No Space for Further Burials

by Feryal Ali Gauhar

  Bulbul sat on the sack wearing just his T-shirt and the soiled jeans. He seemed to have lost the red scarf, the only thing he had to keep him warm. He looked up at me and smiled. Even in the weak light of the lantern I could see that his eyes were glazed over, as if he was in a trance.

  Waris hung the lantern on a nail in the wall and returned to the kitchen. I took his place, standing in front of Bulbul like a guardian protecting him from the ghosts that haunted him. I asked him what he had done with his scarf. He glanced at me again, then got up and asked me to follow him to a corner of the basement. He peered up at the roof. I followed his gaze. The red scarf hung limply from one of the rafters. Bulbul looked at me and then dropped his eyes to the floor. A sack of grain sat directly underneath the floating scarf.

  For a while I could not make out what any of this meant, until Bulbul climbed onto the sack of grain and reached for the scarf, wrapping it around his neck. Then I understood. He was trying to tell me that he had wanted to end his life. At least that is what I thought.

  Bulbul tugged at the scarf. It was firmly knotted around the beam. Then he lowered himself to the ground and stared at me, perhaps seeking approval for this whole business of hanging himself from the rafters. In my nervousness I laughed, then pulled his arm and led him to the place where he had been sitting earlier. I sat in front of him, on my haunches, and looked into his face, asking him questions for which I had no words.

  Slowly, Bulbul began to roll up the cuffs of his trousers again. I did not move, having no idea what to expect. When he finished rolling them, neatly, like a track runner, he took my hand and I let him place it over the dark stainlike marks on his skin.

  Sukht kard. Burning, he said. My uncle.

  I did not understand and continued to stare at the scars. He got off the sack and kneeled down on the floor, resting his hand on my shoulder, his eyes on mine. These were burn marks, he said, from the time after his father died, the gangrene having set into the wounds, a fever burning up his life force until he was nothing but a yellow cadaver.

  My uncle, the one for who my father made the fruit-filled lumps of molasses, ended up having to marry my mother after his death, as is the custom among my people. The woman he had intended to wed the following spring was taken by the rebels when they came to loot and burn the village. She was seen again in springtime, her body floating on the scum-covered water of the village well. When she was pulled out of the well, it was clear that she had been pregnant and had taken her own life.

  My uncle, Lawangeen, was now my father, even though he was years younger. He did not treat my mother well—she could have been his own mother’s age, I suppose, and the woman he was forced to abandon had ended up dead in the village well. So there was much anger in him, and when he took us to the city in search of a livelihood, he expected me to find work to support my mother and sister. I was still young—my front teeth had reappeared, big and firm, as you can see. But I was still a boy.

  I found a job at a roadside stall selling kebabs and naan to passersby. I was to wash the dishes and prepare the seekh, the skewers on which the meat was grilled. The kebab seller would let me have a meal of the scraps leftover in people’s plates in return for my work, and I could take home some of the naan to my mother and Gulmina.

  In the evening I would stand on Chicken Street—this is where the foreign people came to shop, but since the war there were not many around. The foreigners were in the city, helping us, helping women, even helping the sick and the wounded, but they did not shop much, and in any case the shops were shutting down, business was bad and times were not certain.

  My uncle wanted me to sit at a corner of Chicken Street and hold my hands out to passersby. He asked my mother to put on her burqa, and to take Gulmina along too. We were to sit near a busy intersection. We were to hold our hands out and ask for money. I said that I would rather die than beg, but he beat me and told me that with the little naan I brought them, we would probably die anyway, so why not swallow one’s pride and beg for some extras, some meat perhaps.

  My mother was ashamed of this, but she could hide her shame in the many folds of her covering. And Gulmina was too young to know that she was no longer the daughter of an honorable farmer. She was now on the streets, earning a living like all the shameless others who had no homes and no hope for a better life.

