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It must have been a week later. It was just about dawn. Karen had become used to the first glimmer of light that gave them their last few moments of peace before the efforts of the day began, the short period of cool before the cold of the night gave way to the day’s unremitting heat.
She looked across at the others. Miyako and Natsumi frailer than ever. They had found yesterday’s tasks almost too much. Their faces had taken on a blank, empty look suggesting that they had withdrawn somewhere deep inside themselves. Anouk still strong, maybe as strong as Karen was. She seemed determined not to show that she could be broken, though all of them knew that they could stand little more of the treatment they were receiving and the lack of food.
Karen wondered how many women had been through here; used until they could do no more and then left to die or killed when the work they could do no longer repaid the food that they needed to keep them alive. It was more brutal than anything she had seen on her trips into Kushtia in the past. She wondered if she would ever see anything more, ever again.
This time though the pink glimmer of dawn came with another light; the bright white light of a magnesium flare and the sharp detonation of explosives. Anouk was suddenly awake startled from her sleep by the noise. Karen and the others pressed closer together hoping against hope that this was a rescue.
There was the chatter of automatic weapon fire. A single booming gunshot in response – Karen assumed it was the old man’s rifle, a rusted weapon she had seen him carrying one day while she was trudging around harnessed to the pump. More automatic fire answered it. More thumps and bangs. The four girls tried to huddle together, terrified in case they should be hit in the exchange of fire.
And then, Karen realised the shed was burning. Fire had broken out in the straw bales piled against one wall. Already acrid smoke was starting to fill the shed. She grabbed Anouk’s shoulder and pointed to the smouldering bales. The two of them tried to pull at the chains that held them prisoner in the shed. They were no more able to break themselves free than they had been when they first arrived. The chains were as strong as ever before and the girls, if anything, were weaker. Karen looked down at her wrists, now the bruises from her shackles were made raw and bloody by her efforts to free herself. Miyako and Natsumi were screaming, pulling at their own chains. Anouk had been able to reach a log. She tried to lever the ring that held her chain from its fixing in the wall. The almost rotten wood split and splintered without effect. The smoke was getting thicker. All four girls were choking and coughing as the air got hotter, sparks and stalks of burning straw whirling as the draft of the fire scooped up the air in the shed.
It was then that the door to the shed burst open. Two figures in combat fatigues carrying machine pistols were silhouetted against the smoke and flames and daylight beyond. They ran into the room. Taking an axe, one of them smashed the ring that their chains were fixed to and grabbing Miyako by the arm pulled the four of them from the shed as it began to collapse in flames around them.
They ran, still chained together, through the smoke and flames, as quickly as the shackles on their ankles would allow, stumbling and falling as they tried to keep up with their rescuers. Karen looked back over her shoulder to see the corrugated iron roof of the shed collapse as the flames consumed the timbers that held it up. She stumbled as she missed her footing on a petrol can discarded in the path. Two other soldiers were still firing into the homestead, lobbing grenades into the smoke and flames. The shed where they had been kept was now well ablaze, a pillar of smoke and sparks reaching up into the dawn sky. Other buildings in the farmstead were flaming or in ruins. Sticking out from beneath a heap of planks and timbers that had been the shed housing the pump, Karen saw the legs of the old man; his rifle beside him. Whether he’d been killed by gunshots or the collapse of the shed she couldn’t tell but there was no doubt he was dead. Beyond him the younger man lay, on his back eyes open, staring at the sky, as dead as his father, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, wounds stitched across in his chest by automatic fire. Karen saw the old women run out from one of the buildings, waving her arms above her head, her shawl smouldering, face streaked with dirt. A single shot caught her and stopped her. A look of surprise came over her face as she fell to her knees. A burst of fire followed, hitting her in the chest. She fell back.
