The Watch
ALSO BY JOYDEEP ROY-BHATTACHARYA
The Storyteller of Marrakesh
The Gabriel Club
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA
Copyright © 2012 Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2012 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, and simultaneously in the United States of America by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.
Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Permission credits appear on
this page
.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Roy-Bhattacharya, Joydeep
The watch / Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya.
eISBN: 978-0-307-40252-3
I. Title.
PR9499.3.R596W38 2012 823′.914 C2011-908136-9
Jacket design: Tal Goretsky
Jacket images:
(Chinook helicopter)
: © Pool/Reuters/Corbis;
(U.S. Marines with the Female Engagement Team)
: Lynsey Addario/VII;
(Afghan shepherd girl)
: Reuters/Arko Datta;
(U.S. soldier)
: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic;
(members of the security detail for Eikenberry in front of Chinook helicopter)
: Reuters/Tim Wimborne
v3.1
This book is dedicated to the people of Afghanistan
And to
Chris Hedges
,
Preceptor, Exemplar
Rick Sullivan
,
Officer, Gentleman
&
Jonathan Shay
Physician, Healer
Contents
I know that I must die
,
E’en hadst thou not proclaimed it; and if death
Is thereby hastened, I shall count it gain
.
For death is gain to him whose life, like mine
,
Is full of misery. Thus my lot appears
Not sad, but blissful; for had I endured
To leave my mother’s son unburied there
,
I should have grieved with reason, but not now
.
—S
OPHOCLES
,
Antigone
COMBAT OUTPOST
TARSÂNDAN
K
ANDAHAR
P
ROVINCE
A
FGHANISTAN
ANTIGONE
O
NE.
Two.
Three.
Four. I count the moments and say the Basmala in my head.
In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful …
It’s up to me now. I’m scared: my hands are shaking, my mouth is dry. I cast a look back at the mountains where I have spent my life, where I was born, where my family died. All my family, that is, except my brother, Yusuf. I remember what Yusuf said before he set off to storm the fort: There are moments when, in order to be master of a situation, you have to go mad and keep your head at the same time.
I remember this as I turn the wheels of my cart and trundle down the sloping track to the square field and the fort. They’ve leveled everything here: there are no trees, and there’s no vegetation, not a
semblance of shade; the earth is dry and cracked and already scorching hot despite the early hour. Dust swirls about me; the sun blazes down on the drab earthworks of the fort. The ground is scored with boot marks and the tracks of many vehicles. Piled up on one side of the fortifications is a jumble of rubbish: discarded oil cans, bent iron posts, and plastic bags and buckets. The only signs of life are occasional metallic glints reflecting the rising sun, and a vertical line of smoke. This arid landscape could not be more different than the fertile green valley I started out from. It’s a desolate prospect, and yet I’ve spent my entire overnight journey across the mountains waiting for this sight.
As I push against the ground with my hands to propel the cart forward, I think of the precarious mountain trails and can hardly believe I’ve made it here with nothing more than the strength of my puny arms and shoulders. Some of my muscles are raw to the touch, like open wounds; others are dead to all sensation. The stumps of my legs, only recently healed, have begun to bleed; the constant thrusting forward required by my journey has rubbed the sutures raw. I ignore the pain; I ignore everything except the fact of my being here. I tell myself that I am here because my heart is huge and my tenderness real. I am here to bury my brother according to the tenets of my faith. That is all there is to it.
A body covered with buzzing flies bars my path. I feel the bile rising up my throat. With a sense of unreality, I lean out of my cart and turn the body over. It isn’t Yusuf, but a youth lying with his face down and a bullet hole through his forehead. Blood has congealed over one eye; the other is closed. I let him go and recite the Janaza over him. Some distance away, another body lies huddled. It’s Rehmat, one of Yusuf’s men, his black turban unraveling in loops as I raise his head. Rehmat was immensely strong: he could lift an entire felled oak with one hand. Now the lifeless hand rests limply against mine. I let him go and sit back in the cart. A flock of crows wheels impatiently in the
air. High overhead a vulture flaps its wings and prepares to land. A flag at one corner of the fort snaps like gunshot in the breeze. Already I feel worn out. My brother was a fool to attack here: behind its multiple barriers of barbed wire, sandbags, and mud-and-stone walls, the fort looks impregnable.
I move forward and approach the third, and last, body lying in the field. It’s Bahram Gul, the oldest of Yusuf’s companions, who once brought me a posy of mountain daisies when I was a child. His open mouth is unnaturally red, his hennaed beard encrusted with crimson muck. Bahram loved to sing; then the Talib came and he fell silent and tended to his fields. But lately he’d taken up singing again. His voice echoes through my head as I leave him behind. Bahram’s daughter Anisa was my closest friend before she died in childbirth. Now they will meet again. I envy them the good fortune of their reunion.
A puff of dust kicks up from the ground to my left. I see it out of the corner of my eye before I smell its burning scent and hear the high-pitched ringing sound. My brain dulled from my recent exertions, I keep pushing myself forward until a second puff kicks up fiercely to my right. That’s when it dawns on me that I am being fired at. When the third bullet shrills past, I come to a stop. The silence seems to last a lifetime. The shadow of a solitary cloud drifts across the land.
I reach up and touch the taweez around my neck. Many years ago, Father brought back a written prayer from the shrine of a Sufi Pir near Zareh Sharan, and I’ve worn it sewn into a leather pouch ever since. Now the leather’s softness reassures me. Instead of looking at the fort to see who’s firing at me, I look behind at the mountains. They stand like faithful sentinels in the sky, their enormity dwarfing everything. When I turn around again toward the fort, it seems shrunken in contrast and no longer as intimidating. I see it for what it really is: a rudimentary structure slapped together with adobe, sandbags, and drywall. An alien accretion.
I hold up one of Yusuf’s white shirts and wave it in the air.
Moments later, a metallic voice echoes across the field and asks me what I want. Tsë ghwâre? it asks. Although it speaks Pashto, the voice has a distinct Tajik ring to it. I am not surprised.
The fort seems very far away. I make my own voice big and answer that I am here to bury my brother, who was killed in the battle yesterday. I am his sister, I call out. My name is Nizam.
There is a lull, and then the voice asks: What is your brother’s name?
I tell them. Once again, there is a silence. I try to picture how they must see me from their side: a small, shrouded figure in a wooden cart slung low on the ground. I imagine their surprise. I must take advantage of it.
The voice breaks the silence. I detest its metallic gargle.
It asks: Who told you that you could find him here?
I reply: Those who survived the battle.
What does he look like?