Thirst: A Novel of the Iran-Iraq War (15 page)

‘What a dreadful crime … how ghastly!’

‘I was very small when I heard about this. I didn’t cry.
But I wanted to go with someone to the pigeon-fanciers’ hangout. I wanted to look into the eyes and faces of each and every one of them and find out which wicked bastard had had the heart to do such a horrible thing. But my family wouldn’t let me. They told me they were all cutthroats to a man. That same evening, late at night, word spread that the rivals had brawled and knifed each other, cut each other open. There was a policeman in our neighbourhood; his name was Nabi Sebil. He brought the news from the police station. “See?” said my family on hearing this, “We don’t belong to that world.” I see I’ve drifted away from the matter in hand, Lieutenant sir, but … they called them pigeon-fanciers. As in, they loved pigeons. Then how is it possible that someone who is in love with pigeons can bring himself to decapitate about eighty or ninety pairs of them in a couple of minutes?’

‘Madness! Excessive love is a hair’s breadth away from madness. There have been lovers who have killed their loved ones out of sheer love! Greed, greed and avarice are vile motives that can sometimes lead – indeed, often have led – to bigger crimes as well. Did you fill the flasks, all of them? Okay. I’ll take that spade, too. Give the giant some more water, and call him Saad! He won’t tell us his real name. We don’t need to know it, anyway. He’ll tell us everything when the time comes. I’ll take the flasks, these weapons, this spade and anything else that might be useful. You carry one of the two remaining bodies and Waqqas will carry the other one. There’s nothing else left here. Right, let’s get moving!’

‘Yes, sir! But just to satisfy my curiosity, please, I know
it’s very forward of me to ask, but that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that phrase, that word.’

‘Which phrase?’

‘Besmel!’

‘Okay, up the hill we go. Saad first and you after him, but keep your distance and don’t walk immediately behind him. We don’t know if he’s mad enough to suddenly turn on you, hurl himself and what he’s carrying on you and set you all rolling down the hill. I’ll walk backwards in front of him and point his own gun at him, so he knows I can send him to hell with no chance of missing. Still, you shouldn’t walk directly behind him. Walk parallel to him! How long did it take you to get up the hill the previous time?’

‘Less than fifty minutes when I was carrying a body. This time it might take about an hour. The first time, when I went up with no load, it only took me seventeen minutes to go up and come back down again. But from Saad’s expression, I don’t think he’s capable of turning and moving nimbly. His hands are tied too. It’ll be a miracle if he doesn’t tumble down while he’s climbing anyway. I’m ready … but …’

‘I understand. Alright! Once we’re up there, out of this valley of doom, there in the trench I will tell you all about
besmel
. We’ll probably have to stay in the trench for the entire day and at nightfall find a way to break out, walk under cover of darkness and get ourselves to a friendly base. I’m not concerned on that score. Many’s the night I’ve stared at the stars, and I know how to navigate by them, like the caravan leaders of old. We’ll have all day in the trench for me to tell you the story of
besmel
, the story of becoming
a dove, and the story of that lioness who has breasts filled with milk, who scours the desert for the lost ones who are dying of thirst and hunger. Immediately, without any delay or expectations, she feeds them her milk and shows them the way. Have you heard about that lioness? No! But … if we don’t manage to get out of this valley of hell, or if dark clouds come and cover the sky and the stars are no longer visible, and if clouds of fire rain down upon us, then we’ll see with our own eyes the meaning of the word you are seeking to understand. Right then, lift the body up onto his shoulders and fasten his legs to his neck with the cartridge belt. That way this Saad will know he’ll be in even more trouble if he tries to shed his load and do a runner. Anything else to report?’

‘Same as before, two or three petrol tankers parked beyond that bend in the road and no doubt there are other booby-traps concealed or buried all over the place! We didn’t have time to investigate thoroughly. This pass is known as the Pass of Hell and it’s been in enemy hands for months. Perhaps they’ve planted gunpowder in every grain of dirt. How can we tell?’

‘Let’s go, then … You know, I really wish you hadn’t told me that story about those pigeon-fanciers … it was horrible. Ready, soldier?’

‘Yes, sir!’

