The First Stone

by Carsten Jensen

  Steffensen gathers Third Platoon together and explains what’s going to happen. They accept the proposal. “Now, we’re the Taliban,” says Camper. “Warriors dressed as civilians. Fuck, man—all those times I’ve had my finger on the trigger but wasn’t allowed to shoot! Now it’s their turn!” He points up at the sky. “They must be more than a little frustrated up there.” He looks at the others, who are all laughing. But I can hear in their laughter that they’re only trying to buck up their courage.

  The first group leaves the woods shortly thereafter. It’s an old man with a crooked cane, a woman in a burka, and two children. We give them time to cross the rocky plain before we send out the next group, also a man, a woman, and two children. The man is younger and keeps his weapon hidden beneath his kirtle. The sky is clear. We can’t see any drones, nor do we hear them, but we know they’re somewhere high above us. An F-18 suddenly thunders across the plain. The small group halfway across freezes. I’ve given the order not to run unless you’re fired on. When panic strikes, however, reason goes out the door. Will they expose themselves as soon as they start running? Is that how the pilot will see it? I have no idea. A fighter jet firing air-to-ground missiles at a man, a woman, and two children? It seems absurd—but war is full of absurdities. I suddenly tense. Am I about to witness their death? The fighter jet roars by. The little group passed the test. They didn’t run. Now they’re moving at the same tempo as before toward the two stone circles indicating the border.

  We send out the next small group. This time one of the soldiers is with them. Simon, in a shalwar kameez, followed by two larger boys holding his hands. An idyllic scene in the midst of all this horror.

  It goes on like this for about an hour—in fact, we’ve gotten more over to the other side than we expected, about twenty-five. Just seven or eight more hours and we’ll all be over there.

  Although the fighter jet has appeared several times, nothing has happened. I can’t say we’ve gotten used to it—I’m startled every time—but the panic stays at bay.

  “They’re slow on the uptake,” says Sharif, who’s standing next to me. “Surely they know what’s going on.”

  “What can they do?” I smile back at him. I’m beginning to think the plan will work.

  Suddenly we hear the howl of fighter jets. This time three F-18s are headed right for us. Trails of smoke shoot out from beneath the planes—and the next moment the entire forest is under attack. No fountains of gravel or fire shoot up from the ground beneath us. Instead, it’s like gigantic lilies unfolding their petals in all directions. Flames rise with a hungry roar as if they want to devour all the oxygen in the area. Firebombs.

  The trees around us ignite, the junipers vanishing in a sudden wave of heat. Trunks and branches turn black, as in an x-ray. Men, women, and children fall to the ground, their robes on fire. If these are white phosphorous bombs, as I fear, there’s nothing we can do. The flames will eat flesh right down to the bone. I see Malalai’s sisters holding hands, still dressed in white, erect, immovable. They’ve finally found their element in the fire. Suddenly they burst into flames and fall down, as if felled by an axe, but still holding hands.

  Everyone runs from the sea of flames rising behind us. Seeing Bahramand in front of me, alone, screaming in horror, I grab his hand and drag him with me. He stumbles and falls. I pull him along for a bit and then sling him over my shoulder. He feels surprisingly light.

  At the end of the plain, several hundred meters up, there’s a gigantic ground-attack AC-130, with a wingspan of over forty meters, crammed full with howitzers, 20 millimeter cannons, and machine guns, an oversized psychotic threat, able to wipe out a whole company of well-armed soldiers, with a crew of more men than the platoon I’m trying to save. A doomsday machine.

  Can feet think? How far is it to the brain’s survival instinct? I run like I’ve never run before. Bahramand whimpers on my shoulder. Can he see the burning forests and the figures falling, their clothes in flames? Can he see the glowing corpses lying among the stones? As an old man stumbles to the ground at my right, a younger villager grabs his arms and pulls him along. A little farther ahead, Sharif is sprinting wildly, alone, and I know what’s driving that wild sprint—and what will be driving him for the rest of his life. Revenge. Nothing else.