The four girls were pulled past the gruesome scene, out of the compound and towards a low rise in the ground. Behind it sat a dung brown, camouflaged, half track vehicle sat, its engine throbbing impatiently. Their two rescuers pushed the four girls inside and climbed in after them. Karen could see only smoke and rubble where the farmstead had once been. Two goats, confused by the noise and flames bounded across the ground, bleating disconsolately. The two other soldiers climbed into the half track. As they sat down and the truck moved off, one of their rescuers pulled off their combat helmet and shook out a cascade of long black hair.
“You’re a woman,” gasped Karen in surprise.
“Does that mean you’d rather go back?” she asked in a heavy Kushtian accent.
“Oh, no,” said Karen. “No. Of course, no. It’s just that I didn’t think there were any women in the Kushtian armed forces.”
“You are right,” the woman said. “There aren’t.” She lapsed into silence as the truck ground on, the tracks clattering as they propelled them forward, the engine roaring insistently as it took each hill and dip in turn. It was hot in the truck, the sweat of the girls and their rescuers mingled with the stink of diesel as they drove on. They were heading west, the light of the rising sun streaming in through the back of the truck, dazzling Karen. She looked around at her fellow prisoners. They were all asleep, exhausted by the relief of rescue.
Karen wasn’t so sure.
Their destination turned out to be another cluster of sheds, little more impressive than the ones that they had left. But at least when they arrived they seemed to be welcomed by a cheering group.
All women, Karen thought as she peered out from the truck, about twenty of them. Mostly in combat fatigues, a few wearing western style skirts or jeans, two veiled in the traditional Kushtian chanoosh. Whoever they were, Karen could see that they weren’t part of the Kushtian army or any regular troops. Their rescuers helped them down from the truck and led them across to one of the sheds. A woman appeared clutching a set of bolt cutters and sheered through the hasps of the padlocks that closed each of the four girl’s shackles. As their chains fell away the four could not contain their relief and gratitude, hugging one another and the woman with the bolt cutters in turn. Other women arrived; one with a bundle of clothing, two more carrying bowls of steaming water, soap and towels. Anouk, Karen, Miyako and Natsumi, grabbed at the soap, splashing water from the bowl and cleaning themselves as best they could. They had seen no hot water since their capture.
They dried themselves, picked clothes from the heap and dressed. Karen found a shirt that was long enough to serve as a dress, Anouk a tee-shirt and shorts, the two Japanese girls found jeans and sweat shirts that weren’t too large for their small build. “Thank you,” Karen said to the women that had brought them the things. “Thaknarish. From all of us,” she waved at her colleagues, “thaknarish.”
Another woman appeared with a tray carrying four bowls of the hot, spiced lentil, soup and a pile of the simple flat breads that were a common staple in the uplands. The girls grabbed at their first real meal in two weeks.
Karen was sitting on the floor scooping at the last of the soup with a piece of bread when the dark haired soldier that had been one of her rescuers returned in the company of an older woman of maybe forty, her own dark hair starting to grey, her face lined. She wore an immaculately white tee shirt, khaki combat trousers and desert boots. She looked at the four girls and then spoke briefly to the soldier, muttering quietly in Kushtian that Karen could not really make out. She seemed to nod in agreement with what ever the soldier was saying. Three other armed women had appeared in the door. “Aargn,” the older woman said, waving the three others in, “Laringi!”
“Laringi?” thought Karen first of all thinking she had misheard. “Lock them up? That can’t be…” Her puzzlement was cut off by the clatter as each of the soldiers pulled back the bolt on their AK47’s and strode towards them. Karen put her hand up to fend off the grip of the first soldier that grabbed at the sleeve of her shirt. She was rewarded with a blow from the butt of the woman’s rifle. Winded, Karen felt herself dragged to her feet. With the gun’s barrel against her ribs she was pushed from the shed and across the courtyard. Behind her she could here the others being dragged out as well. There was another shed, smaller, barely ten feet square. Karen was pushed through the door. Disorientated by the dark she stumbled and slammed into the opposite wall. Winded, she sank to the floor as the three other girls were pushed in behind her. The door to the shed slammed shut behind them, cutting off the light from outside. She heard the familiar clack of a padlock closing. They were prisoners again.
