The young boy was strange and naive to the brothers. On his fourteenth birthday, the new moon before Ramadan, in northeastern Balochistan, the dusty hands of the brothers gently stole him from the window of his room, and the boy had thought to himself then, I will die. But the universe was not careless and Allah made it so it was not his time and he became a paperboy for the brotherhood that exhibited the unbearable stench of the massive gates of hell fire. 

For his initiation, he had been tasked to kidnap his grandmother because she kissed a vase of flamboyant tulips, each burnt out like long straws. Or rather, that is what he liked to think. She was in a floral dress that evening, decorated in pallid stems, and her gentle beauty was suffocating. And yet when he grabbed her, there was nothing but a faint droplet of recognition in the perfume of her breath, the familiar lilac of herself, and this confirmed what he already knew: that he was nothing in this world anymore, that there was no love sacrificed and left for him. After keeping her in captivity in an assigned truck trailer, somewhere in the dunes of Karachi, he found that he could not hurt her like the lieutenant wanted him to and figured that if he had to be a woman, then he would be a woman just this once, and so he let her go with the peace of mind and mild wound that his grandmother did not know him and would never want to know him. Though the assignment failed, he had seen what the brotherhood had meant by “worthless,” because sometimes there is no way to go back to the patch of the universe you’ve left or been stolen from. 

But that was two years ago and the young boy, who was now on the brink of seventeen, was, on this Sha‘bān evening, lying limply with his body melting into the soft fabric of the makeshift stretcher like a drowning whale. His mother used to say, on long jolting journeys of the wooden wheels rocking back and forth like a carriage to the northern Switz mountains, that the snow falls from Allah to remind his children of his care and love. But he thought now that the snow that kissed the tip of his nose was only a nuance and not a feeble of poetry.

Standing at the young boy’s feet was a woman, faint like an eagle's feather folded over a thousand suns, dressed in a basil sari that looked as if it were made of shards and leftovers of the stone military uniforms the men wore. She moved in the snow so gracefully it gave the illusion that she was tipping on a halo, and the sound of the wind in the holes of her scarf made a comforting, sheek sound that could be music in another world. The boy, however, was fascinated with this woman because he had never actually seen a woman on the battlefront for life out here in the wilderness was arduous and with the Afghans scouting nearby, the front was traditionally and always occupied by men; the circumstance was nothing but the complete parallel universe of gentle and tranquil. Despite her odd attendance, however, the women in the military sari enthralled the boy for only a short while because the boy was occupied with the thoughts one has before Azrael rolls onto their face of the earth to liberate the soul from the flesh and bone of the body. Suddenly, his life came to him like blood in fiery veins and he felt that if today was the promised Day of Judgement, he would neither receive the blessing of his mother nor father since they had probably most forgotten him. 

The women in the basil sari with the halo feet began to rock the stretcher like a cradle from left to right, creating a type of rhythm when coupled with the uneven marches of the soldiers. There came the humming of the earth’s sounds, the black birds and fresh snow, and the woman began to hum lightly too, creating a subtle melody. And the boy felt calm once more though he knew very well that he was on the brink of death. 

The lion must have been the work of the prophesized cursed eyes for he came so abruptly. The young boy and the king of Kashmir were strutting down the yellowed grasslands that led to a wall of forest, scouting for a shelter embedded in nature from the heavy snowfall. 

A seventeen-year-old soldier without a rank to his name and a king was an odd sight for only the marked soldiers were permitted to converse with the king. But when the lieutenants and the general were seated comfortably around a kerasal fire pit where the king stood and explained the dire need to shift camp, the young boy had spoken up against the grown men and said, “The forest will keep us warm and protect us.” A venerable lieutenant turned around and when he saw that who had spoken was a young boy, he opened his mouth for chastisement and prescription of punishment, but the king strutted forward and said, “I think that is a wonderful idea.” And the grown men had exchanged a countenance of shock and then anger, courtesy of the fact that a young boy was, just now, celebrated by their lord, the king. As the boy and king strutted further and further from the tents of the camp, the boy found himself looking back, as if expecting an arrow from one of the angry men to fly and kill him, by accident they would say.  

When the boy glanced over his shoulder a third time, found nothing, and once again set his eyes forward, only about five feet from his combat boots was a mountain lion, gray eyes and fur like the expensive Persian rugs the king liked to loot from the wives of the Afghans after defeat. The young boy and the king paused and the king felt his belt, where a pistol was usually hung. But today, neither the boy or the king had weapons save the small wooden blade the boy always kept in the crook of the sock of his boot for eating hard deer meat.

The king shamelessly bellowed a whimper. The two were situated far from any of the cedar trees, which they could have climbed had they been closer, and to run to the camp was to try to outrun the mountain lion, which was a far shot. The king pressed his lips and peered down at the boy, a primitive instinct suddenly overcoming him and propelling him to, in one magnificent push, force the boy upon the bent grass. The sudden motion startled the mountain lion enough that the creature leaped onto the boy, giving the king the opportunity to rush to a nearby cedar, where he was able to reach the lowest branch with one hand, wrap his other arm around the trunk, and pull himself up. 

The boy knew that the dinner blade would give him a chance to run. But he was slow and his boots too tight to allow his fingers to slip in and grab the blade. For a moment, as the weight of lion pressed into his back, he was happy that he was still breathing and uninjured. But as his arms toiled and shifted to unzip his boots, they suddenly went limp and his body, like the skin of a date,  were torn and hung in the teeth of the lion like a clothesline. From his shoulders, and his head, claws escalated and drew past the skin and into the muscle and meat lying beneath, suddenly torn. The boy had often wondered if Satan laughed at the silly wars of humans. The death of a person must be amusing to them, people huddled like frozen penguins over caskets, people wailing selfishly because death deprived them of some form of comfort. He was sure that there would be no laughing over his death, because there would be no people huddled like frozen penguins over his body, wailing because death deprived them of some form of comfort. 

At last, there was a hellish scream from the throat of the boy and then a gun rang out twice and the body of the lion went limp and the boy pressed his ear against the snow as the sound of boots and the whispers of people drew near. Suddenly, the tremendous weight of the lion was lifted.

“Medic!” a distinct Hindi accent hollered, but the medic was already there, practiced in his art, there was no bewilderment, for death was inevitable. 

Gently still, as if the boy was made of expensive glass, he was lifted by the arms and legs and here he caught a glimpse of the snow below him which looked as if Indian spices had been purposely splashed against it. Now, the young boy wondered if he will ever feel his mother or his sister. He will die now, and he was overcome with the bitter thought that he was not all that good. 

The Kashmir king descended from the cedar and told his lieutenants, “The boy was too slow climbing the tree.”

"Well," one of the marked soldiers said, "he was only a boy. Hardly useful. Men die everyday."

The men marching with the boy’s body in between and the woman in the sari who was guiding them reached the dip of the valley where the fallen, forgotten, foregon, spirits lied. Here, there were bodies with their skin peeled, bodies with faces hung like taffy, curled into ribbons and knots, bodies with hair burnt down like the end of a bomb just a few centimeters from the scalp, scalp bleeding and blackened. At the pit of the valley, the stench and heat unbearable, to the massive pile of contorted bodies, killed by wartime, among the hundreds, the boy was thrown in like dust. His breaths still came and the brothers scooped snow in between muddy fingertips and threw it at him so that his eyes may close. It was then that the teardrops that spread across his face never turned to sparks of fire for in an instance, the boy was true dust and mud.