War has miracles that minds are unable to comprehend, and anyone who has lived in a city at war is fully aware of this.
It is said that time will reorder the chaos of things, albeit to a modest degree, and this is what people have begun to notice recently, after years of war, as they remember their circumstances in the first year of battle.
When the clashes erupted in our city, utter chaos ensued, but with the passage of time the war began to follow a rhythm. Affairs were gradually arranged between the northern neighborhoods that were controlled by one sect and the southern neighborhoods that were governed by another. The bloody battles therefore ended up confined to the market area in the center of the city as the two sides took turns in displacing, killing, capturing, and exchanging those who belonged to sects other than theirs. The clashes and the exchange of fire even stopped occurring on a daily basis when they agreed to have two ceasefire days per week; one was dedicated to the loathed exchange of the dead and prisoners and the other to the hurried trading of various goods.
Dr. Sulaiman had taken on the task of arranging, recording, and wrapping the corpses in a medical center designated for this purpose after receiving them from the fighters. He would then supervise their delivery in the market area to Dr. Mahmoud, who had undertaken the same task as authorized by the other party. Each of the doctors would then return to his practice with the corpses that belonged to his group. They examined the bodies to find out the nature of the torture that their owners had been subjected to before death. They recorded their findings in a report for the fighters’ command and would then work on stitching up the wounds of the corpses, cleaning them, and shrouding them so that they could finally be handed over to their families.
Although the two doctors had studied together at the university, their births into two different sects meant that the war had forced them, like tens of thousands of others, to go to the neighborhoods that suited their respective group.
One day, while they made their exchange among the rubble of the main street in the market, Dr. Sulaiman slipped a note into Dr. Mahmoud’s hand. “Read this carefully and consider it with a calm mind,” he whispered seriously, winking at him with his left eye.
Dr. Mahmoud quickly took the piece of paper and put it in his pocket, looking around at the volunteers who were helping with the exchange process.
On the way back he read the note several times, and in the following days he thought carefully about its content, scratching his chin uncertainly. He soon came to like the idea that Dr. Sulaiman was proposing.
In the days that separated that meeting from the next, Dr. Mahmoud began to imagine his colleague Dr. Sulaiman entering the room and standing before him. He imagined hearing his voice repeating the words written on that piece of paper: “My dear friend, the war has been going on for years, and now we have an opportunity to improve our situation, yours and mine. How about hiding valuables—jewelry and money— inside the bodies we swap over every week? We profit, and it will also benefit others. If you agree, we can both spread the word that we have contacts among the fighters, then we can deliver some deposits to the other side in exchange for a certain fee. What do you think?”
“I agree.” Dr Mahmoud repeated this phrase silently whenever he opened his colleague’s note. He then uttered it before him in a low, trembling voice when they met a week later among the ruins of the market.
In the following days, both of the doctors spread the word among their acquaintances in their respective areas that they could deliver valuables to the other side. This was good news and was welcomed by many, because when the people were displaced, most of them had left behind various treasures, which they wanted back, and also because there was a dearth of foreign currency, vital to many on both sides. Others planned to help those who had been their neighbors before the separation, away from the eyes of the fighters of their sect or the militants of the other.
Those who heard the news supposed that each doctor must be in communication and have good relations with the fighters, enabling them to safely deliver the deposits in exchange for material gains, which they would share with the fighters.
And so various people began intermittently to go to the two doctors, passing them valuables and paying them to deliver these to addresses on the other side; they did not know the specific delivery method.
One day Dr. Sulaiman received five corpses from Dr. Mahmoud. “There’s foreign money in the body of the blond man and a few pieces of gold inside the big man,” the latter whispered into the other’s ear. “I’ve wrapped them up well with the addresses and sewed up the wounds.”
When Dr. Sulaiman returned to his practice, he opened up the bodies’ deep wounds and took out the deposits before carrying out his usual work of cleaning, archiving, recording, and shrouding the corpses. The next morning he handed the bodies over to their families, and in the evening he delivered the two deposits to the intended addresses.
It was on the evening of the same day that odd things began for Dr. Mahmoud. He had prepared a bowl of lentil soup and was lamenting the distant nights, which he would always remember, when his sleep was not disturbed by strange happenings.
The soup spoon had not quite touched his lips when he heard a series of quick knocks on the door. Dr. Mahmoud returned his spoon to the bowl. Bewildered, he walked over to find out who was there. The sound of shells was rising from afar, little by little, like a black shadow stretching up the wall, slowly elongating.
“There’s nothing worse than late-night visitors,” Dr. Mahmoud muttered resentfully.
He quickly swallowed his words when he saw through the peephole his elderly aunt who lived nearby. He had not seen her for months, because during the war years she had begun to suffer from some disturbances in her mind.