“What’s happening?” Anouk’s voice in the darkness. “Why have they locked us up? Who are these people?”
Karen’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom. She could see Anouk sitting against the opposite wall, Miyako and Natsumi beside her.
“I don’t know,” said Karen. “It doesn’t make any sense. They’re not government troops. They must be some sort of militia, I suppose.”
The door opened again. One soldier stood beside it, weapon cocked. One other came in, grabbing Miyako and pulling her to her feet. Natsumi tried to pull her back and was rewarded with a cuff to the head. Miyako was pulled outside, yelling in Japanese to her friend. The door was locked again. Natsumi was hammering at the door.
“Are they going to kill us?” Anouk asked.
“I don’t know,” Karen said slowly. “I really don’t know.”
All three girls sat straining their ears hoping to hear something hoping not to hear other things. It was perhaps an hour. The door opened again. Miyako was pushed back into the cell. Apparently unharmed she sank down beside her friend. “Pro-hram,” she said with a puzzled look on her face. “Pro-hram?”
It was evidently Anouk’s turn. The guard pointed her weapon at her and gestured for her to get to her feet. With the barrel of the guard’s AK47 against her ribs she was pushed out of the cell. The door closed and locked again. Karen ran to it and managed to find a crack at one edge. She watched as Anouk was prodded across the compound to the largest building on the far side.
Another hour or more passed. Again the clunk of a key in the cell’s padlocked door heralded the return of the guards. Anouk was pushed back in and Karen was grabbed. As she was pulled to her feet, Anouk said, “They want to know about something called ‘The Programme’. When did we join it? Where did we come from to it? I didn’t understand what they were talking about.”
Karen was hustled away. It was getting late in the day now. The sun was starting to set, shadows lengthened across the compound as the peaks of surrounding hills cut off the sun light sooner than it would otherwise have gone. Karen followed the same path that Anouk had been taken along, up some creaking wooden steps, across a veranda and into the building.
From the corridor a wooden door opened into an office. Behind the desk sat the same old woman that had ordered their imprisonment. Another woman similarly dressed in tee shirt and combat trousers stood beside her. An empty chair stood in front of the desk. Karen was pushed across to sit.
“Please,” the woman behind the desk gestured to the chair. “Please sit down.”
Karen did so warily. “Who are you? Why are you keeping us here? I am an American citizen, I demand to be put in contact with the American Embassy in Kolin.”
“Kolin is a long way from here,” the woman said. “Not perhaps as far as from your last accommodation, but a long way. You ask so many questions. You don’t say, ‘Thank you for rescuing us.’ Isn’t that a little ungrateful?”
“Yes, yes, I guess so,” Karen seemed chastened by her captor’s accusation. “But you have locked us up and ….”
“Or perhaps you regret being rescued, being taken away from your dream?”
“Dream? Nightmare more like! Your people saw how we were being kept. Like animals. How could that be a dream?”
“I don’t know,” the woman replied. “But then I haven’t subscribed to the programme, I’m not a participant.”
“When did you join the programme?” the woman standing beside the desk cut in, conversationally.
“What programme? I’m not part of any programme. I was kidnapped, brought over the border into Kushtia, sold in a market somewhere and dragged off to where you found us.”
“Your colleagues tell a similar story.” The woman behind the desk looked directly at Karen.
“I’m not surprised. For my part it’s true. Who are you?”
The women ignored her question. The woman standing spoke again. “So did you sign up for the programme in America or when you travelled to Kolin?”
“I’ve told you I’m not part of any programme. I’ve not been to Kolin. Well not recently. I’m an American citizen, you must tell the American Ambassador.”
The woman behind the desk shrugged her shoulders. “Communication is difficult,” she said. “We need to be sure what is going on first. Thank you. That will do for now.”
