140 / 145
140
“I have the guts to die, but do you have the guts to live?” he
quoted, long, dark hair falling into his eyes. His face was impassive,
tiger-striped in the light from the lamps. A gunshot cracked against
the stillness of the night, and I jumped. “I’ve been thinking about it
a lot, lately, what with the war and all. Because, you know…” he let
the sentence drop, and barked a laugh.
I punched his shoulder affectionately. “Don’t you go and die on
me, now. We’ve got a war to get through.”
So flippant back then! Had I known what I know now about the
mental cost of war, I would probably have been more tactful.
But it was an interesting thought, nonetheless, disquieting and
almost ironic, here in a war-zone at the end of the world.
’
I found Hakim curled up on my living room floor the next morning,
arms over his head and eyes closed, and, in fits and starts, received
his story.
He couldn’t even remember what he’d been doing, he told me.
Reading, watching TV, whatever, when suddenly he’s on the floor,
eyes rammed closed and writhing, fingernails embedding crescents
in his skull as he struggled to hold onto himself through those
sounds.
The thump of a windblown book hitting the floor, I realised
later, can sound uncannily like a gunshot.
His heart was racing, almost palpitating in his chest, oxygen was
just out of reach, every hair and nerve in his body attuned to the
slightest sound, the slightest current of air, the slightest vibration,
and he was shaking, trembling, shivering.
He told me where he’d been the past eight months.
He told me about the failed raid, how they’d stormed them,
found him, and dragged him blindfolded to a bunker underground,
where they held him and bound him and tortured him in the dark.
I thought about all I’d heard of torture –how many troops had
raided places like that in the past to discover gruesome anomalies;
prisoners of war bled dry, humans kept under solitary confinement
and tortured for days on end to test the authenticity of papers
written by madmen; shackles and syringes and knives.
I held my partner as his seizures subsided, and thought again of
Tennessee Williams. I thought of all I knew of bravery, and
wondered what it felt like, truly having the courage to live.
I held him as the sun rose.
‘
Courage To Live
12