The Face of War

We all fight wars.

With ourselves.

I was now running through the streets, trying to make it home. Things passed me without notice– I was too occupied. As I reached home, I blasted in.

“Where the hell is he?” I asked my shocked mother and uncle.

They directed me to his room and he had his back to me.

“Going somewhere, are we?” I asked, panting.

“Oh, good day brother,” he nonchalantly replied.

“You cannot go fight the goddamned war!”

He now turned to me, judging me through his bifocals.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because… you’re not front-line material. Have you even taken a look at yourself, brother? You will be out of there, on a stretcher, in two minutes time.”

“I… I don’t have to explain myself to you. This is my life and this is exactly what I want to do with it.”

I let out an angry sigh, afraid to say anymore.

If I tell you about my brother, you would laugh and tell me to stop joking that this idiot was out to fight the war.

My brother was a bag of bones returning from a fistfight. He was the tiny stick-like figure trying to push himself into family photographs. He wouldn’t stand two minutes in a five-round, for he’d be out in the first ten seconds. Weak in words and weaker in the bones, you could not put your finger on which way he’d go. You don’t know him as I do.

I was sitting by the lake, lost in tenous thought. The clouds floated slowly across the blue and leaves were floating lifelessly on the surface of the lake.

“What’cha doing?”

It was my brother, who, to my amazement, still had the nerve to stand in front of me. He came by quietly and made himself comfortable next to me.

“Nothing. Just thinking of things to say at your funeral,” I said.

“Why do you always wish me dead?” he asked.

“It’s not me. It’s just the things you do.”

“I’m not that big a loser, you know.”

“Oh no no. I think we’re getting to that.”

We just stayed silent, knowing another word would just end with one of us swearing from the water.

“Don’t go to the war, you fool. You’ll never come back in one piece, or without missing a piece,” I said, this time with actual concern.

He smiled and said just as calmly, “I am going to the war. It’s what I want. I will be on that train tomorrow. Despite all you say.”

I saw him walk back into the house.

That night sleep evaded me. I just lay awake, staring at the patterns the light from the lamp made on the ceiling. Our life in the past few years came to mind. My father left my mother when my brother and I were children– the former at the age of eight and I was twelve. I remember still the horror-stricken screams of my mother and the final indifferent look on my father’s face as he left, shattering all that stood. My mother lost her mind and we our home. It took her years to recover and I knew losing my brother would just push her back into the flood. I expected my brother to do the right thing and stay.

I knew as I let him go, knowing it was beyond all I could do, I knew I would never be able to forgive myself because I knew this was the wrong way. I should take him down, with brute force for all I care, but I just felt reluctant. Hurting him. And somewhere, he had found his wings and this was his cue to fly.

The daylight greeted me late the next day. I rushed about the house looking for my foolish brother.

And just as I expected, he… left.

I ran. Instead of taking the jeep to the station, I ran. A move I later regretted for every step I took and every second I wasted seemed too precious. But I did reach the station, just as they were ready to leave.

The station at that moment was the gloomiest sight you would ever see. The platform was crowded with sad, teary faced mothers, wives, children and men in uniform. Every corner, there was someone breaking down. My eyes searched and I found him, eventually. He was just preparing to leave when he saw me.

“I told nobody to come. I didn’t want them to see,” he pointed at the sight, “all this.”

“You idiot,” I began.

“Ah! golden words!” he mocked me as I spoke.

“You idiot, do you know what you are doing?”

“I seem to have come this far by my understanding.”

“I meant, you know exactly what happens. If you get on that train, you will most probably never come back or in the best scenario, we would get your torso with your head. You know that, right?”

“I do, brother.”

“Mother will never recover from losing you, fool.”

“I know that. But what are the odds that I might turn up at your doorstep, alive and well, in a few years?”

“None.”

“Brother, I will miss you. Give my love to all for I’m getting on that train and putting my life to use.”

“I am pretty sure there are more than enough people on the frontline. They could spare you.”

“But this is what I want. Goodbye, my brother. I love you.”

He put his arms around me in a touchy embrace and I let a tear slip out of my eye. I was successful in hiding mine but he wasn’t as much.

I waved to him as the train pulled away from the station. And I knew.

I was never going to see him again.

I did. And got a flag as the last remains of my beloved brother.

We all fight wars. With everyone. With the past. With time. With God. With ourselves. We all fight wars.

And the ones who come back? They never do. They come back as hollow shells, leaving their lives in the battlefield. They come back full of scars, seen and unseen, which have horrifying stories to tell. They never come back as they were. They are damaged like the broken homes and scattered families. They are in pieces like the shattered pieces of a grenade.

Almost alive is no better than being brought back in a bag. Because then he would wish that he was rather dead than alive.

What is worse, dying or being haunted by the thought that you should have?

__END__