No Space for Further Burials

by Feryal Ali Gauhar

  The worst was when Haji reached for my legs and began to prostrate himself, touching his forehead against my knees and murmuring something I could not understand. The only word which was familiar was his daughter’s name. He spoke her name in a voice that was choked, and I feared he would break down at any point and do something unexpected and dangerous.

  I called Bulbul over, feeling quite powerless to get up and move away from him. Bulbul took awhile to come and he, too, seemed not to notice Haji Meer at my feet. I asked him to tell me what Haji was saying. Bulbul avoided looking at him but still went ahead and asked him what he wanted from me.

  Tell Bacha Saheb that I would like him to bring my daughter back from her grave. Tell His Holiness that I will pay anything for him to bring my daughter back, like he brought that small rat back to life. Tell him I want him to bring Zarsanga and to breathe life into her like he did for that small mouse that now smiles and drinks her mother’s milk and makes my life miserable because she is not mine.

  Bulbul tried to explain all this to me, but somehow could not find the words to help me with the title Haji had given me: Bacha Saheb. I heard Haji repeating this as many times as he spoke his daughter’s name, but Bulbul did not seem to think it necessary to explain their significance to me. I will ask Sabir what this means, although I should really forget about it since Haji is not quite in his senses anymore, hasn’t been since making that terrible decision to let his daughter die.

  I see the graves again. There are rows upon rows upon rows. Each one is about a foot long and six inches wide. Each one has a small, sharp stone as a marker at the head. I walk through the passages between the graves until my feet begin to hurt. I sit myself down between two graves to catch my breath and rub my feet.

  Suddenly the ground beneath me opens up and I slide slowly into the earth. I see the graves from inside now. They are full of small, ratlike animals, rodents of all kinds. None of these creatures are dead. They are just waiting to dig themselves out and breathe again.

  I know this in the strange way that dreams have of letting one know things without really showing them.

  The camel meat is lasting us quite a long time. I think it’s because Noor Jehan boils the bones to make us soup. Some of us get the meat; others just content themselves with the broth.

  I think I will be here long after the meat and the bones and the soup have disappeared.

  * * *

  Sabir comes to me today and tells me that he is worried that once the snow starts to melt, the attacks will begin again. He says the mountain passes will clear themselves of the ice which makes them impenetrable, within two weeks. Already he can see the great masses of ice shrink on the peaks all around us. And I know from my own work of shoveling the snow into pails that there is less and less of it.

  I also know that once the snow melts we will be able to see the graves again. And we won’t even know who was buried where since there were no markers to begin with, and in any case, all graves look alike when they have been dug for those who have no one to mourn them.

  Last night there was a dull thud outside. I woke up and stared at the darkness for a long time. I know I had been dreaming, and I was glad to have lost the dream for it was as distressing as the rest.

  I am always waiting to wake and find myself in some other place, and sometimes I am afraid that I shall never wake up and that the place of my dreams is the place where I will live, always.

  Bulbul says the snow has started to melt and that a large chunk fell off the kitchen roof last night. I don’t know whether this is good news or whether we should begin to fear the war again.

  Much as I have tried to be at peace with my surroundings, I know that the madness of war is infinitely better than the madness of time standing still. At least in war there is a beginning and an end. Here there is nothing, and I don’t know how to live with this emptiness anymore.

  Sabir says he has heard the sound of gunfire in the distance. He says he saw smoke spiraling into the sky the other day. And he saw planes flying overhead, tiny, like kites in the sky.

  They have come again, and this time they carry food packages and soda cans in large blue parachute bags. I am hungry and do not wait for them to give us the message they have brought for us. I tear into the food package—there is peanut butter and pork rinds and soya sauce. I find some chewing gum and a stick of licorice. And I find the message written on the back of a baseball card: The partnership of nations is here to help.

  I reach for the soda and before I can open the can, it explodes in my hand. I see my friend Gary trying to say something to me but I cannot make out the words. My hands are just stumps now. Gary laughs and picks up another can and throws it at me, chiding me to make that winning layup in our game of one-on-one. He is still laughing as I show him my stumps. The can lies at my feet, rolling on its round belly. I lean down to look at it. There are words written on it: This is gonna shine like a diamond in a goat’s ass.

  I look at Gary and I see his face change as something shoots out of the air and strikes his head, severing him at the neck. Gary is still laughing as his head falls at my feet and I lean down toward it so that I can hear the words he is saying. He tells me that from now on it’s just a game, and that I am the only one playing it.

  I cannot deal with this anymore. Every day one of these crazy people comes to me and asks me to heal a cut or a bruise or an infection. Karim Kuchak follows me around and hangs onto every word I speak. Hayat offers me her small leather pouch in which she carries dried herbs and bits and pieces of wire, hair, grass, and even what looks like animal gut. And Anarguli insists that I have to hold the baby every day in order to give it strength to survive. She has wrapped it in Bulbul’s red scarf and the skin of a slaughtered lamb. Noor Jehan has brought the baby to me several times to ask me to bless it with my breath and a prayer.

