I, Who Did Not Die Read online

  “You did good, Zahed. This one might make it.”

  Right there, I knew what I was supposed to do with my life. After the war, I wanted to be a doctor, too.

  “Will you teach me how to do this?”

  “You don’t expect me to stitch all these poor bastards by myself, do you? You’ll need to learn sutures. And please try not to fucking faint.”

  There was no time for fainting—or teaching, for that matter. The next day an ambulance raced back from the front line with a boy who looked like he couldn’t have been much older than me. Blood was coming out of his nose and mouth, and he had a big gaping wound behind his ear. This time I watched as the doctor sewed his skin together, wincing each time the boy cried out in pain. I handed over fistfuls of gauze, but the boy’s head wouldn’t stop bleeding. Then the boy started to shake.

  “What’s happening?”

  The doctor threw his scissors down.

  “He’s going into shock. I can’t do anything more for him.”

  With that, the doctor left me alone in the surgery room with the patient. He’d stopped shaking and was moaning like he was trying to say something.

  Carefully, I approached the bedside. The boy’s eyes opened halfway, and he squinted at me.

  “Brother, what’s it going to be like to die?”

  He wanted an answer, but I had none. I wanted to say everything was going to be OK, but lying to a dying person was wrong. I couldn’t just stand there; I had to answer him. But there was no way I could know what he was asking.

  “Close your eyes,” I said, taking his hand in mine. “I will sing to you.” I began to sing: “Sleep, sleep my future hope, sleep. Hope of the future, sleep.”

  I sang the lullaby over and over until I felt the life leave his hand. I stayed with him a little longer, crying quietly, so the doctor wouldn’t hear and fire me again. I could see now why the doctor had walked away. You couldn’t possibly sing to all the patients, or your heart would get so bruised it would die, too.

  After two weeks at training camp, our Basij unit was finally sent to war. Omid had his own rifle by then, a Russian Simonov that he’d showed me how to fire a couple times. Me, I had just a medical bag. We packed our stuff and joined a convoy of military trucks carrying about three hundred of us, none older than twenty, south toward Khuzestan Province, where most of the fighting was happening closer to the Gulf. My job was to attend the wounded on the battlefield, but still it would have been nice to have some sort of protection besides my helmet.

  Our commanders said we were going to join a big operation called Sacred House, to liberate Khorramshahr, the first city the Iraqis seized when the war began almost two years before. The Arabs had bombed the water tanks and oil refineries, stolen our homes, and taken over the port, and for that, they would pay. They might think Khorramshahr was theirs to keep, but, our commanders said, they didn’t know how big our Basij hearts were. The enemy might have more firepower, but our strength came not from bullets but from Allah. We weren’t just fighting for Iran; we were fighting to save the revolution, and for Islam. If you killed one of us, ten more would spring up to fight in his place. The Iraqis put land mines all around Khorramshahr, but even that couldn’t stop the Basij, we were told, because we had something even more powerful—we weren’t afraid to die.

  It was an ink-black night when our trucks stopped in the marshy dunes of Shalamcheh, ten miles outside Khorramshahr. Our mission was to block a main road that crossed the Shatt al-Arab river into Basra, to blow up the bridge and cut off the route the Iraqis used to send troop reinforcements into Iran. Our unit was one of many that was quietly cutting off all roads leading into Khorramshahr, encircling the city to trap the Iraqis. Once we had them surrounded, we’d move in and take back what was rightfully ours.

  The cold got under our thin uniforms, and the wind tugged at my shirt and made my eyes water. Our feet made sucking noises in the mud as we trudged through a marsh, and I heard some sort of animal hiss and scurry out of the tall reeds as we passed—a fox, or maybe big rats. There were date palms everywhere, but many were singed on top from bombings, and without fronds they looked like abandoned telephone poles. Our commanders wouldn’t let us turn on our flashlights, so we stumbled in the muck, trying our best not to fall into the slime. We were making a hell of a lot of noise for a surprise attack, but luckily for us there were no homes for miles. My heart was rattling in my rib cage, but I saw all these boys around me pressing on, so I raised my chin like them and reminded myself that this was the John Wayne mission I’d been waiting for. Although I was terrified, at least I was surrounded by bravery, and that was something like security. We were searching for places to dig foxholes and make blockades when I felt a thunderous blast in my chest and saw a flash of white light up ahead. Then I heard a boy shrieking for his mother. Hundreds of feet stopped at once, and an eerie silence fell down on us.

