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For longer than a day, Naveed was entombed in rubble. Little by little, he eventually extracted himself from the landslide by pushing off stones until he had worked all the way down to his toes and freed himself from his heavy boots. His gun was gone as was the backpack, which the avalanche’s descent down the mountain had ripped off his back. Both were buried within the debris.
It was now late afternoon and the temperature was dropping. The recent explosion had scared every living creature—animal or human—into their holes, caves or inside their homes in the valley.
Naveed stood and assessed his limbs for injury. Aside from some cuts and bruises and a few broken ribs, he was in pretty good shape. He was thirsty. The effort to dig himself out had exhausted him. For awhile, he looked around for his backpack but soon gave it up. If he wanted water, he was going to have to find the little stream that flowed through his cave.
In one direction, over the top of an adjacent mountain, lay the open country of Afghanistan. He had jihadi friends and sympathizers in Afghanistan he could depend on for assistance. In the opposite direction the bombs had fallen. The familiar terrain in that direction had been reconfigured by the explosion. Nothing was recognizable. His cave complex had once been marked by an oblong boulder that had sat atop the solid rock cave; this point of reference had always been a welcome sight. Seeing it meant they were close to home. Now the oblong boulder was gone. Naveed scanned the horizon. No single boulder was higher than the next. It occurred to the young man that he didn’t see even one rock that could be described as a boulder. The landscape had been crushed and flattened like a giant had shaken the land through a metal screen, sifting out all the large pieces. The expanse he stood on was no longer a hill. He tried to think of the Western word for it. A plateau was more like it. The land was higher in elevation than that of the valley below, but the place where he had once lived had been sheared smooth—like the top of a table.
Naveed oriented himself and walked toward what used to be his home. When he reached the edge of the plateau, he looked upon the town below. Much of it had also been devastated and flattened. Most of the hillside had slid down and overtaken the homes, crushing them, while knocking others off their weak foundations.
Naveed looked around again getting his bearings. He estimated he was standing where the front opening to his cave had once been, but there was nothing left to confirm his location. Nothing except the small spring that had, only an hour before, entered the cave from a porous wall and had exited via the front entrance. The water had found its way out of the pile of rubble and was cascading down the hill, hitting rock after rock, determined to erode another path for future generations.
Naveed bent down and touched the spring-fed water. It looked pink against his dusty hands. He dipped a corner of his white scarf in the water and withdrew it quickly. His scarf had turned pink. Somewhere under the rocks, dirt and debris, the pure spring-fed water had found his parents.