Suicide notes

Натиг Расулзаде

Роман в криминальном жанре о молодом человеке, сражавшимся в Афганистане и ставшим калекой вследствие полученного ранения. Теперь, вернувшись на родину, он вынужден ступить на преступный путь, чтобы прокормить и лечить больную мать, и в финале боссы наркомафии его уничтожают.

Natig Rasulzade

Suicide notes

Novel

I’m twenty five, I’ve been to war, and over three years ago now, at the end of 1981 I got back from Afghanistan, I still had nine months until full demob, I got blown up by a mine and lost an arm, actually it wasn’t me but a fellow next to me in the chain, we walked in a chain, we were moving towards an afghan village and this place, we had known it before, wasn’t mined, this mine that blew up my friend was accidental, some bastard fixed it there, just in case, for some plonker, and there you are – my friend stepped on it and flew into the air before my eyes, myself being thrown away by the blast, I fell immediately, feeling a cutting pain in my elbow and before passing out managed to raise my head and see how, a few paces away, in a cloud of dust and rocks, were quietly (I went deaf from the blast) falling down to earth human entrails of indistinguishable colour. We hadn’t expected a mine here, how on earth had he managed to step on that stinker, did himself in as well as mutilating me, well whatever, it’s in the past now… I hadn’t really been close to him, not like we had squabbled or something, it just happens like this – we simply hadn’t got on well together from the beginning and later on didn’t get any closer; the guy as I knew him hadn’t been much… well he had been a bit of a coward, though it’s not very nice to say this kind of thing about the deceased, still nice or not but it’s true, quite a few had noticed this in our division. He hadn’t really been trying to be a hero, liked to stay put, sit snug quietly in a safe place, but Afghanistan is not really an amusement park, you won’t sit snug for too long, war is war, and we all were afraid, afraid of getting killed, getting crippled, well becoming invalids because we all knew just too well that if you become an invalid here in Afghan and go back home, that’s it, that’s the end for you, nobody would bother to take care of you, won’t even notice you, as if you didn’t even exist, just like the war in Afghanistan didn’t exist. A simple pension will take all your remaining strength to get it from the state, and in the end all that would drive you crazy. For heroes, obviously, it’s a bit easier, but they’re tight on heroes – it’s not like mushrooms growing after the rain, there’s not enough medals for all of us, though if it was up to me, I would give medals to all the guys who served here with dignity, honestly, because even that is not easy here – to serve with dignity, without fear and cowardice. I for example, tell you the truth, was scared every minute, because in my thoughts I always was at home, and at home, in Baku, I left behind my mother, my father had passed away just recently but I hadn’t been able to go to his funeral, I was in hospital. I also have a brother but he’d been living apart from us for a long time. He lives in Saratov, stayed there after the army, got married and now has his own family, kids and work. He’s much older than me, now he’s over forty and has been living his own life for a long time and almost forgot our mom. Mom doesn’t have anyone else apart from the two of us. Who would take care of her should something happen to me? So I was afraid, how wouldn’t you be afraid of getting killed or wounded at war? That’s it. If something happens to me, how would mom survive on her own? On the pension that she would receive for me even a cat couldn’t survive nowadays. She is old and sick, she’s got to eat and drink, right? Alright, suppose she’ll be eating little, buying cheap foodstuffs, living without fruit and vegetables, but still she needs medication, she constantly has to receive treatment for her diabetes, treat her goitre, treat all her health problems, problems that any elde