The snow had just started, the first of the year. Hazy light through the clouds outside the window of our third floor apartment cast light shadows off of the slowly falling flakes.
“Is the hot water on?” Mom said from the kitchen.
I ran to the bathroom, climbed onto the side of the tub, and looked through the safety window on the water heater. The grill of blue flames popped on. “Yes!” I yelled and ran back to my Matchbox cars.
“Still on?” she called a moment later.
I ran back into the bathroom. There was a strong smell of burning. Flakes of black, charred plastic dripped from the heater. “Something’s wrong!” I shouted.
Her feet pounding down the hallway. She grabbed my arm and pulled me out. Firelight flickered on the hall wall.
Mom yanked open the front door and pushed me ahead of her down the stairs. She banged on our downstairs neighbour’s door. He opened it with a surprised look on his face.
(“Tell him we need help!”)
“Uncle, something happened. There is a flame in our toilet.”
He nodded and gestured for us to come in. We sat on his hard sofa while he talked on the phone, too quickly and complicatedly for me to understand. The firemen came. It was evening before we could return to our flat.
“Tell your mother the water heater must be replaced,” he said.
I nodded.
(“Tell him ‘thank you’.”)
“Thank you, uncle, for liking to help us.”
Our apartment was drenched.
“Dad will be back from his trip tomorrow. He’ll figure something out.”
We went to the neighbourhood restaurant for dinner walking through the fresh snow from earlier in the day. The snowfall had stopped and the night sky was frozen and magnificent. After I ordered the bean soup that was my favourite, the violin player approached our table, offering a folk song for a small tip. Usually Mom waved him off, but tonight she nodded to him. He played and sang. Mom listened.
“What is he singing?”
I listened a moment and then translated,
Dear mother, why did you birth me?
You ought instead to have thrown me
Into the river.
Then I’d not be a forgotten child.
She smiled and shook her head.
“Eat your soup,” she said.
Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram.
When the nights close in Afternoons and evenings converge, The long summer days having moved on.
Leaves capitulate like flames frozen upon the ember season Gently stirred by the breath seen murmuring around the bough, Serenaded by the nature of contemplation.
We confine ourselves from the numbing cold, Consoling ourselves by the warmth of the fire, Reassured by our reminiscences maturing in ardent grace.
As the perennial atrophy cauterizes the peregrination, Before expectation burns through the vapours of matutinal glamour Reaching across the vault of cerulean restoration.
Rising upon the orient horizon of an aestival veranda, Spreading its symphony of molten nuance Through the apparition of an ocean exhumed.
Climbing the balcony of postprandial pioneering By intervening our denial, As we observe the rumination.
Before surrendering to the season of grievance, Where beauty’s acquired by its more alluring honesty As opposed to more obvious estimations.
The Cycle of Life
Eventually the horizon will burn in turn with the darkened sky And the moon shall shine as a fossil in homage of night, Embraced with sanctimonious judgement of nature’s deceit As stars journey passed escaping those forever still and vacant With such privilege to witness destiny in its proposal As summers arousal becomes weathered by autumnal mists, Clearing for winters serrated breath, Before the brides of benevolence provide many a mellow treat under this raw arrangement, And we occasion ourselves into the clear revelation of calm turbulence, Where time has no age.
Winter Blossom
No sooner has the snow died back from the ground and trees Then the Galanthus and blackthorn blossom Before the cherries shed theirs, Providing a covering of snow through spring, Crowned by the May bloom serenaded by elder With the cow parsley and stitchwort amongst the verges Where meadowsweet froths As the oxeyes watch you wander by Towards the woodruff and ransoms thawing along the riverside.
Beneath the Yew
A robin perches on the grave stone Like a spirit watching out for me, Cocking its body, then it’s head, Before fluttering into the yew hedge, Where a blackbird bounces, Flicking the leaves to the side, Rummaging amongst the decay, To find a worm and end its life In preservation of its own.