‘THIS IS BAD!
Very bad indeed, Major. You’ve entered my head, got inside my mind and created the most dreadful confusion. I was on the verge of finishing my work. The scene was there, right in front of my eyes. Everything was crystal clear. I could picture my characters, and understand their every motive. In my mind, I’d rehearsed everything that needed to happen. A small symbolic truce, avoiding the humiliation of either side, starting with a white shirt tied to a stick. It was simple, very simple. The two prisoners would leave the trenches holding white flags. They would descend the hill from either side, followed by the soldiers and their commanders, unarmed, and they’d all walk towards the water tank. They were all thirsty, they would drink water, greet each other and converse. They would wash the dust off their foreheads and sit for a little while in each other’s company. They would see each other with their own eyes, not through the distorting lens of war, and they would realize that they felt no particular hostility towards each other. In that frame of mind, they would all be their real selves. They wouldn’t be soldiers anymore. You’ve disrupted a small truce, Major, a symbolic peace. Isn’t it the case that every war ends in peace? I was going to make this happen sooner. But you, Major, have entered my mind, penetrated my consciousness and thrown my thought process into disarray. You’ve thwarted my creativity! Why
won’t you let a person at least live in his own mind according to his own will!’

‘You shouldn’t have returned to your homeland, Abu Alaa, I do wish you hadn’t. They wouldn’t accept the suggestion I made with regard to you. I pleaded for leniency, in view of the friendship that has grown up between us during the time we’ve spent together. But they didn’t approve of the idea. I tried to impress upon them that you needed rest. Rest in an asylum. If they’d seen things my way, you could have escaped with your life. You could have stayed there for some time and you’d have had plenty of time to reflect on your profession and your life. At the same time, it would have been an excuse for you not to write this report, which we now have to deal with. Or conversely, you could have made up your mind to write it after all, and then you would have been reprieved, and that would have been the end of it! But now … it’s a different story. I have a message for you from the palace of the caliph Abu Ja’far: a short and clear message. Plus a gift – a pen, and a sidearm as well! A dossier, a copy of the dossiers of those three prisoners is still waiting on your writing desk. The message is very short, clear and concise. Either you write the report about those three prisoners or you will become a dove, by your own hand! I don’t have permission to stay here any longer, Katib, and I’m not allowed to chat or discuss this with you either. The message is clear and all my attempts to convince them that you’re suffering a nervous breakdown and need to be admitted to a mental hospital for a spell have fallen on deaf ears. I wish you good health, good mental and physical health. God keep you, Abu Alaa!’

‘God keep you too, sir. God keep you!… But I can’t even hold a pen with these weary fingers and withered wrist, Major, let alone a gun!’

‘So just keep hold of it for self-defence!’

‘I can’t do it. I’ve never done military service. And even if I could hold a weapon, I wouldn’t anyhow. How could I shoot another person? Even in self-defence! I just can’t conceive of such an act!’

‘Well, that’s all we can do for you! You might find it comes in useful. Once again, may God keep you!’

EVERYTHING IS CLEAR
until clouds suddenly blot out the sky. Surely not in this season? Dark, roaring clouds, growling. Under a duvet of dark grey and black clouds, Jamoo turns on his side and spontaneously presses the palms of his hands to his ears, as if he is unaware that he has rolled over and is not lying on his front anymore, but on his back, looking at the sky from the base of his machine gun. Not looking … rather staring at the low ceiling of the sky. No, not staring, but drowning in the rumbling duvet of the sky. A sky that growls and roars in whichever direction you turn. Sometimes the roaring is fleeting and sporadic, while at other times it seems to reverberate all around; worse still, it has no specific origin. From all the points of the compass, these sounds, the roaring and the explosions, course and flow. The last time he had the lieutenant, the soldier and the captured man in sight, they were ascending the slope of the hill with tired and heavy footsteps. But then the sky had suddenly exploded and instantly turned black. Now he realized it was clouds of smoke that had sullied what had been a clear sky. From the lowest possible altitude at which aircraft could fly, a huge plume of smoke had billowed up, which grew so dense so quickly that it seemed as though it might darken and befoul the whole world. They were military aircraft, no question. Aircraft that were capable of bringing down a black rain,
and that’s exactly what they were doing. They rained down an infernal shower upon the entire valley of hell, setting off explosions. One after the other, a series of explosions, intermittent, near and far! What was it that was buried in the heart and shoulders of that valley of hell from whose depths smoke and black flames now belched, rising up to touch the remainder of the tattered duvet spread across the low dome of the sky? Up they billowed, obscuring the rocks on the flanks of the slopes, blackening everything as they went; and as they licked up, it seemed as though the tongues of fire were turning the hillsides into a furnace, whose intense heat could be felt as it reflected down upon the heart of the earth and on the stones and the trench, that same hand-dug ditch in which Jamoo had by chance ended up. And now that he had recovered his power of speech, he was screaming. With each scream, his mouth filled with acrid smoke, but he kept on screaming anyway, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. He didn’t have a clue what had happened all of a sudden, and what was happening now. Round and round and round his head and his eyes swivelled … as if the world were spinning around the head of this young man who had fallen into the depths of that ditch and who knew nothing, who could only scream; and the only way he could stifle his screaming was by grinding his face into the dirt and yelling into the earth … until all his breath was exhausted and all he could do was wait for time to pass, for the earth to spin round, and for this unknown something, which was unlike anything he had ever known, to come to an end. Maybe it will resound in the ears and heart of the earth,
that blood and ash-drenched scream of a teenager who from the bottom of his being yelled his anguish into the ground: Oh Gooodddd …

