Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
We have begun to dig more graves in the shadow of the walls of this compound. The
earth is dry and hard; there are many stones and jagged objects buried beneath the sur-
face, and sometimes I can recognize the remains of a young child or a woman, a swatch
of torn fabric, sometimes deep red like a pomegranate, sometimes blue like the sky
above. Many times I have felt my hands stroke the severed limb of someone I may have
known, the skin cold and layered with the fine dust of this desolate land. It is as if these
limbs and the fragments of clothing were the people themselves, the people for whom
these graves were dug, hurriedly, before more bodies began to pile up against the wall,
waiting for a space for burial.
He comes to me every morning and we begin the day with an effort at conversation.
Over the last few days the enamel cup he has kept aside for my tea is left cold and emp-
ty, an indication, I suppose, of depleting rations. Or perhaps he is not happy, not happy
with me, with my inability to understand him, my lack of imagination, my failure to
decipher his drawings on the earthen floor of my cell. He is unhappy at the seeming ab-
sence of any effort on my part to crack the code of his language.
He has many tongues, this boy. And fluid hands with which he etches the stories he
tells, embellishing his accounts of war with objects found in the courtyard—shards of
broken vessels, smashed bottle caps, empty vials, shattered syringes. Once, earlier on, he
brought a large catalog to me, pa**ing it through the bars of this cell as if it was a sa-
cred text. I noticed then how nimble his fingers were, long and sinewy, almost with a life
of their own. His hands and his eyes danced as he spoke, forcefully, the words tripping
over his strong teeth. When he handed me the catalog I was still looking at his mouth
as he said words I barely understood. His mouth worked fast, spit forming foam at the
edges. I knew that he had probably not had more than the gruel of potato peels which
the caretaker's wife pa**ed around in a large bucket, her young son pulling it along on a
rickety wooden cart with one wheel missing. Yet he was so alert that morning, eyes dart-
ing from mine to the book and then to the four corners of the crater-filled courtyard. He
urged me in an almost comic medley of sounds and words—I recognized the broad Rus-
sian, some German, some French, and even English—he urged me to look at the book,
especially at those pages he had marked with feathers and string and even a clutch of
matted hair. He whispered urgently to me, like a man crazed, to consider seriously his
request to get him the things he craved, the things he knew I could get for him, if only
we could find a way to contact the mail-order section of Sears, Roebuck & Company
from this deserted bit of hell. As soon as I began flipping through the worn pages of a
1960s collection of American clothing and kitchen gadgets and camping equipment, he
turned my attention to a pair of suede hiking boots, fur-lined, an orange parka, down-
filled, a pair of goggles, and a pair of yellow corduroys.
I love America, he said, and he smiled, then laughed, his mouth opening wide. Bul-
bul, he called himself, after the redbreast robin sang to his mother the day his father
died. That was many years ago, when the war had just begun.
On most days the waiting is endless, and I find myself actually longing for chaos to hit
the compound so that there is something to watch, something to make the hours fly. I
have lost track of time, and other than a vague idea of how many months I have spent
locked up in this cell, I sometimes think the day is about to begin when it is dusk, and
then I am afraid, for none of the people here know the difference, most of them having
lost even the memory of their own names. Of course Waris, the caretaker, knows every-
thing, and his wife the cook—they are not from among the inmates here. But everyone
else is crazed, even Bulbul, who looks like he is on the edge of sanity, the way he leers at
me sometimes, his eyes gleaming and his lips wet with saliva. What is he thinking?
