Your Scarlet Letter Found Its Way Back Home

“Y-You are not kidding me, r-right?”

Amyra could hear his lips quivering through the phone, and visualize his face flushed with emotions of all sorts with the good news circling around the ramparts of his ears. She could imagine him clasping the cord around his knuckles and pressing his ear closer to the phone, waiting for the one affirmation she was about to give him.

“Not at all, Captain Yuu. You really are going to be a dad.” She chuckled softly, to add a tinge of light-heartedness to their conversation. But who was she kidding, this wasn’t a light-hearted conversation at all. She had broken the biggest news of her life to him, and it pricked her insides that he wasn’t with her to hold and cry while celebrating.

She could hear his breath getting heavier and jagged through the phone. And even though they were miles away from each other, she could picture him flopping down on the floor, his sweaty palms cupping his knees, rocking back and forth like he always did when consumed by overwhelming emotions. Some habits never change. Not even when you are an officer in the military leading a battalion of more than 50 soldiers.

“I’m coming back right now. I’ll send an application requesting a leave righ-“

“No, no, no,” Amyra shook her head frantically, “No, Mak. You can’t do that, not when the war is going on. The regiment needs you.” And the government won’t let you anyway, she wanted to add. But for all they knew, their calls could be getting intercepted by Zarkan officials; she couldn’t afford to get reported for treason at the moment.

“I don’t ca-,” his voice faltered, but not before she could fathom what he was going to say, I don’t care. However, they both knew there would be no layers of veracity or weight attached to the statement. The military conscription was forced on all healthy Zarkan men between the age of twenty to forty. You weren’t offered the choice to care, you had to care for Zarka.

“I just- I just wish we would have been called for duty a week later.” He finally uttered, “I would have been there with you right now.”

Amyra just closed her eyes shut and nodded silently. No words were needed, after all, to convey the painfully conflicting emotions they both were drowning in at the moment.

_______________________

Mak couldn’t care less if Amyra did not believe the news was worth going back home. For him, this one phone call had brought felicities unlike any other and sparked off fireworks inside his body. He sat against the burgundy wallpaper, with his left hand still clutching the phone, and let the elation soak through his bones. He allowed the surrealism of the moment to sink in before getting up and rushing out of the phone room, his body pressing against the crowd of those queued up behind to call their families.

“Mak,” he felt a calloused hand grab his arm.

“What happened, brother? Everything okay back home?”

It was Dhir, the lieutenant of the battalion. Both of them had joined the force around the same time four years ago, and therefore, had gotten close over time. Such friendships did give you the benefit of omitting ranks while chatting off duty.

“Yeah, Yeah,” Mak nodded, and continued when Dhir’s concerned eyes kept staring at him, “It was my wife, she’s pregnant.” Saying the words out loud felt like regaining consciousness, and he felt the look of stupefaction disappear from his face when he witnessed Dhir’s eyes bulging out followed by a quick bark of laughter.

“What? Is that true?” Dhir started, with the goofiest smile plastering across his face, “Oh heavens, congratulations, congratulations, Mak.” An excited breath escaped his lips after every word.

He turned around on his heels and with a rosy sanguine face, announced to the entire room, “The Captain is going to become a dad, everyone, c’mon, congratulate him and he might even agree to treat you guys today.”

Oh, the good-natured Dhir, what could you even expect from the jaunty man who distributed two hundred kilograms of sweets amongst his comrades when his own daughter was born two years ago.

Mak saw everyone in the room turn towards him with astounded faces and before he could even utter a single word, the horde swarmed around him, bombarding him with all the blessings and congratulations that existed in the world.

“Congratulations Captain Yuu. May God bless your family.”

“It will be a girl, sir, the last one in the regiment with a pregnant wife had a boy.”

“Oh I’m sure it doesn’t work that way, and that hardly even matters now, Captain.”

The strange sweetness of laughter echoing in the room loosened the nerves Mak didn’t realize had stiffened across his body. The glorious subtlety of their celebration created an ambiance that bespoke a future held in ecstasy. There was no way this war was going to last nine months, and even if it did, Mak vowed to himself that he would be there for Amyra and his unborn child.

“So how about we celebrate with a cup of chai and steamed buns?” He proposed.

The room erupted into boisterous affirmations, cheers, and laughter.

_______________________

Amyra had mostly gotten used to her mundane daily routine after Mak had left for duty two weeks ago. His return back home might have been short-lived, but she had cherished every moment they had spent together. And now, she thought to herself while her hand caressed her lower abdomen, she wouldn’t have to spend her time alone when he was away. She could almost picture her baby with its radiant face under the roseate light of the dawn, its cushioned skin with dimpled knees, and dimpled knuckles, big almond-shaped eyes tinted a chocolate brown and spotted with golden specks like its father.

