Натиг Расулзаде - Suicide notes

Well, what can you say…Of course what would they be doing here, what had they lost on this foreign land? And what have we lost on this foreign land? Or is it foreign for some and not so much for the others, it turns out that it’s not so foreign for the ones like me? What have tens of guys that were killed under fire in front of my eyes in a little more than a year lost in Afghan? What have I lost in Afghan? Now I can give a definite answer to this question – my arm, yes and also the faith in the wisdom of our leaders, not that this faith was very strong before, but still… In hospital, I remember, one bed across from me there was young lieutenant. He had both his legs amputated – they had been torn apart by a shell, or rather shell splinters got him. His legs were so much stuffed with those splinters that there was no bone left intact, therefore keeping his legs was not possible. A young guy, a bit older than me. We spoke a few times, even though he wasn’t very talkative, you wouldn’t want to talk much in such a condition. He once told me that he had never wanted to be a soldier, but in their family they insisted on it because all men in their family had been in the military, his grandfather and his father, but he himself always dreamt of becoming an actor, and he was a handsome guy too, that you could say, with such an inspired face. His father still serves, and it was him who insisted on the military career of his son. The guy didn’t like being a soldier, but still he had studied and got his lieutenant stripes and a ticket to Afghanistan, with his father’s blessing to boot. And that’s how it turned out. The man became a disabled invalid. Once I was woken up at night by a strange mumbling over my head. I turned around quietly and saw on the windowsill, a couple of steps away from me, the legless lieutenant sitting on the windowsill and quietly whispering something. Automatically, not yet understanding what’s going on, I started listening… The bedside table, I recollect, was by the windowsill… He must have moved it from the bed to the window and climbed on the bedside table and from it onto the window… So he’s sitting on the windowsill, whispering something as if praying, sort of monotonously, like a man who hasn’t got enough spirit to read properly, just waves his hand with his index finger pointed like someone telling off a misbehaving child. So I listened up. “Your mother this and that, and I wish bad luck to you, and your half – witted father, him decorated with orders, and all your orders, and your mother, and all your decorations, and all your stinking lives in this world” – was he saying in foul language wildly gritting his teeth. That’s roughly what I heard and at first didn’t understand anything but then it struck me – the window is open, he’s sitting on the windowsill in front of the open window! I involuntarily yelled, he was startled and looked at me, said something through his clenched teeth, turned around on his hands, quickly leaned back, and that moment the windowsill became empty. I shouted, louder now, calling for the nurse on duty. My weird, animal kind of scream woke everybody up and I, it seems, kept screaming for some time, with my hand pointed to the window. I went to the window, the nurse was already in the room, lights came back on, I glanced outside – the lieutenant was lying down there in his underwear that completely covered the stumps of his legs. He lay there with his head somehow unnaturally popped out, his arms stretched… Our hospital was in Kabul, the ward – on the fourth floor, the top one, and the lad hit, probably how he had anticipated, the ground with his head down. When we rushed downstairs I approached him and clearly saw how his head had been smashed, the scull was cracked open and some darkish matter was appearing inside in the gap. One eye had dropped out and was lying on the lieutenant’s collar bone. The eye socket was dead, scary, and creepy for me because I clearly remembered these lively, moving and full of sorrow, light – blue eyes of this young guy. What only recently was so alive and now dead seems doubly dead and somewhat sinister like death itself. The body was immediately covered with a bed linen. Well, thanks for that. He left behind a wife and a little girl. A day after this incident I got checked out of hospital.

