The Ink Bridge (34 page)

Arezu talked to the old man. He nodded and began to speak. He talked for a long time, pausing to hawk and spit out the door, and once to scribble on the cave floor with a stick. When he had finished Arezu turned to me.

‘He knows the boy. He came when he was young with his father. They camped nearby in a cave. He fell into the water and the
pir
had to save him. That was a long time ago.'

‘Was that all he said?'

‘Wait, I am getting to the rest.' Arezu sips her tea. ‘He came back here, before last winter. He was older, much older. The Taliban had stolen his tongue. It was hard for them to talk because he had no words. He could only write his thoughts in the dirt with a stick. His dirt-words said that it was unsafe for him in Bamiyan, even with the Taliban gone. That there was a man there who wanted to kill him.'

‘The Snake. So he ended up back in Bamiyan too. I knew it would be bad for Omed to come home. He did it to protect my father and me.'

Arezu continues, ‘He lives on the far side of the lake. The
pir
hardly sees him. Sometimes there is some smoke. He doesn't know how he survives the winter. He has no animal to keep him warm.'

‘I have to go there,' I say.

From the square of light we can see the other side of the lake. It looks hazy and very far away.

‘We can't be out after dark, Hec.'

‘Arezu, I am so close. I can't give up on him again.'

‘It's too dangerous.'

‘Go back with Sameer. I'll be okay.'

‘You don't speak the language. You don't know the customs. How can you think you'll be okay? Word will have gone around that a foreigner went out walking and hasn't returned. Sure, this is the safest province in Afghanistan, but these are a poor people. And you are just dollars on legs.'

‘I have to do it.'

‘And what about me?'

‘You'll be okay. Go to Sameer and drive back to Bamiyan. There is still time before nightfall.'

‘That is not what I mean. What if something happens to you? What do I do?'

I place my hand on her shoulder. ‘No one will hold you responsible for me.'

She shrugs me off and stands up. The ceiling of the hut is so low that she has to crook her neck. It makes her fury seem worse: a hooked weapon, a bend of barbed wire. ‘You are so stupid sometimes!' she shouts.

I watch her from the door as she stumbles back along the path, leaving clouds of dust behind her. The
pir
mumbles something to me that I cannot understand. It could be advice about goats or girls or about the danger of walking alone.

I walk alone. It is not like walking through a forest or a city where the path ahead is obscured. Here everything can be seen for ten kilometres, from the turreted mountains to the broken-biscuit shoreline. I feel exposed. I wonder what the range of a Kalashnikov is? And who could be hiding behind the rocks?

I whistle a tune that comes up from my nervy depths
.
Why exactly whistling should make things better is beyond me. Perhaps it is just company of sorts, a cheerful but slightly stupid friend.

Dad and I would watch the Monty Python movie
Life of
Brian
every weekend. The final scene was the best: where Brian is being crucified with a bunch of others and his mum turns up and says (we'd put on her shemale voice), ‘Go ahead, be crucified. See if I care.'

And then we'd whistle loud until our cheeks hurt:
Always
Look on the Bright Side of Life.
Loud enough that it would seep through the door of Mum's room where she would be curled on the bed. And it would cover her like a balm, like aloe on sunburn.

From the far shore I can see the cave of the
pir
like a mouth opened to the lake. Ahead is the small jumble of mud walls that the old man had pointed out.

Each step becomes a heartbeat and I feel the distance between Omed and me closing. It has been seven long years and so much has changed, yet so much has stayed the same. I remember when I met Omed in the candle factory, when he had first showed me what bravery meant. How he had stood up for what he believed. In the end that had been his undoing.

As I get closer, the walls form three collapsed buildings. A fourth, still standing, has a rough roof of saplings and mud. The place will soon disappear back into the land it was coaxed from. There is a thin wisp of smoke coming from an opening in the roof. I breathe deeply.

The door is made of sticks bound with loops of wire. This is no more than an abandoned summer camp for herdsmen. On one corner of the roof, a meagre crop of
qarghana
is drying. I knock. It is an absurd little noise in this big space, no more than bird-chitter or the rub of a cricket's legs. The door opens on its wire hinge.

A man with a moustache appears. He hides his body behind the door, but I can see its outline through the branch bars. He looks at me as if daring me to speak. Inside, the
qarghana
fire crackles. There is no other sound.

