Short Story Competition!

Broken Land

by Wendy (Year 12)

My father was killed by a Russian when they invaded Afghanistan, my country. They came over the mountains and destroyed our villages, our crops. Now the earth yields nothing because the stain of bloodshed cannot be washed away. Not even the raven comes.

When I was a boy, my mother used to beat her chest and cry, “Allah! Why didn’t you spare my husband? Why do you let me suffer? There is no food on our table!”

Her eyesight has become poor and her voice, I cannot hear it. She forever sits in the darkness of our cold mud house and her legs have grown stiff. She is an old woman, I realise. She needs someone to care for her.

But I am a man now, and I need to work.

“I’m leaving the house,” I say to my mother. I wrap the turban tightly around my head and throw my shawl on.

Her silent silhouette doesn’t stir.

I blink a few times as I step out of the house. Today, the sky is like a lapis lazuli burqa shrouding the dusty brown of the village. It looks magnificent.

But I quickly drop my eyes and start trudging along the gravelly road. The man is wearing black with a gun at his waist. He pierces me with his yellow hawk eyes as he saunters past lazily. He is of the munkrat, the religious police, and if I stand still, he will ask questions.

I can still feel his stare upon my neck, long after the gravel digs into the thin soles of my shoes. Long after it feels like my naked feet are treading on shards of glass. 

I arrive at Pazhman’s shop. It is small and crowded but it is enough space to sell bread and goat milk. I work for him and in return, he gives me two loaves of bread a day.

“You are still a young man,” he tells me, as I stir the boiling goat milk. “So I give you enough to eat. When you have a wife and children, then I will pay you.” I nod in acceptance. At the end of the day, he places the loaves of bread on the table for me to take home.  I reach to take them and he puts his gnarled, calloused hands on mine. “Boy,” he says, “I am getting older and have no sons or daughters. Look after this shop when I am gone.” I nod again. “Allah bless you, agha sahib,” I say, like an incantation.

On the way back home, I stop outside the wall surrounding Mehrak’s house like I do every day. Mehrak is a short man with mean little eyes and a walking cane. He had this high wall built to keep his wives and daughters locked inside like prisoners. There are no screams today.

Everything is quiet except for the sound of muffled sobbing. It is such sad, sad sorrow. I peer around the corner of the wall. A figure wearing a burqa is slumped outside the gate. It is Mehrak’s daughter, Shameem. I walk over and she lifts her burqa. “Esfandyar!” she cries, “Oh it’s you! I knew you would rescue me one day!” I squat down to tuck some of Shameem’s brown hair behind her ear. There is an angry red lash on her cheek and her face is wet and dirty. But she is still beautiful.

Her large grey eyes look up at me pleadingly. A long time ago, they had been iridescent, like a marble held against the sun, its colour shifting, depending on the way the light played upon its curved surface.

I wish I could still see the orange and green of her gaze.  That fire. I wish that the requiem did not extinguish the life in her eyes. 

“Take me home,” she begs, clutching at my arms. I look away in shame and see her stub of a leg poking out from under her burqa. A cursed day two years ago, she stepped on a Russian mine.

It was Allah’s will.

“Take me home,” Shameem begs, more desperately. I am still looking away. “You promised me,” she says, almost loathingly. I can taste the bitterness on the tip of her tongue.

I feel guilty. Long ago, I did promise her. We had stood under the green foliage of a tree, its boughs arched over us like a mother’s protective arms over her womb. How musical her laughter had been. Insouciant days rolled by, spent watching gold and crimson pour from the heavens, picking pomegranates and breaking them open. I would whisper “for eternity” against the warmth of her neck. And she would sing her lullaby as the red juice trickled down our fingers, clasped together. The red of love. But also the red of blood.

It is different now. She is different. If I marry Shameem, I would be supporting two crippled women for a lifetime and my back would break.

Shameem would be a useless wife.

I press a loaf of bread into Shameem’s arms and run. She tries to catch my hand but she falls. “Esfandyar! Don’t go!” she cries after me tearfully. “The munkrat will kill me if they find me alone! My father has renounced me! I have no home, Esfandyar! Why do you leave me?”
Her wails follow me all the way home, like a sharp tree branch snagging my turban, pulling me back.

I resist.

An ocean pounds in my ears, its undercurrents hissing nefariously in my ear, lacing my conscience with black.

I wipe away the hot blinding tears. A thousand pomegranate trees are standing in the graveyard, their carcasses pressed against the navy of the unforgiving sky. 

The horizon seems so far away, like it’s pushing itself away from the loneliness of my heart. 

I reach home and throw my turban on the floor, like I am throwing away that sepia memory of Shameem. I let my hair fall free.

My mother’s silhouette doesn’t stir.