The Ink Bridge, page 1
ALSO BY NEIL GRANT
Rhino Chasers
Indo Dreaming
From Kinglake to Kabul
(Neil Grant & David WillIams, eds)
NEIL GRANT
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
This project is supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria.
First published in 2012
Copyright © Neil Grant
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ISBN 978 1 74237 669 1
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
Cover illustration & design by Joe Leong
Text design by Bruno Herfst, set in pt Wilke
For Emma, Matisse and Calum – children
of immigrants. And for my ancestors
who lived and died on the Badbea cliffs.
And for Sardar Shinwari
who is still finding his way.
Omed had the Buddha’s eyes and a tongue that refused words. His was the silence of caves; the false peace that descends when a mortar shell rips apart a building. His was the stillness of bald mountains and long beards and the paths cleared by bullets; the quiet of a long-bladed knife.
Did this all begin with Omed? Or did it start with me at fifteen, shouting for answers; words running sour in my mouth, bleeding to whispers in my throat, evaporating in numbed ears. Those ears: my dad, my invisible friends, teachers that either didn’t care or cared too much.
It is easy to look back and see all the pieces and the joins between them. The shards that could one day form this story. The tricky part is getting them all to fit together. It is like building an arch.
An arch begins with foundations, dug deep into the earth, filled with concrete. Then, the columns rise side by side, curving in space until they almost touch. They are cheating gravity and need to be propped. It is then that the most crucial part is laid. The keystone slots neatly into the curve and spreads the load to the two columns. It is what links them and holds them in place.
Our two stories, built word by word, in parallel, rise alone and unstable until the keystone is located and placed to make them strong.
I am searching for that keystone. Without it I cannot begin to build. It is buried in cold sand; it is bruised by wind and slivers of ice. I am searching for Omed. I know if I find him then I find the final stone. Then all this looking back can stop.
I have learned you cannot live in the past and the present at the same time. It takes too much energy to carry the dead. There is only one path out and that is forward. Omed knew this, but in the end he was forced back. Maybe that was the end of him. If this is true, I need to know; because his story and mine are waiting to be linked.
Today I am in a big tin bird, droning across the acetylene sky. Clouds are nothing, vapour that this plane discards as it shunts onwards. I press my palm to the perspex window and I can feel the ground below. My country, dusted crimson, auburn, citron, umber. It is a mandala viewed from above. Tiny roads and dusty tracks vomit into dry riverbeds, cloud shadows smear the land. The bleached bones of cattle and kangaroos settle into dirt. Somewhere on this landscape, his tracks are still there, after all this time.
I remove my hand but the imprint stays for a moment – a ghost of a time that has already passed. Like our stories – his and mine.
Hector Morrow
En route to Kabul
Contents
Part One: Omed
1
2
3
4
5
Part Two: Hec
1
2
3
4
5
6
Part Three: Across the Bridge
1
2
3
4
5
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
part one
Omed
OMED NOORI WAS FROM BAMIYAN and had always known the two statues. They were carved into the mountain and had once borne the faces of his people, the Hazara – eyes like badam kernels, the soft, high cheekbones. They had stood for over fifteen hundred years and had seen the coming and going of many invaders who hacked at the stone and plaster with swords as they passed. The Taliban were just another annoyance.
Omed shifted so he could get a better look. If he was seen, he would be shot and left as a warning to others. The Talibs were boring holes – in the ragged stone feet, in the rock behind the heels, up higher in the long folds of stone clothes. The men, local Hazara pressed into the dangerous work, swarmed like bees, slipping in little parcels of poison, hanging on ropes tied round their waists, spinning down, chins grazing the pebbled rock. There was Tahir, the father of Hamidullah and Zohra. And the baker, Sadiq, whose family were killed in their beds.
The Talibs lounged in the niches and doorways, and in the gloom of the ancient caves with the paintings of flying gods. They picked at their teeth with their fingernails and aimed their rifles at the men on the ropes. Omed had seen them in the chaikhanas, the small teashops in the main bazaar, with their greasy turbans marking the walls, sucking at glasses of tea through small, hard sweets. They would get boys to dance for them and they would smoke hashish and opium. They were not as pious as they pretended to be.
The statues stood as they always had, silently taking in the broad sweep of hills and the broken bricks of town, waiting like mutes about to taste a stick. Years before, tourists would come from America and Germany to stare at the Stone People. Omed and his friends would offer themselves as guides, pulling them by their sleeves up the narrow staircase that led behind behind the statues. At the top the foreigners would point and click at Bamiyan – the fields of vetch and wheat, the tall poplars that lined the streams, the blue minaret of the mosque that was a bright eye among the dusty buildings. Above everything rose the snow-covered mountains of the Koh-e Baba range; heroic saints with their long white beards.
