CHAPTER TWO
On a grassy bank
running down to a swollen stream about ten miles from the Albanian
border, a man dozed in the morning light. The sun had not yet risen
above the hill in front of him so the ground and his bedding were
still wet. For some time he had been aware of his travelling
companions moving around him, packing and rolling up the sheets
which they’d hung between the bushes to give shelter. They coughed
and grumbled to each other, mostly in languages he didn’t
understand. But the sounds of the camp breaking in the early
morning were familiar - men stiff from a night in the open,
wondering how they found themselves without bed, food or a good
woman.
Someone was prodding
the campfire into life. At first he didn’t understand why: they’d
eaten the last of the food the night before - dried lamb and a
broth made from chicken bones - and he knew there was no coffee or
tea. Then he smelled the mint and remembered they’d gathered it in
a ditch the night before. They’d made mint tea and now one of them
was beside him, nudging the back of his hand with a warm tin cup.
He opened an eye to see a grin of chipped teeth, spreading in an
unwashed, slightly pock-marked face: the youngest of the three
Kurds, an amiable character who was always jollying the others on.
He said in English, ‘Drink, mister, for your health.’
The party began to
move off down the bank towards the track, but he still couldn’t
bring himself to jump up and follow. The delicious memory of his
dream was still fresh and part of him didn’t want to leave it
behind. He watched shafts of light moving over the hill to catch
the top of a tree nearby. A tiny bird, one that he had never seen
before, was flitting to and from a vine that had become detached
from the tree. Each time it arrived to perch on the twig, it bobbed
up and down, checking the area for predators before diving into the
shade of the vine to feed its young. He realised the bird must have
been there all night, within a few yards of the fire and the men
under the shelters, and he marvelled at its nerve and
discretion.
At length the
sunlight fell on the ground above him and he shook himself from his
reverie, stood up and stretched. He had only a few possessions and
it didn’t take long for him to bundle them up and tie them together
with the belt that he’d kept with him these past six years. As he
made his way down the bank, slipping on the damp grass, the men’s
voices were brought to him on a soft, warm wind. It would be a good
day, he thought. Yes, they were due some luck after all that had
happened to them. Maybe they would find a way of crossing the
border into Greece without being arrested and treated like
dirt.
In the past he might
have prayed to Allah. Now it did not even occur to him. After so
long in the holy war the Western part of him was reasserting
itself. He was leaving the wilderness and the barbarity behind and
he was taking back his old name - Karim Khan - and with it the hope
of finding the young medical student, who drank alcohol and loved
and charmed but who was no less in awe of the Prophet because of
these activities. Belief had not deserted him, but faith in
sacrifice had gone, along with the nomme de
guerre - Mujahad, or soldier of Islam - and just now he
would rely on himself and not God’s will.
He climbed down on to
the track and noticed the bunches of twigs that had collected in
the ruts along the road, borne there by the rainwater of the day
before. Beetles were feeding on insects drowned in the storm. The
pulverised rock in the road’s surface sparkled with chips of
quartz. Everything seemed beautiful and in its place that morning,
and he felt a surge of optimism. He shuddered at the words that had
taken him to war: ‘Allah has conferred on those who fight with
their wealth and their lives a higher rank than those who stay at
home.’
No more of that. No
more slaughter. No more chaos.
But whatever he
thought, he was still the veteran campaigner and his ability to
march on an empty stomach was undiminished. Soon the stragglers of
the group ahead came into view. As always it was his two fellow
Pakistanis at the rear. Both were very thin and clearly at the end
of their resources. Nine months the two had been on the road.
Having started from a mountain village in Northern Pakistan they
had crossed to Iran and walked to the Turkish border. Most of their
money had gone when a con man promised them flights and a visa to
Greece, but they kept enough to get them to Bulgaria. Ahead of them
went the Turk, Mehmet, and the Arabs, a Jordanian called Mumim, and
a Palestinian from Lebanon who gave his name as Jasur. Out in front
were the three Kurds - the young man who had given him mint tea,
his uncle and a friend from his uncle’s village. They had the
promise of work in Athens and had only been travelling for a matter
of weeks. They were the freshest of the party and it was clear they
felt themselves out of place in this group of migrants, harried
from one country to another and sometimes reduced to eating leaves
and grubs to survive.
High in the pastures
above them Khan noticed one or two locals moving about with their
beasts. Cow-bells sounded with an unmusical clank across the
valley. He was glad his party was not walking bunched up together
because that always made people suspicious. In this country, where
Muslims were so feared, they had to keep their wits about them. The
men with dark skin - the two Pakistanis and the Jordanian, who had
African blood in him - had to be especially careful. Not for the
first time, he was grateful for his own light colouring, which
family tradition held came from Alexander the Great’s soldiers.
Some part of him registered that he should feel at home here in
Macedonia.
As he was having
these thoughts he noticed the Kurds hesitate. He stopped and put
his hand up to the sun and tried to see through the shimmer of heat
already coming off the road. They had seen something in front of
them. One had dropped his bed-roll and knapsack and spread his arms
in surrender. He was showing that they weren’t carrying weapons.
