Fiction: The Most Wonderful White Stockings

Read More: A brief Q&A with A. Molotkov

It was a woman’s leg. My last pickup for the day. I was hoping to deliver it to Nagib’s location sometime in the afternoon. Early afternoon if I could manage. Only a couple of miles to walk, but who knew what I would run into. This was war zone, after all. I always thought it was a shame, the way bodies and body parts just lie around, unclaimed, uncared for. Nagib was laconic about his own reasons. “Someone has to do it.”  For one reason or another, such was the path he had chosen, the work he found important. Rather than trying to change the world so that there would be no dead bodies, no body parts.

I was still optimistic about changing the world. But I wasn’t quite sure how this change was going to come about. In the meantime, I wanted to help him. It was a difficult job. Someone had to do it.

“What do you do with all of these?” I asked him when I first started.

“Sometimes people come and claim them. Usually no one comes.”

He was silent for a while. I didn’t want to rush him. Every now and then, you could get him to comment beyond a sentence or two, if you kept your mouth shut and gave him space to expand into.

“Even if they say they recognize someone’s body part, I can’t help wondering if they are just desperate to find something, some remnant of their loved one. Can they possibly be sure it’s their son’s hand, their wife’s finger? An arm, a foot? All this stuff. Most of these are common-looking. Most people look the same. Are they just pretending to recognize?”

Nagib fell silent again.

“It’s a sad thing to do,” he finally summarized, unnecessarily.

“Yes, it is,” I agreed.

Sometimes I ran into these truncated families while depositing a part or two. Despondent people in search of something tangible to connect them to the one suddenly removed. These scenes recurred in my mind as I picked up the leg. It’s standard procedure. I put it in a plastic bag, as airtight as I could make it. We don’t have access to ice, dry or wet.

But there was something I couldn’t get out of my mind.

The stocking.

It was quite beautiful, almost intact, just some blood stains at the very edge where lace patterns ended and the tender, gentle patch of uncovered skin began. The most expensive stocking you could buy, I was quite sure of that. It must have been from Fatimah’s corner store, if it was from around here at all.

The air smelled of dust that had not had the time to settle. And death. But did it, really, or was I simply imagining that?

This is when I heard the bombers coming.

Leila wakes up at dawn. She should go check on the chickens, but she is too lazy. Mom will take care of the chickens and not mention it, as long as it happens only once in a while. Sometimes mom smiles. She enjoys being supportive. Leila loves that about her. Some girls’ moms are so hard on them. But she shouldn’t take advantage of her own mother’s kind nature. Maybe she should get up and check on those chickens after all, she wonders.

This is when she falls asleep again.

But she can’t oversleep, so she wakes up.

She finds herself thinking about Tarif. He is so handsome and cute and wonderful, and she can’t get him out of her head. The way he looks at her now and then. Maybe they can get married? Of course, the parents would have to agree. It will take time. But it’s pleasant to consider. He’s so nice and most serious and most good-looking.

Leila has to force herself to stop thinking about Tarif. She needs to get dressed.

I ducked, knowing that bombs may fall pretty close. There was just enough room for me between a collapsed building and a dead truck whose eviscerated cab still boasted comfortable leather seats, soon to be collected and reused. They say they target insurgents, yet there is no clear definition for that. Mostly, the innocent get killed. But is anyone innocent? Living here? Living like this?

I knew that sitting out this air raid would be a safe choice, well worth the time. Maybe I wouldn’t make it back by early afternoon, but I was still hopeful for a 5-o-clock cup of tea at my apartment, before I headed out to spend the evening with friends.

It was really close this time. Dirt clods blasting past my earthbound body and raining on me as I pleaded that this particular explosion would not kill me.

It’s a strange experience each time, you can’t quite get used to it. The planes were insect-like, dreadful the way only hell can be as they buzzed over my head, shitting death. I felt intense hatred for the pilots. What kind of perverse empty-mindedness does it take to agree to fly these horrible things?

The leg was recent. Maybe one or another group of undesirables was hiding out in this area. Maybe no one was hiding out, they just happened to drop their bombs a few miles away from the correct target.

Targets are frequently incorrect once violence starts.

I remembered finding my father, just lying there. No one was able to explain where the bullet had come from, or for what reason. It’s just one of those things that happen here. An incorrect target. One day a person is removed from life.

He and I had not had a chance to talk very well. There were things I wish I had said, found a way to say, the time to say.

The leg, neatly wrapped, is next to me. It’s the most unusual stocking.

Leila’s thoughts have wandered for a while. She sits up in bed. Tarif has such beautiful eyebrows. She wishes she could touch them. They must be prickly to the touch. Her own eyebrows are quite thin. She would like to have those enormous eyebrows some people have. Some people are so lucky!

But she knows she should not complain. Most people think she is beautiful. She can do without the eyebrows.

Maybe she could talk to him?

It is quite inappropriate to talk to a boy. But most girls do it anyway. Why not? These are new, different times, even though parents don’t want to accept that. How would she approach him?

She will ask Haifa or one of the other girls. They must have some idea. The other girls say that they saw Haifa kiss Ali, and not just once. Haifa is very brave and very bad, and Leila loves her. She hasn’t dared to ask her about Ali. Or about kissing. She should ask. Haifa will explain all about the new, different times, and that there are things we have been taught that we should not take for granted. She is good at explaining those things. Leila is not as good at conversation as some other people, although sometimes she would like to be. She would like to be as smart as Haifa, but maybe if she were that smart, she wouldn’t be as beautiful as she is.

She smiles, realizing that she thinks of herself as beautiful. First she heard other people say it, and now she is used to this opinion and has accepted it as fact.

When she looks at herself in the mirror, she knows it’s true. It’s not very modest, but she knows it.

Tarif is clearly very serious. He studies a lot, but he also helps his father, and his father seems to be quite satisfied with him. A kind old man. Tarif can be a good husband for her. She would be a good wife for him. She feels a pang of pain as she realizes she doesn’t have him yet. But she knows that one day, she will.

I awoke from my thoughts. The planes, these bloodthirsty bats, were no longer polluting the sky. They were probably done for the afternoon. A night crew might return after dark to pound the rest of life out of these few blocks. I looked at my watch. Two and a half hours had disappeared from my life. It didn’t feel like a long time. It had passed in an instant. Strange, isn’t it? And another thing that’s strange: the level of attachment we humans feel for the body our loved one has left behind, a shell so painfully empty.

I wondered about the leg. Just one leg, no counterpart anywhere in the vicinity. Finding the match was not a requirement, but most of the time they ended up close by. Not in this case. It was as if the rest of the body had vanished. I did not want to think of all the possible scenarios that might have collided to make this happen. Who was she? What did they mean, these stockings, on this particular day? Where was she headed, what was she thinking about?

I got out of my hiding place, on my way to Nagib’s location. The smell of destruction permeated the air. I was almost there when screeching brakes pierced the quiet. A car zoomed by, another one chasing the first. They seemed to materialize out of thin air. The drivers were firing at each other. I knew they could shoot me without a second thought. I was certain it must have crossed their minds. But they didn’t shoot me, not this time. The car chase just faded into the distance, as if I had simply imagined it. […]

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