Anthony tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of establishments, including Shot Glass Journal, Jerry Jazz Musician, and CommuterLit.
In Anecdote, History and Kashmir, the writer explores the profound power of personal narratives to reshape our understanding of history. Through a compelling personal encounter on a highway, he captures the shared struggles of individuals caught within rigid systems, shedding light on the deeper, often-overlooked layers of authority, duty, and humanity. By juxtaposing this anecdote with broader historical narratives, the essay delves into how anecdotes serve as counter-narratives, challenging dominant historical accounts and opening windows to individual experiences that history tends to overlook. It draws on literary examples from George Orwell, Saadat Hasan Manto, and Basharat Peer to reveal the nuances anecdotes can bring to complex socio-political contexts like Partition and the Kashmir conflict. This essay argues that by embracing anecdotal storytelling, we can enrich historical discourse, deepening our empathy and understanding of human experiences that otherwise risk being lost in sweeping narratives. A must-read for those interested in the intersections of history, literature, and the lived experience of conflict.
An anecdote is a concise, frequently personal narrative that communicates a certain point or idea. Anecdotes are frequently used to shed light on a person, location, or occasion and can help make difficult concepts easier to comprehend or remember. They often add a humanizing or engaging element to writing and conversation. In their famous book Practicing New Historicism, Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt assert that anecdotes provide a sense of authenticity and “the touch of the real” that exists both within and outside the mainstream historical succession. The mainstream historians, who usually view individual or small-scale events in relation to a broader historical background, find anecdotes insignificant and “mere rhetorical embellishments” or sometimes “as brief moments of respite from an analytical generalisation”. In contrast to the common assumption that considers anecdotes as methodologically inconsequential, Gallagher and Greenblatt propose a theory that regards anecdotes as equally significant as the grand historical narratives. They claim that anecdote could be conceived as a tool with which to rub literary texts against the grain of received notions about their determinants, revealing the fingerprints of the “accidental, suppressed, defeated, uncanny, abjected, or exotic” – in short, the non-surviving – even if only fleetingly. This interest serves the “effect of arousing scepticism about grand historical narratives, or essentialising descriptions of a historical period”. They further argue that anecdotes function as parallel narratives that have the potential to puncture the grand narrative sequence of historical explanations and become significant narratives in their own right. Anecdote, therefore, can sometimes be used as a methodological and counter-historical tool to assimilate the multiplicity of voices and discursiveness of memory.
Let me recount an anecdote. I was speeding along the highway, knowing I had just ten minutes left before the biometric attendance system at my workplace would lock me out. After 10 o’clock, the stern officer in charge made no exceptions. Even arriving one minute late meant submitting what he emphatically called “short leave,” leading to a deduction from our salary. It was a rigid rule we had grown accustomed to, just as we had grown used to the frustrating halts for army convoys on the road. But that day, desperation gripped me, and I gathered the courage to talk to the army man who had stopped me.
“I’m sorry, but could you please let me through? Our officer doesn’t allow us to mark attendance after ten, and if I’m late, my salary will be cut,” I blurted. He didn’t acknowledge my plea. Whistle in hand, he was focused on directing the vehicles into a line that stretched seemingly for miles, as if the road itself had surrendered to the endless convoy.
Just when I thought my words had been lost in the wind, the soldier, now weary from his whistling, approached my car. He spoke softly, a stark contrast to the authority he wielded with his whistle. “You don’t need to apologize,” he said. “I never want to stop anyone like this. I understand your situation. But I have to follow orders, just like you. Our officers are strict, and so are the rules. Sometimes I feel awful when I have to stop ambulances, but there’s no choice.”
He went on to tell me about his own life—his family back home working on sugarcane fields, and his recent marriage, a flicker of personal warmth amidst the mechanical reality of his duty. The convoy, slow and deliberate, began to pass. Meanwhile, I typed out my “short leave” request, ready to submit it as soon as I reached my office.
Before he returned to his post, the soldier, still holding his whistle, said in a quiet, almost apologetic tone, “I’m sorry.”
