Oleander by Kshipra R. Kashyap
Doctors with guns held to their heads tend to make more mistakes.
The native surgeon tried to keep his scalpel from trembling, a cold ring of death waiting by his side. Those at the other end were foreign – black masks, reflective visors, military fatigues. He remembered a time thirty years ago when medicine had been respected in his homeland.
There had been no Arfuto then.
A prod, a nudge. He made an incision on the back of the little girl’s head. They didn’t have enough anaesthesia left from the bombings to fully sedate her. She stared back at him with eyes wide with fright – or curiosity? Pain resulted from both of them.
Two agonising, silent hours of him drilling, of her crying, of both of them praying. Another chunk of concrete rained down. The operating room could collapse upon them at any moment. He saw the foreigners exchange glances. If they should abandon him…
“Here.” One of them stepped forward, a silicon wafer in his hand. “No special procedure. Just make sure it touches the prefrontal cortex.”
He tried to keep his voice level as he picked it up. Little lines were etched across the surface, giving off an eerie light against the dull fluorescence he worked under. “What does this do?”
“Extraneous intelligence. It’ll help her find a way out of this blasted minefield of a country.”
“Don’t you want to take her out from this bla- my country?”
“It’s too dangerous. Enough of the questions.”
“And it has worked before – this device of yours?”
No response.
“So-” he laid the chip in- “she is your experiment?”
The grip on the gun tightened. “Careful.”
“Shoot me now, and she dies too.” But did these men value their secrets more than they did children?
He didn’t have the time to find out.
Explosions rocked the outside of the building. How did he know they were explosions? Because bits of plaster and steel and screams cascaded down upon them, and all he could do was shelter the open wound with his body as he worked desperately to finish the sutures, while all around him, the military men looked around and yelled, “Arfuto” and scrambled and made for the doors, one of them telling him to “get out, get out,” but didn’t he see, that wasn’t possible, he couldn’t abandon a girl like his own daughter, and presently it all came crashing down, clouded with smoke, hemmed in by dust, and then the Arfuto came barging in with their beige dress and their hand-held semiautomatics, and they held him down on the ground as he looked around for his patient, but she was nowhere to be found, so presently all he could do was point to where the soldiers had gone and hope that the Arfuto would leave him behind to protect her, because he was sure the pale men in their military dresses wanted the same thing, for wasn’t that why they went through this whole charade? But the Arfuto didn’t; they took him along, away from the rubble, away from his home, so he, the doctor, who could now barely see through blurred eyes, looked at his clinic one last time and prayed.
+++
A packet of biscuits moved.
One of the occupants were wrested out, the others standing by, mutely watching a foreshadowing of their own fate.
Three went this way before Nafeni heard the other voice.
Hello there!
She didn’t think much of it. She was nine, and she knew what she wanted. Pa, Ma, and some water. Ma had always known what she meant. Pa had always got her what she wanted. They didn’t have much to know or much to give, but they knew and gave regardless.
There was no Ma and Pa now.
“I’m thirsty.” Her thoughts made sense of themselves into a voice, a voice which looked to be good enough for her new friend, the Voice.
Certainly! Let’s get you some water-
A whirr, a little whine from within; Nafeni was suddenly cognisant of a thumping agony in the back of her head. She thought to duck down and cry out for Ma, but Ma wasn’t there, so what about Pa, but Pa wasn’t there either, and they had warned her not to be weak in front of the strange men, no matter how helpful they seemed, but there was no one there – they might be there, anyways, hiding amidst the rubble and the dust and the memories, so she decided not to cry.
The Voice, the one inside her head, changed tone.
Listen, we’ve got to get you out of here. It’s a very dangerous place.
“Will you take me to Pa?”
What?
“I want to go to Pa, to Ma, then home, and at home I’ll find water-”
It beeped a couple times, tinny voices in her ear that spanned the length of blink. My sources tell me it isn’t safe there. Please, listen to me. You need to leave this place.
“No.”
There are people like Ma and Pa back home, and they’ll take care of you very well.