  “There’s been an explosion; come on!” another medic shouted as he grabbed my arm and ran toward the screaming. We followed the sound to a boy about eighteen, sprawled on his back with his left leg in shreds just below the knee. His intestines were spilling out of his stomach, and his face was blackened on one side into a grotesque mask.

  “My leg! Where’s my leg!”

  My stomach clenched into a fist and my feet turned to cement. I was too scared to touch him, and I had no idea what to do. The older medic pushed me to one side and told me to call the ambulance on the walkie-talkie. Only then did I look up and see that there were medics attending a handful of boys in a circle around me. It was hard to tell which one of them had triggered the land mine. Holy shit, we had walked directly into a minefield.

  The medic pulled out the shoelace on the boy’s remaining shoe and tied it tight around the stump of his leg to stop the bleeding. He dug in his supply kit and pulled out a thick plastic bag.

  “Hold this open over his stomach,” he instructed.

  I helped him put the boy’s intestines in the bag, seal it, and tie it to his body. If the boy was lucky, he’d make it to a hospital in time for a surgeon to put the contents of the plastic bag back into him.

  The boy grabbed my arm and tried to sit up. “Did I lose my leg?”

  “Yes,” I said, gently pushing him back down. “But you still have your other leg. You will be OK.”

  He closed his eyes, maybe for the last time; I’m not sure. There was nothing else to do until the ambulance arrived. Our battalion by now had gathered into a frightened group of rabbits, afraid to take another step. We sat down together in the sand, safer in a huddle.

  The commander stood before us and shouted above the howling wind. “Brothers, your time of martyrdom has come!”

  A collective cheer rose from the group: “Long live Khomeini!”

  “I need volunteers to clear this minefield. Those who are willing, stand up.”

  The commander put his hands on his hips. He wanted us to walk in single file, a minute or so apart, to clear a straight path through the minefield to the other side where there was a small river that fed into the Shatt al-Arab. Once we’d detonated all the bombs in that corridor, our professional army could follow through safely and continue about the business of blocking the road to Basra. There was no telling how many of us would die before we set off every explosive in our chosen lane. Although Ayatollah Khomeini said religious devotion would shield us from bullets, the commander was more realistic. “If you get killed in the name of Islam,” he told us, “you will join all the prophets in paradise, where rivers run with honey and beautiful women put fruit in your mouth.” We would become heroes in our hometowns, the subject of legends and poems and monuments. Our families would get money from the government for our sacrifice, and martyr cards for extra food rations.

  To the right of me, to the left of me, boys stood up and shouted the names of the prophets they’d meet in the afterlife: “Ya Hasan! Ya Husayn!” Their fervor was like an airborne disease, and everyone was catching it, as dozens of boys volunteered, th
en more, then more, until there were nearly one hundred recruits standing, all eager to outdo one another’s zeal. I watched in disbelief as they put their weapons on the ground and walked up to the commander, ready to die. I bowed my head, hoping I wouldn’t be the only one to say no. I felt the crowd’s stare, and the word that was growing larger and larger over my head: coward. What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I a true believer like them, feeling lucky for the chance to go to paradise? Why did I have to question everything? My father must have been right; I was weak. I joined the Basij to become a man, and now that it was time to be brave, I was trembling like a ninny. Boys even younger than me were already untying their boots to donate them back rather than waste them in an explosion. I was ashamed of myself, and didn’t want my shame to ride on my shoulders for the rest of my life. Then, as if someone else was pulling the strings, I felt my hand rise in the air. Like a puppet, I stood up and walked to join the group of human minesweepers.

  Omid watched me and then slowly raised his hand too. As he approached the martyr line, I shook my head and tried to wave him back, but he always did whatever I did, like a younger brother.

  “It is time,” the commander shouted. “Awake to judgment day!”