Yes … somewhere, at some spot here on planet Earth, a shell is propelled out of the muzzle of a heavy weapon. A leaden shell, heavy and destructive. We don’t know the exact circumstances, and perhaps the person who orders a firing button to be pressed doesn’t know either. Maybe a switch is flicked up or down instead. How can we know? All we are interested in is what happened afterwards and who was responsible for causing these clouds of smoke and fire to rise up above a pass, a ravine, a chasm – in any event, a target that did not appear to be an ammunition dump. What was this disaster that was unfolding before the eyes of a young man who had forgotten his own name, and his birthplace as well – who had just a random name, a meaningless word on his tongue, but who otherwise was completely mute, or rather dumb? Dumb and afflicted with instant loss of memory. Now his body felt racked with fatigue and aches, and his eyelids were heavy, weighed down by a thick layer of something whose colour he did not recognize, but which he imagined must be that of tar or – less dark – of smoke. He had been hurled into the depths of the trench, and each explosion had reverberated against an earthen wall whose surface was studded with stones and pebbles. He understands nothing now except that the world has been engulfed in such a ghastly silence that when he reflects upon it for a while, it appears to him more dreadful than the hell that went before. How much
time had elapsed since it happened? Thousands of years or just a fleeting moment?

He lifted his head with difficulty, and with his handkerchief, now as black as tar, tried to wipe the thick layer of dirt off his eyelids; eventually he succeeded to the extent that he was able to open his eyes and look at the sky. Yes … it was completely blue – but strange! For no noise was coming from it. Beforehand he could hear the noise of the air, before this, some sounds could be picked up, the sound of the breeze or even the sound of silence, but now there was no sound at all. He tried to stand up. Bracing himself against the wall with his hands, he straightened his body. Once upright, he gazed around. There was silence and nothing else. He put his foot on the step of the trench, and the sun came into view, the wide dome of the sky and the earth. He climbed out. Not a single soul was visible, nothing! He walked towards the top of the hill. They were missing, the bodies were missing. He looked into the chasm. It was black like the belly of a furnace, silent and dark, and there was no sign of anyone or anything. The machine gun whose tripod he himself had secured in the ground was gone too. Everything had vanished! He looked at the sun. It had passed its peak and was declining towards sunset. He remembered that the fangs of the sun had sprouted when the lieutenant and the other two had climbed up and laid the bodies on a piece of ground and swiftly gone back down again. Yes, earlier on he had been able to make out someone’s arms and shoulders, naked and bruised, and recalled that he had chucked two flasks full of water behind the machine gun, shouting: ‘Catch!’ Yes … he had heard a voice. He had heard the sound of a
command from his own superior. He remembered that he had picked up the flasks, drunk half the water from one of them, and given the remainder to that handcuffed young man … a prisoner? But … where was he now? Before this all happened, he recalled that the prisoner had been lying on his front behind a pile of earth next to the trench. He walked over to where he had been lying, but there was no sign of him! The flask was gone too. What had happened? He climbed back down into the trench; the radio telephone was buried. Why was he bothering to dig it out? It wasn’t working anyhow. Or maybe it was working and he couldn’t hear anything! He tried to operate it. He couldn’t hear the sound of his fingers working. He picked up the receiver and pressed it to his ear. Not a sound! When he replaced the receiver he saw it was soaked with blood … what had happened? What had happened to the head that remained attached to his body? … Fear gripped him. He put his hand on the trench step and stood stock still. Petrified. A dove? Yes … there stood a dove on the lip of the trench, perched on a clod of earth, looking at him and shifting around on its feet in a semi-circular motion. A second appeared, and then a third and a fourth, then a fifth – and in the same order they flapped their wings and soared upwards. And what about those drops of blood? How to explain them? In that darkness the doves were hard to see, but gradually more doves joined them, and forming a circle they flew, up and up against the background of a blue sky that stretched far, far away to the sea, that ancient gulf; the same place where the sea and the sky became one. All one single, smooth surface, the colour of Neishabur turquoise.