She closed her ears, but it had no effect. Her new voice sounded like one of those giant strangers dressed like shrubs and leaves, the ones who used their big trucks and scary loud sounds to chase after the beige monsters. Ma said both were bad.
“No strangers, Nafe – you see them, you come home, okay?”
“Why?”
“They fight each other, terrible people. Not for each other, not for themselves, but for us.”
“Why?”
“You saw what they did to Uncle Beke, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want them to do the same to you?”
But her memories came to a halt. Uncle Beke was bad, Nafeni. He supported the Arfuto. He was an Arfuton himself.
The Voice was inside her. It had heard everything she said, and she didn’t like anything it said. But how could you avoid yourself? An idea, yes – but she had to be careful to not think it.
That was it.
“I want to go home.”
Now, I’ve already explained this to you-
“At home, there’s water.”
And there’s also the Arfuto-
“The Arfuto came once already. They won’t come again,” she lied. It didn’t know she lied. It wasn’t like Pa.
The Voice creaked away in confusion and settled on begrudging compliance.
I’m still responsible for you. The moment you see danger, we’re going to run.
+++
Ma and Pa weren’t home.
She stepped around the tiled garden path and into an alley barely wide enough to squeeze through. A series of green pipes – so that we don’t see them against the moss, Ma had said – ran down the wall, culminating in a tap. Nafeni turned the red plastic handle.
The first gulp of water tasted like heaven.
The second was acrid – not acrid-tasting, but acrid-feeling, acrid-smelling, acrid-
She didn’t remember the third.
When she came to and saw the bombed-out house, she didn’t feel grief. She only remembered what Pa said when he caught her stealing last winter’s oranges.
“I promise, they weren’t there, no fruit-”
“Are you sure?”
“I swear, not a single one was on the tree. Maybe - maybe it’s dead, or something-”
His gaze was unrelenting.
“Okay, fine! I took them, Pa, but only two! Please-”
But he had merely shook his head. His eyes were now set in their worried cases and turned towards his prized orange tree. “The bad things, Nafe, that you say in a lie – God has a way to make them come true.”
And so he had.
“Ma? Pa? Ma!”
The only listening ears were in burnt cinderblock; she could hear voices, but they were the sounds of wind whistling through the new gaps in her home. Shrubs of pink flowers with pointed petals – Pa had said they were poisonous – suffocated under the weight of broken plaster. A layer of dust covered it all, like a relic of the past. A past that could be easily forgotten and ignored. She had been thrown head-first against the wall. Warmth greeted her fingertips and came away in the form of scarlet, but strangely, she felt no pain, no, no pain at all, except the little aching nag in her heart that told her no, no, it couldn’t be, yet it was, because the whirr of the offending, escaping plane was the only sound in the air, and of course, Pa was a councillor, Ma was the village head, so why would the Arfuto care for one neutral child when they could get rid of two enemies?
War was like chemical fertiliser to Nafeni. It grew her, but she didn’t know it was destroying her. Mercifully, a distraction interrupted her thoughts.
Go back down the path you came. Don’t panic. Take a left away from the clinic. We can’t let the Arfuto trace you. They’ll arrive very soon. You have little time. Run!
It took an hour of scrambling through hedges, sneaking through holes, hiding by roadsides and then finally coming to a wooded trail before she realised.
The new Voice wasn’t male. It was hers.
She could think again.
The pieces came to her, bit by bit. The foreigner Uncle Kedvesen gave her had quieted, leaving behind the plans to escape. Plans – from whom?
By now, it had come back – the pain – but not as a dull ache, instead as a scathing throb. The ability to think physically hurt. Or was it that cut? A touch, a grimace, then a quickly-stifled sound of pain at the bloody fingers because there was no kindly person to listen to her scream and every chance of an Arfuton finding her. God, if only she could escape. She tried to think, to remember.
… blasted minefield of a country…
What was a country? She only knew the little spinning tops, that old phone Ma had with the blocky games, her older brother, a smiling boy-now-man who would lift her up and spin her around, going ever so fast before he’d put her down, gentler than a feather.
