Obligatory English isn’t my first language.
I’m going to die in three hours. Specifically, I’m going to be executed.
I’m being held in a small hut. The walls are washed white but stained yellow by the humidity. I can’t see them building it, but the pounding of hammers and cracking of wood swims through the thick air.
A gecko darts into a hole in the wall. Smart. My stomach is boiling. I can smell myself ripening in the heat, like a bad mango.
I’m not afraid. I know what’s coming. It would be a relief, really, but I don’t think that I’m that lucky. I’ve never been lucky.
I managed to steal this phone from one of the guards, so sorry for any typos - I’m on mobile. I don’t know if it means anything in the grand scheme of things, but I want my story out there. For people to know who I am. Who I was. Maybe, in that way, I can live forever. Instead of just being a person who existed at some point in time and then, suddenly, stopped.
***
When Aaban Nana passed his A levels, Dada and Mama wanted to celebrate.
Home was a small village in Vavuniya. It didn’t have a name because nobody ever had a reason to visit or ask directions. If you were from there, you knew it. If you weren’t, it didn’t exist.
Dada was a ticket collector on the railway, so he would disappear for months at a time, carried away in a pale blue company car that disappeared in the green hills. When he returned, he would tell stories of people he met, singing songs that he and the porters would write in the baggage. Sometimes he stole from the white people’s luggage. Nothing too valuable, but something small and dainty for Mama and I. Or a book for Nana. Nothing that would be missed.
I never left home while growing up. Dada wanted Nana to work with Pittu uncle to make furniture so we could rent a larger house, but Mama insisted that he go to school. I presume so that they would have more money for my dowry when it was time.
I was plucked from school when I was in second grade. When I got older, household chores were paired with elocution lessons, cooking, sewing. It was idyllic, despite the lack of space and privacy. My windows didn’t have curtains, so it was impossible to change without boys staring. I just learned to change before the sun came up and after it set. Hiding behind the darkness.
I saw little wrong with my life. The train was a window into a larger world I didn’t care to open.
Aaban passed his exams; not with flying colours but good enough to earn a placement. “We will have an Accountant in the family!” Dada cackled. “Maybe you can count enough money you learn to make a little bit disappear!” Mama slapped him. Aaban smiled awkwardly.
“Congratulations,” I murmured while cleaning up his dinner. He looked at me with watery eyes. “Thank you Fathi.”
Dada talked about the city all the time. The music, the smell of food, the heat and the big signs for movies. He wanted to see Lagaan.
“It’s a waste of money Dada.”
He waved away Amma’s comments with a disdainful flick of the wrist. “It is never a bad idea to live life Amma! The whole world is going by while you’re sitting here, you don’t want to see it?”
“The tickets are too much money.”
His eyes threatened to escape his head.
“It’s not a waste of money! It’s our legacy - kicking out those Britishers.”
“Are you an Indian, you idiot?”
“No, but we’re all SARC!”
Aaban Nana and I stole away from the bickering, scrubbing the dal under the Banyan tree in the courtyard.
“Do you want to see Lagaan?” I asked.
He nodded, head bobbing unsteadily on his slender neck. Adam’s apple slithering under the skin.
“It has good songs.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard it on the radio.”
“When?”
“On the trishaw, coming back from the tutor.”
“Then tell Amma! She’ll not say no to you.”
He smiled.
“She’ll say yes to Dada. She just makes him work for it.”
Dada hired Pittu Uncle’s van to go into town instead of booking tickets on the train. “There are only first class seats in the van!” he chuffed. Despite her stoicism, his giggling unearthed a small smile in Amma’s face. She wore her nice sari but kept her gold at home, buried in the little metal lunchbox Aaban used for school. She hid it in the middle of the night at the edge of the paddyfield. I wonder if the box is there still.
I was nervous. My skin itched and a hollow feeling ran up and down my neck, picking at me with long fingers. I didn’t think anything of it then; maybe it was just a discomfort with being so far from home. From seeing things that were different. My mind puzzled itself, exploring opportunities to escape. Trees to hide behind. Rocks I could make a fist with.
Silly nervousness, I thought. Foolish.