  Boys secured their headbands tighter on their helmets and jostled to go first. The commander kissed the first boy on the forehead, the boy shouted “Ya, Ali!” and started out into the night like a ghost floating over the dunes. We lined up, and as each boy passed the commander, he kissed him and said a few private words. From the back of the line, I watched boy after boy disappear into the night and thought how strangely orderly it seemed, as one by one we moved up silently and patiently, like we were waiting in line at the school cafeteria. When I reached the commander, he asked if I had any last words.

  I thought of my parents, who were probably frantic when I had disappeared. I was probably going to die tonight, without ever getting the chance to make things right with Baba.

  “Tell my family that if I’ve done anything bad, they should forgive me.”

  He nodded and kissed my forehead. Then I took off running.

  My legs pounded the earth, beating out a tempo with my heartbeat as I flung myself forward in the pitch black, squinting to try to make out the shape of the boy in front of me. I pumped my arms and dug my feet into the pitted ground, terrified that each step would be my last. Several times I lost my balance but waved my arms frantically to stay upright. I made it about fifty yards before I heard the first explosion. It burst into an orange flash for an instant, just in time for me to see the silhouette of a body hurtling through the air. It was so unreal; it looked like something in a cartoon, like someone flung from a catapult. My legs trembled and I slowed my pace as the blasts kept coming now from up ahead, some of them yellow, some of them orange and some white. The explosives each had a different power, sometimes throwing the body a few feet, sometimes tossing a boy as high as a building.

  My mind unhinged from my body, and all of a sudden I had a bird’s-eye view of myself running below. It was a sporting match, and I was cheering myself on. “Go!” I told myself. “Go!”

  I kept going.

  Only in hell do arms and legs rain down from the sky. Everywhere I looked there were pieces of boys and blood, so much blood, as if it was seeping up from underground like oil. This was worse than any of my nightmares, any of Ghaffor’s horror films. The falling bodies detonated more mines, and the blasts were coming faster now. Chaos broke out as boys ran off the path, and others yelled for them to come back. I turned around and shouted Omid’s name, but my voice was buried beneath all the screaming.

  Something landed ahead of me and as I got closer I could see it was a blackened torso, the boy’s face half-peeled away, exposing his skull. I was hysterical now, screaming for my mother, shrieking along with everyone else as death chased us. Tears blinded my vision as I pushed myself forward and thought how stupid I had been to think war was going to be exciting. War is the stench of shit and vomit and burning flesh in your nose, forever. If I was going to die, I only hoped I’d step on one of the big land mines used to destroy tanks, because then I would just be blown into so many little pieces that I wouldn’t suffer. “Please, Death,” I begged, “come get me. Come get me now so I don’t have to see this anymore.”

  “Help me, help me, helpme, helpme, helpmehelpmehelpmehelpme!” I wailed. Or maybe I just thought it. My mouth was open, but I couldn’t tell if any sound was coming out. Then I saw a pink hazy light up ahead of me, floating just out of reach, and decided to run to it. As I got closer, the pink light got brighter and I heard the sound of a small girl laughing. Two arms reached out of the light and I reached up and clasped the hands. Dadna, my fairy, emerged from the light.

  “Follow,” she said, turning and flying in front of me. Pinpricks of pink light pulsated through the veins of her wings. I followed her blinking lights in the dark, until I felt something wet on my shoes and realized I was standing in water. The river. I’d made it through to the other side. I looked around, but Dadna was gone.

  I collapsed into the mud and hugged my knees to my chest. I rocked back and forth, trembling and squeezing my knees so hard I thought they’d break.

  Omid.

  I staggered back up to look for him and noticed the rest of my unit coming through the secure path, and some were carrying the wounded. I didn’t see Omid, but he found me first, and leaped onto my back in relief. We tumbled to the ground, weeping openly and loudly; we didn’t care about being men anymore.

  “Don’t ever do that again!” he shouted.

  “But you did it,” I said.

  “Did not.”

  “What?”

  “I started to, but then I just couldn’t do it; I freaked out and ran back. Lots of us did.”

  His confession hung in the air between us.

