Hinterland: A Novel (28 page)
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Authors: Caroline Brothers
I found an old chessboard in a cupboard at the home for boys but nobody knew how to play.
I missed Aryan so much. Sometimes at night he would come to talk to me. He reminded me about the puppies and the canary that couldn’t fly or sing and the pigeons on the rooftop in Afghanistan. He asked me if I’d chosen a birthday month and told me never to forget I was an Afghan, even if I didn’t remember much about it. He told me to make my way and start a new life, that English people were good people and believed in human rights, and to make sure I worked hard in school now that I had finally got there because so many boys we had known would never have the chance. And I was able to listen to music because the other boys showed me how to put it on Aryan’s phone. I haven’t started to play an instrument yet, but there is a teacher at the school who says she can show me on a pipe that’s called a recorder. Once I get good, then all I will need is to find some English people planning to get married.
Sometimes I have nightmares about the man in Greece. I imagine that he is coming to find me and take me away in his truck. And sometimes I wake myself up with my own yelling when I dream about the things that happened to Baba and Madar. The only thing left inside Aryan’s wallet was the folded-over photograph of our family from before I was born. So I take it out and look at it, and it makes me feel sad but also calm. And sometimes, when it gets very cold, I get the shakes because it reminds me of the way Aryan died, and then I try to hold it in by holding my breath but I can’t stop the tears from coming. If the canteen ladies notice they bring me a cuppatea to warm me up. And I practise my counting, because it’s true what Aryan said, that you can’t count and be sad or frightened both at the same time.
About a year after I got here Hamid managed to find where I was. By mistake he called Aryan’s mobile phone one evening, because he still had Aryan’s number recorded in his own, and when I answered he couldn’t believe it was me. I told him where I was staying and he came to see me one Saturday in the morning before he started his work. He had found a job washing up in a restaurant and was making some money but the hours were hard and he didn’t like it how his clothes got drenched and his hands went wrinkly inside the gloves and how much he stank all over by the end of the night. They let him sleep in a space out the back and he had no shower but at least he could use the sink in the toilets. He hoped to move to something else, maybe waiting on tables where sometimes the customers left tips. He didn’t try to go to school any more because there was too much trouble back home, and now he had to send money to save his sister. But he worried all the time about not having papers, and said that if the police caught him they would try to send him back.
The thing about not going to school was that he would never get to study astronomy. But he said he still looked at the stars even though there was so much light at night-time over the city, and it made him feel peaceful to imagine ancient times, when the starlight first set off on its journey to Earth.
Warmest thanks to Barbara Trapido, Alexandra Pringle, David Miller, Sarah-Jane Forder, Polly Clark, Mark Harrison, Ann Brothers, Caroline McLeod, Janet Chimonyo, John Follain, Rita Cristofari, Paul Myers, William Spindler, Matthew Saltmarsh, Sylvain Piron, John Paul Rofé and everyone at Bloomsbury. My articles for the
International Herald Tribune
familiarized me with some of the locations traversed by Aryan and Kabir; I am most grateful to the late David Rampe, and to Susan Meiselas at Magnum, for their support and encouragement. Simone Troller at Human Rights Watch generously shared her insights into the situation of unaccompanied Afghan children and other separated minors across Europe, while Jean-Michel Centres and Mahvash Grisoni broadened my understanding of the daily circumstances of these children’s lives. To all three, my deepest thanks. I have also drawn in places on Wali Mohammadi’s brave account of his odyssey in imagining Aryan and Kabir’s. To Nadjib Sirat, who steered me straight on so many points of Afghan life, my heartfelt thanks. Above all, I am indebted to the numerous young Afghans who, courageously or urgently or shyly or gradually, shared their experiences with me. In memory of my father, this story is for them.
Caroline Brothers was born in Australia. She has a PhD in history from University College London and has worked as a foreign correspondent in Europe and Latin America. She currently lives in Paris where she writes for the
International Herald Tribune
and the
New York Times
. She is the author of
War and Photography
and also writes short stories.
Hinterland
is her first novel.
War and Photography
Copyright © 2011 by Caroline Brothers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10010.
The lines from the poem “Ithaca,” taken from the G. Valassopoulo
translation in the
Criterion
in 1924, are copyright © C. P. Cavafy.
Reproduced by permission of the Estate of C. P. Cavafy c/o Rogers,
Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 IJN
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Brothers, Caroline.
Hinterland : a novel / Caroline Brothers.--1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-60819-678-4
1. Brothers--Fiction. 2. Homeless boys--Fiction. 3. Afghans--Foreign countries--Fiction. I. Title.
PR9619.4.B758H56 2012
823'.92--dc22
2011020290
Print edition first published by Bloomsbury USA in 2012
This e-book edition published in 2011
E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-752-1