France, November 1917 — Somme Frontline
Mud. Smoke. Silence.
And then the screaming.
War, Murtasim had learned, was a strange teacher. It taught you how loud silence could be. How death often came without warning, and how memory became your only warmth in the cold.
He crouched in the trench with his rifle slung uselessly over his shoulder. He hadn't fired it in days. There were no offensives right now — just waiting. That was the cruelest part. Not the violence. The waiting.
Waiting to die.
Waiting for a letter that wouldn't come.
Waiting to forget her.
But he couldn't.
Meerab.
Even her name felt like a breath of spring in this freezing November.
He pressed his back against the wooden slats behind him and closed his eyes. In his hand, wrapped in oilskin and tucked in the inside flap of his coat, was a black-and-white photograph of her. A stolen moment from the past — her hair tied back, her eyes defiant, her lips caught between a laugh and an argument. He had no right to carry it anymore.
But it was the only thing keeping him sane.
Every evening, when the sun dipped beyond the barren horizon, Murtasim would take it out and sit on the edge of the trench, just above the line of fire. He knew it was dangerous. But he didn't care.
If he was going to die, it should be under the open sky — not buried in muck.
He rubbed his thumb across her cheek in the photo, whispering to her.
"Today I saw a boy from Bengal die holding a red string in his hand. He said it was for his daughter. She's two. His voice broke when he said her name."
He closed his eyes.
"I wonder if you think of me. Or if you've burned the letters."
A voice beside him stirred him from thought.
"Murtasim bhai, why do you do this to yourself every night?"
It was Harjeet, the tall Sikh boy from Amritsar who had become his only friend here. His turban was dusted with ash, his beard muddied.
Murtasim didn't answer right away.
"I like the sky," he finally said.
Harjeet sat down next to him and pulled out a tin of old, cold roti.
"You don't eat. You barely sleep. And every sunset, you look at her picture like she's a ghost."
"She is."
Harjeet raised an eyebrow.
"She's alive, isn't she?"
"Not for me," Murtasim said quietly.
There was a long pause.
Harjeet sighed, shaking his head.
"You Pathans. Always dramatic."
Murtasim chuckled softly.
"We're poets. We don't die in silence."
Harjeet looked at him then — really looked.
"You think we'll get out of this?"
Murtasim didn't answer.
Instead, he pulled out a folded paper from his breast pocket — a new letter. Not to Meerab. To no one.
Just words. Just blood.
He read aloud under his breath.
"Somewhere beyond this trench, my land waits. I smell her in the smoke. Hear her in the gunfire. Lahore is in every bullet that misses me."
"And she — Meerab — she lives in the way I hold this gun like I once held her hand. Firm. Terrified. But never letting go."
Harjeet's voice was soft. "You should mail that."
"No," Murtasim said. "It's not for her. It's for after."
Two Days Later
The shell hit at dawn.
They were ordered to charge the enemy line through no-man's-land. A suicide run. Harjeet was behind him. Murtasim didn't hesitate. He had stopped fearing death long ago.
As he ran, the cold wind burned his face. The screams were muffled. His boots tore through mud and barbed wire. He clutched the photo of Meerab in one hand and his rifle in the other.
He thought of her eyes.
He thought of her jasmine bush.
He thought of the rain.
Then came the sound — a crack like the sky itself splitting.
And everything turned black.
That Evening – In the Trench
Harjeet crawled back with blood in his eyes. He had shrapnel in his leg, but he carried something clutched to his chest.
A blood-streaked wallet.
Inside — a photograph and a folded letter.
He found the British officer and said in broken English, "This... give this... to Lahore. To her. He wrote for her."
The officer barely nodded.
He didn't even ask the soldier's name.
The Letter Found on His Body (Never Sent)
Meerab,
The day before I die, I want to remember your voice.
I want to hear you say my name the way you used to — when we fought over poetry or climbed mango trees or listened to the rain in silence.
I want to remember how your hands moved when you read, how your brows knit when you argued. How you laughed when I called you my lioness.
I don't know if I'll live. I don't know if this war will end before I do. But if you ever wonder — yes. I thought of you every second. You were my warmth when the trenches froze. My breath when the gas came. My hope when the sky turned red.
If I return to dust, know that the last thing I carried was your photo. And the jasmine you left behind.
Not even war could take you from me.
Forever,
—Murtasim