As I continued my journey, I found myself confused, unsure of whom to blame. Was it the soldier, who had politely disallowed me passage despite his own reluctance? Was it me, for leaving home a few minutes too late? Or was it the rigid, faceless authority on both sides that enforced such inflexible rules? Or the convoy itself, groaning defiantly on the road, indifferent to the small struggles of those caught in its path. In that moment, it felt as if we were all trapped in a system of invisible forces, each of us playing our roles, unable to break free. The soldier’s apology echoed in my mind long after I had driven away, a reminder that sometimes, in the grand machinery of life, none of us truly have control.
This anecdotal occurrence disrupts the usual flow of history, adding a personal dimension that counters its tendency to generalize and sum up complex events. In considering who writes history and the methods they use, we realize the limitations of historical narratives in capturing individual experiences. This anecdote humanizes a critical aspect of history, bringing in emotions and empathy while challenging simple categorizations of “dominant” and “oppressed.” For instance, the soldier who stopped me is part of a dominant power structure, yet he himself is subject to authority and rules beyond his control, revealing the disparities in power even within the dominant ranks. Such narratives puncture historical generalizations by focusing on lived experiences over broad assessments of the collective condition.
Symbolically, such incidents don’t aim to counter history but offer alternative perspectives, running parallel to official narratives and preserving the nuances of individual experience. Methodologically, the anecdote leans more toward literary expression than historical; it captures unique, singular moments that history often excludes. Where history concerns itself with the powerful—the structural frameworks of governance, policy implications, and broad societal changes—anecdotes reveal how these structures influence individuals, their relationships, and ultimately, their consciousness.
Literature’s strength lies in handling such anecdotes as, for example, demonstrated by George Orwell’s essay Shooting an Elephant. In this personal narrative, Orwell, a British officer in colonial Burma, describes the internal conflict that compels him to kill an elephant against his better judgment. The essay serves as an anecdotal critique of colonialism, showing how the colonial system oppresses both the colonizer and the colonized. This perspective on colonialism is unique to literature, which captures the emotional, internalized cost of imperial power that history’s structural approach may overlook.
The history of Partition in India illustrates this gap between historical records and anecdotal literary depictions. While history provides dates, statistics, and geopolitical causes, literature captures the visceral human costs of Partition, giving voice to individual stories often lost in official accounts. Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories, for example, delve into the chaos, trauma, and moral ambiguity that Partition inflicted on ordinary people. In his story Toba Tek Singh, Manto portrays the absurdity of Partition through the eyes of a mental asylum inmate who cannot understand the new lines drawn across his homeland. By focusing on a single character’s plight, Manto reveals the emotional and psychological dislocation that numbers and policy discussions fail to capture. Similarly, Khushwant Singh’s novel Train to Pakistan uses a fictional village to depict how communal harmony was shattered by the violent upheavals of Partition. Through the lives of villagers who are suddenly divided along religious lines, Singh explores the betrayals, guilt, and unexpected kindnesses that emerged amidst the horror. These personal stories humanize the statistics of Partition, making us feel the tragedy on an intimate level.
