No Space for Further Burials

by Feryal Ali Gauhar

  Here one’s view of the world changes when one has a full belly. After last night’s meal I slept deeply, not dreaming, not even shifting in my bed. Perhaps this is because Bulbul helped me make a mattress out of piles of dried leaves and the feathers of slaughtered chickens. But more than that, it’s the sense of well-being that has come to me since Sabir’s return—I have begun to feel that there is hope yet, that we shall be found, that there are good things to look forward to, that I am being looked after by these people here, the one-legged man, the mute child, the half-crazed, scarf-wearing vagabond, and Waris, the only man with all his senses intact. And Noor Jehan, how can I forget this woman, this mother of all mothers, the one who gets up first and sleeps last, making sure that all of us, the sane and the insane alike, are fed. Noor Jehan—Bulbul tells me her name means Light of the World, and truly she is that.

  * * *

  Noor Jehan came to me today. She brought Qasim with her, and while she spoke to me in her language the boy looked at the pages of this diary and began to draw with the pencil I have almost worn down to a little stub. I watched him as he drew, transfixed by his ability to turn the empty pages of this book into a world peopled with creatures real and imagined. I could not understand much of what Noor Jehan was trying to tell me, but the name Anarguli caught my attention and I realized she was talking about the girl Bulbul had taken me to see several days ago. Tearing my gaze away from Qasim’s fantastic drawings, I followed Noor Jehan into the women’s quarters, completely incapable of imagining what I would find there.

  Anarguli sat with her back to us in her usual position. She did not move when we entered the cell. Behind her was the old woman Bulbul had told me about—the one who had been assaulted. This was a very old woman, if I could judge from the deeply etched lines on her face, like cracked earth in a drought, and the empty cavern of her mouth. She wore a frayed veil on her head, but I could see the hair—silver, thick, matted, and long, stretching to her feet and beyond. I was fascinated by the braid she had plaited—there were twigs and colored threads and bits of dried grass woven into thick strands intertwined with each other. The woman sat behind Anarguli, her knees wedged into the girl’s back. I could see her picking threads off Anarguli’s shawl. She twirled a thread between her fingers, then licked it and proceeded to weave it into her braid. Anarguli remained completely still, as if she was made of stone, a fossil in this airless cell.

  Noor Jehan sat beside Anarguli and reached for her face. The girl flinched. Noor Jehan asked me to sit close to her, facing the girl. I did so. Qasim kneeled by the door of the cell, playing with the wheels of his cart. I could hear their whirring, and I remembered that I had promised myself that I would find something with which to build the fourth wheel of this child’s precious vehicle.

  Noor Jehan drew my attention to the girl’s face. I leaned forward and she pulled Anarguli’s veil off her forehead. I was overwhelmed by the girl’s beauty. She was pale, but the coloring of her dark hair and eyes and the shadow of her lashes made her radiant. I didn’t know what Noor Jehan was trying to tell me. She motioned for me to come closer and examine the girl’s eyes. I inched forward, uncomfortable on my haunches, and peered into the girl’s face. She did not move, neither did her eyes, and I was troubled by that. She seemed to stare at some far corner and only shifted her eyes when she heard us moving around her. I asked Noor Jehan to lead the girl closer to the window so that I could observe her in the light, the little that creeps in through that small opening high up in the wall.

  Noor Jehan pulled the girl forward. She did not resist. I moved toward her and pulled the lower lids of her eyes down, looking for signs of disease. I tried to remember the many things we were taught in school at the San Joaquin Valley Central. I had trained as an emergency medical technician, and in this most distressing time of my life I couldn’t remember half of what I had learned. All I could see was that the girl was anemic, almost bloodless, her skin translucent and her eyes vacant. But there was something else that bothered me about her eyes, the fact that she didn’t follow our movements, that her pupils didn’t constrict when we turned her face toward the light.

