The Walking Dead

Syed was on his stomach, breathing noisily, and Khalid padded past him. He skirted the next mattress where Jamal lay, hugging his pillow, and he thought the kid pathetic. He was beside Ramzi's mattress, the one who was all talk and who had been tongue-lashed in front of them, and there was the dark shape of his body: the muscle man seemed to have buried his head under the blankets, to be sleeping and not moving; the covering over his head masked his breathing. The window swung again. He could make out, in the darkness of the room over which the shadows of the curtains bounced, the rainwater's brightness on those blankets. He reached forward, above the mattress and Ramzi, to catch the window.

The curtain billowed into Khalid's face and covered his eyes, blinded him. The window cannoned into his fingers: Pain arced up from them. His feet snagged on the cable of the side-light, which went taut and toppled him. He fell on to the mattress and the sleeper. He expected a convulsion of movement and to be thrown off by thrashing arms and legs, but he sank down softly.

Under the blankets, and lined up in the shape of a body, his hand — bleeding — found two pillows, a tight bundle of clothing and a closely rolled blanket.

The curtain was pushed back by the wind, and the rain ran on his face and settled on his hair. He realized the enormity of what he had found.

He pushed himself up and looked through the window. He did not feel the rain or the wind's force on his skin.

Khalid shouted, a spirit that wailed at the approach of death. He screamed. Around him, they woke.

The older men, in pants and T-shirts, were at the open door — and Faria in pyjamas. The ceiling light was snapped on.

Khalid pointed first to the open window and the sodden curtain, then to the mattress, the pillows, the bundle and the rolled blanket. He tried to hide his shiver, but it was not from cold. Fear tugged at him.

The voice snapped behind him: 'That fucking imbecile with the big mouth, how long since he was seen?'

Who would answer? Who would dare to face the fury? Khalid steeled himself, hesitated, then looked down at his wrist-watch and stammered, 'Other than him, I was the last to go to sleep. He could have been gone for seven hours. What do we do?'

'Behave, if you are capable of it, like soldiers — not brats still crying for their mother's breasts.'

The door slammed. All of them — Khalid, Syed and Jamal — trembled as they dressed in silence, and none went near the open window. Would it be aborted? Would they be sent home? By association, were they disgraced? The questions seared the mind of Khalid, but he dared not ask them.

Chapter 12

Wednesday, Day 14

As he lay on his bed, the tumult beat round Ibrahim. He could hear but not see. His door stayed closed. Whatever crisis raged in the cottage, he was not part of it. No one came to his room. Breakfast had not been brought to him, nor had he been called to the kitchen. Before retreating to his bed, after the shouting and door slamming had started, he had faced the wall, knelt and prayed with intensity. Then he had lain on the nicked-up sheets. What he could hear told him little.

He remembered moments of confidence, some extreme, but they were now behind him. They played in his mind: walking from the mosque where the imam had spelled out the rewards available to the virtuous, the brave, the dedicated; cleaning his room personally, not leaving it to the servant, tidying his affairs secretively, and polishing the glass in the frames holding the photographs of his brothers, the martyrs; telling the untruths to his father and sisters, and justifying them because of the pride and glory his family would know when his name and face were on the television screen; being called forward by the Leader, the man of war, chosen above the other eleven, walking for him and being praised. Then confidence had surged in him, and it had been with him when he had stepped towards the departure gates at Riyadh's King Khalid airport — the calling of his name had not deflected it — and as he had walked past the checks and the armed police at the train terminus, his leather jacket thrown open to show the swan, and as he had arrived in the car at the cottage, knowing he would be carrying the bomb when he left it…But now the confidence was gone, had ebbed with each hour of the days and nights that he had been left in the room.

Should he have thrown open the door, stalked out and demanded to be told what was the cause of the crisis?

He wished the girl would come…Alone among them, she was the one he wished had come to his room.

It was because she was flawed, her face crossed with the scar, that he valued her.

Until now, beyond his door there had been a babble of shouting. He was forgotten. The voices had been indistinct. He recognized then that Jamal and the girl were in the corridor outside his room. Did they realize that he was on his bed, abandoned but straining to hear?

Jamal said, a hoarse whisper, 'I don't think we can go on now.'