What are they all thinking in this valley of the dead? What am I to think when the sun
disappears behind those godforsaken mountains and night falls over the compound like
a shroud? What am I to believe in when there is no one to whom I can tell my story,
when there is no one who will believe it?
one
September 18, 2002
They are going to attack the compound again. I can tell by now when a raid is about
to begin because of the silence which precedes it. These people here, the inmates
of this asylum, may not be as crazy as they look, for they seem to sense the coming
of d**h and destruction as acutely as animals before disaster strikes. I have
watched them from my cell, the ones directly across from me in the courtyard, the
ones who have found their way out of their cells since the locks were broken at the
time of the first raid. I was not here then, but Bulbul told me in his combination of
many languages that the looters came through a hole in the wall after the first
bombing, which k**ed many of the men who had been let out by the staff to stroll
in the compound or to get some sun. Bulbul winked at me when he described the
rape of several of the younger boys, and of the old nameless crone who weaves
anything she can find into her hair. Bulbul winked and grinned and wet his mouth
and then held up his forefinger and thumb in a circle, pa**ing the middle finger of
his other hand rapidly through that circle, grinning the whole time, almost
laughing. He stopped suddenly, when some memory slipped across his eyelids.
Anarguli too, he said. And then he was silent, as if something had broken in him
the day the marauders raped the girl he loved so deeply.
I saw him from the bars of this cell the day I was taken, having made the mistake of
going on a reconnaissance mission alone, desperate to seek something which con-
stantly slipped through the haze of my consciousness. Since my arrival in this
country, I had felt restless at the camp where we waited out the days in boredom
and the nights in fear. Most of us had no idea what to expect, rarely having stepped
out of our homes in small towns across America. For many this was the first real
adventure of their lives, hunting down the enemy, k**ing for sport. This was not
boot camp, this was the real thing, the actual arena where all that we had trained
for would unfold before us like the video games we played at the local arcade.
At the base we were told that a dissenting warlord had begun attacking the vil-
lages outside the city, many of them perched like sentinels on the edges of the sur-
rounding mountains. I had not intended to go alone but found myself unable to
endure the long days at the camp, waiting for something to happen, waiting for
orders to pursue what we were here for, liberty and democracy, both of which
seemed as elusive as the enemy.
Perhaps going on the mission was not really the crucial mistake. Perhaps it was
the fact that I clambered out of the jeep to peer inside the large, gaping hole blast-
ed into the boundary wall of a dilapidated building clinging precariously to the peak
of the hill nearest the city. I strayed, following the rutted trail of other jeeps which
had traveled this path on unknown missions. At a certain point outside the dam-
aged wall, the ruts in the trail sank deeper into the ground and the wheels of the
jeep began to slip on sandy soil. I left the jeep to see how badly wedged the tires
were, and that was when I made the mistake of peeking into the courtyard of this
place where I will probably spend the rest of my days, looking out at the madness
around me, locked into a cell with an earthen floor and one small window with bars
protecting me from the outside.
The rebel soldiers saw me as soon as I bent down outside the wall to pick up
the radio transmitter which had fallen off my lap when the jeep came to a sudden
halt, hitting a large rock and then sliding into a ditch. It must have been the sound
of the tires slipping and the engine revving which alerted them—it seemed as if
they had just looted the compound and were beginning to return to their mountain
hideouts when they saw me. They dragged me to the man who appeared to be in
charge, yelling orders and shouting abuse.
Even in the frenzy of the a**ault, I remember him carefully wrapping the
charred remains of what was probably a chicken that had been hastily barbecued
over an open fire. He looked at me cursorily, picked his teeth with a chicken bone,
burped, and wrapped up the meat in a piece of paper he had picked up from the
ground. There were many such scraps flying around the courtyard, leaves too, and
feathers from the recently slaughtered chicken.
The man had come right up to me and grabbed my face with his hands, squeez-
ing my jaws in a powerful grip. He looked me straight in the eyes and then slowly
lowered his hand to my chest, stroking my uniform as if it was silk, lingering over
my name tag. He probably couldn't read, but he peered at it for a while and then
turned his head aside and spat on the ground. He grabbed one of my arms and
pushed me toward another man who stood by, his Kalashnikov held in one hand
as if it were a reed or a stalk, weightless. The commander pointed at the rooms
along three sides of the courtyard and his soldiers pushed me toward one of these
rooms, this cell, this terrible space which is like a grave, a tomb for the living. In-
side the cell they shoved me to the ground and removed my shoes and socks, then
my uniform. They hit me when I resisted. I heard the commander yelling to Waris
that I was to be kept in the cell until they returned, that I was not to be let out under
any circumstances. That much I understood from the gestures he made. It would
take a little longer for me to understand the words he barked in his guttural voice.
