From the shadows between colossal trees the dawn mist drifted across the trail. A girl was running hard, a basket of washed laundry on her head, hands struggling to keep it there. She’d have to ditch the basket if she was serious about putting distance between her and her pursuers, but she pictured her mother, hands on hips, enquiring after the whereabouts of what was almost their entire wardrobe. Breathless, she looked behind. She could see nothing and now the path, too, faded beneath the mist. She ran on, instinctively picking out the way ahead. A male voice barked somewhere behind her and seconds later, three short bursts of automatic rifle fire thudded in quick succession. The soldiers must have seen or heard her and followed her back into the forest. When Jasmine Gavidia witnesses an El Salvador army killing, people want her dead, and she must sort friend from foe. A fast-paced adventure with explosive action and refreshing honesty, this is a story of a 14-year-old girl growing up fast after the massacre at El Zacate and finding a new life.
From the shadows between colossal trees the dawn mist drifted across the trail. A girl was running hard, a basket of washed laundry on her head, hands struggling to keep it there. She’d have to ditch the basket if she was serious about putting distance between her and her pursuers, but she pictured her mother, hands on hips, enquiring after the whereabouts of what was almost their entire wardrobe. Breathless, she looked behind. She could see nothing and now the path, too, faded beneath the mist. She ran on, instinctively picking out the way ahead. A male voice barked somewhere behind her and seconds later, three short bursts of automatic rifle fire thudded in quick succession. The soldiers must have seen or heard her and followed her back into the forest. When Jasmine Gavidia witnesses an El Salvador army killing, people want her dead, and she must sort friend from foe. A fast-paced adventure with explosive action and refreshing honesty, this is a story of a 14-year-old girl growing up fast after the massacre at El Zacate and finding a new life.
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Overview
From the shadows between colossal trees the dawn mist drifted across the trail. A girl was running hard, a basket of washed laundry on her head, hands struggling to keep it there. She’d have to ditch the basket if she was serious about putting distance between her and her pursuers, but she pictured her mother, hands on hips, enquiring after the whereabouts of what was almost their entire wardrobe. Breathless, she looked behind. She could see nothing and now the path, too, faded beneath the mist. She ran on, instinctively picking out the way ahead. A male voice barked somewhere behind her and seconds later, three short bursts of automatic rifle fire thudded in quick succession. The soldiers must have seen or heard her and followed her back into the forest. When Jasmine Gavidia witnesses an El Salvador army killing, people want her dead, and she must sort friend from foe. A fast-paced adventure with explosive action and refreshing honesty, this is a story of a 14-year-old girl growing up fast after the massacre at El Zacate and finding a new life.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781854251077 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Merlin Press Limited, The |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2014 |
| Pages: | 420 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Daniel Hyland is a bilingual author, poet, artist, and musician. His book of poetry, Ecos de Aganipe, published in El Salvador, is held in libraries worldwide, as is his collection of short stories, Anécdotas de un Extranjero en El Salvador. His poetry has appeared in the Salvadoran magazine La Mosca and has received critical acclaim by Delia Quiñónez, correspondent for the Real Academia Española.
Read an Excerpt
Jasmine's War
By Daniel Hyland
The Merlin Press Ltd
Copyright © 2014 Daniel HylandAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-85425-110-7
CHAPTER 1
March 1984
From the shadows between colossal trees the dawn mist drifted across the trail. A girl was running hard, a basket of washed laundry on her head, hands struggling to keep it there. She'd have to ditch the basket if she was serious about putting distance between her and her pursuers, but she pictured her mother, hands on hips, enquiring after the whereabouts of what was almost their entire wardrobe.
Breathless, she looked behind. She could see nothing and now the path, too, faded beneath the mist. She ran on, instinctively picking out the way ahead.
A male voice barked somewhere behind her and seconds later, three short bursts of automatic rifle fire thudded in quick succession. The soldiers must have seen or heard her and followed her back into the forest.
