face. Her headscarf was all torn and her hair was crazy, wild, and she turned to me and said, “Pray harder, you of all people, you really need to see for yourself.”’

  ‘Terry do that, don’t they,’ said Adrian thoughtfully, ‘pray hard.’

  ‘No fucking use,’ I said.

  He threw his cigarette to the ground, stubbed it out under a boot. ‘What would you do if you saw the angel?’

  I gave a sinister laugh. ‘Well, Gabriel is a man, so no use to me, but as you say, anything is possible.’

  Adrian turned to me, in his eyes a mixture of incredulity and relief. ‘Really, for a second or two, really I thought I was goners.’

  ‘You’re right on one point,’ I said. ‘I have heard it can happen, when it’s not wired properly. There was a lad from Bravo Company who got charred feet. Went on bragging. Bad taste.’

  ‘I felt like crying.’ He looked down at the burnt boot. ‘I could get myself a new pair from stores.’

  Crouching down, I retrieved a map from my daypack. I took a pen from my tunic pocket, one of those that could switch to six different colours. After finding our exact position on the map, I turned to Adrian, my pen poised at the ready. ‘What colour? Blue, green, black, red, orange or purple?’

  Adrian laughed. ‘Red. . . no, black,’ he said.

  ‘Black it is. Black-Spot Hartley, I’m going to name it after you. I’ll take it to the lieutenant and he’ll get it copied back to HQ where they keep an archive and maps. How do you feel about that?’

  He shook his head, raising a foot off the ground and staring at it. ‘No, I won’t change them – these ones are lucky.’

  Superstitiously, I wore prayer beads around my neck, lucky beads, or Terry beads as the lads called them, and out of instinct I touched them. ‘What you should know is that on an IED the fuse is soldered to the charge, and you would think they’re joined, wouldn’t you, and that the join is true, as true as life and death, but you’d be wrong. There is a distance between them,’ I paused, ‘a potential distance through which you could slip an atom, what they call a metaphorical distance.’

  ‘Goners, man!’ Adrian still had one hand clamped to his head. He peered over me, his lower eyelids swollen and black with soot. ‘That’s the truth.’

  In black ink I scratched the position of Black-Spot Hartley onto the map. ‘Private Hartley, as the senior NCO I want your opinion.’

  Adrian got down next to me. Rocking on his haunches, he put on a serious face.

  ‘You always seem to know what’s going on down below.’

  He appeared confused but nodded just the same.

  ‘In Friends do you reckon Ross will forgive Rachel?’

  ‘Rachel had sex with Joey,’ he said brightly.

  ‘We only saw them kiss.’

  Adrian clutched himself and rocked with laughter. ‘Well, if she made Joey use a condom, Ross might forgive her.’

  ‘Do you want to watch a bit before shut-eye?’

  ‘Seen it, Sarge. Next episode moves on to a different story, leaves it open, cliffhanger like.’

  I looked at Adrian with a frown. ‘You’re going to spoil my day, Private Hartley.’

  Adrian pointed to the map in my hands and smiled. ‘What are the green crosses for?’

  ‘Terry positions,’ I said. Six green crosses made over the course of the patrol coincided exactly with those made the previous night.

  ‘Terry’s busy looking over his fat hairy belly at the Grim Reaper giving him head.’

  I said without looking up, ‘Better not take it for granted, Private.’

  ‘Sarge?’ He shook his head for what seemed like a long time, as though deep in thought. ‘It’s spiritual.’ He squeezed his palms together and squinted hard at the join between them. ‘The true distance between the fuse and the charge is spiritual.’

  I pretended to yawn. ‘It would have got you that tan you’re after.’

  ‘Panic tanning, Sarge.’ He stood up and curled a bicep, the tension spreading upwards through his neck and terminating at his clenched chin above which he tried to squeeze out a smile. ‘For my going-home body.’