He opened the door and invited her in, kissing her hand and hugging her warmly. As soon as she had sat down in front of him, she burst out crying bitterly. She choked on her words as she tried to explain, all the while waving around a piece of paper held between her fingers. “Please, my nephew, I heard that you have contacts who can make deliveries to the other side of the city. I wrote a letter to my husband. I haven’t seen him for years, since he was forced to take refuge on the other side after all our children were killed. I wrote this letter to him. I miss him. I remembered that we used to write letters to each other when we were students at the university, and in my loneliness I felt the need to write to him again. Please, deliver this letter to him, and in return take my gold bracelet; you can split the money with your people who do the deliveries.”
He held her hand to prevent her from taking off her bracelet, turning his face away as he listened to her continuing sobs. He sighed and took the letter from her. He nodded and promised to deliver it to her husband on the other side, patting her shoulder tenderly. He helped her to get up and walked her slowly to the door.
When he returned to the dinner table he had lost interest in the soup. He opened his aunt’s letter and read it, exhaling and sighing every few words, agonizing for his aunt and her husband. The words of her letter were a clear example of her mental turmoil.
“There’s some cash wrapped up with an address in the woman’s corpse, and there’s a letter inside the young man with the long hair. I’ve wrapped it up together with the delivery address. Don’t be surprised: it’s from my aunt; she begged me to deliver it to her husband who lives in your part of town. Please, don’t be shocked. Crazy things happen in wars. The war itself is a crazy thing. My aunt’s condition is miserable and heart-wrenching. She’s not right—her children were all killed and her husband was displaced. Let’s make her wish come true. Her husband’s house isn’t far from your practice. Please do give the letter to him.”
Dr. Sulaiman felt very flustered upon hearing these words as some of the volunteers behind them arranged the corpses on stretchers. On a previous night, as he had closely watched the war from his balcony, he became convinced that it was indeed crazy, but he had never imagined that this insanity would make corpses into postmen, carrying messages between the war zones in this disaster-stricken city. Even the imagination could never come up with such madness. The body was now a post carrier, and the letter was inside! Unlike imagination, the grotesqueries of war seemed to have no limits.
Both doctors were speechless. The words vanished from their lips as, with trembling hands, they joined the rest of the volunteers in zipping the black plastic bags over the blood-soaked corpses so that they could be taken back to their respective medical centers.
Nor would the grotesqueness end here. It would now imbibe the war as its wine and wobble, horribly drunk, between the fates of two doctors, taking the form of a dark series of unbelievable events, a series that only they among the inhabitants of the city would be able to see.
The volunteers helped Dr. Sulaiman transport the corpses back to his office and get them inside. Then they went home. The doctor opened the woman’s corpse to take out the coins; they were tightly wrapped with the address of their owner inside a deep wound. He moved to the body of the long-haired young man, intending to open his wound to extract the letter his colleague’s crazy old aunt had written.
He was initially confused; there was something odd about the man’s body. It was as though a slow, faint pulse, like the light of a dying candle, was still present inside it. He examined the body hastily to discover, his breath racing in his chest, that the young man was still alive. Dr. Sulaiman immediately used the defibrillator on him, then connected tubes and devices to various parts of his emaciated body. After hours of painstaking work tending to the wounds, Dr. Sulaiman was sure that the young man would regain consciousness in the morning.
Out on his balcony Dr. Sulaiman lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. He then exhaled for a long time. He was in shock. He did not understand. Had the fighters on the other side and his colleague Dr. Mahmoud not noticed that this young man was not, in fact, dead? Or had he really died and come back again? The war was insane; it was the perfect time for bizarre things to happen.
He went back to check on the young man and noticed an improvement in his pulse and breathing. He contemplated his chest. In the depths of that chest was a letter written by a mad old woman. Dr. Sulaiman could not get it out; he would not. He must protect the life of this young man.
Dr. Sulaiman did not sleep well that night; his slumber was disturbed by nightmares. In the morning, he handed the corpses over to their relatives, then called the young man’s family. A few hours after they had arrived, the man began to regain some consciousness. None of them could understand why the fighters would hand over an injured person without a ransom or anything else in return. They guessed that fate was on their side and thanked God several times. After two days, the man’s health had improved enough for his family to take him home. Dr. Sulaiman waved goodbye. At the door of his practice, he imagined it was the letter that stood in front of him. Then it started drifting away, and he could not deliver it to its addressee, so he waved until the letter disappeared into the distance.
The next day, the old husband of Dr. Mahmoud’s aunt came to Dr. Sulaiman. The bombing was severe. He introduced himself with tearful eyes. He told the doctor in a warm voice heavy with longing that he had heard from acquaintances about his ability to deliver goods and begged him in a voice wearied from the horrors of war to take a letter to the other side. His wife, whom he had not seen for years, lived there. He offered Dr. Sulaiman a modest sum of money. The doctor refused the money and took the letter from the old man’s pale hands. His heart breaking for him, he promised to deliver it. He did not tell him about his wife’s letter, which was buried in a young man’s body and would remain there forever. He kept this secret interred deep in his heart.