Closer to home, our regional literature also uses anecdotes to offer powerful counter-narratives to mainstream historiography. Basharat Peer’s memoir Curfewed Night gives a brief anecdotal account of a 19-year-old militant in Shopian who, inspired by the Bollywood movie Tere Naam, grows long hair, frequently follows a girl to her college whom he admires and desires a romantic escape with for a life of peace. Yet the “militant tag” makes this impossible, highlighting the limits and personal sacrifices embedded within such a life. Peer also captures the longing that militants face for ordinary joys, like watching the moon while relaxing in their own homes. Peer writes, “Being a militant wasn’t only about getting arms training and fighting; it was also about being excluded from the joys of life. Being a militant was also about the near certainty of arrest, torture, death, and killing.” Similarly, The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed offers a fictional yet immersive exploration into the life of a young Kashmiri man in a heavily militarized zone. Through his collection of ID cards from fallen militants, Waheed’s protagonist serves as a haunting testament to both the personal and collective trauma of living amidst conflict. The “militarized wilderness” metaphor is powerful in underscoring not only the physical violence but also presents a different context to revisit history. On the other hand, writers like Arvind Gigoo, Siddhartha Gigoo, Rahul Pandita, Varad Sharma, and Chandrakanta offer an alternative perspective by documenting the displacement and struggles of Kashmiri Pandits. Through anecdotal depictions that go beyond polarized historical narratives, these writers bring forth the diversity of experiences, reflecting the profound pain of losing one’s home and culture, as well as the empathy needed to navigate the layered identities. Both approaches—Waheed’s focus on the militarized experience and the empathetic recounting of Pandit displacement—highlight the unique role of literature in capturing complex human dimensions. These narratives challenge monolithic perspectives, revealing how individual stories intersect with broader socio-political narratives, fostering a more comprehensive understanding of the conflict and its deeply human repercussions.
In this way, the anecdote does not contradict history but enriches it, filling gaps and offering perspectives that historical accounts alone cannot convey. By bringing these experiences to light, literature and anecdotal accounts reveal the human realities behind historical structures, creating a fuller, more empathetic understanding of our shared past.
Ghulam Mohammad Khan was born and raised in Sonawari (Bandipora); an outlying town located on the wide shores of the beautiful Wullar Lake. Ghulam Mohammad believes that literature is the most original and enduring repository of human memory. He loves the inherent intricacies of language and the endless possibilities of meaning. In his writing, he mainly focuses on mini-narratives, local practices and small-scale events that could otherwise be lost forever to the oblivion of untold histories. Ghulam Mohammad considers his hometown, faith, and family to be the most important things to him. He writes for a few local magazines and newspapers. His short story collection titled The Cankered Rose is his first major forthcoming work.
You can find more of Ghulam’s work here on Ink Pantry.
The snow is falling but do you care after all you are the night. The fire is burning but the stars do not warm and are insanely distant. After all you are the night of death. No one is born in a cemetery with a candle in their hands and this death continues simultaneously with the night. The river is endless. After all you are water and you are one with time. And everything around is censorship or self-censorship. And the jumping recitative of fir trees drinks the smooth surface of autumn. The last sip. But the truth does not exist. Death teaches after all death is our only teacher. Death learns hands and hands learn to sleep. Teacher or student? After all no one knows anything and this night an infinite amount of water has flowed into the future and all around is white and white. A black cry descends on the black snow. The ice cracks and the depth is endless. Minutes pour out. The years float by themselves like water in water. Seagulls cry. There are no more seagulls. There have never been seagulls before. There will be no seagulls and only beaks. Sound. The sound cracks. The forest of death noisily falls asleep and only the snowy night that touches your lips like an ellipsis. The word is your name. Cut a strand of silence and share the silence with it. Your grandmother was shot with a machine gun during the German occupation more than 70 years ago. Your daughter today looks at the sky and sees military planes shooting at the stars in the continuous darkness. Nothing has changed in the world for decades. The forest is squatting and the night shoots at the cast-iron milky back of the head at the soldiers sleeping in the barracks. The river of night floats by every second. After all. The future has never been here before. There is no future.
Mykyta Ryzhykh has been nominated for Pushcart Prize. Published many times in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, TheNewVerse News.
You can find more of Mykyta’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Listen to the Children chattering With me. They share seventy Secrets about how Their mothers make meals. They say their Brother is the Biggest brother in The whole damn land. They claim to Have crowns. They say they Never fall down. They are liars lying: Everyone falls before They learn to fly.
Little Lizard
The little lizard licks The wind by my bare leg. His face furrows. It is clear that he Is as revolted of me as I am of myself.
His webbed feet pound the Dusty ground as he Zips off into the Bushy undergrowth.
I can see his little Head poking out, Watching, Waiting for me to make my move.
