Born Under a Million Shadows (14 page)

Pulling her gloves on, Rachel hurriedly thanked Georgie and May for inviting her to the party, pretending she needed to go because she didn’t feel well.

“Rachel, stay a while longer, you may feel better in a minute or two,” James tried, but as he spoke she hardly looked at him, her eyes darting quickly to the door as if she couldn’t run away fast enough.

“No, really, I must go,” she insisted, and as her gaze finally met his, her cheeks turned from pink to red and small tears came to blur her eyes.

Georgie gave her a hug, and before James walked her to the gate May also moved to embrace her. As she headed back into the living room, I could tell from May’s face that she felt ashamed about the jokes she’d made earlier.

Once Rachel had left the house and jumped into the front seat of the car that was waiting for her, nobody seemed to be in the mood to party anymore, only to drink. And as another bottle of wine was magically brought out from the kitchen,
this was my cue, apparently, to go to bed. Taking me by the hand, Georgie led me upstairs and into James’s room.

“Well, that was a bit of a disaster, wasn’t it?” she said, coming over to sit on my bed.

“The food was good,” I stated, wanting to rescue something from the night to make her feel better.

“Yes, the food was good, you’re right. As always.”

Leaning forward, Georgie placed a kiss on my cheek before whispering, “Happy New Year, Fawad. I hope all your wishes come true this year.” Then she got up and switched off the light.

As she closed the door behind her I offered a quick prayer to my God, asking Him to help make Georgie’s dreams come true too.

In
my head, behind my eyes, there was a storm of color; ugly rips breaking up the sky I saw there, flashing clouds of black and red, fighting for space in giant, greedy swirls. I felt the anger of the world wrap itself around the wind and I ran for a bush to take cover, but I struggled to reach it in time and the night tore it away before I got there, so I ran from the hill, tumbling through the long grass as I lost my feet, rolling through blades grown black in the dark. I knew I had to get away, but my hands were caught and I couldn’t free them until the light came to carry me away to the valley.

High in the sky I saw eagles circling above me, swooping in pairs to a pocket of brown lying on the ground. I got to my feet and saw I was wearing Rachel’s gloves.

Slowly I walked toward the brown, and as I drew close I recognized it as a dead thing. I thought it was a sheep at first, but as I walked nearer I realized it was too large, and now there was Georgie knelt near, holding the goat comb she carried. She was stroking the dead thing’s hair and smiling, so I smiled back.

“You want to help?” she asked.

“Okay.” I smiled.

But as I leaned closer to comb the dead thing I saw long black hair covering its back and I grew afraid.

“Go on,” Georgie encouraged, so I leaned forward and parted the hair. It covered a woman’s face, and it was the face of my mother.

Throwing the comb to the floor, I backed away.

“Don’t leave me, son,” she cried.

She was crawling toward me on her hands and knees. Her fingers reached for me, but they were rotten and black and the buzz of flies hung around them, feeding off her sickness. She jumped for me, and I screamed.

It
was pitch-black in the room, and I could hear James snoring in the dark beside me. The lights were off, and the generator stood silent.

I needed water, but I was too scared to get out of bed. My mother’s face was still strong in my mind, and it was so cold I could see my own breath. My eyes felt sticky with sleep, and my throat had turned tight as if my body was trying to strangle me.

I needed water.

“James?” My voice sounded weak, as if it was traveling from another place. “James?”

When he gave no answer I grabbed the knife that was stuck in the board on my side of the wall and slipped out from under the blanket. I put on my plastic slippers and walked to the door.

Outside our room everything was covered in night, creating fuzzy black shapes that knew I was afraid. I reached out with my feet, found the stairs, and moved slowly toward the kitchen, now helped by a faint light that broke through the blackness and came from the candles still burning in the living
room. The tiny flames turned the air red where the light crept through the sides of the door. It was a flickering, dancing light that pulsed with the sound of voices coming from the other side. And as I half listened my heart quickened because I knew it was wrong.

I watched my hands reach out and push the door open.

“No, you drunken idiot. I told you, not here!”

She was struggling, and he was on top of her, holding her down, his hands too strong, his body too heavy. It was crushing her.

“Come on, stop fucking around; you said you wanted this.”

The voice was thick, heavy, but I heard it, like I’d heard it before, and I saw him pressing her arms into the cushions as the flames danced around them, turning them both orange; him fighting to control her, his body on top of hers, light licking at his feet and revealing the terrible black of his eyes and the white of hers as they both turned to look.

