The Diary Officer

By: Diyar Latif

Translator: Daliya Raouf

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(Record of the first night)

I don’t remember how many days I have been feeling fear, despair, hunger, and doubt of surviving. A fear is cutting me like a saw.

From time to time my colleague asks me: Can you remember Zhina? Can you remember Shno? or Lana, sadly, he took a deep breath then he said: I make love with all of them in General Library. I hit him with the stock of my rifle and whisper: what’s wrong with you son of bitch, can’t you see the shadows! we are sieged. Oh, Damn university! Damn it to hell! A few minutes from now, we’ll be imprisoned like birds in a cage. If reinforcement didn’t reach there, it would have been impossible not to become guests of Khalifa. Suddenly shooting starts and bullets are pouring like rain, it is the first time in my life I am using a weapon and going to the battlefield. I am often scared of going to the toilet at night, but now an ammunition belt is wrapped around my waist, a logo is added to my Uniform “Border Guard”.

A loud crack, gunshots shattered the air and exploding hand grenades hit the walls of our shelter.

Perhaps the devils of darkness learnt this confrontation art from Nazi military’s prolonged sieges on the city of Leningrad. The first five minutes, (my knees, arms, fingers, and my neck) were numbed. It’s good to be brave, but very dangerous as well. My mind is paralyzed, my mouth dried from anxiety, on my back I carry a mountain. I am trembling. I cry a river in secret, thousands of bad thoughts come to my mind. I have to stand up like a mad ox, and shoot the opposite side. Indeed I do what I have just mentioned. Then they shout Takbir. My friend hurries to defend, I can hear him saying: Fuck the fate, may the remaining days of people who had made this situation, be like hell. I am not the man of this. He wanted to shoot more, but he fell on his back. I ran and bent down over him, a bullet had penetrated his chest. He struggled to take his last breath, “we shouldn’t have been here” he said.

He fell between my hands. My eyes were filled with tears as if lemon juice was poured in them, my tears fell over his cheeks softly, I kissed his forehead. Then I held my rifle and started shooting the enemies on the opposite side, I shouted, I cursed life and that bloody night. The sun had risen and we did an intense attack, we passed through the shore and entered the asleep wasp colony, the bats were beaten…

Bat is the term that local Media of our political party and force use to name the enemy forces. We entered the city, it was raining, Hummers were our guides, we were a muddy army in need of some sleep.

(Record of the first day)

A flower-decorated stage, a megaphone, suited bodyguards, and here the president reads a national speech, claps everywhere make the weather sunny. He is huge and ginger, enthusiastically shouting and threatening With his finger points to the audience: We rained down fire on them from the mountains. President, himself was the general marshal commander of the forces, he had been abroad, he came back home after the war ended.

He does not look like he has had a harsh life, No one has ever seen him riding a military Jeep, he is not even able to set a plan to rescue one meter occupied land, he can’t distinguish the name of different weapons, and nowadays the president starts writing stories!

It is said that the scribes, who works tirelessly rewrite the heroic stories of the president on and on, day and night, He doesn’t even understand the basic rules of writing and punctuation. On the first page, there is a photo of the president holding binoculars, sitting on a mound, the purpose of the photo is to show that the president is watching the enemy lines, but he forgot to remove the binocular lens covers.

He doesn’t even remember how many years has he been the presidents of this country!

…

My ears are wounded by the speeches, on the screens, he was satiated and talking about the value of the symbolic achievements. Commanders were busy with stealing sheeps, at night Major Generals were drinking and talking about the robbery of cows and goods in the backline of the liberated territory. I am lost in the lies.

Ms.Sama is one of the naughty fashion stars of a military Baron, she had told my lover: Our vaginas are wet with the smell of wildness for we can smell it from bodyguards’ dicks.

She also added: The wives of political and higher military leaders feel bad about the sexual dysfunction of their partners. She was not ashamed to admit how dependent they are on their boyfriends.

Then She noted that if the situation was different that they might have depended on plastic dick toys, or else they would have become sexual abusers. When the leaders have sex they use medications and ask to finger the ass to reach orgasm. She once said: When I sleep with my boyfriend, I ask him to cum on my face, and ironically she believed that sperm would make my face look younger.

On March 8, we entered the city, mines were beneath us, they were buried under the ground in many locations. We had to be careful. We were divided into several groups, each entered a quarter, and began to search houses. Each group was responsible for searching in a block. We faced difficulties while searching in houses and passing through them.

There were timer mines along with the trenches and shelters of suicidal bombers, these were all obstructions, we had to faced to move in and clear the area house to house.

War makes the words in my heart hard like stone. My colourful dreams were turned into dark nightmares, the bombed car explosions, the death of my friends just like leaf loss in the fall, the sound of hand grenades and attacks in the foggy nights make my soul empty.

With the beginning of mankind on earth, war comes and emits poison into the atmosphere. War takes many things away from us, a leg, a dream, a heart or even more than all of those things. War has taken away our happiness, it has destroyed our simplicity, the smell of gunpowder has filled our noses. Monsters within us have awakened. It has turned the breeze into a storm, washed away all the houses, and presented rows of tents instead to live in.

When the war had ended, the buildings rebuilt, roads were paved again like a carpet, gardens were in full bloom, hospitals, temples, and schools were rebuilt. But the wound deep in our hearts was never healed.

