| Feryal Ali Gauhar's second book is written from the point of view of a US army medical technician who is taken captive by rebel soldiers and thrown into an asylum. His interactions with the other inmates, men and women driven mad with grief and loss and the repeated violation of their country, highlight the true tragedy of Afghanistan, of the land's desolate history of plunder and brutality, inflicted both by outsiders and insiders. |
| I have not slept well the last few days, and it is not the fact of my incarceration alone which keeps me awake through these long, cold nights. I cannot fathom how long I will remain here, but that is not the only thing which troubles me. It is not just a question of not having a decent meal or a decent bed to sleep in, or even the knowledge that nothing is certain here except death. |
| What nags me are the things we were taught before we came to this land, the tenets of war, the rules of engagement. I keep going over these in my head all the time, the virtues of coming here, the need to liberate these people, the absolute necessity of enduring freedom. |
| Enduring Freedom. Enduring. Freedom. Two words which don't mean anything to me any more. |
| This morning Noor Jehan stood at the bars of this cell again. I wanted to pretend that I had not seen her, but I knew she came to me to ask for help, and I know it is for the girl Anarguli that she appears before me with such regularity. I have not had the heart to ask Bulbul about the wound on the girl's head, I also don't have the words of 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, 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 a good, noble man who would marry her. |
| I wanted 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, that the woman he loved so much was likely to go blind because of the head injury she had suffered at some point of her wretched life. I wanted to tell him that Anarguli would probably be never be able to stitch fine clothes for their many sons, that soon she may not even be able to see him when he sat beside her on the cold floor of her cell, holding her hand and speaking tenderly to her of his love and her beauty. |
| I did not tell him any of this, and I did not know what to tell Noor Jehan who stood before me silently, her smooth brow marked by deep furrows of distress. |
| ***** |
| In all the training we did at San Joaquin Valley Central, we did not learn about the kinds of injury and disease that could be expected among people who have lived with so little. At boot camp we did not learn 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 tell us to protect the territories we have liberated we are not told who the enemy is, and who are 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 just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. There was a ten-year old girl, Zarmina, I remember, who came to us with one of her legs blown off... No Space for Further burials |
| Author Feryal Ali Gauhar Publisher Women Unlimited Pages 192 Price Rs 250 |
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