Translated by Hinh
I
A: I am in a war zone. Can you talk with me for a while?
Me: Can you tell me specifically where you are?
A: Kurdistan.
Kurdistan is a cross-border geographic and cultural region in West Asia where Kurdish people mainly live. It does not belong to a single country, but stretches across the broad mountain areas of southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and western Iran.
Me: I truly hope nothing reaches you. Do you have a shelter, or are you just indoors?
A: Just indoors.
Me: Why did you not choose to leave when the fighting began?
A: Because this is my motherland and my home.
II
M: Have you heard of Operation Sindhoor?
Me: No.
M: Pakistanis came to our village in India. It is a famous tourist destination. They slaughtered the men in the village and left the women and children there crying. Then we had Operation Sindhoor. Sindhoor is the vermilion, the deep red powder, that married Hindu women wear on their foreheads. At that time, their husbands were still alive. Now, all the husbands are dead.
Me: So this was a military retaliatory operation?
M: Yes. We bombed them with missiles.
Me: Ah. It is cruel, but it also feels like there was no other way.
M: I am an intern at a missile base. I got to touch the shell of a missile with my own hands. I study artificial intelligence. We want revenge.
III
Me: I am Chinese, a university student. What about you?
I: I am a soldier, twenty-one years old. Because of my work, I would rather not say my nationality. Thank you.
But he has an Israeli name, and a Middle Eastern time zone.
Me: Of course I will not ask further. I just hope you take care of yourself. Being a soldier must be exhausting, right?
I: Yeah. I sleep two to four hours a day. But my gear is pretty cool. That’s it.
Me: (playing dumb) I have only seen that kind of stuff in a few shooting games. Sleeping so little cannot be good, right?
I: Maybe I am just used to it. There is not much time to sleep. And my gear is way cooler than theirs. (sends a swaggering photo) Being a soldier is hard, but it is also satisfying. Don’t you think all of this is cool?
Me: …It is pretty cool, actually. Did you eat breakfast?
I: I had a cup of coffee and a cigarette.
Me: Well, that does not sound very nutritious.
I: Just like you are going to school, I am just going to war. I go home once a month when I get leave. Nothing else, really. Usually I sleep in a barracks with ten other people. I hate crowded places.
I: Oh, right. I also like poetry. And purple.
IV
J: I am a naval reservist, though I left because of some things. I have to say, I still miss that time. We kept certain habits, for example: hats off indoors, hats on outdoors. But I have already adapted to civilian life. I am still in university now. Yesterday I cooked something delicious with my friends, and I was really happy.
V
B: Yeah, yeah, one of our gaming teammates is a veteran. His back is bad, so he cannot really work, and he just stays home all day playing games. He will direct our tactics sometimes, and he barely sleeps either. Besides gaming, he does not do much else. Gaming seems to be the most important thing in his life.
VI
R: We do not have full-time firefighters in my country. So I do it part-time, 24/7 on call. It is hard to say there is much leisure in my life.
Life burns like this, and life goes on like this.
No matter what one wants to complain about—perhaps the meaninglessness of survival, missing memories, drones shot down over Kurdistan, and the people who remain where they are and hold their ground. Some histories keep replaying themselves, repeating the same cyclical mistakes. There are indeed too many human beings; nothing has ever truly been indispensable.
And yet I still feel that some lives remain vivid and full of color through all the muddle. They are, after all, only particles in the current of history. But lucid people rarely manage to feel any participation in this world, and I lack that feeling myself.
For ordinary people, a sense of participation exists in the soil under their feet, in the smell of earth on rainy days, and in the scent of cooking oil drifting up from the apartment building downstairs. To throw one’s whole life into unfinished work is much like the way we ourselves were thrown into the world.
There is the brittle crack of firecrackers outside the door, yet the New Year has already been left behind. It is March now. The year 2026 has stumbled through one quarter of itself, and one fourth of time has been spent on breathing, love, the rise and fall of tides, and labor. I have done nothing, and yet it feels as though I have experienced everything: a parting, a forgiveness, new friends, and a clearer path ahead. I do not seem to have asked anything of heaven, and so fate casually assigns me nihilism and tragedy.
But there has never really been any comedy in this world. The core of everything can be read pessimistically; it depends on the angle and the way you look at it.
Sometimes I am terribly tired, and I have many questions. I always joke: yes, existentialism and nihilism have tightened their grip on me again. I walk toward a certain emptiness and shake out half of the smallest possible dose of pills. During one winter, I began each day with an iced Americano, swallowing coffee together with medication, and then at night I paired expensive alcohol with cheap sleeping pills. A whole box cost only three dollars, while the alcohol cost much more. I was not squandering money, but I do not drink cheap things. Drinking expensive liquor neat requires a crystal-clear block of ice. Trying at once to pursue stimulation and the relaxation that follows it, like a heart pumping blood—contracting and releasing.
Now I no longer do that.
My psychiatrist told me I am still too young. At this age, even neurotransmission can be adjusted. In the end, there is a very good chance I will not need to rely on any medication at all.
Sometimes I do not know what I am doing. The sounds gradually recede, and then I get lost in my own backyard. Everything can be put down. Everything can be remade. Do I really think so?
In truth, perhaps I do not. I narrow the road into a single tight line, then collapse over any wrong turn or any curve that should not exist. I am digging trenches, yet refusing to let them bend. I have already seen this in myself. From countless lives in bloom, I have discovered the limits of my own field of vision. But I was shaped into a stubborn person, and that stubbornness was used in the wrong place, cast into an indestructible defense.
After taking sedatives, all vigilance drops away. Then many things become easier, and inspiration flows without end. Sometimes I feel that I am most myself when I have no defenses. Once I put them on, I become a hard and unchanging sheet of iron that can no longer bend. This is not the same thing as wearing a mask.
What if defense could become a mask instead?
I do not know what I am writing, because I am not entirely sober. But I do know one thing: today I wrote completely from the heart, and my subconscious must know what it is saying.
What am I afraid of?