The Last Kestrel. Jill McGivering

carefully. Allah alone knew how.

      As soon as she saw first light, she got up. She tried to wash the exhaustion out of her body with cool water, then forced herself to start her chores. Abdul emerged, yawning, to find much of her work already done.

      ‘I’ll go to the big market today,’ she told him while he ate. ‘I need spices. And my cooking pot is cracked. These village ones are useless.’

      ‘Cracked?’ He looked up. ‘But it’s new.’

      Hasina spread her hands. ‘Why quarrel over a pot?’ she said. ‘Anything you need?’

      He shrugged. He was already finishing his bread and tea. He dipped into his pocket and pulled out some crumpled notes. ‘Spend it with care,’ he said.

      She waited until he had set off for the fields. She wrapped her best shawl around her head and shoulders, making sure her hair was properly covered, and picked her way along the edge of the fields, down the hillside towards the riverside track. Her body settled into the rhythm of the long walk to Nayullah.

      The big market was held every week but she didn’t go often. It took a whole morning and, besides, they couldn’t afford to buy much. Today she’d needed a reason to walk. If she stayed in the fields all day, her worry would suffocate her. She looked out across the river, at the thick reeds breaking the water, the flies in a low black cloud on the surface. She’d bought treats at the market for Aref when he was a boy. Nuts and sweets in twists of coloured paper. Cheap plastic toys. How he’d loved them. She wiped off her forehead with the end of her scarf. Now where was he?

      She lengthened her stride. The sunlight was bouncing sharp and clean off the water at her side. It was a blessing from Allah, the river. The land around it was green with ripening corn and low foliage. A lizard ran into the path in front of her, froze, then darted for cover. When she raised her eyes to look beyond the river, the desert softly shimmered in the heat, stretching away to the horizon, endlessly thirsty and barren.

      A boy came slowly towards her, herding goats along the river bank. He was a gawky child. She nodded to him as he approached but he slid his eyes away, embarrassed. He clicked his tongue at the goats, slapping at them with a long switch. The goats knocked and stumbled against each other. They filled the narrow path and she stepped into the scrub to let them pass. For some moments, the air was suffused with the low tinkling of the bells at their necks and the thick pungent scent of hot goat.

      She walked on, thinking. Since she could remember, there’d always been fear and fighting here and restless young men eager to kill. Her own family’s village had been razed by the Leftists when she was a girl. The baker and his wife tortured and killed. No one would tell her why. Their children, her playmates, had been sent around the village to grow up with cousins. Sad children, after that, with fewer friends. When would it end? She thought again of Aref. The way those young men had strutted like cockerels, all self-importance. Such foolishness.

      As she finally approached the market, she quickened her pace. The stalls were spilling out along both sides of the dirt road and deep into the land behind it. She looked over the hawkers. That was someone she recognized, that farmer. Over there, another. Regulars from a nearby village. She’d bought from them since they were boys. Baskets woven by their wives. Clay pots. Vegetables and fruit. They were seated silently on the edge of the large cloths they’d rolled out over the dirt. Something about their stillness made her uneasy.

      She walked further, past a fat row of dented trucks. The metalwork flashed with sunlight. More outsiders. Vegetables gave way to bales of used garments and second-hand shoes, hillocks of garish foreign plastic, buckets and bowls. The old men and boys who sat with these goods, cross-legged, their feet bare, were strangers.

      Her head was starting to ache. A volley of cries from crackling loud-hailers. Cages of chickens squawked and clawed. Young men were cooking up snacks in pots, flipping them with flattened knives. The smell of frying oil hung heavy in the air. How Aref loved oily snacks when he was a child. What would those boys with guns give him to eat today?

      A young boy, weighed down by a bulging bag, came running towards her. He stuck to her side, brandishing a plastic bottle of juice. He pushed it in her face, urging her to buy. She swatted him away. Across the road, a group of young men skidded to a halt on motorbikes, kicking up dust. They wore dark glasses and faded foreign T-shirts, cotton scarves tied loosely round their necks. They were whooping and showing off. They called out insults to a passing group of mothers and daughters. The young women pulled their scarves more closely round their faces. Hasina hesitated.

      A sudden movement caught her eye, down beyond the market, towards Nayullah. There were men in the road, waving their arms and flagging down vehicles. The sun glinted on metal at their chests. She screened her eyes to look. Guns.

      They were Afghans, not foreigners. They wore shabby uniforms, bunched in folds at the waist. There was a barrier in the road. They were stopping passing vehicles, forcing them to pull in to the side and be searched. At that moment, a motorbike came roaring through, two young men clinging to the seat. Behind it a battered pickup truck, open at the back like a farmer’s vehicle, was forced to a halt. Were the men in uniform asking the drivers for money? Who were they? She frowned. This was something new. It unsettled her.

      She turned in from the street and picked her way down the narrow mud aisles between the stalls. The clamour flowed over her. Last time she was here, she’d bought boots for Aref. He’d be wearing those boots now. She looked round, trying to get her bearings. The second-hand shoe stall had gone. Everything looked different. The stalls seemed brasher, the shouting stallholders more aggressive. Other shoppers barged and jostled her, as some pressed their way forward, others forced their way past. Every time someone stopped to examine the goods, crouching down to turn over in their hands a plastic sandal or cotton scarf, they became a rock in the stream, damming up the crowd behind them.

      Hasina began to feel light-headed with the noise, the heat and her lack of sleep. Through the crowd, she saw a face she recognized. A fruit-seller. An old man from a village near town. She pushed her way towards him.

      ‘May Allah bless and protect you,’ she said to him. ‘And all your family.’

      ‘And may He also bless and protect yours.’ He got to his feet, pushed his toes into his sandals. His cap was dusty. He moved to the side, clearing a small space at the side of his stall so she could step in from the thoroughfare.

      ‘So busy today,’ she said. She wiped her face with her shawl.

      ‘Yes, so many people.’ He gestured to her to sit, then turned from her to his goods. He had arranged a display of oranges in a carefully balanced pyramid, small misshapen pieces of fruit, picked too early in the season. He spent time choosing one, then sliced it open over the earth with his knife and handed her a piece to suck. The sweetness of the juice made her heady. He settled down, cross-legged, beside her, and smiled as he watched her eat, showing, through his grey beard, black stumps of teeth.

      She sucked on the orange, pulling her scarf forward round her face. In front of them, the crowd streamed past. ‘How is business?’

      The old man spread his hands. Hasina saw the bulging veins running along their backs. ‘Like this, like that,’ he said. ‘When the rains come, then it will be better.’

      ‘Yes, let’s pray for rain soon.’

      They nodded. The fat man at the next stall began to shout through a loud-hailer, urging passers-by to stop and look. The rich smell of the orange cut into the stale sweat all around her.

      ‘I’ve never seen so many vehicles,’ she said.

      The old man scowled. ‘And those new police, you saw them?’ He wagged his finger at her. ‘Thugs. The foreigners give them guns.’

      Hasina felt the orange thicken in her throat. The policemen’s guns must be good then. Better than the country-made weapons of the fighters. She threw the orange peel behind her onto the ground, wiped her sticky fingers on her scarf.

      ‘So much trouble.’ She looked round. No one was close enough to hear. ‘More killing in town,