  The sun had risen quickly, and at both east and west, as though bearing down upon us, stood the peaks of the Hindu Kush, close enough that during the night patrol we had shivered under their icy weight. Once illuminated they seemed friendlier, as though painted in as a magnificent backdrop to the movie we sometimes felt we were making. If in years to come we forgot everything else, we would always remember the mountains, against which we posed for photographs during the day whenever a new and unexpected vista opened up, and the cold, the white-cold starlit breath through which we viewed each other during the night.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Section will be wondering what the fuck kept us.’

  We doubled back along a crooked dusty path, a low barbed-wire fence separating it from a wood on one side. On the other was a waist-high poppy crop. The only sign of life was an occasional scorpion darting across our boots.

  ‘When we get back, best not to brag about it,’ I said.

  Through a gap in the wire we cut into the wood, densely populated by tall upright pines. The foliage had burned to ochre in the summer sun, and under our feet crunched chestnut shells and the bony, desiccated detritus of fallen twigs. We zigzagged cautiously between the trees, checking the weight of each rustling footstep, and with our rifle sights we slowly scoped the perimeter.

  ‘Have you noticed something weird?’ said Adrian. I shook my head. ‘Trees seem to be getting shorter.’

  The sunlight dappled the wood in alternating shafts of light and dark. When I squinted, the tops of the trees seemed to bend into a downward curve in the middle distance and then rise again in a blur at the far end. Save for birds in the trees and the creaking of foliage in the gathering heat, the morning was silent and still.

  ‘You get it too, boss?’ Behind me Adrian stood perfectly still, his nose tuned to the air. ‘Smells like. . .’ he paused as though wondering whether to continue, ‘love.’

  Something else had replaced the night jasmine, a rounded, perfume-like scent that seemed to be growing stronger.

  ‘Just roses,’ I said. ‘Big deal here, roses.’

  ‘Boss, Black-Spot Hartley has reminded me, I haven’t done my death letter.’

  ‘Just count down the sleepovers,’ I said.

  ‘Could you help me write it?’

  ‘Count off seven and you’ll be waving out the window at the Hindu Kush and oiling your biceps,’ I said.

  ‘I need it all set down, on paper, signed and witnessed. Something for Britney – maybe, as well, someth
ing for her mum.’

  ‘Hustling in pubs for an arm wrestle and shagging anything that moves.’

  ‘Gonna go up to Old Hill and see her, make amends.’ He lit up another cigarette, blowing the smoke out of his nostrils.

  ‘Thought you said it was a one-nighter – she got one in the oven and you did a runner?’

  Adrian threw the empty cigarette packet to the ground, crushed it under a boot. He coughed violently. ‘Makes no difference. Girl’s mine. Want to be a proper dad.’

  I touched my prayer beads and whispered a Bismillah for his kid.

  ‘The lads, it gets on their nerves when you pray in Paki, but I don’t mind.’

  ‘I bet they don’t believe in the Angel Gabriel either,’ I said.

  ‘What’s it called, when you squash the rose petals inside a book?’ said Adrian.

  ‘Get her chocolates instead, from duty free on your way back.’

  ‘I’ll take her out. Steak meal and all the trimmings.’

  ‘What makes you think she’s waiting for you?’

  ‘I could. . .’ He nodded slowly. I waited, but he didn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘Your England,’ I laughed, ‘all that beef and gravy, it’s fiction.’

  ‘My Britney is going to get roses,’ said Adrian, picking up his pace. ‘I’m in need of roses.’

  ‘It’s called pressing. You press the flower.’

  We followed the rose scent. Shorter, colourful pomegranate trees had replaced the evergreens. Their branches spread low with dense green foliage; from them hung the large round fruit, not in abundance but dotted here and there, like a picture in a child’s book. The fruit was blood red with a thick leathery skin, and beautiful against the green leaves – too beautiful, as though unreal, painted in. The pomegranate orchard was well tended, with narrow irrigation channels running parallel to each row of trees.