The guard gripped Karen by the arm and pulled her to her feet. The two women in tee-shirts turned to one another and began talking quietly in Kushtian. The guard pulled Karen away. As she was hustled out of the office she called over her shoulder, “I’m Dr Karen Armstrong, from the University of Michigan. I’m an American citizen you must call the American Ambassador. Call him!” They seemed to take no notice as she was taken outside, back across the compound and into the cells. They took Natsumi after that. She came back muttering about the “Pro-hram” just as Miyako had done.
It was dark. The four girls sat waiting. The cell door opened once more. A guard ushered in a figure clad in the traditional chanoosh, the all-enveloping robe and veil of the unmarried Kushtian woman. She carried a tray with four more bowls of food, bread, some fruit and four cups of a creamy yoghurt based drink. She set it down in the centre of the cell. Kneeling beside it she beckoned to the girls forward. “Daraghl, eskedi,” she said. “It is good. A lentil dish. Eat. Please.”
Karen crouched down beside her looking over her shoulder concerned that the guard might prevent them talking. “You speak English?”
“Some,” the veiled woman said, “Not well.” She lowered the lids of her eyes in the sign of submission that Karen had observed so many times from the veiled women of Kushtia. The girls reached for the food, scooping up the dahl like mixture eagerly.
“Where are we? What are these people?” Karen asked of the girl.
“I should not say. The guard,” she nodded to the door. “They oppose the programme; that much you must know. But you are safe here. They will not harm you, I think.”
“What is this ‘programme’ that everyone talks of? We don’t understand.”
“It is all right,” the girl said lowering her eyes again. “I see why you want to be like us. They think it is harmful though. That it will hold back change. They see a different future for Kushtia.”
The guard appeared again at the door and gestured to the girl. “I must go,” she said, collecting up the empty bowls and cups. With that she left them and the door was padlocked shut behind her.
“Do you have the first idea of the trouble that you have caused, Doctor Armstrong?”
It was morning. Karen was back in the office. The guards had come for her after the veiled girl had brought them a breakfast of yoghurt, grains and oats. This time, though, as they had pulled her to her feet they had wrenched her hands behind her back and cuffed her wrists together. She was sitting in the same chair that she had been in before but this time the mood of her captors seemed uglier.
“This has been the cause of our problems,” the older woman gestured to a dog-eared copy of the edition of National Geographic that had carried Karen’s article, “Veiled and in Chains”. She scowled across at Karen. “This caused the Programme. This started it all. Those pigs in Kolin.”
Karen protested. “I don’t understand what you are talking about. That article was published a year ago. I have been out of America for six months. I only came back to Kushtia two months ago – I’ve been living in hill villages and just over the border. I’ve not been anywhere near Kolin and I don’t know anything about a programme.”
The woman seated behind the desk turned to her colleague and nodded. She turned back to Karen. “The curious thing, Ms Armstrong, is that I believe you. I’m not sure that it changes anything but I believe you. Let me explain.” Her colleague seemed to lean forward to object but the woman behind the desk waved her back. “Since you have been good enough to identify yourself, I should do the same. It is polite. I am Kalasa Karench, my husband is a Council member so I suppose you could say I am, or have been, part of the Kushtian elite. I believe passionately in our culture and values but I know they must change. For women especially, Kushtia is not an easy country in which to live. Unless you have seen nothing else.”
“I know,” Karen interrupted, “that’s what my work has shown. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes,” Kalasa nodded, “but it is not the truth that we are looking at here. It is the consequences.”
“Consequences? Some academics were interested in that article. There was some hoo-hah in the popular press. Some lascivious comment on television. I stopped doing TV chat shows about it – I found the undercurrent of innuendo unpleasant. But it will all have been forgotten now, The public has a short memory.”
