“Show me,” I said, thrusting the rifle back at him.
He swaggered a bit as he revealed the loading chamber just above the rear handle. He thumbed one round through the lid, against a spring, then the second. I puckered up and blew air in a silent whistle. Whoa. I hoped I looked impressed.
“Is it ready?”
“No.”
He slid an oblong wedge just above the chamber forwards with the same thumb.
“Safety catch.”
He exhibited no shame, no sense of irony, that he might be demonstrating the tool of my eventual execution. He swung the muzzle towards me and I palmed it away with an exaggerated cringe, though in truth I really did feel my stomach knot.
He pointed it at the wall and made two “pee-ow” noises with faux kickbacks. I took a step forward so we were both holding it and gave a little childish give-me tug on its stock.
“Nah,” he top-lipped at me and pulled the short magazine from the bottom of the weapon, returning the two rounds to his breast pocket. Replacing the magazine with a snap, he made to pull the gun from my hands, but I held on.
“How old are you, Hamal?”
“Twenty-two,” he replied, with a toss of his head.
I’d guess he was adding a year or two. I pulled him in close with the gun and leaned over it and kissed him hard, locating that errant top lip. He was surprised but didn’t recoil and I took my hands off the gun and cupped his face to keep it there, while separating momentarily to look at him, as if admiringly, I hoped.
He swung the gun away against the wall and pushed me backwards towards the bed, but without the aggression of his useless attempted rape of some weeks before. I put my palms against his chest, feeling the little cylinders of bullets in his top-left pocket between my fingers.
“No, Hamal. Not yet.”
He did what he did, just smiled with his lip in free flight, ran his hand down my backside, then picked up his gun, the cigarettes and, with an uncharacteristic house pride, the coffee cups, and left the room, as ever without looking back.
I had no plan. I’d obviously decided to work on Hamal, but I really didn’t know what I was going to do. If I had known, if I’d formulated it as some kind of strategy, then I’d never have been able to do what eventually I did. At least, I like to think I wouldn’t be able to.
My seduction of the boy just seemed some form of progress, or the instigation of a change that might generate some progress. Perhaps he’d tell me something. Perhaps he’d help me. Perhaps he’d persuade someone to let me go. But, no, I had considered none of these outcomes and they certainly formed no part of a conscious plan. If I had thought about it, it seems highly unlikely that I could have thought that establishing some human intimacy with my captors would improve the situation.
If I’d really been considering consequences, I might have acknowledged the possibility of being raped by the Troll, so I really can’t have been planning at all. Maybe I was just whoring some new living privileges. But I hadn’t even thought about that either. Sometimes, I have to confess, Hamal was just something to do.
But the following morning began to shape a purpose for my folly. Hamal and the Troll stayed longer than usual, their telly coming on a little earlier to replace the radio, an indication that they were expecting to wait. My door remained locked, but I was by now familiar enough with the ambient sounds to know when Mr Silent arrived with Burly. The television went off ahead of a short and earnest exchange, before the cast moved into my room, Burly unlocking and leading, the other three following, appropriately armed to show off their diligence to their boss.
“Get up,” said Burly and I did.
He was carrying a flat little pile of white cotton, which he dropped at the foot of my bed as I moved away from it. It was a gown and shawl, I discovered later, along with the white undertrousers that unmarried Muslim women often wear, the gown high-necked, tied and buttoned at the front. It was not unlike being admitted to hospital.
“It seems your people don’t want you,” he said, standing in front of me with his hands on his hips. I said nothing. What was there to say? But I felt intensely lonely.
“So it’s time to be rid of you, missionary. Put some Arab clothes on.”
He indicated the pile. I was to move from black abaya to white – quite a transformation, night to day.
“You like? Tomorrow you meet some different Arabs, yes – different Arabs. Maybe they make their own video, yes? You understand?”
He chuckled and turned to share the joke with his staff, but it turned out this was just a manoeuvre to give his shoulder and right arm enough swing. He brought that arm up in one complete motion, swiping the back of his hand across my head with such deft force that only my head snapped to my left and hit the wall, my body still erect and the stagger only coming a moment later.
I felt nothing at all, no pain, but there was a buzzing and I couldn’t see from my right eye, as if a large cushion had been pushed against that side of my head. A moment or two went missing and my head grew heavy and pendulous as I turned back to the room. Only the left eye was processing images and I was looking at the crocodile motif on Burly’s shirt, a line of vision that was lower than I expected. I was crouched, I realised, but not kneeling, much as high-Anglican priests pray over the Eucharistic elements. There was some chatter in the room, but my buzzing ear
