I thought I’d share a powerful short story written by my younger brother David. Its awesome! I love reading his writings….. He’s working on a novel now, and I cant wait to read the first draft. Enjoy.
Layla
Baglan: 25km northwest of Kabul, Afghanistan, 2001
“Alam! Is that really you?”
The room sat frozen as they studied the intruder in the doorway. Gone was the smooth cedar skin and cheeky eyes of the most confident young man in Baglan, replaced instead by a long unkempt black beard, deep set eyes and a face seamed with the tragedies of war. His cotton shirt and pants were caked with dirt and dry blood and his sandals worn and broken. Eyes distant and glazed with a slight scowl embedded on his lips, he stood there staring, not uttering a word.
“Alam?” she implored again, rising slowly out of her chair and moving hesitantly toward him. The young boys, not feeling her concern rushed to their father, grabbing him by the waist before Misha also ran to embrace him.
“Thank God it’s really you!” she wept into his arms.
Only young Layla remained at the table, watching, as their kisses were not returned, and their excitement faded into concern. An all invading, putrid smell had entered the house with him, a smell that was not easily forgotten. It was the smell of death.
As Misha and the boys fussed about him, taking him to bed and washing him, Alam barely uttered a word, nor did he for seven more days. He would sleep fitfully and could often be heard whimpering, or crying out some unknown name ‘Irza! Irza!’ He would look at their faces, but see them transfigured, as they would be in death, white with that mysterious slight smile that corpses always had. As though they had realized something in death that they hadn’t seen in life, and that something had made them smile. For the seven days Misha stood vigil by his bed and told him all that had happened in three years. How his uncle Akbar had died of cancer, how the family had struggled for food but survived, and how Layla’s best friend had died before her eyes a few months previous, when an American missile had hit the market.
“The best medicine is routine,” she would say, scolding Alam when he didn’t eat and refused to talk. But his heart was no longer there; it was lost somewhere far away, deep in the Hindu Kush. Often he would stare blankly out the window at the majestic mountain range that steadily rose in hills, like a sea of rough water, before rising steeply toward the snow capped summit. It was Layla who had scared them all the most though when the diffident child had said ominously “the devil has stolen his soul”.
On the seventh day he awoke to find Layla sitting on a peeling prussian blue chair staring at him. Her face was smooth but in need of a good wash. Her loose lilac headscarf flowed from the back of her head, covering the top of her cobalt dress. As beautiful as Cleopatra, her eyes pierced with a resigned gaze that betrayed the knowledge of death. Seeing Alam wake she ran out of the room. Her eyes had impressed his heavy mind and it struck him as profound that she had changed so much in three years yet everything else remained the same. The same sun baked faded orange adobe walls and mud thatch roof of the house. The same stifling heat that caused his clothes to stick his skin. The same aggressive boys fighting loudly in the street.
He got up slowly and walked out of the room into the large rectangular living area, where the family ate their meals and spent most of their time indoors. He sat down on one of the large brown cushions just as Misha walked in the door.
“Your up, thank god” she exclaimed. “Let me make you something to eat”.
Alam sat and watched absently as she made him some flat bread and apricot, bringing it over to him in an orange plastic bowl. As he sat and ate, he noticed Layla peeking through the doorway and looking around. Through the corner of his eye he watched as she seemed to consider the consequences of entering the room before deciding against it and returning to what he had noticed was her daily solitary routine of drawing in the dust outside.
“How long has she been like this?” He asked in a throaty rasp without raising his head from eating.
“Since her best friend died before her eyes. She is like you; barley says a word to anyone anymore. Its not right for a ten year old.” Misha replied with an apprehensive ambivalence.
He continued eating and spoke no more.
Seven more days came and went but not much changed for the afflicted. Alam continued to whimper quietly in his sleep, refusing to talk or contribute to the earthly world around him. Only Layla, who felt a strange affinity with her father, still sat by the bed and watched. She had begun each morning to comb the local fields for little purple tulips, which she would place by his bedside as he rested. They are the angels that guard the Hindu Kush, he had told her before the war.
On the fourteenth day Alam awoke to the room of purple tulips and found his heart had softened. He walked out the back low-ceilinged door and again saw Layla sitting cross-legged in the small walled in back courtyard, making patterns in the dust. Her head was low and she looked distant and sad. He went to her and sat down, cross-legged just as she was. Barely looking up, she seemed to curl in closer to the ground. They sat like that for some time, quietly sitting and feeling the warm desert breeze flow over their faces. As he looked around the washed out orange of the courtyard, he noticed an old bucket of yellow paint sitting in the corner, a relic from more prosperous days.
“I want to play a game with you.” Alam said staring at the bucket.
Layla stopped playing and looked at him inquisitively, surprised to hear his voice.
“Follow me” he said picking up her hand from the dust and lifting her up.
He walked to the bucket of paint with Layla lagging behind, bent over and opened the can. It smelt like old paint.
“We are going to paint this house with our handprints,” he said with a confidence not seen for many years. “And with every handprint, I want you to think of something your sad about, and stick that sadness on the wall.”
She wrinkled her forehead and stared at him confused.
“Here, let me show you.” With that he, dumped his hairy right hand into the sticky yellow muck, letting it drip for a moment and then placed it on the outside wall of the house.
“I am sad,” he said leaving a large yellow handprint on the wall “that my friend Irza died in the war.” But as he mentioned the name, his throat constricted, lips began to tremble and his confidence left him. He stood there staring into the handprint, drifting back into his purgatory. Seeing this, Layla nimbly placed her hand in the bucket, just like him and placed her yellowed hand next to his, leaving a little yellow handprint on the orange wall.
“I am sad because my friend Aida died” she said with a tremble in her voice.
Seeing this, Alam recovered himself, dumped his hand back in the bucket and said
“I’m sad that I couldn’t save Massoud” as he plastered the wall again.
She stood there with her head sighed, as if gathering her thoughts.
“Your turn” he said
“I’m sad that you left for so long” she said slapping the wall.
A piercing blade, her words cut straight for his blackened heart, tearing out the puss, causing him to remember a feeling long forgotten.
Bending low, he placed his hand in again and said
“I’m sorry I left.”
With a quick splat, he slapped the wall and hugged his daughter with an overdue ardour that sent a yelp of glee from Layla.
And so, with their clothes covered in yellow paint, they assailed the wall with a vengeance. Slapping, smacking and whacking all morning long. And as they painted, they cried. And as they cried they began to heal. And as morning moved into afternoon, the house covered with pale yellow hands, the exhausted two moved back inside and fell asleep amongst the cushions in the living room. Layla, wrapped around her father like a seasoned vine, they rested.
© David Parry 2006
(Compassion International)