And having checked out of hospital, without an arm I went straight home, still having ten months to go until full demobilization. In some sense, it comes out, I was lucky. Well, every cloud has a silver lining, so to say, even without one arm but I’m still alive and coming back home on my feet and not in a zinc coffin. So I went to Baku, my home, where else would I go? I thought let’s make mom happy with my stump. She was happy of course, with arm or without; at least her son was back home alive. She roughly knew what was going on there where I had just come back from, I had written to her, though in the letters I tried not tell the whole truth about it, so that she wouldn’t have worried too much. I never described that war in dismal colours, never wrote about any dangers, well not the whole truth, in other words like our media covers these events – they probably also don’t want to disturb the public with some petty issues, like me not wanting to disturb my mom. She clung to me, hugged me, wouldn’t let go for sometime, literally shed tears on my stump. “Thank you for coming back alive sonny, – she said through her tears – so many families in Baku have lost their sons there, I trembled with fear every day, thought… thank God you’re back alive… Thank you.” “Thank me?! What are you thanking me for? – I said, – say thank you to the party and the government for my coming back alive. The winter has gone and summer’s here, we thank our party for this beautiful year . Something like this.” “Oh”, – mom gave me a faint smile and slapped me on the back, – even after having been to war you haven’t become more serious.” “Never mind – said mom – we’ll survive, now that you’re back we’ll survive. Just don’t say things like that, be careful, for a hasty word you can pay with your youth.” That fear of the old times repressions still lives in mother. “Well – I said – don’t you worry about paying for it, we paid for it a long time ago, I have become disabled at my age, let’s see now how they pay us back.” And as if I knew it about this payment. I was entitled to a pension as a disabled war veteran, but I nearly dropped dead while I was trying to get it. It’s disgusting to even remember how many thresholds I had to haunt, references to get, applications to write, decorations to show, sort of, here they are, everything is in order, all by the rule, not only our wise leader has them, I also have them, don’t you worry, and my stump is also real, dear comrades from the military medical commission, not a fake, you can touch it if you like… Eventually I got so disgusted by all this stuff that I wanted to scream, to get a knife and stab all these bastards from whom this miserable pension of mine depended, or stab myself like some Japanese samurai, with a hope that for the rest of their lives they will be conscience stricken… Then I went to my factory, even though I knew in advance that it would not do any good. And so it happened. Some bastard in the personnel department – with a well fed mug – declared at the end of our conversation that, well, I didn’t send you to that war and you can’t have any grudges against me because we can take you back at the factory – and then this bastard smirks like all them bastards smirk – only if your hand grows back again. He didn’t manage to hold himself and chuckled at his own wit. Yes – I said and felt that my kettle was boiling over, a bit more and I’ll explode and then won’t be able to say anything at all, I barely held myself because I had left my last nerves in Afghan, became a real psycho. Yes – I said – it wasn’t you shit face sent me to Afghan, but I fought there and risked to get killed there every minute only so you here with your other bastards could grow fat cheeks and backsides, so you here could rip off dough from young guys for their employment, you dirty scum, and then pay off for your bustard son skipping his army service, and avoiding going to war. So that you on the money of workmen like me, money that you suck from them like a leech, making up various reasons, you could on that money fix your bastards in institutes, buy them cars and leather coats. I told him roughly like that, in the end I couldn’t hold on and yelled at him. He stared at me, flushed with anger, eyes bulging out, he hadn’t faced such dumbfounding impudence for a long time, in short he looked as if he would kick off right now, which would be very appropriate from my point of view. But I’m all wound up, on the edge, I couldn’t just leave slamming the door behind me – not enough, that’s for the refined. I was ready to kill him for mocking at my battlefield wound. So I grabbed the first thing I got my hand on – pity it was a light plastic stationery kit – and hurled it at his red bald spot. Take this! – I said *** your mother…! And I stepped out. I didn’t hear a sound behind my back, that scum was probably still in shock. Well, obviously with my character (though, if you think of it, what did my character have to do with it, people have to be provided with work regardless of their bad or good characters but here it’s different and everyone considers it normal) afterwards I didn’t find any other work except as a night watchman. Eventually I began receiving the pension, an unexpected miracle, I by the way thought that everyone had forgotten about my existence. So the pension plus wages as a night watchman at a construction site, overall: five or six trips to the market. In one word, if you don’t spend anything on clothing and medical treatment or do this very seldom – the money was just enough for food. But I was young, and still am young now, though I’m disabled, sometimes I forgot about it. Honestly, I wanted to dress well, wanted girls falling in love with me, or at least have money for hookers, who in our city you couldn’t even come close to if you had less than a fifty in your pocket. I wanted us to have plenty of everything and first of all wanted that mom was in no need of anything, because she unlike me needed only the necessary things. What kind of a son I am if she wouldn’t have the very necessary things? That’s why I constantly thought about money, thought where to get, earn more money, what I could do, fix something. So one night I sat in my booth, looking after some dog shit which in our building site was more common than any construction materials, I sat looking at my stump, smoking my favourite “Prima”, because I started to love what I could have; I sat thinking my sad thoughts: how could I start living normally, like a normal person. On my arrival from Afghanistan I tried to enter the institute again, but it was more like trying my luck, I understood that I had lost my last knowledge at war but thought that like a war veteran I would get some discount. But regardless of my veteran benefits, they cut me down like a rabbit. And now before the new attempt to become a student and eventually an engineer I had a whole year ahead. A whole year of expectations and loads of unrealized opportunities to become a human being without a higher education. So I sat there thinking about all this stuff and heard some steps. I looked out of the booth and saw one absolutely plastered guy staggering towards me. I met him and said – what are you wandering about the building site for? Either you’ve got no better place for a night walk, or you’re trying to steal something? If you’ve come for stealing, I’ll knock you down stiff in a second, because it is my job here to protect our precious and not yet dragged away socialist property.

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