Katabasis

That night, like every of my many nights, I saw your charred face. I saw the tears, leaving behind a bloodied stain. And your skin, rotting, left to decay for the flies to feast.

I could only watch as you brought your hands, outreached. Your fingers curling around my neck.

Your pleas and cries, thrumming beneath my eardrums as I struggled to lay myself awake from your strong grasp.

I saw the smoke dissipate from a place we once called home, as tanks rolled the streets and gunshots ricocheted from the plastered walls leaving behind a mark of bullet holes.

Then, they tore you from my grasp, faces blurred, albeit their mocking smiles. Wearing uniforms with logo’s that I would never wish upon my worst enemy glint upon.

Even as they took you away, I still heard your cries.

Even as they burnt the city to ash and left our people to die, I could do nothing but watch.

Our flag burns to the ground, marked by the footsteps of the soldiers that had their hands-stained red. And tossing and torturing my people like ragdolls. 

Until the bodies pile, a makeshift bonfire. As they chant in unison, until it creates a hole. 

All the hollowed and torn faces of my people.

Of parents, the elderly, and children, begging to be freed from the misery that they worried was hell. 

Crying for God. Pleading for His mercy. Asking to be forgiven.

And it wasn’t until I saw your face

did I jump. And how selfish, I had thought back then, that I assumed would cost me a sin. 

Which instead, costed me a martyr. 

And it is here that I lay awake, from my disturbed slumber. A night terror, all too real, as it blurs between illusion and reality. 

And it is here that I don’t know what I fear; the nightmares that taunt me in the sleep of my survival from war. 

Or that it had made me forget my home. Forgot your face. 

My dear;

I don’t know how long it had been since I lost you to the flames.

I sometimes pray that your ghost visits me in my sleep, embracing me with your phantom arms, and hushing whispers to ensure that everything will be okay. 

For frankly, I don’t want you to be forgotten. A name left to break on your tombstone. 

And I pray that your death was not the price to pay against the defiance of the enemies that had taken everything from our hands. That had made us lose everything from our place, a homeland.

by Zarrin Ahmed