He would take the money he earned home to his mother and the words – bitte, danke schon, please, thank you – he would present to his father.
But as the troubles grew worse, the tourists had stopped coming, and the river of their ideas and language, the pebbles of money, had ceased. The Talib had closed Omed’s school, leaving only the madrassas with their endless teachings of the Qur’an.
Now there was nothing to do but eat the dust and wind, so Omed and Zakir had come here to the feet of the Stone People to find out what the whole town was talking about.
Each Talib, with a beard longer than a fist, was bent over fuses. Their fingers moved quickly, twisting and pushing tapers, occasionally wrapping the loose ends of their black turbans back into place. They were absorbed in the work of God. They had cleared the poor people who lived in the surrounding caves, shouting that they would remove the abominations from the mountain side.
Omed could see one of the cave people, Anwar, rolling wire between the charges. Anwar lived alone between the great statues. He had a goat, and a roll of old carpet on which to sleep. Although he was not very old, his beard was greying and he had a habit of chewing on the loose end of his turban so it was always soggy.
In the mornings, after he had fed the animals and swept the yard, Omed would squat beside Anwar as he washed from an old pink watering can, rubbing the freezing water over his face and neck, blowing his nose into his hand. Anwar would brush his teeth with his forefinger and then his thumb before taking a long look out at the valley.
Omed would come for the soft flat bread Anwar cooked in an oven dug into the ground in front of his cave. Anwar would slap an oval of dough against its wall and pick out the sparks that clung to his eyebrows and beard. The bread was the best Omed had ever tasted. The stories he listened to out of politeness.
‘The two statues are called Salsal and Shahmama, the father and mother.’ Anwar passed Omed a slab of bread, hot from the oven. Omed tossed it from one hand to the other to cool and then took a bite. It tasted of smoke and wheat, the breath of harvest.
Anwar continued, ‘The father’s face was once made of wood and covered with gold so it shone like the sun. Such was its brilliance that it was covered with a cloth. The father’s eyes were made of rubies, the caves behind them, lit with fires. In the evenings men would chant behind the mask and the cloth would be removed. Salsal’s eyes would pierce the whole valley with their light.’
The b read was good and Omed wanted more, but he could see that Anwar had only made two and was about to eat the second. Anwar rose off his haunches. ‘Come, we will go inside where it is warmer.’ He swung the blue curtain aside and they went into his cave. On the back wall were the remains of an old painting. Omed touched the curve of lips in the lamp glow, feeling the soft plastered surface next to the rough rock. The soul had been removed from this one with a quick blow from a hammer. Anwar poured tea from his battered kettle into two glasses.
‘They will kill them you know,’ said Anwar.
‘Who?’
‘The Taliban will kill Salsal and Shahmama.’
‘But why?’
‘Because they are like us.’
One of the men looked up from his work and over to where Omed and Zakir hid. ‘Go, you Hazara dogs!’ he shouted, and threw a handful of rubble in their direction. They ducked behind the stone wall, hoping that he wouldn’t follow with a stick or a foot. Or a bullet.
The Taliban twisted the wires and connected them to the plunger. Omed pointed to one stern-looking man and whispered in his friend’s ear, ‘That Talib has a face like your mother.’ The man had a long scar that had conquered his nose and lip, tearing them sideways. His single eyebrow was so thick it collapsed on his eyes.
Zakir punched his arm. ‘He looks more like your sister.’ Zakir lied – Leyli was beautiful and Omed knew how she and Zakir looked at each other.
Omed wrestled him to the ground, but Zakir was stronger, always stronger, and soon had him pinned.
‘Surrender,’ Zakir said as he looked down on him, his long fringe dangling above Omed.
‘Never!’ shouted Omed and with a grunt tried to push his friend away. Then the ground shook once, twice, and Zakir slumped onto him. Omed felt slices open on the back of his hands and pieces chip from his scalp. Stones drove into the ground around them and when they finished falling, dust coursed over them like bitter fog. He coughed, fighting for air, pushing his face into Zakir’s shoulder to filter out the fine powder.
Eventually, Omed pushed Zakir off and rose to his knees. He felt the back of his head and looked at his moist fingers where blood and dust had mingled to a brown sludge.
It reminded him of the day the Talib shot his father. The bullet had passed through his back and disappeared. Like magic. He had fallen on his face, his nose breaking on a grindstone. Omed had been fourteen.The ground in their yard quickly sipped most of the blood, leaving only a dark stain that the chickens kept pecking no matter how often he beat them with a stick.
Omed smeared his own blood between finger and thumb. ‘Zakir,’ he croaked. The world was dim, muffled. He coughed and spat up a dirty lump. ‘Zakir.’ He crawled over and shook him.
‘Zakir. It’s over. The Stone People are gone. Zakir?’ The words were strange echoes inside him.
He rolled Zakir over.