  I really don’t understand what’s going on. Bulbul tells me that they all believe I have special powers that can heal them. I am referred to as Bacha Saheb, a holy man. I ask Bulbul whether he believes all this drivel and he just nods slowly, staring at my mouth.

  I don’t know how long I will have to play this game now. My endurance wears thin like the ice outside, and I know I simply have to find a way to get out.

  Noor Kaka has come to pay homage to me today. The old man can barely see or stand, but he can certainly see my saintliness and my special powers. He asks me to look at his eyes and tell him whether I can help his failing vision. All I see is a lot of mucus being secreted out of his tear ducts. I want to tell him that at his age, and in the middle of this war, he should just be grateful he can get around in this miserable place without stumbling over these crazies. As if reading my mind, he says he is worried he will fall and hurt his bones and then become a burden to his sons and daughter again. I want to tell him that it’s time he gave it up for good, went off to his Maker who would surely let him into Heaven in exchange for the treasure he found in some godforsaken desert a hundred years ago.

  * * *

  Gul Agha, too, has a problem he wants to discuss. He brings me a crumpled photograph of a young boy sitting in front of a dark curtain, possibly a photo studio like the ones I saw in the city before I lost my way and my ability to reason. Gul Agha asks me to tell him if this child is still alive. And if he is, does he remember his father? Can he walk now? Has his lame leg been fixed? Maybe the good doctors at the camp made him a prosthetic limb, maybe he has a wooden leg now, maybe he will walk all this way on that wooden leg and find his father who abandoned him the day he lost his way, and lost his mind.

  I am at the wall again. I have begun to assemble the rats I have freed from their graves, and like the Pied Piper, I am leading them to that part of the wall we filled in with bricks. They begin digging. I watch as they claw their way into the earth and down into its innards. There are hundreds of rats and they obey my command for I am a saint, a man with special powers.

  They have dug a hole wide enough for me. I get down on my knees
and crawl through to the other end. It takes awhile to get through this dark tunnel, and when I get to the other end I am facing a deep pit filled with shit.

  I gag and then retch. Something falls out of my mouth with the yellow mucus. It is Noor Kaka’s eyes.

  The child doesn’t stop crying. It screams itself to sleep every night. And during the day it whimpers and wails as if in constant pain. Bulbul says it is hungry. Noor Jehan thinks it is in pain. Hayat says it is cursed. All I want is for it to shut up and let me sleep.

  * * *

  Karim Kuchak asked me today if I could help him to grow and be tall like normal men. I want to laugh in his face and tell him that if I could make him grow I could also land myself a spaceship and get the hell out of here.

  These people are crazier than I thought.

  Waris and Sabir have asked me to help them collect as much snow as possible before it melts and is sucked into the earth. Outside I can see the smoke that Sabir spoke about. It rises from beyond the black mountains and colors the sky gray.

  After we had filled up the drums with snow which is no longer white and clean, Waris came to me and asked if I could cure him of a man’s worst disease. He does not say more than this, but from how he turns away, averting his gaze from mine, I can guess it has something to do with his crotch.

  Oh boy, now I am a healer, not just a gatherer of snow and a melter of ice.

  I am so tired this evening that I can hardly write, and even if I wasn’t tired the crying baby doesn’t let me sleep. Sometimes I wish I could just pick it up and throw it out into the courtyard.

  Maybe I should never have brought it back to life.

  Waris does not look at me today when we begin our task of shoveling the snow into the storage drums. I want to tell him that I could try and cure him of his disease (syphilis, impotence?) only if he got me out of here. But he avoids me and I don’t know how to bring up the subject of his diseased dick.

  That’s a hoot. Diseased Dick. Pickled Prick.

  I can see the smoke coming from another direction now, from a place closer to us. And today I heard the bombers flying overhead. It’s only a matter of time now before they come and get me.

  I find Bulbul is really quite a funny guy. He makes me laugh, the way he hangs around that woman and her child, pretending he can give them a life when he doesn’t even have one of his own.

  Something stinks here. Today I found several maggots in the camel soup. Maybe Noor Jehan thinks the food tastes better with some extra protein.

  The camel calls to me from the other side of the pit with the dead rats floating in a river of urine. He wants me to heal the wound which has the shape of a necklace around his long neck. I want to get closer to him but the river is deep and wide and I am afraid I will fall in and drown.

  Sabir says he knows the planes are coming back, carrying their lethal load of bombs. I know they carry only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He says we may all have to go back into the basement in order to be safe.

  I tell him that Waris needs to have his dick fixed. I point toward my crotch and act like I’m going to pull down my pants so that he can have a peek. He stares at me and then laughs. Then he stops suddenly and walks away.

  Maybe tomorrow he will come to me and ask if I can grow his leg back.

  The fucking child does not shut the fuck up why doesn’t her stupid mother feed her or fling her into the fire so that we can sleep for God’s sake.

  Noor Kaka has come again with the problem of his eyes. I tell him that he should go and get himself a new pair, and the stupid man takes off his glasses and gives them to me, telling me to fix these if I can’t fix his eyes.

  Where the hell is your shitty treasure, old man?

  oh god oh god oh god oh god they are making us move back into the basement overflowing with shit and dead rats.