***
We stopped at a canteen on the side of the road at 7 PM. Pittu Uncle had insisted on giving us tea when we picked up the van, so we’d left home later than we’d meant to.
I thought it wondrous - much, much later - that the streets in the city were always lit. That the sun going down did not dictate how you lived your life. But in Vavuniya, at that time, nighttime was another world. Pitch black and dangerous, alive with the trills of insects and animals and dacoits. The road wasn’t safe.
The sun was still lazily sinking behind the hills when we pulled in. “There won’t be another place to stop before it gets dark” Dada said, so we pulled in.
The old man had a name I can’t remember. He was pleasant enough at first sight, smiling through milky teeth, banyan yellowed with sweat. There was a stockroom in the back that he was willing to let out for the night. He gave us some rolled up mats with colourful fabrics I’d never seen before. I looked at him, holding them up with a cocked eye.
“Musallahs,” he said. “Left behind by some Muslim family.”
Muslims never left musallahs behind. They were a part of their faith, loved and respected with an intense, familial love. But at that time, I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know what a musallah was.
***
I woke up to furious whispering.
We’d fallen asleep in a square, our feet pointing at one another. There were only enough blankets and musallahs for three, so Dada slept wrapped in his shirt. The oppressive heat and humidity of the day had lifted into a cooler breeze, but it was still so hot.
Dada and Amma slept closer to the door, their heads pointed towards it. Aaban slept to my right, his skin glinting in the moonlight.
Shadows loomed over Dada and Amma. Grotesque and impossibly dimensioned. I couldn’t make them out in the dark, heads merged into torsos, arms and legs snaked out from thick, geometric shapes.
I saw the blade flash, the same moonlight that lit my brother’s body glinted off of it.
It hit Dada with a wet thunk, a squelch and crack that sounded like a tree branch breaking in a storm.
It rose again, and came down with a fury. My father briefly and feebly tried to defend himself against the third blow, but by then he was already doomed. His ragged chokes gurgled across the clay floor.
Amma’s screams woke Aaban up, and he leapt to his feet. He charged the first shape, knocking it over, as a second brought a blade of its own down across Amma’s neck, severing her throat, the sudden silence louder than the scream.
I struggled to my feet as the blades ate my family, wrapping the musallah around my face as I rushed past the shapes. I hit one in the shoulder and knocked it off balance. It did the same to me.
“FATHI! RUN!”
Aaban struggled against the first shape, his fingers closing around the blade. Blood, viscous and black in the dark, ran down his arms. I heard soft plops as severed fingers hit the floor.
My feet found rhythm again, just as something heavy smashed into the base of my skull.
My head hit the floor hard, bright lights exploding behind my eyes. Through a haze, I heard a panicked scream followed by wet slaps of steel against meat. As my eyes failed, I saw a figure hit the floor, reaching towards me with jerky limbs -
***
I woke up unable to breathe.
Dirt caked my nostrils and mouth. I gagged as soft clumps slid down my tongue, blocking my throat.
I forced air through my nose, clods of earth popping out followed by snot, which was quickly followed by blood, which blocked air from coming through. I convulsed against the blockage in my throat before swallowing it. It burned like mud and shit, but I could breathe a little.
I couldn’t see, but pressed my forehead against the darkness. It held, but felt loose. Finding my fingers, I scrabbled at the soil packed over my head, making grooves in the earth before breaking through.
I’d been buried in no more than a foot of loose dirt that had been packed down by feet. The exertion made my eyes expand and the blood vessels pop, but I managed to excavate the sides of my face. Dark blobs swam across my vision.
Cool night air flooded my lungs and I gasped against it, hungry. The weight of the dirt on my chest stopped my lungs from expanding, so I excavated my chest, and lay back, taking it in. Earth was still packed in my ear canals, so the world was eerily quiet.
The first time I died, I was six. We were playing outside when the storm came suddenly, like a broken cart running down the street. Though we were only a few houses from home, I was soaked by the time we got back, Aaban carrying me against the wind and rain.
I caught a fever. It crept up slowly, then exploded white hot behind my eyes, filling my head, nose and throat with blood and flem. Every nerve ending caught fire and I writhed in pain on the straw bed, my mother’s hand resting on my forehead, the cool water in the cloth evaporating as it touched my skin. Her eyes full of tears, she kept repeating “It’s okay shellum, I’m here.”
