Read Online A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie - Free Book Online
Authors: Kamila Shamsie
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only the balaclavas. Qayyum remembered the handkerchief in his pocket, the one Captain Dalmohy had instructed him to dip into the buckets of liquid they passed, and he held it up against his face even as he watched the breeze move the yellow mist eastward. So this wasn’t hell. The mist would have leapt into his lungs if it were.
The emerald green of the grass turned to pine green; the sun sank entirely into the water. His hand had gone to sleep but he was afraid to shake it awake even though the numbness was moving up his arm. There had been a sepoy sitting upright in the field as men advanced around him, one arm ending at the wrist. Qayyum picked up the severed hand he’d almost trodden on, and passed it to the man who thanked him, very politely, and tried to join the hand in place. I think there’s a piece missing. Can you look? he said, and died. Qayyum had forgotten this, though it had happened only hours earlier.
Qayyum tried to pray, but the Merciful, the Beneficent, had abandoned this field and the men within it. Something was moving along the ground, a heavy weight; a starving animal, wolf or jackal, with its belly pressed against the ground, smelling meat; a German with a knife between his teeth. Grass flattened, the thing entered the space between Qayyum and the stream. Any movement was pain, any movement was target practice to the gunners. And then a whisper, his name.
– Kalam, stay there. They’ll shoot you.
– Lance-Naik, sir. Shut up.
One afternoon in the Street of Money Changers, Qayyum and his brother Najeeb had stumbled on an object in the road – a dead rabbit with its lips sewn together, foam at its mouth. A man walked past a hundred cruelties in Peshawar every day, and nothing about the rabbit made him slow his stride, but Najeeb knelt on the street and carefully cut away the thread, the animal’s fur-and-mud-caked head in his palm. When Qayyum put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, Najeeb looked up and asked, Do you think its family was near by and it tried to call out to them? As if that were the real reason for distress, not the needle lancing the animal’s lips, the hand which would have stopped the breath at its nose. Oh Allah, the cruelty of the world. How had Najeeb known this terror, this loneliness of dying alone? Kalam’s hand clasped his ankle and he felt tears dislodge the blood in his eye, which he couldn’t touch without feeling as if he were wiping off his whole face.
– Don’t leave me.
– Brainless Pashtun, do you think I came all this way just to smell your socks?
Time had never moved more slowly than in those minutes – or was it hours? – in which Kalam inched himself along the ground until his face was level with Qayyum’s, and he could see what the fire had done.
– Tell me. How bad is it?
– Don’t worry, Yousuf, all Zuleikhas will still want to seduce you and so will the Potiphars.
– Kalam, don’t joke.
– It’s this or tears. Just be patient, we’ll retreat when it’s dark.
– The sun has gone.
– My friend, you’ve forgotten the moon, large and white as your Frenchwoman’s breast and climbing through the sky. Still a few more hours. But I’m here, don’t worry. Your Kalam is here.
The end of his sentence disappeared in gunfire. Qayyum’s body jerked in anticipation of the bullets that would rip through him, but Kalam had a hand on his chest, telling him to hold still, the gunners were aiming at something else. You stay still too, Qayyum said, but Kalam braced on his elbows and used them as a pivot for his arms, the rest of his body motionless as – again and again – he lowered his palms into the stream and slowly, hardly spilling a drop, brought them to Qayyum’s parched mouth, washed the blood from his face and tried to clean the mess that was his eye. With the stink of blood all around, the only light in the world came from those cupped palms, the shifting water within them.
MayâJune 1915
â Iâm sorry, no, it
The emerald green of the grass turned to pine green; the sun sank entirely into the water. His hand had gone to sleep but he was afraid to shake it awake even though the numbness was moving up his arm. There had been a sepoy sitting upright in the field as men advanced around him, one arm ending at the wrist. Qayyum picked up the severed hand he’d almost trodden on, and passed it to the man who thanked him, very politely, and tried to join the hand in place. I think there’s a piece missing. Can you look? he said, and died. Qayyum had forgotten this, though it had happened only hours earlier.
Qayyum tried to pray, but the Merciful, the Beneficent, had abandoned this field and the men within it. Something was moving along the ground, a heavy weight; a starving animal, wolf or jackal, with its belly pressed against the ground, smelling meat; a German with a knife between his teeth. Grass flattened, the thing entered the space between Qayyum and the stream. Any movement was pain, any movement was target practice to the gunners. And then a whisper, his name.
– Kalam, stay there. They’ll shoot you.
– Lance-Naik, sir. Shut up.
One afternoon in the Street of Money Changers, Qayyum and his brother Najeeb had stumbled on an object in the road – a dead rabbit with its lips sewn together, foam at its mouth. A man walked past a hundred cruelties in Peshawar every day, and nothing about the rabbit made him slow his stride, but Najeeb knelt on the street and carefully cut away the thread, the animal’s fur-and-mud-caked head in his palm. When Qayyum put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, Najeeb looked up and asked, Do you think its family was near by and it tried to call out to them? As if that were the real reason for distress, not the needle lancing the animal’s lips, the hand which would have stopped the breath at its nose. Oh Allah, the cruelty of the world. How had Najeeb known this terror, this loneliness of dying alone? Kalam’s hand clasped his ankle and he felt tears dislodge the blood in his eye, which he couldn’t touch without feeling as if he were wiping off his whole face.
– Don’t leave me.
– Brainless Pashtun, do you think I came all this way just to smell your socks?
Time had never moved more slowly than in those minutes – or was it hours? – in which Kalam inched himself along the ground until his face was level with Qayyum’s, and he could see what the fire had done.
– Tell me. How bad is it?
– Don’t worry, Yousuf, all Zuleikhas will still want to seduce you and so will the Potiphars.
– Kalam, don’t joke.
– It’s this or tears. Just be patient, we’ll retreat when it’s dark.
– The sun has gone.
– My friend, you’ve forgotten the moon, large and white as your Frenchwoman’s breast and climbing through the sky. Still a few more hours. But I’m here, don’t worry. Your Kalam is here.
The end of his sentence disappeared in gunfire. Qayyum’s body jerked in anticipation of the bullets that would rip through him, but Kalam had a hand on his chest, telling him to hold still, the gunners were aiming at something else. You stay still too, Qayyum said, but Kalam braced on his elbows and used them as a pivot for his arms, the rest of his body motionless as – again and again – he lowered his palms into the stream and slowly, hardly spilling a drop, brought them to Qayyum’s parched mouth, washed the blood from his face and tried to clean the mess that was his eye. With the stink of blood all around, the only light in the world came from those cupped palms, the shifting water within them.
MayâJune 1915
â Iâm sorry, no, it
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