I reach out slowly with my hand. Omed's hand comes to meet it. Our fingers touch and wrap over each other. We stand there for a while looking at each other over the bridge we have formed. A bridge that has crossed so much distance and difference, and survived for so many years. Then he opens the door and pulls me to him, hugging me so tight I think he may break my ribs.

The room has so little: a couple of hessian sacks on a bed made of tree branches, a woollen coat on a peg thrust into the wall. Omed pulls the pot from his tiny fire and makes us a glass of
chay
.

I don't know where to start. I don't know if he realises that I can speak. He is still locked in his silence and will be forever.

I pull out my journal to show him a photo of my father I have stuck between the pages. He grabs it from me and flips through the pages, smiling, as if recalling something sweet.

He scribbles in the air with his fingers and I pass him a pen. He begins to write, slowly and fluidly, relishing the touch of the pen on the page. Each loop is an arabesque, each plunge, a dive from a highwire. I read over his shoulder like a peeping Tom.

I have waited for this day, my friend. I never stopped thinking of you or the kindness you and your father showed me.

He hands me the journal and I say, ‘I can speak now, Omed.' But he shakes his head and pushes the pen into my hand. So I write my response:

I have waited for this day too. Our friendship meant so much to me at a time when I most needed it. We started a bridge between us when we met. Today we can lay the last stone.

It is a very slow way to speak and the words are there forever. It is a high-stakes conversation.

Omed rises from his spot on the floor. He picks something from a stone shelf. He holds it in his fist above my hand. As I open my palm, he drops it in.

It glints in the firelight. I grip it between my thumb and forefinger so it can draw the warmth from the fire. It is the fish-jewel that the fisho gave me all that time ago. The same jewel that I gave to Omed when he left. He picks up the pen and writes again:

I knew one day you would collect it.

I unwrap something of my own. Something I brought from home that will complete his story. It is a metal arm with the letter ‘e' stamped at one end from Mum's typewriter – the one he wrote his story on when we lived beneath the same roof. It is to replace the one that was missing from his father's typewriter when he was a boy. I write:

This is for your father. To lay his story to rest, to complete it.

He grabs the pen quickly.

It is you that must tell his story. I have entrusted it to you.

With the pen back in my hand, I do not know what to write. I consider each word before I put it down.

It is an honour to tell his story. And to tell yours. I don't know if I have the ability to do it well.

The pen is back in his hand.

You will do it well because your heart is in it.

The pen is still, but the ink it has left dances under the firelight. Outside, the sun is setting. I talk then and my voice is a bucket in a deep well.

‘What happened to the Snake?'

He paid to have me shot when I returned to Bamiyan. I came here to wait. He was killed in a knife fight in Badakhshan. I heard it was over a shipment of opium. He lived like a snake and eventually he swallowed his own poison. The Talib had been forced from the valley. I hope they will never return. It was a matter of waiting.

‘And now you can go home, Omed.'

My home is here now. My family is scattered.

‘I met Leyli.'

Omed's eyes brighten. He writes:

Was she well
?

I don't know what to say. She wasn't sick, that much is true, but that is only part of the story. Do I need to tell him what he already knows, that Leyli, the daughter of an educated man, is the second wife of a greybeard? That she has forgotten how to read and is raising illiterate children on stale bread and
chay
? That the power of the written word means nothing in her village? ‘She is well,' I lie. ‘You should go to her.'

Omed circles the words:
My home is here now,
as if it is an incantation that will protect him from the snow and bullets. When dark comes there is nothing to do but sleep. In the dark I cannot read the thoughts that Omed places so carefully on the page. He has no light, except that of the fire, and he feeds it sparingly.

I hear Omed's breath slow and deepen. The outline of his body is a dark island on the floor next to me. I fling out my arm and find the end of his shirt with my fingers. I grip it tight and fall asleep myself.

The sun comes across the lake like it is running from something. I have been sitting on the shore for an hour waiting for it. A light breeze hits the water and I feel as if I can breathe for the first time in over a week. I have done what I set out to do – I have found Omed. All that is left is to write it all down. That is the easy part.

I flip open the journal. There is nothing more scary and exhilarating than this fresh page. The possibilities are endless. I write the date and
Band-e Zulfiqar
. I draw Ali's sword under it, long so it touches both margins. I grip the pen between my teeth and make myself comfortable on the rock.