Читать книгу Flashes of War - Katey Schultz - Страница 10

With the Burqa

With the burqa, it was like this: the world came at me in apparitions, every figure textured by the mesh filter in front of my eyes. In a city with so much death, it was easy to believe half of the people I saw were ghosts. Women sat like forgotten boulders along the sidewalks in Kabul. We begged. We prayed.

Now, wearing the burqa is a choice. Without it, the sun is so bright that when I walk it feels like swimming through sticky, yellow air. I can see clearly, but there’s nothing left of my city to look at. A missile that didn’t detonate sleeps like a gigantic baby in my garden, cradled in a ten-foot crater of dirt and rubble. There used to be a brick wall around my family’s home. My father built that wall. Now, my father is gone, and the wall is gone, and even the tools for restoring the wall have been looted from our doorstep.

One night, I dream that the missile takes root. The garden groans and stretches, growing rounds of ammunition and grenades. In the dream, the entire neighborhood comes to harvest from my weapons cache. I wander through the rows of weaponry, tugging bullets by their brass tips. They fall into my palms like succulent berries. The grenades are more difficult, but my touch is soft. I set them in my satchel like fresh eggs and carry them to the market where servicemen from the base are having a holiday.

They come to my booth reluctantly at first, then hungrily when they realize the weapons have grown from the earth. Here’s a bullet for the sergeant who pestered my children in the middle of the night. A handful for his team members, the way they looked at us like something to be pitied. And the grenades? Those are for the pilot who dropped the missile on my house. Watch how trustingly he takes the satchel, hugging it like a new parent. When everything is sold, I leave the market and slowly walk home. I hear the pop and whir of bullets first, then the grenades explode. I don’t have to turn around to see what disaster looks like.

When I wake, the sun is a ball of flame arcing over my city. There’s no escape from its heat. I reach for my burqa and cover myself once more. It’s damp and dark in here, just like the grave where my father’s bones have turned to dust.