I, Who Did Not Die Read online

  I had no use for religion, so I found every excuse to skip prayers. Sometimes I had a stomachache. Sometimes I pretended to be off spying on the enemy, when actually I was hiding in one of the caves not far from the base, overlooking the bombed-out city of Dehloran. I’d been given a warning—several of them, actually—that I’d be kicked out of the Basij if I continued to miss prayers. I nodded like I was sorry, but I truly didn’t give a shit. They were empty threats, anyway. In the year since Mina was killed, I had honed my skills as a sharpshooter to the point that I could shatter the telescope lens on an armored tank. The driver would be forced to come up through the hatch to get his bearings, and I’d wait for it . . . then kiss my trigger finger and nail him in the head. When I got a direct hit like that, for a brief moment I felt one or two of my heartbeats, just before I went back to being numb again.

  Since Mina had died, my tongue had stopped tasting food and my eyes had stopped sleeping at night. There was something wrong with my ears, so when anyone spoke to me, all I heard was a voice clogged by a ball of cotton. I didn’t have the energy for conversation, and I muttered so many one-word answers that people stopped talking to me altogether. Killing was my only accomplishment. Yeah, I was an excellent sniper, and I was pretty sure the commanders couldn’t afford to get rid of me. So I wasn’t going to join the performing parrots every day. Go choke on your prayers for all I care, I thought.

  So that’s why I was standing outside my tent alone just before sundown while the rest of my unit was off bowing to God, when I heard the soft tinkle of bells approaching. I turned and saw a gray-haired shepherd herding a flock of sheep, with a young girl in bright red robes by his side. He raised his wooden staff toward me and said hello in the Lori tribal dialect that my grandmother used to speak, and when I said hello back, they gasped in surprise that a soldier knew the right words. I watched them crest a small hill and then stood for a moment, staring at the rams and ewes trotting behind. One of the rams at the back of the pack wandered near our battalion’s garbage pit and began rooting in it. I sidestepped closer. I took another step, then another. A few sheep snorted to let me know I was too close. The ram stomped its foot and tossed its head a few times, and I felt my pulse pick up, knowing we had chosen each other. It lowered its brown head and showed me its spiraling horns, and I drew out my bayonet. The landscape narrowed to a pinpoint, with only that ram in my crosshairs. And before I could stop myself, I grabbed one of those horns and twisted the animal to the ground. I clamped one hand around its mouth as it thrashed, and ran the edge of the bayonet across its throat.

  The animal made no noise as it stilled. When its rectangular irises no longer registered me, I let go and rose to my knees. The earth spun and I fell to all fours and waited for the dizziness to pass, but it just kept going, and waves of panic amplified inside me. I could justify killing the enemy, but the ram was an innocent, and I can’t tell you why I killed it. It was like my brain disappeared for a second, and when I snapped out of it, I couldn’t believe this was the work of my hands. Whatever evil was inside me was growing and starting to take control.

  There was nothing to do but get rid of the carcass. Luck was on my side, and the shepherd didn’t return as I hurried to skin it. I was almost done butchering it when the guys returned from prayers. We hadn’t had meat in months, and when they saw what I had, I was their hero, a king of kebab, and I went along with their assumption that I’d hunted on purpose. We buried the intestines and the head, hid the meat in our tent with some ice, and then later that night a bunch of us hiked up a trail to one of the caves, where we could roast the mutton over a fire. Word had spread to several of my military buddies from Masjed Soleyman, and by now we were a good-sized dinner party. I was the guest of honor, but I didn’t feel like celebrating. Every time someone clapped me on the back or shook my hand for the feast, I saw the betrayal in the ram’s yellow eyes again, and the blood that seeped from its tear ducts as I squeezed its mouth closed. The men ate the entire beast, even after their bellies swelled in agony, never knowing when they’d have roasted meat again. I took a few bites, felt sick to my stomach, and put the kebab down.

  The next morning, we were called together for an announcement.