  “How many died?”

  Omid put his arm around my shoulders.

  “Almost everyone who tried to go all the way through, you crazy idiot.”

  “Omid, do you believe in God?”

  “Do you?”

  Mostafa always said that Islam was about peace. But if that’s true, why were two Muslim countries fighting each other? Iranians said “Allahu Akbar” and Iraqis said it too. What was the difference between this Allah and that Allah?

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “For?”

  “Teasing you about wanting to go home.”

  FOUR

  THE MAGNIFICENT ONE

  I used to be a falafel king. Now I was no more than a dog. One whistle, and I leaped out of bed in the morning. Two whistles, and I jogged in formation with the pack, while my master supervised. Run, stop, turn. Good boy. Again. Three whistles, and I got five minutes to lap up some lentil soup before the next command.

  But I was a good Iraqi soldier. I obeyed and didn’t ask questions.

  My second tour in the military had a sharper edge. I thought it was because they were trying to toughen us up for war. We were cussed at, no matter what our education level, no matter what rank we held before, as if all of us were peasants. We were kept in constant motion, going from drill to drill, so there was no time to dwell on the inevitable, that sooner or later we were going to put our lives on the line.

  They couldn’t have picked a more punishing place to train us, in the middle of a desert outside Az Zubayr on the Kuwaiti border. I’d never seen such nothingness. Haze and sand all the way to the horizon, without a structure or a tree to break up the view. I could see why nobody lived there. It was more than a hundred degrees during the day and teeth-chatteringly cold at night. But it did have one thing going for it: I could practice firing a Kalashnikov in any direction and be assured I would hit nothing.

  What I wouldn’t do for just a few hours to myself to strategize how to marry Alyaa. At night, adjusting and readjusting my long legs on the floor of the tent I shared with five others, I sometimes could see her face for just a quick flicker before I fell into an exhausted sleep. I was
so beaten down I couldn’t even muster the energy to dream, and then suddenly it was four in the morning again and I was whistled awake so the whole sadistic cycle could begin anew.

  Ten straight days of this monotony, then something out of the ordinary happened. The emergency siren wailed, signaling all of us soldiers to gather. A long caravan of open-air Russian jeeps came rumbling up and out stepped a group of high-ranking officers in dust-free uniforms with gleaming brass buttons. Our basic training was complete, they announced, and now it was time to separate us into different divisions. Some of us would be chosen for artillery, some for administration, some for special forces. I felt dread pool in my gut while the most senior officer circled us slowly, sizing us up like a farmer purchasing cattle. I fixed my gaze on the back of the head of the man in front of me and avoided eye contact. The most senior officer said nothing as he pointed at the soldiers he wanted, and the chosen twenty followed him to the jeeps and were driven who knows where.

  The next officer selected fifteen more men and left in the same secretive fashion. Finally, the lowest-ranking officer of the bunch inspected me and the last dozen men left behind. He peered into my face and slid his hands over my arms and stomach to feel my muscles. Then he shoved me to see if I would fall over. I held my ground.

  “Are any of you sick or injured?” he demanded.

  No one answered.

  “Good. All of you are now in my tank division. You have two hours to gather your things.”

  We were driven another two hours deeper into Az Zubayr, where forty-ton Russian tanks with cannons that could fire up to three miles awaited. Tank duty was one of the better assignments, I guess, because it was more protected than the poor guys who had to fire from the trenches. But tanks were also big, lumbering targets, visible from the air. Before training began, the commanders gave us the rest of the day off to visit our families, as long as we returned by five the next morning. That gave me exactly sixteen hours to find Alyaa.

  I took a bus to the nearest town and then a second bus to Basra, willing the wheezing clunker to go faster as it lazily chugged along, stopping to rest in every little outpost along the way. It was so infuriatingly slow that I even pulled the Koran my mother had given me out of my pocket and thumbed through it to distract myself. Religion was always a low-key affair with me, I respected it, but I didn’t feel the need to pray, and as usual the verses swirled before me and I gave up, slipping the book back into my shirt pocket. I made a mental note to find a different method of transportation if I ever wanted to make real use of a military leave.