LITMIR.BIZ

      Dedication

      For Nick

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Dedication

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Chapter 30

      About the Author

      Acknowledgements

      Also by Jill McGivering

      Copyright

       About the Publisher

      Chapter 1

      It was May and even here in the mountains, the heat was thick and heavy. I was out alone, fetching water, walking in an idle zigzag to and fro across the path, swinging the pail in my hand and feeling the heat prick my hair under my scarf. Down in the shadowy orchards, men were reaching for the first ripe peaches and plums of the season. Beyond them, a car wound its way down the narrow road to town, coughing up dust. When it disappeared, the broken silence mended itself as the heat settled.

      I was practising a new walk, holding my back rigid, swinging my hips in a sashay the way the older girls did. I imagined Saeed watching me, as he sometimes would, keeping his distance but following me to or from school. I thought of his handsome face and dark eyes and placed my feet as neatly as a dancer.

      A noise. I stopped. Banging. A faint sound. I stood and listened. Hammering. Clean and hard and out of place. It was coming from my left, near the mosque. I crept through the grass to crouch behind the high corner of a compound. I held my breath and peered around the wall to look.

      Three strangers were standing on the path near the entrance to the mosque. They were banging a piece of paper onto a tree, fixing it with nails. Further down, three notices were already fluttering on other trees, pinned like butterflies. I felt a stab of pain, imagining they were living things, nailed to the wood and suffering.

      The men were thick-set with dark turbans, bushy beards and grubby shirts. One was as old as Baba and had a crooked nose, as if long ago he’d been hit in the face. His stomach bulged under his kameez. He was standing back from the tree, giving orders. The other two, doing the hammering, were younger. One was handsome; his upper arms thickened into ropes of muscle as he wielded the hammer. There was something dangerous in the set of his mouth. His eyes were cool. A long gun was hanging from a strap, slung over his shoulders, and the metal glinted in the sunlight as he lifted his arm and the hammer blows fell. My stomach tightened and the breath stuck in my chest.

      They worked their way further up the road, banging papers onto all six trees outside the mosque, one by one. Finally they walked back down the path to a battered pickup truck parked far below in the road.

      The older man got into the passenger seat beside the driver. The handsome young man and his friend climbed into the open back and sat with their guns propped upright between splayed legs. They gripped the truck’s metal cage, their knuckles white, as it started to move, pitching them off balance. The handsome man turned to look up the path. I ducked back behind the wall, heart thumping. Had he seen me? When I dared to look again, all that was left was dust, hanging in the empty air.

      I counted to a hundred, then walked down to the first notice and stood, trying to read the lettering. It had been written in black curly handwriting and copied by a machine.

      By Order, it said. All music is contrary to the will of Allah and is henceforth forbidden. All shaving of beards is contrary to the will of Allah and is henceforth forbidden. All contact between men and women who are not close blood relatives is contrary to the will of Allah and is henceforth forbidden. All women and girls shall be confined to their compounds and not venture into public. Praise be to Allah! It was signed by a man whose name I didn’t know and underneath his name it said: Supreme Commander, Faithful Soldiers of Islam.

      I looked up and down the path. No one. I set down my pail and gripped the two sides of the notice in both hands, tearing it off the tree. The paper ripped from the nails, leaving behind shreds that hung like skin. I held it against my face, tasting the paper with the tip of my tongue and breathing its strange inky smell. It was dangerous and disturbing and made me shiver. I smoothed out the creases against my thigh and folded the paper carefully in half, then in half again, and hid it in my pocket.

      Chapter 2

      The pressure was so intense that the crowd seemed about to burst. All around Ellen, ahead and behind, fists were punching the air, thrust upwards in unison by the rhythms of the chants. The voices were shrill, on the brink of screams.

      ‘Pakistan Zindabad!’ Long live Pakistan. ‘Freedom Zindabad!’ The shouting was led by a man in a black baseball cap. A megaphone distorted his words, punctuating them with explosions of static and piercing whines. Placards, dancing above the protesters’ heads, showed the mass-produced images of opposition politicians.

      Ellen, at the edge of the crowd, straightened her headscarf and climbed onto a boulder for a better view. No sign of the other reporters. She ran her eyes down the human river of people, dividing the chaos of raised hands and wobbling placards into sections. She made a rough mental count of one portion, then multiplied it to judge the size of the whole protest. Four thousand people, certainly. Perhaps five.

      She wrote a few lines, noting down some of the slogans and a short description of the man with the megaphone. She’d like to kick off her report with colour, if the editors gave her enough space. Something dramatic to grab the reader’s attention before she started to expand and give context. Her readers would need help making sense of it all. Further pressure on the Pakistani government. No. She needed to give a greater sense of rising drama. She tucked loose strands of hair back out of sight under her scarf, thinking, then added: on this already beleaguered Pakistani government. Around her, the shouting was reaching a crescendo. She should leave soon. The latest in a growing number of protests. Showing mounting public frustration, public concern, about the government’s handling of the current crisis. She paused. How many readers would remember what crisis? She added: of the government’s handling of its current battle against the threat from Islamic extremists. Too long. She went back and crossed out a few words.

      She looked

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