Daydreaming like this became one of her little idiosyncrasies. A supplementary habit she developed was that of learning about knitting. After having woken up from her tranquil slumber, she would spend her time luxuriously roaming around the bustling market, looking for some snug, vibrant yarn. Every so often, a flamboyant dress on display across the street would distract her from her primary intent, or the other times it was a pair of elegant shoes. Sometimes it was the mellow tinkling of colourful glass bangles that would catch her attention, but as soon as her hand brushed across her belly, her brain would reiterate the purpose of her visit to the market, and she would recommence her saunter along the brisk fumbling bodies of the place.

Thereafter she would commute to her workplace while munching on the namkeen she managed to buy from one of the vendors in the market. The crumbling walls of the cloistered school building greeted her, as did the good morning melody that the children chorused while welcoming their teacher to the class. They would look up enquiringly at her bag full of yarn and she would have to answer until their dear faces broke into a satisfied grin. She would ask them to narrate the alphabets every day ensuing which, they would ask her to recite a riveting folklore she remembered from her childhood. Amyra wasn’t blessed with the finest memory but was creative enough to be known as the nonpareil storyteller of the town. They would bid the school wall goodbye once the clock struck twelve, and thus would begin her journey back home.

Preparing lunch under the sweltering heat and loneliness of her kitchen was what she regarded as the worst part of her day. But it became bearable the more her belly swelled up, for she found inside her swollen belly, an audience she could narrate her fatuous tales and furtively make asinine remarks about the government to.

The most anticipated days of her tedious routine, though, were Fridays since every Friday evening marked the time when Mak got the opportunity to call her from his base. They would go on for at least thirty minutes, engaging in nugatory conversations for they both knew the subjects of the conversations were trivial. The actual point of their conversation revolved around confirming that they were safe and sound.

She sat down, as usual, on that Friday, with a book in her hand, in hopes of learning how to crochet a sweater out of all the yarn she had brought over the last couple of days. She set her phone down on the table and tried to focus on the pages, but couldn’t help glancing furtively every time the screen lit up. Eventually, she got up and flung the book across the room with an exasperated sigh.

The phone, however, never rung that day.

_______________________

“Maybe for a week sir?” Mak persisted following a quick shake of the Colonel’s head.

“I’m afraid Makena, we cannot let you leave right now.” A pained voice rose from the Colonel’s throat, “Had the situation been any better, I would have driven you to your house myself, but it is just………impossible right now.”

Mak felt a disgruntled sob building up in his chest, but all he did was give a vulnerable nod, which made the Colonel's eyes soften. He set aside the cumbersome load of papers, got up from his creaky chair, and crossed the room to give a congenial pat on Mak’s shoulder.

“It’s not that I don’t understand, Makena.” He began, “Believe me, I wish I could have done something to help you, but you know….you know the government wouldn’t let anyone go back now. These bases are the only home we will have till the situation mitigates. But we are stuck here for now, and all we can do is hope for better days to come.”

The better days did not show up, however. The Kollustan forces launched a full-scale attack on an adjoining base that Friday morning and a clamour broke out in their own regiment, with panic-stricken soldiers hoarding weapons, loading guns, and preparing themselves for war. A fracture of inferno in the obsidian black sky announced the arrival of the Kollustan army at their own base in the evening, pallid corpses of their Zarkan counterparts hanging upside down from their shoulders. Mak barely had a second to register the sea of enemies before the first grenade blew up, splattering molten red blood from the naked wounds of the bodies it gashed, obliterating what stood in his line of vision.

***

What sparked off that day subsisted for about a month, but they finally managed to make the Kollustan army with its remaining three soldiers flee away. They made a reasonable choice, Mak considered. But that by no means meant that they could rest easy now. The sole motive Mak saw in them beating a hasty retreat was to recuperate and return with technologically advanced weaponry.

Zarka’s transitory victory, however, did not come without a price. Nine out of the fifty-six soldiers in the battalion had lost their lives. Those with no evident injuries too had been mentally scarred. Young men would wake up startled and trembling in the dead of the night, claiming they heard serried bodies pummeling and clobbering against each other, or clanking and loading of guns, or the slashing of throats with combat knives outside the tent, and sometimes it was the insidious hiss of a grenade.

Mak could offer little consolations, since he too, was caught up in his own nightmares with the same one playing itself over and over again. Amyra’s euphonious chuckle, followed by her running and disappearing into the dark, and no matter how much Mak pursued her, her shawl would always slip from his grasp like sand. Sometimes, he would hear the gut-wrenching howl of a baby’s cry, and every such occurrence would end with him breaking into a cold sweat. The verisimilitude of the baby’s wailing would continue to haunt him for the entire day.

