Akram's War by Nadim Safdar

Author:Nadim Safdar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Akram’s War
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 2016-03-07T05:00:00+00:00

13

‘My people have a saying: A woman is born when she gives birth.’

Grace stares at me incredulously, the knife tip making a blanched indent in her skin. Soon it will pierce the surface and she will bleed.

I take slow steps towards her. ‘God love you, Grace, but the problem with you is that you were born with a face that could never quite solve the puzzle.’

Her mouth trembles and she glares at me silently as though trying to work out what I have just said.

‘I know you’ve thought about it. Putting the lights out. For good.’

A slow trickle of blood leaves the point of the knife, running down the blade.

‘But that sort of thing, it’s not for you.’

The trickle reaches her fingers clasping the knife.

‘Some escape, some take revenge, and others, well, they just take it. Sooner or later, they lower their expectations and reach some sort of compromise.’

‘I can’t do that.’ As she speaks, the knife slips to within an inch or so below her Adam’s apple. ‘You don’t understand. You can’t compensate for what they take away.’

‘No, my love. The compromise is with yourself.’

‘Whose side are you on?’ The knife returns to its earlier position.

‘You were asleep, weren’t you? I told you all that stuff and you slept right through it.’

The knife presses deeper, the trickle of blood growing, branching into two and then three. The blade is dangerously close to her carotid.

‘If you were listening you might have heard something. Something that might make you stop.’

As she shakes her head in confusion, the knife serrates the skin at an angle, drawing tiny pinpricks of blood.

‘I knew Britney’s dad. I served with him.’

She shakes her head more vigorously, her eyes bulging like those of a trapped animal. The blood runs between her fingers. ‘I hardly bloody knew him myself. Said he was serving but they all say that, don’t they? Told him I was expecting and he done a runner.’

I say, ‘Adrian Hartley. Only Allah knows how I loved that man.’

The knife drops to the floor and her body starts to shake uncontrollably. I grab a tea towel off the sink and wrap it around her neck, applying pressure. I gently guide her back up to the bedroom, where I make her sit up in bed, her back against the headboard. She is wide awake and I pour her a large drink. She wants to know everything, ‘for Britney’s sake, to tell her when she’s older’. She tells me they were never in love and I can say it how it was. Propped next to her, my arm around her, I begin at the beginning.

*

‘Nature, what makes it different?’ bellowed Training Corporal Longbone.

I looked across at the open fields and then back at the woods from where we had come. The long route march, the last of week three, had worn me out. My feet, in boots that were not yet broken in, hurt with every step, and the sweat was still running into my eyes as I stood in formation as though ready for inspection.

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