I saw the boy who calls himself Bulbul that evening, just a glimpse of him. It
must have been the outrageously red scarf he wraps around his filthy shirt collar
that caught my eye. I stood at the bars of the small window, staring out at the
courtyard, trying to make sense of what had happened, wondering whether this was
real, whether I was imagining this insane scenario.
It started to quiet down, one or two seemingly able-bodied men had herded the
sick ones into their cells, and a woman began to collect the odd bits of paper still
floating around in the evening breeze. I watched her talking to a child, a thin young
boy about eight, scrawny and ill-clothed, his mouth dark where saliva had dried in
a circle around his lips. The child never answered, but kept playing with a wooden
cart that had only three wheels. The woman did not look at him while she gathered
the bits of paper and tucked them into her shawl. She just continued talking to him
as if he was part of the conversation, as if his silence spoke words she could
understand.
That's when I saw the edge of the red scarf float out of a clay oven fixed in a
corner of the courtyard. In my confusion I thought it was a flame, for that is what
one would expect to see leaping out of a tandoor meant for baking large, unleav-
ened naan. Upon glimpsing the long, sinewy fingers which intrigue me so much
now, I looked again, pressing my face against the cold bars of this cell, wondering
if I had begun to hallucinate. First his head appeared, his eyes narrow slits a**ess-
ing the situation, testing the air. Finally, after the woman and the child had made
their way inside the compound, the rest of him emerged from inside the oven. He
wore a pair of faded denim jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a
sports shoe company. And the red scarf, which he unwrapped and then wrapped
again around his neck, carefully, as if he had all the time in the world, as if nothing
was wrong, as if this is the way it had always been, this state of war.
He sauntered across the courtyard toward the rooms, rolling on the balls of his
feet while patting his disheveled hair into place, on a casual evening stroll. Just
before disappearing into the compound he looked toward my cell, shook his head,
and whistled. I kept staring at him until he vanished into the veranda running along
three sides of the compound. There was nothing after that, only the wind and the
dust and the rustle of dry leaves.
September 24, 2002
This is Tarasmun, this place. It is an asylum for the mentally ill, the physically
handicapped, the blind, deaf, and dumb, and the unwanted. There are roughly forty
inmates here—Waris the caretaker tells me there were twice as many before the
raids started. Many of the men were k**ed in the bombing, some of the younger
ones had died of illness, others of poor conditions, and still others for lack of care.
Each time there was a raid, the looters would take away the medicine and whatever
remained of our rations. The food they consumed in their hideouts, deep caves
carved into the sides of these impossible mountains, and the medicine they sold
on the black market.
Everything is available on the black market—cans of condensed milk, ciga-
rettes, even alcohol and videos of lewd film songs with cavorting women in tight
sheath like clothes. Waris says Bulbul is the one who told him this; the boy even
carried a picture of one such woman in a pink shift and black Rexine boots. This
picture was cut in a circle and placed in the cap of a small tin which held his many
treasures. I saw it when Bulbul came to exchange things with me, offering his plas-
tic comb and a snort of the tobacco he held in the box if I would give him my
underwear. I told him I would rather die than let him strip me of my shorts, but he
didn't understand, and laughed at me, telling me that I was going to die in any
case, that it didn't make any difference if I had my shorts on or not. When you're
dead, he shouted, you're naked in front of God. And in front of the men who will
bury you.
I have never really known if Bulbul is sane or not—sometimes his kindness is
overwhelming, and at other times his cruelty cuts into the flesh like a dagger.
