the smaller children in their arms, crying with them. Baba and the Uncles went across to the donkey and Baba bent down and tickled the soft patch between its ears, the way he always did, and I knew he was saying goodbye.
In truth, it had been a bad-tempered animal which nipped us with its strong teeth when we children pulled its ears or climbed on its back for a ride. But it had been part of our household since I could remember and now it was dead and I had to bite hard on the inside of my cheeks to keep from crying.
Baba and the Uncles made pairs and lifted the shafts of the cart themselves and pulled the Aunties and children back down the mountainside. The toddlers cried and struggled and had their legs slapped to hush and keep quiet. Mama, her huge stomach pushing out beyond the edge of the cart, was pale.
I walked alongside Baba. His face dripped with sweat as he heaved the cart and his spectacles kept sliding forwards on his nose and I wished I could help him. I asked, ‘Who was that man? Why did they do that?’
Baba glanced down at me and his expression was sorrowful.
‘His name is Mohammed Bul Gourn,’ Baba said. ‘He is a very dangerous man and I pray God you will never see him again.’
My hands tightened into fists at my sides. ‘But why did they shoot our donkey?’
Baba was panting. The strain made deep lines in his face as if he were already old. ‘Don’t ask so many questions, Layla.’
I stopped. Other people had said that to me since I was a little girl, Jamila Auntie and the cousins and the other Aunties and even Mama but never Baba; Baba had never said such a thing. He and I were explorers, he used to tell me, searching for knowledge. I stared after him, shocked and hurt, as he and his brothers and the laden cart rumbled on.
Chapter 4
They drove from Islamabad to Peshawar. Ellen sat in the back of the four-wheel drive beside Frank. In the front, the local driver was sitting low behind the wheel, a round cap on his head, a brown blanket trailing from his shoulders.
She was eating her way through a packet of stale biscuits, spraying crumbs and picking them laboriously off her trousers. Frank was trying to pour steaming chai out of a Thermos flask without spilling it over his thighs.
Her face ached. The bruising had bothered her all night. Now she was full of painkillers which made the passing landscape seem remote and a little blurred. Islamabad’s city traffic, the overladen carts, brightly painted lorries and crowded motorbikes, had fallen away. The motorway stretched ahead, almost empty. They’d set off at dawn when the sun was little more than a shy red glow. Now it had whitened, burning dew off the grass and making the wheat fields shimmer.
Frank’s phone rang. She smiled. The ringtone was a phrase from a Rolling Stones track. The music ran on in her head even after he’d answered it. She followed it until she reached the chorus and the title came back to her, carrying memories of sweaty student bars and tables sticky with spilt beer.
He’d lodged the plastic cup of milky tea between his knees to take the call and she reached across and took it for him. His jeans were worn at the knees and crumpled. They ended in heavy boots. He seemed to be confirming arrangements.
Almost as soon as he finished, the phone rang again. It was a long call. Frank’s voice was soft, dotted with mantras of ‘absolutely’ and ‘understood’ and ‘that’s all you can do’. Afterwards he took back the cup of cooling tea and turned to the window, presenting her with a hunched shoulder.
‘Everything OK?’
He didn’t look round. His fingers were tight round the rim of the cup. Finally he said, ‘Not good. They sound overwhelmed.’
He drained the cup and held it out so she could refill it for herself. His lips were pursed. They both kept their eyes on the flow of steaming tea from the Thermos.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. He didn’t reply. He seemed distant, preoccupied.
The driver started to fiddle with the car radio. The silence was filled with bursts of white noise and high-pitched music. She drank her tea, trying not to swallow the black specks circling at the bottom.
‘You want an apple?’ Frank pulled one out of his bag and rolled it to her along the seat.
A car veered in front of them and the driver was forced to brake, pumping the horn with the heel of his hand. The sun was hard on the windscreen, burning streaks of light across the tarmac.
She bit into the apple, still thinking about the strains on the camp. ‘You got funding?’
He gave a snort. ‘I just spend money we don’t have. Then the guys in head office curse the hell out of me and run in circles trying to fill the holes.’
‘Have they launched a special appeal?’
‘Not yet.’ He shrugged. ‘It hasn’t made the news yet. But they say a rich Brit might help out. Hasan Ali Khan. Know him?’
She nodded. She knew of him. ‘Quentin. Quentin Khan. That’s what he calls himself in London.’ He was a middle-aged Pakistani. Vastly rich and now part of the London smart set. ‘Made a fortune in transport. Lorries and ships.’
‘That’s him.’
‘And he’s giving money?’
‘I guess. They’re talking to him.’
They were slowing down, approaching the row of booths that signalled the end of the toll road.
‘Good.’ Frank nodded ahead. ‘Our guys.’
Two trucks of armed police were waiting at the side of the road, just beyond the booths. As their own car emerged from the barrier, one truck slid out into the traffic in front of them and the other slotted in behind. They were open-backed. Policemen were sitting in two rows down the sides, rocket launchers across their knees and guns upright between their legs.
The young policemen at the ends of the seats were staring down at her through the windscreen. She adjusted her scarf, making sure her hair was properly covered. One, with a shaggy beard and long loose face, looked forlorn. His opposite number was much younger, all designer stubble and bulging biceps. His eyes were hidden by dark sunglasses.
‘Do we need them?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. They offered.’ Frank grimaced. ‘There’s a lot of Taliban around. The roads aren’t secure.’
Peshawar had always had a bad reputation. She’d first come some years before to write about Afghan refugees who’d spilt over the border to escape the Taliban there. She remembered driving through the bazaar, a dusty, colourless array of stalls selling piles of plastic toys and cheap cotton clothing. Men with shaggy beards and woollen tribal hats had stopped to glare in through the car windows. The metal noses of guns glinted at their sides. She’d wanted to stop, just for a moment, to buy a hookah pipe for her father. The driver refused, wagging his finger.
‘Not safe for ladies,’ her translator explained. ‘Very bad place.’
As traffic forced the car to a walking pace, a man with deeply lined skin had stooped and put his face to the glass, squashing the tip of his nose against the window. His palm pressed beside it in white flattened
