Baz was confused after talking to Nazanina. Could she really tell them nothing about the attack at the Well Diggers house that night, even though she’d been there? How was that possible?
‘Why would she lie to us?’ she said, as she and Nagpal hurried out through the gate of the family’s compound.
‘Fear of reprisal, maybe,’ said Nagpal. ‘If it was the Taliban, they could have sent a threat to her via her imam. Maybe she thought it would be safer to make up…’ He stopped talking mid-sentence.
Baz looked up to see why.
The street that had been deserted when they’d arrived at the compound was no longer empty. Tirich and the guard they’d brought with them were still sitting in the Land Rover, just across the road, but a group of three men were leaning against a Toyota Hilux parked a little further along. One of them was pointing at her and Nagpal, saying something to the other two.
‘Come on,’ said Nagpal, quickening his pace.
‘What is it?’ said Baz.
Before he got the chance to answer, one of the men shouted something at them in Pashto. Baz didn’t catch the words, but she could tell it wasn’t friendly.
‘What’s going on?’ she said to Nagpal in English, so the men couldn’t understand.
‘Sorry,’ said Nagpal in a low voice. ‘It’s my fault.’
‘What do you mean?’
The three men were approaching them now.
‘Hey, Sikh, get out of our city,’ said one, making a rude hand gesture that Baz had seen plenty of times before in Chicken Street in Kabul.
‘You’re not welcome here. You’re an infidel, an insult to Allah.’
Tirich had started the engine of the Land Rover, while their guard had wound down his window. Baz could see that he was holding his rifle in readiness.
Damn! This was escalating fast.
‘Heh, what are you doing, travelling with a Pashtun woman – you know that’s haram.’ Forbidden. The man who spoke picked up a stone from the street and rolled it from hand to hand threateningly.
Because of her looks and her hijab, they’d made an assumption that she was a Pashtun. She stepped forward to block the man’s path, ignoring Nagpal’s hand on her arm, trying to draw her back.
‘I’m not Pashtun. I’m American,’ she said in English first and then repeated it in Pashto. ‘I’ll travel with whoever I like. Please move out of our way.’
The men burst out laughing at her show of bravado, but they didn’t move. They stood their ground between Baz and Nagpal and the Land Rover. Beyond them, Baz saw the guard get out of the vehicle, his AK pointing towards the ground. He slammed the door behind him to catch the men’s attention.
They turned to look at him, but the fact that he had a weapon did nothing to deter them. Every Tom, Dick and Harry in Helmand carried an assault rifle.
Tirich got out of the Land Rover now and leaned on the driver’s door. ‘Get lost, you sons of donkeys.’
The man with the stone raised his arm and threw it. Tirich ducked, but it glanced off his forehead, leaving a wide, red gash.
‘Goddammit,’ said Baz, a tide of anger rushing through her.
One of the men turned back to her and, stepping forward, gave her a sharp punch in the stomach. Winded, Baz stumbled backwards into Nagpal, who only just managed to save her from falling on her arse.
A shot rang out. The guard’s rifle pointed at the sky, but he slowly lowered it, training it on the man who’d thrown the stone. Tirich had a hand pressed to his forehead, but his face was awash with blood.
‘Come on,’ wheezed Baz, still fighting for breath.
She and Nagpal scurried past the men and back to the Land Rover.
‘Get in the back,’ she shouted at Tirich. ‘Nagpal, help him.’
She climbed into the driving seat. The engine was still running. Beyond the three men, she could see more men emerging from compound gates and jogging down the road towards them. The shot had alerted them to trouble in the neighbourhood, and the strangers were cast in the role of villains.
The guard fired another warning shot into the air, then climbed into the passenger seat.
‘Drive,’ shouted Nagpal, as the posse closed in on them.
Baz threw the Land Rover into gear, and they shot forward. She had to swerve violently to miss the stone-thrower, then she sped up the road towards the T-junction at the end.
‘Which way? Which way?’
‘Left,’ said Nagpal.
‘Right,’ said the guard.
‘Fuck!’ She took a fast right, tyres almost skidding on the gravelly surface, and immediately saw that it was a dead end. She slammed on the brakes and executed a three-point turn.
‘Are you okay, Tirich?’ she said, not daring to glance round at the speed she was driving.
‘He’ll be fine,’ said Nagpal, sounding calmer now. ‘Cuts to the head always bleed a lot.’
She slowed down. No one had followed them. Tirich directed her back to the main road, where she swapped places with Nagpal, happy to let him take on driving duties back to Lash.
‘What the hell was that about?’ she said, once she’d applied a couple of butterfly stitches from the Land Rover’s first aid kit to Tirich’s cut.
In the front, Nagpal shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. I’m a Sikh, and the Taliban declared us heretics.’
‘But the Taliban are no longer in control,’ said Baz.
‘They’re not in government, no. But down here in the south, there’s a strong insurgency and they have plenty of sympathisers.’
‘Do things like that often happen?’
‘More often than I would like. Many Sikh families have left Lashkar Gah for Kandahar or Kabul – and even more have left Afghanistan altogether.’
‘And what about you, Nagpal? Will you leave?’
He glanced around at her. ‘I’m an Afghan. This country is my home. I won’t let them drive me out.’
Baz checked her phone. In all the commotion, she’d momentarily forgotten they were waiting for word on Mac. But no matter. She hadn’t missed a call or a message.