Bewilderment engulfed me, bewilderment and a sense of wonder that passed my understanding. I became confused as I looked, it baffled and confounded me … They kept on emerging from the strata of soil and stone and pebbles. They rose to the surface, every generation of mankind, one by one until they formed a vast multitude from the past. On and on they came, a leather rag clutched in a hand here, and a garment-clad half of a body there, some shroudless, some shrouded, but all gasping for breath, streaming in different directions, like a question without an answer, without looking at each other. Some bowed in salutation to the sun, others to the earth, some prayed to the sky, others to the water and stone. Where is my qibla?† Where is it? Where is my temple? My mosque? Where is my monastery, my temple, my synagogue and my fire? Where are my horse and my fire? My qibla, my sun and my temple … Where are my house and my nest? The river of souls merges and merges, then widens … wider and wider and wider …! One salutes the water, one salutes the sun and one salutes the earth!
‘Can you hear that, soldier? Can you hear the voices?’
‘Drink some water, sir! Please drink. You’re hallucinating! You can barely stand upright! I’m holding you up. Your brow is drenched in cold sweat. If you give up, what shall I do? I know the first thing I’ll do is kill the prisoner, that’s for sure! So drink, drink some water, Lieutenant, sir! We’re in the worst possible situation. Don’t just take a gulp, drink some more!’
‘I’m drinking, I’m drinking. But you can see it too, can’t you, soldier?’
‘What is it I’m supposed to see, sir?’
‘You really can’t see it, then?’
‘What, sir? Please, I beg you, get a grip … you saw with your own eyes what happened. We did our best. You poured water onto his lips and forehead yourself. I’m talking about the third soldier. But he chose to take the flask from your hand and empty it on the ground. Rest assured, by the time you got to him he’d already whispered his ashhad‡ a thousand times. You heard for yourself how he departed this world asking for forgiveness and reconciliation. I’ve collected their identification tags. All five of them. I’ll keep them separately. All five of them dead for the sake of getting some water … As per your orders, I’ve laid all five of them in a row, facing the qibla. Now I’m waiting for your next command. It was you who said that it doesn’t do to linger in the valley for too long. It just takes another madman to appear up there. Then we’ll be finished, too. The rising sun only makes it even more dangerous to stay in this vile valley of doom!’
‘So you honestly don’t see anything? Not a thing?’
‘Sure … I can see that oaf there, our prisoner. He’s our responsibility now, too. If only I could finish him off. He can’t stand upright either, he fell down over there, and nearly passed out!’
‘Didn’t I order you to give him some water?’
‘I did, though, sir. Otherwise he’d have gone to hell by now. Even so, he can’t stand up, because he’s so overweight!’
‘Give him some more, then.’
‘How much?’
‘Until he’s had his fill! Until he explodes, for all I care!’
‘May I ask, sir …’
‘Ask what?’
‘If you’re alright?’
‘Couldn’t be better! Say what you were going to say.’
‘In such circumstances … I mean, after suffering from thirst for such a long time, if a person drinks too much water, will he explode? Or die suddenly? I’ve certainly seen with my own eyes how men can pass away just like that!’
‘A flask of water can hardly kill a man, can it?’
‘No, sir. But … we don’t have much left either …’
‘It’s not much, I know. The dying, the thirsty … but we’ve been stuck here for too long. Just tell me what we should do with our men. I can’t leave them on this scorching ground under the sun. What should we do with them, soldier? What was your name again?’
‘Anoom, sir. I’ve commandeered a spade from the enemy trench, sir. Allow me to bury them right here, or on the flank of the hill. Close to the water tank. You know how to recite the death prayer, don’t you?’
‘First we must recite our intention. But I’d like us to take them with us. My heart won’t let me abandon them here. In this narrow pass.’
‘We could take them with us, sir, sure. But where to? I don’t have a compass on me. If I’d had one I wouldn’t have been captured. What about you, can you work out which direction we should go in?’
‘I unravelled a ball of string behind us so we could retrace our steps, but heavy bombing has churned up the ground. So we’ll just have to take them to our own trench for now. Now go and get that giant up on his feet, will you? We need him to help us carry his victims. Go and give him something from the flask!’
‘Then what, sir?’
‘I’ll sling a body over my shoulder and climb the hill. You take another and the giant can carry a third. Just make sure you keep your eyes on him.’
‘I’ll lay one body across his neck and shoulders without untying his hands. And I’ll tie his feet together so that he can’t pull any tricks while he’s carrying his burden. Like leg shackles! In just two round trips we can carry them all up to behind our machine gun. It’ll be fine if you just take one body, sir! The two of us, Saad and I, will do the second round. You can go back down to fetch some more water. There aren’t many intact flasks left, but … in the best case scenario the radio telephone might start working again. Then we could call for an ambulance, assuming one can cross the front line.’
‘Cross an area that’s in the enemy hands? Very well, remove his blindfold and take him over to the bodies. Let him see the results of his handiwork at close quarters!’
‘His men were lying about all shot to bits too, sir, as a result of our firing … and our men just went down to that accursed water tank. One by one … I couldn’t stop them. Thirst and the sight of the water tank had made them take leave of their senses, every last one of them! What could I do? They were young. They were volunteers who didn’t really have any understanding of military discipline yet. Instead, they just took the idea of martyrdom for granted. Each person putting the others before himself …’
‘So what preventative actions did you take that failed, Lieutenant?’
‘Well, I tried talking reason and logic to them, telling each of them what his duty was. I stressed the need for order and discipline. But some of them had been through no more than six weeks of training. I tried every which way I could, sir, I even told them stories and parables! But it was useless, sir, impossible. They would have started fighting among themselves in the trench and I wanted to avoid that at all costs! After the heavy bombing and the annihilation of the reserve forces, when our line of communication was broken, the men’s mindset changed completely. The radio telephone only transmitted a single message, saying that we couldn’t expect relief any time soon. And that we should act on our own initiative. That made things worse than they were already. I was the group’s senior officer. Commander of my unit. Before the destruction of the reserve forces the men had a certain look about them, but afterwards the atmosphere was quite different. That was only natural. I tried to pretend I wasn’t afraid, but … it was a dead end, sir. We’d come to a dead end. Enemy forces had taken the ground behind us, and in front of us were lines of enemy troops who gunned down anything that moved. Hunger and then thirst grew. We were forced to stay in the trench for days on end. Our tactics switched from offensive to defensive and then from defensive to explosive, punctuated with moments of reckless hope. What would you have done in my place, sir?’