Jasmine Gavidia had been the last of four laundry-bearing girls to file on to the black road that led to El Zacate. She had joined in the baiting of Elena the Dreamer with a couple of playful taunts of her own, which earned her a peal of laughter from all except Elena. Elena, given to dreaming of storybook romance, held her head high and, picking notes at random from a Nahuatle love song to show she could not be baited, sauntered straight into the middle of the road. Automatic gunfire blasted over her song, battering the dawn with such startling violence that for an instant Jasmine froze to the spot. Elena's arms shot up, fingers splayed, basket in the air, dyed tiers of cloth winging after it. Her scream rose above the gunfire and then broke off with tragic abruptness. Her arms craned down to horizontal, moon- white palms now upheld towards her attackers, head turned aside. She fell to her knees where bullets, shaking her body, shoved her over backwards until her bended legs sprang from beneath her and she landed on her back. The basket rolled into the ditch. The guns went silent.
Jasmine rediscovered her limbs and recoiled in horror, backing away deeper into the shadow and scanning to her left. Two figures in rounded helmets with rifles across their midriffs were striding through the mist towards her. She turned and fled back into the forest. At first she heard the desperate footfalls and terrified squeals of her companions behind her, but they faded as she ran and now, looking back over her shoulder once again, she saw no sign of either girl, nor did she hear their screams.
But she heard more gunfire, spurts of it filtering up from El Zacate.
'Madre.' She came to a shambling halt, swivelled round, and hesitated. Her mother had been lighting the clay oven in the courtyard when Jasmine had left home a little over an hour ago. Other shooting, this time from the road, decided the matter. The basket had to go. She tucked it behind a bunch of ferns sprouting between the roots of a ceiba sapling, hidden from casual observation. Now unencumbered, she sprinted over the uneven path in the direction of the river, the thin mauve dress fluttering about her body and her hair spiralling out behind her. She could smell the river, the musty sweetness of wet rock, moss and damp sands. She would follow its near bank and cross at a point she knew well, a ten-minute jog upriver where a balsam poplar had fallen and where the water was only shoulder-deep. From the other side she would take the farmers' path that climbed to La Molienda, where once the co-operative had run its processing plant. And from there she would have a clear view over El Zacate.
She was hoping that she'd gained a decent lead on her pursuers when a sharp exchange of what sounded like hastily issued instructions brought her skidding to a halt. More soldiers, she guessed, scanning the fog for them. They must have crossed the bridge at the edge of the village and come up the riverbank to cut off the runaways. She looked desperately around. Must get off the path. She slipped into the undergrowth and moved forward, pushing past branches that yielded against her body, easing them back into place to avoid whipping up giveaway noise. She was patting her way past another giant tree trunk when she heard breathless voices behind her – two of them:
'You seen any more?'
'Finished off two back there but another gave me the slip. Couldn't have been more than eleven but runs like a deer. Didn't come your way, did she?' A pause, perhaps allowing the question to be answered with a nod or shake of the head, before the second voice resumed. 'This Salvadoran army gear is useless, you can't run in it. No way could I catch her.'
The men were now on the path behind her. With aching caution she lowered herself and settled on her haunches between two roots, breathing through nose and mouth together, the pulse in her ears like the beating of a bird's wings on the air, all senses fully alert.
'She'll be in the undergrowth, then,' the first voice decided, and Jasmine bit into her knuckle. But she dared not move. Inches beyond her toes the flowers of a yellow sage weed stood as motionless as a still-life painting. A minute black ant, waving a jagged shred of orange amaryllis petal that outsized it a hundred times, hiked erratically towards a curled leaf edge.
Then there was an eruption of gunfire. Automatic rounds tore through the forest with appalling ferocity. Jasmine screamed, wished she hadn't and fell back into a sitting position, arms crossed over her head. With an effort she stifled a second scream, and peered out. The sage flower heads were chopped to smithereens. The black turf was churning and spitting into the air. Whole branches came crashing down around her. Airborne leaves, bits of twig, fern and bark whirled, danced and collided in a deafening frenzy of bullets that smacked into the trees. She screwed up her eyes and flattened her palms over her ears. Drawing her knees up to her chest she shrank deeper into the silk cotton's roots. She could smell the saps of the forest as they were released into the mist, and taste the metallic tang of blood.