When I woke up, I was covered in a white shroud, Amma’s sniffles heavy and wet. I moved the cloth off my face and asked for water. She screamed.
She and Dada later called it a miracle. Pittu Uncle said that I must have just fallen asleep and woke up after the fever broke. Aaban would later confide in me that I had stopped breathing. I’d been dead for ten hours, my skin cold, my heart still. But then, suddenly, I wasn’t.
The next time, there was no confusion about what happened. Which is why Aaban never told anyone.
Karthik was one of the boys in our village. He went to school with Aaban, and they would sometimes share the trishaw coming back to split the fare instead of walking home. One night they both were held behind and came home late, so Aaban insisted that he come to our house for dinner. Meager as it was, he complimented it gratefully. His laugh was thick and sonorous, the jawbone in his face sharp as he smiled at me with playful eyes.
Behind the house was a road that Appa had built to reach the old well. We didn’t go that way anymore after the pumps were put in a few years ago. The underbrush slowly swallowed it, and animals ran through the tall grass, dissuading anyone from using it. But it didn’t scare Karthik.
He came to the window to talk to me after school, crawling through the grass and vines and flowers, which he would pick and tie into larger flowers before gifting them to me. I hid them under my mattress, where I’m sure they’ve turned black with neglect and age.
He’d compliment me about my hair, my skin, my smile, my cheeks when they’d burn red at his words and soft laughter. The first time he’d watched me changing after dark I wasn’t aware that he was there. But the next time I was. And the time after that as well. The time after that, he reciprocated, and I took my turn watching him.
Aaban found out somehow, and his anger was apocalyptic, cleaving through the clouds like Kalki on his horse.
Karthik visited every other evening, so I was expecting him that night. I was surprised instead to see Aaban at the window.
“It’s okay Fathi, come, I want to talk to both of you.”
Nervous but excited, I wrapped a shawl around my head, tiptoed past my sleeping parents, and stepped into the night air. I felt light headed, the anticipation thrilling my senses and heating my blood.
Aaban stood next to the coconut tree, and said something I can’t remember before he hit me on my cheek with a stone, breaking the bones of my eyes.
He dragged me in the dirt through the old vines and grass and hit me again and again, telling me that I was risking his future and our family’s honour. That I was a veci, and that I would ruin his name and reputation. I begged and pleaded and promised that I wouldn’t do it again, hot tears rolling from my blind eyes, my fingers too brittle to pry off his stone vise grip, bones breaking under his crushing pressure.
He took me to the well and pushed away the heavy stone covering the entrance. He told me he loved me, but that my sinfulness was the reason for everything bad in our lives. He promised me that my death would one day be a blessing for the family that they wouldn’t be able to see for a long time, but it would be there, waiting for them after the rain. Then he threw me in.
I fell for an eternity, then landed on my head; the soft pop of my spine and the cutting of the thread killed my arms and legs. The world blackened as I sank into the soft mud, which oozed over and around me, swallowing me whole as the stone whined back over the entrance.
When I woke, my lungs were full of water and mud. The feeling was awful, as if my entire body was filled with cement. My brain and eyes burned, and when I dragged myself out of the dark I vomited for hours. I had to swallow the mud in my throat to clear my lungs, vomiting that so I could breathe a little bit more each time.
There was little light, seeping in from the moon and the sun in turns through the gaps in the stone. It was mercifully cool during the day, but freezing at night. I floated for hours as my body knitted itself, before my limbs moved properly again.
I found Karthik down there. His body hacked to ribbons by dull metal, deep gouges in his flesh speaking to an unspeakable anger. The wounds had blackened but not yet rotted due to the cooling, healing mud. I was confused rather than horrified, cupping his hollow face in my hands, entranced by the feel of his skin and the liquid of his brain that wept from the back of his shattered skull.
It took me two days to push the stone aside. On the third day, the break of daylight stung my eyes, and I realized I could see clearly again. Both eyes perfect. It was at this moment that I knew something was different. What it was I didn’t know.
