lashed out and the heavy sandal hit its jaw hard enough for it to lose courage. Then the oldest of the dogs, fangs yellowed, fur greying, threw back its head and howled.
In the night he had seen the dull lights of the village. He had staggered to within a hundred yards of the nearest building, then collapsed. He had lain down on the dirt and stones, beside a fence of cut thornbushes, had heard voices and known that he did not have the strength to go the last hundred yards from the fence to the nearest building – and he had slept. The sleep had killed the pain that eked from each muscle in his body. If it had not been for the dogs pulling at him, Caleb would have slept on through the dawn, until the sun was high.
He could see a dozen low-built homes of mud bricks, flat-roofed, beyond a maze of small, fenced fields. The dogs watched him, wary of him, and the warning howl had not been answered: the doors stayed shut. To the side of the community's homes, separated from them, was a compound walled with stones and bricks – new, he thought – and above the walls bright flags of white and red and green fluttered from poles, and Caleb knew that it was a recently constructed cemetery, a shrine to men buried as martyrs.
If he were to find his family, Caleb needed food, water and clothes, and he needed help.
He pushed himself up but his knees gave under him and he sprawled back on the ground. The second time he tried he was able to stand. His legs were in agony, and his arms, shoulders and chest.
He had no choice but to approach the village. He bent and picked up a stone, hurled it at the oldest dog, the pack leader. His decision was made: he must approach the village. In all the life he knew – two years and then twenty months – decisions had never come hard to him. He was too weak to skirt the village, to put off the crisis moment of contact. He had to trust and hope.
He knew that his arrival would cause panic. At Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta, the interrogators had told him that the power of A1
Qaeda was broken, for ever, in Afghanistan, and he had believed them, and that the leaders of his family were in flight; it had been the story they told to encourage him to confess involvement and contacts
… but he was just a taxi-driver, Fawzi al-Ateh, and he knew nothing.
To return to his family he must go to the village and hope for help.
The dogs trailed him. Half-way to the village, staggering, unable to walk with a steady stride, he saw a woman's face at the window of the nearest house. She ducked away and the nearer he went to the house, the greater the cacophony of barking. A door opened.
A man, half dressed, roused from sleep, was framed in the doorway, a rifle raised to his shoulder.
Caleb's life, at that moment, hung by a thread.
He knew that in some villages the Arabs of the 055 Brigade had been detested, seen as arrogant foreigners. Now he might be shot, or he might be bound and sold back to the Americans. He straightened his back, and smiled. He spoke in the language he had learned, the language he had used in Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta, that of Fawzi al-Ateh.
He greeted the man who aimed the rifle at him. 'Peace be on you.'
The response was suspicious and grudging. 'On you be peace.'
Caleb knew the weapon. He could have stripped it blindfolded in daylight or darkness and reassembled it. The safety catch was off, the finger was on the trigger, not the guard. He stood his ground and held out his arms, scratched and scraped from the times, beyond counting, that he had fallen; he showed he had no weapon. The rifle barrel lowered, then dropped. He ducked his head, a pose of humility, but he showed no fear. Like the dogs, the man would associate fear with deceit. Quietly, Caleb asked for hospitality, shelter and help.
Without taking his eyes off Caleb, the man shouted instructions to the older child. Caleb understood him. The child led, and Caleb followed, the man behind him. The store shed was of brick, with mud daubed over it. The child opened a heavy door, then ran. Caleb went inside. He saw goats, and their fodder, long-handled spades and… The door was slammed shut behind him, darkness closed round him, and he heard the fastening of the door. There were no windows. Outside, the man would now be squatted with his rifle, watching the door while the child went to bring the village elders.
He sat on a carpet of hay and the goats nuzzled against him. They might kill him and bury his body in the village's rubbish tip, or sell him, or they might help him.
He slept.
Later Caleb was woken by the sound of the door scraping open.
He staggered out into the brilliance of the sunshine, and sat cross-legged on the ground in front of a horseshoe of the village men. The oldest men were in the centre. He told his story. They might hate the Arabs of Al Qaeda, they might have fought alongside them. He spoke the truth as he knew it. His voice was soft, gentle and without hesitation. Their faces were impassive. As he spoke, a helicopter flew high overhead. His presence endangered the village. The village would have wealth beyond the dreams of any of the tribesmen if they sold him on. From the moment he held out his right arm and showed them the plastic bracelet with his photograph on it and the name of Fawzi al-Ateh, and the reference US8AF-000593DP, he knew he was believed. He was tall for an Arab, but had swarthy coloured skin, and in his time in their country he had learned their language well. They listened, were spellbound, but it was not until the end of his story, when he ducked his head to show he acknowledged that his life lay in their hands, that he knew he would not be shot or sold.
The oldest village man came to him, lifted him, then walked him to the cemetery.
A year before, fighters had been killed a day's walk from the village, caught on foot and in the open by helicopters. The younger men of the village, with mules, had brought their bodies here. They were buried with honour… The fighters were Shuhadaa, martyrs in the name of God. Their bodies lay in the cemetery, their spirits were in Paradise.
That afternoon a messenger left the village with the name of Abu Khaleb carried in his mind, along with the name of the Chechen, to travel into the mountains to the encampment of a warlord.
That evening a kid was killed, gutted and skinned, and a fire was lit. Caleb was fed and given juice to drink.
That night, his orange overalls were thrown on to the dying fire and they burned bright. He wore the clothes of a young man from the village.
That week he was the protected guest of the village while the elders waited for instructions on how the journey to return Caleb to his family could be achieved. And he did not know how long that journey would be, or where it would take him, or to what fate – but he knew that he would make that journey.
Chapter Two
Caleb's body and face were flooded by the light. The men around him scattered.
The week in the village had passed quickly. He had rested, then he had worked at his strength and gone into the hills above the village to exercise his leg muscles and expand his lungs. He had eaten well and had known that the villagers used precious supplies of meat, rice and flour to feed him. When he had left the village, armed men had accompanied him; he was never out of their sight. The code of these people, he knew, was pukhtunzvali and it had two principles: the obligation to show hospitality to a stranger, without hope of a return favour, was malmastiya; the duty to fight to the death to protect the life of a stranger who had taken refuge among them was nanawati.
Twice in that week, formations of helicopters had flown high above them. Once, in the distance, he had seen a moving dustcloud and thought it would be a fighting patrol of the enemy's personnel carriers. The tribesmen had stayed closer to him – they would fight to the death to save his life because he was their welcomed guest. An old man, blind, sitting astride a donkey led by a boy, had come to the village in the afternoon of the seventh day with the answer to the message. On that last night in the village, they had feasted again, used more of their precious stores. No music and no dancing, but two of the older men had told stories of the fighting against the Russians, and he had offered his of the fighting against the Americans. The fires' flames had lit them, and the old man, the blind traveller, had recited a poem of combat that had been listened to in silence. He had realized at the end of the last evening, the fire dying, that all eyes had been on him, and he had seen in the shadows the furtive movements of the women and knew that they, too, watched him. He had been given a robe of pure white and he had stood and lifted it over his head, over his shoulders, and had let it fall so that it enveloped him. He had not known his own value to