Slides
The stray cat has A stray heart.
Murder
You stick In my mind like You are hot tar Or golden honey on A spoiled spoon. You are the worst Itch I’ve ever felt. The doctor begs Me not to scratch but Every time I scratch diamonds Scatter in my senses. You have hair, I guess. I have hair too.
Dominik Slusarczyk is an artist who makes everything from music to painting. He was educated at The University of Nottingham where he got a degree in biochemistry. His poetry has been published in various literary magazines including California Quarterly and Taj Mahal Review. His poetry was nominated for Best of the Net by New Pop Lit. His poetry was a finalist in a couple of competitions.
You can find more of Dominik’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Like a cough turning to a sputter of acid spew from wasteland psyche- when it verged on gospel I transferred to oblivion.
Last rites before cracking the safe with colonies of termites teeming, an insight into the black holes you can’t get enough of, never enough-
shoes and starched shirts ill-fitting. The body born outside a factory in a dim-lit alley off a side street from…
Where’s that black hole end anyway?
In the middle of a pitch or field a maiden baking in the sun naked, a victim, a sacrifice, a ‘pick me’ girl in the pitch-black night: common ground for timelessness.
So when the horses go on strike it falls on candlelit vigilantism to rectify, say old van Gogh jerking in a cornfield,
since the cops always appear when you don’t need ‘em and are never there when you do.
But lack of holes won’t complement a face eager to kiss off at the finish line.
Flags don’t fit either, not on moons or ocean liners, at the races or pirated, jammed in some hole to stanch the blood, mucus, sweat, from the bottomed out quake of stormtroop marching-
uniform tight at the pits and crotch, strangling the apple, mutating the core.
Pin a medal on it to witness sudden bursts of supernova.
Old blind Rembrandt astral-projecting from the vanishing point, his varnished panel of mahogany.
Petty Crimes
Keys on the zinc counter with the Renault parked on the roof
Dogs named Socket and Brass
Small dogs, old men Talif the student Kalif the king
El trains, babel of human sewage The urge is to snarl and shred Corner bodega inviting petty crimes
I look her in the eye like from a thousand pop songs there’s been idiocy before too
and when it rains it rains like automatic weapons having a party
Dogs named Eisen and Kreuz Sordid old men
Rear-most chambre de bonne at Le Roi Cold as the walk-in reefer at the 7-11 off Saint-Augustin
the Pekingese patiently watching the sex between Genevieve and Sophie
Later queueing up for apéritifs dine-and-dash being American slang
Jay Passer‘s work has appeared in print and online periodicals and anthologies since 1988. He is the author of 12 collections of poetry and prose, most recently The Cineaste (Alien Buddha Press, 2021). Passer lives in San Francisco, the city of his birth.
You can find more of Jay’s work here on Ink Pantry.
in your mysterious eyes water walking water grows its symbols spoon-fed cubs of tigers, water, the terror of hippos, of water, of mastication, teeth of boulders, war, water, war; immaculate death come home in one piece you breathe inside the box death weighs more than water but to water you return
I am buried in the cliffs of death a solid gemstone chipped from a globe
i wanted to paint myself blue to see if I could match the sky; I could not duplicate clouds; it was a fallen sky it was a bad bacteria that followed as I ran, through the night’s quiet poison; finally a sky black enough for me, Vincent’s perfect canvas
hills that christened themselves black and green; small dignity blank as sun red as tears
How much joy is contained? How much music
still thrills the heart?
