Chapter 38
Reinforcements and supplies arrive from eastern Khor.
For hours, warriors and villagers alike sift for bodies through the once fertile valley.
The survivors are tended to in a healing tent, and I help distribute rations with Katayoun.
Cemil had simply cursed at the carnage of the township, hands shaking, before storming off.
Hours later, after a medic wraps my shoulder, I am granted a short rest. I force myself to address the corpse, laid next to thousands of martyrs, tied with raven-feathered cloth.
When my hands lift the sheet, my sleeve muffles my cry.
Arezu is still dead.
I stand there, frozen. When Alif Adel crosses through the rows of bodies and passes me, I tug at his tunic.
‘Tell me that I imagined it.’
‘Imagined what?’
My voice veers into something ugly. ‘Tell me. I want to forget, I want to be wrong, please— ’
‘Underling.’ He pries my hands off.
I point wildly to the body. ‘Tell me that’s not Arezu.’
His expression falls. ‘Arezu deserted a month ago from the pazktab.’
I fall on to my hands. ‘No.’
‘It’s true.’
Ice claws my chest. ‘I had a right to know—’
His face is firmed against remorse. ‘Your overseers would never jeopardise this war for personal attachments. Arezu had not yet enlisted. She was simply a brave pazktab girl who fled hastily to defend her township. If word spread of a child running away, it would set a dangerous precedent in the pazktab. What if her peers foolishly followed her? If we had informed you, you would have left your posting. In war, we make difficult decisions, and as your superiors, Yabghu and I decided against informing you.’
All the signs were there. Arezu spoke of her hopes to defend Khor.
She begged me to lie about the realities of war – she ached for their comfort so she could believe she had a chance to live.
She was a scared girl diving into the throes of battle.
When she promised to reunite with me after the war, she was lying to me as much as I was lying to her.
‘You knew,’ I croak.
‘You cannot understand what goes into war until an entire empire’s fate rests in your hands.’ He pats a hand on my shoulder. I am too numb to recoil. ‘Khamilla, no doubt she’s a hero. But she is one death out of many. War does that to people; it turns bodies into numbers.’
The frankness of it. The cold condolence is a sharp knife. I stare at other warriors hunched over corpses. The injustice of it cleaves my heart in two. I cannot even protest Adel’s logic, because if Arezu was another’s comrade, I would not flinch at her death.
‘She hoped to be a warrior. To be a Qabl master.’
‘A child died saving villagers from the monastery. She’s a greater warrior than any of us,’ he whispers.
I blink at the burning sensation behind my eyes. ‘I wish someone could tell her.’
Adel regards me. Whatever he sees must satisfy him. ‘Tell me, in the next battle, what you will do to the enemy?’
I am reminded of the look that engraved his face at the sight of Mitra – the burning, blinding hatred. A people reduced to the simple word enemy. At the centre of it, one emperor.
‘The Divine have mercy, I will make them scream.’
Yabghu approaches me twice to take Arezu’s corpse to the gravediggers, but I refuse.
I had thought this war, at the height of its destruction, was true Hells, but this – Arezu’s death – flings me to the peak of agony. I prefer screams and cries to this awful stillness. I prefer the hot feel of blood to cold skin, helpless, with a dead body in my arms.
How dare I breathe when the girl below me cannot? She was good. She was good. And that goodness murdered her. Goodness is futile.
I do not know what else to do other than to trace my fingers upon Arezu’s face, skimming her nose, cheeks, her broken skull. Only once had I held Arezu willingly. And I ache to do it again.
But touching her now is only the echo of what could have been. Her soul is gone. The Angel of Death has led her to the barzakh, and I pray the Divine will bathe her in nūr until the last hour. The certainty embraces me in its own light.
My child has the status of a martyr, a guarantee of Paradise, but . . .
I will never see her again.
My next breath jolts the air. I only know anger and vengeance, but the thought of snuffing it out terrifies me. Because if vengeance means losing all chance to be good, then what hope do I have to see Arezu in the hereafter?
I wish Eliyas was here; he would speak the beauty of prayers into death.
Or Yun, with his harsh but red-warm heart, who would give me a stern talking to and fill me with resolve.
I want Babshah to speak a folktale. And Uma with her quiet empathy.
But I have nothing but an affection that has rotted, poisonous; it was that that made Mitra. That struck this child dead.
My nails jam into the grassland. But the pain brings a purpose.
