No Space for Further Burials

by Feryal Ali Gauhar

  I laughed at him then. No one knew I was here, locked up among these lunatics. And the bombers in those jets would have been so high in the air they would not have seen any living thing, only their radar screens, and they would have released the bombs according to the computations of the latest technology. They had no idea who they were bombing, even if the message they had sent was meant for the one they thought they had in their grasp.

  But now I feel that part of what Bulbul said just might be correct—that I had joined the enemy, that I was now on the other side of this war. The only difficulty I have with this is that I really don’t know who the enemy is anymore. I don’t know who that bomb was targeting. All I know is that it cost many lives, and none of them was the enemy.

  Noor Kaka began his story late at night. He had rested; Noor Jehan insisted that one of the four chickens Sabir brought be slaughtered to make a decent meal for the old man. There was some discussion about this—Bulbul said he was trying to get the hen to lay eggs which we could eat, or which would hatch to give us several more chickens, eventually. Noor Jehan argued that the old man needed strength, that he had suffered an ordeal far worse than any we could imagine, stuck under that tree, buried beneath tons of rubble, not breathing, not eating or drinking.

  She won the argument, and came up with a broth flavored with cloves and pepper and another spice which looked like a five-petaled flower kept in some mysterious sack in the basement. We all had a taste, at least those of us privileged enough to eat in the kitchen. The men in the basement were given the usual gruel, except for the seven who had helped to raise Noor from the debris. They were brought up to the kitchen and given naan soaked in that broth. Bulbul saved the chicken bones for the dog that had found Noor. We all wished there was more of this soup, and Qasim was the one who did what all of us wanted to: he scraped the bottom of the cooking pot with a bit of naan and then licked his fingers, sucking on them for good measure.

  Noor Kaka began his story after the men had laid out a tattered blanket on the kitchen floor and prostrated themselves in the direction of Mecca. I watched in silence as they offered their evening prayers, turning their heads from side to side in unison, as if they were one body with one belief—that all that comes to pass comes from Allah. Even Bulbul joined the men—he would normally skip the prayers offered by Waris and Sabir five times a day. But this evening Bulbul bowed his head before his Maker and thanked Him for bringing this old man, this newfound uncle, back to them.

  Noor sipped his tea with immense delight. His measured slurping resonated in the kitchen and calmed our weary bodies, letting us rest our minds, at peace now with the solace of knowing that we had won a small battle in this great war. When Noor Kaka spoke his voice rasped softly, as if the dust of his underground vault had eroded the lining of his throat.

  You do not remember me, Waris my son, I have been here so long, and so much longer than you. But I remember you, I remember the day you and your wife, this young woman who is like a daughter to me, came to this place, some belongings packed on the back of a mule, and some carried on your own backs. The mute boy, Qasim, was a baby and you carried him as if he was the most precious thing you had. And indeed he is precious, he is life, and he will beget life, sons who will defend our land from the infidel.

  I was already here for many years, before the English doctor and the German one and even this last one, the one who died in that basement. What was his name, son? What did we call him, those of us who could still remember to talk with words, not animal sounds?

  Daud Ali Shah. Yes, I remember, that was his name. Or that is what we knew him as. They say he refused to leave us all behind after that first raid, so he pleaded with the rebels to spare him, to let him take care of us. The others fled, or were killed. The women—of course, you know what happened to the women. We shall not talk about that, my son. We shall not dishonor our daughters by speaking of what happened to them.

  Yes, that Firangi Doctor—he died for us in that basement down there. The rebels said they would keep him for ransom, so they took him downstairs and locked him up. Even you, Waris, even you could not help him. It was too late by the time you managed to break the lock on that basement door. He was already dead, strangled by a rope he had used to hang himself. May God keep his soul, even if it is a sin to take one’s own life.

  But what is not a sin, my son? When is a death not a sin? And when is a death a righteous thing, a just thing? Only when God wills it, my son. And in this case, I do not believe that Allah wanted this man to die, as much as he has not wanted any of these people here to die, these men frail of body and mind, these children who have no one to call their own, and me, foolish old man who lost everything and then found everything when I came here, all those years ago. So many years ago.

  I am now a hundred years old, maybe even older. God knows—my mother could not read or write, nor could anyone else in the family except the mullah who recited the azaan in my ears the day I was born, bringing me into the faith. But I do remember that when I was a very young child there was another war, and then another one, and several more throughout the time I was growing up. My father, God bless his soul, my father was a simple man, like most folk in our village up in the mountains of Kunarbagh. When the Firangi sent its army to conquer our land, my father joined the lashkar of forces that fought this foreign army, sending them back to Hindustan from where they had come.

  But those are other stories. Those stories I will tell you when you have the time to listen. I do not want to burden you with all that I know, all that these sinful eyes have seen. Of course, now I do not see so well, but these eyes can still tell good from evil and I can tell you that the Firangi has always had evil designs on our land, they have always wanted to conquer us. But God made us a proud people, and we did not allow strangers to come and take our land and our women and our honor away from us. I do not know who these foreigners are this time—if they are the sons of the same ones who came a hundred years ago when I was a boy, or if this is a different breed. All I know is that they have come to destroy our land and take away all that is precious to us. All I know is that we must fight them, and we must protect what is ours—our land, our women, our honor.

