Some Things Should Stay Buried Who: Adnan When: early afternoon Where: by the wood pile Rating: PG-13ish for violent memories
Today was a day to throw himself into work. After talking with Coop, and telling her everything he had about his past ... it stayed stirred up. Adnan hadn't broken down, per se, but he'd been on the edge of it all evening and night and then again in the morning. It was a yawning pain in his chest, a hole that he was sure everyone was feeling in varying degrees. But his was laced with fire, and the memory of the stench of burning bodies was strong. So he'd gotten up early and set to work immediately, shaping the tree-trunks they had collected, lopping off branches and chopping some of them in half. Keeping a mental tally of what he needed in what size filled his head with enough noise to keep the memories at bay.
Until a flash of white nestled in the purple in his peripheral vision caught his eye, at least. Frowning a touch, Adnan climbed over one of the bigger logs, eyes cast downward. It was white and curved and ... a skull? If it was, it was newly picked clean. He crouched and started brushing dirt away. The appearance of one open blue eye gave him a start, before he realized what it was. A doll's head. Setting his axe down, Adnan started to dig it up in earnest.
There was no telling how long it had been there, buried most of the way. Likely uncovered a bit by all the men traipsing around as they dropped off lumber. As he pulled it free of the earth, brushed the chunks of soil off of it's filthy dress, and looked down into it's cracked face, something powerful pulled in Adnan's chest. It wasn't a doll like any of the ones his sisters had ever had, but with those glassy blue eyes staring up at him in that lifeless perfect little face ... his vision blurred suddenly, before he even realized tears were coming.
In his mind's eye, he saw his older sister's body laying in the dust. One leg twisted back behind her in an unnatural way, her dress yanked up around her waist. She'd been raped and shot in the chest. Her dark eyes -- dark as Coop's, dark but always warm -- had been staring blankly up at the sky when he'd found her. There was dirt in them. Her arm had been broken and dirty, as if some soldier had stepped on her as he walked away. Adnan had covered her properly, then sat for hours with her hand in his lap and cried.
The only way to keep them from being desecrated later was to burn them.
Only halfway in the present, he stood up stiffly with the doll. He cradled it in one arm as though it were a real baby, and started walking away from the wood pile. He nearly tripped once or twice, with his eyes leaking the way they were. Once he felt far enough away, he felt to his knees, gently set the doll aside, and started digging with his hands.
It was all an oversaturated blur, in his memory. Finding the fallen bodies that were his family. Mother, father, younger sister, grandfather. Bringing them all together and laying them out side by side. Straightening limbs, pushing hair out of faces, rearranging clothes. Slapping at flies, and not feeling like he could get his breath for more than a few seconds at a time. He covered their faces with black cloth. His entire history was gone, everything he'd ever known and loved. Adnan had found some gasoline, and stood there a long time before he could bring himself to dump it on them.
Once the hole was deep enough, Adnan moved the doll into it. He didn't know it's history, who it had belonged to, if they survived this place. It didn't matter. After a moment of looking down at that molded little smile, he started pushing the dirt back down on top of it.
He hadn't even thought about giving the fire time to die before nightfall. About what might happen if the soldiers came back. Adnan didn't care. If they killed him too, at least he had done what he could for his family. He said a prayer, asking Allah to accept them into Heaven, and forgive him for not being there when he should've been, then tossed the match.
The doll was safely in the ground again. Still on his knees, he dropped into the position of prayer. It was one he hadn't been in in years, but his body remembered it just the same. He wasn't clean, it wasn't the right time of day, he was on bare ground, he had no idea if he was facing the Ka'ba, or if there was even a God in this place to hear him. He prayed, regardless. The words came slow at first, rusty as he moved from his kneeling into standing and back down again.
He stopped himself halfway through the Salah. It was fruitless, he felt like a fraud. He was out of place; he should've died alongside his family. If he existed, Allah would never forgive him. He didn't deserve it. This, maybe, was his punishment. To not even be a part of the world any longer, but stranded in this place, where so much could slip through his fingers even easier. Where he might have to burn more bodies.
Still kneeling prone, his forehead in the alien earth and the scent of fire in his nostrils, Adnan curled his arms around his head and sobbed.