A Soldier's Story

A SOLDIER’S

STORY

ABDUL HOTAKEY

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© 2013 by Abdul Hotakey. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 04/15/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-4285-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-4284-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013907171

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

This book is dedicated to the loving memory of my brother, Babai, who went missing in action while serving in the Afghan National Army in 1990. We love you brother and we miss you.

CHAPTER 1

I am a sick man. A very sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my decease, and do not know for certain what’s troubling me. I don’t like doctors, I don’t consult a doctor for it, I don’t consult a doctor for my troubles, but I do have respect for medicine.

Who ever reads these notes should know that I am the author of these notes, and these notes are only imaginary. Nevertheless it’s clear that I exist in the society, when we consider the circumstances under which our society is formed. I have tried to expose the views of public more distinctly than is commonly done one of the characters of the recent past. In this fragment, I have introduced myself to my views, and tried to explain causes owing to which I have made my appearance and was bound to make my appearance in our mist. In the second fragment there will appear the actual, in this second fragment there will be my actual notes concerning certain events that took place in my life. I will also explain my relations with doctors. Besides, I am extremely convince that performing or not performing specific actions bring good or bad luck, that some events or phenomenon or omens, and, genuinely, fearful believing in a super natural dementia to events, sufficiently slow to respect medicine, anyway I am well educated enough not to be superstitious but, I am superstitious. No I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am humiliating in this case by spite; I am perfectly well aware that I can not pay out the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than any one that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it’s from spite. My liver is bad, well-let it get worse!

I have been going on like that for a long time, I would say twenty years. Now I am forty four. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer, I was a spiteful officer. I was rude and took pleasure in doing so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find compensation in that, at least. A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to do that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose. When applicants used to come for information to the table at which I sat, I used to grind my teeth at them, and felt enjoyment when I succeeded in making any body unhappy. I almost always did succeed. For most part they were all petitions. But of the uppish ones there was no officers in particular, there was this one officer I could not stand. He simply would not be humble, and clang his sword in a disgusting way. I carried out a bitter prolonged violent quarrel instead of hostility with him for almost eighteen months, over that sword. At last I got the better of him. He left off clanking it. That happened in my youth, though.

But do you know, my dear readers, what was the chief point about my fight? Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of the extremely serious spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I might foam at the mouth, but bring a toy to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I might be less aggressive. I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterward and lay awake at night with shame for months after. That was my way.

I was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful officer. I was lying from spite. I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and with the officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful. I was conscious every moment in myself of many very, elements absolutely opposite to that. I felt then positively a sensation that a large number of worms were moving inside me, those opposite elements. I know that they had been s arming in me all my life and carving some outlet, but I would not let them, would not let them, purposely would not let them come out. They tortured me till I was ashamed: they drove me to uncontrollable shaking, my body and limbs would be violently be shaking which were caused by uncontrollable muscle contractions, which were symptoms of brain disorder and other unknown contractions. They sickened me, at last, how they sickened me! Now, are not you fancying, my dear readers, that I am expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking God’s forgiveness for something? I am sure you are fancying that… However, I assure you I don’t care if you are…

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything : neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a man nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it’s only the fool who become anything. Yes, a man in the twentieth century must and morally out to be highly distinguished and outstanding, must be standing out among all others because of superiority in a field of activity. A man must be a characterless creature; a man of character, an active man is per-eminently a limited creature. That has been my conviction this forty four years. I am forty four years old now, and you know forty four years is a lifetime; you know it’s extreme old age. To live longer than forty four years is bad manners, its vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty four? Answer that, sincerely and honestly. I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I tell an old man that to their face, all these venerable old men, all these silver-haired and reverend seniors! I tell the whole world that to it’s face! I have a right to say so, for I shall go on living to sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty!, Stay, let me take a breath…

You imagine no doubt, my dear readers, that I want to amuse you. You are mistaken in that, too. I am by no means such a person who is not glad or amused, not feeling or expressing amusement, good humor or gladness, or something like that you can imagine, or as you may imagine; however, irritated by all this saying and speaking incoherently, my way of saying things rapidly and incoherently without pausing (and I feel that you are irritated), you think fit to ask me who I am-then my answer is, I am a collegiate officer, I was in the service that I might have something to eat (and solely for that reason), and when last year a distant relation let me six thousand dollars in her will I immediately retired from the army and settled down in my corner. I used to live in this corner before, but now I have settled down in it. My room is unhappy, I am ill and feeling very unhappy. My room is horrid on the outskirt of the town. My servant is a country boy, ill-natured from stupidity, and, moreover, there’s a nasty smell about him. I am told that Kabul’s climate is bad for me, and that with my small means it’s very expensive to live in Kabul. I know all that better than all these sage and experienced officers and councilors… But I am remaining in Kabul; I am not going away from Kabul! I am not going away because… !Why, it’s absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.

But what can a descent man speak of with most pleasure?

Answer: Of himself.

Well, so I will talk about myself.

I want not to tell you, my dear readers, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not even become an insect. I tell you honestly that I have many times tried to become a worm. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, my dear readers, that to be too conscious is an illness-a real throughout-going illness. For man’s everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the amount which falls to lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy twentieth century, especially one who gas the fatal ill-luck to inhabit Kabul, the most unconsecrated and premeditated town on the whole terrestrial globe. (There are premeditated and unpremeditated towns.) It would have been quite enough, for instance, to have the consciousness by which all so called direct persons and men of action live. I bet you think I am writing all this from behavior to impress you, my dear readers, because of feigned or unnatural behavior that is often meant to impress others. You think that I am trying to be witty at expense of men of action; and what’s more, that from ill-bred affection, I am clanking a sword like my officer. But, my dear readers who ever can pride himself on his disease and even strut around over them?

Though, after all, everyone does do that; people do pride themselves on their disease, and I do, maybe, more than anyone. We will not dispute it; my contention was ridiculous. But yet I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease. I stick to that. Let’s leave that, too, for a minute. Tell me this: why does it happen that at the very refinement of all that good and beautiful as they used to say at one time, it would, as though design, happen that I not only felt but did such ugly things, such that… well, in short, actions, that all, perhaps, commit; but which, as though purposely, concurred to me at the very time when I was most conscious that they ought not to be committed. The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was high and beautiful the more deeply I sank into my bog and the more ready I was to sink in altogether. But the main point was that all this was, as it were, not accidental in me, but as though it were bound to be so. It was as though it were my most normal condition, and not the least disease and depravity, so that at last all desire in me to struggle against against this depravity.

It ended by almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I had this fact about myself as a secret, I was ashamed(even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret, abnormal, fully deserving contempt, contemptible enjoyment in returning home to my corner in some disgusting Kabul night, actually conscious that the day I had committed a repulsive action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, chewing and biting at myself it it, tearing and consuming myself till last the bitterness turned into