Comradeship (standard:drama, 1925 words)
Author: Bobby Zaman	Added: Feb 05 2002	Views/Reads: 3531/2572	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The year is 1971, a time of war, turbulence, and injustice in Bangladesh, and two young friends take matters in their own hands.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


Fueled by the painful memory of his lost love Faheem rushed out of the
room and ran down the stairs.  Anand followed. 

"We'll take my father's car," said Anand in a hoarse restrained whisper.
 They cut through the front lawn in a sprint, blood beating madly at 
their temples.  The hot, lifeless afternoon was all around them like a 
panel of merciless judges.  Anand wiped his forehead with the sleeve of 
his shirt and brought out a set of keys from his pocket. 

Sweat seeped into the still new gash and burned Faheem's face. 

"You ready?" said Anand looking at his friend over the top of the car. 
Faheem secured a firm grip along the edge of the passenger side window. 
 They pushed the car out as quietly as their quivering, heat beaten 
muscles would allow, with Anand looking up at his parents' window with 
each grunt and shove.  Faheem was overcome with a vengeance so thick 
and encumbering that, at times while Anand stopped to take a breath, 
he'd keep the car moving all by himself. 

The Lieutenant stomped back and forth cursing and spitting on the dirt. 
His truck stood in the background like an obedient hound, and Niazi and 
Akbar waited in the sweltering heat to hear their orders.  The 
Lieutenant was used to endless hours of waiting.  When he was a child 
and in the throes of punishment, his father would pace around the bed 
coiling a leather belt around his hand and circle the room endlessly, 
muttering and grumbling in undecipherable jargon before bringing the 
first fierce lashes cutting across the still-to-be-lieutenant's naked 
body. 

Niazi wheeled around like a top as the Lieutenant's bloated palm smacked
his sweaty face and sent him spinning to the ground. 

"Cowards and motherloving homosexuals! Is that what we're going to use
to cleanse this place of Hindus and kaffirs!" 

Akbar made a move to help his comrade.  Niazi was stumbling to keep his
balance, with a slim trickle of blood mixed with saliva oozing down his 
chin.  The Lieutenant kicked dirt at Akbar and said, "Oh yes! Help him 
like he's a motherloving woman!"  Then he looked up at the sky again 
and squinted; a crow cawed hoarsely from a nearby banyan tree and a car 
engine roared to life.  "Last chance for you motherlovers," said the 
Lieutenant wiping his brow and climbing into his truck, "you think you 
know it all.  These little heathen bastards sleep in paddy fields and 
roam like roaches.  A bullet isn't enough for them."  He drove off and 
the truck disappeared into a swelling arc of dust. 

Anand's heart thumped in his chest like hoof-beats.  Without a word
Faheem slid into the driver's seat and put the humming car in gear. 

"My father will kill me," said Anand panting and pushing back his hair. 
"We have to fix the car up real good." 

Faheem only heard rejection and humiliation knocking heads inside him, a
life of endless torment waiting to haunt him with every step.  He sped 
the car to the end of the street and waited to turn the corner.  From 
here they had a clear view.  Faheem took the binoculars from Anand. 

It's now or never...Is that a song? Must be, or why else would it feel
as though those words should have a tune?  Faheem stepped on the 
accelerator and turned the corner, in the process nearly tipping the 
car to one side and into a ditch.  Anand hissed with fear.  With the 
rising velocity a wind rushed in and cooled Faheem's burning face, 
father mother sister school home marriage Rehana streaking, zigzagging 
across his conscience like firecrackers.  In the closing distance 
between the car and their target Faheem and Anand could see a man 
pulling another man to his feet. 

"The truck isn't there anymore," said Anand. 

Niazi clung to Akbar's arm to keep his balance, but the reeling in his
head turned his stomach and took him toward the ground.  Akbar gripped 
Niazi's torso from the back and pulled him to a standing position and 
held him there.  Niazi's cheek was swelling and turning color.  It was 
a hard hit and would definitely make a lasting impression on his face. 

The sound came from behind, at first like the buzz of a hornet and Akbar
ignored it, while Niazi was too disoriented to be able to hear anything 
at all.  Akbar's arms weakened under the weight of his comrade and he 
strained his neck to find the source of the approaching sound that was 
getting louder by the second. 

Anand clutched the sides of his seat. 

When the sound was just a few feet away, Akbar shuffled and rearranged
his feet and turned to face it, unknowingly holding Niazi like a full 
body shield, and saw a man with death on his face grasping the steering 
wheel with all his might and looking straight ahead, at him, Akbar, and 
his half-conscious comrade.  Next to the driver was the form another 
human being, pallid, colorless, fixed in an expression of speechless 
terror. 

Contact. 

Akbar's feet gave away from under him, his grip unclasped, and Niazi
fell on the hood of the car with a thud. 

The car hit the two men like a bowling ball.  Faheem kept on driving
with one of them on the hood, while the other went sent flying off to 
one side from the impact.  The sound of metal hitting bone and the 
subsequent cry of pain ripped through the still and heat-ruled 
afternoon.  Anand gasped and covered his eyes. 

A crowd was starting to gather.  Faheem hit the brakes and the soldier
fell off the hood.  Up ahead, where the street merged into the main 
intersection, there was a line of people blocking the way like a wall.  
True, they were more confused than inflamed, but these were tense 
times.  Faheem put the car in reverse.  On the way back he rolled over 
the groaning soldier that had fallen off the hood.  The crowd rushed to 
the dilapidated body and recognized it as the nose-picking soldier that 
kicked and spat at them during inspection every time they needed to 
pass the checkpoint.  A seventy-year-old Bengali man, who was now part 
of the crowd, had been forced at gunpoint two days ago to strip his 
clothes and walk two more miles to his home stark naked, his only route 
being the one cutting directly through the marketplace. 

Akbar scrambled to his feet and saw the car driving away, with Niazi
sprawled on the hood like a writhing insect.  People were coming out 
from houses, shops, restaurants, and barbershops, and soon had 
constructed an enclosed circle around the checkpoint from where Akbar 
was, all the way to the end of the street by the main intersection.  
Tires screeched as the car came to a sudden halt and Akbar saw Niazi's 
limp body tumble off like a sack.  Few seconds and the car started 
moving in reverse.  Niazi lay on the ground making slight movements 
with his legs.  Akbar saw the car coming, with Niazi directly in its 
path and made like to run, when a piercing, heart-stopping sensation at 
the back of his head made him drop like dead body.  He looked up and 
turned his head and saw the crowd coming at him like a pack of wolves, 
and on the ground next to him the brick that had been flung at him.  
Masses of people were closing in from both sides.  The last thing Akbar 
saw before being lynched to death was the car rolling over Niazi and 
tearing him up like a rag doll. 


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