Free Danger Close by Charlie Flowers Page A

you take Rizwan to the northern guardhouse between eight and ten tonight. And Rizwan. Two things. First. The Americans found some parachutes south of here in a dry culvert earlier today. It’s only a matter of time before they join the dots. Second. Tell your girl I know she is tunnelling, and to stop it. Just because the Taliban managed it at Sarpoza last year doesn’t mean she can try. That is all. Good luck.’
    He then gave a letter to Mo and left.
    Mo handed the letter to me. It was a handwritten note, signed at the bottom. I couldn’t read the writing. I looked at Mo. He beamed at me. ‘Don’t laugh. He knows my mother’s side of the family.’
     
     

 
     
    15
     
    At 8.30 that night Mo walked me down the ubiquitous high fencelines to the northern guardhouse. There was the smell of diesel and the hum of a generator. Two guards sat on plastic garden chairs by a set of open hangar doors. A queue of what looked to be laundry-women were waiting to go in to the hangar. We tagged onto the back and waited our turn.
    Mo whispered in my ear. ‘These are the staff, the backbone of everything here, really. They do the laundry, cooking, sewing… they run the place. They’re Uzbekis.’
    We shuffled forward as the Uzbeki ladies went into the brightly-lit hangar, chattering like birds as they went. As we watched, another set of women came out of the hangar carrying a shrouded body on a stretcher. Mo shrugged. ‘Overdose or a suicide. We have a lot of them.’
    Finally we reached the head of the queue. CCTV cameras watched us. Mo talked to one of the guards and indicated that I should show him the letter. I did.
    The other guard came over to look. He spoke two words to Mo. ‘Pa rekhteya?’
    Mo just said ‘Pa rekhteya.’
    The guard nodded towards the hangar. I was in.
    ‘Mo, what does this letter say?’
    ‘It’s a note from the General. It says anyone carrying this letter is allowed access to either hangar in Parwan for the next 72 hours, from this date and by his order.’
    Then he clapped me on the shoulder and said ‘See ya in a bit then akhi!’ and left the way we’d arrived.
    I walked into the hangar. It seemed to be less of a circus than the mens’ section, but still a muddle. The paint theme here was scuffed and flaked lime green. Everywhere I looked, women were haggling, arguing, hurrying off on some engagement. I smelled cooking on the air. Proper cooking, not the slop we got in our section. My stomach started to grumble. Focus, Riz, I told myself.
    Now, if I was Bang-Bang, where would I be, I asked myself. Easy. She’d be teaching a class somewhere. I started to pace the cinderblock corridors, looking for classrooms or signs I could understand. I walked past a blank-eyed Uzbek girl lazily pushing a mop. I looked down. She was swabbing at a large slick of blood and some used needles. The dark red slick got larger and the needles just swam around in the blood. God. I started praying under my breath, almost without a thought. C’mon Holly , where are you babe …
    All the room and cell doors seemed to be open, and as I neared the end of the hangar, I came to a T-junction. To my right was a scrum of women, and some boys, craning to see into a doorway. I made for the doorway and pushed my way through.
    The crowd parted reluctantly and there she was. There she was, flicking cards down onto a trestle table. To either side of her sat two boys, neither of whom could have been more than twelve or thirteen. Hard to tell. She was wearing a grubby salwar kameez and a loose hijab over her hair…really loosely. I chuckled to myself at the rebel headscarf and my naivety in thinking she’d be teaching, rather than running a card school. I then stopped as I realised how pale and thin she was, and spotted the livid bruise on her cheekbone and the dried blood where someone had torn her nose-ring out. She’d been in the wars.
    ‘Aaaand, house collects! Biennnnvenidos a la vidaaa locaaaa, compadres…’
    Bang-Bang