Hinterland: A Novel (14 page)

‘Well after all, why not – computers are the future, aren’t they,’ the man says. Aryan can’t tell if his words are sarcastic or sincere. ‘Even Afghanistan one day will need computers. What about him?’ He nods at Kabir.

Kabir puffs up his chest. ‘I’m going to be a musician,’ he says. ‘I will play songs for the English people at their weddings.’

The man laughs, his angular face relaxing for the first time. ‘I hope they appreciate Afghan songs in England,’ he says.

The woman nods towards Kabir and speaks to her husband.

‘She says she will cut your hair, both of you,’ Rahim says. ‘She is right. They will never let you into school in England looking like goats straight down from the hills.’

Later, Rahim tells them about the trains. That they might have to get off in Nice, or Cannes, and get another train to Paris. If the police send them back to Italy they can wait and try again, or cross on foot from Ventimiglia, an Italian town on the road that runs next to the sea.

Then, in Aryan’s notebook, the man draws them a map of Paris in thick green ink that clots and smudges under his fist. He puts in a station, and a river, and a canal. He adds arrows that show where they have to walk for a couple of kilometres, until they reach a park. Beside the park he draws another station.

‘This park,’ Rahim says, stabbing green ballpoint dots on to the page where he has just drawn a clump of stick trees, ‘is where all the Afghans meet.’

He presses so hard that the next day Aryan finds duplicate maps furrowed into the following two pages.

The intimate sound of scissor blades is close to his ear; Aryan is trying not to move. Dark crescents of hair settle on his knees like apostrophes. In his nostrils there is a tickling that wrinkling his nose won’t alleviate; finally he throws up a hand, and the scissors hesitate before resuming their journey. Delicate fingertips brush his neck, tug at the hair behind his ears, check that the length is even on both sides; he is betrayed by a sudden flush of embarrassment. It is the first time anyone has touched him with such gentleness since he can remember; the feel of it mingles with the image still on his retina of the girl in the railway carriage; he wants it to last and last, and then feels ashamed at his longing. He prays the woman hasn’t seen his flaming cheeks; is glad that, unlike in the barber’s shop where he used to go with his father, there is no mirror here.

Kabir has already had his turn. When Aryan runs his hand upwards against the grain of his short-cropped hair, it reminds him of the puppies back on the farm. Kabir’s giggles come in contagious ripples.

The tension lifts as his muscles relax in the safety and warmth of their refuge.

In the end they have to wait two days for their clothes to dry. Then Rahim directs them to the station.

In the train to France, Aryan peers at his new reflection in the lamplight, his features appearing and disappearing against the black backdrop of night.

They are still his eyes peering back at him, though the shadows around them look deeper. Perhaps his newly shortened hair is making his face look different. He knows he is changing but he can’t identify exactly how. It is not only the down on his lip. He can’t tell whether it is just the light, or whether his cheeks have grown thinner, his eyes larger, his jaw more gaunt.

He runs his hand along the nape of his neck, remembering the dangerous lisp of scissors, the woman’s hand grazing his cheek. He remembers the girl in the night train to Rome. Their images overlap and blur, and the thought of them makes him feel happy and empty at the same time.

They awaken more than an hour from the terminal in Nice.

Their carriage rocks through tunnels and creeps through sleeping stations. They crawl past the rear of apartment blocks where women in bathrobes reach into kitchen cupboards, and shadows move behind windows thickened with steam. There are hothouses full of pumpkins and tomatoes, and carpets of cacti, and plantations of beach umbrellas where the rails pass close to the shore. Tent awnings stretch beside caravans, and rambling villas perch on headlands, among pine trees growing at perilous right-angles to the cliffs.

‘Why do people have swimming pools if they live so close to the sea?’ Kabir says. The aqua rectangles flash past them like postage stamps of sky.

Aryan has wedged their tickets into the net above their folded table and doesn’t answer. He is thinking about the disused fountain they used to splash in after it rained, how they used to dry off by lying on the roof of an old Russian tank that heated up in the sun. How that was where he had gone to play with his friends on the day that Baba was killed.

They have followed Rahim’s advice and picked out a family in the train. They plan to tag along beside them when they alight, in case there are any police.

But when the train pulls into Nice, Kabir gets blocked in the aisle by the crush of passengers, and the family disappears down the steps.

The crowd is washing them towards the exit when anxiety suddenly clutches Aryan’s throat. Peaked hats and dark-blue uniforms are moving towards them; he is gripped by an involuntary fear.

‘Papers,’ one of the policemen says. He and Kabir are hemmed in by a sea of official blue.

Aryan produces their train tickets.

The policeman takes them, examines them, holds them up to the light. Then he rips them in half.

‘Where is your passport?’ he says.

‘No passport,’ says Aryan. His mouth is dry and he stumbles over the English words.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Afghanistan.’

‘How old are you?’

Aryan tries to ignore the truncheon and the pistol at his waist, and the heavy boots like the ones that soldiers wear. He looks to the female officer instead. She carries the same weapons as the men, and her hair is tied back so tightly that it pulls all the expression from her face.

‘Fourteen,’ he says. His heart is beating fast.

The man barks something into a two-way radio. The reply comes in a screech of static.

‘You know to come to France you need a passport and a visa,’ the policeman says. ‘You have to go home to your country and get them.’

