Across the room, her mother had lifted her head to watch. Ellen felt the weight of the silence, of the room’s holding its breath.
‘This is the last letter we received from him,’ the daughter said. She traced the writing gently with her finger. ‘He says he is leaving Helmand, leaving the job with the military. We should expect him home.’ She paused, blinked, continued. ‘But he sounds upset. “Things are not as I thought,” he says. “Not at all.” He writes to Mama not to worry. He’ll find work in Kabul.’ She glanced up at Ellen. ‘He means some work for foreign journalists, like he did with you. Translating.’ She paused. ‘He liked to work with you. Always when you came here. He looked forward to it.’
Ellen nodded, holding her gaze. ‘I did too.’
The daughter sighed, turned back to the letter. ‘“Don’t be angry. I cannot stay here any longer. It is not honourable.” This is what he says.’ She looked up again and Ellen saw her hesitate before she decided to speak. ‘I think he sounds afraid.’
Ellen let her eyes fall to her own hands, limp in her lap. She forced herself to face this new thought of Jalil’s fear. It sat heavy in her gut. Was it fear for his life that had made him decide to leave? A wave of nausea took her. She clenched her hands into fists, resisting it, and saw her knuckles whiten. It is not honourable for me to stay, he’d written. Honour. A cornerstone for him, she knew that.
It’s my fault, she thought. His death. I could have stopped it. She closed her eyes, screening it all out, digging her nails into her palms. Her breaths were coming in short bursts in the quietness and she tried consciously to slow and lengthen them. The family mustn’t see her distress.
A splutter of static and microphone squeal broke into the room from outside as the dusk call to prayer began. It filled the silence, shimmering in through the open windows and across the room, a young male voice of sad sweetness. Ellen sat, rigid, feeling the blessing of prayer wash over them, low and melodious in its devotion. She concentrated on breathing. The room was soft with memories.
The first time she worked with Jalil, they’d embarked on an intense ten-day road trip, interviewing dozens of Afghans about the forthcoming elections. What did they expect from their politicians? Who did they support? They’d asked shopkeepers, housewives, farmers and traders, piecing together material for a four-page spread on the general mood and how Afghans saw their future.
She’d been given Jalil’s number over lunch in Islamabad. A friend on The New York Times had just come out of Afghanistan. With so many journalists swarming through Kabul, decent translators were thin on the ground.
‘Kinda young,’ he’d said, scribbling down the mobile phone number on a paper napkin. ‘But good. Smart as a whip.’
For the first three days of the trip, she’d wondered. Jalil had been nervous, stumbling over his English. He seemed shy. He was little more than twenty and she was used to working with older men, canny operators who were usually ex-journalists themselves. They could be cocky and not always trustworthy but they brimmed with confidence and they knew a story when they saw one. By comparison, Jalil seemed naive.
On the fourth day, they turned off the road and bumped along dirt to a cluster of mud-brick houses. A boy, herding goats, flattened himself against a wall to watch and was turned to a ghost by the fine brown dust beaten up by the wheels. Beyond him a thin man was tugging at a donkey whose body was rendered invisible by a vast load of brushwood. A girl with a dirt-encrusted face ran to the man and clutched at his leg as they passed, her eyes round.
The schoolteacher, a contact of Jalil’s, greeted them warmly. They sat cross-legged on cushions in his bare front room and drank green tea from tall glasses. Jalil translated back and forth. Yes, the schoolteacher told them, his voice measured, everyone in the village knew about the elections. He was encouraging them all to vote. But would the politicians help them? He had his doubts. Would they bring electricity to the village? And then, there was the school. He shook his head, his eyes pleading. He hadn’t been paid his salary for so long now, for four, five months. How could he—?
The throb of an approaching truck interrupted him. He looked towards the window, nodded to Jalil and, in the doorway, pushed his bare feet back into the sandals waiting there. Ellen sipped her scalding tea and listened to the slam of a truck door outside, then low voices.
The man who entered with him smiled round. He had a short beard and a brown Afghan hat and greeted them with easy confidence. Ellen sat up, interested, to watch. My cousin, said the schoolteacher, and clicked his fingers to his son to run for a fresh chai glass. Just a few minutes later, before the conversation had really resumed, Jalil got to his feet, thanked the schoolteacher and ushered Ellen hastily out of the house.
‘That was abrupt.’ Ellen watched the passing landscape with dismay from the back seat of the vehicle. They’d spent several hours driving out to find the schoolteacher and she’d left with barely half an interview. ‘What’s the hurry?’
Jalil was sitting in the front passenger seat by the driver. He mumbled something she didn’t catch.
‘He had more to say,’ she went on. The late morning sun was intense. Her head, encased in a headscarf, was already hot. ‘We didn’t have to leave just because his cousin came.’
‘That man he calls his cousin,’ Jalil turned back to her and lowered his voice, ‘he is not a good man.’
Ellen shook her head. ‘Why do you say that?’
Jalil raised his hand and worked it open and closed like the mouth of a glove puppet. ‘Blah blah,’ he said, snapping his thumb against his fingers. ‘He is a man to go blah blah blah to someone. To some powerful man. He came rushing to see us for a reason.’ He stared at Ellen. His voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘Maybe he is going blah blah to some Taliban.’
Ellen glanced out of the window at the swirling dust, the blank brown landscape. They were in the middle of nowhere. ‘Oh, come on.’
When she looked back at Jalil, he was frowning.
‘Maybe they’re just cousins.’ She sighed to herself. She’d hurt his pride. ‘He seemed friendly enough.’
‘You saw his smile?’
‘What about it?’
Jalil pointed to his own mouth. ‘So much of gold in his teeth. New gold.’
Ellen shrugged. So what? He had gold teeth.
‘His watch?’ Jalil ran his hand round his wrist. ‘Foreign watch. New.’ Jalil paused, watching her reaction. ‘Who gave him all this money?’
He faced forward again. His hair was sticking together in clumps along the top of his neck.
Ellen thought about what he’d said. The teeth, the watch. She hadn’t noticed them. Jalil had. ‘He could be a businessman,’ she said. ‘A trader.’
Jalil gave a dismissive grunt. ‘Business?’ He gestured out of the window at the emptiness of the desert. ‘Here?’
She paused and considered. Maybe Jalil was smarter than he looked. He just wasn’t loud. ‘Blah, blah,’ she said. She was used to Afghan men with big egos. Jalil was different. She lifted her own hand and opened and closed it like a mouth, as he had done. ‘Blah blah, blah blah.’
He turned back to see and she snapped her hand open and closed at him until they both started to laugh, saying ‘blah, blah’ stupidly to each other as the driver swung back onto the road and they headed through the dry, swirling dust towards the next village.
Now, in this grieving house, the call to prayer gave a final burst of static and came to a close. Silence reached into the room. Ellen shifted her weight. It was already late.
‘Manana.’ Thank you. She placed her right hand on her heart in a gesture of thanks and bowed her head to Jalil’s mother. Ellen unravelled her legs and rubbed her ankles to bring them back to life. She