“You would think so. But it is not the case in this instance. There were many who saw your article as a romantic dream. An idyllic society in which men are men and women are grateful. There are always those women for whom such a society has its attractions.”
“But surely the fantasies of a few western women cannot affect Kushtian society? Change will happen here. I said so in my article. As Kushtia becomes more open. The United Nations, for example, ..”
“Yes, the United Nations. Part of the problem, I fear, not part of the solution. Many women responded to your article. The Kushtian Foreign Ministry had many applications from women wanting to immigrate, to be part of this imagined ideal society. They didn’t see the sort of conditions that you and your friends were being held in. They only saw the romantic idyll.”
“And how has that changed things here?”
“The Council is wary of change in the ways of men and women. Council members have many wives and concubines. Why should they want things to change? They see, as you did, that pressures would come upon them. To enfranchise women. To allow them to own property or to make contracts. To choose in the matter of their husbands or lovers. They feared that outsiders might take a different view of human rights to that of their own. And then one of them had a very clever idea. They are not stupid or backward. They are politically very clever. Their ambassador to the United Nations met with a representative of UNESCO. How interesting, he said, that the UN supports world heritage sites, that the buildings and environment of important places are protected. Should the same protection not be extended to cultures – they ways that people live? The UNESCO representative thinks this is a good idea, that it will give them a way to increase their influence. They make a proposal to create ‘World Heritage Cultures’ in which the way of life of an indigenous people can be protected from outside influences and under which the UN will fund education activities to promote cultural understanding in the world outside. It is seen as non-controversial, something on which the Russians, Americans, Chinese and British can agree for once, and is passed. The Kushtian culture is declared as the first World Heritage Culture.”
“And that makes change difficult within Kushtia. Change that you believe is needed.”
“Worse than that. UNESCO funding is being used to run the programme.”
“You keep talking about this ‘programme’. I still don’t understand it.” Karen wriggled her wrists against the handcuffs. “Can you take these things off?”
Kalasa shook her head. “The programme is the ‘Kushtian Cultural Experience Programme’, women from all over the world coming to experience Kushtian life and culture.”
“Isn’t that good? Bringing in outside ideas? Won’t that make change easier?”
“No. That’s not how it works. This programme attracts a certain sort of woman; one that finds the ideals of traditional Kushtian society attractive. They come to live in households as servants or concubines. To be treated as chattels of the household. You know how women live in Kushtia, Dr Armstrong. As virtual slaves. There are many in the programme. A hundred or more. The Council is claiming this is a validation of Kushtian culture, that western women are seeking something not found in their own societies. That is not the case. In truth, they are sex tourists, validating the regime. It’s a reason for not giving way to change.”
“Change that you want to make happen?”
“This group share my ideals. But it is hard for women to take action. Because we cannot own property, everything we need we must steal. We have learned to be hard, to fight, to fend for ourselves. Many women in the programme are not happy. The romantic ideal is not as they thought. We try to help them. We wish to give them a voice. We thought that you four were like that. Programme participants in appalling conditions. You would be an important voice for us, speaking out against the evils of the programme. Like the others will.”
“The others? You have already brought others out of the programme?”
“Oh yes. There are five. Women that have been freed from the programme.”
“But if they have returned home, they will be speaking out, change will happen.”
“No. They have not returned yet. They are still here. We have to keep them here until we are ready to speak out.”
“Imprisoned as much as if they were still in their households?”
Kalasa shrugged. “Sometimes immoral acts are needed in a moral cause.”
“And is our imprisonment an immoral act in pursuit of your moral cause?”
“I haven’t decided yet. Your friends are inconvenient. Evidence of slavery in Kushtia is not something I wish to present, that might create too great a call for international intervention. It confuses things. And you, you Dr Armstrong, are even more of a problem. It might be dangerous for you if people in Kolin knew you were in the country. Or it might be dangerous for us if those in Kolin knew you were here. We will decide. But until then you will have to be handcuffed, I think. I’m sorry.”