He wasn’t smiling anymore. He hadn’t smiled last month, when Pa and he had argued so violently the house shook when she had hidden behind the flour bins, when she heard the sound of a door slam when she peeped out the window and saw Bator, dear Bator, storming out into the driving rain, when Ma, through her tears, told her he had taken Nafeni’s doll to always remember her by as if he were already dead.
No, she said, she wanted to keep all that and send back the Arfuton, who had chased her here, and also the camouflaged angry men with their guns, the guns that had put stars in her brother’s eyes and made him blind to his own family.
Where are we going?
Installed by whoever ordered Uncle Kedvesen to cut her up, she thought. The shrub men and tree women. But the plans were few, and they came to a crossroads, and the voice inside her was kindly, but it didn’t know where to go. Exhaustion took control for a moment, or it might have been the dizziness, for she hadn’t seen the tree root sticking out of the dirt and fell.
+++
When she awoke, it was dusk, but when she awoke, she was already walking, and when she awoke, she saw that the Voice was back, and her own was gone.
We’re going to the outskirts. It sounded irritated now, no more kindness in its tone. Nearly ran into an Arfuto patrol. We must be more careful now. Safety first, and then everything else.
As far as she was concerned, things had taken a turn for the worse. “But Ma and Pa-”
Later. Not now.
“But-”
The Voice sent a slight jolt of pain, like touching a wet wire, through her bones. Nafeni knew a sign when she saw one. Now she couldn’t argue, couldn’t think, but wait…
Presently, a breeze drowned out the crickets.
“An Arfuton - look!”
The Voice took no notice. If she didn’t think her thoughts, and it couldn’t hear well...
Another gale.
“He doesn’t like me much, but he doesn’t want what I want, so to get what I want, he should start to like me again-”
It died away.
“Voice?”
Yes?
“I’m sorry that I left you.”
Silence. She had learnt how much grown-ups liked apologies. Any damage could be done as long as she followed it up with ‘that’ look. Large, teary eyes. Trembling voice. The innocence of youth, the cunning of mischief.
“Please?”
Turn right on this road.
She did as he said. “I promise I’ll listen to you-”
Keep to the shrubs.
“-every word you say-”
Get under the shadows.
“-until we get to safety-”
Stay away from the streetlights.
“-so, won’t you forgive me?”
And be careful on the roads-
“Please? Pretty, pretty, please?”
Oh, fine!
Annoyed to perfection. But Nafeni couldn’t take any chances. She decided to play it safe.
“Your home – what’s it like?”
The Voice brightened up at a question more suited to its programming. Advanced, secure, creative – everything you need. You’ll find it an excellent home. A place safe from all dangers.
“Like the Arfuto?”
We have police; we have the law. The Arfuto wouldn’t dare enter my country. Remember the men who gave you this chip?
She remembered well enough. The same men that the Arfuto hated and feared in equal measure, the same men who had killed Uncle Beke just because he had refused to let them take his truck.
Too late, she realised her mistake. The Voice lost any good humour it had just gained.
Now, Nafeni, remember – Beke was an Arfuton. Besides, we’re on your side. The Arfuto aren’t.
“What do you want with us?”
For you to live in peace, away from war, away from bloodshed.
“What do you want with me?”
To take you back home, of course. Where it’s safe. This war won’t end anytime soon. There’s no reason you must continue to suffer.
“Home?” She kicked at a rock.
Home, indeed.
“Your home isn’t my home.”
Your home is no more a home, Nafeni. Look at the broken stones in front of you. They represent the state of your nation. Things will get far worse very quickly.
She stared at the rock she had kicked. It had come to a rest near a tree. A flickering flashlight, the one thing they’d carried along with them from the clinic, illuminated it. Nafeni picked it up. It was almost perfectly spherical, the indentations a paler colour of grey than the rest of the stone.
“Bator and I used to play with pebbles. He would take the smooth ones, and I would draw a circle of chalk – he would shoot his, and I mine, and whoever got the most marbles out of the circle would win.”
The Voice didn’t have anything to reply with.
“I don’t care about your country,” she continued, her voice suddenly infused with feeling, “I want Bator back. And my marbles. And Uncle Kedvesen, and Uncle Beke, and-”
You’ll be safe enough where I come from.