Steven Stone has been writing for a long time and has worked with many styles. Steven writes about different subjects, but seems to always come back to metaphysical type work with a generous amount of imagery.
the dreamed winter the storks sitting meekly in Africa the butterfly frozen in the marvellous pond mice write a gorgeous myth a rural boy longs for the moonglow witch apollonianly bewitched a stunning world in a moony way I am full of druidic wizardries You are like a dragonfly We are singing
the dream-like spring the storks are coming home so tenderly the butterfly awoken in glory but sitting mice write ovidian songs a rural girl yearns for afterglow in addition hex enchanted a dazzling world in a starlit way I am shrouded in this cool mystery You are such a firefly We are trilling
the dreamy summer the storks are nesting mayhap peacefully the butterfly flying over becharmed garden mice write Dionysian ode an auntie is bent upon blue hours the enchantress is conjured amusing world in a starry way I wrapped in plethora of sorcery You are Dionysian spider We are chanting
the dreamful autumn the storks are going to fly off musing the butterfly dreaming just before coming death mice write Apollo’s hymn an uncle muses about cool star the sorceress enraptured such a cute world in a moonlit way I stay under a spell of tenderness You are like a charmful bee We caroling
Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is poet who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku as well as long poems. Paweł has published his poetries in many magazines. He writes in English and German.
You can find more of Paweł’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Even if I were to bark up the wrong tree, so be it as long as I am barking something. I don’t know how to climb a tree. Wrongs can’t be right until a climb has ensued. I slide many times before I correct my path. A really steep climb, all the way up, reaching out to save my children who lie here at the top.
Giants take my children from me and put them there. Too strong for me, I can’t fight back. No big deal for them ’cause they don’t need to climb the tree; standing on the ground, they simply roll ’em over to the nestled leaves. But I must stand my ground if I were to win this war. It is a war now that they have taken them from me.
I hold on to the bark for dear life. As much as I want, I can’t let go of it. I don’t know how to. Fear is all around me. Fear is swelling inside of me; my children, taken from me. I slide. I slide all the way down. The bark is flimsy. It comes off easily. Just as well, I spring right up, get back on with the climb. My nails dig deep, clawing into its russet skin.
Some bark comes straight off and exposes a stark tree which in turn shows a clear pathway to me. The tree gives me some stability, as I get my bearings back on it. Half way up, I hear my children sing, “I love you Mummy. My only sweet Mummy. I love yoouu when the days are sunny. In winter, I love you some more”. Sweats run down my forehead. Trepidations rise as I hear their voice. They sing out loud; I yell that I am coming to rescue them. They tell me that the time is right now, ’cause the monsters are out to pick berries in the woodlands.
Time is of the essence. How soon before the giants return? Amla in Bangla, and rich in Ayurvedic properties, the giants know about it only too well. They are after the ripened fruit—the reds, not the greens. They have a huge appetite to whet. I inch up and slide back; quick to resume, I stay the course. Gently treading this time, afraid to fall. The tree seems to be growing on me. I feel dwarfed against it, obviously unlike the giants as tall as the tree.
What better lure than to secure my children’s destiny from the giants who would make a meal out of their tender bones, and red gooseberry even before the evening is out? This impossible climb bruises me from head to toe. Lean times, a lean tree. Weary of the chase, I turn my gaze upon the woodlands. From this height, I can’t see the gooseberry anymore; minutely microscope, they seem to disappear on the stretch.
The tree is tall; too tall for me. Giants have no patience, and perspire in vain. I see clearly how distraught they are, trampling the shrubbery in anger because they don’t see it. The fruit is massacred underneath their giant feet. Towering tall, they don’t see what I see. I see my children. They see me. I make them a few gooseberry pies picked from the same shrubbery.
Multiple contests’ winner for short fiction, Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning Australian novelist born in Bangladesh. Her historical fiction, The Pacifist, is an audible bestseller. Included in The Best Asian Speculative Fiction Anthology, her works have also been acclaimed by Midwest Book Review, and DD Magazine, translated into German, Greek, and Bangla, her works have been reprinted, anthologized, selected as Editor’s Pick, Best ofs, and made the top 10 reads multiple times. Additionally, her works have been nominated for Pushcart, botN and James Tait. She has authored eight books and has been twice a reader and juror for international awards. Her recent publications are with Litro, Otoliths, Popshot Quarterly, and Alien Buddha.
You can find more of Mehreen’s work here on Ink Pantry.
