I, Who Did Not Die by Zahed Haftlang & Najah Aboud

Author:Zahed Haftlang & Najah Aboud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regan Arts.

ELEVEN

YADOLLAH’S RAM

One supremely annoying thing about the Basij was that they were very strict about daily prayers. We were expected to pray three times a day, and the only exception was when we were in the middle of battle, of course. Other than that, hundreds of us would routinely form a perfect line, bow down at the same time, and come up at the same time, all singing the same sound together. But if I was going to talk to God, I wanted to do it in my own language. Why did I have to just repeat stuff in Arabic that the minister of ideology and politics ordered me to say? That wasn’t really praying; that was being a parrot. If I was going to talk to Allah, it should be in my own language, and what I would say in Persian was, “You are an asshole.” Every time I asked him why he killed Mina, all I got was silence.

I had no use for religion, so I found every excuse to skip prayers. Sometimes I had a stomachache. Sometimes I pretended to be off spying on the enemy, when actually I was hiding in one of the caves not far from the base, overlooking the bombed-out city of Dehloran. I’d been given a warning—several of them, actually—that I’d be kicked out of the Basij if I continued to miss prayers. I nodded like I was sorry, but I truly didn’t give a shit. They were empty threats, anyway. In the year since Mina was killed, I had honed my skills as a sharpshooter to the point that I could shatter the telescope lens on an armored tank. The driver would be forced to come up through the hatch to get his bearings, and I’d wait for it . . . then kiss my trigger finger and nail him in the head. When I got a direct hit like that, for a brief moment I felt one or two of my heartbeats, just before I went back to being numb again.

Since Mina had died, my tongue had stopped tasting food and my eyes had stopped sleeping at night. There was something wrong with my ears, so when anyone spoke to me, all I heard was a voice clogged by a ball of cotton. I didn’t have the energy for conversation, and I muttered so many one-word answers that people stopped talking to me altogether. Killing was my only accomplishment. Yeah, I was an excellent sniper, and I was pretty sure the commanders couldn’t afford to get rid of me. So I wasn’t going to join the performing parrots every day. Go choke on your prayers for all I care, I thought.

So that’s why I was standing outside my tent alone just before sundown while the rest of my unit was off bowing to God, when I heard the soft tinkle of bells approaching. I turned and saw a gray-haired shepherd herding a flock of sheep, with a young girl in bright red robes by his side.

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