The Bomber

The Bomber


The bomber caught her breath as the bus jumped, jostling its passengers.

“Don’t be afraid,” they had said strapping the explosive to her body,” this stuff is very stable. Even a bullet won’t set it off!”

“Don’t be afraid,” she repeated, “Have no fear.” Yet it was fear, she knew, which made her sweat. It flowed from her skin, running down between her breasts where the explosives nestled.

“Near your heart,” they had said, “it will be fast, and no-one will look there. You are too young.”

No-one will look. Two more miles and one last checkpoint. No-one had looked; so far, they were right. She was too young.

“You will be a martyr,” they’d said.

“I will be a martyr,” she repeated.

The bus stopped, and she ran her fingertips carefully over the trigger in her pocket. “Not now,” she whispered, “not yet.” A few people got on the bus. The bomber looked away through the tight mesh of the window at the sun-baked houses that lined the road. A boy settled onto the seat beside her and she glanced down. The boy wriggled on the seat, bare legs flinching from the hot vinyl. His knee was scabbed. He noticed her gaze and smiled.

“Football,” he said, and then laughed.

She looked away. Her brother played football, had knees just like that as he lay dead on the kitchen table.

“So stupid,” she thought. “Sticks and stones for bullets and tanks!”

She glanced again at the boy. Same age. He looked up at her, still smiling.

“Was he innocent?” she thought, “Could she do it now?”

She could easily kill soldiers, or the man seated in front of her, but the boy? The boy did not know her reasons, would not understand if he did. Her heart beat strongly against the explosives; its rhythm stoked the anger that guided her. Her brother would understand her reasons. His death released the flood of her anger, unstoppable by any levy of the law, scouring her morality bare and sweeping away any ethical sandbags that tried to contain her outraged vengeance. She forced herself to picture the dead faces that stared from posters throughout her village, to remember her parent’s eyes as they mourned each death. “We must share our pain,” she thought, a tight smile touching her lips, “ we have no monopoly on pain.”

The boy bit his nails and hummed to himself, dreaming of scoring goals.

“I could do it now if I had to,” she thought, and stared at the dusty window.

“Be patient,” they had said. “Choose your target well. Kill the bastards.”

She wondered if she’d feel anything. She thought of the nails sewn into her clothes. When the time came they would tear flesh. Her flesh too. Would it hurt? She flinched at the thought and the boy, feeling her shudder, touched her arm.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

She nodded and smiled quickly. “Not now,” she thought, “not yet.”

One more mile. The bus stopped in traffic. Muffled sounds came from the street. There was laughter; a song was lifting from a nearby rooftop. She tensed as she recognized the melody. The notes pierced her mind where they reflected off shards of memory, making them glint in her consciousness like pieces of a broken mirror in the dust:

The smell of dinner on the kitchen table– chicken, cucumbers and tomatoes.
Her toes pressed against the floor savoring the coolness of the tiles.
Her mother humming along with the radio as she made tea.
A cry from the street and the door catching the light as it heaved open.
Strangers – a man in green pushing her aside and sweeping the table bare.
Her mother’s cry.

From under the table she saw them carry her brother in. They laid him out scant inches above her. Someone placed his shoes carefully in a corner. Then his arm fell so that his hand hung just above the remnants of the meal.

“One more mile,” she thought, and I will see him again.

***

The bus pulled over to the side of the market-street and stopped. Passengers stood to disembark as the soldiers approached, asking for names and searching bags. She watched them from her seat and fought back the urge to detonate herself.

“Wait’” she urged, glancing at the boy.

“Be modest but friendly,” they had said. “We want civilians to die because they are least prepared to suffer. Take the soldiers only if you must.”

The bomber rose and walked to the front of the bus, her hands visible in front, holding a small shopping bag. She smiled as she stepped down, and looked at her feet. A soldier stared at her. He was young and nervous, afraid of hidden bombs and quick knifes.

“Shopping?” he asked, and she nodded holding out the bag. He opened it with the muzzle of his gun and looked carefully inside. She wondered if hate could be smelt. He nodded and waved her past. She did not look back as she entered the market, but pressed the bag to her breast and willed herself not to run.

People crowded the street. People buying and selling food, laughing with friends squabbling over prices. She slipped from stall to stall as if shopping. She bought tins and placed them in her bag to create more shrapnel. People let her pass, few noticing her at all. Children ran between the adults, playing games. They were covered in smiles and dust like the children in her market, like her brother. They laughed as one stepped on a dropped tomato, splitting open its ripe flesh on the street. She thought of what she had to do for her brother.

“I should do it soon,” she thought, “the cameras will be watching me.”

But the children stopped her. Were they innocent?

“Can I do this?” she asked herself.

She had stopped moving and now stood still in the middle of the street. The life of the market flowed around her. In her mind she saw the seconds tick past, her finger moving, the blast. She saw the bodies split open on the street. Bodies stretching on and on, on every market street, in every town. Only dust on the martyr’s posters. Only tears on her mother’s face.

“Should I do this?” she asked, “Is it the right way?”


The cameras watched her standing, head down, in the street. A judgement was made.

Why? … for her brother…for herself? To give herself meaning? … meaning writ large in blood. A meaning of her choosing … perhaps. The bomber’s fingers caressed the trigger. The world seemed to spin around her as if she were its very axis, as if one move would make it fall, a coin settling in the dust. Heads or tails, life or death. For an instant both sides seemed possible, it seemed she still had a choice to makes.

“Hey!”

She turned.

“Hi!” The boy waved at her and smiled just as the shot came.

She paused, then settled slowly to her knees. At her breast the brightness of her life pulsed and slowly stained her shirt. Her thoughts cleared. She looked up past the scabbed knees into the eyes of the boy. The bomber smiled and fumbled for the trigger as the second shot came.