  “Brothers, we have a friend,” our commander said. “Maybe you have seen Yadollah the shepherd; he walks by our base to bring his animals to a spring not far from here.”

  The commander explained that the old man was born and raised in Dehloran, had never left Dehloran, and refused to leave his beloved hometown even after the Iraqis bombed it. Like many of his displaced neighbors, he’d moved his family and livestock to a big tent in the mountains near our base, where it was safer. We’d given him a radio and he helped patrol our perimeter as he moved his flocks.

  “He came to me this morning. He is missing a ram, and his livelihood depends on that animal. I want you boys to keep an eye out and let me know if you see it.”

  I wished the earth would open up and swallow me, leaving no trace of my sinful existence. I heard snickering behind me, and another soldier whispered, “We’ve got all these boys dying, and they are worried about a ram?” A few dinner-party guests quickly looked my way, but I kept my gaze straight ahead. There was no way they would rat on me, because then they would have to confess they ate the ram as well.

  All this time I’d been telling myself I was a good person because I’d saved that Iraqi, and I used that one event to ignore all the bad things I’d done since then. But I was no better than anyone; I was a ruthless killer, and all the denial in the world wouldn’t change that. As I thought of the displaced shepherd and what now would become of his family without a breeding ram, I wished everyone on the planet could spit on my face. I deserved no less. My stomach heaved, as if it were trying to expel that bite of the ram still in there. I slumped forward, silently looking at the ground, but in my mind, I screamed so hard that my vocal cords were ripped out.

  That night, the ram chased me in my dreams. He pawed at the ground and gnashed his teeth, and I felt his hot breath on my face. His eyes were pools of blood and the light glinted off the sharp points of his horns as he roared at me in a voice of rolling boulders.

  “For each of your blows against my body, I will kill you a hundred times over!”

  Flames shot out of his nostrils as he chased me down, and I ran for my life, apologizing for killing him, but my voice was lost in the landslide of his hooves getting closer, until I could feel his hooves smack into my back. He knocked me down and stomped on me until I was flat as a leaf in a puddle of my own blood. He had fangs like a tiger and picked me up in his mouth, whipping me from side to side so that little pieces of me tore and flew everywhere, until I was nothing more than a shred of flesh dangling from his jaws. He spit me out, laughed, and trotted away with a little bounce in his step.

  “Zip it, Haftlang; you’re keeping everybody awake!”

  There’s no way to hide a nightmare in a military tent. My sweat had turned ice cold in the winter night air, and my teeth were chattering. I bit my blanket to keep from crying, to hold on to something real. I was too frightened to close my eyes for the rest of the night.

  Night after night, the ram came back. He gored me. He butted me off a cliff. He sat on me. He kicked me into outer space. Each time he demanded to know what right I had to kill him. My troubled sleep was starting to exhaust me to the point that I was delirious all the time, walking around half awake and half asleep in a dream state that allowed the ram to visit whenever he liked. I started seeing him in the daytime, around corners, behind trees, or on the horizon, making me a constant, jumpy nervous wreck. Rumors started that I was losing my mind, probably started by my sleep-deprived tent mates, who were forced awake by my cries. When sleeping pills had no effect, one guy in the battalion offered to put me under a spell and chanted something at me in Arabic in a gravelly voice as I lay very still.

  I did sleep, but the ram came after me again, this time from the air with eagle wings that were as big as an air
plane’s. The sky parted and he flew at me with outstretched talons as I tried to sprint out of his shadow, but no matter which way I ran, the silhouette of his body grew larger and larger around me like a spreading stain. I closed my eyes in terror, and when his hooves landed on my back, his wings shrank back down to the size of a crow’s. He knocked the wind out of me, and the weight of him pressed on my bowels and forced my lungs up into my throat. I gagged for air as he picked me up with his teeth, and we flew so high that the earth looked like a stone. I was crying and my teardrops stayed suspended in the air like stars. I could feel his fire breath singe the back of my neck, and I begged for him to let me fall to my death. But he only laughed.

