Read Online Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich - Free Book Online

the war. When I got home that day I started stammering and my temperature shot up. My parents thought I’d caught the flu. I stayed at home for a week and read my favourite book, The Gadfly, by Voinovich. **
    Why force me to remember all this? After I got back I couldn’t bear to wear my ‘pre-war’ jeans and shirts. They belonged to some stranger, although they still smelt of me, as my mother assured me. That stranger no longer exists. His place had been taken by someone else with the same surname — which I’d rather you didn’t mention. I rather liked that other person.
    â€˜Father,’ the gadfly asks his former mentor, Montanelli, ‘is your God satisfied now?’ I’d like to throw these words like a grenade — but at who?
    Civilian Employee
    How did I end up here? I simply believed what I read in the papers. ‘There was a time when young people were really capable of achieving something and sacrificing themselves for a great cause,’ I thought, ‘but now we’re good for nothing and I’m no better than the rest. There’s a war on, and I sit here sewing dresses and thinking up new hair-dos.’ Mum wept. ‘I’ll die,’ she said. ‘I beg you. I didn’t give birth to you just so as to bury your arms and legs separately from the rest of you.’
    My first impressions? Kabul Airport was all barbed wire, soldiers with machine-guns and barking dogs. Officers turned up to pick out the prettiest and youngest of us girls. Quite openly. A major came up to me. ‘I’ll give you a lift to your battalion if you don’t mind my truck’.
    â€˜What truck’s that?’
    â€˜It’s a 200.’
    I already knew that ‘200’ meant dead bodies and coffins. ‘Any coffins?’ I asked.
    â€˜They’re being unloaded right now,’ he told me.
    It was an ordinary KamaZ truck with a tarpaulin. They were throwing the coffins out like so many crates of ammunition. I was horrified and the soldiers realised I was a new arrival.
    I got to my unit. The temperature was 60 degrees Celsius and there were enough flies in the toilet to lift you from the ground with their wings. No showers. I was the only woman.
    Two weeks later I was summoned by the battalion commander. ‘You’re going to live with me, sweetheart!’ he informed me. I had to fight him off for two months. Once I almost threw a grenade at him: another time I grabbed a knife and threatened him with it. ‘You’re just after bigger fish. You know which side your bread’s buttered!’ was his usual comment. I got as tough as old boots there. Then one day he just said, ‘Fuck off!’ and that was the end of it.
    I started swearing too. In fact, I got really coarse. I was transferred to Kabul as a hotel-receptionist. To begin with I reacted to men like a wild animal. Everyone could tell there was something wrong with me. ‘Are you crazy? We won’t bite you!’ they’d say.
    I just couldn’t get out of the habit of self-defence. If someone asked me for a cup of tea I’d yell at them: ‘Yeah, and what else — a quickie?’ Then one day I found … love? That’s not a word much used over there. He used to introduce me to his friends as his ‘wife’, and I’d whisper in his ear, ‘Your Afghan wife, you mean.’
    Once, when we were driving together in an armoured car, we were shot at. I threw myself over him but luckily the bullet went into the hatch. He’d been sitting with his back to the sniper and hadn’t seen him. When we got back he wrote to his wife about me. He didn’t get any letters from home for two months after that.
    I love shooting. I enjoy emptying a whole magazine at a single burst — it makes me feel good. Once I killed a muj. We’d gone into the hills to get some fresh air and make love. I heard a noise from behind a rock. I was so scared