She said, softer, 'Then the work of so many is wasted, was for nothing.'
'I am intelligent, yes? I have a place at the university in London, yes? I am not a fool, yes? I see it, do you not? We are all in danger now.'
'I had thought it would be easier…'
'A big man was sent, a commander and a fighter, but he does not lead us. He has brought down chaos on us. We did not need him…and we did not need the Saudi kid,' Jamal murmured, but the boy heard him. 'I would have done it, if I had been asked.'
'You boast as Ramzi boasted. You do not give him what he is owed — respect.'
Savagely hissed by Jamal: 'The respect I have, now, this moment, is for the scale of the catastrophe falling on us. Do you not understand? You do not need education from a university to comprehend what we face — imprisonment all our lives'
'What does he face? He faces two situations. He may be sent home, back where he came from, his martyrdom attempt a failure, and that failure with him for the rest of his life because he will never be chosen again. Or he faces a worthless martyrdom — not at the place and time of maximum advantage, rushed to a street where the casualties are scaled down, where his death is wasted. Not only, Jamal, do you boast but you display a selfishness that disgraces you. You do not think of him, only yourself.'
The boy heard a bitter, whinnying laugh. 'He might be free, and-'
The boy heard the hiss of her response: 'Or kneeling in a square at home while an executioner raises a sword and prepares to behead him.'
'- and might be walking forward, thinking of virgins awaiting him, and not caring whether he kills ten or one, wounds ten or one. He has virgins in his mind.'
'You are obsessed. You disgust me. His Faith is to be admired, not sniggered at.'
'What obsesses me — with Ramzi gone — is the thought of a prison cell with the key thrown away.' The shouted answer. 'And it should obsess you, too, and—'
There was a yell from deep in the cottage, as if they were called, and the boy heard their feet patter away. He gripped his — raised knees. He had learned the cause of the crisis.. the, reason for the catastrophe, and what was thought of him. To all of them but her, he was as worthless as an animal sent for slaughter. To her he had importance…but she had not come to his room.
More voices. He came off the bed.
Voices beyond the window. He edged back the curtain but kept his body hidden.
The older men searched the garden. 'He has the whole night's start on us.' They started at a bare dug bed under the window along the outer wall from his. 'I should have cut his fucking throat when I could have.' They crouched there and made a close examination of the ground. 'Will he go to the police and talk with them? Will he have gone home to his fucking family? I don't know…If he has gone home, then is arrested, will he be able to endure interrogation?' They stood and gazed across the grass, and the rain fell on them. Neither had a coat or seemed to notice it. 'At least here, in a democracy,' the boy heard rough, braying laughter, 'it will not be as severe interrogation as in Abu Ghraib. It will be decent and polite — but would he break?' Then they tracked away over the grass, like hounds scenting a quarry, and came to the break in the hedge beyond which was the expanse of the ploughed field…and Ibrahim no longer heard them. What he did hear, faintly, was the sound of a vehicle approaching, an engine's grind.
Ajaq listened.
The Engineer, close to the hedge, said, 'My decision is made. My work is finished. I will not stay another hour.'
Ajaq thought his friend had been too long and too often near to the source of explosions that the damage to his hearing was irreparable. The noise of the vehicle was growing, and he imagined it heaving between the rutted lines in the track and the potholes. 'You, my dear one, should be with me. Tell me you will be.'
He heard the voice of his friend, urgent, and he thought of the men in mountain caves, or in the compound of a tribal chief in the foothills, who had sent him and who now listened to their radios to learn that the faith placed in him was justified. He heard the engine of the vehicle, racing in low gear, and he thought of the myriad skeins of the web that had been put together. He heard a shrill call for him to come back to the cottage, and he thought of how many had risked so much to place him where he now stood and how they would crumple if the mission failed or was ineffective.
'You cannot delay. You cannot remain here. You were given rubbish to work with. You would not be fairly blamed if you quit. At home, where you belong, where you are a leader of fighting men, you would have finished with this, moved on and found another target.'
