After the Death of a Man

I died.

When a story opens by announcing its protagonist’s demise, it risks sacrificing suspense for inevitability, and monotony often follows. But there's nothing to be done—I died. It’s as annoying as when the usher at the cinema, to get back at you for not tipping him, spoils the movie's end by whispering it in your ear. But forgive me—I died.

I died, yet I’m just as curious about how this story ends as you are.

I used to think death brought release from life’s burdens. But no—it only lightens them momentarily before crashing back down on you with full force. You struggle, you thrash, but you can’t escape. Then comes acceptance—or maybe something short of it.

What I’ll tell you now isn’t a story, not really. It’s the account of how I refused to accept death and went on questioning life. I’m the chubby, bespectacled kid in a movie who escapes the killer when he’s supposed to die, shouting, “Why me? Why do I have to die?”

Even in death, the way I lived clung to me. I couldn’t stop questioning. I became, in a sense, a ghost haunting my own life. That’s why I decided to go after the man who killed me.

No, I didn’t leap into his nightmares with a “Boo!” I didn’t cheapen things like that. I just needed to understand—why did I die?

Mine was a death as ordinary and as extraordinary as any. I had no idea that day would be my last. That morning, I made myself a simple breakfast. My work hours were irregular, so I had time to sip my coffee and read the newspaper leisurely. I liked playing with words in those quiet hours. I’d wander through them, touch them in my imagination. Imagination. I’d start with a slow descent down the tall stem of the ‘I,’ then let my hand rise gently into the flowing curves of an ‘N.’

I loved reading the long stories of others, but I never thought my own stories were worth stretching out with vivid descriptions or deep philosophical dialogues. Maybe it was a kind of occupational affliction—one of those disorders common to people chasing short-term, project-based work. Outcome-oriented. Deadline-driven. Always rushing, always under pressure, always late. I lived in haste, as if I were always on the verge of some urgent assignment—even though I had none.

Waiting impatiently beside the microwave for food to reheat. Eating fast. Drinking fast. Changing shirts and trousers before they could even get dirty. Dropping by the dry cleaner twice a month because there was no time to do laundry. Hiring a cleaning lady weekly because there was no time to clean. Eating out constantly because there was no time to cook—meals fried in cheap oil, with fake flavors, cooked fast, and tasted more or less the same.

Gaining weight fast. Denying it fast, convincing yourself smartly that you’re fine. Hitting the gym. Running fast. Pedaling fast. Flirting fast with a woman you met at the gym café. But then leaving just as fast because you’re “too busy” and she has to pick up her suit from the dry cleaner for a meeting.

What do you expect from a life lived at such speed? If you rush through life like that, then when your death finally crashes down on you, it feels just like it did for me—a crash test with a dummy inside a car that hits the wall at full speed. Except the dummy isn’t a dummy. And this isn’t a test. And even if you rewind the film in your head a million times, the crash still happens. This is your first and your last. You used up your only chance at full speed.

That’s exactly how it was for me.

I finished breakfast. Got in my car. Turned the key in the ignition—

Boom! A tremendous blast rang out.

At around 2:30 p.m., just as I shut the car door and turned the key, everything blew up. In the stunned eternity of that explosion, the first image in my mind was of my son. My little boy. I thought, “He’ll grow up without a father.” Like I did. I never wished to leave him my darkest nightmare as an inheritance. I felt pity for him, for myself. I thought I wouldn’t get to hold my wife again. I saw her smile flash before my eyes—one last time—and I felt how deeply she’d grieve. I couldn’t bear to look at her face in my mind.

And then the moment of reckoning came. They say if you die without seeing your killer, you’ll recognize them at the moment of death.

Faces passed before me. Familiar faces. Not one, but several. Cowardly eyes, treacherous expressions paraded through my mind. Who are you?

They didn’t stop. And as my pain deepened, I realized I was dead.

Still, the faces didn’t stop. My friend, Captain Salim’s face was there, asking, “What happened, brother?” And I said, “I don’t know, Salim.”

More faces—familiar but shadowed. One after another. Was my pain from my body, torn apart? Or from this chaos in my mind? I didn’t know.

It hurt. I was bleeding. “Dear God,” I remember thinking, “just let me die already.”

Though “remembering” might not be the right word. Maybe it all lasted three seconds or even less. But I died.

And in that moment of knowing I had died, I was relieved to be free of that parade of wretched faces. I couldn’t name a single one. They were familiar, but nameless. Later, I would understand. But at that moment, it was too soon. I was too dead to blame anyone. Too absurd a mess to demand answers.

Later, I would name them. One by one. And it was then, in that voiceless agony, that I screamed to my son—not with my voice, but with a silence that fell into bottomless wells. I echoed within myself. I moaned. My voice reverberated inside the walls of my own body— the very body I once so cleverly convinced myself was truly me. The body whose boundaries I embraced with all the particles of my mind, from birth to death, in every direction. That ship I sailed in during my journey through the world.

As a dead man, it was my most basic right to know who had killed me.

Luckily, once the initial shock wore off, I figured it out quickly.

One evening, I found my killer crouched beside a wall on the edge of Serdeny Street.

“I know you,” I said.

From between his beard’s matted tangles, two black holes of eyes glared up like insects. He grumbled.

“I know who you are,” I said again.

He scratched his beard. Took another drag of his cigarette.

The stench—a mix of rotting flesh, garbage, sweat, and sourness—made my stomach turn.

The smoke and his stench blurred together.

It was obvious he had no home beyond that street corner.

I waited to see if he’d say anything. He didn’t.

He shifted his weight and kept smoking.

I raised my hand, almost touched his shoulder, but pulled back. Even if I knew he wasn’t truly evil, something about his filth made me recoil, as if it might contaminate me.

I rubbed my hands together instinctively, wiping away the discomfort.

I was visibly unsettled. I wanted him to be unsettled, too.

Why the hell had he planted that bomb under my car?

I wasn’t his first nightmare. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t flee.

He stood there like he’d been expecting me.

He didn’t look like someone who’d seen a ghost.

“I saw you,” he said.

His voice came out as a rasping grunt—whether from the smoke or ruined lungs, I don’t know.

“I saw you. First, by the car. Running. When it exploded, I heard the blast. I stopped. I turned. You were standing just beyond the car. I thought—maybe he didn’t get in. Maybe it wasn’t him. If not, we’re screwed. Then I saw the engine blow again. You didn’t move. People screamed and rushed toward the wreck. You still didn’t move.”

“That’s when I knew. I wanted to run. But I just stood there. I knew you’d come for me.”

“Why’d you plant the bomb?”

“They told me to. So I did. Don’t know why.”

He didn’t know.

I knew he didn’t know.

“Give me a cigarette,” I said.

He did.

We sat on the wall and smoked.

“Then I understood,” he said. “When I saw your face in the papers. Said you were a writer. They told you to stop writing, but you didn’t.”

When I finished my cigarette, I got up.

Vanished into the dark street.