An interval while they reloaded, and the mayhem resumed, yet she sensed the gunfire was indiscriminately placed. Uncertain of her precise position the pursuers were laying down blanket fire hoping for a chance hit, the assault gradually moving along the path. Encouraged by this, Jasmine relaxed a little and, quite abruptly, the shooting cut out altogether.
The pitter-patter of debris falling on ferns. Somewhere a partially severed branch was creaking as it was wrenched away by its own weight and crash landed among the stirring of an unsettled forest.
Perhaps the greens were reloading. Perhaps they were listening out for her. She kept her eyes tightly shut.
'Come on, Ángelo. She never survived that. We practically shaved the undergrowth.'
When finally the other answered it was to suggest they head back to the village and rejoin the battalion. Jasmine stayed put, listening to the casual banter as it dwindled with distance.
'No matter how carefully you plan an operation you always overlook some small detail. No-one considered the girls ... leaving at dawn to do laundry by the river.'
A while passed, she wasn't sure how long, before she heard more gunfire. But it was much further away this time. She drew in a long breath and exhaled slowly. Had it not been for the shield of the silk cotton tree she would surely have been cut down.
Her hair felt laden. Shaking her head she hand-brushed twigs, leaves and soil from her curls. She paused to stare incredulously at the ant as it scaled a crooked twig, still waving its merry sail despite the gale it had weathered. She tugged a couple more twigs from her hair and then, clutching her knees to her chest, she began to tremble.
Do the soldiers really think they got me? Or are they just pretending to walk away, to give me a false sense of security and lure me out on to the path? She waited, occasionally rubbing her arms, wondering how many other soldiers might be about, and assessing her chances of giving an unknown number of them the slip. She knew these forests intimately, having undertaken long expeditions on her own, following the river north. Flouting her mother's severe instruction to steer clear of the red zones, she had on more than one occasion ventured into Chalatenango Province to quench her thirst in natural springs and even bathe in their icy waters. But this was also home to the guerrillas, their camping and training grounds. Although, despite their stealth, she could pick out their scent even at a safe distance, the same bitter smell that tramps give off, but as guerrillas regularly moved in columns, that smell was multiplied. And she had seen them – men and women of all ages in a motley combination of peasant clothing and camouflage gear – sneaking their way through the undergrowth. She had heard the unconvincing bird-cooing of flanking scouts, and stumbled on their abandoned camps. On two occasions she had spotted boys, eight or nine years old, darting with such speed that she had merely glimpsed them before they were gone.
Feeling equally at home in forest and village had given her an edge over her friends when it came to giving their pursuers the slip, if only temporarily. Now there were too many sounds for Jasmine to feel at all confident of detecting an approaching adversary before they found her. She felt as if she was waiting to be discovered rather than waiting it out. Besides, she must get to La Molienda.
So she came to her feet. Stooping, she picked her way back to the path where she paused to check out both directions.
Morning had broken and the forest canopy was shot through with the first pale rays of sunlight. She turned to her right and trotted along the path, hopping over roots and ducking beneath branches. A muddy clamber led her up a cone-shaped mound and down its other side. Soon she was on the sandy riverbank where clear ripples negotiated black boulders, the far bank an abstract of woodland greens. She set off along the soft sand, leaving a trail of small footprints.
In places the bank narrowed and she splashed through the shallows; in others she had to clamber over rocks that were slippery with running water or moist green moss. Her heart stopped at the popping of renewed echoing gunfire, her mother the foremost of her anxieties. But to go back to the road would be fatal. No, her best chance was to make for La Molienda and get a clear view of El Zacate from above.
She had followed the bank for almost a mile before the mist had lifted sufficiently to see across the river. Not long after, she spotted the fallen balsam poplar, half its branches submerged in the water. Wider here than at any other point that Jasmine knew, the river was also shallower, and ever since she had discovered the overgrown trail on the other side almost five years ago, she had made this her regular crossing point.
She waded into the chilly water, sand and pebbles riding in her sandals. Her dress clung to her, cold against her skin. She pushed forward, deeper, with the current tugging. Minutes later she reached the fallen tree and after clambering through its tangle of branches she plodded ashore. She took a scouting glance round while wringing the hem of her dress before setting off. She launched herself up a shoulder-high bank and with the sand subsiding beneath her feet, grabbed the stringy roots of a thorn bush and hauled herself on to the track, earning a brace of inch-long welts across her brown upper arm.