  “You are contaminated with sin, from head to toe,” the ram roared. “You think you are so brave; you think you are a man. Do you know how many people you have killed with your ignorance?”

  “Forgive me,” I sputtered.

  “Your hands reek of blood, your breath spreads blasphemy in the air! Your veins flow with poisons, your skin is made of slime.”

  He was right. But if he only knew the whole story. It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t always this way. Maybe if I could convince the ram that part of me used to be good, he’d leave me alone.

  “It’s war. What else can I do? Why don’t you go speak to the person who started the war? I had no choice.”

  As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized how pathetic I sounded. None of my leaders ever said anything about killing animals.

  “Still a sniveling boy. You want to be a man? Go tell Yadollah what you’ve done.”

  Then the ram dropped me, and I fell to the earth, exploding like an egg on impact.

  When I awoke to the frowns of my tentmates, I knew what I had to do. I went to the supply room on the base and liberated a couple of wool blankets and a kerosene lamp and made my way up the mountain, 1,500 feet up to Yadollah’s tent. It was one of those large tents like the nomads used, held up by wooden poles and covered with black canvas, with an open square for a door. Yadollah was outside milking a goat, and as I approached, he stood up and casually walked into his tent. He returned holding an antique Brno rifle across his chest, the kind used by the Iranian Army in the 1930s and ’40s, and stood with his legs slightly apart, determined-like.

  “Who goes there?” he asked.

  I stopped a few feet from him, put my bag on the ground, and stood with my hands clasped in front of me. It was so cold that I could see my breath.

  “I’m Zahed. I’m with the battalion.”

  He studied my uniform and glanced at my bag.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s cold; I’ve brought you wool blankets and a kerosene lamp.”

  He lowered the rifle and came toward me, reaching for my hands.

  “You’re freezing. Please, come in where it’s warm.”

  The inside of his tent was the exact opposite of the drab exterior. The dirt floor and the walls were covered in colorful woven kilim rugs, and the perimeter was lined with pillows for sitting and sleeping. A wall of bedding and storage trunks made a dividing line down the center of the large tent—one side for Yadollah, his wife, and their six children, and the other for the herd of sixty sheep and goats, plus a horse, two mules, and a cow. There was a fire pit for cooking off to one side, and a flat rock for kneading bread. The children were huddled around one kerosene lamp for warmth, with lambs and baby goats in their laps. All eyes, animal and human, followed me as I entered their sanctuary, not ready to decide if I was friend or foe. I presented Yadollah’s wife with a loaf of bread I’d squirreled from the army kitchen, and she hugged me in thanks.

  “I just made some butter,” she said, handing me a glass of carbonated yogurt doogh just like the kind Maman made for me every night.

  Yadollah lit the kerosene lamp I’d brought and set it down next to the children, and they squealed with delight. Half of them separated from the original circle and closed around the second lamp, sharing the heat. They’d need several more lamps to beat back the subzero nights. The smallest boy reached up for my hand, pulling me down to the group. I sat cross-legged on the floor and he wiggled into my lap, hiding his chubby hands in his legs. I felt like an uncle, returned from a long trip, and I didn’t want to leave. I took food out of this boy’s mouth. I pushed the shame away and tried to be a comfortable throne for him.

  Yadollah brought out a silver tray heaping with steaming flatbread and a cup of fresh butter, and set it on the ground.

  “Our guest goes first!” he ordered, and the kids drew their hands back from the tray and stared at me. Yadollah and I each took a piece, then sat on some pillows while the feeding frenzy commenced.

  “We aren’t starving, you know,” he said. “Don’t let them fool you.”

  I nodded politely, to protect his pride.

  We talked late into the night about where we came from and what we wanted out of life. Now that I was right next to him, I could see he wasn’t the hunched-over old man I’d thought. He was fifty-five, with a plain wisdom and a broad chest and the energy of someone half his age. He’d been born in Dehloran, grew up there, earned his living, married a cousin, and had kids in Dehloran, and when the bombs started falling, he lost his home, but he wasn’t about to lose his birthplace. It was no longer safe for his animals to roam free, and if they couldn’t graze, he couldn’t make a living. So he packed up his family and the whole herd and moved them to the mountains, close to our battalion for protection.