  A shepherd stands there surrounded by a surging flock of sheep. A salvo cuts him down, and red splatters from many of the sheep. The animals dash off in all directions before they stop, confused, staring, until the mass exodus registers again and they run in the same direction as the rest of us. A donkey is suddenly lying in front of me. Swerving to avoid it, I collide with a man coming from behind. We both trip but regain our balance and keep running. Like sheep. Like donkeys. Like people.

  They’re falling all around me. Only chance decides.

  Yet, not everyone falls. Will the shooting stop once we reach the two stone circles at the border? I dare not think about it. It’s the only thing driving me forward: if I just run fast enough, I’ll find refuge.

  My eyes are blind with tears, though I have no idea where they’re coming from. An old woman is on her knees before me, where she must have fallen. I already have Bahramand on my shoulder, so I can’t carry her, too. I stop for one damn second and lift her back on her feet. “Come on!” I scream into her face. I can’t even hear my own voice with all this noise. We keep running. The boy on my shoulder isn’t moving; for a moment I wonder if I’m carrying a dead body. No time to check, although I know my chance of being hit is just as great whether I’m standing still or in the middle of a breathless sprint. The gunners don’t even have to aim: they just need to spray the plain, and some body, person or animal, will be in the way, one here, one there. Merciless chance will take care of the rest. When harvesting, a combine doesn’t go after specific pieces of straw.

  I trip, reaching out with my free hand and trying to hit the ground with my free shoulder, so I don’t land on the boy with my full weight. Everything goes black.

  The noise from the jets subsides, which I perceive as my senses shutting down. It’s all over now. I’m going into the darkness. I hear Bahramand scream, and I think that this is what eternity sounds like, the echo of a child screaming in pain. I hear a woman scream, too, and I think the same thing. Eternity is a woman screaming in pain. And then I scream, a long, despondent cry from the bottom of an empty well I once confused with my soul. In death, I’ll be just as homeless as I am in life. Muslims have one view of life after death, and Christians have another. But I don’t have any.

  I feel the boy kick, struggling to get out from under me. I try to push myself up on my hands, but my left hand got torn up when I tried to break my fall. I can’t lean on it, so I decide to just sit up. Bahramand has already wriggled loose and is gone. I don’t hear any noise. No machine guns thundering across the plain between the mountains. A stone circle rises to my right. We’re inside Pakistan. One, two, maybe three meters in, that’s all, but we made it.

  And I know that “we” is much too optimistic. “We” didn’t make it. Some of us made it. Time to find out how many.

  Leaning on one knee, I stand up. The plain is riddled with bodies, people and animals. The woods we ran out of only minutes ago is now a wall of flames, as if nature is telling us there’s no way back.

  49

  They’re lying out there. The wounded, the dead, the silent. Should we just leave them there?

  We’ve put our lives on the line to cross the plain. It would be dangerous to go back. Or have the pilots, the operators, the planners—whoever—achieved their goals? Have we been sufficiently maimed and frightened? Have we learned our lesson? Is that what they think?

  The cries of pain continue.

  The villagers start to walk back out onto the plain. At first only a few of them, then more. Maybe they recognize some of the voices calling for them. Their movements are almost trancelike.

  Projectiles from a 20 millimeter cannon do horrible damage to a body. People are gathered aro
und each of the figures lying on the plain. Wailing, some throw themselves on top of the bodies. Once they’re helped back up on their feet and led away, they’re smeared in the deceased’s blood. The same clothes that were protecting them from the cold become improvised body bags, although they mostly resemble bloody packages of slaughterhouse waste. A woolen shawl, a kirtle with half a body in it. The useless burkas finally serve some purpose; inside, there’s a jumble of shattered body parts that can’t be reconstructed. The men handle the men’s bodies, while the women see to the women’s and children’s. The wounded moan, sobbing, imploring, restless mumbles that no one would hear if the doomsday machine still hovered above us. Right now it wouldn’t make any difference. We’re catatonic, in a state of shock, and would just stand there if a new attack occurred.

