No Space for Further Burials

by Feryal Ali Gauhar

  The well stands in the middle of the courtyard, under the only tree which still has its limbs intact. This is where the inmates usually gather during the day, sitting under the shade of the tree, trying to remember the resonance of their own voices. The well had been covered with a wooden lid but that seems to have disappeared, and now all kinds of things float on the surface of the muddy water—once, I believe, I even saw a severed finger, or perhaps it was a twig, or my imagination playing tricks, or the distance from my window. It’s hard to know what is real here—it’s hard to know anything at all except the fact that the nights are longer and colder, and the days bleak and hopeless.

  September 27, 2002

  I have asked Bulbul to get me some more paper and some of the pens he managed to save from the bonfire that the rebels built the last time, burning everything they could find in the office of this asylum. I saw the fire rage through the middle of the courtyard, and heard the vials of medicine shatter in the heat, glassy screams of protest punctuating the deep breathing of ravenous flames.

  Bulbul promises me plenty of writing material. He holds up a charred twig and scratches it along the wall, drawing a picture of a girl with large eyes and full lips. He looks at me and then smiles as he draws a heart around the girl. Then he leans forward and kisses the girl on the mouth, making a long, drawn-out sound like a man dying. I do not know how to react—I see a young man kissing a charcoal drawing of a girl etched onto a wall and I don’t know how to feel. Even as I smile I am aware that there is a great sadness here, behind these walls, outside that wall with the gaping hole in it.

  * * *

  September 29, 2002

  Bulbul tells me that Waris has asked him to help the few able-bodied men rebuild that hole in the wall. Waris believes it is the only way they can keep the looters out. I believe that after his wife was taken into that cell and possibly assaulted, Waris wants to make sure nothing of the sort will happen again. It is a good plan, to repair that hole in the wall. It will secure the compound.

  It will also remove any chance I may have of getting the hell out of here. I don’t know what to say to Bulbul—he looks at me as if he needs to report the day’s events to me. I really don’t want to know half of what he tells me—most of it seems implausible, much of it doesn’t make any sense, and quite a bit is probably his own imagination. But at least it gives me something to look forward to, locked up here, waiting for this young man with the incongruous red scarf to saunter across the courtyard and disclose the day’s details to me in a strange combination of tongues.

  October 2, 2002

  I cannot believe what has happened. It is difficult to write so soon after disaster has struck this compound. My fingers are stiff from the cold and my back aches after long hours of crouching in the corner, hiding from the moonlight that would certainly have given away my presence.

  The looters came again last night. There were many of them, from what I could make out at that time of night. Tarasmun has lost its electricity connection, and oil lamps are lit only in emergencies. It was pitch dark when the sound of rushing men woke me up from a fitful sleep. My first instinct was to look through the bars but something kept me down, hidden in the corner. Perhaps it was my own fear slithering down my back and paralyzing life and limb. I could only hear what went on—I heard Waris shouting to his wife, I heard her as she rushed past the cell, the child Qasim probably running along with her, the irregular squeak of his three-wheeled cart sounding like a fingernail against a chalkboard. I heard other voices, guttural voices belonging to men I couldn’t see. There was more shouting, then the clanging of metal doors, then the wailing and screeching of the inmates I had begun to know by sight. I could not identify them from their sounds of anguish, I only knew that they were terrified. There were gasps of pain and the sound of whipping and kicking. I heard Waris yelling again, asking someone to let these men go, that they were miskeen, innocent. They could not be blamed for the war.

  Waris must have been gagged. I did not hear him again, except for muffled sounds and the stifled thwack of a slap. I heard men crying, some shouting incoherently, using words I had not yet understood. There are so many languages here, and the only one I have managed to understand is the one which speaks of fear.

  October 3, 2002

  Bulbul has not come today. I do not see Noor Jehan the cook or Qasim the mute. It is cold in this cell where the sunlight rarely creeps in. I have not eaten since yesterday.

  October 4, 2002

  Nobody walked in the courtyard this morning. There are no sounds here, only the wind and the leaves and the branches rubbing against each other. Where is everyone? Am I alone now in this godforsaken bit of hell?

  October 5, 2002

  Thank God Bulbul brought me a cup of tea. Thank God he is well. Thank God for his red scarf and the willing grin which curves around his face like a crescent.

  Waris came to me today. This is the first time this man has actually come across the courtyard to talk to me. He is not very old, nor too young, but incredibly impressive even in his tattered turban and weathered wool vest. Bulbul calls him Graan Kaka, Elder Uncle. It is a term of respect. This much I have learned here, that uncles and aunts do not have to be relatives. They are family, even if they have never seen you before. And they take you into their lives as if they had always known you.

  Waris has provided me with a set of clothes to keep me warm and to keep me from shaming myself in the presence of his wife. His eyes are comforting and warm like cups of tea on a winter morning, and his hands are rough and capable, stringing words in the still air with majestic flourishes. He is as royal a man as I have met, this peasant who has surely seen better days, whose voice reveals that he is not my enemy, that he is hunted too, and haunted by terrible memories which replay themselves on the insides of his closed eye.