He had hoped the night would end his torment. It didn’t. He thought the storm in his mind might calm with the dawn. But the storm raged on. Standing rigid behind his gun, his lifeless gaze locked on the barrel jutting out from the narrow window of the muddy bunker, perched high on the mountaintop.
In the beginning, he found a strange comfort in staring at the barren, lifeless slope on the enemy’s side, its dry earth stretching into an endless desolation. The enemy pickets, hidden among the distant rocky precipices, visible only through his binoculars, rarely troubled him. But the world beyond those jagged peaks—untouchable, unreachable—haunted him more than any threat of war. Oddly, their own side of the mountain unsettled him the most. The lush green slope, dense with deodar trees, the shimmering stream weaving through the valley below—it all felt like a scene from someone else’s life. A life he no longer belonged to. Yet the tiny houses, no larger than matchboxes from his vantage, always drew his eye. There was something about them. He couldn’t say what. Maybe it was the thought that people still lived inside those fragile shells, even while he stood alone, staring at a world that no longer made sense.
He wanted to squeeze the trigger, to empty the entire LMG into the misty mountainside. Reload. Fire again. Anything to silence the restless storm inside him. But nothing would settle. His anger simmered just beneath the surface, a volatile mix of frustration and suffocating boredom. The night stretched on, endless and consuming, swallowing him in its choking darkness—a darkness that burned like fire, thick with smoke he couldn’t escape.
In the filthy, abandoned barrack at the far corner of the camp, his comrades would be gathered—drinking, gambling, losing themselves in the haze of liquor and late-night revelry. He would imagine the door still ajar, the stench of spilled blood thickening the air. He could see his father, the hypochondriac, pacing madly, unable to bear the sight. He thought of him, and the memory sent a twisted satisfaction through him. He could almost hear the echo of his father’s frantic mutterings.
But none of it mattered. Not the men, not the barracks, not the maddening silence. The only thing that held his focus now was the gun. His fingers twitched on the trigger, drawn to the cold, familiar steel. It fascinated him, how easy it would be to let loose, to unleash all that rage in a single violent burst.
He wanted to scream. To tell them all—his comrades, his father, anyone—that they didn’t know, that no one could understand how hard it was to be him, to be stuck in this place, in this skin, under this endless, heavy sky. But the words wouldn’t come. All that filled him was the blackness of the night, sinking deeper into his heart, his mind, his soul.
And still, he couldn’t fire. The darkness only deepened.
Some things aren’t meant to be, some are beyond your control, and others—utterly unnecessary—are thrust upon you to break you. Bloody fate. No, not fate—it was helplessness that wasn’t part of the plan. It was forced there. A soldier has no fate of his own. It’s shaped for him in the grandest of words, dressed up in promises of purpose, but concealing the bitter truth beneath—the agony.
What better place to amplify his suffering than this barren hilltop, overlooking a few distant enemy pickets on one side and a valley on the other—so still, so detached from the world that even the small cluster of Gujjars seemed forgotten by time. He had his answer: there was no better place because, after that night, he knew he had nowhere to go.
Fifteen days and nights—that’s all. Then he would return. It felt like a cruel transaction: sacrificing something precious just to cling to something that had become a necessity. He felt trapped between the two, caught in the limbo of a twisted bargain. Bloody fate wasn’t written in his stars; it was abandoned here, on this godforsaken hill.
There was something deeply wicked—at least, disgustingly unfair—about trying to justify anyone’s misery by calling it fate. It was easier to blame fate than admit the truth: that none of this should have happened. And yet here he stood, his fate written in the nothingness of this place, while the world spun on, indifferent.
He had loved everything about the marriage—the preparations, the way tradition blended with longing, how emotion intertwined with involvement, excitement with anticipation. The house had been alive, glowing with lights that, in the night, seemed like a flame burning bright in the dark furnace of the world. Everything overflowed with warmth, every corner brimming with life.