  ‘You smell love? For me love is an easy walk down to the local where no one calls me a Paki.’

  ‘And out of the window of your local you can see the estate and that shithole you call a mosque?’

  ‘Green fields, mate. Green fields.’

  ‘That’s your fiction,’ said Adrian, plucking a pomegranate off a tree.

  ‘Steady,’ I said, ‘this patch has never seen the white man.’

  ‘Then I’ll be earning the roses.’

  I listened to the sound of his teeth tearing at the leathery pomegranate. He turned and smiled, blood-coloured seeds dripping from his lips. ‘Don’t you ever feel,’ he continued between noisy mouthfuls, ‘like back at base when we do an ammo count, that you did nothing more than just blast the fuck out of anything within a thousand yards of Terry? Don’t you ever think you’ve got to earn something, anything, earn that shitty view from the pub window?’

  ‘Last contact the lieutenant wrote off twenty-two thousand 7.62, twelve RPG and two Javelin. A lot of money for a sandcastle.’

  ‘And the rest,’ he said, spitting out the dripping husk. It landed on the ground, quickly staining the dry, yellow earth.

  ‘Last contact I counted two Terry souls as they flew off to heaven.’

  ‘I don’t hate them. You got to respect—’ he began.

  ‘You have a short memory. If that thing I pulled you off had been an IED you might not be smelling love right now.’

  He looked at his boot and shook his head. ‘Luck.’

  I said, ‘Roses, Private Hartley, you can touch and smell, even dry in a book, but luck is another one of your fictions.’

  ‘We know where Terry are and they can set their watches by our movements, yet. . .’ he struggled for words, ‘yet we prance about on patrol and let each other play on.’

  ‘You live and breathe, Hartley, and that’s all there is.’

  Adrian shook his head again. ‘They’d have just chalked it up, like we do. One of ours for a hundred of theirs.’

  ‘That’s reasonable,’ I laughed.

  ‘A hundred thousand pounds worth of armoured truck blown up by an IED packed with ten pound of fertilizer,’ he said.

  ‘Private Hartley, you are an Englishman. Your shit floats on pork fat content, your skin is pink and burns, your breath is like that of those dogs you love, and if anyone heard you side with Terry it would be most unwelcome.’

  ‘They should have these in England,’ said Adrian, rolling a second pomegranate in his hand. ‘There must be better mosques than your one in Best Street? Pretty ones that aren’t full of Pakis?’

  ‘You forget my mother saw the Angel Gabriel at Best Street,’ I said.

  ‘I get it, that’s all,’ he stammered. ‘I get where Terry are coming from.’

  ‘Haji, Terry, raghead, Paki,’ I said. ‘Take it from me, it’s black and white, there’s nothing to get!’

  ‘Yesterday I saw this Terry give mouth-to-mouth to a newborn goat. Goat got up and was sick all over him. Terry laughed his head off.’

  ‘Random shit. Don’t get taken in. Have yourself a deep breath and count off seven sleepovers.’

  In the centre of the wood was a clearing, a long strip of closely cropped bright green grass bordered on all four sides by a low wall built of stone and painted white. The larger stones were punctuated with green Arabic script – at a guess the ninety-nine names of Allah. Through the middle of it ran a broad path; over the path, at intervals of about four feet, were tall trellis arches bursting with red, pink and white roses.

  A smile spread across Adrian’s face. He shook his head and his eyes sparkled. ‘Who could hate the Terry?’

  I stared in wonder. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘It’s a good sign. Britney’s mum will take me back,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, and if you concentrate hard enough you might even remember her name.’

  ‘Must have taken Terry years,’ he said. ‘How the fuck do they water it?’

  We stood below the first arch. The early morning sun was already intense and the dense network of intertwining flowers provided the small comfort of a gappy shade. The roses cast a complicated pattern on the grass. Adrian put his nose to one and inhaled deeply. ‘It’s something, isn’t it? Love.’