Aryan looks at him with a kind of disbelief. In his mind their journey unspools like the ribbon of a broken cassette. He thinks about all the terrain they have covered: the months of unpaid labour in Greece, the long hours in the workshop in Turkey, the way they crossed Lake Van in a leaking boat. He thinks of the night-time struggle across the mountains, and the Kurdish peasants they stayed with, and the smugglers who left anyone who couldn’t keep up by the side of the trail. He remembers the trek across the desert in Iran, his palpitating heart as they crossed the frontier by night to avoid the border patrols, and their last journey out of Afghanistan. He thinks about the things that he sold, and the money that has gone, and the things that can never be reversed.

‘We don’t want to stay in France,’ Aryan says.

But the policeman is already pulling handcuffs out of his pocket. Aryan’s stomach contracts. He looks wildly around but the police officers are standing very close. He can feel Kabir trembling at his side.

Aryan’s wrists are so thin that the handcuffs have to be adjusted to the narrowest setting; the policewoman does the same for Kabir.

Blank with fear, they watch another policeman stretch his hands into skin-coloured surgical gloves. Then he pats down their bodies, searching for weapons.

Kabir is white-faced. He recoils at the man’s touch. Aryan has never seen him so afraid.

They are led to the back of a police van with plastic coverings on the seats. They are driven back across the border to Italy.

‘Couple more for you,’ the French officer says as they enter an Italian police station. Aryan can see red-and-black playing cards aligned in columns on a computer screen.

‘Where are you going then?’ the Italian policeman asks when the French van has pulled away. The buttons of his jacket strain over his paunch. Beside him, a young lieutenant scrutinizes them with the eyes of a ferret.

‘England,’ Aryan says.

‘How old’s he?’ he asks, nodding towards Kabir.

‘Eight,’ Aryan says.

The man swears. ‘They’re getting younger all the time,’ he says to his colleague. ‘I’m not locking up kids.’

He turns to Aryan. ‘Make yourself scarce,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to see you ever again.’

Aryan guesses they are in one of the small Italian border towns they had seen from the window of the train. Maybe it is Ventimiglia, the town that Rahim mentioned. He knows Kabir will feel better if they can find something to eat.

In a narrow street they come across a shop selling takeaway pizzas and fries. Counting their coins, Aryan adds a can of Coke from the refrigerator. They sit dangling their feet on a low wall outside and ignore the seagulls clamouring for a share of their spoils.

Kabir licks the salt off his fingers and wipes his greasy hands on his trousers.

‘We’re going to have to walk,’ Aryan says, ‘like Rahim said. You feel up to it?’

‘How far is it?’ Kabir asks.

‘The same distance we did in the van.’

Kabir ponders. ‘What about your ankle?’ he says.

‘It’s OK. We’ll go slowly if it starts to hurt.’

‘Maybe it’ll be shorter if we go along the beach.’

They follow the cantaloupe-coloured streets to the sea. A yacht struggles to make it into shore. A trio of women gossip over prams with hoods like refugee tents. They button their cardigans to their necks as the breeze whips their skirts against their legs.

No one takes any notice of the two boys.

It is the first time they have seen the sea, apart from the glimpses they had had from the train, and the patch of blue they saw on the waterfront in Genova.

Kabir is thrilled. He gallops through sand and reefs of pebbles and calls back over his shoulder to Aryan.

‘I’ll race you to the water,’ he says, his too-long trousers flapping against his too-short legs.

At the water’s edge, where the sea-stones clatter and slide, he tangles in his own momentum and trips. He comes up frowning, rubbing the imprint of pebbles off dented knees.

Aryan laughs. ‘Nice dive!’ he calls.

‘I won!’ Kabir says when he catches his breath, raising his fist in triumph at Aryan’s approach. ‘Do you think it’s really salt?’

‘Check and let me know.’

Kabir spits out the briny water with a grimace.

‘You may as well go all the way in now,’ Aryan says, observing the high-water mark on Kabir’s jeans.

‘Brrrrr – too cold!’ he says. ‘Why is the sea two-colours blue?’

‘I don’t know,’ Aryan says. ‘Maybe the dark part is where the sharks are waiting for you to come in.’

‘Or you, if I push you in first!’

They tussle on the sand where the pebbles end, Kabir twisting Aryan’s fingers to win the advantage. But Aryan easily slides a knee on to his chest.

‘Mercy, do you beg for mercy?’ Aryan asks. ‘Or shall I feed you to the sharks?’

‘Never!’ says Kabir, squirming.

Aryan leans more weight on to his knee. ‘Will you eat sand?’ His hand forms a funnel above Kabir’s face.

Kabir wriggles his head from side to side. ‘Peace!’ Kabir says. ‘Peace! You win.’

‘Promise to be my slave?’ The hand hovers.

‘Yes, anything!’ Kabir says.

‘Say it!’

‘I promise to be your slave!’

‘For ever?’

‘Yes, yes, I promise to be your slave for ever!’ Kabir cries.

Aryan relinquishes his grip.

Coming up breathless, Kabir pulls the cone of a seashell from under his back.

‘Just tricking,’ he says. ‘I’ll never be your slave!’

Aryan fells him again and tickles him till they are distracted by the valiant yacht, which finally manages to ground itself in the shallows.