Short Story: A Voice from the Ashes
A Short Story by Qader Moradi
Translated from the Farsi by Daud Razawi
Everywhere I looked, that man’s face appeared before my eyes. In the streets and bazaars, everywhere I thought he was following me. When I looked at passersby, I searched for him – a man who walked with wooden crutches, legs amputated above the knees, wearing dirty, white cloths covered with dry bloodstains and a turban resting in circles around his neck.
This strange, frightening man never left me alone, not even in my sleep. Everywhere he was with me. I tried to get rid of him but to no avail. He was with me everywhere and talked to me at all times. He would not leave me in peace. He mumbled something close into my ears – vague and repetitious.
I thought of finding him, talking with him and begging him to leave me alone. I wanted to tell him that I am innocent; I am not guilty, that I had done nothing wrong. But I could not find him.
The first time I saw him was in the new wood sellers’ bazaar in our city. And I found him in my room that night. I ran away from him and did not see him again, or maybe I saw him once more.
That night, the scream of a woman awoke me. It was in the middle of the night. I aberrantly got up. The room was dark. I struggled to find the light switch. But before I could find the switch, the shrieking sound of a bullet broke the silence of the night, and the women’s screams and cries filled the night.
I wanted to find the light. I was afraid. Maybe someone shot somebody in the street. But what happened to the light switch? I noticed that the wood heater in my room was lit. Perplexed, I gazed at the heater. My whole body overcame with fear. How could the heater turn itself on? For many days I was alone. I hated the sight of the heater, although my room was cold, I did not want to turn it on.
Fearfully, I looked at the flames inside the heater. Several times I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was awake. But I was awake, and the heater was on. The flames of the fire inside the heater shined through the tiny holes and the reflections danced on the rug. The burning wood crackled making frightening sounds.
My heart rate and shivering of my body increased. Again, I wanted to find the light, when the man’s voice instantly startled me.
“Don’t be afraid… don’t be afraid.”
I quickly gazed at the heater. I could not believe my eyes. The stranger was inside my room, standing next to the heater. I jumped and almost screamed, “Who are you?”
The man’s turban rested in circles around his neck. He said softly, “Don’t be afraid.”
He was disabled with his legs amputated above the knees and stood with crutches under his arms. I did not know what to do. Maybe he intended to kill me. I thought to escape. But then to my surprise, I noticed that the man was crying.
I found the light switch. I turned it on and looked at him. His face seemed familiar. I might have seen him somewhere before. I could not remember where I had seen him.
I hastily asked him, “Who are you?”
Maybe he was not dangerous. Maybe he was in danger and had come to my place for safety.
He cried and did not answer my question. His clothes were white but dirty, with stains of dried blood. From next to the heater, he took a piece of the wood, looked at it and cried. His tears ran down his face. Seeing him crying reduced my fear. Then I recognized him. He was the man I had seen in the wood sellers’ market. My head spun. I became fearful again. That day when I was buying wood, he was looking at me from a distant. I had thought, maybe he has mistaken me for somebody else.
Maybe he wanted to kill me. I wanted to tell him that he has mistaken me for somebody else.
But the man cried, showed the wood in his hand to me and said, “Did you know that this piece of wood came off the window of our house?”
With this question, I felt like he had hit me with that wood on my head. This wood piece is from the window of his house! Now, I understood what he was saying. He had come to take revenge. The wood pieces from his house were burning in my heater. I felt that I was in a very dangerous situation. I had to escape anyway I could. I should not pay attention to his cries. Maybe he was insane. Crazy people do not think logically. It was clear that he was going to kill with this piece of wood. Fearful and with a jittery voice I said, “But I have bought the wood.”
The stranger laughed – he laughed loud like an insane man. Then angrily he screamed, “I know you have bought them! I know. But do you know that the piece of wood is from my house?”
And then he started crying again. He wiped his tears on his sleeves. He took another piece of wood from the heater, cried more and said, “Oh God. Oh my God. My house…the bookshelf of my son…the blood of my six-year-old daughter is dry on this piece of wood. Oh my dear God…my house…our house…our house…our house fell on us. You don’t know we were under the rain of bullets. In a second my family disappeared. I don’t know if the earth cracked and took them or did they fly to the skies, but they were not there. Everywhere I look for them…my wife, my little daughter, my son, my legs, the crib, the shelves, and the doors. You don’t know where they are? Huh? No. You just warm up your room with the wood. Ah, what a pleasant warmth they give to your room!”
And he started laughing aloud, scary laugh. I knew he was not insane. His words did not sound crazy. Laughter and cries, anger and outrage were mixed in his voice.
I said again, “But I bought these woods.”
And then I ran out of the room. I was afraid he might have a gun or a knife with him. I could hear him still laughing and screaming. I did not wait anymore. I ran out of the house and into the street until my foot hit a rock. And I fell on the ashes on the road.
I heard the man’s voice in my ears. The voice came from the ashes, it gave me a shiver. The voice cried, “Run! Run! Burn! Burn! Burn!”
I quickly got up and ran again. The man with the crutches followed me. I ran and ran, but the voice of the man was with me, inside my ears. It was as if the man without feet was in my head, in my ears, sitting there and talking to me. He was crying and laughing a nervous laugh. He was angry. He was screaming, repeating himself.