  I wanted to leave the cell, unable to do anything to assist the girl, or to help Noor Jehan understand her silence and her almost catatonic state. When I turned to exit, the old crone grabbed my shin with a bony hand and held on with all her strength, strange animal sounds spilling out of her mouth like gravel. Noor Jehan spoke to her gently and tried to loosen the clawlike grip of the woman’s hand around my ankle. But she held on with unexpected vigor, and I stood immobile, listening to her guttural noises, watching the spit dribble down her chin. Noor Jehan called to Qasim who stood a safe distance by the door. She asked him to help lead the woman back into the corner of the cell. I stood rooted to the same spot, watching the mute boy assist his mother in this task. Qasim seems to have a way with the people here, locked up in his silence much like they are in these cells. The old woman listened to him as he made similar incomprehensible sounds, touching her shoulders and stroking her hands which were still clasped around my ankle. Gradually she released the pressure on my leg and I felt the blood rush into my foot, nearly frozen from the cold and the iron grip of this crazed woman.

  As I turned toward the door of the cell the old crone uttered something, a few words that Noor Jehan seemed to understand. I swiveled around to face her as if I too had understood her command. She stared at me for a moment. Then she lunged toward Anarguli and clutched the girl’s veil, pulling it off her head. Anarguli remained motionless. Noor Jehan rushed over, a small gasp leaving the girl’s mouth, a sudden, sharp intake of breath. She embraced Anarguli and hurriedly put the veil back on her head. I heard the old woman babble on about something, pointing to her own head and then to Anarguli. I didn’t turn back toward Anarguli, for I felt the shame that must have stabbed the girl deeply enough for her to let out a cry, a piercing sound which momentarily filled that dark room, a lament for a lost love.

  When Noor Jehan and Qasim joined me in the courtyard we did not talk or even look at each other. What could I say about having just seen a beautiful young girl with tufts of matted hair growing between bare patches of skin black with dried, bloody scabs?

  I don’t know if Bulbul knows about this, whether he has seen the ravaged scalp of his beloved. Even if he has, he probably loves her just as much, for these people here seem not to care about anything except the deep suffering they share, the unspoken agony of their lives.

  I have not slept well the last few days, and it isn’t the fact of my incarceration alone that keeps me awake through these oppressive, cold nights. I cannot fathom how long I will remain here, but that isn’t the only thing which troubles me. It’s not just a question of not having a decent meal or proper bed to sleep in, or even the knowledge that nothing is certain here except death. What nags me most are the things we were taught before we arrived in this land, the tenets of war, the rules of engagement. I keep going over them in my head, the virtues of our coming here, the need to liberate these people, the absolute necessity of enduring freedom.

  Enduring Freedom.

  Enduring. Freedom.

  Two words that don’t mean anything to me anymore.

  This morning Noor Jehan stood at the bars of this cell again. I wanted to pretend that I didn’t see her, but I knew she came to ask me for help, and I know it’s for the girl Anarguli that she appears before me with such regularity. I haven’t had the heart to ask Bulbul about the wound on the girl’s head—I also don’t have the words or the will to do so. Somehow I want Bulbul to love this girl as much as he does without damaging the illusion he bears about her, or about himself. He told me once that as soon as the war was over he would take Anarguli away from here and marry her, find a job in the city where she would become a seamstress, and they would be the parents of many fine sons. He told me that he would go to the city and look for his sister Gulmina, bring her to their home, and find her a good, noble husband.

  I w
anted to tell him that none of this would ever happen, that his sister was probably dead or living in some cave as the mistress of one of the commanders, and that the girl he loved so much was likely to go blind because of the head injury she had suffered at some point in her wretched life. I wanted to tell him that Anarguli would probably never be able to stitch fine clothes for their many sons, that soon she may not even be able to see him when he sits beside her on the cold floor of her cell, holding her hand and speaking tenderly of his love and her beauty.

  But I didn’t tell him any of this, and I didn’t know what to tell Noor Jehan who stood before me silently, her smooth brow marked with deep furrows of distress.

  In training at San Joaquin Valley Central, we never learned about the kinds of injury and disease that can be expected among people who have lived with so little. At boot camp we never learned that in war the victims are always the poorest, the ones who have no choice, no power, no weapons with which to defend themselves. And at the base where our commanders briefed us on protecting the territories we had liberated, we were not told who the enemy was, and who were the victors.

