THE MARTYR
Page 1
Kemal winced as the battered truck came to a bone rattling halt. The truck was more than twice as old as most of the kids in the back and had ferried generations of scared boys to a dozen battlefields. Kemal peered out of the canvas cover and saw smoke rising from the ruins of what had once been a bustling city. Decades of civil war had left it a pile of stone and cement, inhabited only by the ghosts of those who had lived, and died, in its streets. Kemal gripped the old Kalashnikov by his side, not out of any desire to hold the weapon, but as a means to steady his shaking hands.
`Hey, crybaby looks sick!
Kemal whirled at the insult to see Abdul swaggering out of the truck, cigarette dangling from his lips. Abdul was just 17, three years older than Kemal, and had been to the front once before. This, combined with the fact that he was the oldest member of this `platoon', ensured that he was always teasing the other boys and boasting of his own exploits in battle.
`Platoon! We are to defend that hill over there from the infidels!'
Kemal followed Adbuls pointed finger to see a small hillock, perhaps a dozen meters high, covered with scraggy grass and a few boulders. Why the hell would anyone want to fight over that? Kemal followed the dozen other boys up the hillock and sat against a rock. He had heard whispers that the enemy would attack at dawn, now just a few hours away. At least a thousand men on both sides had perished attacking, and defending this hill in a series of bloody skirmishes.
`You okay? Remember, no fear. God is on our side. If we die, we become martyrs and go to heaven.'
With those words, Abdul passed by, repeating essentially the same story to each boy. Kemal knew these words well. He remembered the day the religious police had come to his house and asked his mother that he be sent to the front. She had sobbed and protested, having already lost a son and husband in this never-ending war, but ultimately there was no choice. Before leaving, Kemal remembered seeing her crying alone in his father's old study. His father had been a doctor with a prosperous practice before the second civil war began. With the withdrawal of the Russians, he, like most educated Afghans, had believed they would be at the vanguard of rebuilding the shattered nation. But a renewed civil war, even more terrible that the one against the Russians, had soon engulfed the nation.
Kemal also remembered meeting his sister, who did not cry, but just held him tight, as if by doing that she could prevent him from going away. But she had shed enough tears to last a lifetime already, seeing her American educated boyfriend killed in public for speaking out against the government, watching her life crumble around her as she was fired from her job under the new rules which prescribed what jobs women could perform, and as she watched the bodies of her father and brother being carried home.
Kemals family had always been religious, but what followed his drafting exposed him to an alien face of the religion he had come to love. Clerics took classes in the morning, telling the boys how it was their sacred duty to kill infidels, and how they would go to heaven for doing so. Kemal had asked how that was so, since the enemy was also of the same religion. The caning he received taught him not to ask any more uncomfortable questions. Three days of basic training in handling rifles later, Kemal and his `platoon' were at the front. The war had become like a living animal, demanding ever increasing human sacrifice to whet its insatiable appetite for blood. Most able-bodied men above 18 were already fighting, or dead, and now they had begun looking for younger boys to fill the ranks.
Kemal didn't know much about heaven or God, but what he did know was that getting killed over a meaningless hill was unlikely to bring him closer to either. Abdul must have read the doubts in his eyes, as he came over to sit by him.
`Abdul, do you really believe well go to heaven if we die here?'
Abdul stopped him with a fierce glare. `Shut up! Dont try and corrupt the other soldiers here. I know youre from an `educated' family- but that doesnt mean you spread your rubbish here. This is a holy way, and it is an honor to become a martyr in this cause. Thats all I, or anyone here, needs to know.'
Kemal remembered a very different Adbul, one whom he used to play with, one who would crack bad jokes and laugh at them himself. But all that was before his family was wiped out in a rebel attack. He had returned from school to find his house burning, with everyone inside, hacked to death. Since then, something had died inside Abdul, and something much darker had been born in its place. Kemal remembered his own anger when his father died, but also remembered his mothers words- `Revenge just means more death. What we need is peace- people to forgive and forget, not join this madness.'
