In The Tunnels [FICTOID]

Each time a two-ton bomb went off, the lights in the tunnel danced on their wire, making their shadows cavort grotesquely.

Khaled brushed the grainy concrete dust off the letter he was writing.  This one would go to the Abbey Library of Saint Gall in Switzerland.  Its contents, other than the address and salutation, was identical to the five other letters he had written.

So far none of the libraries he wrote to replied, but that didn’t surprise Khaled. 

Just getting the letters out of the city would be an achievement, for a reply to reach him would be a miracle.

Still, nonetheless, he wrote. 

He wrote in a formal, very literary, almost poetic style.  At heart, he remained a plain soul, but even plain souls may be touched by the Muse.

Especially if they desperately needed a question answered.

Khaled’s question?  How much am I to blame?

After the previous day’s bombing, he was the youngest fighter in the tunnel, though perhaps “fighter” didn’t adequately describe his role.

He might have accepted “warrior”, since he did contribute to the hellscape all around them, but not “fighter.”

He didn’t fight, he never fought, not even to throw stones at the enemy’s tanks in futile protest.

All he did was smuggle messages through various checkpoints around the city. 

Knowing any electronic communication could be intercepted and decoded by the enemy, his leaders used human couriers.  Preparing for such a mission took two days, first gulping down a strong laxative to purge his bowels of any contents, then patiently submitting as his unit’s medics gently inserted the message capsule inside him.

Khaled would then pass himself off as a young laborer hired to help clean away rubble from the previous war, and midway through his shift would slip off to rendezvous with his contact.

The contact would remove the capsule and send Khaled back.  What the contact did with the capsule after he removed it, Khaled couldn’t guess, didn’t want to guess.

Enemy guards stumbled across them once.  Khaled and his contact both reacted in alarm but the enemy simply assumed they felt embarrassment at being caught with Khaled’s pants down around his ankles.  The guards laughed and made crude jokes about the sexual proclivities of the conquered population and looked no further. 

Khaled and his contact let’s their breath out at their good fortune, then the contact removed the capsule and hurried away.

While Khaled never knew the exact contact of the messages he carried, he knew them to be of vital importance to the eternal struggle against the enemy.

A few days earlier he noticed a sharp uptake in the activity in the tunnel, more men, supplies, and munitions coming in.  Khaled felt excited:  Something was in the air, something was coming.

At the time he hoped some of the messages he and his other young comrades carried contributed to this, but that was then and this is now. 

In the relentless, implacable counterattack, the enemy launched its full genocidal fury against the city.  All his fellow young couriers now lay dead, buried under tons of concrete or blasted to bits by direct hits.

It didn’t matter which. 

Dead is dead.

Before the counterattack, Khaled listened to the older fighters vow they’d rather die than live under the enemy’s rule.

But that was then, this is now.

Now many of those fighters lay dead, burned / blasted / buried under dirt and rubble.

Their fellow citizens -- young and old, male and female – never knew the fighters’ plans, but now they bore the brunt of the merciless counterattack.

Khaled joined the fighters as a courier after his uncle died in a pointless confrontation with the enemy.  Seeing his mother weep over her brother’s death, he vowed to make all those responsible for his uncle’s death pay.

Today his mother, father, older sister, younger sisters, and baby brother lay unburied in the crater that sat where their house once stood.

They would be alive if we didn’t attack the enemy, Khaled thought.

“They died martyrs,” the older fighters said.

They didn’t have a choice, Khaled thought.

That began his quest to write all the great libraries of the world, even those aligned with the enemy, such as the American Library of Congress, or with a different religion, such as the Vatican Library.

He needed to know:  How much am I to blame?

He resigned himself to never hearing from them.  He had no idea if the earlier letters he slipped to refugees fleeing the city ever got through.

But he needed to know, he needed to know.

Finishing his letter, he folded it, stuck it in an envelope, and affixed one of his dwindling supply of postage stamps to it.

The enemy cut off all electronic communication into and out of the city, so all he could do was write letters and hope they got out, hoped they got through, hoped he’d receive an answer.

He didn’t trust leaders anymore, not religious, political, or military.

But he did trust libraries, repositories of truth and knowledge.

The lights danced again as more heavy bombs hit the city.  As the shaking grew in intensity, Khaled realized the enemy must be targeting the neighbor directly above them.

I may not have much time, he thought, and pulled out another sheet of paper to write another letter.

© Buzz Dixon