“What a world we live in. Parents give their children axes to break wood. The doors and the windows of the houses ruined by the war to sell them in the wood market. You do not know this. You just buy the wood to warm up your room with them. The pieces of wood, the broken doors and windows go on the scales and are being sold and bought. The woods from people’s windows and doors, from their picture frames, some already burned by the fire of guns and bombs. It is people’s lives and memories that go up on the scales and being bought and sold. These woods carry the memories of happy families, their laughter. Don’t worry. I cannot catch you. You see, I do not have feet to run. They took away my feet and gave me these wooden crutches instead. You think I am crazy, don’t you? You know it was my father’s house. On every piece of this wood, I see the memories of my past life. I hear from them the laughter of my daughter. See that wood? It was from the family’s old crib. Yes, run! Run away from the wood, from the smell of my kids. I smell my old house in this wood. I passed your street when I smelled my house. The smell came off of the wood you were burning. I came to see my house, my kids and my past life. I came to feel the comfort of my old home from these pieces of wood. Have you ever had a house? Have you ever felt calm and comfort it gives when at the end of a long day you come home? I need these pieces of wood. Regardless of how much they cost. I will buy them back. I will keep them with me to see the last signs of my past life, the last signs of my children – the peacefulness of home. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
I stood at the side of the street and saw crowds of women and children passing by. They were poorly dressed and looked injured. Their head and faces were wrapped in bandages. Their clothes had dried bloodstains. They were saying something. They were screaming and crying. The earth was shaking. The moon in the corner of the sky was shaking. The stars were shaking. The women and children had pieces of wood in their handpieces of wood taken off of windows and doors, of closets and shelves and of old cribs.
They were chanting, "Our homes, our homes!”
They were moving the wood pieces in the air. I was afraid. I ran to another street. And I found myself near the wood market. The moonlight lit the market. The market was busy. There were hundreds of poor women and children, hundreds of carts, hundreds of scales, hundreds of guns, hundreds of buyers, and hundreds of sellers. And there was wood, wood all over the place, pieces of wood half burned, dried with bloodstains. The people’s faces were dusty. Wood pieces were going up, the scales and money were changing hands.
“Look, look, how they buy and sell my life and burn it! You run. Yes, you must run.”
Suddenly, the man without feet came from the crowd of the market. He ran towards me and attacked me with his crutches. I felt a sharp pain in my head and screamed. I woke up. I turned on the light and looked at the heater. Everything was in place. The room was filled with a frightening silence. Even the sounds of the guns and the bombs outside had been reduced. Maybe that night the war had ceased.
The next day I gave all the wood pieces to the grocer in my street, but the nightmare would not leave me in peace. The voice of the man was in my ears everywhere I went. I could not go to the wood market anymore, not even to the grocer in my street. I could not see the ashes anymore. So, I moved from that neighborhood.
One morning in the early spring when the weather was still cold, and the night before it had snowed, I went for a walk. The unseasonable snow and storm had ruined all the blossoms, making everybody grieve.
I passed the cemetery that was at the end of our street. I saw some passersby bending over a dead body. It was the body of a man without feet. His crutches were lying next to him. His turban rested in circles around his neck. His clothes were dirty and covered with dry bloodstains. The night dogs had eaten his face. He was shot. And he held some pieces of wood in his arms. They were blue and looked like they came from windows and shelves. No one knew him or knew why he had the wood pieces.
I became frightened. I looked at the cemetery and saw a lonely tree with all its blossoms withered.
About the Author
Qader Moradi was born in Balkh Province in 1958 and grew up in Faryab province. He completed high school and studied journalism in Kabul. He was a teacher and reporter for Bakhtar New Agency. In 1990, his first collection of short stories was published in Kabul. He was forced to leave Kabul in 1994 because of the Islamist destruction of the city. He currently resides in Holland.
Qader Moradi portrays a scene from the 1990s civil war led by the various Islamist factions who destroyed Kabul, killed thousands of its citizens, and physically and mentally scarred thousands more. Moradi threads a tapestry of trauma and memory in this haunting story.
The narrator, engulfed by guilt, is relentlessly pursued by the phantom of a deformed man whose ravaged life mirrors the war-torn landscape. The wood, once a source of warmth, now burns with the sounds of lost homes and families. It's a chilling indictment of how conflict turns the remnants of ordinary lives into commodities and curses.
Moradi wields stark imagery, contrasting the beauty of unseasonal snow with the grotesque fate of the man who clutches fragments of his former world. Through this dissonance, the story conveys the physical horrors of war and its enduring psychological toll.
This story brings to mind the tales my mother heard in her neighborhood of Murad Khani in old Kabul. Her elders, including grand uncles and grand aunts, narrated frightful echoes in the night—battles bursting with the sounds of clashing swords, people in chains, and cries bellowing from the narrow alleyways. These stories seemed to originate from the turmoil of the late 1800s.
Moradi's short story replaces the weapons of the old with modern fighting tools. However, the restless spirits of our collective past continue to roam and haunt the living today.
This translation, by Daud Razawi, was first published in the October 2004 issue of Aftaab Magazine.
