The Shot by Sarah Sultoon

Author:Sarah Sultoon [Sultoon, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orenda Books
Published: 2022-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Safe Rooms

‘Repeat after me,’ Adam said as we huddled in the debris outside the crumbling façade of what was left of Ahmed’s house. ‘In and out, OK? If we don’t find him inside, we hustle back out and shift.’

I flinched along with Adam as Kris slammed the armoured-car door closed. Hamdi, the Iraqi journalist at the local news agency who’d shot the original video, quivered next to us.

‘Watch yourself, Kris.’ Adam frowned as he brushed himself down, the sudden commotion kicking up clouds of dust into the air. ‘Anything else you want to get off your chest?’

‘Sorry.’ Kris grunted as he shouldered his camera. ‘You got it. In and out.’

I swallowed reflexively as I watched him do the same. The air was still thick with dust, hazy with every shaft of sun that peeped out from between the clouds elbowing each other overhead.

‘You’re good to go, then,’ Adam replied with another frown, tapping the radio clipped to his belt. ‘And make sure you keep these on. I don’t want to be told you turned them off because of some audio problem.’

‘Loud and clear, sir. Loud and clear.’

My hands went to my own radio as Kris patted his. Finally we were able to follow Hamdi into what was left of the house.

The air inside had a charged quality, not just because of the dust lingering in it. For a building so close to being completely destroyed there was still so much to take in– the masses of cables hanging from what was left of the ceiling, the broken picture frames with their torn insides, the fluttering, scorched panel of what once must have been a curtain. I felt like my body was operating from somewhere outside of itself, rotating my head on my neck as I tried not to stare, but in what other way was it possible to look at something so alien? It was only when I realised that Ahmed was already in the room that I was able to snap out of it. I don’t know what I’d expected – that he’d have been in bed, perhaps? Except of course he wouldn’t have been, no Arab would receive visitors in anything other than the most hospitable way possible, even if mad with grief.

‘Sami,’ Hamdi whispered as he beckoned me over piles of rubble to a semblance of a sofa. I had to stifle a gasp when I saw the dusty tea tray, four delicate glasses.

‘Sami, this is Ahmed.’

And there he was, almost folded onto the floor, a torso propped on whatever he had left of legs, stuffed underneath him like a cushion he couldn’t feel.

I dropped to my own knees, no care for the debris underneath.

‘Salaam aleikum,’ I whispered, holding a hand over my heart. ‘Thank you so much for allowing us into your home.’

He nodded, fresh tears oiling the tracks already dried hard onto his rumpled face. Behind me, I heard Kris’s camera whirr to life. And so too did Ahmed’s story.

War had already taken so much from him, first between Iran and Iraq, robbing him of his eldest sons.

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