At the rally point were other paras, and the sound of a motorcycle running. The honest faces forced Abelito down on his knees. He heard them talking, and then new voices shouted questions, Abelito answered with the truth, still believing the truth mattered, that the truth could stop what was to come. A balled-up rag was stuffed into his mouth. Another rag was tied over his face, covering his mouth and nose. Abelito was kicked onto his back. The part of his mind devoted to his family and the part of his mind devoted to pain receded. The fear took over. He tried to scream out but the rag stifled him.
Wetness, then. First on his face, lips, spreading through the cloth, soaking the rag, the smell of gasoline and soap. It confused Abelito as the taste hit his tongue. Why this? What are they doing? Someone took the blindfold off, and he stared up at the honest faces. Quickly the mixture of gasoline and soap saturated the cloth. Abelito held his breath, unsure of what was to come. Then he breathed. The fumes entered his body. And Abelito’s mind, which had been divided between the pain in his jaw, his love for his family and town, and his terror for his own life, that mind disappeared.
I could try to describe what it felt to breathe in the fumes from that mixture of soap and gasoline. I could say, “Fire spread inside Abelito’s skull and lungs.” I could say, “His nose and throat felt as though they were being burst open from inside,” or “His eyes felt as though they were being squeezed out of his skull.” But this is not helpful. The pain consumed. Whatever had existed before inside Abelito, memories, desires, dignity, and whatever had existed before outside Abelito, his father and mother, his home, the fields where he worked, the church where he prayed for redemption, these were replaced with nothing more than his sense of his own body, a body subject to pain and a body subject to death.
Abelito held himself still, did not dare to breathe. The honest faces came back into focus, faces that no longer seemed the faces of people like Abelito, like the people he had grown up with, but the faces of something more than human, faces of the masters of his body and of his spirit, masters of what would be Abelito’s scream of pain and death, if only he could scream.
The desire to breathe welled up in Abelito’s chest, in his throat. The sting of gasoline burned at his eyes. The desire to breathe grew stronger. It became a command. Abelito breathed again.
I do not know how long this went on, how many times Abelito breathed and how many times the pain reduced him to the nerves inside his chest and behind his face, how many times the pain expanded his mind into the universe of his suffering body. When the cloth was removed, there were new questions, and Abelito’s mind tried to find scraps of thought to string together into answers. Honest answers—that he was just a villager, a coca worker, that he was searching for his parents—and dishonest answers—that he was a guerrilla, that he was a spy, that he was the Carpenter himself, back from the dead and here to kill all paras—they blended together. They made no difference. The cloth and rag returned, Abelito’s mind disappeared into pain, and then there were more questions. If only Abelito could have opened up his body to them, allowed them to shove their hands into his rib cage, grasp his heart, extend their fingers into his brain, along the inside of his throat and jaw, and work his mouth and tongue into the shape of some acceptable answers, he would gladly have done so.
Then a word was spoken, and the honest faces disappeared, and the rag and cloth disappeared, and a new face, an older face, appeared. It was not a kind face, nor an unkind face. It had a thin beard and sorrowful eyes. The owner of the older face cut the ropes holding Abelito, checked his eyes and hands.
“It’s good, it’s good,” said the older face, the face of a man I’d come to know, the face of Osmin.
He held Abelito’s body firmly, but not without tenderness. He held him the way the Virgin Mary must have held the corpse of Christ. He said, “What is your name?”
And I said, “My name is Abel.”
4
LISETTE 2015
Two bombings in a day is new. New is bad. But for the moment, I have work to distract me. The AP beats me on the urgent. Suicide bombing in Karte-ye Mamurin. As I’m grabbing my bag Aasif calls and I put him on speaker.
“Just civilians,” he says from the site of the first bombing. “Broken glass everywhere. Shops and houses. No possible military target.” He has Wahidulla, at the Health Ministry, confirming fifteen dead and possibly up to three hundred injured, Police Chief Rahimi confirming they’re all civilians.
I’m nervous. Kabul has felt increasingly dangerous the past year and a half, since the attack on La Taverna du Liban, since the Swedish reporter shot randomly in the street, since the suicide bombing at the Christian day care, since the attack on the Serena Hotel, since the two Finns shot in broad daylight, since the Cure Hospital attack. But I’m smiling as I exit the door.
Moments like these, they’re the best part of the job. The part where something awful happens, and I get assigned to do something about it. To write the story. To sort