  Waris speaks to me in Pashto which I do not understand. My three-month language immersion concentrated on the language of the city and of the royal court, Persian. Waris speaks a little English, learned from the doctor who used to run this place. The doctor and his staff fled during the first raid—several of the women nurses were taken by the commander of that incursion. It is said that they will never be seen again, and if they are, their families will never accept them. This is the mysterious thing here, in this land of so much conflict—a stranger is an uncle, but one’s own daughter is a stranger once she has been taken away against her will. Despised and discarded, not worth the spit which burns holes in the dusty ground of tribal justice.

  But that is not what Waris came to tell me this morning. He had a proposition to make, one that I did not take much time to consider. Bulbul acted as interpreter while Waris spoke eloquently, nodding his head each time Bulbul was able to convey his intention to me. I am to be let out of the cell, Waris says. I am needed to help with those who were hurt yesterday in the raid—there is a bleeding man with a gash on his head, and a young girl who does not eat or sleep. There is also a small child who has been raped. He had been left for dead, but the morning after the raid, when Noor Jehan emerged from her hiding place, she found that the boy was still breathing, lying still in his own blood on the cold floor of the cell. He is Qasim’s age, possibly not yet ten. Waris does not know if he will live—he has lost a lot of blood and lay on the floor all night with nothing to cover him. The looters stripped him of his clothes, although they must have been too small to fit any one of them. Perhaps there are young boys in their ranks, children, like the one they brutalized in the dead of night.

  October 6, 2002

  I have spent the day in the shattered office of this asylum, rummaging through the debris for anything that could be used to stem the blood trickling out of Sabir Shah’s head. Sabir is the one-legged man who has a face like nothing I have seen before. It is rutted and scarred, much like the landscape of this forsaken valley. Bulbul informs me that Sabir was attacked while still in his village. The only man there with an education, Sabir was accused of blasphemy by a cleric. The
council of village elders was told that Sabir had thrown the holy book onto the ground and then trampled it with his boots. The elders called for the village council to decide his fate. Later that day, before a judgment could even be rendered, the accusing cleric threw a bottle of acid on Sabir’s face, blinding him in one eye, making the flesh around his jaw fuse with his neck. Sabir was not deranged in any way; he was as able-bodied as any of us—despite his one eye and one leg. I do not know how he lost his other leg; Bulbul still has to tell me that story.

  In the raid last night Sabir used his crutch to hit one of the men who rushed into his cell. The man had dragged a young boy into a corner when Sabir swung his crutch at him. The crutch hit the man hard, but not hard enough, for he returned the blow with equal or more vigor, hitting Sabir across the head with the butt of his rifle. Then the soldier untied the string which held his trousers up and sodomized the child, a thin, sickly boy who hardly had any use for his hopelessly twisted limbs. Sabir says he did not see this; he was blinded even in his good eye by the blood spurting out of the gash on his forehead. But he heard the man grunting and the child gasping in pain. That was enough to suggest to us what happened last night—that and the child’s devastated condition.

  I did not find anything that could be used as a bandage in the office. Waris took a bedsheet and tore it into thin strips which I used to stem the flow of blood. I know we must find some antiseptic to heal the wound, but there is nothing left here. On the wall of the cell I can see the smudge of fresh blood left from the night before, and on the floor I can see where the child lay in his own excrement, stained with red.

  We have taken the child into the kitchen where it is warmer. Noor Jehan is cleaning him up, she has tried to make him drink some gruel, but his lips have turned blue and his eyes have begun to roll upward. This is much worse than I had imagined, and I do not want to think what will happen without proper medical help. Sabir will survive—he has survived much worse—but this child is a paraplegic, already ill and deformed. What chance does he have to live?

  What chance do any of us have if things continue this way, if nobody finds us, trapped in this nightmare?

  two

  October 8, 2002

  We are waiting for the night to play itself out. It is colder now, and in the morning I saw the snow on the peaks surrounding us. Waris has given me his frayed shawl which I have draped over myself to keep the cold out. He lets me stay in the kitchen where it is warmer, and where Bulbul, Sabir, and Noor Jehan attend to the ailing child.

  Noor Jehan rocks him back and forth and tries continuously to make him drink the tea she keeps warm on the embers of the dying fire. I can see the liquid dribbling out of his mouth and onto the curve of his bony neck. In the treacherous light of the fire I can make out the veins running under this child’s fragile skin, blue rivers of hope. There are sores encrusted all over his body, ravaged by disease, wasted by neglect. He is calmer now, it seems as if the color is returning to his lips. Noor Jehan insists on wetting his mouth with the warm tea, just to give him strength, she says. She has added some of the precious sugar she has hidden in a coarse sack behind the kitchen door. Perhaps the sugar will give the child the strength to pull through the night. Perhaps Noor Jehan’s crooning will keep him alive, her gentle care and the warm tears cascading down her face.

  October 9, 2002

  We have to dig another grave this morning, at sunrise, when the snow on the peaks seems to glow with crimson light like the cheek of a young girl. It will be a small grave, narrow but deep enough to hold the crippled body of the dead child.

