Seeking Sohail

Chapter 1

I've had a feeling that Sohail got really bad press in Our Girl and we found out at the end of Episode 3 that there certainly were hidden depths to him. I suspect he had a sad back story, possibly similar to Qaseem's. And I wonder how he really felt about Molly? So I've decided to go looking for his history.

Thanks to Tony Grounds and the BBC for these great characters which intrigue and fascinate me.

"You know, Charles, there was something else I had to do when I went back to Afghan. I needed to find Bashira and to make sure she's OK, of course I did. And I had to see if I was any good at teaching them new medics…and I am, I'm the nuts…" Charles smiled as he recalled the first conversation he and Dawes had about his blisters and the new boots which he had thought were unnecessary and the cause of his sore feet. That was the time he first remembered thinking that his new medic was going to be a handful. He was intrigued by her. While she wasn't exactly cheeky to him –yet- he got the distinct impression that she wasn't the least bit afraid of him or his rank.

She did think she was "the nuts' at her work and had no hesitation at saying so while she proved herself by doing a first-rate job of dressing his blisters. He could, she suggested, break his new boots in by running the platoon around the camp. So had begun a daily catch up, when she would attend to his feet and they would converse lightly about the very divergent worlds they came from. The captain found himself making excuses to drop into the medic's tent sometimes more than once a day on top of the daily appointment times to get his dressings changed.

These days, now that she was back from her second tour which she had done without Charles, they spent some of each day in the long narrow garden at the back of the Royal Crescent house. His parents were still away in Italy and he continued tidying up the garden, sometimes stopping to sip a cool lemonade and to kiss Molly lightly on the top of her head. Molly would sit on one of the white wrought iron garden chairs, knees drawn up to her chin and arms encircling her legs, talking, listening and laughing with him as he pruned the escallonia and heaped up the cuttings for burning. Bees dizzily hummed, wafts of fragrance from the lavender beds drifted through the hazy air.

Relaxed and happy, she found this companionable time with Charles to be the second best thing about these, their first days alone. The best thing did not need any explanation, just that it happened several times a day and that she had never felt more loved and cared for in her whole life before this time. Charles had only to touch her lightly for her to be ready for him and he to be ready for her and their passion for one another, she quickly recognised, was boundless and always new and fresh. Never had she been so ready to share parts of herself that she had held close, fenced off from all others for fear that she would not be taken seriously or, worse, mocked. She could tell him and she could trust him.

"Qaseem's a very patient man," Molly started talking again." I think I was hard work for him…"

"He really respects you, Molly," Charles reassured her. "More than that, he told me he's very fond of you. You remind him of his daughter who would have been the same age as you if…'

She interrupted, "Yeah, and I feel the same about him. When we were in Afghan Qaseem and me, we talked a lot about family stuff 'n that. Sometimes I used to wish he was my father, or at least that my father was a bit more like him."

"So what was the other thing you wanted to do in Afghan, Molly? What's it got to do with Qaseem?"

"Sohail,"she whispered. Charles saw the tears forming, just as they had in the military hospital when Sohail died all those months ago. Just as then, he took her face tenderly in his hands and gently wiped the tears away. "I got it all wrong about him, Charles. Qaseem helped me sort it all in my head. He said it might be good for me to talk to you about it when I got home."

"Let's go inside," he said, slipping an arm around her shoulders, "I'll clean myself up. How about you make us a hot drink and then we can sit down and you can tell me all about it, Molls. Sounds like it's been very important to you. Funny, I thought there was something not quite right, couldn't put my finger on it." Leaning down, he wiped her tears away again. "Let's sort it out. Can't have you sad like this, Dawsey!"

As they settled into the big, soft chairs in the study, Charles recalled a conversation he had shared with Qaseem not long after the uncomfortable visit he and Molly had made to Sohail's tent. He had wanted to understand something of what drove the big Afghani soldier, who gave off an air of barely suppressed rage most of the time. There was something else, though, something that suggested sadness and pain. Charles had noticed the scarring and what appeared to be burn marks on Sohail's face and neck.

During the traumatic events on the road to Bastion, when he and Molly had discovered Sohail's broken body under the bloody stained white sheet he had been stunned to hear the Afghani pleading in Pashto to be allowed to die. The man had said he had nothing to live for. Before he died that day, however, Sohail had unwittingly enlightened him and Molly about two acts of selflessness which gave the lie to assumptions they and others in 2 Section had made about him.

One of those acts involved Sohail taking a fatal beating rather than follow orders from the Taliban to execute Molly. It was no wonder she felt a need to find Sohail's story, to better understand him. Charles recalled the conversation he had had with Molly at Smurf's funeral. He had told Molly to take the time to sort all of her stuff out before she came back to him. Clearly, this was a big, important part of that stuff. And who better to help than Qaseem?

Molly sipped at her hot tea and gave Charles a small smile.

"I ain't very good at this stuff, Boss…"

"Charles!" He reminded her. He'd noticed that whenever she got a little het up or shy around new people from his life, she tended to revert to the old pattern of relating to him from the FOB and Bastion days. And calling him "Boss" was part of that. Though sometimes he thought she deliberately provoked him into reminding her that of his real name so she could smirk and tease him as she had in the restaurant on their first real date.

"No hurry, Molly. You had a fair bit to do with Sohail, not much of it good on the surface, I think. I sense there was a lot we didn't know before you went back to Afghan. It's going to be really, really interesting to find out what happened when you talked to Qaseem."

"Well, here goes," she started.

I'm really not sure about this storyline. Some reviews would help me make my mind up. There will be some romance along the way, I believe.

listen to him.