The copse was nothing like home, the ground sodden beneath Didar’s back. There was so much rain in this country. He shifted his head on the roots of the tree, peered down at his leg and tried to assess the blood loss. Perhaps it was not so bad. Overhead the trees rustled and blanketed the late evening light, turning the world tonal. He thought of the bright sun, the dusty heat, the vibrant sounds of Kabul and felt himself drifting, floating. It would be so pleasant to fall asleep and dream. Of home. Of Amina.
He opened his eyes with a start, the man’s face looming out of nowhere. ‘Hey! Paki!’ But there was no-one. Just some wild creature or a trick of the breeze.
‘Focus, Sar’e,’ he chided himself, and renewed his grip on the belt around his thigh. ‘Stay awake. Control the bleeding. He won’t be back.’
He’d encountered men like that before, in the streets of Crediton, as he’d walked from the hospital or waited for a bus. Keen to remind him that this was not his country; that he did not belong. As if he could forget. But not here, not in this quiet wood. And not with a face concealed by a mask.
‘Hey! Paki!’ Useless to tell him that he was from Afghanistan; that he had worked for the British Army; that he had no choice but to leave. The man had a knife and his own rationale.
A sound caught his attention and he squinted into the woods, hoping to see a walker with a dog. How British people loved their dogs! It was not yet dark. Still time. But he saw no-one; just the trees as he lay weakening in this place called Burlow Copse. What a strange language English was. Only this week he’d heard the same word, ‘copse’ used at Crediton hospital where he did night shifts as a porter. ‘Stabbing coming in,’ said an A and E nurse, ‘and the cops’ll be here too.’ She meant police officers, as he soon learned, but for a moment he thought of large trees stomping along behind the ambulance.
But where were the cops now?
He swallowed, changed hands and pulled on the make-shift tourniquet, but he was losing strength: it was seeping out of him and into the earth.
‘Help will come,’ he told himself again. ‘This is not your time. You have an exam to pass.’ He made himself think about that; about the final step towards registration. When he could, once more, do the work he was trained for – mending broken bodies – only here, thanks to god, he would be doing appendectomies or fixing hernias, not battling to put back together the bomb blasted abdomens of children that had dominated his surgical internship. The challenge now for his colleagues back home was malnutrition. That, and the mishandled births of women prevented from attending hospital. ‘Amina,’ he thought again and didn’t even try to stop the tears that gathered, slipped over his temples and into his hair.
‘Do you know who I am?’ the man had asked him but, of course, Didar did not.
‘Please. I have no fight with you. Tell me what you want.’
‘My country back, Paki. That’s what I want. Understand?’
Did he? He had lived in a country that had been contested for centuries: invaded, claimed, fought over. He himself had seen the results, bloody and mangled on the operating table, forced to wear an unsterile beard, forced to pray while people died. What did this man know about invasion, oppression? About the loss of a country?
‘I have great respect for this country,’ was all he could say, as the nausea rose and he tried to still his hands. The man just laughed.
Desperate now, he turned his head towards the dim light that signalled the end of the tree line. How much longer did he have? He had been so close. Just a walk across the field, along the lane and back to his little English house made of rubble and mud, just like those at home. ‘Cob’ it was called here in Devon, but it was still mud and a very unsuitable material, in his opinion, for such a climate as this.
Cob. A loaf of bread; a piece corn. Didar closed his eyes and let himself drift. He was so very tired.
‘Do you know who I am?’ The man had moved closer and looked right into Didar’s face. And, for a brief moment, Didar wondered if he did know him. And then the pain of the knife as it plunged into his thigh took away all further thought.
He cried out as he fell to his knees, as a boot in his chest sent him toppling to the ground. ‘Pray to your Allah,’ the man said, quietly, ‘Because I am the saviour, Paki. The saviour of my race.’
To read Chapter 1, click here: Imperium – Prologue and Chapter 1