I have no recollection of what happened after that. The excruciating pain is the last thing I remember from that night. However, finding myself in the familiar, naive luxury of my childhood room was quite comforting when I regained my consciousness. As I scrutinized the room, from the ceiling to the walls to the old picture frames smiling back at me, I felt dad’s firm hands grip mine.
“DAD?!” I was more petrified than relieved to see him alive.
“I thought… you… I… lost you!” I tried to sit up, nevertheless that lingering pain still exhausted me.
“Well, you didn’t.”He laughed. “Just a little cut on my forehead, which the doctor was happy to sew up for me.”
“How did we get here?”
“Son, let’s just say, our guardian angel was watching over us.” His soothing voice rang with reassurance.
“I have a confession to make,” I blurted out.
=“What is it, son?”
Something about being watched by the guardian angel shook me to my core. Did it see me turn my back as well, to the heinous act of Lt. George Preston and his subordinates that night? I looked at my father; his steadfast eyes smiled at me through his wrinkled face, and I was not scared anymore.
“One morning,” I began, “about two years back, when I was posted in Afghanistan, I did something I shouldn’t have.”
Dad looked quizzically at me.
“A local woman was accused and arrested for stealing Lt. George Preston’s watch. Lieutenant detained the woman for the entire day and I was to interrogate her until she confessed. I kept asking her and she kept saying she hadn’t stolen the watch. In the evening, Lt. Preston barged in followed by a few other officials and asked me to leave, said he knew a better way to get a confession.”
I paused to take a deep breath, only to realize I was sweating profusely. My throat was dry and my heart hadn’t ceased its attempt to break out of my rib cage.
Without looking at dad, I continued.
“I stepped outside expecting to hear the Lieutenant intimidate the already dismayed woman. Sure, it began like that, but soon there were disturbing bashing sounds. Then I heard it, the appalling screams of the woman, penetrating the walls of the inquiry room.
“On several instances, I thought of putting an end to this horror. But I did nothing; I just stood outside the door and waited for it to stop, until the screams became a white noise.”
No longer, could I contain my guilt-ridden emotions buried inside me; I started sobbing like a little boy.
I finally looked at dad with tearful eyes. He was looking outside the window, silently.
“You have met Iqbal,” I said in a low voice. “He’s her son. I didn’t know it at first. To me, he was just a boy with a rifle, until last year he showed me his family picture…”
Iliena Bosu (India)
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