  “And the herd was happy here, and then pooft!—my ram, he vanishes.”

  I was planning to tell Yadollah the truth in my own way, but he brought up the ram first and caught me off guard. I choked on a crumb and erupted into a coughing fit. Yadollah’s wife ran to me with a hot cup of tea.

  “Thank you,” I croaked.

  Yadollah picked up a ney cane flute and began blowing a sad tune on it, and it gave me the feeling he was talking directly to me through the sound, saying he knew what I’d done and this was what my betrayal felt like in his heart. Then he paused, as if he’d suddenly forgotten the next note.

  “None of the soldiers saw him?” he asked.

  “Everyone’s still searching.”

  As soon as the lie fell out of my mouth, I wanted to run out of the tent.

  “That was the finest beast I’ve ever had,” he said, setting the flute down. “I was going to slaughter him when the war ended. To celebrate.”

  Now more than ever, I needed to come clean, but it would’ve been too much of a sucker punch to confess right after he told me that. It was getting dark, but not dark enough that I couldn’t see the disappointment on his children’s faces. I left the warmth of his tent with an invitation to return the next night for dinner but without a clear conscience. I vowed to tell him when I returned.

  Five more kerosene lamps later, and I still hadn’t said a word. I returned to Yadollah’s tent several times a week for months, on the pretense that I needed walks to clear my head and to help me sleep at night, which everyone was only too happy to oblige. I exchanged stolen jewelry with a kitchen cook for fish and sometimes chicken to bring to Yadollah, and the more I became a part of his family, the further the ram receded from my thoughts. He was still there, but it was more like he was a dot far off on the horizon and too tired to come all the way over here and chase me. I had a secret family now, and I didn’t tell anyone in my battalion about it. Yadollah’s tent became my church, where I went to get away from the violence all around me as well as the violence inside myself. Like Mostafa before him, Yadollah became my guide, listening to my story of how I joined the war and about Mina, and giving advice when I asked. Now the children ran to me when they saw me coming, their hands grasping up to see what delicacies were in my bag. I had become their Uncle Zahed, and the oldest daughter now blushed when I came over, maybe because she wanted a husband.

  Yadollah was hungry for any news I heard on the base about the war coming to an end. It was 1988, and even our own co
mmanders were saying the war was on its last legs, that UN peace negotiators were drafting a resolution to end the war and both Saddam and Khomeini were going to sign it.

  “So, my friend, are we going to win this war soon?”

  I was stretched out on some pillows, and Yadollah was in his favorite position, sitting on a stool and polishing the wood handle of his rifle with animal fat, even though it was already so shiny you could see your reflection in it. A wild dog came sniffing by the tent and Yadollah’s wife grabbed a rock and threw it, sending the thief away.

  “I don’t think we’ll win, Yadollah. There are thirty-plus countries supporting Iraq, and we only have Libya and Korea on our side. We need more tanks, and nobody is selling us equipment or ammunition anymore.”

  “Hmpf.”

  I knew Yadollah didn’t want to hear it, but I tried to explain that the Iraqis had sophisticated stuff. Machine guns that had electronic ears that could pick up sounds and aim themselves. They had night-vision goggles with heat sensors. We were a joke with our pistols that kept jamming.

  “Listen, Yadollah, I have to tell you a secret, and I beg you to consider forgiving me.”

  “My son, you’ve always been good to us. What is it?”

  I started sweating profusely, and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.

  “I killed your ram.”

  A heavy silence descended on the tent and I felt seven pairs of eyes turn toward me, everyone’s except those of Yadollah, who stared out the door of the tent with his jaw clenched and every muscle in his face shaking. Then he picked up his gun and pointed it at me.