  The first time I managed to collect enough money to actually buy something, I went straight to the vendor who sold secondhand shoes on his cart, parked next to the kebab seller. He knew me—I would sometimes get him the big pieces of meat when he asked for a meal, and he was kind to me. I had seen a pair of shoes he had on his cart—they were boots, white ones, with fur on the edges and blue laces. There was a star on the side, a silver star that gleamed when the sunlight hit it just before evening fell. I asked him for this pair—I had the money, I had worked for it.

  That evening when I got home, wearing the shoes like a medal, my uncle took me into a corner of the room near the cooking fire and made me take off the shoes. I thought he was going to put them away for a special occasion, like the Festival of Sacrifice, when we would certainly get some meat to eat.

  But he did not do that. Without saying a word, he put the shoes in the open fire, and then he held my hands down and asked me to put my feet in the grate. I could not believe what he was doing. My mother protested—she screamed for him to have mercy on me, that I was just a child, her only son. What use was I if I had no feet? What use was I if I could not leave the house to earn a living? Had one cripple not been enough in the family? Did I not nurse your brother when he became half a man? Did I not hold him in my arms when his back arched with the fever that took him from us? This did not pacify my uncle. He pushed me onto the floor and dragged me by the feet toward the fire. Then he took the burning rubber of the shoes I had bought and pressed them against my feet. I remember the searing pain, and then I remember nothing.

  I woke up to the smell of burning rubber and charred flesh. I could not walk for days. My mother would clean my wounds and change the bandage; she would apply a paste of herbs and butter. And she would weep, her tears healing that place in me which none of her medicinal preparations could reach.

  I don’t know if I can deal with this anymore, this place, this wilderness, the obvious desperation of a people driven to madness. How on God’s good earth am I going to get out of here?

  October 15, 2002

  Sabir has still not returned. It is dark now and we sit in the kitchen, gathered around the hearth. Noor Jehan cradles Qasim’s head in her lap. It appears she is looking for lice in his hair. I worry now, about lice and vermin and disease. Don’t know how long I will survive this.

  Bulbul emerged from the basement at nightfall. His scarf was tied around his neck again. He smiled as he came and sat next to me on the floor. Then he put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a pen, an expensive-looking pen, and offered it to me. I took it—it was a Mont Blanc, gold tipped, with a man’s name engraved on the side. I read that name in the light of the fire, speaking it aloud: David Elisha.

  Waris glanced up and asked for the pen. He stared at it for a while then handed it to Bulbul, questioning him in short spurts. Then he got up abruptly and walked out the door. He was visibly upset, and perhaps he had gone to wait by the wall for Sabir’s return. Bulbul just stared at the floor, not speaking. Then he peered up and told me that the pen belonged to the Canadian doctor who had run this asylum before the war. He said he had found it in the basement, lying behind the sacks of grain in the corner where he had stood earlier with his scarf wrapped around his neck. Dr. Elisha had died in the basement, a rope around his neck, the day the soldiers came and took away the nurses, killing the male staff and imprisoning him in the basement.

  Bulbul returned the pen to me, saying that it would be useful for me, for my writing, for the words I try to leave on scraps of paper so that I do not end up taking my life the way he has wanted to, so many futile times.

  I wanted to see
the grave where Dr. Elisha was buried. Bulbul took me to the back of the compound, near the incinerator. There are several graves there, but only one with a cross stuck into the ground. The cross had been assembled from two planks of wood with some lettering still visible on them, perhaps the sides of a crate. A long, rusty nail pierces the place where the two pieces meet. The wood is cracked at that point, and the plank that nests in the earth has almost split in two.

  October 16, 2002

  Last night, once I was back in my cell, it began to rain. At first it was a light drizzle, then there was thunder and streaks of lightning that lit up the sky like a thousand fires. Now it is pouring, and Waris and Bulbul have gone crazy struggling to lift as many of those handmade clay bricks as they can. They are trying to get them out of the rain to keep them dry. I refuse to leave this cell. It is cold and I really couldn’t care less if the pathetic lumps dissolve in the rain. It’s their wall, let them worry about it.