  I shivered involuntarily. ‘There are seven rose arches,’ I said. ‘Like the seven levels of Terry heaven.’ I scanned the area through the sights of my rifle. The orchard continued on all four sides from the edge of the lawn and from there, in all directions, and as the tree line grew taller and sloped upwards, the fruit trees were replaced by alpines.

  He said excitedly, ‘Feel it, man.’

  We went and sat on two large stones under the middle arch. He lit up a cigarette.

  ‘Private Hartley, you fall in love too easily.’

  ‘All those nights you stayed up at the mosque, Sarge,’ he pulled hard on his cigarette, ‘you should have kept your fucking eyes open.’

  ‘Mate, pick yourself a fucking rose, let’s go.’

  He stared straight ahead. ‘It’s eerie.’

  ‘What is?’

  Adrian dropped the pomegranate, crushing it absent-mindedly under a boot. ‘The eyes. You seen them, Sarge?’

  He was right. I looked around, suddenly aware of eyes, hundreds of them, staring back at us. The eyes were about six inches long, with blue, green and brown irises, painted at eye level on the trees that surrounded us. The arrangement was obviously designed to be viewed when seated on the stones.

  ‘Evil eye,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They look creepy but in fact they’re supposed to ward off evil,’ I said.

  ‘They’re fucking queer,’ he said.

  I laughed. ‘My mother swore by them.’

  ‘No, man, it’s an ambush.’

  ‘Then it’s already too late,’ I said.

  ‘Evil eye isn’t Muslim, it’s fucking superstition,’ he said.

  Adrian lecturing me about Islam was embarrassing. ‘It’s not right you going on like that. There’s no depth to you. You don’t think. You don’t care for anything. You’re just some rand
om pisscan from the estate.’

  ‘In Old Hill, you Pakis think you’ve a monopoly on God.’

  ‘Look, man, I should know. I grew up in it. It just never really convinced me. . .’ I shook my head, exasperated. ‘Thank God for down below, your estate and that, where there are no rules.’

  Adrian got up, slung his rifle over his shoulder and strode towards the seventh arch, his arms spread out and palms facing outwards. I followed.

  ‘Nothing worth having on that estate, but your Pakistani mindset, it just doesn’t export. You seem to think that God is found in curry houses and corner shops, but here,’ he tested the weight of a rose in his hand, ‘here, if you Pakis put your mind to it, you can do anything.’

  ‘Allah tells us that in England we should apply ourselves to earning pound notes,’ I said.

  ‘Say I’m Terry and hungry and I find a loaf of bread. Do I hide in a dugout and gorge on it all by myself? Do I give it to some poor orphan in return for God’s blessing? Do I share it with my Terry mates? Here,’ he stared at me and nodded, ‘here every day is a test and you have to be true to yourself.’

  ‘Tell you what. . .’ I paused, wondering if I should continue. Although it was every Muslim’s duty to convert people to the faith, I had never considered it to be within my power. ‘If you really want to be like Terry all you have to do is recite the Shahada. It’s a one-liner. But you have to do it to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle fucking Star”.’

  ‘Really?’ Adrian’s voice was childlike, too trusting.

  ‘Do what your heart tells you.’

  ‘But. . .’ He stopped as though he didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

  ‘But remember, the believers will always lead you astray.’

  ‘Good advice,’ said Adrian, nodding.

  ‘Recite the Shahada and I will call you Brother fucking Hartley or Abu fucking Britney and you can find a dugout and fornicate homo-style with the Terry brotherhood.’

  ‘You’re fucking with me?’

  ‘No, brother, it’s my duty.’

  Adrian nodded. ‘Abu Britney, man, inshallah.’

  The word inshallah sounded awkward coming from a gora, but Adrian’s pronunciation was good, as though he had been practising. My loud laughter echoed around us, and Adrian blushed a deep red, wounded. I stopped suddenly, conscious of the noise I was making. ‘Okay,’ I whispered, ‘repeat after me, La ilaha. . .’