The day after Bulbul saw me in the cell, he appeared at the small window with a
dented enamel mug and peered at me through the bars. I had spent the night hud-
dled in a corner on the damp floor, nothing but a filthy burlap sack to cover me.
Bulbul handed me the mug of hot tea and then stared at my near-naked state. After
a while he smiled, then extended his hand through the bars and gestured for me to
offer him mine. I did so, hesitating only because he seemed to not have washed in
a long time. But his hands were clean, his fingernails scrubbed and polished. I
shook his hand tentatively, fearing this gesture on his part, fearing what was to
come next. Who among these people would befriend me, who could I trust? Bulbul
squeezed my hand for a moment, then he stroked the inside of my palm with his
finger. I dropped his hand as if it had pa**ed an electric current through the con-
tact. When I looked up at him he was grinning, rapidly flicking his tongue in and
out of his cavernous mouth. I wanted to throw the hot tea onto his face, but thirst
compelled me to calm myself. He stood at the bars for a while, then saluted me
sharply and left.
September 25, 2002
I am trying to keep count of the days I am here by drawing a calendar on the last
page of this book which must have been a register of some sort. There is a list of
medicines on several of the pages, a kind of stocktaking. The rest of the pages are
empty. The book is bound with red tape running along its spine. Bulbul found it in
the office, which has already been ransacked by several groups of looters. He is
fascinated by the fact that I can write—he showed me his own name in the Arabic
script and then asked me to write it for him in English. I did, and then I watched as
he traced the lines of the letters with his finger, as if he were caressing the cheek of
a young child.
September 26, 2002
This morning the soldiers came again. They were not the ones I had been captured
by; I couldn't recognize a single one. It seems that anyone can gain access to this
place because of the hole blasted into the wall. I watched them from my cell as they
went around exploring the compound, looking for things to loot, for people to ha-
ra**, women to brutalize. There is a system to these raids—Waris the caretaker
does not resist them anymore, probably having learned that to do so would
amount to nothing except more harshness, more cruelty. Bulbul says the last time
soldiers came through the hole they locked Waris in the kitchen and took his wife
into an empty cell. Bulbul had heard her cries. The child they have adopted, Qasim,
does not speak, a deaf-mute probably. Bulbul says he heard him cry that night. The
rest of the compound was silent, as if the tongues of all the people here had been
pulled out and chopped into pieces and scattered to the wind.
Bulbul tells me the stories about what goes on in the compound during the
raids. I have begun to understand his language, the combination of foreign words
he uses to explain the violence and desperation of the soldiers. We communicate
in a jumble of words, even sounds, as Bulbul paints pictures of what has tran-
spired here, what he thinks will happen, and where he would rather be: America, he
tells me so often, and shows me the Sears catalog again and again, smiling and
nodding as if his departure were imminent, guaranteed on the first flight out.
Bulbul tells me that this place was supported by the government before the country
fell apart and power was hounded like a sack of grain in a famine. There was a doc-
tor and several nurses, some ward boys, and a few janitors who tried to keep the
place clean, washing out the cells daily, even airing the dirty blankets and dousing
the inmates with lice-k**ing solution every so often. Bulbul remembers the time he
was taken to the dispensary to be inspected for lice—he had protested that he was
clean, but the ward boy stripped him down nevertheless and threw a bucket of cool
antiseptic lotion on him. Khushboo, good smell, Bulbul said, taking a deep breath
and flaring his nostrils. He insists that he still smells good, although I try to avoid
breathing when near him. There is a sour odor in the air all the time—obviously,
the janitors no longer clean the cells, the latrines have not been cleared since the
first raid, and there is hardly any water left for bathing. Bulbul, in fact, is among the
cleanest here, after Waris and his wife, Noor Jehan. She always looks like she has
just washed, and sometimes I wonder if she is siphoning off the water in the well
and keeping it for herself and her family.
The well stands in the middle of the courtyard, under the only tree which still
has its limbs intact. This is where the inmates usually gather during the day, sitting
under the shade of the tree, trying to remember the resonance of their own voices.