“Will you take Ma and Pa?”
It avoided the question. Those wiser than you wish to help. You would be wise to accept it.
These were clearly boundaries she was crossing. She couldn’t risk the Voice shutting her down again.
But at the same time, she had to know. Gone were they days she only worried for tomorrow.
“Who will be my Ma and Pa there?”
We have foster care. The government will put you there first. Then, if someone’s interested, you’ll be adopted. Taken into a new family. Loved for, cared for.
“And if there is no one?”
You’ll be safe. Our leaders will keep you safe.
A gust whistled past her ears just in time to drown out her words:
“That’s what the Arfuto say.”
They came to a river, its dirty rivulets flooded with yesterday’s rain. In the summer, it would be teeming with screams of laughter.
“Do you have children there who play and bathe in rivers like ours?”
No, no – every child is provided for. There’s no risk of infection like this. There’s clean water for everyone. You don’t have to live like this.
The edge of her flashlight beam caught on a clump of the brown-capped mushrooms they’d forage every autumn.
“And do they find their own food, like we do?”
There’s food enough for everybody. You children won’t have to worry about going hungry. No – your parents, if you get them, pay for everything and feed you. We’ll make sure of that.
Out in the distance, a bolt of lightning from some far-off storm turned the landscape to day. They could see grassy knolls past the riverbank.
“So there are no goats, no animals, no rivers to play in, no forests to hide in-.”
Heavens, what for? You’ll have your books, your food, your playgrounds – secure and safe – in short, everything a child could ask for. Warm houses, cold water, happy adults, laughing friends. You should be grateful.
Nafeni had heard enough to understand her situation, and she understood enough to know that she couldn’t do anything about it. She put on a smile for the Voice and locked away her thoughts.
Halt – to your right, past this bend.
She strained her eyes – sure enough, a brick storeroom of some sort, the kind they used for hay and fodder, rose up from the distance. Heat temporarily erased the pain in her legs as she ran. The thought of soft pillows and food overruled those of the broken windows and bombed-out craters that dotted the place. The Voice urged caution.
These are my countrymen. We’re almost near safety. Approach, but slowly.
Nafeni slowed down. She slowed down to a halt.
The countrymen.
The camouflage shooters.
The enemies of the Arfuto.
The people who had taken her brother away.
She hesitated – at the threshold, at the brink of being discovered, at the end of an old life. It sunk in, there and then, that there was no Ma to turn back to, no Pa to pick her up and hold her in his arms if she did. No Uncle Beke, no Uncle Kedvesen…
Perhaps, perhaps she could just make a run for it, away from the fools in their ivory towers, with their mouth full of honey and their tanks full of guns, into the foliage, as she had earlier, because – shut up, Voice, shut up – how hard would they look for a worthless girl, daughter of some councillor, daughter of a village chief?
And then she would fish for food, for Ma had taught her already, and gather for mushrooms because Pa was expert in such matters – had they known, years before, that it would all come to this? She couldn’t be sure, but she was still at the threshold, wishing she were in some protected glade, alone or with someone to trust, but for now, alone, alone with her marbles and memories of Ma and Pa, and maybe she would cry over Bator if she really felt homesick…
Bator.
Bator would know what to do.
The Voice was indignant by now, but it hadn’t jolted her again, and she wondered why – maybe it had something to do with her dissipating strength or the fact that they were finally on the same side, albeit for different reasons, and both reasons lay behind that door, so she would bolt in, and find out where Bator was, because Bator would watch over her, and protect her, and she would tell him how cruel these foreigners were, and try to erase the madness that had taken over him, so Nafeni kicked in the door…
Only to find the place empty.
Rusty beams. Wooden planks. Scattered. Dusty tables. Metal coffee pots. Strewn all over. Mattress. Unslept in. Kitchen counter – stale bread. Uneaten. Corner – green clothes. Camouflage. Unwashed.