She hurried up the trail, which local plantation owners once used to ferry harvests to La Molienda; that was before an earthquake had brought down most of its walls. The cooperative, renamed "El Beneficio", had since relocated to the neighbouring village of Nejapa. The new building was modern, smart-looking and incorporated the latest anti-seismic components within its walls. There had been more than a little resentment in El Zacate, resentment that their larger neighbour should be the beneficiary of this new coffee processing plant when previously it had been housed, if not within El Zacate, at least close enough to elevate the prestige of the tiny hamlet.
With the intermittent crackling of distant gunfire urging her on, she hurried up the steep hillside. On any other day Jasmine would have paused to catch her breath. But with her mother on her mind she put in a remorseless effort and eventually came out at the top of the rise. Breathing heavily now and not too steady on her feet she followed a narrow ridge high above the forest and coffee orchards until, within catapulting range below, there was La Molienda – broken walls upon a ragged cement terrace wedged into a sloping hillside. She pelted down the hillside through an avenue in the orchard. This was where she and her schoolmates played tag and hide-and-seek amid the few upstanding adobe walls whose irregular maps of whitewash they had daubed with graffiti: "Corazón, corazón, dame tu amor." "El Águila, ganador de la Copa de América." "Juan e Isabela."
Sprouting stringy weeds from its cracks the cement flooring covered an area equal to the combined footprints of five regular houses. All useable roof tiles had been barrowed away by villagers, and now the timber rafters lay in splintered segments, scattered like the dead leaves and the unsalvageable tiles.
With her heart in her throat she walked across the derelict processing plant, faltering as she approached the edge, scared about the view it would afford her. To avoid being silhouetted on the skyline she got down on hands and knees, crawled to the rim, and peered over.
* * *
Jasmine could see the layout of El Zacate well from this height and angle. A standard colonial grid plan of the type employed by the Spaniards in the Americas from the earliest years of the conquest, with single storeys of whitewashed walls and wood-shuttered windows, pitched terracotta roofs, and waves of bougainvillea washing into courtyards. A cobbled thoroughfare ran down the middle of the village. The domed church of Santa Teresa and the town's colonnaded committee offices faced each other across the plaza. And from the plaza a quaint arched bridge of volcanic rocks joined the black road where it entered the forest. Faded Partido Demócrata Cristiano campaign posters of the President of the Republic, Martin Aragón, gazing benignly upon his loyal partisans, were plastered on walls and doors.
And behind it all a football pitch was scratched into the light brown earth, where Jasmine, having risen to the coveted rank of centre-forward for Los Halcones, gave as good as she got in the male-dominated sport.
And here the normality ended.
About El Zacate today was an abnormality that squeezed the air from Jasmine's lungs. Across the plaza and along the road as far as the alley that cut through to the school, a thousand people – the entire population of El Zacate – were lying belly down, side by side, in straight rows. Folded arms cushioning a cheek or forehead. Heels knocking together, toes kicking down, ankles crossing and uncrossing. Others lay perfectly still. Dresses were vivid splashes of colour, a single or double braid of hair weaving down the backs of the women. Men in reed hats and Wellingtons. Others barefoot, the skin of their soles startlingly pale. The shorter stature of the kids cut them out beside their parents, the infants just bundles in their mothers' arms.
A swarm of soldiers were striding about the recumbent villagers, most of them in belted olive-drab rolled up at the sleeves, helmets, sagging field packs strapped to their backs; but others had saucepan caps crammed down to their sunglasses, and well-stocked equipment belts pinching puffed camouflage fatigues. All of them hefting M16 assault rifles and doing a lot of shouting. Jasmine couldn't be certain how many greens were down there because they were constantly shifting, disappearing beneath the eaves while others emerged from alleyways or open doors, driving stray villagers forward at the end of prodding bayonets, kicking spaces into the already compact rows and slotting in their hesitant prisoners.
La Guardia Nacional, Jasmine recognised without difficulty. Why are they here?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Jasmine's War by Daniel Hyland. Copyright © 2014 Daniel Hyland. Excerpted by permission of The Merlin Press Ltd.
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