“I accept your apology,” Karen said with irony, “but you’ll excuse me if I don’t applaud your caution.”
Kalasa nodded and turned to her colleague, “Don’t put her back with the others for now, Alana.” She gestured to the guard and Karen was pulled to her feet. “Use the guard room.” She left the room more worried than when she had entered it and was marched towards the back of the building.
Karen was sitting alone in the cell that she had been taken to. Her hands were still cuffed behind her; she had tried flexing her wrists in the cuffs but it was clear that she wasn’t going to be able to free herself. She sat on the iron frame bedstead that was the only piece of furniture in the cell and looked up at the barred window and then across at the heavy wooden door. It was starting to get dark.
She heard the clattering sounds of a key in the lock and the door to the cell opened. Framed in the door stood Alana, the guard. Karen watched as she stepped into the cell and pushed the door shut behind her. In spite of herself and her situation, Karen found the confident air of the dark skinned woman alluring. Her own sexual drives were as likely to favour women as men and the bright white of Alana’s tee shirt tight against her well formed body, contrasting with the dark brown of her skin, together with the woman’s confident air at a time when Karen’s own resources were at such a low ebb, triggered a response that Karen found all too familiar. The lock crashed home. “I thought you might like some company,” Alana said. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from the back pocket of her shorts, took one for herself and offered one to the handcuffed Karen. She shook her head, rejecting the offer.
Alana took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled, blowing a stream of smoke across the cell. “You’re an attractive woman, Doctor Armstrong,” she said, smiling as she looked down at Karen. “I could make your time here much less uncomfortable.” Alana reached out and ran her hands up the back of Karen’s head, toying briefly with the short, soft hairs she found there.
Karen moved her head, trying to escape Alana’s attentions. “Aren’t you supposed to wait a while for the Stockholm Syndrome to kick in?” she asked intending to discourage the guard but instead revealing her own feelings with a lick of the lips and a coy look in her eyes.
Alana gripped Karen by the hair tightly and twisted throwing her back on the bed. As she fell back with a soft “Ohh!” the guard knelt across her. Alana reached behind her back and unclipped her riot baton from her belt. Karen tried to wriggle free but Alana’s weight on her belly made sure she could not. “Get off me, you, gruunggfh,” she tried to call out but her cries were cut off by the side grip of the baton as Alana pushed it into Karen’s mouth. Alana gripped either end of the nightstick, pushing Karen’s head back against the bed. Karen groaned as the baton cut into either side of her mouth. With Alana’s weight behind her grip on the stick, Karen couldn’t move.
“You be good or that stick will choke you,” Alana spat. “Now, you gonna behave, yankee?”
Karen helplessly handcuffed could only grunt compliance.
“That’s a good girl. That’s good,” Alana smiled. The guard took her hands off the stick. Karen caught her breath, freed from the risk of choking. “Now you just suck on that like it was your boyfriend’s piece.” Karen needed no encouragement; she had a strong oral response to sexual arousal and was already sucking and gnawing on the baton’s grip. Alana was fumbling at the buttons of Karen’s shirt. Eventually she lost patience with trying to unfasten them and wrenched the shirt open. She greeted the sight of Karen’s breasts with a sigh of approval. Immediately her hands were on them pinching and squeezing at Karen’s nipples. As she saw Karen’s reaction in the stiffening of her nipples and the increased rate of her breathing, Alana bent her mouth to Karen’s breasts and set to nipping at each in turn with her teeth.
Karen’s response was to mmmph and groan ever more loudly mouthing her passion around the grip of the baton. Alana sat up and pulled the stick clear of Karen’s mouth, watching her bright eyed look of arousal as she reached back with one hand to squeeze one of Karen’s tits. “Decadent Yankee,” Alana teased.
