The Journalist

Part 62: I'm Ready for Responsibility

Some say, every human being who dies will live in the memories of others. Death makes man take full advantage of life. If our lives were eternal, it would be boring.

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Life is a great mystery. Like I don't know if today will be the end of my meeting with my little girl. Clear melts were unceasingly producing in my eyes. My body fell, my life seemed to drift.

"Sister, please wake up! Didn't you just say you wanted to rest?" I said on the sidelines. "Come, ask me another question. Let me answer your question! There's a lot I want to tell you. You've never heard of it, have you? I have a big secret I keep and I dare not reveal it. It's about your mother, aren't you curious to know?" I said while stroking his face.

My heart still rejects the reality that is happening. I wish he was just pranking me and would suddenly open his eyes while laughing softly.

"Sister, aren't we going to meet your mother, Uncle Ahmed and your other comrades? You're so cheating! How can you leave without saying goodbye to me?"

When a person dies, his sense of hearing is the last to go. That's why I keep talking to him even though everything I'm throwing isn't going to make him breathe again.

I roared until I coughed. This is the longest cry in my life. Until darkness robs me of consciousness and time just jumps off.

***

The sounds of many people were staring at my hearing. Even so, I had no intention of opening my eyes. I feel someone is releasing my hand in Khalila's hand. However, my palms were increasingly wrapped around the tiny fists, unwilling to let anyone get rid of them.

"One man is alive!" someone shouted right beside me.

Hearing that, I looked up at Khalila quickly. In fact, nothing has changed. He's been stretched stiff. The distinctive scent of death slashed my nose again.

"You okay?" ask the man to me. It turned out that the person he was referring to was still alive was myself.

Orange rays hit my face to make my eyes reflex closed. I don't know how long it's been, I woke up from a sleep I didn't even notice. It seems that this group of people are volunteers from other Arab countries. Several bodies have been evacuated and put in body bags. They prepared a stretcher, then were about to lift my body. However, I immediately brushed aside all those who were about to touch me. My tears spilled once I looked at that innocent little face.

"Is he your family? He should be buried soon. The burial ground is very limited due to the number of casualties of the war that enslaved" said one of the men with a turban attached to his head.

One man patted me on the shoulder. "God willing, heaven awaits him."

I slowly took my hand. "Where are you going to bury him? I want to come ...."

It took a struggle to get Khalila out of the car wreckage that was overrunning her. As if I was sliced open, my heart crumbled again to see the half-broken body of Khalila, especially on her legs. Surviving long enough in such circumstances isn't it very painful? But my little girl is very strong. No complaints or tears.

I went with them to the burial site that turned out to be in Khalila's hometown. I carried nothing on my body but the pants and clothes I was wearing and next to Khalila's shoes. I saw Khalila's shoes. These shoes have twice saved me from the threat of life.

Laptop, camera, wallet, and cell phone I left in the car before I decided to go out to get Khalila's shoes. Everything is buried and destroyed with carcasses. Including the exegetical book of Ameena that I have not yet known its contents.

We arrived at an area filled with gravestones. I saw residents and volunteers busy working together to build a layered grave. Some others looked to be mourning the bodies. This is because the condition of the land that has been full so they are forced to make a layered grave. In this place, the war fighters from the rebel group are buried.

credit: Amer Almohibany

I looked at the silence of Khalila's body which had been placed in a rectangular hole and then drowned in the soil. The war was over after the United Nations called for a ceasefire, but the grievances were still evident in this location where people wept over his dead family.

After burying, one by one the volunteers left me. I looked blankly at the mound of earth in front of me that had just been plugged in a headstone. My gaze began to blur as these eyes spewed out a liquid of sadness.

I looked to the side. A small knife lying on the ground shifted my focus. I took the knife and looked back at Khalila's tomb. I put the knife in my pants pocket and then I turned around.

"Mm .. mina-chan," I call hoarse.

