As I run my pen on this fragile sheet of paper, there runs a life so miserable, gloomy- as blank of happiness as the white of the paper, and hopeless, I must add because it's a futile spur to envisage existence hereafter:
The darkest shadow of the brightest sun shows 12, the time of noon. It is all dark; no more than the smoke that ties together the sky and the earth. Along with the smoke of fire of life, the stench of the putrid and the lifeless bodies stretch miles into the horizon. And then there appears an old woman, carrying a cane to support her lethargic body in one hand, and in another holding a hand of a young but incomplete boy. Relaxed and unhurried, she toddles on that suffer land. Her face is burnt on one side; her body so curved; one can imagine a curve of a parabola. Her curled hair seems like the frizzy strands of dry coconuts and her clothes are torn and dusty as if she has been buried under the sand for a decade.
“How is the scene, mom?” the boy asks her. The fragile eyes of his have lost their sense before the end of the war. He saw them start, but now he cannot see them end. The war took his eyes and left him with blind breath, black soul.
“Eagles are hovering and the dogs have no time to pursue them,” says his mother. “They are working on the same corpses.”
They, the old eyes, see only the great big things not those small flies that are going together with the eagles and the dogs because it is the time for the big things and the big powers. She starts explaining to him how the corpses are lying one after another and resting one over another, and how the dogs and eagles are snatching the flesh. And, the boy feels someone being stepped on by his foot.
“I stepped on someone’s body but I couldn’t hear him yelping.” He signs and cries, “I think I have lost my hearing too, mom.”
“No dear son. People these days don’t yelp; they only feel pain. They are tired of yelping. They have been crying a lot for all these years.”
"How does the man look like?" the boy asked her.
"He looks like your elder brother," the woman said, paused a while, cried and continued, "a young laid wearing a completely different dress and containing a thousand of mysteries in him- he wears a Muslim cap but he is not a Muslim because he has a read Tika in his forehead- he can't be a Hindu; he wears a Christian necklace- he can't be a Christian because he looks like a monk by his clothes."
"Mom, there can’t any such man. There can't be any man of no religion. There can't be any man of every religion." He seems to be disagreed to what his mother told.
"Where's Aman?" he remembers his elder brother, who had just turned eighteen some days before.
His mother replies, "Allah took his scalp, Yama took his head, Jesus took his neck and Buddha took his rest body."
The boy cries for his brother and remembers every lovely moment they had spent together. He cries and cries till his eyes lack tears; the thirsty sand fills its thirst.
“Mom,” he says, “I am very thirsty, if only I could get a drop of water.”
She goes to a well and takes a jar that is resting on the wall. She brings the jar full of water from the well and gives it to the boy. He drinks, not much, before pausing.
“It has a taste like blood, mom.”
“Blood?” she laughs a scornful laugh, “Blood is not that cheap; only the color and taste are like blood. Drink my child. Do drink.”
The boy then drinks and empties the jar. The cool moisture feels delectable on his thirsty lips. She fetches some water for herself and drinks a little.
“It’s a little sparser than the blood.” She says to herself, holds her son’s hand again and starts walking.
“What are we looking for mom?” he asks.
“My dead body” says her bereaved voice.
The boy has no idea on her enigmatic answer. She searches and finally finds what she was searching for, the dead body. Taking the hand of her son to the body, she speaks out:
“This must be your father.”
His hands, shaking and trembling, fondle the dead body and he screams:
“Where is the head mom?”
“What’s the value of head if there is no life?” she replies.
The sun has reached near its vanishing point- half set and half setting. Dusk paints the sky and they start walking back to the cave where they have been hiding themselves for last four years. Suddenly, the woman stops the boy.
“Son wait, there’s a pit forward.”
“Thank you. You always keep me safe. I love you very much, mom.” He hugs her then he asks, “How deep is the pit?”
“It’s very deep.” She replies.
"Will you be able to come out if you fall in it?” His question was unusual.
“No son. I couldn't.”
“Then it’s good.” He says and pushes her into the pit.
The old woman falls and gets her head hurt on a sharp stone. Blood starts to flow from her scalp. She cries in pain, “What have you done son? How will I come up?”
The boy doesn't reply. He starts searching for something on the ground.
“Why did you do that?” She asks again.
He, still rubbing the ground, desperately searching for something, cries, “You deserve to be there shouting and crying in pain. There’s no one to help you. There, you will suffer the life before suffering the death. I will see you suffer, cry with hunger and thirst, and struggle to die.”
“Why do you want to see me suffering? I have always loved you. I am your mother, son. Help me to come up.”
“Because you have given me birth, you deserve this penalty.”
“I wanted to kill you but I couldn’t. So, I couldn’t kill myself. I can’t let you live alone in this world.” Her voice deepens with pain.
She starts to cry. Heavy tears start flowing down the boy's cheeks.
"But I can kill.” He whispers.
Finally, his hands come across a dagger that has claimed to many lives in the war. And miserably, one more is killed with the dagger.
I stop my pen. So, stops his breath.

• bj baniya