The rock was the size of a hand held flat and was shaped like the head of a spear. One edge reminded him of a seashell he had once seen in the bazaar, sharp and serrated. It had broken through his skull, neatly, allowing in flies.
Omed shook his friend, but he was as limp as a newly slaughtered goat. His tongue slipped from between his lips, followed by a rivulet of black fluid, too dark to be blood, too dark. No. No! Omed gripped his own head. Everything burned. He grabbed his friend against his chest. He shook him. Wake up . . . wake up . . . wake up.
He got to his feet. It was a dream, he knew it. It was a dream and in it he was invincible and terrible and fearless. He climbed over the wall, the piles of fallen stone, shouting at the Talib, calling them pigs, and worse. There was blood in his eyes, behind his brow, in his ears. His temples felt thin.
They looked up from their business – slapping each other on the back, congratulating, pointing with their feet to the fallen gods. Then they turned with curiosity to the screaming boy.
Omed ran at them, the stone in his hand; the same stone that had removed his friend. He brought it above his head as he came, shouting. And for a moment he saw the fear in their eyes and felt the power of it. Their mouths stretched like wire. Muscles on their necks shivering.
He struck the first on the bridge of the nose and felt the bone collapse. With the second, he pulled the stone up in an arc, tearing soft cheek muscle. He bit the face of a third. Then it was only a hazy mess of screaming, stabbing, kicking, spitting, hair and flesh and earthy blood in his throat and the clouds whirling. But when the power left him, five Talib remained.
He spat at them again as they held him into the dirt. He spat and yelled in Pashto, bad words that his father had never allowed. He could hear them muttering about punishment until the tall one with the scar took over.
Hold him.
To Omed it was only a whisper, like wind stripping out winter trees.
The blade was curved and as long as the thighbone of a sheep. It was chipped but sharp, he noticed that as it came closer. That and the metal glint, the patches of rust blooming, the brass hilt turning to green.
His tongue, hold his tongue.
He felt the fingers enter. He tasted steel and gunpowder, and the smell from when the man had toileted and not washed. Omed withdrew his tongue deep inside, but they punched him hard so he lost his breath. And the man drew his tongue out like a worm. As he did, the one with the scar went to work with his knife, carving under with the tip. He felt his tongue break free of its harness, loll on the floor of his mouth. Blood drained into his throat. He drank it, tasting iron and anger. Then he fell heavily into dreams.
He had gone to Darya Ajdahar – the Valley of the Dragon – with Anwar. It was the year his father had been killed and he had needed to escape his house and its mud-walled compound. That awful stain.
They had climbed onto the roof of a battered bus, swatting flies and hunkering down among the rough bags and bunches of chickens. The Grandfather of Mountains – the Koh-e Baba – was dusted in snow so it looked like the soft lining of a cow’s stomach. But the sun was a gold platter on the tablecloth of sky. Omed breathed the cool air, forgot, remembered, ate a chunk of Anwar’s good bread.
When they reached Darya Ajdahar, they climbed down from the bus and walked slowly up the dusty slope. Anwar made sure he and Omed stayed between the coloured stones that showed the safe path between the landmines. The back of the Dragon was long, blocking the valley, its snout facing towards Bamiyan.
Omed’s father had told him the story, as it had been told to him, and to his father further back into the past, under the bowing roof of their old house.
The Dragon had been the scourge of Bamiyan with its violent, bloodthirsty rages. It had held the valleys to ransom until the King had agreed to offer up food and camels, and a young girl, as a sacrifice each day.
Hazrat Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, had stood before it as it breathed acres of fire. And with a circle of his sword, Zulfiqar, the rolls of flame became tulips that dropped to the ground at Ali’s feet. The Dragon was much maddened by this impudence and reared its terrible head, screaming in anger until the bedrock of the valley shook and the sky boiled with clouds. But Ali stood his ground, and when the Dragon slumped in exhaustion, he thrust with Zulfiqar and sheared the animal down its back. With that act, Islam had triumphed among the people of the valley.
As Omed and Anwar climbed higher the rock turned white.
‘We are at the Dragon’s head,’ said Anwar. ‘See, these are its tears. And look here, its blood.’
Omed placed his hand on the cool rock, touched the tears, touched the blood. He brought it to his lips where it tingled, slightly salty.
‘Come, we must go higher.’
They climbed again until they were on the Dragon’s broad back, where the sword of Ali had cut the mighty beast in two. Mist puckered the edges of the sky. The mountains dragged it around them like a cloak.
Anwar grabbed Omed’s head, pushing it to the gap in the rock, the Dragon’s mortal wound. ‘Here, listen,’ he whispered.
And Omed heard it then. A soft moaning from deep within the beast. A long mournful dirge, something more awful, more heartfelt than a wail. It was the sound of sorrow, of emptiness, of loss.