  It was wonderful waking up this morning to see the sky clear and the dust washed from the leaves of the big tree. Bulbul came to me, face gleaming, hair combed, pants clean but soggy, and wearing a woman’s orange sweater instead of his soiled T-shirt. Last night, while they were lugging the bricks into the veranda running along the compound, Bulbul decided to take his clothes off and bathe in the rain, letting the grime run off his skin into the earth. Waris had done the same, except that he wrapped his turban around his groin, unlike Bulbul who had danced around naked.

  I want to wash today. Bulbul says the well has filled up again, that Noor Jehan and the boy have warmed some of the water and are going to wash Anarguli and the old crone in the women’s quarter. I want some of that warm water, I want a bar of soap, some shampoo, and then I want to put on a clean pair of clothes, some respectable shoes instead of the rubber flip-flops bequeathed by Bulbul, and I want to sleep for many, many days and all the nights that follow.

  Bulbul has come to me again. He does not smile, and I wonder if it’s because Sabir has still not returned. I have spent the day in the sun, under the tree that still drips rainwater off its leaves. Waris has helped Noor Jehan and Qasim carry pails of warm water into the women’s cell. If it rains again, I’ll suggest that they let all the men out and make them dance naked like Bulbul did last night, washing away the lice and the infestations of parasites that I have seen tunneling into their skins.

  But Bulbul, despite his clean smell and the combed hair and the old-new sweater, has turned into his other self again. He is clearly distressed as he informs me what Noor Jehan has told Waris about the girl, Anarguli. While washing her she had seen a swelling in her belly and wondered if that might explain why the girl hasn’t been eating, whether she’s perhaps carrying a child, conceived of the rape she was subjected to during that first raid. I want to tell him it could be hunger that’s swelling up in her belly, like a great heavy mass of yearning.

  He gets up and tells me that it’s Mohammad’s child. Anarguli’s dead husband, Mohammad. And he is happy as he says this, waving the end of his scarf in the air like a lasso. I look for Sabir Kaka now—he come home soon.

  October 18, 2002

  They came again toward nightfall. It had begun to drizzle; Waris and Bulbul herded the men out of their filthy cells into the courtyard, under the tree. Some of them laughed at the rain, others wept, a few even ran in different directions, rushing to get their clothes off and wash themselves. I watched them from my cell—it had threatened to rain and I had agreed to help Waris carry the clay bricks back into the veranda. But the rain came sooner than expected and the soldiers arrived with it, turning the water in the well red with blood, shooting for sport. Waris tried to get most of the men back into the cells, but a few remained under the tree watching the leaves sway in the evening breeze.

  Three men were killed, their bodies dumped in the well. Their crime? They resisted the soldiers who wanted their shoes—broken, mended, scuffed pieces of leather and rubber that cost them their lives.

  Waris has asked me to help him wash out a few tin drums which must have stored oil at some point. He says we must pray for rain to fill them up with water. And once we have washed the drums we will have to remove the bodies from the well and bury them.

  Bulbul disappeared again. It took me awhile to guess where he could be. But he was in the basement, in the same place. In his hands he held a pair of shoes. I examined his feet—they were bare and hideously deformed, the bones crushed, the flesh turned into shapeless lumps after the burning. He did not look at me when I stood before him. He cradled the shoes like a pair of newborn lambs, tender and fragile and deeply loved.

  four

  This morning Waris stood outside the cell and yelled, calling me over and over again: Firangi, Firangi. He waved frantically in the direction of the wall. I thought I was still dreaming, or at least hallucinating, when I saw the caravan of motley creatures amble through the hole in the wall. There was a dark-haired camel, a very scrawny mule, a long-haired dog almost as high as Sabir Shah who then walked through, crutch under his arm, a broad smile stretching like a washing line across his face. He followed the mule, patting it gently on its bony back, encouraging it to step over the debris and the sodden earth that lay in its path, a major obstruction for an obstinate beast.

  I flung on the shawl and rushed out barefoot in my excitement. What was all this about? Where had Sabir come across these creatures? Which godforsaken corner of this valley had yielded such a rich harvest?

