Read Online LASHKAR by Mukul Deva - Free Book Online Page B

died?’
    Iqbal himself was witness to five huge heaps of mangled bodies that they recovered from the debris on the first day. By evening their minds and bodies had been pushed to the threshold. Stomachs and throats ached horribly from the constant retching and throwing up.
    When darkness finally forced rescue efforts to a halt, the tired beaten men who stumbled back to camp that night had nothing in common with the enthusiastic young boys in search of adventure and a cause to believe in. The thrill and excitement of bombs and beliefs receded into the gaunt futility of death. If this is how life can be brought to a sudden wrenching halt then what is the point of it all? What meaning does the jihad have…does anything have?
    The next morning again found them headed for the devastated town, sombrely shouldering their picks and shovels. The pieces of cloth tied around their mouths and noses did not smother the stink of death. They split up in pairs as they entered the town and reluctantly began to make their way into the desolation. Iqbal and Omar came up to the ruins of a small settlement. The silence was deathly. Suddenly Iqbal heard a dull thud and a muffled cry. Quickening his pace he walked around the collapsed wall of the hut.
    A plump, thickset woman in her early forties lay in the rubble of what was once her home. Iqbal’s heart lurched when he saw her. It was as if Hamida, his mother, was lying before him. The same kindly face, the same hennaed hair. The right side of her face was badly bloodied. The lower half of her body was buried in the debris. A thick wooden log lying across her body pinned her down. Iqbal could see her straining to raise the log and free herself.
    Frantic hope flooded the woman’s face when she saw Iqbal. ‘My daughter is still buried under,’ she flailed a hand. ‘Please get her out of there. She is terrified of the dark.’ The women’s voice broke: ‘Please, son …please…my little girl.’
    ‘Don’t worry, Ammi.’ The word eluded Iqbal’s control; he looked away. ‘We will, but let us get you out first.’
    ‘Please!’ she begged. ‘Get her out first. She has been calling out to me and crying the whole night.’ The woman’s voice broke into a crazed sob. ‘I have not heard her crying for sometime now,’ she whispered after a long pause. ‘She must be hurt.’ There was a dogged hope in her words; words that resolutely denied the other reason for her daughter’s silence.
    ‘We will help you first.’ Raising his voice Iqbal hailed Omar. Together the two of them managed to move the log away. And then he wished they hadn’t. The lower half of the woman was pulp. Blood surged out as the pressure of the log lifted away. ‘How is she still alive?’ Omar whispered harshly. He too was struggling to retain control over himself.
    ‘Zeenat…my daughter…’ the woman seemed oblivious to her own pain. Or maybe the hurt in her heart overrode everything else. ‘Please get her out.’
    She pointed again towards the huge heap in the centre of the hut.
    Omar and Iqbal exchanged a long look. Then they both went to work with their shovels. Minutes bled away. As did life from the lady lying on the hard cold floor of the place that had once been her home. She watched them with an unblinking gaze; the hope in her eyes glazing over into death as Iqbal and Omar pulled out the lifeless corpse of her daughter from the rubble. It was as though she had willed herself to stay alive only for her daughter.
    Iqbal could not bring himself to abandon the dead woman and her teenage daughter. ‘I want to bury them,’ he finally told Omar.
    ‘Let’s get them to the…to where the other bodies are…’
    ‘No, Omar, I want to bury them here…where they lived…’ He looked away. ‘She looks like my mother,’ he finally whispered softly…reluctantly.
    The two men began to dig. Iqbal felt his head explode with pain as he gently lowered the woman who reminded him of his mother into the shallow