“Preverse Kushtian,” Karen responded. Alana chuckled in return. She picked up her riot baton and slid the tip of it along the inside of Karen’s thigh. She gasped quietly, spreading her legs to welcome the intruding ebony stick. “Mmm,” Karen whimpered as the tip of the stick came closer to her vulva. Her muttered appreciation changed to a moan as Alana moved her head down to substitute her tongue for the probing rigidity of the riot baton.
The two women tumbled together in a tangle of desire until in time each was sated.
Karen sank back, exhausted. “How did you know?” she asked Alana.
The guard grinned. “I didn’t,” she said. “I just fancied fucking you. You weren’t in any position to stop me.” She traced a finger along the one of the steel cuffs that secured Karen’s wrists. “You still aren’t.”
Karen groaned. “Can’t you take those things off me?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Alana responded. “You get some sleep. We can talk in the morning.” She got up from the bed and pulled a blanket up over Karen as she lay back.
Curiously liberated by the guard’s attentions, Karen watched as Alana left her, studying the woman’s smooth tanned skin, noticing the tattoo of two intertwined K’s on the side of her thigh as she picked up her clothes. Exhausted by their love making, Karen was asleep by the time that Alana reached the door of the cell.
It was light again before Alana came back to Karen’s cell. Karen was just stirring from a night’s sleep made fitful by her shackles. She struggled to sit up, shrugging off the blanket, infuriated by Alana’s look of amusement as she twisted herself around, wrenching her shoulders as she tried to sit herself up. “Huna!” she snapped. “Bitch!”
Alana wagged a finger in response. “You don’t have to be kept like that,” she said.
“I know. You can undo these anytime you choose,” she turned her back on Alana, offering her the opportunity to unlock her handcuffs.
Alana sat down on the bed beside her. Karen’s shirt had pulled from her left shoulder as she had tossed and turned in her sleep. Alana slid it back into place. Karen responded to her gentle touch. “You can help us,” Alana said. “Help us expose the Programme. Help us change things.”
“Why should I do that?” Karen replied.
“So you can go home,” Alana grinned as she watched Karen’s attempt to look relaxed. “But, if that doesn’t matter to you, so can Miyako and Natsumi and Anouk too. They don’t need to be kept like this,” Alana tapped Karen’s wrists cuffs, “either.”
Karen started at the mention of the girls’ names. “But they should go, they’re no use to you and they know nothing abut the programme.”
“You are right Yankee. They don’t understand Kushtian society. You do. They don’t speak our language. You do. They do not even know how they came to be here. But they do have one important thing about them.” Karen looked at Alana with a puzzled expression. “You care enough about them to think they should go home and you can do the things we need done,” Alana said coolly. “Help us and they can go home.”
“Huna!” Karen spat.
Alana gripped her by the shoulders and spun her around pushing her back on the bed. “I thought you liked me like that.” Alana lay across her pressing her hand down across Karen’s mouth to silence her. “Now, keep quiet, Yankee and listen. I’m gong to tell you what this Huna wants you to do.” Karen tried to struggle under Alana’s grip. “You’re going to help us abduct one of the programme members and then you’ll take her place. You’ll be inside the programme. You’ll help us to break it.” Karen stopped struggling her eyes wide with disbelief as she looked up at Alana over the hand that was clamped over her lips
Alana slid her hand away. “You must be mad,” Karen said. “You must be mad and you must think that I am mad. You’re a mad huna!”
“Maybe but I’m the mad huna that can help your friends get home.” Alana knew what Karen’s response would be.
Sometimes patience is the only option.
Karen kept on quietly pushing the broom across the dusty floor of the luggage claim hall of Kolin airport. A woman cleaning, dressed in a chanoosh, attracted no attention even though there were few others there. Two security guards lazing in a corner, sucking on hand rolled cigarettes under a ‘no smoking’ sign, apparently deep in debate about some abstruse aspect of the performance of the Kushtian national football team, ignored her and everything else around them.
