The Inbetween People (20 page)

M
Y
MOTHER
came back after the explosion. I was in hospital, she arrived while I was sleeping, so that when I awoke she was there, beside me, her face hovering over mine, her finger raised to her lips, her forehead creased in great frowns of concentration. I didn’t acknowledge her presence just then, drifted in and out of sleep, and each time I opened my eyes I was again surprised to find her there; yet the fact that she was there, her very presence, exploded through my senses. In the end she stayed for five days, she sat by my bed most of that time, brought magazines and books with her, flicked through them.

Occasionally she would place a magazine on her knee and stare in front of her at the wall, and she would begin to talk, she talked a lot when that happened, she seemed anxious to fill the room with the sound of her voice, though a gradual realisation came to me, the realisation that I didn’t know who she was anymore, nor she I, that the years we spent together had left no trace on either of us so at times it seemed that we were strangers, and that the letters we had exchanged over the years had done little in the process of enlightening each as to who the other was. There was an awkwardness too, whenever her hand brushed against me, or once she leaned forward and her hair fell across my face, we regarded each other then and she moved away, and scraped her hair back from her face, binding it harshly at her nape. And other times she would stare at my wounds and reach her hand out, as if she wanted to touch them, as if that touch would become a kind of balm, but at the last moment she would withdraw her hand and stare out the window, or at a magazine. Yet at times I could still detect traces of her through an unconscious smile, an inadvertent sigh, a silent moment; at times I perceived in her voice the person remembered all these years, who I had once adored and who had known me intimately.

But it was like seeing a face in an immense crowd so that you had to walk through the crowd to reach that face, and it would blur with the crowd; and when you reached the point you thought the face had been, you saw it somewhere else and had to move towards it again. And it seemed to me that all that was left of her was her laugh and her smell and those quiet moments that belonged only to her, and lying in bed I wished that she would leave so that I could again return to memory. Don’t you remember how it was, I wanted to say to her, but I would look again at her eyes, staring hard at a glossy magazine and I didn’t find the words.

A
ND
IF
I leave, I think, what do I lose, what part of me drifts away, is left behind, will I find it again, or will it forever be lost in the immensity of this place. Like my mother, will it become an elusive part of me that is lost, though at times there is a whisper of something, a reminder, a smile or a laugh so it seems that it was never really gone, until the next gesture snuffs it out completely, so that it is obliterated from the minds of those who remember forever.

Sahar places the cigarettes before her, David reaches under the gauze and takes another. He hands me one and I hold it delicately between my fingers.

Tell me, I say. I want to know what happened.

She takes a deep breath and begins to talk.

C
HAPTER
28

U
ltimately, not everything can be told; it is a clear day in the middle of the spring, cold, the wind is like a knife, we walk through a small town, me and Saleem, on the way to my cousin’s wedding, the streets are so crammed with cars that we abandoned ours at the edge of the town rather than negotiate the narrow streets.

We hear a din in the distance, a distinct hum that comes from the outskirts of the town. Without seeming to realise it he walks towards it, each stride increasing in length, bringing him nearer, so that he almost breaks into a run. I chase after him, tugging at his arm. Where are we going, the wedding is back that way. I point back the way we came, towards the cars that remain motionless, jammed together, horns blaring. Why are we going this way, why are we going towards that crowd. I just want to see what’s happening, he says, we won’t stay long. Other people are rushing in the same direction, towards the crowd and the noise, he keeps walking, pulling me behind him, and then we turn a corner and glimpse the crowd, a great heaving angry mass, armed with flags, a dull hissing noise emanating from them.

I think there is a protest, he says, I want to see what’s happening, and I move with him again, submitting. He quickens his pace in tone with those moving around us, and soon we are jogging, dodging around people. Saleem, I say, I think we should turn back now. The crowd moves in unison, the police are hassled, shout into their radios, demanding reinforcements, there are people all around us now, and it is difficult to move. What’s happening, he asks the man standing next to him. There’s a new army base being built here, he shouts back through the clamour of the crowd, we are protesting against its construction. Let’s go, I say, and tug at his sleeve, there will be trouble. I take a step backwards, trying desperately to retreat through the crowd that is surging forward, gripping his wrist in an attempt to tow him after me. People shout at the police, curse them, and some of them pick up stones.

