As the Bodies of Victims Pile Up in Ukraine
As the bodies of victims pile up in Ukraine, I am painfully reminded of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the atrocities the Russians committed there in the 1980s.
Growing up in Kabul, I used to see stray dogs fighting over and feasting on dead bodies on a daily basis. That is why I get so emotional when I watch the news about Ukraine now. I feel the pain of those mothers who will never see their sons again, wives who will never see their husbands again, and especially of the children who will go on grappling with the meaning of death for the rest of their lives, but never truly come to terms with it.
As I have seen in Afghanistan, the seeds of grief and hatred will get planted within these kids, causing them all kinds of physical and psychological problems. Some will grow to seek revenge, some will fight the demons within themselves, some will try to find the reason behind their losses, and some will try to forget the past and start afresh, but none of them will ever get their peace back, not even the most forgiving ones, because ultimately they are being robbed of their childhoods, and the child within them will always weep.
As for the grownups who somehow managed to survive the war, they will go on looking into the dark abyss, and the dark abyss will stare right back at them while sucking the soul out of them bit by bit.
As for those who end up in foreign lands, they will always live in their motherland — mentally — while their sense of guilt of abandoning their country will devour them one bite at a time. When they watch the news and see how their beloved motherland is shelled and destroyed, they will feel shelled and destroyed on the inside. They will lament their sorrows to whomever listens to them. Every now and then a kind individual will sympathize with them, but no one — absolutely no one — will ever fathom the depth of their pain, a pain that cannot be diagnosed by any doctor or medical equipment, but it is always there, and it is felt down to the marrow.
At times, nothing will be more agonizing than that lump of agony in the throat that will always be there, even when the war is over, because deep down they will forever be mourning their loved ones, mourning their country sitting on piles of rubbish, mourning their loss of identity in their new country, and mourning that one day they will also die, but die far away from their people and motherland to be buried in some cemetery where no one will ever come to visit their graves.
But while they are alive and breathing, the pain of helplessly watching powerful politicians advocating war and sending more innocent lives to their early graves will make them feel they are being killed over and over.
And even sadder than that is when they see people who have no experience living in a warzone even for one hour cheering those politicians. When will these people realize that war is where young people are sent to hate and kill each other by the same political leaders who know each other, hate each other, and yet never kill one another?
And when the war is over, these same politicians end up meeting one another, shaking hands, having a meal, and cracking jokes. But those mothers, wives, and children who lost their loved ones will go on living with their sorrows for the rest of their lives. These survivors will eventually realize that their greatest tragedy was not losing their loved ones, but surviving the war. What a curse to go on living with unforgettable memories while the dead ones are sound asleep in their graves.
I speak from firsthand experience. I know war and its aftermath too well.
While some of these survivors may never experience a truly happy day in their lives again, some may still find solace or encounter moments of joy here and there, but their solace and joy will always be tinted with a sense of never-ending bereavement. In my case, though, the day I held my newborn for the first time, I felt as if I was holding my mother, grandfather, uncles, aunts, cousins, and all those I lost to war. That night I wrote in my diary: “No man can claim he knows love in its purest form until he is blessed with a daughter.”
Babies — this I also speak from experience — heal broken souls.
Qais Akbar Omar is the author of A Fort of Nine Towers, which has been published in more than twenty languages, and the co-author of A Night in the Emperor’s Garden, which has been dramatized by BBC Radio. He has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, The Sunday Times, The Globe and Mail, and The Cairo Review of Global Affair, and he has published short stories in The Southern Review, AGNI, The Hopkins Review, Guernica, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. In 2014–15 Omar was a Scholars at Risk Fellow at Harvard University.