The flight from London had arrived not long before. A steady stream of passengers that had known better than to trust their belongings to the whims of Kushtian Baggage Handling were leaving the hall clutching cases that tested the limits of the concept of hand luggage. A few, less experienced travellers were waiting in the hall. One, Karen could see, was the one that they were looking for.
She was standing not far from the trolley that would eventually be towed away to be replaced with another containing the bags from the London flight.
She was wearing a loose beige skirt and a comfortable silk top, she held a light coat over one arm, a handbag over the other. Her long straight hair was tied back with a paisley patterned scarf, sunglasses perched on the top of her head.
Most important of all though, she was clutching the blue and white folder that singled her out as a participant in the programme.
Karen hadn’t believed it at first when they had explained to her how things worked. Participants coming into Kushtia were cleared through Immigration. There an official explained to them that they would be met by their hosts after they had collected their baggage. Immigration explained that they would retain the participant’s passport for the duration of their stay and in return they issued a card which held the participant’s name and reference number, together with a welcome pack and details of the host that they should expect. Then they were simply waved through and left to collect their baggage and find their hosts.
Karen could see how that reduced work for Kushtian Immigration. “But,” she said, “doesn’t that mean that unless someone gets the passport and the participant together again at some later stage, there’s no way of knowing that the person leaving the airport is the person that came in on the flight.”
“Exactly,” said Alana, “and with security so poor in the luggage reclaim, almost anyone could swap with an incoming participant once they have their welcome pack but have yet to meet their hosts.” Alana waved a picture of one of the blue and white folders. “But why would they want to do that?” she said with a wink.
Karen waited for a while to see if the girl would do as they had expected. She was looking at her watch impatiently wondering where her cases were. She noticed the sign for the washrooms and headed off towards them. Karen was pleased. It had saved her suggesting that the girl used them before she left.
Karen swept her way across the hall and followed the girl inside after dropping an “out of order sign on the washroom door. Shortly after her, two other women followed, one pushing the other in a wheel chair, both wearing the all concealing chanoosh.
It only took a matter of moments.
Karen was first to emerge, wearing the girl’s clothes and clutching her welcome pack. She’d pulled her sunglasses down but the security guards would only have noticed her if she’d been wearing the Kushtian football team’s new strip. She walked over to where the luggage trolley had now appeared. There were only three bags left on it now, the others had all been claimed. She checked the flight ticket she’d found in the girl’s handbag. Baggage receipts tallied with two of the bags on the trolley. She lifted them off and headed for the exit.
It was only as she reached the exit that the guards seemed to notice her but only to leer at her legs as she passed them by. They didn’t take any notice at all of the veiled woman in a wheel chair being pushed by another as Alana took the unconscious Lucy out of the luggage hall and across to a parked van.
Karen saw a man holding up a card saying “Lucy Baildon”, the name that tallied with the one on the welcome pack she was holding. She walked across to him and showed him her welcome pack. “Aaargn,” he grunted approving and gestured to a battered Mercedes that stood outside the terminal building. He didn’t offer to take either of Karen’s bags. She followed him out.
He let her put her own cases in the boot of the car. She clambered in to the back sinking down onto the seat, its plastic covering hot and sticky against her thighs. It sagged discouragingly beneath her. The car stank of cigarette smoke and other smells that Karen, even with all her experience of the Kushtian way of life, could not identify. Her driver turned around – gesticulating, pointing to her face and then to the seat beside her. She found a small parcel and unwrapped it. It contained a simple veil. Obviously the driver was concerned at the impropriety of being seen with an unveiled young woman in his car.
Karen took it out and draped it across the lower part of her face. Somehow her sunglasses seemed wildly inappropriate. She took them off. The driver looked up at his rear view mirror, evidently inspecting her. “Aaargn,” he said, turning the key in the ignition and starting off.
© 2007 Freddie Clegg
All characters fictitious.
Dr Armstrong also features briefly in Freddie’s story “Market Forces” available here.
Download PDF copies of other Freddie Clegg stories at :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
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