His companions turned round to consult the others, or maybe to warn
them.
Khan saw a figure
moving in the clump of bushes on the left of the road. He was
wearing a uniform that was exactly the same colour and tone as the
shaded vegetation. A wisp of smoke came from behind him - a
campfire - and beyond that tarpaulins had been stretched across the
lower boughs of the trees. On the other side of the road, parked up
in a cutting, were a truck and two covered jeeps.
The Kurds didn’t seem
to know what to do. One of them began to retrace his steps. He was
gesticulating, shooing the rest of the party back up the way they
had come. More soldiers moved from the shade onto the yellow strip
of road; they swaggered and almost dragged their weapons along the
ground. Khan recognised the type - soft, untested, conscript
bullies. He had seen them before in the Balkans and he knew exactly
what was going to happen next.
One of the soldiers,
probably the first man to move from cover, raised his gun waist
high, fired and brought down the retreating man. The other two
Kurds turned back in disbelief to the soldiers, raising their
hands. They dropped to their knees to beg for their lives but were
killed the instant they touched the ground. One slumped forward;
the other keeled over in slow motion.
With the first shot
the remainder of the party had taken to their heels. The two Arabs
and the Turk ran straight up towards Khan, but the Pakistanis had
thrown away their possessions and dived for the bushes. The
soldiers were galvanised. They ran across the road, climbed into
their jeeps and, with great swirls of dust, turned the vehicles and
tore up the valley towards the three men still on the road. Unlike
the first shots that had killed the Kurds, the fusillade of gunfire
that came from the lead jeep echoed around the hills. The Turk was
hit in the leg but limped on. One of the Arabs stopped and tried to
drag him to safety, but the soldiers were upon them in a second and
both men were mown down. Khan moved to the side of the road into
shade. He watched the jeep pull up and the soldiers unleash a
volley of shots into the corpses. The other jeep had stopped a
little further back so that the Pakistanis could be hunted down.
Shortly afterwards Khan heard another crackle of shots. A man cried
out. Then a lone shot - the coup de
grâce - snapped through the woods.
Khan shouted at the
Palestinian who was now about a hundred yards away. He knew their
only chance was to head off into the trees above them. He yelled
and yelled at the man as if willing him to win a race. Khan had
been in such situations before and, judging by the way Jasur was
bent double and zigzagging the final few yards towards him, it
wasn’t the first time he’d been under fire either. Together they
slipped through a gap in the bushes and began to climb. The
undergrowth was still wet from the storm and the soil gave way
easily under their feet, but in a few minutes they got above the
road and saw that both jeeps had pulled up below them. They heard
shouting and a few shots were loosed off into the trees, but it was
obvious the soldiers were unwilling to go in after them just yet. A
truck arrived and they saw a man get out, an officer shouting at
the top of his voice. He was clearly organising a sweep of the
hillside.
Khan watched for a
few seconds longer, steadying Jasur by holding his shoulder. He
looked up the slope and decided that rather than crashing on
through the wood and giving away their position, they should stay
where they were. He explained in a mixture of Arabic and English,
then pushed his still uncomprehending companion into the
undergrowth and covered him with saplings wrenched from the loose
soil. He went to find his own hiding spot about twenty paces up the
hill and dug himself in, efficiently covering his legs with dirt
and pulling boughs across him to hide the disturbance. Once in
place, he hissed a few words of encouragement down to Jasur just as
he had done a few years before when waiting in an ambush with a
group of novice Mujahadin, all of them quaking in their
boots.
For about fifteen
minutes he heard no noise from either the road or the woods around
them, but gradually the sound reached him of the soldiers slashing
at the undergrowth and calling out to each other. He fastened his
gaze on the bushes where Jasur was hidden, hoping that the
Palestinian’s nerve would hold when the soldiers passed by. He
wriggled a little and felt in his back pocket for the knife he’d
picked up in Turkey. He placed it in his mouth then swept the dirt
back over his chest and arms and sank into the forest
floor.
The soldiers were
close to them now. He estimated that one was about thirty yards
above him while another, who was moving much more slowly, would
eventually pass between him and Jasur. He held his breath and
waited. Suddenly the uniform appeared a few yards from him. The man
stopped, unzipped himself, thrust his pelvis forward and started
pissing. The stream of urine glittered in the light filtering
through the trees. As he neared the end he shouted up the hill to
his friend, a crude joke bellowed to the forest.
Khan decided to
launch himself the moment the soldier turned away. Just then, the
saplings which had so artfully concealed Jasur erupted, and his
head and torso appeared. The soldier was caught unawares. He turned
and yelled out a single syllable of surprise. But instead of firing
he struggled to zip himself up and seemed to have difficulty
getting hold of the automatic which he had swung round on his back
while he urinated.
