Chapter TWENTY-TWO Part One

Honey ran until she could run no longer. So close…she had been so close but of course the soldiers couldn’t know that she was not an enemy. A quick look around confirmed that she had become separated from the other women in their panic to escape and now once more was alone.

There was a tiny frozen pond in the wadi she had taken refuge in and she broke the ice to fill her water bottles, first washing the soldier’s blood off her hands with the bit of the warmer water left in one. What she wouldn’t give for a bath but body heat was far more important than cleanliness, so she resisted the urge to splash even her face with the icy water, put the sling back under her voluminous robe and started again in the direction the road had taken, hoping that it would lead her to Kandahar, praying that her bleeding, cracked feet would last just a little longer and that this trek was nearly over. If only she had an idea of how much further it was. This not knowing was making the trek seem endless. It was getting increasingly difficult to keep going, to keep believing that she could do it. And now with the lack of food she was having dreams even without sleeping.

It had been days since she had eaten, long days that drained her strength. The bottom of her gown was thickly coated and frozen with the mushy snow from the road and she was worried, for the first time since she had taken her desperate gamble with the twins, really worried that this journey was going to prove beyond her. The last two days she had been fighting off frequent hallucinations, kept seeing Urs in the distance, wasted energy several times moving as quickly as her bloodied feet would allow to the shimmering illusion of him, only to have it fade as she got closer.

There were scrubby frozen plants near the base of the hill and she clawed at the hard packed earth to expose the roots, her nails so broken and short that once again her fingers bled, but she persisted until she could see the roots clearly and began to pry them loose. How she wished that the Taliban hadn’t stripped all the refugees of knives and anything else they thought would be handy. A knife would be useful now that the few plants she found were in frozen ground. She broke them off and put them in her sling to thaw against her body. At least today she would eat and she had water again.

She plodded on, running through a song in her head, Chris de Burgh’s ‘Missing You’, but it was just too sad, so she thought of a track that the guys had done, Por ti Sere…much better, and concentrated on a harmony for it, felt better as she thought of them singing it, doing it just for her to sing along, even if only in her mind.

**

One more full day and they would finish the tour. Urs talked privately with Lieutenant Jeffers, asking to stay even if the others left but the Louie refused, warned Urs that if he didn’t go willingly he would be cuffed and taken.

“It would be worth my bars if I let you stay. The colonel would have my ass for grass.”

“But we know she was alive just a few days ago and so near here. I can’t just abandon her.”

“Look, I’ll pass the word to all the other officers to watch for her. If she gets here and requests medical aid, they’ll take her under guard and then she can tell the female officers who she is. That’s all we can do now. I’m sorry.”

Urs was very quiet when they boarded the truck to go to the 2 small camps just to the east of Kandahar and his silence worried David.

He came over and sat next to Urs in the bed of the truck as they bumped over the rutted road.

“Hey….you aren’t planning to do anything stupid are you?” he asked Urs softly.

Urs looked up at his friend with a small twisted smile.

“Who me? The one known for his logical ‘Swissness’?”

“Oh Gawd, you are!!! I can tell…you have that look. Urs what do you have planned?”

Urs sighed and leaned back, still speaking softly so as not to be heard over the heavy drone of the truck.

“I’m not leaving. I’m going to slip out of camp tonight and I don’t have any idea how, but I’m staying here until I find her.”

“You can’t do this…what if something happens and neither of you come back? What about the boys?”

“David, I love my sons but they need their mother and so do I. I will miss them terribly, of course, but I’m not too worried about them. They’re too young to form lasting bonds yet and if we don’t get back to them, I know you three, my brothers, will take care of them as well as I ever could alone. Just ask Katja for the legal papers I had my lawyer draw up and left with her.”

“See, there’s that Swissness again. You thought of this way back when we were still home, didn’t you?”

Urs raised one brow at him. “I think I’ve done enough illogical things over the past year to do for the rest of my life. It was time to take charge of my life and be a man, a logical, Swiss man.”


**

They finished both of the distributions and headed back to the base. David hadn’t spoken of their conversation again but he kept watching Urs.

Urs was very calm. He had made his decision and felt that this was the right course to take, regardless of what the NATO forces or David thought.

**

They were 5 K from Kandahar and the compound when the truck ahead of them slowed and stopped. The Sergeant got down from the back and came over to report to the Lieutenant in the Divo’s truck, while his squad deployed at the ready.

“What’s the hold up Sergeant?”

“Sorry sir, someone spotted movement in that building. There were a bunch of refugees here a couple of hours ago. It might just be one of them that just got left behind.”

“And it could be another Taliban suicide bomber. Check it out.”

The Divos waited patiently, had become resigned to these constant delays and were no longer quite as nervous when they happened. They watched as the squad was deployed and advanced in spurts toward the building, arms ready. David was fiddling with the controls for the tape deck/radio and suddenly the recording they had done of the First Noel blared over the speakers, he turned it down to a normal level and shot the Lieutenant an apologetic smile.

“Sorry,” he said but the Louie just smiled and said: “Leave it on….. reminds me of home.”

David looked back across the yard to the partly demolished building as the squad got closer, nearly ready to rush it.

Carlos looked up and nudged Seb. They both turned to stare at Urs as he rose to his feet slowly. Then they heard it too, and the shock froze them in place for a moment.

“Listen!” Urs grabbed David’s arm and slipped quickly from the back of the truck. One of the guards pushed him back with his rifle but Urs just pulled his helmet off to hear better, repeated ‘LISTEN!’ and stood by the tailgate.

Now they could all hear it, a descant being sung beautifully, but in a weak voice, in English along with their track. The squad leader looked back to the lieutenant and raised his shoulders. He got the signal for go but with caution and stood to rush the building.

One of the squad had basic Farsi and yelled in that language. “Hands up!!! Show your hands!!!” The singing stopped and a frightened but determined voice answered in Farsi.

“I am wounded and unarmed.”

That set off the soldiers and they all advanced, yelling at the person in Farsi, English and French, to raise hands and come out, all nervously fingering their triggers, waiting, ready to fire or run.

Behind the wall two hands came into sight, small, bloody hands with thin arms, one reaching for the sky, the other laying limply on the top of a chadur covered head, followed slowly by a small black clad body. The sergeant put the end of his rifle over the wall and against the woman’s forehead, so hard that she staggered a bit. He motioned her to come out, glanced back to see another figure crouched on the ground with his head at an unnatural angle and yelled at his squad to cover the man on the ground. He again motioned the woman forward, never moving the barrel, not even a fraction, as she limped carefully around the broken wall.

The whole scene was surreal. The woman sighed and dropped her other hand to her head, her fingers working at the fastening for her garment. The sergeant yelled at her to put her hands back up, another was screaming at her in English to kneel and she sank to her knees, her head bent slightly but she kept on pulling at the fastening as if maybe yanking on a primer for explosives. The sergeant tightened his finger on the trigger. Lieutenant Jeffers drew closer and roared at the squad for silence.

She raised her head up to him, the barrel of the Sergeant’s rifle following her movement and now the lieutenant could hear her voice shaking as she called out to him.

Just as the knot for the chadur slipped free and the veil and garment slid from her head and shoulders she managed to make herself understood.

“Lieutenant….I am Canadian….my name is Honey Harper…please help me.”


****