Mak was well aware of the cause of his nightmares. The Kollustan attacks had severed the telephone services in their base, and he had been unable to reach out to Amyra for a month since no alternatives were available. When the new landline was finally installed after Kollusto retreated, Mak was the first to rush inside the phone room, frantically dialing the number and getting it wrong a few times. It was her ‘Hello’ that finally calmed him down.

He was careful not to upset her by telling any bad news, but much to his horror, she had already discovered the evil tidings of the ordeal through media.

“You should stop reading the newspapers. You’ll upset the baby with all the bad news.” He suggested.

“They are my only means of confirming whether you still are a part of the good news when you can’t call, Mak.” She replied.

The words kept slithering across Mak’s mind even after the call disconnected. I still am a part of the good news, he solaced himself. But as he sat down to write letters assuaging the families of the deceased soldiers, he found himself wondering what wrong had they done to deserve the bad news.

_______________________

“How about Preeti? Grace, pleasure and love?”

“Well, it does have a decent meaning, but how about Amerie? It means a fearless hard worker.” Mak’s voice suggested through the phone.

They had been going on about baby names for more than twenty minutes now, but they had figured that since only five months remained before the baby’s arrival, it would be better to start preparing.

“I like it. But what if it’s a boy?”

“Uh- I can’t come up with any boy names.”

Amyra let out a chuckle, “You literally know so many boys from around you.”

“I wanted something original, though.”

“How about Emir? It means chief or commander. He might grow up to be like you, to serve in the military-” She immediately halted.

“Sounds fine,” Mak responded in the most nonchalant monotone.

“They denied my application for returning home.” He added.

_______________________

Mak despised the scanty vegetation of the hills they had sought refuge in. They had their base attacked and taken over by Kollusto a couple of weeks after his last conversation with Amyra. And now it had been more than a month since they had fled away with the twenty-nine survivors. The loss had been double this time around, and Mak felt reckless and injudicious not only as a captain for having lost around half of his battalion in a period of half a year but also as a human for having made a promise to himself he only now realized he could have never fulfilled. Sitting in the exposed ochre of the hills, Mak couldn’t help but contemplate the meaning of this war against humanity and its devastating consequences.

It didn’t take long for the Kollustan men to spot the 29 camouflaged uniforms amongst the rocks that were lead grey and ochreous.

How if it hadn’t been for two obdurate nations, he could have lived to hear his offspring’s first cry.

The enemies beckoned each other forward, pointing their guns in Mak’s direction.

How if it hadn’t been for humans falling for the hate propaganda, he could have lived to bid Amyra the last goodbye.

Mak tightened the grip around his rifle, placing it over his shoulder for support and aiming it at the man heading the rival force.

How if it hadn’t been for this futile war, he could have returned home and everything would have been fine.

He couldn’t shoot, not when the significance of human life had finally dawned upon him after this long. He couldn’t bear the thought of taking away someone’s life when he was expecting a new life stepping into his own world in three months.

“Preeti, I like that name.” he whispered, “May you bring lots of grace, pleasure and love to this rotten world, my precious child.”

He felt a bullet pierce his chest, and the best and the worst part was that he saw the fireworks again before the pitch-black darkness.

_______________________

Amyra savoured the verdure and serenity of the hills her house was located in. The hushed whispers of water drizzling onto emerald rocks, allowed her to sort through her rushing thoughts. She had received many condolences over the past few days- calls, messages, and letters from acquaintances telling her how brave she was to have handled the news well in her condition. But she didn’t see anything heroic in putting on a façade and pretending that being numb meant being fine. She remembered how she had lost control of her thoughts and sputtered everything to Mak once when he couldn’t call in three months, and how she had ended up breaking down on call. He, however, was never like that; he always composed his thoughts calmly and meticulously, but every so often she heard him suppress a sniffle before the call disconnected. He was the brave one. He had died a brave one.

On the gloomy day when she discovered the news, she received a box full of his belongings wherein she managed to find a letter that he had written more than a month before his death, addressed to his unborn child. She, finally, had decided upon a name for her baby, owing to her husband’s last words that some of the surviving soldiers had managed to hear in the ominous silence that brought upon his death, and apprised her about.

As mystified as she had been, she set the letter inside a wooden box and locked it up, preserving it for years later when her child would be old enough to read about the soldier who despite never being able to return home, continued to live where he belonged- in her heart, in her cherished memories, and in every story she would subsequently narrate.