  It is still dark. I have stayed up with Waris and his wife while Bulbul slept propped up against the sacks of potatoes Sabir Shah managed to acquire on a recent trip to the nearest village. How he gets around with one eye and one leg is beyond me. The crutch he uses is ancient; its wood has chipped with use and age, and the rubber cap at the bottom is worn down to a thin sliver, falling open like the skin of a wounded animal. But Sabir somehow sneaks food into this compound, using resources known only to him. He is only half a man, but seems to have twice the strength of all of us here.

  My fingers have grown numb trying to write in the cold, trying to reach for the warmth of the fire that went out ages ago. I have only the moonlight to guide me, and in its shadows I see the desolation of this place more clearly than I can during the day. There is no one around; the others have been quiet since the raid. It is as if the fear has been beaten out of them, as if life itself has taken a beating. I can hear Bulbul snoring gently—he is young, younger than me, a beard and mustache barely covering his elongated jaw. His stringy limbs are stretched out on the earthen floor of the kitchen like he is at home, among his own, in the comfort of his loved one’s arms.

  Sabir has appeared, armed with a spade and a pick-axe. I must go with him and look for a suitable place for the grave. I leave Waris and Noor Jehan to grieve for the dead boy. He will have to be bathed in fulfillment of religious obligation, and then a shroud will have to be found for him, a clean length of cloth which will envelop his emaciated body, a cocoon for the journey ahead.

  Bulbul has come to me again. I am to spend the day locked up in the cell, just to please my captors in case they return and ask for me. Apparently a large sum of money rests on my head; Bulbul smacks his lips as he tells me the dollar amount demanded by the rebels for my release. A phenomenal amount, considering that no one knows who I am or where I am at this point in time. Who would have told the people at the base about my whereabouts, and who will be looking for me? Will anyone dare to venture out in this wilderness to look for someone who never really belonged to the community of men who dream of high school sweethearts and baseball games on the weekend?

  This evening Waris returned to my cell and let me out again, accompanying me to the kitchen where Sabir and Bulbul waited. Noor Jehan and Qasim must have been making rounds of the compound, feeding the inmates in their cells. I could see the peels of several potatoes swept into a corner. These people have no sense of sanitation—why must they let things just rot and lie around as if there’s no way to dispose of them? Everywhere there is something rotting, and even in this dry air the stench of rotting flesh hangs heavy. Perhaps the graves we have been digging are not deep enough.

  I am so tired now and want nothing more than to get out. I must get out of this hellhole.

  October 10, 2002

  Bulbul woke me up earlier than usual today. He appeared at the window, a shadow, his red scarf tied around his head like a bandanna. When I refused to acknowledge his presence he made a clanging noise against the bars of the cell with a spade. I had no choice but to see that he carried two of these across his shoulder, one of them meant for me.

  We have begun digging the ground again, piling up the earth along the wall. Tomorrow, after we have shoveled a portion of the stretch running along the damaged wall, Waris and Sabir will guide us in molding small channels from the cells so that the water which Noor Jehan uses to wash the floors can run into the ditches. Then we will throw the freshly dug soil back into the pits and mix it up to form the clay for bricks to rebuild the wall. I don’t yet know whether we will bake these bricks or just let the sun dry them before we begin our task. I do know that this is good, hard work and it keeps my mind off my misery.

  I am hungry now. Noor Jehan has served us gruel made from the potato peels I saw in a heap behind the kitchen door. She is saving the potatoes for the evening meal. And she promises me some sugar in my tea later on. She smiles at me, and I can see the kindness in her eyes, hooded as they are by last night’s sorrow. She must have been a beautiful woman, this pillar of strength, this matriarch. But the war has ravaged her face, drawing deep lines across her forehead which is otherwise like a lush, fertile plain, full of promise.

  October 11, 2002

  The water which runs into the channels we have managed to dig is filthy. It stinks, and I hate to think that we will have to churn up the soil with this effluence. I have told Bulbul I
need to take a break. Let them do it. I’m really not interested in building a wall that will keep the raiders out and me inside.

  Sabir has devised a way to mix the clay without having to soil our hands with the dirty water. He began by using the armrest of his crutch to guide the water into the pits, and then proceeded to break off some of the mangled branches of the few remaining trees. With these he mixed earth with water, and signaled to Waris and Bulbul to fashion their own tools and join him. I sat in the shade of the wall for a while, eyes shut, just too exhausted, until Bulbul nudged me and asked me to help. He said they need to have the bricks molded before sunset so that they can dry out during the night.

  The little mute boy, Qasim, is helping with the laborious task of making clay bricks. He drags his three-wheeled cart around, carrying the clay from the pit to a sunny spot in the courtyard where Waris and Sabir shape it into rectangles. Sabir uses the broad side of his crutch this time to construct a temporary siding for a make-shift mold. I think I will look in the office for something that might do the job quicker. Perhaps a wooden drawer from the desk that was cracked open by the soldiers. This would make a mold for larger bricks, finishing the task sooner. Obviously these people have no idea about speed or time or the urgency to get things done. Even this business of repairing the damage is executed as if it was a normal thing to do, as if this happened every day, digging the hard earth and channeling gutter water into pits that look like long, narrow graves in the shadow of this cursed wall.