Saleem begins to retreat, his eyes scanning the surrounding crowd. He sees a teenager, little more than a boy, cradling a rock between his hands, under his chin. The boy kicks out at a cat that weaves its way through the crowd, hair standing on end, anxious to find an escape from the stamping feet. He strikes the cat hard with his foot on its left flank, the cat flees, the boy holds the rock closer to his chin, he is watching a policeman. A group of soldiers have arrived on the scene, are parading along in front of the crowd, but the boy’s eyes remain fixed on the policeman who is bellowing desperately into his radio. He watches the policeman, and Saleem notes that one of the soldiers is observing the boy. The crowd heaves forward, shouting something, we cannot hear the exact words of the chant, but it is about a homeland, the search for a home, it is an angry chant.

Saleem, I say, Saleem, let’s go now, the wedding. I’m not staying here, I’m going. And I begin to turn from him. And then the boy makes his move, the boy with the rock cradled between his hands, with visible determination he manoeuvres the small rock so that it rests in his right hand, he tilts his hand backwards, slowly and with utter concentration, and the rock lies at an angle from his body. All the time he watches the policeman.

Before he can release the rock, transform it into an angry missile, Saleem springs towards him, for here on this frozen spring day, on this white chalk road that snakes downwards towards a distant valley, he sees this boy’s life with such lucidity as if it were his own, he sees his life and what it will become if he throws the stone, the bleakness of his future if it meets his target, the darkness and the lack of hope, and the slow festering hatred inside him. He dives towards the boy, the energy and the madness of the people in this land, in this crowd, swelling through him as he leaps, reaching the boy a millisecond before the rock leaves his hand.

The boy looks at him, his mahogany eyes reading the intention in Saleem’s, but it is too late and when he casts the rock he has lost his focus, so that it whistles past the policeman’s left ear, before smashing onto the white road. Damn you, the boy curses at Saleem as he lands on him and they both tumble to the ground, the boy’s nails pinching Saleem’s back. But in the same moment a bullet is discharged, the roar of death in the sound is so very familiar to him, ringing out in the clear day, under the white sky that appears to have filled with snow, and the crowd is seized by panic, begins to disperse. The bullet sinks into Saleem’s flesh, he remains on the ground, the boy wriggles out from under him, crazed with fear, abandons him on the street and disappears amongst the masses who are fleeing up the mountain road, back towards the village with the narrow streets and tall buildings where they can disappear into the shadows.

S
OME
OF
them halt at a discreet distance, where they linger, shuffling their feet; others remain at the scene, screaming, panicked, but refusing to leave. In the dizziness of that moment you are aware of a great dart of ecstasy rushing through you as the boy escapes into the crowd, and disappears along the mountain road. He’s escaped, you want to shout, for never in your life have you known such ecstasy. You have a heightened sense of awareness in those moments: Sahar is hysterical, screaming, and there is another voice, a man, pleading with her to calm down. They hover over you, their faces blurred, and other images too, from long ago—your mother’s voice when you were young, the sunlit days of your childhood, the slap of the fishing line hitting the water, the thud of fish on a warm rock, the smell of the rosemary in the yard behind your home, the speckled metal of the junk Uncle Sabri collected there, and inside you the ardour for living that has always lived within soars to the surface, threatening to explode in a great rush of grief and desire; and you close your eyes for all that there is now is the eagerness in your heart to live, to refuse to succumb.

That is how you die: in the midst of an agitated fleeing mob, yet simultaneously in isolation, removed from everyone and everything, in complete and utter solitude you die, the face of your wife and a strange man hovering over you, quietly you creep from the world, it releases you, the world, with no questions, no recriminations, it simply lets you go, all is extinguished in that moment, everything that you are, and the girl knows it, the girl sees the life leave you, her hysteria intensifies, her screams grow louder and she beats at the soldier who stands by her side, and the soldier moves away from her in response to the orders of his supervisor, leaving her to kneel beside you until her screams become sobs and her breath becomes rakish and she clutches at her belly and moans in agony, and somebody shouts that she will need an ambulance first for the man is already dead.

C
HAPTER
29