Around me, the air turned to screams. It sounded like hell in my ears as it pushed through the hate and the fear, burning like fire in my blood. Then the anger burst from my mouth with the howl of a million animals, and because I couldn’t let it happen again, not a second time, not this time, I ran forward and raised my hand, feeling the knife sink into softness as I slammed myself hard against him.

Still the screams kept coming, tearing at my head.

I kicked my legs at the air around me, trying to break free of the noise and the fear, but now there were more screams and they were different from mine, and I saw the flames laughing and the shape of a thousand terrors surrounded me and then she was upon me and she forced the fire to leave, bringing her arms to catch me, smothering me in her smell.

In the chaos of my mind I recognized Georgie and I melted into her flesh as she took my head into her body and I let her
breathe her love into me. She was telling me not to worry, and I felt the warmth of her hands press on my hair, and it felt good, but in the distance somewhere around us I heard a man shouting.

“He stabbed me in the ass! The little shit stabbed me in the fucking ass!”

The accent was French.

9

I
DON’T THINK
I’m particularly special. I’m not amazingly beautiful, but I’m not Jahid-ugly either. I’m not the biggest brain in my class, but neither am I dumb as a donkey. I’m not the fastest runner; I don’t tell the best jokes; I’m not the best fighter; and though I know I’ve seen things that maybe a boy my age shouldn’t have seen, even that doesn’t make me particularly special.

My father was killed, my brothers are dead, and my sister is missing. But in Afghanistan, that’s a big “so what?”

Spandi’s mother died in childbirth, the sister she was trying to deliver died with her, and from the age of two Spandi never felt his mother’s warmth again or the comfort of her love. He doesn’t even have a photograph to remember her by, just a picture in his head that fades with every year he grows taller.

Jamilla’s parents are both alive, but their house has become terrorized by drugs. Sometime in the past her dad went to work with the poppy, and he fell under its spell as he licked the resin from his fingers during the harvest. Now he is hungry for the drug, day and night, while the rest of his family just remains hungry. And even though he stays away from the home for days on end, he always returns eventually, looking for money; and when he can’t find any money he visits his fists on the head of his wife as well as Jamilla and her two older sisters.

Meanwhile the orphanages of Kabul are filled with children whose parents have been lost and killed.

So none of us is particularly special. We just carry with us different versions of the same story.

However, when I woke up the morning after the night came to haunt me, I opened my eyes to see May and Georgie sharing the bed next to me while James was wrapped in a blanket snoring on the floor by my side, and I did at last feel in some way special.

So I was really sorry when seconds later I touched the mattress under me and realized I’d wet the bed.

10

J
ALALABAD IS THE
capital of Nangarhar Province in the east of Afghanistan, and for more years than anyone can remember Kabul’s rich have come to this city to escape the biting cold of winter.

Georgie and I, however, had simply come to escape.

With my mother’s illness still keeping her at Homeira’s house and my recent attack on Philippe, it was decided I needed a break.

“He was only play-fighting with May,” Georgie explained as we worked our way through the seven sisters, the snow-topped mountains that took us away from the capital and into the warm valleys of the east. “He wasn’t really trying to hurt her.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes, Fawad, I am.”

Although the pictures in my head told me a different story, everything was so muddy in there right now I couldn’t be clear of anything anymore, and if Georgie said it was so, then I guess it must have been.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I didn’t realize.”

“There’s no need to apologize,” she continued, ruffling my hair. “How could you have known? Philippe had drunk far too much, and so had May. But I promise you, they are really very good friends, and they would never hurt each other. And maybe May and James and I are all to blame for what happened, not you. We should have been more sensible with you,
Fawad, what with your mother being away. So, we’re sorry too. We didn’t think.”

Georgie pulled me into her side, which felt a little bony, and held me there for as long as the journey allowed. The rest of the time we were thrown around the back of the car like two bees in a jar as the city road crumbled and turned into rocks.

The journey from Kabul to Jalalabad was pretty interesting, and if my thoughts hadn’t been so busy with miseries pouring in from the night before, and if my head hadn’t kept smacking against the window with the force of the drive, I guess I would have enjoyed it tremendously because it took us through the pictures of a million painters and a million more stories. For four hours we traveled beyond the giant mountains that guarded the Kabul River; past the command post where the warlord Zardad kept a soldier chained up as a dog, feeding him on the testicles of his enemies; over the small bridge where four foreign journalists were murdered in 2001; down into Surobi and past its shimmering lake; along gentle bends hugged by brilliant green fields, overtaking
kuchis
and camels and dark clouds of fat-bottomed sheep; back along the river toward the fish restaurants of Durunta; and through the Russian-built tunnel that skirted a dam and led us to Jalalabad.