Nervous Goats, Huddling in the Dark
By Michael Kelly

 

Taher Khan imagines he has a daughter.  He would teach her to read.  He would make her a silk kite, show her how to maneuver the strings to make it fly.  They would have tea together in the shade of palm trees.  He would name her Nasreen.

He imagines a son.  A thin happy boy with a smile wider than the Helmand river.  They would play buzul-bazi together, visit the mountains.  He would name him Rasheed.

And because you can not have a son and daughter without a wife, in his mind’s eye Taher conjures a wife.  Beautiful, of course.  And smart.  They would talk and, in private, hold hands, touch, kiss.  Her name is Laila.

Returning from his daily fishing sojourn in the Helmand River, Taher finds such a family in a small stone house on the outskirts of Lashkar.  The day is dim and cold.  Black clouds clot a violent gray sky.  The goats, penned in the back, bleat familiar agitation.  He speaks to the goats calmly, smoothes their matted fur with his rough hands.  He walks into the house.

Taher blinks, drops his catch of fish.  He smells goat shit and blood.  Fish guts.  Electric thrum of flies in the air.  Outside, thunder cracks, and the goats cry.  The girl is face down, backwards on the small chair, as if she was a boneless rag doll tossed aside.  Her burqa is caught on the seat of the chair, exposing pale stick legs.  The back of her head, devoid of veil, is matted and tacky with blood.  The flies buzz.  Taher moves to the girl.  He swats at the flies, grabs hold of her torso, slowly turns her, seats her in the chair.  Her face is scratched, crusted with dried mud and blood.  Her eyes are open.  Under their milky surface, Taher can see that her eyes are golden-brown.  He wonders if those eyes ever saw a dark kite swooping against a blue, cloudless sky.

And Taher wonders if those golden-brown eyes witnessed what happened to the boy.

Ah, the boy.  The boy’s head is on the kitchen table, placed precisely in the center.  Eyes closed.  Mouth open, but not smiling, no.  The body is on the muddy kitchen floor.

The woman, for Taher knows you can not have a boy and a girl without a woman, must be in the other room.  He moves around the boy, crosses to the bedroom.  The woman is on the small cot, naked, prone as if sleeping.  Taher steps closer.  Ragged wounds cover her torso.  Her hair is the color of a midnight sky.  Full mouth.  Smooth skin.  Beautiful still.

A rumble from outside.  The goats stamp their feet, shuffle against the pen.  Thunder, Taher thinks, but the rumble grows louder, closer.  He steps out the main door.  The dark sky is close, suffocating, and near to bursting.

Down the pathway, on the dirt road, a dim figure stands beside a small armored vehicle.  Taher blinks.  A soldier.  Western, perhaps.  Maybe an Afghan national.  Taliban?  The distance is too great, he can’t be sure.

The shadowy form holds a weapon close to his chest.  He stares at Taher, and Taher stares back.  The distant figure yells something but it is muffled, unintelligible.  A warning, Taher thinks.  Or an offer of help.

Taher says nothing.  A boom of thunder and the dark figure flinches.  But Taher, hands at his sides, keeps staring.  It is all he can do.  Rain falls in heavy wet sheets, as if the ashen, sodden sky had been slashed with a thousand knives.  The stranger looks up into the smoke-colored sky, climbs into his vehicle and, with a glance at Taher, drives off.  Taher turns, walks into the house.

Inside, Taher finds a small spade.  He takes it out back, well past the goat pen, and begins to dig.  Water seeps into the holes.  It is near dark now and he works quickly.  After a while the rain lets up, and the three small wet holes that Taher has dug begin to drain.  He stands, moves into the house.  In turns – two trips for the boy – Taher carefully takes the bodies from the house and places them into the holes in the ground.  Momentarily, the goats are quiet.  He pushes the mud into the holes, filling them as best he can.  He speaks to the goats, looks into their cheerless eyes, pats their heads.

Taher drifts back into the house.  He finds a rag, and on hands and knees scrubs the floor, the table, the chair, the bed, everything.  He scrubs for a very long time.  Then he sits at the bare table, looks around the dim small room.  He imagines, briefly, that he has a family.

Outside, in the vast dark, the goats cry and huddle together.

 

END