The Ink Bridge (7 page)

In Lahore, the Snake found a room with one bed and mint-green walls flecked with blood. Huge scabs of paint hung from the ceiling and trembled as a sour breeze blew over them. Omed lay on the bed and watched television – Channel V from India. Girls with long blonde hair danced to furious beats while, outside, a thousand kites climbed above the city. It was Pakistan that had bred the Taliban, but Pakistan did not have the stomach for their ways.

The Snake swung open the door. ‘I need one hundred dollars,' he said.

Omed shook his head.

‘For passports. We need identities if we are to travel to Australia. We must have our photos taken. And then I need to go alone for the passports. Do you think these people will want a boy meddling in their affairs? I am known to them. You, they do not know.'

A grin slithered onto his face and his big eye shone like a coin. ‘I see you are questioning if you can trust me,' he said, ‘But the question you need to ask is not
if
you can trust me, but how can you afford
not
to trust me?'

The photo shop was near the hotel. The air was filled with smoke and car fumes, music wailed from speakers. They were told not to smile. They were told the photos would be ready in three hours.

Back at the hotel, Omed lay on the bed and watched kites tumbling above the city. Even though the window was cracked and dirty, and the curtains ravaged with holes, the kites signalled the beginning of spring.

Omed thought of the time an American had bought him a kite. He was wealthy. Omed and Zakir had known it when they saw him – his jacket with button-down pockets, the thick boots, the metal bottle he sipped water from. It was before the Taliban, before they banned kite-flying, when the skies of Bamiyan were hung with diamonds of coloured paper.

‘Watch this,' said Zakir as he smacked the dust from his hat and walked straight up to the foreigner. ‘Yo lak kite?' he asked.

The American had squinted at him. Zakir only partly blocked the sun. He took a sip from his bottle. ‘Some,' he said.

‘We lak kite.' Zakir pointed his thumb at himself and then Omed.

‘Good for you, boys,' said the American and got up from the low wall he was sitting on.

Zakir followed. ‘I lak kite. We lak kite. Please to buy.'

The American turned. ‘Look, you seem like nice kids, but if it's all the same to you I'd rather not buy you a kite.' The man pulled at his shirt collar. ‘God, it's hotter than the devil's underpants out here. Thought it'd be cold. Expected snow and ice.'

Omed could see the man was uncomfortable; he tugged on Zakir's sleeve. ‘We should go, Zakir. The American does not want to buy kites.'

‘Omed, be brave. If you want something you must ask for it. This is the way of the world.'

It was true, Zakir was much braver than him. He led while Omed followed. He would be a great man one day; Omed knew this and kept close to Zakir in the hope that some of his friend's bravery may come to him.

‘Meestar, come, one kite.' Zakir walked backwards in front of the man.

‘Look, son, you think I'm made of money? Sure I've come to look at your statues from halfways around the world, but I'm just a poor sucker like you, just born in a different country is all.'

Zakir shook his head. Omed could almost hear the strange language rattling around in Zakir's brain. Omed was the one who knew English. He should talk to the American. ‘One kite, meestar,' Zakir said. ‘One kite.'

The man stopped walking, bit his bottom lip. ‘I'm too soft for this place. Too soft. They said before I left, why not Europe, why India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, why there? They were right. Too soft.' He stared at Omed. ‘Spose you'll be wanting one too, huh?'

Omed smiled at the man.

‘I must have “sucker” tattooed here in big letters across my head, in Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi and just about every other language under the sun. Sucker, that's me.'

Zakir led the way to the kite shop. They picked the biggest, the brightest. They got large spools with powdered glass thread. Omed's was fire-red and perfect, but when he got it home his mother made him sell it back to the shopkeeper so they could buy bread for the family and a sack of lentils and a flyblown neck of goat.

Even when his father had lived, there were often times when they were hungry. Words were worth little. Less even than half the value of a kite, which was all the shopkeeper would pay.

The American caught him two days later near the river. ‘Where's the kite?' he demanded. Omed just shook his head and pretended he didn't understand, but the shame he felt, the overpowering disgrace of his poverty, made him want to weep.

The man shouted after him. ‘That's gratitude for you, hey.'

‘I need the one hundred dollars now,' said the Snake, getting up from a lopsided chair.

Omed opened the tin. The rolls of American dollars were faded black and green, torn and shabby. Pulling the rubber band from one roll, he peeled off five twenty-dollar bills. The Snake's small eye widened until the pupil was as big and black as a lychee seed. Omed stuffed the remaining money back in the tin and handed over the one hundred dollars.