Now, back in the cold isolation of the mountain wilderness, that warmth felt like a distant memory. His body ached, and his soul felt hollow. This place, which once held some purpose, now seemed devoid of meaning. The endless days blurred into weeks, weeks into months, as the wilderness stretched out before him, tired and lifeless. He hadn’t noticed before how utterly empty it was. The enemy side, often shrouded in impenetrable mist for weeks at a time, had become as distant as his own sense of duty. Even the valley below, with its stream cutting through the foothills, felt as unreachable as home.
The separation changed him. It warped his perceptions—about duty, about his nation and its bond with this barren land, about marriage, home, and even his beloved wife. Doubt gnawed at his mind. In the loneliness of his cold bunker, sitting behind the big gun, he began to realize that doubting was its own form of journey. A slow, painful descent into self-realization, into the fragility of self-worth. He imagined the bullets in the magazine rusting, just like his own purpose.
He thought now that perhaps all this—the grand ideals, the noble duty, the sacrifices—meant nothing. Perhaps they had never meant anything at all, just illusions propped up to give shape to something hollow. And maybe they would remain that way for ages, lost to time and meaning, continuing on as empty echoes.
Integrity? To hell with it. Nothing, no one – not even the indifferent elements of nature – remains consistent. Inconsistency is woven into the fabric of existence. Yet we humans crave stability, especially in relationships. We demand it and cling to it, despite knowing that nothing endures unchanged. Yes, for as long as one can, one should hold onto it. But even the strongest relationships, the ones built on trust and loyalty, inevitably buckle under the weight of inconsistency. His doubts, once quiet whispers, grew into an obsession, filling the barren wilderness of his soul. The desolate landscape around the bunker only served to amplify the inner turmoil. He withdrew from the rowdy late-night gatherings in the abundant barracks, no longer drinking, no longer gambling. He stopped caring about the numbers in his salary account or what remained of his connection to the world outside.
The thought of betrayal gnawed at him like a wound that refused to heal. His mobile phone, once a link to the distant world, now seemed like a mocking presence, incapable of guiding him through the shadows of his mind. Doubt, he realised, was a journey – a descent into the primal, crude essence of one’s being. And it terrified him.
The doubt became real. Palpable. Like a river swelling with the pressure of a coming flood, it built within him, threatening to burst its banks. Betrayal – the one thing he couldn’t bear. The one thing he saw, he would never tolerate – loomed over him like a spectre. Sometimes, alone in the bunker, he wept behind the big gun, feeling smaller, more insignificant with every sob. A man lost, shaded by the large hat that he pulled down to his chin as if trying to hide from the world and from himself.
The doubt grew unbearable. And so, one night, without telling anyone, he slipped away from the camp. Two days later, in the dead of night, he murdered them both in their bed. His suspicions, his fears, had been true all along. He left the dagger buried in her stomach, a twisted sense of justice searing through him as he made his way back to the mountain wilderness.
The camp did not report him missing. They found him, questioned him, but never spoke of it. He didn’t care. His soul had been hollowed out, and the man he once was had vanished. The night never ended for him after that. He was trapped in it, suffering, endlessly suffering. And when the weight of it all became too much, when he could no longer endure the darkness pressing in on every side, he turned the gun on himself in that cold muddy bunker.
As the final shot echoed across the empty mountains, he screamed, “Oh great mountains! I am sorry. I couldn’t protect you.”
Ghulam Mohammad Khan was born and raised in Sonawari (Bandipora); an outlying town located on the wide shores of the beautiful Wullar Lake. Ghulam Mohammad believes that literature is the most original and enduring repository of human memory. He loves the inherent intricacies of language and the endless possibilities of meaning. In his writing, he mainly focuses on mini-narratives, local practices and small-scale events that could otherwise be lost forever to the oblivion of untold histories. Ghulam Mohammad considers his hometown, faith, and family to be the most important things to him. He writes for a few local magazines and newspapers. His short story collection titled The Cankered Rose is his first major forthcoming work.
You can find more of Ghulam’s work here on Ink Pantry.
