touched his fingers to his pounding temples.
The Romanian did not move. Kane tapped him on the shoulder. ‘I said just shift…’
The Romanian sprang around. ‘What are you?’ he demanded. ‘Some kind of imbecile?’ Then, ‘You! Go!’ he insisted, flapping Kane away as if he were some kind of vile bluebottle.
‘Go where?’ Kane tapped his index finger against his own chest. ‘This is where I live, you moron. This is my home.’
Kelly attempted to struggle up again.
The Romanian turned – ‘Idiot girl!’ – and firmly pushed her back down.
‘Ow!’ she expostulated, plaintively, as her bony arse made contact with the stone step.
At the sight of the Romanian manhandling Kelly, Kane completely lost it. He grabbed him by the shoulders – as if to spin him around again – but the Romanian was already moving smoothly of his own volition, and as he turned, his right fist turned with him. He punched Kane in the chest with it, then followed through with a hard left to his gut. They were powerful punches.
Kane doubled over with an embarrassing squeak. He saw the Romanian starting to lift his knee, then hesitating, as if re-considering delivering him a swift kick to the groin area (although it was still very obvious – even to him – that if the Romanian had seriously wanted to finish him off, he probably already would’ve. Those were amazing punches for a man of his stature – he was 5' 5" at a push).
Kane remained down for a few seconds (catching his breath, consolidating, thinking this all over), before his watering eyes finally settled on the steaming coffee Thermos (Ye Gods! A gift!), and, quick as a flash, he’d grabbed it, straightened up, and thrown the contents into the Romanian’s face.
The Romanian screamed. Kelly screamed (she was splattered, and the Romanian staggered sideways, accidentally knocking into her). Kane dropped the Thermos and heard the glass break inside of it (he took an active – almost adolescent – pleasure in the sound of its fracturing).
The Thermos had been open for some minutes and the coffee wasn’t exactly boiling, but it was hot enough. The Romanian was scalded, yet seemed far more concerned by the damage to his clothing. He was hopping mad.
‘This is my work shirt!’ he yelled, pulling the still-steaming fabric away from his hairy chest, gesticulating wildly. ‘You have ruined me!’
Kane suddenly started laughing. It was a hoarse laugh (he was winded). He pointed, weakly, at the ruined shirt (it was hardly the most glamorous-looking garment he’d ever laid eyes upon). The Romanian, meanwhile, had noticed his damaged Thermos. He snatched it up from the paving, almost howling.
‘My Thermos!’ he wailed (his pronunciation of the brand-name was – even to Kane’s ears – rather endearing). ‘What have you done?’
At this point a second man arrived; another entry-phone engineer, potentially the Romanian’s senior. He had Kelly’s two lurchers with him.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked the Romanian. The Romanian didn’t answer. Instead he took the Thermos – his knuckles white with fury – and threw it, violently, against the nearest windowpane. The window – it was a large, double-glazed one – chipped but did not shatter.
Even so, the second entry-phone man was visibly alarmed by this display. ‘Gaffar,’ he gasped, ‘are you off your fuckin’ head?!’
Gaffar stood his ground, his arms at his sides, breathing heavily (like the Invisible Hulk, transforming), his fists clenching and unclenching (‘the glass hasn’t shattered, dammit’ – his eyes were screaming – ‘so now I might be obliged to hospitalise somebody’). ‘That’s not even my window,’ Kane said, still chuckling, still limply pointing, like everything was a joke to him.
The second engineer glanced down at Kelly. ‘You all right there, love?’
Kelly nodded. Her eyes were closed now. She was resting her head against the door. Her face was very pale. One of the lurchers nuzzled her open hand. At its tender ministrations she emitted a gentle groan.
In the midst of all his hilarity, it finally dawned on Kane that she might not actually be bullshitting him about the fall. Had she fallen? He peered down at her, properly. He blinked (it was almost as though he hadn’t seen her there before –
Kelly?).
His mirth evaporated. A shattered piece of shin-bone was poking out – like a discarded lolly stick – through the tight, smooth flesh just underneath her knee. The lower half of her leg was purpling and swollen to almost twice its normal proportions. Her trainer was off (lying on the ground nearby, next to her slightly mangled-looking Nokia). If her foot was a balloon, then it’d been pumped too full of air (looked like some kind of zeppelin sent up to advertise a discount shoe-store; or one of those themed lilos which kids loved to bob around upon, in the hotel pool, on holiday).
It was gruesome. As a boy Kane suddenly remembered shoving a piece of driftwood into the heart of a beached-up, blue-white jelly-fish (to see if it was alive, to see how it would react). That was her leg – what it reminded him of –
Christ –
What a cruel child I was
He glanced over at the Romanian. The Romanian was standing exactly as before (arms down, fists clenched, breathing, breathing). His cheeks were wet – were shiny – with remnants of the coffee. In the distance Kane picked out the insistent bray of an ambulance –
Hee-haw!
Hee-haw!
Oh shit.
If the Romanian had punched him again – right there, right then: square in the face – he would’ve considered it an act of the most extreme beneficence.
His full name was Gaffar Celik and he wasn’t Romanian. He was a Kurd. He had just turned twenty-four. He was born in a poor town called Silopi, in Turkey, on the Iraqi border. His father had died – when Gaffar was only three – working as a Village Guard in a private army under the control of a Kurdish feudal lord. His mother had then taken them eastward (Gaffar, and his younger brother), first to Marlin (to stay with her widowed father), then on (when he passed) to be with her sister, in the beautiful mountainous village of Hasankeyf.
Hasankeyf was a kind of tabernacle to Kurdish culture (40 miles from Batman, straddling the Tigris River), and the sister was married to a man whose paternal line had found gainful employment for over twelve generations guiding tourists around the ancient sights there (the legendary caves, the remains of the old bridge, the magnificent obelisk, the beautiful, stone archway).
But few people visited them any more. The Turkish government had plans to flood the town as part of the Llisu Dam project, and so, gradually, one by one, the tour operators had wiped them from the cultural map (the south east had always been a difficult area). The decision – they insisted – was in no way political (to systematically flood all significant Kurdish landmarks? But what, they asked gently, was remotely contentious in that?).
Sometimes Gaffar felt like they were already submerged (there just wasn’t actually any water, yet), that they had been abandoned, betrayed, cut off. But he was not bitter (had no time for bitterness). He merely felt a dreamy nostalgia (for a non-existent future), coupled with a tender, almost poignant, regret.
Occasionally – and with scant warning – things could turn nasty. Battalions of Turkish soldiers would suddenly descend upon them, en masse, and burn down people’s homes (frighten them, move them on, accuse them of insurrection, of supporting the PKK and the Kurdish Revolution). Gaffar’s family were just one among many (the working estimation stood at 70,000) to be methodically oppressed (and displaced) in this