‘I will return with the passports,' said the Snake as he left the room.

After he had gone, Omed wondered if the Snake would return or if it was just another trick to milk a stupid village boy of more money. He cursed himself for being so unwise. But as the time passed he realised that to be free of the Snake was worth a hundred American dollars. He would just have to find the path to Australia by himself.

Dread struck at him with heavy paws, sharp claws sunk into soft flesh; his stomach spilled outwards. He was a village boy who had landed beyond the horizon of the known lands. He had seen the world only through his father's books. And how little those words had prepared him.

The kites outside clashed. The powdered glass strings cut against each other. One drifted off. Torn by a violent wind, it spiralled up to meet the dark clouds that had formed over Lahore. Rain, in huge spots, stained the streets. Soon all the paper kites were drawn back to earth.

Reaching under his pillow, Omed pulled out the tin box. He ran his hands over it and felt the roughness of rust under the swirls of his fingerprints. He slipped a small finger into a hole that may have been made by a bullet. Omed opened the box and stared at the rolls of dollars pressed against each other, like bodies. He removed the bands and spread the notes over the bed, faces of high-browed men staring back at him. Solid, square faces hacked from stone. Some bearded, others balding or with hair rising like clouds from their mountainous scalps. For these faces, men would kill. These slips of paper could mean freedom or death.

Omed piled the notes into groups of faces. One dollar – white hair, solemn as a mullah. Five dollars – rock jaw, fringed with beard. Ten dollars – high forehead, strange shirt. Twenty dollars – wild poet's hair. Fifty dollars – stern, beard too short to please the Taliban. He counted all the piles and stored the number in his head. Seven thousand, five hundred and ninety-six American dollars. More money than he had ever seen in his lifetime. How had the Poet of Kandahar collected it all? He looked as poor as anyone. It was a lot of money. If Omed could return home, his family could live like kings.

But he could never return home. Even seven thousand, five hundred and ninety-six dollars could not stop a whistling bullet from a Kalashnikov.

The Snake had robbed him of one hundred dollars already and they had spent money on a bus journey, the hotel and on bribes. Out the window, Omed could see people bending, sitting, pacing, stretching, scratching. Any of them, all of them, could steal the money. It was not a rich place; some people would kill for half the amount. Omed pulled the shabby curtain across, tearing a corner in his haste. The burden of the money was too great and he fell onto the bed, his lips touching faces and numbers.

‘Of course I would return,' said the Snake as he sat down in his crooked chair. He couldn't keep his eyes from the bed filled with dollars. ‘Here!' He threw Omed a Pakistani passport.

The photo was his, but the name was Mohammed Afghani. Omed held the passport to his face and pointed to the name.

‘Oh, I am so sorry,' said the Snake. ‘I will take it straight back and tell these men that the Shah of Hazarajat is displeased.' He cleared his throat, drew the curtain and spat into the street. ‘Would you be so stupid as to allow a name to stand between you and freedom?'

Omed shook his head as he stuffed the notes back into the tin, closing the lid tightly.

‘Listen, my friend.' The Snake's voice softened and he put his arm around Omed's shoulder. ‘If you would trust me and let me hold the money for safekeeping, our journey would be a smooth one. With you clutching the purse, I cannot protect you.'

Omed shrugged his arm off and pushed him away. The Snake growled and shoved Omed onto the bed, where he clipped his head on the wooden edge. The Snake's eyes were bloodshot, whites the colour of ghee. He brought his face close to Omed's. There was hashish smoke on his breath. A forked tongue slid along the broken edges of his teeth.

‘You should be careful. A boy alone in a foreign city is subject to many dangers. A boy with a lot of money could be at risk. A boy with no history, no family, could disappear like water into the earth.'

The Snake grabbed the box and walked to the door. Omed's world went red. Like the last day of the Stone People. His blood burned in his arms and thighs. Omed leapt at the Snake's back and as they fell to the ground, the Snake's face smashed heavily into the door. He rolled over and his fat tongue, with the split tip, lolled out of his mouth. Blood wept from a cut above his eye, onto the stained carpet.

Omed prised the dirty fingers from the box. Then, grabbing the Snake by his heels, he dragged him towards the centre of the room and opened the door. He jumped the stairs two, three at a time and ran into the street.

He ran, dodging trucks and motorbikes; cracked concrete and oozing gutters blurring beneath his feet. His feet slapped the ground, beating out a rhythm that kept him moving. His breath was sharp, his heart lunging in his chest. There was no time to think about where he was going. He just kept running.