  The wounded animals neither bray nor bleat. The pain forces whole new sounds out of them. While it turns people into animals, pain turns animals into people. Their cries are inconsolable, and as we move out onto the plain to put them out of their misery, we find a child lying on the ground as often as we find a screaming donkey or sheep. The trembling animals with anxious gazes that search for some meaning they’ve never known get a bullet to the head.

  The explosive fire in the woods has died down. A smoldering layer of ash blankets what was once the forest floor. Only charred stumps remain of the juniper trees.

  There are ninety-one dead and wounded. Most of the injured will not survive. So about half of us must be alive, reduced to medics and pallbearers carrying the heaviest of all burdens. I don’t know what tally I’m keeping . . . some inner tally, I guess.

  I walk from one body to the next, as if they all belong to the group I feel personally responsible for. Kneeling in front of each prostrate figure, Simon, who has run out of bandages, looks up at me and shakes his head. Seven Danes have been killed. Viktor, the sergeant. Camper, the silent sharpshooter with the Icelandic background. Andreas, the squirt with the camera. Sylvester is lying there, too. Dennis. They look even paler in death. Their lifeless faces resemble pieces of the moon that have fallen to earth after a cosmic collision. Some of the Danes didn’t manage to get out of the burning woods in time. Only ashes remain of Sebastian and Mathias. Five of us are still living. Five! Steffensen, Hannah, Simon, the chaplain—and me. All this murder, all this suffering, and I’ll return with only four of the fifteen I was supposed to save.

  Do the others realize the grotesque cost of their survival? Do I? Yes, I do. My mission has failed. All that remains is the lone thought of saving us. We must do what soldiers always do: let the big questions retreat for practical considerations.

  We’re on the border between two countries, a border between life and death. One small hillside after another emerges on the land next to the two stone circles. The villagers then place sticks in the burial mounds and tie torn pieces of clothes to them. The fluttering flags are spotted with blood. The women’s cries rise above the plain. They’ve drawn Hannah into their circle, just as the nomad women did; for a moment she disappears among them, and I think that’s a good place for her to be. Lonely grief is unbearable, while shared sorrow has the power to heal.

  Future travelers passing by the grave site in this barren countryside will know that no one died peacefully here. Will a myth form around this place? Will it become a mecca for wayward shepherds and people in flight who’ve stopped for a moment? And what will they think? What stories will they tell?

  I know why the dead lie here; they were caught in the crossfire between too many agendas. One of them mine.

  Danes will be lying here, too. The chaplain’s hands shake. His arms hang by his sides, as if he’s fighting the urge to fold his hands in prayer. Simon has one hand on his shoulder. Steffensen, his face stony, stands on the other side doing the same. Møller’s lips move; he mumbles nonstop in Danish, as if he has a fever. “For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return, for you . . .” Suddenly he stops, as if he’s lost faith in the resurrection.

  “For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return . . .” He’s not preaching now, but isn’t that the lesson today, the paralyzing lesson preventing him from finishing the ritual?

  As we’re about to start digging holes where our comrades will lie, the ancient man with the crooked cane walks over. “They can’t lie in the ground,” he says with trembling lips, his voice shaking. “These dead are martyrs. They must be buried as martyrs.”

  Having buried their own, the villagers come over, each one dragging large- and medium-size stones. They want to build a holy shrine, what they call a ziarat, in honor of the murdered jihadists. I explain it to the soldiers, and we help to drag stones together. The children carry stones, too. The peasant women, who are as strong as their husbands, lend a hand while continuing to wail out their grief in rising and falling rhythm with the hard toil of dragging the stones. Before long, a two-meter-high monument rises over the mutilated bodies, which none of us could bear looking at when we laid them in a row. A blood-spattered pennant now also waves above the holy shrine.

  The chaplain raises a hand as if he wants our attention. “Our imam will now say a few words in our own language,” I say. They nod in understanding.