But she was safe now, wasn’t she? The fear dissipated. And how long had it been since she slept? In came the exhaustion. What was that – at the far corner? A mattress? She didn’t remember much as she tumbled towards it, tiredness taking hold of her, except to add one thing to her list of observations:
No Bator.
+++
By the time she fell asleep, even the crickets had died away.
It was all the Voice could do to get her out of bed and scarf down some bread and a sip of water.
We have to move at dawn, It had explained as she ate and drank unseeingly over detailed maps. I know where they are. Rest now – I can’t do much if you’re weak. I can barely sustain your brain’s signals as you sleep.
But when she was in that state of half-daze, half-awake, she realised it wasn’t there; the Voice was nowhere to be found. Nafeni could think clearly again. Maybe it had been the way Uncle Kedvesen’s hands shook as he put the Voice in – or was it because of the bombs at home? She could think now, but presently, she was too tired to think, and so she collapsed onto the dusty down of a mattress that reeked of sweat.
By the time she fell asleep, even the crickets had died away, and while she drifted off, Bator walked in, and as she slept, he spoke to her, that brother to her lost hopes, the shepherd of her will to obey the Voice.
“Nafe? Nafe!”
“Shush, quietly, or else the Voice will hear you-”
“The Voice can’t hear us anymore. Are you hurt? Nafe, speak, please!” He shook her dream-self violently, almost to the point of waking her up. Realisation hit him just in the nick of time.
“No, no, of course – then the Voice will come alive, and he will find me.”
“Bator, where are you?”
“I’m safe enough. It’s you we have to worry about.” He stared at her, and she could see scrapes and bruises all over her face reflected in his dark, glistening eyes. “What happened to you?”
“Please, Bator, not-”
“Was it the Arfuto?” His voice became taut with anger. The stars still shone in his eyes. They were surrounded by stars, in fact – hundreds of them, thousands of them, flickering in the dark, empty warehouse, each one representative of a dream, her dream. They billowed around and fidgeted at the slightest mention of a breeze. Like feathers. Like lies.
“Listen, Bato, that’s not the problem – well, it is, but there are others – and that includes your friends, those strange armies of pale men – those who say they’ll save us – no, please, Bato, hear me out – they’re bad, they’re all bad, both these sides -“
But Bator didn’t reply, and Bato didn’t resist. Bator sat down, defeated, but Bato was angry. Bator’s eyes had the fire of vengeance in them, but Bato was no longer guided by the stars, for they had started to vanish, evaporating like goat’s milk on the stove.
“Nafe?”
She hesitated. “Yes?”
“I know.”
Silence.
“I was here until dusk. The Arfuto came in with people – boys and girls, like you and me. We’d bombed their homes. There was nothing else they could do. Only five guns and almost fifty others – what could they do against us twenty killers?” She could hear Bator – the dream-mind version of Bator – swallow hard.
“They wanted shelter, Nafe. You remember Irina? Irina, from home? She was with them, and I swear, I swear I saw her look at me, remember me, right before-”
His voice gave out to muffled sobs.
Nafeni said nothing. She couldn’t. Sponges can’t absorb more after they become full, and hers was sodden with the loss of her parents, the abandonment of her home.
Now, the dark red stains across the warehouse and the stench of acridity seeped into the final cracks. She had no more room for Bator.
Everything that intended to destroy her had got there first.
“It’s done. It’s all done and over with. The bodies are in the back, and we’ve fled.”
“Come back for me. Please.”
“I can’t. Listen-”
“Don’t leave me here!”
“I won’t!” Panic crept into his voice. “I hate these men as much as you do. I hate the Arfuto even more. But do you know who I hate the most? It’s Death because Death has already come for Irina, so I have no more reason to live, and if Death comes for you, then I’ll have no more reason to fight!”
She backed up and involuntarily burst into tears.
“There, there-”
“Bato, I’m scared-”
“It’ll be alright-”
“-of the Arfuto-”
“Don’t worry-”
“-and of the foreign shooters, the ones who took Uncle Beke-”
“I am too-”
“-and Bato, if they find me, and they catch me, then they’ll kill me, just like Ma or Pa, or worse, they’ll take me away from you, and you can’t ever see me again, and – and you might as well be dead!”