  I had been stationed with the Combined Joint Task Force at B—air base since coming to this strange country. We treated the wounded and the sick, those injured in the course of duty and those hurt for just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. There was the ten-year-old girl Zarmina, I remember, who came to us with one of her legs blown off and the other so terribly damaged that it would have to be amputated. She was bleeding so heavily that the doctors at the army hospital thought she wouldn’t make it. One of the frontline ambulance drivers had brought her in. The stretcher she was carried on was drenched in blood, and she was so pale we thought she was most certainly dead. The commander and the surgeon at the combat support hospital also didn’t think she had half a chance at survival, and when tests were run, the laboratory technicians found she had dangerously low levels of red blood cells. Instead of 40 or 50 percent, this little girl only had 10. The medical laboratory team knew they had to get the life-saving red blood cells back into her system, but when the surgeons pumped two units of predonated blood into Zarmina’s thin arm, things started going wrong. Massive transfusions dilute the serums in the blood that help it to clot, and the only thing to do in order to save her life was to give her whole blood, along with units of fresh-frozen plasma.

  The problem was that the lab didn’t store whole blood, so we hurriedly set up a makeshift donor center and called for volunteers. Within half an hour we had four units of blood from four donors. It took longer to thaw the frozen plasma, but the surgeons had stabilized the girl and there was hope now that she might survive.

  Zarmina’s condition was so critical that two units of whole blood were transfused into her body that day without being tested for compatibility. We were lucky that the blood type matched, just as she was lucky to have been found by the medical evaluation team on board a helicopter, flying over her home province on a reconnaissance mission. I don’t know where she is now, that little girl whose father held her and wept like a child, unashamed and unwilling to let her go. She thanked us when she left, straddled on her father’s back, holding the toys given to her by the nurses and medical technicians. She said she wished she could come back for the ice cream and other treats she had been given. But in my heart I prayed that she need never see us again, not in that hospital, not in war, not even in peace.

  I do not know what’s causing Anarguli to lose her sight. When Noor Jehan insisted that I examine her, I asked her to lift off the girl’s veil, revealing the wound which had festered and lay open like a gully. It could be the trauma of the injury or it could be disease, or even the sheer poverty of these people. Blindness can be caused by so many things, but the worst is the blindness of those who can see and who do nothing with that gift of sight.

  I instructed Noor Jehan to clean the wound—I will not touch this girl unless absolutely necessary. She brought a small enamel bowl filled with warm water, and I asked her to retrieve a clean piece of cloth and some ashes from the cooking fire. She gathered them, along with a small packet of yellow turmeric powder that we mixed with the ashes and the water to form a paste. Noor Jehan applied this balm to the wound, then she blew on it, as if her breath would cleanse it of the bacteria thriving in its rawness. As I turned to leave, she pulled the girl’s veil over her head.

  The old crone was silent today. I cast a cursory glance at her—she was fast asleep in her corner, the grotto of her mouth wide open and her absurdly long braid wrapped around her legs like a thick iron chain. She snored gently, dreaming of another time, another place.

  Waris told us last night that he expects a raid soon. It has been several days since Sabir’s return, and surely someone must have seen his cavalcade of animals passing through the mountains. There were many caves along the way and sometimes when people are forced to flee their villages, they live in these caves, raising their children and burying their dead as if there has been no disruption at all in their lives. The rebels, too, hide there, and surely someone would have seen Sabir herding the camel and the mule and the dog through the narrow passage leading to Tarasmun.

  * * *

  Bulbul has found a way to utilize Sabir’s motley crew of animals in the construction of the wall. Waris insists that it must be repaired before nightfall. I am not sure if I want to be a part of this exercise; this is the only way out, and God knows how desperately I want to get out. I have no idea where I’ll go, or how I’ll get to where I want to. All I know is that I cannot languish in this prison anymore.

  Bulbul has managed to work out a relationship with the camel and the mule. He has built a contraption with planks of wood from the shattered desk in the office and wedged it on the camel’s hump. Waris and I are supposed to load the bricks onto this carrier, and Sabir will lead the mule to the wall where we have dug a separate pit for the clay slip we will use to bind the bricks to each other. The mule, which Bulbul has named Gulab Jan, the Rose of Life, has probably been starving and is nothing but a heap of bones and mangy, patchy hide. But he is useful for simple things like hauling a pail of slip to where Waris lines up the bricks in the damaged part of the wall. This is a patient beast, or maybe it is too tired, or perhaps it really couldn’t care either way. He stands obediently beside Waris until the slip has been used to plaster the bricks, and another pail needs to be filled and carried over to the master bricklayer.