  Sabir stood by the well and propped his crutch against the solid trunk of our only living tree. He continued to smile, looking at Waris, his one eye glinting with delight. Waris rushed forward and embraced this one-legged, half-blind man who had brought back gifts of grain and fruit and sustenance, bundled carefully into the saddlebags thrown across the backs of the camel and mule.

  I joined the two men and we laughed together, Waris and I, in amazement, Sabir with the sheer joy of having achieved so much more than he had set out to do. Waris called out to Noor Jehan and Bulbul and proceeded to find moorings for the straying animals. I helped him pound a couple of wooden pickets in the corner of the courtyard, across from the tandoor. We tied up the camel and mule after relieving them of the generous load they had carried across so many miles.

  Noor Jehan brought out a cup of sweetened tea for Sabir. He drank with obvious relish. His face was layered with dust, his eyelashes blond from the sunlight, but his pleasure was impossible to miss beneath the grime and fatigue. He turned to Bulbul and instructed him to take care of the animals—after all, they had journeyed long to come home to all of us.

  This evening we have eaten well. The saddlebags tied to the backs of the animals were like bottomless wells serving up unexpected treasures. The mule had carried a bag full of apples, most of them bruised and worm-infested, but apples nonetheless, and several pomegranates which Noor Jehan took and put away. In the other pouch there were four chickens, their legs tied to each other. The camel yielded wild spinach, walnuts, watermelon seeds, ears of corn, and potatoes. And the dog, that huge mastiff with the frayed rope tied around his neck, the dog carried his own burden: a red-beaked partridge sitting in an intricately woven cage. This was tied to the rope around his neck and suspended like a bell.

  Sabir feeds the bird tiny seeds of rye and barley that he fishes out of his pocket. He has named it Inzargul, the flower of a fig tree, and as he sips his tea he tells us of his journey to Sarchashma, beyond the impossible mountains.

  At first, I had a difficult time keeping my balance on that bicycle, but after a while I managed to get the rhythm of using the crutch to pedal. I wedged it between the plates of the pedal and then off I went, shooting over the track toward the pass between the black mountains. It was only after I reached the part where the road begins to climb that I had to dismount from the bike, but I kept it with me, pushing it along and actually using it to rest against when I got tired or winded.

  Getting through the pass was difficult not only because of the rough t
errain but because of the rebels hiding in the caves along the side of the narrow opening. I know the less traveled paths, the ones I used to take when I came from the city to visit the family, so I was safe, although the journey took more time and effort.

  Imagine my horror when I got to the village: there was no one around—the houses had been razed to the ground, the crops burned, everything destroyed. I threw the bicycle down and rushed into the lanes, calling out the names of friends and relatives I had lost touch with since the accident. Khaistamir! Hamesh Kaka, Gulabsher! But there was no answer, only silence and the sound of the wind and dead leaves rustling. At first I didn’t know what to do, so I sat outside the door of what used to be our home, and I wept. I know the boy Bulbul told us that the village had been destroyed, but I didn’t want to believe that—how could brother turn against brother, killing and looting and dishonoring our sisters, our mothers? But it was true, the boy had told us about the rebels coming and demanding food and shelter, and when the elders decided to resist, to keep whatever meager harvest they had gathered in the year of misery, this is what happened, the total destruction of the village.

  But where have these people gone, I asked myself, sitting outside that familiar door. Where could my ailing father, my sisters, where could they all have gone? And what about the animals—were they taken too? Did the rebels take the animals, did they kill them, or did my father herd up the sheep and cattle and drive them away from here, far from this desolation?

  That was when I head the barking. It was the most beautiful sound I had heard in so long. It was the dog, this one I have brought with me, the one I raised as a pup, and he was barking, letting me know that all was not lost, that some of the ones I had loved were still there in their homes, even if there were no roofs on the houses, no walls left standing, but a home is where you have buried your heart, and I had buried my heart in the soil of my home the day my father asked me to leave, the day my life ended and another man, half a man, was born.