The End of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

apart by a 12-gauge shotgun.”
    “Your…your stomach?”
    “A man from a neighbouring village – a man I had known since I was a child – he blew it to pieces in search of a Greater Serbia. Overnight I changed from being a fellow resident to a filthy rodent. People can be so fickle, no? And grudges run so deep. Then he turned his gun on my daughter – my screaming, petrified little girl. So, yes, now I am missing my stomach…and my child.”
    I stared at her in shock and disbelief. “I…I don’t know what to say, I’m…I’m quite speechless.”
    “And I am quite stomachless.”
    “But…but doesn’t it…hurt?”
    “What’s to hurt? There’s nothing there.”
    “But how…how could anyone…do such a thing?”
    “Why not? People can be dead and living at the same time, no? Don’t you know that by now? He was living but feeling nothing – nothing but resentment and suspicion and anger. There are those that are dead inside but still take breath. You would do well to remember this, little boy,” she said, her eyes squinted as if to underscore the weight of her words.
    “But it makes no sense. It’s senseless – cruel and senseless.”
    “You ask for reason from such people? I was Muslim – that was all that mattered. He saw my faith as skin deep. So he thought if he destroyed the skin he destroyed the faith. But as you can see…he was mistaken.”
    She threw her head back with exaggerated pride, as people sometimes do when trying to convince themselves they’ve won, while knowing full well they lost.
    “I can’t…I cannot believe someone could be so…I mean, how could they? How could that happen? Why didn’t someone stop him?”
    “What, you don’t have television? All your Western advancements don’t include the television set? You see, you hear, you know. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
    “Yes, but…”
    “What, you don’t like reality TV? Or it’s not reality until you find yourself sitting face to face with it at the breakfast table, is that it? Well, who can blame you really, sitting there in your comfortable home, looking at the terrible images and feeling so bad? It’s not your fault. You didn’t cause it, after all – who can blame you? Except me…looking at you – all of the power and asleep at the wheel. Do we intervene or don’t we? What will it cost us? Will we be re-elected if we act? It’s a human catastrophe. It’s abhorrent. We deplore it. We condemn it. We do nothing. Better to wait…wait until the killing is done. East Timor, Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sudan…so many conflicts, so many conflicting opinions, so much talk, and so much death. So they pick and choose their humanitarian gestures with the steely eye of a seasoned gambler. The scales of power are laden with guilt, cleansed by a moral cause, and replenished by a lucrative book deal upon retirement. And on it goes. But I am too tired for this. I’ve had enough.”
    She stood up and looked around the room with cold detachment. “I will go to my room now,” she said, impassively.
    “It’s…it’s a miracle you’re alive…to have gotten here…to be able to tell your story,” I said, part of me not wanting her to leave, secretly hoping she might feel inclined to go into more detail on her harrowing ordeal.
    “Where? Here? It’s The End of the World – we all get here eventually.”
    “Be as modest as you like, I think you’re…I’m in awe.”
    “You’re in shock. You have no idea, do you? You are like a canvass half started – the rudiments are there but it will remain forever incomplete.”
    She eyed me up and down for a while and then said something that even under these circumstances I still found the ability to be shocked by.
    “And yet I find you unconventionally attractive,” she said, toying with one of her greasy tresses. “Perhaps you want to have sex with me?”
    I was completely taken aback. “Oh, I-I…um…”
    “Yes?”
    “Nothing, it’s just that