The well had been covered with a wooden lid but that seems to have disappeared,
and now all kinds of things float on the surface of the muddy water—once, I be-
lieve, I even saw a severed finger, or perhaps it was a twig, or my imagination play-
ing tricks, or the distance from my window. It's hard to know what is real here—it's
hard to know anything at all except the fact that the nights are longer and colder,
and the days bleak and hopeless.
September 27, 2002
I have asked Bulbul to get me some more paper and some of the pens he managed
to save from the bonfire that the rebels built the last time, burning everything they
could find in the office of this asylum. I saw the fire rage through the middle of the
courtyard, and heard the vials of medicine shatter in the heat, gla**y screams of
protest punctuating the deep breathing of ravenous flames.
Bulbul promises me plenty of writing material. He holds up a charred twig and
scratches it along the wall, drawing a picture of a girl with large eyes and full lips.
He looks at me and then smiles as he draws a heart around the girl. Then he leans
forward and kisses the girl on the mouth, making a long, drawn-out sound like a
man dying. I do not know how to react—I see a young man kissing a charcoal
drawing of a girl etched onto a wall and I don't know how to feel. Even as I smile I
am aware that there is a great sadness here, behind these walls, outside that wall
with the gaping hole in it.
September 29, 2002
Bulbul tells me that Waris has asked him to help the few able-bodied men rebuild
that hole in the wall. Waris believes it is the only way they can keep the looters out.
I believe that after his wife was taken into that cell and possibly a**aulted, Waris
wants to make sure nothing of the sort will happen again. It is a good plan, to re-
pair that hole in the wall. It will secure the compound.
It will also remove any chance I may have of getting the hell out of here. I don't
know what to say to Bulbul—he looks at me as if he needs to report the day's
events to me. I really don't want to know half of what he tells me—most of it
seems implausible, much of it doesn't make any sense, and quite a bit is probably
his own imagination. But at least it gives me something to look forward to, locked
up here, waiting for this young man with the incongruous red scarf to saunter
across the courtyard and disclose the day's details to me in a strange combination
of tongues.
October 2, 2002
I cannot believe what has happened. It is difficult to write so soon after disaster
has struck this compound. My fingers are stiff from the cold and my back aches af-
ter long hours of crouching in the corner, hiding from the moonlight that would
certainly have given away my presence.
The looters came again last night. There were many of them, from what I could
make out at that time of night. Tarasmun has lost its electricity connection, and oil
lamps are lit only in emergencies. It was pitch dark when the sound of rushing men
woke me up from a fitful sleep. My first instinct was to look through the bars but
something kept me down, hidden in the corner. Perhaps it was my own fear slith-
ering down my back and paralyzing life and limb. I could only hear what went on—
I heard Waris shouting to his wife, I heard her as she rushed past the cell, the child
Qasim probably running along with her, the irregular squeak of his three-wheeled
cart sounding like a fingernail against a chalkboard. I heard other voices, guttural
voices belonging to men I couldn't see. There was more shouting, then the clang-
ing of metal doors, then the wailing and screeching of the inmates I had begun to
know by sight. I could not identify them from their sounds of anguish, I only knew
that they were terrified. There were gasps of pain and the sound of whipping and
kicking. I heard Waris yelling again, asking someone to let these men go, that they
were miskeen, innocent. They could not be blamed for the war.
Waris must have been gagged. I did not hear him again, except for muffled
sounds and the stifled thwack of a slap. I heard men crying, some shouting
incoherently, using words I had not yet understood. There are so many languages
here, and the only one I have managed to understand is the one which speaks of
fear.
October 3, 2002
Bulbul has not come today. I do not see Noor Jehan the cook or Qasim the mute. It
is cold in this cell where the sunlight rarely creeps in. I have not eaten since yes-
terday.