  “The day of wrath,” says Møller. He looks around at each of us, and I get the feeling he’s telling us to keep what we’re about to hear to ourselves. “Today you have witnessed the Lord’s wrath. He has shown us what Judgment Day means to him. Not the day when the sheep are separated from the goats, or the just from the unjust, but the day when he slaughters as he pleases. Did any of you think Judgment Day was a courtroom with prosecutors and defense lawyers and a thoughtful jury, psychological empathy and judicial quibbling? Think again. An all-powerful executioner awaits all of you, turning the world into one big execution. Today, the Lord has let his mask fall, revealing his hatred for the very world he breathed life into. He only created it for the pleasure of destroying it. Jesus was nothing more than a cheap trick, the Lord dressed up as an executioner who, with sword in hand, fills his face with kindness before letting the axe fall with all his destructive power. Can anyone believe in such a god? Only if you surrender unconditionally to the injustice of his actions.”

  “What did he say?” asks the old man with the cane.

  “He praised Allah, the kind and merciful,” I say.

  A woman steps in between the graves. She resembles a ghost, as if the dead, already restless, have returned to earth. Her face and long hair are covered with ash, as are her floor-length dress and the two hands wrapped around a gray bundle.

  Sara has the same effect on me as always, compelling and repellant, appealing and abominable, as if she possesses something otherworldly. That’s how she looks right now, not like a survivor but like a herald of death, just as she has always been.

  She lifts the gray bundle over her head. “Malalai’s sisters!” she yells. “I hold their ashes in my hands. Never forget why the martyrs died.”

  They start to build a new ziarat for the gray bundle with the women’s ashes. The ashes are wrapped in a burka: the three women will be buried with the very symbol of their bondage. The burka surrounds them in death, as it would have for most of their lives.

  Another moan comes from the plain. I thought we had brought the last one in, but there’s that sound again. Is it an animal or a person? In the state we’re in, we can’t tell. A small group of us walks out. Simon, his face a mask of exhaustion, is the only Dane who goes with us. Three Afghan women, one of them Sara, accompany two of their men. To my surprise, Bahramand follows a short distance behind us.

  Are we going out to help or to eliminate the last source of horror these endless cries awaken in us? Do we really think that silence, now indistinguishable from death, will have any healing effects?

  As we approach, the moan grows into a scream, a persistent scream, as if all that’s left of life is concentrated in that scream.

  Bahramand locates the scream. It’s coming from a burned little body, cov
ered in charred skin, exposed dark-red flesh and yellow bones, incomprehensibly alive, even more incomprehensibly with open, staring eyes filled with horror and pain. One arm lies to the side like someone crucified, a symbol that has no meaning here. Powerless, we stand there. What can we do? Gather up the body? It would fall apart in our hands. I see an Afghan, his hands shaking, reach for his Kalashnikov. Simon is doing the same with his rifle. A mercy shot. Even the women are speechless. No plaintive cries. Out of respect for the little body in pain, they stay silent.

  Sara walks over to the child, who appears to be a boy, and kneels down beside him. I don’t dare look at her face; I don’t want to know what’s motivating this merciless woman. She takes the charred hand in her own, a half-incinerated human claw, which should have no feeling left, yet the empty stare turns toward her and fills with recognition, not that the child knows who she is, only that she’s there in the middle of this nightmare: a person. Sara moves her hand up to the child’s cheek. She touches the eyelids, still intact in the burned-off face, and closes them one by one. The scream is gone. The little chest rises and falls. The child is dead.

  Sara’s son is standing right behind her, and I see something I never thought possible. He embraces her from behind, laying his head on her back, and she doesn’t push him away.

  I don’t hear it approaching, but a low-flying fighter jet suddenly roars overhead, followed by a rolling wave of earth-shattering noise as it breaks the sound barrier. I don’t know why I’m looking up instead of throwing myself on the ground. At the same moment, the pilot tilts his wings as if greeting us. One wing tip comes dangerously close to the ground, and then he rights the plane before climbing over the mountains and vanishing in a glint of silver. No missiles. No machine guns. What did he want? One last show of power? To see how we’re doing?

  Now horror has a face. Not a flying doomsday machine but a person in a cockpit. Not death as an impersonal force but recognizable, with a name and an address. I’m not sure if it makes it more or less frightening.