  The camel, on the other hand, is a willful creature and does not understand the commands which Sabir speaks with great authority. Either that or it is deaf or just plain malicious. Every time we want him to kneel down so that we can begin loading the bricks on the wooden platform, he decides to go for a stroll around the courtyard and heads straight for the only living tree which still bears leaves even in this season. Sabir limps after him while Bulbul tries all kinds of whistling and calling, but this animal doesn’t heed them. After much cajoling and coaxing (Sabir pulls out a lump of brown sugar from his pocket from time to time and lets the camel take a lick), the camel is brought under control and the wall is ready to receive the gift of our endeavors, the clay bricks fashioned from the soil of this desecrated land, mixed with water that has washed the excrement of forsaken men.

  We have almost finished placing the bricks along the gap in the broken wall. It is evening now, we are tired, and it is not easy to continue this work in the dark. It has become much colder these past few days; frigid wind finds its way through the mountain passes, traveling over snow-capped peaks and snowed-in valleys until it finds this desolate courtyard to play its solitary game of hide-and-seek.

  Waris thinks that we have done enough for today. I think we have done more than we should have—the wall is almost solid now and too high for me to climb, too slippery and wet and fragile to take the weight of a grown man. But it may keep out the rebels—at least it will not let anyone prowling around at night creep into this compound and vandalize what is left of it.

  I do not know w
hat will happen now—I do not know how I will ever leave this place. I know Waris will never let me go—he keeps an eye on me as if I am the key to the calamities this place has been struck by. I know he is just trying to ensure that the rebels will find me in my cell when they do come. I know he is trying to protect himself and his family. I know that I am his friend only during the certitude of daytime when the sun lights up the courtyard, or when I can do something for the injured, tie a tourniquet, flush a wound. I come in handy for the digging of graves, and I am looking after that girl in the women’s cell. But beyond that I am Firangi, a foreigner, unwelcome and unwanted, except for the ridiculous price placed on my head.

  I don’t even know if I can call Bulbul a friend. It has been many days since he sat in my cell and talked to me in his strange, concocted language, days since I have seen him with that defeated look in his eyes. Perhaps I should sit him down and tell him that I have to find a way out of here. Perhaps he will assist me if I tell him that I can help him and the girl get away too.

  A few days ago I asked Bulbul to explain to Noor Jehan that the girl Anarguli needed fresh air and also the healing power of the sun, that she should be brought out of the damp cell and made to sit in the courtyard. Noor Jehan agreed, but the old crone made such a fuss about being left alone in the cell that she was also brought out to sit beneath the tree.

  Bulbul tells me the old woman’s name is Hayat, Life, and that she has been here for most of it—her life, that is. He doesn’t really know her story but believes she was brought here by someone who saw her begging in the middle of the bus depot in the city. She did not speak coherently, so she was brought here to this place where there are others like her, mute, deaf, blind, crazed, homeless, and generally unwanted.

  I am not sure whether what Bulbul says half the time is imagined or if these things actually happen in this place. He says that the man who brought Hayat to Tarasmun knew Waris and told him her story, begging him to keep her here because she would most certainly have died in the desert, where she had told him she would be taken and abandoned. She was a foreign woman, a Firangan, and it was dishonorable to treat one who has come from afar with no compassion. She had been brought to a village in the north by a cameleer, Haji Allum, who had taken his animals on a ship to a land far away—the camels were to carry provisions and metal tracks for the new railway being laid in that country. There were others in that country who had also come from afar, working hard in that hard land, dreaming of the homes they had left behind. When they needed money at the end of the month, before their English master paid their wages and after the stupor of their drunken state had worn off, they would borrow money from Haji Allum. When one of these men could not pay Haji his interest or the amount borrowed, Haji just took his young daughter and brought her back to the homeland on the ship.