He lay in the roof space all through the night, and he was not betrayed.

The jeeps drove away down the track and headed back to the garrison at Amadiyah or the camp at Rawandiz. He was in debt, he owed his life to the silence of the people of the village.

The trapdoor was opened.

The light of the dawn flushed onto his stiff, shivering body.

He was helped down. He walked out into the low early-morning sunlight.

They had already started to dig the graves in the burial ground beside the grazing meadow that was closest to the village. He saw the sweat beading on the faces and chests of the men who swung pickaxes to break the concrete-hard ground, while others shovelled away the rocky earth. The women cradled the heads of the dead and keened their sorrow. He stepped around the ejected cartridge cases and the pools of drying dark blood that had been spilled so that he, their guest, should live.

The burden of obligation crushed him.

He said to his friend, ‘Tell them that I will always remember the value that they have given my life and the depth of their sacrifice, that the shedding of their blood for me is something that I will never forget to my last, dying day. Tell them that I will, and I do not know how or when, repay the debt of blood and life.’

His friend translated, but the repetition of his words in their own tongue seemed not to be heard by the people in their grief. Then, his friend said quietly to him, ‘It is time to go, esteemed Basil, time to leave.’

‘I meant what I said.’

‘Of course, esteemed Basil, of course – but you did not say how or when.’

He was put into an old, rusted truck and driven away from the village, where some of the huts smouldered, away from the deepening grave pits.