  Noor Kaka spoke till we had almost fallen asleep. I still don’t know who he is, what he was doing in this asylum, where he had come from. But perhaps that will come later, on some other night when we gather again to hear his story. He has obviously not seen that I too am a Firangi, the son of those who came a hundred years ago to take away all he had. I don’t know if that is because he is too old and frail and his glasses are broken, or because it is so dark in the kitchen that he cannot make out that I am different.

  Actually, I’m not too sure about that anymore. I haven’t shaved since I was locked up here, I haven’t bathed, I haven’t had a change of clothes, and I wear an old curtain around my shoulders, the shawl given to me by Waris now covering Noor Kaka’s bony body. I haven’t seen myself in a mirror in a long time, and it is quite possible that there is not much difference now between me and these people here.

  Bulbul has brought me a small mirror. It is almost as if this young man is clairvoyant, as if he read my mind last night in the smoke-filled kitchen where you can’t see the back of your own hand even if you hold it up next to your nose.

  The mirror is embedded in the round tin box that holds his treasures. He keeps this box in the pocket of his jeans. He had shown me the picture of the actress in the Rexine boots once, and offered the snuff wrapped up in cigarette foil on another occasion. But this time he has some more things to show me, gathered from the debris and from the pockets of the men we buried the day after the bombing.

  These are strange things, bizarre bits of people’s lives gleaned from a harvest of ruin. There is a gold molar, a silver ring with a large rust-colored stone, a broken comb, a silver amulet, a plastic wallet, some dog-eared photographs, and a walnut. Bulbul takes these items and shows them to me as if they are prizes he won in a school spo
rting event, winning the three-legged race in the courtyard of this damned place. He sets each one in the palm of his extended hand and admires it before passing it to me, narrowing his eyes and assessing the merits of the piece. He talks about the items with great zest, extolling their virtues, selling their charms. I am amused by this, but I also see that for Bulbul this is not just a game—he is offering me some of these treasures not as gifts, but in exchange for the things he has asked for, the hiking boots and orange parka and yellow corduroys that he saw in the Sears catalog. I cannot believe that he still remembers that ridiculous request, I cannot believe it after all that has happened, the deaths and the assaults and the bombing. I cannot believe that this man is still convinced that I will get out of here and send him the things he desires so deeply.

  I know I can’t tell him otherwise, and perhaps it is necessary for me, too, to believe that I will get out. That is the only thought which keeps me going, which keeps me from wanting to take the same route that Dr. David Elisha did, or Daud Ali Shah as Noor Kaka chose to describe him. But I think that in order to take my own life I will need much more courage than I have, and whatever courage I do have, I need to survive this.

  As it is, the basement where I could carry out my own hanging is filled with the ill and the insane. I have not been down there since the bombing, but I believe the place reeks like a toilet, that there are rivers of urine everywhere, and that those who were sick have become moreso now, locked up without the sun, waiting for the next attack or death, whichever comes first.

  I have taken the comb from Bulbul’s box of treasures. I asked him whether he would let me borrow the mirror in order to check what I look like after all this time. I have become haggard and pale, there are dark circles around my eyes, and scabs where I have scratched myself, where invisible creatures have bitten me and sucked my blood. My hair is like thatch, dry and standing on top of my head like a sheaf of wheat. I try to use the comb on my hair—its teeth stick to the dirt and become entangled in the knots. Bulbul leaves me for a while with the mirror, while I struggle to come to terms with the stranger staring back at me. When Bulbul returns he holds a mug of water in one hand and a bottle of mustard-seed oil in the other. He tells me I should dip the comb in the water, it will make the task of taming my hair easier. I do so, and once the knots have been unraveled, Bulbul pours a bit of the oil on his palm and rubs his hands together. Then he applies the oil to my hair, massaging my scalp gently. I am concerned at this proximity—I have never really known how to respond to what I consider to be Bulbul’s overtures. But the massage and his tenderness overwhelm me. I let him do what he is doing, close my eyes, and lean against the wall of my cell. I could not have imagined letting a man touch me, let alone run his fingers through my hair. But then I could not have imagined most of the things that have happened here, and sometimes we fear things only because we do not know them, like the touch of a man’s hand against your own skin.

  I must have fallen asleep at some point. When I awoke, I was still leaning against the stone wall of my cell. The sun was traveling rapidly in its journey beyond the mountains. It left patches of light on the walls and then moved on quickly. I felt a fleeting blaze of warmth as the sun settled on me for a brief moment. I felt well, and I knew that I was now closer to leaving this desolate place than I had ever been.

  Bulbul asked me for the mirror when we met in the kitchen this evening. He smiled shyly and said that he wanted to wash and clean and comb his hair so that he could be ready for Anarguli when she came to join us for the meal. Noor Jehan has declared that Anarguli and Hayat cannot be left in the basement with the others—it is not right, it is not healthy for either the girl or the old woman. No one objects to this, although it is not usual for women to eat in the company of men. We have only known Noor Jehan among us, and she is like a mother, so those rules do not apply to her. But Anarguli is still a young girl, beautiful, with no husband or father or son to protect her, so she must be given separate quarters. At least this is what I am told by Sabir, who laughs while telling me, winking with his one good eye and suggesting that even in this madness there are rules to follow, a code of honor to live by.