October 4, 2002
Nobody walked in the courtyard this morning. There are no sounds here, only the
wind and the leaves and the branches rubbing against each other. Where is every-
one? Am I alone now in this godforsaken bit of hell?
October 5, 2002
Thank God Bulbul brought me a cup of tea. Thank God he is well. Thank God for
his red scarf and the willing grin which curves around his face like a crescent.
Waris came to me today. This is the first time this man has actually come across
the courtyard to talk to me. He is not very old, nor too young, but incredibly
impressive even in his tattered turban and weathered wool vest. Bulbul calls him
Graan Kaka, Elder Uncle. It is a term of respect. This much I have learned here, that
uncles and aunts do not have to be relatives. They are family, even if they have nev-
er seen you before. And they take you into their lives as if they had always known
you.
Waris has provided me with a set of clothes to keep me warm and to keep me
from shaming myself in the presence of his wife. His eyes are comforting and
warm like cups of tea on a winter morning, and his hands are rough and capable,
stringing words in the still air with majestic flourishes. He is as royal a man as I
have met, this peasant who has surely seen better days, whose voice reveals that he
is not my enemy, that he is hunted too, and haunted by terrible memories which
replay themselves on the insides of his closed eye.
Waris speaks to me in Pashto which I do not understand. My three-month lan-
guage immersion concentrated on the language of the city and of the royal court,
Persian. Waris speaks a little English, learned from the doctor who used to run this
place. The doctor and his staff fled during the first raid—several of the women
nurses were taken by the commander of that incursion. It is said that they will nev-
er be seen again, and if they are, their families will never accept them. This is the
mysterious thing here, in this land of so much conflict—a stranger is an uncle, but
one's own daughter is a stranger once she has been taken away against her will.
Despised and discarded, not worth the spit which burns holes in the dusty ground
of tribal justice.
But that is not what Waris came to tell me this morning. He had a proposition
to make, one that I did not take much time to consider. Bulbul acted as interpreter
while Waris spoke eloquently, nodding his head each time Bulbul was able to con-
vey his intention to me. I am to be let out of the cell, Waris says. I am needed to
help with those who were hurt yesterday in the raid—there is a bleeding man with a
gash on his head, and a young girl who does not eat or sleep. There is also a small
child who has been raped. He had been left for dead, but the morning after the
raid, when Noor Jehan emerged from her hiding place, she found that the boy was
still breathing, lying still in his own blood on the cold floor of the cell. He is
Qasim's age, possibly not yet ten. Waris does not know if he will live—he has lost
a lot of blood and lay on the floor all night with nothing to cover him. The looters
stripped him of his clothes, although they must have been too small to fit any one
of them. Perhaps there are young boys in their ranks, children, like the one they
brutalized in the dead of night.
October 6, 2002
I have spent the day in the shattered office of this asylum, rummaging through the
debris for anything that could be used to stem the blood trickling out of Sabir
Shah's head. Sabir is the one-legged man who has a face like nothing I have seen
before. It is rutted and scarred, much like the landscape of this forsaken valley. Bul-
bul informs me that Sabir was attacked while still in his village. The only man there
with an education, Sabir was accused of blasphemy by a cleric. The council of vil-
lage elders was told that Sabir had thrown the holy book onto the ground and then
trampled it with his boots. The elders called for the village council to decide his
fate. Later that day, before a judgment could even be rendered, the accusing cleric
threw a bottle of acid on Sabir's face, blinding him in one eye, making the flesh
around his jaw fuse with his neck. Sabir was not deranged in any way; he was as
able-bodied as any of us—despite his one eye and one leg. I do not know how he
lost his other leg; Bulbul still has to tell me that story.
In the raid last night Sabir used his crutch to hit one of the men who rushed in-
to his cell. The man had dragged a young boy into a corner when Sabir swung his
crutch at him. The crutch hit the man hard, but not hard enough, for he returned
the blow with equal or more vigor, hitting Sabir across the head with the bu*t of his
rifle. Then the soldier untied the string which held his trousers up and sodomized
the child, a thin, sickly boy who hardly had any use for his hopelessly twisted
limbs. Sabir says he did not see this; he was blinded even in his good eye by the
blood spurting out of the gash on his forehead. But he heard the man grunting and
the child gasping in pain. That was enough to suggest to us what happened last
night—that and the child's devastated condition.