But Aaban knew. He came home from school to Amma delirious with happiness. I told her I’d gotten attacked in the jungle by an animal. Something I didn’t see, that had dragged me off in the dark but had thankfully left me whole. She told me that Dada and Aaban had been with the men, searching for the whole last two days. “Your brother didn’t sleep, he couldn’t eat,” Amma sobbed as she held me. “We were all so worried.” The tips of her fingers were numb and burned from candle matches, melted wax forming a thick pool in front of her shrine to Lakshmi.
I looked at Aaban, morose. His face was pale despite the hammer of the sun. Gaunt. His eyes looked like deep tunnels burrowed into his face. Flesh taut over his bones. I could not find anger towards him in my heart, simply sadness and disappointment. Incredulity that he could discard me so carelessly.
We learned he’d passed his A Levels a few days later. I didn’t say a word to him until after he’d eaten - his first meal in days or so he said.
“Congratulations,” I murmured while cleaning up his dinner. He looked at me with watery eyes. “Thank you Fathi.”
All that night, the sound of him vomiting filled the house.
***
I dug myself out of my grave, thinking of the viscous mud in the well, when the rain started to fall. Soft, fat droplets hardened as they stung my skin. I drank water that pooled on my wrists and elbows, sucking greedily to chase away the acid taste of dirt.
I heard laughter.
The jungle is a living thing, full of sound. But human sounds are different. They ring through, heavy and wet, like something that doesn’t belong. The laughter didn’t belong.
I dragged myself out of the lazily dug hole, looking down at the criss cross of white flesh that shone hard against my dark skin. Catching the moonlight like pale eggs.
More laughter. Dancing in my head across the gurgle of blood seeping from my father’s throat.
Maybe they were like me? Could they be alive?
Those hopes died almost as soon as my heart wished for them.
Mounds of overturned earth lay before me, slapped down with feet and shovels. The dirt was swollen with the rain, ants running across the surface, burrowing into the deep dark.
I fell across the first mound, birdlike fingers tearing away heavy clumps of wet earth. An insane hope and blood humming in my ears. It didn’t take long before I found Amma’s sari, the tattered remnants glittering weakly in the moonlight like a dying firefly. Her head was gone.
Something inside me broke. Something mad and angry gripped my heart and rotted my soul as I waited for the laughter to stop. Waited until the candles were blown out, before creeping across the veranda, where bloody machetes lay in the rain, the water carrying away the remains of my family into the drain on the roadside.
I threw four of the long knives into the drain, where they were buried by fast moving mud and water. Picking up the longest, the lightest I found. In the glint of light I saw a wicked scar across my elbow like an empty nest after the hawk’s attack. The pounding of my heart roared in my ears as I opened the door carefully, and stepped inside.
***
I was found later that day by a family stopping from the road. Asleep, covered in blood and the remnants of the dacoits and the shopkeeper, who was indubitably working with them. Lazily, I heard their screams and panicked whispers, before falling asleep again.
***
I woke up in the police station, being questioned for the murders of the men and three other people whose bodies were found buried behind the canteen. They questioned who I was, where I was from, why I’d done what I’d done. I gave them nothing - not because I didn’t want to, but because I was filled with this incredible sense of fatigue. Exhaustion flooded and filled my nerve endings. When I was aware, I heard Amma’s scream, shrill and sharp and pure until the blade sang its song. I thought of that as I swung the machete into the skulls of the sleeping men, repaying their favour in blood.
The canteen owner had woken up to the sounds of steel eating meat. He begged for his life, apologized for his role. His scream wasn’t like Amma’s though. It was earthy and ugly, like a lame donkey being put out of its misery. I didn’t have any kindness in my heart for him.
And now, I had nobody to speak for me. Nobody to prove my story. Nobody here knew me. Pittu Uncle’s van was gone, presumably taken for chop.
***
I’ve made my peace with death. I want to die. I want it to be over so I can rest. I don’t think I - or whatever power that has a good of me - can piece my body together again. I’m desperately afraid it will, terrified that my body will keep my soul here, not letting me go.
Thank you for reading my confession. I hope that, by the time you do, I won’t have to suffer this world anymore. I hope that someone else finds my story and knows that you don’t have to let them make you live the way they want you to. And if they do, you can take their flesh with you.
Fathi.