He paced around her headspace. A vague instinct made her conscious of a cuckoo’s crow, but it was distant, almost as if from underwater.
“Okay – okay, listen. I’ll do my best to get away from camp. It won’t be easy. I’m ten kilometres away. I can start at dawn, but you must be at the town by noon. The one Ma took us to sell our oranges. We’ll be together again, and then we can figure something out. Can you do that?”
“With the Voice in my head?”
“You have to try, Nafe. It’s our only choice-”
His voice became garbled.
“Bato? Bato!”
“-outside of the country-”
“Can you hear me? Bato!”
“-and, listen, Nafeni-” his voice was more urgent than ever, his dream-self voice, his real-but-not-real voice, yet he took the care to skip her nickname. “-I left Pa because I thought he was a fool. I left Ma because I thought she was stupid. Stupid for not believing in our future. A fool for hiding and sheltering. But I know now. And you will swear to me – listen, listen – you will swear that it cannot happen again, even though they’re gone, and you’ll go back home, somewhere safe, and stop playing the rebel, the hero, because I tried, and I failed, and you cannot fail with Death and…behind…other…time…understand? Do you understand?”
“But Bato, are you – is everything-”
Nafeni started awake, sunlight streaming in from the window, the sun scorching dry the tear-tracks on her cheeks. All she wanted to do was return to the dream; all she wanted was to go back to Bator.
+++
Daylight. They turned into the street. She and the Voice. And hid immediately. She from the Voice. And she from the Arfuto, because the Arfuto had got there first.
They had taken over the town, their camps pitched inside the town hall, their weapons twirling around their hands, their faces set in harsh smiles. The refugees with them scampered around like mice, trying to stay hidden, trying to melt into the shadows, trying to avoid Death. For the first time, she could hear how anxious the Voice was.
The rest of the routes are far more dangerous. Stick to my instructions. We’ll be fine.
She knew it was a lie.
“The bad things, Nafe, that you say in a lie – God has a way to make them come true.”
But this was no bad thing, so Pa’s lie rule didn’t apply.
From north came the sounds of ambush.
And Nafeni ran, and she could run fast, but she was running in the wrong direction; she ran towards the sounds of gunfire, ducking beneath trees, ignoring the yelps and jolts that the Voice inflicted upon her because she knew this ambush to be what it really was, and she shouted out his name – Bator, Bator! – for all she was worth, which might have been nothing, but to her was everything, so she screamed and yelled for everything, but all she attracted were the attention of muzzles, and men in war cannot distinguish well from the smokescreens and the human shields and the civilians and the combatants, and it was best to be safe than sorry, so the last thing Nafeni remembered was a little warm thud, and then she saw Bator – he was right there! – but something, no, everything, was wrong, because behind him came a councillor, and the councillor’s name was Pa, and behind him was a headwoman, and the headwoman was called Ma, and they were all smiling, and beckoning her into their arms, Bator with her doll in his hands and the stars gone from his eyes, Ma with pride in hers, and then Pa - she couldn’t make much of Pa, because he looked disappointed, and a little sad, but mostly grateful, because at the end of it all, it was over, wasn’t it? And Death was kindly, for suffering was of the realm of the living, and those who left it had had enough, so Death offered no more, and Nafeni was happy.
+++
“It’s a little sad, you know – such a young kid-”
“Well, what can be done about it? Come now.”
“The foreigners shot her. If they hadn’t come here, all interfering-like, in the name of ‘justice,’ or whatever they preach in their newspapers…”
“And yet they interfere. So what? Why do you sulk?”
“She would have been safe with us.”
+++
“I saw the body with my own eyes, man; it was terrible. God-awful terrible.”
“Damn the Arfuto. Without them, we wouldn’t be here, fighting a war that wasn’t ours.”
“A pity. A real pity. She would’ve been safe with us.”
+++
Only Death knew. It picked at the spring of oleander by its side, poison and beauty all in one, and watched her run to her brother, doll in one hand, Pa’s palm in her other, Ma right behind them, happy again. All of them were tearless; all of them were now safe.