Free The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam Page A

darkness outside. David thinks of night as a creature that licks objects into oblivion.
     
    We regret the loss of the children’s lives. But those children were already worse than dead because they were being taught to forget Islam in that American-funded school. They were bound for Hell but because of our actions have now become flowers of Paradise . . .
     
    David remembers how back in the 1980s, when the Salang Tunnel to the north of Kabul was an important supply route for the Soviet Army, there were several plans by the U.S.-backed guerrillas to blow it up. But because the tunnel was of such key importance, the Soviets guarded it day and night and nothing was ever allowed to obstruct the traffic inside it—you couldn’t just park a truck full of explosives in the middle and then walk out, having set the timer going. The only possible way of collapsing the tunnel was for someone to blow themselves up in there. The Afghans were appalled when the Americans suggested this to them. No one volunteered because suicide was a sin. The path would not fork at the moment of the explosion, sending the bomber to Paradise, the infidels to Hell. No, the Afghans told the Americans then, it would deliver both parties to Allah’s Inferno.
    The statement now continues:
     
    The blameless Muslim adults who have died are like the blameless Muslims who died in the attacks on the Twin Towers: Allah has sent them to Paradise . . .
     
    The age David is, in the middle years of his life, he is equally responsible for the young and the old. Those above him and those below. As he drives he places a hand on Marcus’s arm to transmit comfort. The bones of the Englishman are thin under the weight of his palm.
    It was in the Pakistani city of Peshawar that he had met Zameen, when he was twenty-seven years old, a dealer in gems. Someone who knew by heart the co-ordinates of where to locate various stones. Spinel: 34° 26 ’ N, 64° 14 ’ E. Emerald: 35° 24 ’ 59 ” N, 69° 45 ’ 39 ” E. Someone who knew that Kublai Khan had paid as much as 170,000 ting for Afghan rubies. And that the world’s earliest known spinel was discovered in a Buddhist tomb near Kabul in 101 BC .
    In Peshawar a ruby had suddenly materialised at his feet one day at dusk. He leaned closer because of the lack of light and saw that it was a sphere of embroidery silk. There were others around him. Emeralds. Sapphires. Opals. They had leapt out of the door at the top of a staircase a few yards from him, unravelling as they came in a waterfall and then a river of loveliness. A young woman stood there holding the other end of the red filament that was in his hand, and for a few seconds they had remained linked by it, looking at each other.
    Pure distilled life, a beautiful child behind her was stretching his body in a high-armed yawn, his shirt rising up to reveal his navel.
    C ASA IS FOLDING a sheet of paper in half. In the light of the lantern resting on the ground near by, the paper is bright in his hands. He is swift though careful. A series of ten folds—some small, others spanning the entire length of the sheet—and the plane is ready. Gripping it between his forefinger and thumb, he walks towards a clearing. He releases the plane a few times into the air to test its arc. After a number of adjustments, he walks to another section of this disused expanse of land behind his home.
    He raises the small white plane above his head and puts his other hand into his breast pocket. He strikes the match against the bark of a nearby tree without looking, introducing a smell of smoke into the air, and brings the fire to the aeroplane’s tail. The flame touches it almost caressingly and the white paper ignites.
    He releases the burning shape, watching it glide along the low tree branches.
    He walks away then, travelling in the opposite direction to the airborne fire, turning around only when he is fifteen or so yards from where he was, his eyes all intensity and seriousness. The