He must have heard
Khan behind him, the movement of earth and rush of air, but he
showed no sign of it as the weight of his body was pulled back onto
the knife. His shaven head came back and his eyes met Khan’s with a
strange awkwardness, an embarrassment at the sudden intimacy with
the man covered in dirt, not understanding that the first blow of
the knife had neither punctured his heart nor severed his spinal
cord, and that there would be no second blow. Khan let him sag to
the ground and in an instant removed his water bottle, gun, and
ammunition clips. He wagged his finger at the soldier and put it to
his own lips. The soldier looked up terrified, but managed a
nod.
Jasur came to his
side and crouched down. They were hidden from the soldier above
them who had started to call out to his companions, repeating one
name. Alarm rang in his voice, which communicated itself up and
down the line of soldiers and they all started calling out. Khan
darted another look at the soldier and jabbed the gun at him in a
way that couldn’t be misunderstood. They turned and began to climb,
moving around the main thickets so as to make as little noise as
possible.
A minute or two
passed then all hell broke loose. The soldiers discovered their
wounded companion and started up the hill, firing shots into the
trees above them. The old maxim of mountain warfare came back to
Khan - flight is always better than fight. Long-practised at
fleeing into the mountains, he quickened his pace and blocked his
mind to the pain that would come with the exertion. They went
straight up for a hundred and fifty yards but soon Jasur was
begging him to slow down. He had given his all in the sprint up the
road. Khan put an arm round him and felt his skinny frame heaving
and his heart racing. There was virtually no muscle or fat on him.
He tucked his hand under Jasur’s armpit and started to haul him up
the hill, the Palestinian’s breath wheezing in his ear. They went
another fifty yards and scrambled over some rocks. Ahead of them
the trees thinned out to the pastures where he had seen the cattle
herds. Beyond these he remembered the rocky crags that he’d noticed
in shadow when he was lying in the field. It meant they were steep,
but it didn’t follow that they were impassable.
He turned round.
Jasur, who had fallen to his knees, was silently coughing phlegm
onto the rock. His eyes and nose were streaming and his skin had
become grey. The medic in Khan guessed these were not tears but
some kind of allergic reaction, probably caused by pollen or the
leaves he’d been covered with, but when he took hold of his head
and looked into his eyes, his diagnosis changed. Jasur was having
an asthma attack and showed every sign of heart strain. Khan rolled
him onto his back and started to give him mouth to mouth
resuscitation, then pressed down rhythmically on his chest a dozen
times. The Palestinian coughed again and began to breathe more
easily, but his eyes showed that he knew exactly what was happening
and Khan thought he’d probably experienced an attack like this
before. He put his hand to the man’s pulse - more regular now - and
lifted his head to give him some water from the soldier’s bottle.
At that moment they heard the soldiers making their way up the
hill. He dragged Jasur back across the rocks so he was out of view
and then snaked forward on his stomach to look over the edge. There
were four of them and further down the slope came another trio, but
they had no appetite for the climb and were stopping every few feet
to mop their brows and curse.
He tried the safety
catch of the AK47, made sure that the magazine would come away when
he needed it to, then lay flat on the rocks with his face resting
on the polished wooden stock. As he waited his thoughts slipped
back to the first moment of the day and he realised dully that
whatever his dreams and hopes for the future, this was the way his
life was cast. His fate was to be covered in grime and sweat,
waiting in ambush with a murderous old gun in his
hand.
Behind him Jasur
uttered a dramatic series of gurgles and retches. Khan was worried
for his companion but could not risk turning now. He nudged him
gently on the shoulder with his boot and that seemed to quieten
him. For one moment he thought the change in direction of the
soldiers’ voices meant they had given up, or taken a path off to
the left, but suddenly he heard them directly below him. He pulled
himself forward and raised his arms so that the gun was angled
downwards over the edge of the rock. After the initial burst he
bobbed up and saw that he’d hit some of the first group in the
legs. They fell backwards without even knowing where he was. One
recovered and fired in the direction of the rocks, a long way wide
of the mark. Khan sneaked another look and squeezed the trigger.
This sent them tumbling from their cover down the slope. They don’t
mind killing unarmed men in the open, he thought, but they’ve got
no taste for real battle. He fired, changed clips and fired some
more. Now there was no sign of them, although he heard one yelping
like a lost puppy in the woods.
He turned and
wriggled back to Jasur, lying against the rock, facing away from
him. He touched him on the shoulder and said they ought to be
going. Could he make it? He shook him and, feeling no life, rolled
the Palestinian over.
His skin was ashen,
saliva foamed at his mouth and his eyes stared without meaning at
the tiny red spiders that circled on the rock surface in front of
him. Khan was shocked. Bewildered. He pushed himself to his knees
and shrugged, thinking that he should - no, he must - find out who
this man was and one day let his family know what had become of
him. He felt all over the body and eventually located a little
pouch hanging from a string inside Jasur’s trousers. He flipped it
open and saw some folded documents, one or two pictures, a printed
prayer and an identity card. He would look at them properly later.
Now he had to leave and hope that the Macedonians would bury the
Palestinian.
He got up, and
without looking down the hill, jogged off into the next clump of
trees and made for the crags above.