The Return of Faraz Ali by Aamina Ahmad

Author:Aamina Ahmad [Ahmad, Aamina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Published: 2022-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty

Benghazi, September 1942

Weeks went by and nothing changed; there were no orders to get them shipped out. There was no news of the war other than, no, they still hadn’t won it. Since he’d come to realize that Tshepo was not coming back, hope had not dwindled, it was just gone, quick, like a light put out. To be here in this misery, waiting for some kind of ending, alone—he couldn’t do it. The sharp sunlight of Libya turned into a darkness so whole and complete, he knew he would not emerge from it. There was a strange relief in this, in giving up. After that, it was a matter of days before he stopped getting up to get his rations. He spent most of his time in the makeshift tent, staring up at the slivers of sky visible where the fabric of the groundsheets didn’t quite meet. He lay there now, not moving. How he had taken his body for granted before this, frustrated by its limits (if he were a bit quicker, then he wouldn’t have dropped that catch!), but now as he felt life drain from it, he found a new appreciation of all it had done for him, all it continued to do. When he laid his hand on his stomach, he was sure he felt, just under the skin, the blood moving through him, the shape of his liver, his lungs, his heart behind the rib cage he could feel now. Still there, old man, still there. Why won’t you die? How long is this supposed to take? I’m trying, his body seemed to say, as he felt everything slow—I’m doing my best for you, as always.

As he waited, he wrote letters in his head, to his mother, his father. They were blank after a while because he no longer had the energy to think of words but still he felt as if he were writing them—pleasant letters that asked after his siblings, his dear Afzal Chacha, the gardener. He wanted to ask his mother about the dinner parties she liked to throw: Were there still dinner parties in Lahore? Anywhere? Was there anywhere left in the world not scarred by the sound of munitions being fired, the whistle of falling bombs? Was anyone anywhere having fun? Were children still growing up? Was his son? As strange as it sounded to him, son, he was surprised to find himself relieved that his son was safe somewhere away from this, or so he hoped. Ridiculous that he was even thinking it. But the thought returned—he wanted his son to live. To be alive, to grow up, to become something. He wasn’t sure where it had come from. But the fainter, the more distant everything around him grew, the more it persisted.

He sensed movement, someone at the threshold of his tent. He was much too tired to open his eyes, to ask who it might be, so he said nothing. He thought of ghosts, of djinns. Perhaps

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