Only the Dead (© Biswapriya Purkayastha)
Page 2 He had a
wife and a daughter, who called me Uncle and liked to
pull my moustache. I don't suppose I'll ever
know. I wonder, though, if I'd
have got away if I'd jumped out at once, instead of trying to save Jameel.
Could I have been running across the desert to safety, instead of lying on my
back staring up at the sky? And would it have been worth it? Could I have lived with
myself if little Bushra had asked me what had happened to her father? These are questions
without answers, questions to which there can never be answers.
If I could distract my mind from them, I would. But what else do I have to
think about? Is it my family? My
mother is dead, my father long since married again, to a woman I still find it
impossible to tolerate. They both greeted my departure to the army with sighs
of relief, and I don't think either of them has spared a moment of thought for
me since. I must say that I have scarcely spared a moment for them,
either. Maybe now they'll wonder.
Does it matter if they do? I hope nobody will cry
for me. It's not something that would make any difference, so why shed tears?
The earth will keep turning anyway, the tides will rise and fall, and the sun
will burn towards its final swollen end. I am glad, at least, that
I had never had any time for religion. I'd been told many times by many people
that I would go to hell for my lack of belief, and my answer had been the same;
that hell could wait. I'd a life to live. Now that life is over, and there's
still no hell, or heaven, or anything else. A flight of the enemy's
ground attack aircraft flies over, so low that I can see their stubby wings and
high-mounted engines, the rows of underslung missiles hanging from hardpoints.
It must have been aeroplanes like this that had blown us apart the other night,
and killed me. I wonder if they're going to kill somebody else now. Yesterday, they'd been
over, too, just before we'd had visitors. One of those visitors had stood over
me. That was the first time I had seen a soldier of the enemy. I'd looked at him as well
as I could with my one remaining eye, while he stared down at me. He was
dressed in the enemy's uniform, pinkish-yellow splashed with brown and grey,
and his young pink face had been flushed with excitement and a little fear. I
realised that this was probably the first time he'd seen death close up, at
least violent death. To him, death had probably meant an aged grandparent in a
coffin, surrounded by flowers and the scent of incense, not putrefying flesh
and clouds of buzzing flies. I was vaguely amused by
this young warrior, who'd licked his lips nervously and grinned up at someone I
couldn't see. Even the way he'd held his rifle, gingerly, as though it was an
accessory, was funny. He'd almost certainly never used it in combat, and never
would. To the enemy, war is something to be fought at a distance, with
artillery and missiles, and bombers taking off from bases a quarter of the way
round the world. To them, fighting means blowing apart images on a video
screen, for all the world as though it were a game. And then there are
pink-faced boys of this sort, to follow along in the tracks of the attack
aircraft and of the tanks with bulldozer blades, to look down at the carnage
and make jokes to try and pretend they aren't scared, or disturbed. I'd watched him take out
his camera and take a few pictures of the wreckage behind me. He'd gestured at
someone, apparently adjusting a pose, and taken a couple more. Then he'd
pointed it down at me. It seems that I wasn't
positioned satisfactorily. I'd felt his boot under my shoulder, pushing me to
the side. I may have shifted suddenly, or perhaps something had fallen off,
because he'd jumped back, laughing self-consciously. Then he'd bent forward,
eye to viewfinder, to take his picture. The flash had made a tiny spark against
the glare of the sky. I wonder what he'll do
with the pictures. Ten or fifteen years from now, when he's a store manager or
a car salesman, these photographs will be an embarrassing reminder of the past,
something he'd rather keep hidden. He won't want to talk to his wife and
children about the blasted corpse he'd kicked around and taken pictures of.
Perhaps he'll want to throw the photographs away, but probably he won't be able
to bring himself to do it. [ Continue to page 3 ] |