"Mikhail Evstafiev. Two Steps From Heaven " - читать интересную книгу автора

was amazing that he was still alive, that he had not frozen to death during
the past night, which had been a particularly cold one. It must be the will
of Allah!
His cracked lips whispered: "In the name of Allah the merciful and
charitable. The "Lion of Panjsher", the wise Ahmad Shah Massoud has been
right, you should never believe the shuravi. The Russians had promised
to
leave Afghanistan for good. Ahmad Shah opened the road to the north, go
ahead, "buru bahai!" Go back to where you came from! The mujaheddin won't
fire a single shot! Not touch a single infidel. Then why had the Russians
proceeded to bomb and shell poor Afghanistan after that? Why had they killed
so many people for nothing?
Sayeed had been caught by the air strike, too, he had not stayed with
his unit but headed for his native village to visit his family.
Finally he saw two kerosene lamps. Two specks of light. The one to the
left shone through the window of their house. The other one was their
neighbor's. Other families did not waste money on kerosene. He had lain
unconscious the whole night. And just as well that he did not regain his
senses earlier. If he had, he would have heard the cries and moans under the
ruined houses, including the voice of his youngest sister, crushed by clay
and rocks. When he came to, a noise like a roaring mountain torrent filled
his ears and its icy water crackled and rang, drowning out weak, dying human
voices. Semi-conscious and slightly disoriented, he remained alone with the
mountains and clouds that flowed across the sky like that phantom river, not
knowing what had happened to the village.
By evening, the moans ceased. There was no need to bury anyone. The
Russians had buried them all. Alive. Unsteady on his legs, Sayeed wandered
around the village which had been transformed into a large graveyard, hoping
at first to find at least someone alive, to dig them out, save them.
Useless. He recalled whose house had stood where, then sat for a long time
by the spot where his family had lived, crying beside the smoldering
timbers, which looked like small islands in the surrounding snow. There was
no sense in staying in the ruined village any longer.
Sayeed picked up a frozen flatcake, bit off a piece leaving the rest
for later, and hobbled down the beaten path, which led to the road. He
turned around and looked. The first time he had left here, people had stood
outside houses which were built in ascending tiers on the mountain slope,
children were on the flat roofs, all of them watching him, seeing him off to
war. Nobody would come looking for him. Nobody would even remember him. In
any case, who would believe that anybody could have survived such a terrible
scourging? Even the mountains and cliffs of Afghanistan cannot always
withstand such onslaught but crumble, fall, and shudder from the bombs
raining from the skies! What chance for mere mortals? And who would think
that the air strike would catch Sayeed Mohammed on the approach to the
village, that the shockwave would hurl the youth back some twenty meters and
that he would fall into a deep snowdrift, missing the sharp rocks? The
Kalashnikov and a full magazine were undamaged, Allah be praised. But Sayeed
did not dare to shoot himself. He hoped for a miracle. He hoped to encounter
some mujaheddin, get to a village or, should the worst come to the worst,
find some shuravi and attack them in order to avenge his family. But where