Fine, then. Though Arezu is dead, this selfish creature will tuck the child in her arms like that midwinter night and speak soothing words.
I can do nothing more. Because she is my child.
She was my child. And in this dark world, I want to bathe my child in light.
But how?
In Azadniabad, we mark the dead with seeds of firelotus, we let nature reclaim their bodies in the cycle of resurrection.
But in Sajamistan, they bury their dead with a marker of bone-stone to say this is the realm of the barzakh.
However, both empires follow the method of Adam – to bury in the ground facing the first place of worship.
I feel like his accursed son, unworthy of burying the corpse, hiding my sin in the belly of the clay. Still, I prepare Arezu’s burial rites in his way. I perform an ablution upon her to cleanse impurities. I place her broken hand on her marred chest and then the right atop.
I prostrate on the dirt and perform a prayer of the martyrs. With her body at my side, I tuck her hair back before raising my palms. I beg the Divine: please let my words be heard for my child.
But the request stumbles at the sharp ache inside my chest. ‘I-I miss them.’ I wrench the words out.
‘Eliyas, I killed him. Babshah I could not save too. Uma, Usur Khan, and now Arezu.’ Before I know it, my hands are ablaze in nūr.
An old grief that has rotted for years bursts out like an infection and I cannot cleanse it.
‘Please – this pain. Take it away. I cannot bear it. I would die a thousand deaths to see Arezu’s smile one last time. Why had I not cherished it?’
A caw above has my head craning. A familiar raven lands lightly, scratching claws against the tired dirt.
‘Mourn her,’ I gasp to Rasha, ‘for I am unworthy.’ Then I am pressing my nūr to my mouth. Swallow it, a part of me urges. Forget it all.
The raven simply stares. For every martyr, death transcends. Ravens are vultures, to scavenge and find bounty even in the dead.
‘O, Rasha,’ I whisper, for this is what the Divine has revealed to me: the pain that I misunderstood my entire life, the pain that I ignored – it was love. And it assures me that I’m a true dirt-being of Adam. But the realisation is late.
I sink lower, unable to breathe. ‘I’m sorry.
To Eliyas for rejecting your love. To Babshah for forgoing my oath and crumbling under the burden of your tales and buzzards.
I have run from pain to forget it. I cannot forget you, Arezu.
I vow it. I failed in burying Babshah, Eliyas and Uma.
But I will not fail you, my child. I honour your burial with this raven to guide it. ’
Ravens: my enemies’ symbol, but also this girl’s honour. I do not fear it.
I begin my true message through the prayer.
Tears brim in my eyes and my hands drop to Arezu’s face.
‘The children of the monastery live because of your martyrdom,’ I reassure her.
‘You – you perished fighting. Even knowing that if you survived, you might be exiled from Za’skar City, you made a Heavenly Oath to earn power for certain death. ’
My hand stills.
‘You understood the meaning of a true warrior: one who fights not for glory, not for pride, but for justice. You thought you were worthless. But the world knows, your master knows, and the ones you saved will always know you are the paragon of a warrior. It was you who made me promise to smile, and even in death, I cannot forgo a promise made to my child.’
My lips clamp but Arezu needs to hear everything: my honesty and my love. I smile then, through my tears, because she deserves more than just my sorrow.
‘I know you were afraid – so afraid – but the truth is, every mighty warrior feels fear. Because that fear gave you the Third-Stratum – a feat that warriors spend years to accomplish. But the Divine chose you for martyrdom.
‘I’m sorry for turning you away. For being cold. For never showing you anything but my own cruelty—’ I can no longer hold anything in.
‘I’m sorry,’ I suddenly gasp and repeat it.
Again and again. I have never felt this.
I do not recall a time I wept like this.
‘I’m so sorry. For my mistakes that have killed you.
For causing your demise. For being afraid.
For only being a master when I could have been a mother.
Arezu, you and my pupils, you were my first chosen loves, albeit unknowingly.
No one ordered me, no one cursed it upon me.
I chose. I am sorry I never treasured it the way I should have.
I was selfish. But you taught me more than any teacher.
You were a gift and I’m sorry I didn’t see it. ’
And then I’m sobbing as I think back to the last day in Little Paradise. With the promise of a new dawn, it was the first time my stiffened lips had opened and I was brave enough to tell this child the hopes of my heart. So, I give her one more lie.