The noise of rifle barrels is the reason for my weeping, it doesn’t let me think of my lover. I must not die for I am thinking of someone, someone is thinking of me. I would love to fly into your arms, you are my calmness, I miss you and draw your face with my finger in the air. I want to live and die with you, I want to resurrect and have a new life with you again. I miss our jokes, your smile and sweet talk. Thinking of you and the fresh air of our village, I imagine myself holding your hands, going far far away, far from these cruel cities, somewhere we can have peace. You put your hair up and wear a stone necklace. Covered in darkness, a loud crack shakes me out of no place and brings me back to the present. I praise the imagination, it has given me the best opportunity to reach you.

…

(Record of days and nights)

Diary writing is a rebellious act against the hard times. We spent a quiet Friday. Rifles went silent, ceasefire after the war is like sleeping with enemies in the same room. There were times when I could shoot and kill but I did not, I am not a killer, all I did was self-defence. It’s my belief that the person who listens to music and cries, can’t become a killer. Most of us were not believers, but war made believers out of us. Believer in a rescuer, some of us didn’t want to smoke Tobacco of the religion, alternatively, they were addicted to opium of lyrics. I carry my phone and listen to a song for Aznavour, and busier than ever I top-up my diary with the depiction of the smoky rumble.

I wish I were a gardener watering flowers, I wish I were a poet writing poems for the snow, I wish I were a frog jumping into a swamp and would have not come out until the end of the war. What would have happened, if I were a street sweeper and removed the city wastes, what would have happened, if I were not a hero. Indeed as for myself, I wish I never existed, not existing is more wholesome. Existing is subversive and devastating like it is a kind of desolation.

Dusk is falling, the barking of dogs barking can be heard, it has been a while since I’ve enjoyed the sunset, realistically I compliment the darkness. The Woody smell of the trees along with the chirp of crickets take my imagination drift to far lands, where I feel insecure. City nights are not empathetic, they scare me like night walk. The reader soldier said: If I die, I do not want it to happen at night. The night is sorrowful, its silence chokes me. I am scared of the soil (grave), it becomes a nightmare, like barbed wire it tears me apart from inside. Death is painful and makes you shudder and quiver at night, it is like falling into an abyss full of snakes and scorpions. Some nights are bright and some days are dark. Night is the home of secrets. Our mind vitiated by myth thorns. He also said: When I read the stories of Ali Ashrafi, I would like to share my food with the ants!

One night behind the berm on the city edge, the guard remembered a novel’s moment of death. He was heartsick, cried and took a cigarette out of his pocket. A sniper saw the cigarette light and targeted his desperate head, snipers are time skinners. It is said that: He was not a good smoker as he learnt smoking because of this terrible war. I am the one who records the diary, I know that smoking has the pleasure of reaching orgasm, it is hard no to be a smoker on the battlefield, you would be compelled to bite your nails or clean all parts of your rifle and its magazines with the oil, or else worries will efface you.

San was talking in his sleep, he had nightmares with fever, once he told me: I was killed in all nightmares. I am sitting in a cafe there, suddenly a suicide enters and blows himself up. One night I was snoring in my sleep, a mouse went into my mouth and I fought for a breath. in Other nightmares, I am in a no man’s land while walking, l step on a mine and a strong wind blows, vultures with hyenas are circling around and above me. Different nightmares with different ways of killing and death. Even though he had been ambushed twice and had made it bravely face to face with the enemy, he never got even a single gunshot wound. I told him: My friend you are willing to die.

Who said that I would kill my father?! Honestly, I won’t forgive him, he encouraged me to become a soldier, my dream career is acting.

I shoot and curse the day l was born. I had fallen in love with the women in my father’s photographs, there were times I opened my father’s photo albums and imagined love stories with his belovers, touching their breasts. My father is a young handsome man, but he is a bastard as well.

My father is poor and pathetic because of mother’s treatment. My mother is also pathetic because of my father’s treatment.

Back then there were times when my father had indulged himself in sexual desires, but now his desires reduced as he got older.

Father, you put a curse inside my mother’s womb and brought me to this life, I know you have done your best to raise me and gave me honourable life, I never wanted to ruin what you have tried for so hard. Have you ever seen how this cruel life had made me weak and miserable?. Life itself is more dangerous than the battlefield.

We are young men having colourful dreams for the future. We go to the military camps for a living, we are trained, and put in the containers of Iveco trucks, later we were ordered to stay in the defensive positions. we already know that it is almost impossible for us to stay alive and survive.

Actually, we don’t want to make life worse, we dream of spreading peace in the world. But war is something else entirely, we have become the wound and bandage. Retelling the stories of war is like walking on a road covered with spilled nails in bare feet. We lost our dreams, Our tears mixed with soil, like feathers in the wind we fluttered, giving hope was just an excuse to survive.

We are killing flies, piss, and recite folktales in waiting for death. We are waiting for destiny. We were in our concealment when we suddenly heard a shrill voice, a bloody voice, it was the voice of wall demolition along with the falling wall debris and dust, mixed with groans of severely wounded soldiers. it was then when retreat was ordered. I felt numbness in my thigh for few seconds. My gun wound was small, we were under a serious attack.

A major part of our forces was ordered to withdraw from their stations, there were no war prisoners, they would shoot and kill you. We defended ourselves while retreating to our previous concealments. After coming back home, I knew that during the war my beloved one left the country. Now I am in the border areas, It has been few days. I eat boiled potatoes and smoke handmade cigarettes. After removing the military stars on my shoulders, I feel healthy and my nightmares have changed to normal dreams, My insecurities have become more stable.