  Only the kitchen, my cell, which must have been an outhouse, and one other room, possibly a garage at some time (it only has three walls), stand in this forlorn compound. The rest of the buildings have been wrecked. In places only walls stand, as if they are waiting for someone to reclaim them and reassign some sort of purpose to their existence. These walls are as scarred and pitted as Sabir’s face and they seem to have witnessed the same horrors as him. Sabir says the animals will sleep in that garage when it begins to snow. We have to start looking for food again for the animals, and for us, and for the men breathing the foul air of their underground vault.

  Waris says we must find a way to cordon off the area where the unexploded bomb lies stuck in the debris. He does not want any of the men in the basement to wander around and come across it, setting it off, helping it to destroy its target of a handful of madmen, starved and filthy and completely ignorant of the death that awaits them.

  Sabir came to me today for the first time. He was awkward, this man of unwavering courage. He stood outside the cell leaning on his crutch, a mug of tea in his hand. He called out to me and then said, politely, in English: What is your good name? Please tell to me.

  I thought I must be hearing things—I had gotten so used to Bulbul’s brand of communication which was largely an amalgam of several European languages picked up from tourists on Chicken Street. This was the first time I had heard a complete English sentence, coherent, even if a bit quaint. I got up to meet him and shook his hand. He offered me the mug of tea and asked me to sit with him beneath the tree in the middle of the courtyard. I followed him, wondering what this invitation was going to lead to. Another scheme to look for food, another plan to gather supplies from the valley of the dead?

  Sabir waited for a while before speaking and I sipped the hot tea, letting the liquid warm my insides and the enamel mug warm my fingers. It had snowed on the mountains again—I could tell from the chill in the air, it’s the same at home when the Sierra Nevada receives its first snowfall of winter.

  Before Sabir began to speak he dug into his shirt pocket and brought out a fountain pen. It was not expensive, but it had ink in its cartridge and it worked. This I could see when Sabir pulled out a small diary from the same pocket and began to write something in his own language. He spoke the words as he wrote; I have heard them often in this country: Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim, In the Name of God the Merciful. Then he held the diary in his hands and offered it to me.

  Write your name here. Tell to me where you are coming from, who is being in your family, what you may be doing in this country.

  I wasn’t sure why he was asking me to do all this. His tone of voice was not belligerent, but I sensed more than cursory curiosity. What am I doing in this country? I wanted to say. He could see for himself what I’m doing in his goddamned country, but I held my tongue in check and wrote my name on the opened page of his diary. He took it from me, then faced me as he spoke, clearly and with purpose.

  My brother, you may be thinking that none of us here has any use for letters and for pens and paper. I have watched you in the kitchen as you write in your pages, and I have wanted to ask you what it is that you write. I thought that perhaps it was secret, your writing, that it was of no use to anyone except yourself.

  But today I have come to ask you to write something for all of us here. I do not know how much longer we can last in this place, with not much food or clean water. Unless it rains again we will have no fresh water, and unless one of us leaves this compound in search of food, we will have nothing to eat. And of course, my brother, it will snow here soon, and none of us has any warm clothing, except the boy Bulbul who wears that foolish scarf around his neck like a woman.

  In short, my brother, it seems as if the end will come quickly to this place, and it will take all of us. You have see
n the bombing, and you have seen what the rebel soldiers can do. We do not have any weapons; we do not even know how long we can keep these people in that basement before they start dying from disease, or they start killing each other. All we know is that we have not been able to honor the dead of Tarasmun, and there is nothing worse for a man of dignity than to die without honor. We do not want to die like rats trapped in the basement—I will face death like a man, even though I am only half of one.

  But what will happen once there is no one here to bury us? Who will know the names of the dead, who will recite the fatehah at our graves? Who will tell our loved ones that we are no more?

  My brother—I was working for the government, a technician in the chemistry laboratory of the university in the city, before this war. I left the country many years ago to study; I went to the land which is supposed to be responsible for many of the problems we face today. But it was there that I learned that each human being has the ability to learn, to do good, to go forward. I was the only one in my village who went to school—I was the only one who wanted to change the way we have lived for centuries. I wanted my sisters to learn, I wanted them to know that they were worthy of respect, and were not born just to serve us men. But the mullah in the village thought I was going to make the girls turn wayward—he warned me that the little I taught my sisters would expose them to evil, that they would be able to write letters to boys, that they would learn the ways of city women who have no shame, that they would bring dishonor to our families, to the village and the tribe. I insisted that our Prophet, may Peace be Upon Him, commanded that even if we have to go to China to learn, we must go. And that meant all of us, women too. But the mullah would not understand this simple truth. He made up a story of how I had insulted the Prophet, how I had burned and destroyed our Holy Qura’an. And he made sure that I would never teach my sisters anything that would change their lives.