I did not find anything that could be used as a bandage in the office. Waris took
a bedsheet and tore it into thin strips which I used to stem the flow of blood. I
know we must find some antiseptic to heal the wound, but there is nothing left
here. On the wall of the cell I can see the smudge of fresh blood left from the night
before, and on the floor I can see where the child lay in his own excrement, stained
with red.
We have taken the child into the kitchen where it is warmer. Noor Jehan is cleaning
him up, she has tried to make him drink some gruel, but his lips have turned blue
and his eyes have begun to roll upward. This is much worse than I had imagined,
and I do not want to think what will happen without proper medical help. Sabir will
survive—he has survived much worse—but this child is a paraplegic, already ill
and deformed. What chance does he have to live?
What chance do any of us have if things continue this way, if nobody finds us,
trapped in this nightmare?
two
October 8, 2002
We are waiting for the night to play itself out. It is colder now, and in the morning I
saw the snow on the peaks surrounding us. Waris has given me his frayed shawl
which I have draped over myself to keep the cold out. He lets me stay in the
kitchen where it is warmer, and where Bulbul, Sabir, and Noor Jehan attend to the
ailing child.
Noor Jehan rocks him back and forth and tries continuously to make him drink
the tea she keeps warm on the embers of the dying fire. I can see the liquid drib-
bling out of his mouth and onto the curve of his bony neck. In the treacherous
light of the fire I can make out the veins running under this child's fragile skin, blue
rivers of hope. There are sores encrusted all over his body, ravaged by disease,
wasted by neglect. He is calmer now, it seems as if the color is returning to his
lips. Noor Jehan insists on wetting his mouth with the warm tea, just to give him
strength, she says. She has added some of the precious sugar she has hidden in a
coarse sack behind the kitchen door. Perhaps the sugar will give the child the
strength to pull through the night. Perhaps Noor Jehan's crooning will keep him
alive, her gentle care and the warm tears cascading down her face.
October 9, 2002
We have to dig another grave this morning, at sunrise, when the snow on the peaks
seems to glow with crimson light like the cheek of a young girl. It will be a small
grave, narrow but deep enough to hold the crippled body of the dead child.
It is still dark. I have stayed up with Waris and his wife while Bulbul slept
propped up against the sacks of potatoes Sabir Shah managed to acquire on a re-
cent trip to the nearest village. How he gets around with one eye and one leg is be-
yond me. The crutch he uses is ancient; its wood has chipped with use and age,
and the rubber cap at the bottom is worn down to a thin sliver, falling open like the
skin of a wounded animal. But Sabir somehow sneaks food into this compound,
using resources known only to him. He is only half a man, but seems to have twice
the strength of all of us here.
My fingers have grown numb trying to write in the cold, trying to reach for the
warmth of the fire that went out ages ago. I have only the moonlight to guide me,
and in its shadows I see the desolation of this place more clearly than I can during
the day. There is no one around; the others have been quiet since the raid. It is as if
the fear has been beaten out of them, as if life itself has taken a beating. I can hear
Bulbul snoring gently—he is young, younger than me, a beard and mustache barely
covering his elongated jaw. His stringy limbs are stretched out on the earthen floor
of the kitchen like he is at home, among his own, in the comfort of his loved one's
arms.
Sabir has appeared, armed with a spade and a pick-axe. I must go with him and
look for a suitable place for the grave. I leave Waris and Noor Jehan to grieve for
the dead boy. He will have to be bathed in fulfillment of religious obligation, and
then a shroud will have to be found for him, a clean length of cloth which will en-
velop his emaciated body, a cocoon for the journey ahead.