He looked slowly at me. "Thanks ...." His voice is no less than mine.

I looked at the grave in front of him. "What are you doing here?" ask me in a weak voice.

With lips that held back the shakes, she said, "Ahmed .. was shot while wanting to take me and the children were hiding. He let his body become our shield."

One clear melt flowed from the corner of his eye. Apparently, Ahmed also followed Mr. Ali. A friend who lives like that really exists.

Ameena looked towards me. "You yourself why ...." His words were cut off as his eyes fell on Khalila's shoes in my left hand."

I knelt before him with my head fully lowered.

"I ... I'm really sorry! I ... can't keep Khalila right in your word!" I said with my head lowered, "forgive me!" I said that many times.

Ameena spontaneously covered her mouth with both hands while sobbing. Hearing the cry of the woman I love, I was only able to bite my wound-filled lips. My eyeballs are moving erratically. The sound of crying made me sink deeper into the valley of deepening slump.

My hand crept slowly, taking the knife out of my pants pocket. "I. .. will take responsibility!" I said while holding a knife.

With this knife, I'm ready to pay for my misdeeds that didn't take care of Khalila. In front of Ameena, I pointed the knife to my stomach. Just as the blade was about to tear my stomach, Ameena suddenly ran towards me while holding the knife that was almost stuck in my skin. He shook his head slowly while tightly grasping the sharp part of the knife.

I looked at him with round eyes. My hand reflexively removed the knife that injured Ameena's hand until blood dripped between her fingers.

"If you kill yourself, then you also kill the people who love you. Khalila, Mr. Ali, Ahmed even the others. We wait only for time, but do not act before His decree!"

In Japanese tradition, suicide is part of a person's responsibility and a form of repatriating honor. However, Ameena forbade me from doing that. He said the death of every human being is something that can not be delayed, avoided, or predicted when it comes.

A golden light shone upon us both. Warming the heart. Together we looked at the sky where the afternoon sun was about to return to the lap of twilight.

"Khalila dear, congratulations .. You've gone to heaven now. Dreams that many people have. You don't have to be afraid anymore to hear gunshots and explosions because in heaven there is only peace that no one on earth has. Hopefully later ummi can also catch up with you there," said Ameena softly while stroking the headstone.

I looked at the nanar Ameena who was sitting on the side of Khalila's funeral. My brain was spinning considering the initial encounter with the little girl, where she immediately raised both hands when she saw me photographing her with a long shotgun-like lens.

Ameena might be right, Khalila is not fit to be in a place like this. It will be a long time of suffering if you continue to live in a world full of chaos and thirst for human blood. Let it be this time, I believe that heaven does exist and my little girl has been there.

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Author Note:

About suicide in Japan I have discussed yes in NN. So suicide can be said to be commonplace in Japan can even be called a tradition from the past era. The reason is not just despair. Can be as an expression of loyalty to the employer/leader, an expression of shame, guilt etc. if in their military first, there is the most famous kamikaze, kamikaze, that is, troops dare to die where soldiers will be bullets or bombs that are ready to be detonated on the opponent. This may have been the inspiration for suicide bombers. During the defeat of world war 2 the soldiers, his officers, until his people committed mass suicide as a form of shame and loyalty to the emperor.

Kei and Khalila became part of the emotional story I loved in this novel, despite Kei and Yuna's run-down love story, or his love story with Ameena who has not yet seen her. As we all know, children have always been the worst part of war. The name is also war, yes .. there must be a death scene.

For the story of the future of Kei itself, some of you already know, right. But surely you are curious about what makes Kei go back to Japan and then become a political and legal journalist with a different figure.

Happy ending, Yu? Well this is from the beginning of the chapter many are wondering. Happy yes... Happy version of me but 🤣. Seriously, happy. a complicated NN can be happy, right. I appreciate you guys who broke up2 following this novel from the beginning. You guys must have known the ending in my novel how.