The thunder had echoed into the valley from the west, the lightning had lit the valley as if it was the middle of the day, and the wind had gathered.
Through all of the night the gales had howled. By the morning, the fourth, the storm had passed and left only a steady drizzle in its wake.
When the mine-clearers had come on the first morning, Husein had immediately left his home, abandoned his breakfast, grunted at his wife as she'd hobbled after him down the track that he would not be long, and gone over the ford. He had bearded them where they had made their day camp, a battered caravan, a stinking portable lavatory and a parking space for their three pick-up trucks and the two ambulances, up the track from Dragan Kovac's house.
He'd asked the same question of the foreman on every morning since.
He asked it again. 'When are you going to start to clear my fields?'
And he had the same answer on the four con-secutive mornings: 'First we do the pylons. Your fields come after the pylons and the restoration of the electricity.'
'My fields are more important than electricity.'
'Your fields are next year, if there's the money.'
On the first three mornings, Husein had then shuffled down the track to Dragan Kovac's home, had beaten on the door and demanded fresh coffee and a substitute breakfast. Then he'd launched into a criticism of the foreman, and the six de-miners, and he'd denounced the priority of the electricity pylons, but he had won no sympathy. His friend, the idle fool, Dragan, had as little interest in the fields as they showed.
That fourth morning he was not going to visit Dragan Kovac. The morning before, when he had launched into the complaint that his fields were not given enough priority, his friend – the old fool – had remarked that Husein was now too aged, too feeble, to work the fields; Dragan had said it was a dream, no more than a fantasy, that Husein, with his withered muscles, would ever be able to plant the new apple orchard that would eventually be harvested by his grandson; Dragan had said that the fields were his history, that his present should be a game of chess, a seat in the sunshine and a glass of home-brewed brandy, or two glasses. The morning before, blinking tears and shouting curses, he had left Dragan's house and waded back over the ford.
The foreman stood in the caravan's door. Behind him the men read newspapers, smoked and drank coffee. In the ambulances the medics had their feet up on the dashboards and their radios played loud music. All his life, Husein Bekir had worked his fields in storms, hail showers, and in the heat that blistered his skin. To Husein Bekir, the foreman, his men and the medics seemed lazy and complacent, showed no understanding of his need to go back to his fields.
On the other side of the track from the junction where the caravan and the trucks were parked was the bunker that had protected the right flank of Ljut village. Leaning against its stone wall, beside its cave entrance, was a new sign. On a red-painted background was a white skull with crossed bones behind it, and one word: Mina. All the way down the track, on both sides, little posts had been put into the ground and yellow tape slung between them. There was no tape on his fields, only a slim corridor to the nearest of the pylons from which power cables dangled. He would not speak to Dragan Kovac until he had received abject apologies for the insult that he was too old, too feeble and the frustration fed his anger.
'Do you not work if it rains?'
'It will clear soon. We will work when the rain stops.'
'Do you have no sense of urgency?'
'What I have is five toes on each foot, four fingers and a thumb on each hand, eyes in my head, and two balls. I have them, old man, because I don't hurry.'
'If you used those machines, I have seen them on television, you could clear my fields. Why don't you bring the machines?'
The foreman said patiently, as if talking to an idiot,
'We have flails, fastened to the fron of a vehicle that is reinforced with armour plate. They don't clear ground to the standard necessary for a certificate of clearance.
We only use them to cut back scrub.'
'What about those things you carry, the things that find metal? You could go faster if you had them.'
'We have metal detectors but they're about useless in this situation, for two reasons. First, there is minimal metal in the PMA and PROM mines, they are made from plastic. Second, there are minerals in the ground, in the rock strata, which contaminate the signal, also there are the pylon cables, which confuse the machine.'
Husein Bekir snorted. He was being backed, and he knew it, into a cul-de-sac from which there was no retreat. His voice rose in strident attack. 'How, then, will you – one day, when it is convenient to you – clear my fields?'
'Perhaps we will bring dogs, but the greater part of the work will be on hands and knees, manually with the probe. We can push the probe four inches into the ground. That is how we do it.'
The foreman's quiet rebuttals seemed as insulting as Dragan Kovac's sneer that he was too old and too feeble.
'I don't know how you can clear the land if you cannot even put in posts, stakes, that will survive one night's storm weather,' Husein said.
'What do you mean?'
'Down past Kovac's house, your posts are already blown over by the wind, because you did not sink them deep enough.'
'The ground is very hard.'
'Oh, the ground is hard. It is too hard in the summer, too wet in the winter. I am sorry you do not find perfect ground, not hard, not wet. I work in my fields when it is hot, when it is cold… '
' I'll look at the posts. Do me a favour, go home.'
'When I have shown you the posts that you cannot put in the ground because it is too hard?'
' I will walk with you.'
To rid himself of Husein Bekir, the foreman, as if making a great sacrifice in the interests of peace, threw away the dregs of his coffee and went to the nearest of the pick-up trucks. When he reappeared he was carrying a small sledge-hammer. They walked in silence down the track. The clouds were breaking over the high ground in the west, and at the limit of Husein's eyesight were small patches of blue sky. He thought that within an hour there would be a rainbow and then the day would clear: they would have no excuse any longer to shelter in their caravan. In spite of the drizzle the birds were calling sharply. A thrush flew with the trophy of a wriggling worm to an elder bush, a sparrow was chased by finches, and there were little showers of redwings wheeling in formation. The storm in the night had greened his fields. If he had had cattle he would have blessed the rain that gave life to the fields that had been burned by the sun, but he did not have cattle and there was now a yellow tape strip to separate the fields from the track.
If he had had crops maize or wheat or vegetables – the storm rain would have brought them to a peak before the September harvest, but the fields were not ploughed and he had no crops.
With his rolling gait, his hip and knee both aching, Husein hurried towards the lord and the foreman's boots thudded behind him
There were two posts down, not more than twenty-five centimetres from the chipped stones of the track.
The tape lay on the thick grass verge. Of course, Husein Bekir could have taken the one step onto the grass, picked up the two posts, worked them back into their two holes and tautened the yellow tape. He could have done it when he had walked up the track half an hour earlier to beard the men in their caravan.
But he had made his point. How could they talk about clearing his land, more than two hundred and fifty thousand square metres of it, if they could not make two posts secure? He stood triumphant.
The foreman barked, 'You brought me down here because of that?'
Husein walked on.
He heard the thump ol the sledge-hammer behind him. He stopped, looked behind him, and grinned slyly to himself. One post was in. The foreman stepped back onto the track, moved along it half a dozen strides, and paused by the second fallen post
'I do not like to have my time wasted,' the foreman shouted after him.
Husein was about to turn. From the corner of his field of vision, he saw the foreman's left boot on the track,