  I want to die, mother I want to die in a clean place and never leave home again.

  I can hear the bombing. I know they have come for me, but they will first have to destroy the others since there will be place for only one on board.

  I must let them know I am in the basement. They should not waste precious time looking for me, because the snow is melting and there will be a river beyond the wall which we cannot cross.

  Karim Kuchak has offered to help me. He has been a good friend ever since the damned baby nearly choked to death. He follows me around like a dog and wags his tail every time I throw him a bone from my soup. He’s going to help me find my radio transmitter which I know is floating at the bottom of that river outside the wall.

  I like Karim Kuchak, even if he has a big head and a small body. Nobody said he was Karim Abdul-Jabbar, anyway.

  I want to tell Bulbul about our plans, but I don’t trust him anymore, especially after he tried to grab my crotch and fondle me the night he told me about the time he was raped outside the burger joint in that city where his uncle took him.

  Brother, I was young, you know, I didn’t know what the man wanted, and I got into his car because he said he would drive me to my home in the camp outside the city. I was attending to the people who came in cars to eat at the many food places in this new market built along the road to the border. I would run to fetch them a burger or a Pepsi and they would give me a tip, which I took home to my uncle. Most times, I would spend that money just trying to get home—it was a long way, and I had to take several buses and a taxi, which I would share with three other boys who worked at odd jobs like me.

  But that day I thought I could save the money, and I accepted the offer of this man who had come to eat but who didn’t ask me to get anything for him from the snack bar. He said he wasn’t hungry for food, that he was going my way, and that he would take me home.

  He did terrible things to me, brother, things that come to me in my dreams and then I don’t ever want to wake up. After that night, I thought I was no longer a boy, I was useless, like a woman. I didn’t tell my uncle, but he smelled the man’s fluid on my shalwar and beat me till I fainted and fell on the floor.

  I didn’t want to wake up, brother. I wanted to stay on that floor forever, so that my shame would die along with me.

  I am sick of his stories and his whining and the way he touches me. I know he is a coward and, in any case, he will never leave that love of his life and her brat baby.

  Karim and I are getting out of here as soon as I can call my people to tell them where I am. Karim says he is small enough to fit into the cockpit of the smallest plane. And if there isn’t any space, there’s always a place in one’s heart.

  Whatever, Shorty.

  Jesus Christ, now it’s that crazy foreign woman who wants me to fix her ridiculous braid of hair onto Anarguli’s head. She says she is old now, and before she dies she wants to find a place for her hair, and since Anarguli hardly has any her head should be just fine.

  Jesus Jesus Jesus.

  Shorty and I have a plan. We need to send him over the wall so that he can fish out my radio transmitter from the river. We can’t tell Waris this because he is worried about his sick dick, and he will never let me go until I cure him. I want to tell him to put it up the dog’s butt. That should fix it.

  The sun is strong today and there is hardly any snow left on the ground. I can see new leaves on the tree in the middle of the courtyard. There isn’t much time now. As soon as the snow melts, the bomb they left in the rubble will be set off and destroy this place. All it needs is the sun’s rays to warm it up.

  I need to get out of here before that. We have to find a rope to tie around Shorty who will climb that damned wall.

  * * *

  The children came to me again today. They were holding yellow soda cans in their hands. They said there were many more across the wall and beyond the river, near the village where a cooking fire burns all day long.

  I refuse to tell Bulbul about our plans. He is not my friend anymore. He spends most of his time with that woman and her child. Good enough. There wouldn’t be enough room for him in th
e plane anyway.

  I sent Shorty on a recce mission to look for rope. I can smell the fire from across the wall as if it’s burning in my heart.

  In the kitchen Noor Jehan cooks that vile meat with the maggots in it. The whole place stinks of rotting flesh but no one seems to notice, and they eat that disgusting stew as if it were the best thing on earth.

  Noor Kaka comes to me again and asks me if I fixed his glasses. I certainly did—I took out the broken lens and gave him the wire frame and told him he would see better now. Also that he should let me know when he finds that treasure he was telling us about.

  He looked at me as if I was crazy and put the glasses back into his pocket. Let him be blind if he wants to. I fixed his glasses and now he doesn’t even want them.

  Shorty has found a piece of rope. It has blood crusted on it. Shorty says he found it in a corner of the compound, one end tied around a picket in the ground. I can smell the blood and I can smell the stink of the camel which these people killed and now eat as if camel meat was going out of fashion.

  * * *

  The children tell me that the rope is not long enough to tie around Shorty to send him over the wall. They tell me that I must ask Bulbul for his scarf so that we can tie it to the rope and then send Shorty over the wall.

  I don’t want to tell Bulbul about our plans. He will want to bring along that woman and her child, and there will certainly not be enough room for them on the plane. But I need his scarf, so maybe I can make a deal with him, letting him get on the plane only if he leaves the wretched woman and her cranky baby behind.

  Bulbul says he will never leave the woman and her baby. He says he did that once, leaving his mother and sister, and he will never do it again. I tell him to suit himself, it’s his loss. Karim Kuchak and I are out of here on the first plane to land smack bang in the middle of the damn courtyard.