June 2010 – Camp Bastion field hospital

Malik groaned in agony. His back was stinging, his legs were stinging and his scalp was raging. All caused by the after effects of the detonation of the exploding shell. He was lying on a hospital bed on his front to prevent pressure on his dressings. There were four other jihadis with him in this section of the hospital.

He was surprised when he’d awoken to find himself alive at all. He would have thought that the Infidels would have killed him in the courtyard. That is what he would have done himself. But actually his treatment had been exemplary. He had been forced to spend all his time in bed and it had given him time to observe the medical personnel.

All bustling khaki uniforms and white armbands with the sign of the crusader’s cross in red. He thought back to the previous day and wondered if his rescuer had survived. There was no doubt in his mind that he owed the young man his life.

Malik could never in his life, forgive the foreign governments for invading his beloved home country. They had torn his world apart. And slaughtered his brothers in cold blood. They had ripped the heart from his father, and caused his mother’s tears to flow like the great river Tigris. But individual soldiers he could forgive.

He thought of them as misguided. Based in Helmand it had been British rather than Americans he’d been fighting. He had always regretted those whom he’d seen killed and maimed. After all they were from his mother’s homeland. He used to wonder where their houses were. What did their families think of them fighting a hopeless foreign war, so far from home?

Malik looked down by the side of the makeshift bed. The explosion had shredded his clothes. And what was left of them had been dumped in a jumbled pile. He was amazed to see that the leather pouch his father had given him, was still intact. It had been placed carefully on the top. He would have expected looters to have stolen it.

With considerable trouble to his scarred body, he reached down and picked it up. What was it his father had said? Keep this. It is an old Frankish secret of the English that may be of some use to you. He’d not really given it much thought since leaving home. But nonetheless it had been carried with him throughout his training and campaigns.

Malik wasn’t sure what the words were on the documents. They obviously weren’t in Arabic script. And he couldn’t recognise any English words. But he could tell the letters had been lovingly crafted onto the old paper.

He leant back on the bed and sighed heavily. He would be in no need of help in battle with the English from this point onwards. He wasn’t sure of exactly what the future held, but had a pretty strong idea that the prison at Kandahar was beckoning.

His thoughts returned to the young soldier who had saved his life. He must have been wounded but maybe one day might return to the front. Malik wondered if his opponent would have the knowledge to decipher the words on his old papers. Or, even if the knowledge would even do him any good. Still he thought, it seemed the least he could do for the soldier to pass the ancient leather pouch to him. And a week later Malik managed exactly that.