After the old man had left, Dr Sulaiman inserted the letter into a wound on one of the corpses, then sewed it up. The next morning, among the ruins of the market, he took Dr. Mahmoud aside. He told him quickly about the corpse of the young man with the long hair that had come back to life in such a mind-blowing way. Dr. Sulaiman asked his colleague whether the young man had definitely been deceased and watched as dark colors crept in turn with the trembling words over the features of Dr. Mahmoud. The latter swore that the young man had certainly been dead a few days ago. They understood from each other that he had indeed come back to life in an incredible way and that the letter was still inside him without his knowledge. Dr. Sulaiman then told his colleague that the circle of strange coincidences had been completed yesterday when an old man, his aunt’s husband, had visited him, also with a letter, and begged him to deliver it to the other side of the city, and it was now hidden in the body of the brown-haired young woman who lay among the corpses.
Dr. Mahmoud pitched forward, almost passing out; Dr. Sulaiman grabbed him before he fell to the ground. Dr. Mahmoud felt suffocated, dizzy from the horror of these coincidences so unendurable to the human mind. He did not know how he got to his medical center with the corpses. Everything felt surreal, as though he were in another world, a deranged world.
Dr. Mahmoud had stopped being able to hear anything— the words of Dr. Sulaiman when he had bid him farewell or those of the volunteers in the car or their talk at the practice as they brought in the shrouded corpses to lay them on the beds before departing. He was in a daze. He had not heard any words uttered during the past few hours; everyone’s lips moved in front of him, but he no longer heard or understood anything.
Once alone, he hurried to the bodies and removed their covers, one by one, making sure that they were dead. He reached the corpse of the young woman whose wound had been stitched up by Dr. Sulaiman after he had stuffed the letter inside it. He examined the body doubtfully and his heart sank when he saw that the young woman was still alive, though the flame of life in her body was on the verge of going out. He hurried to his medical instruments and proceeded to treat her for several hours until he was sure that her condition was stable. The letter of his aunt’s husband remained inside her body. He was able to save the young woman, but he could not save the letter. A few days later a dark-haired young woman left the medical center, leaning on her family members, walking away from Dr. Mahmoud. There was a letter inside her that she did not know about.
In the following weeks, this bizarre occurrence was repeated several more times, and the doctors could find no scientific explanation for it. They could attribute it, as they stood in the midst of their clouds of cigarette smoke, only to the madness of war.
One day, while exchanging the corpses, the pair raised their heads and looked up to the sky. They felt as if only the sky knew their secret, the secret of the letters entombed in the bodies; the letters that would never reach their addressees. Instead, there were corpses coming back to life, the same corpses in which those letters were buried. What utter insanity was this? No one would believe it if they said anything.
Here, in a bleak room a disturbed old woman kept writing letters to her husband in the north of the city, undaunted by his lack of response.
At the same time, over there, a weary old man sat in his modest room writing letters to his wife in the south of the city, undismayed by her lack of reply.
As for those whose bodies had come back to life after a short departure, they returned to their normal lives, none of them realizing that there was a letter inside them, hidden under a large carefully stitched wound. Instead of a grave embracing their bodies, their bodies had become graves to those wretched letters.
As time passed, the number of people returning to life thanks to the letters increased, as the doctors confirmed to each other during their gloomy meetings at the market.
Following hours of exhausting work, Dr. Sulaiman was sure that the condition of this particular wounded man was stable. He was breathing well now, and his heartbeat was almost normal. A few hours ago, he had been a lifeless corpse, like all the others the doctor had received today. He had a deep wound inside of which Dr Mahmoud had deposited a letter. After the exchange, he discovered, as usual, that life had tremulously returned to the dead body. His work had saved the man but, as always, lost the letter.
The exhausted doctor walked away from the wounded man and went out to his balcony. He looked at the people as they moved along the street. They were walking confidently. Today was one of the twice-weekly truce days. He lit a cigarette and took a deep drag as the sun set slowly in the west, coloring the sky with a bloody orange tinge.
It was a quiet evening. Dr. Sulaiman raised his head to blow his cigarette smoke high. His soul was burdened by the secrets that he could never have conceived of encountering. They were like a film based on an outlandish story, a film written and directed by an ominous fate.
He looked at the sky for a long time. He was sure that it was watching all the things that were happening on earth beneath it, but it would never tell the people these stories of their lives or else they would inevitably lose their minds.
“They wouldn’t believe me if I told them about the letters, about the bodies coming back to life,” he said to himself, turning his eyes away from the bloody sunset. “The things that heaven can’t tell people, I can’t either.”
Dr. Sulaiman began humming one of his favorite songs in a low voice. He had not sung the words of this song since the war started. He had forgotten it, but he remembered it now.
He watched people from his balcony with sad eyes as he sang wearily. He thought about how at this exact moment those people in the street had no idea that some of them had miraculously come back to life. The once-dead now lived with us under the same sky, but neither the resurrected nor the rest of the people knew that inside their war wounds there were letters.
__________________________________
From the new issue of McSweeney’s, Issue 76: Aftershocks. Used with permission of the publisher. Copyright © 2025 by Mustafa Taj Aldeen Almosa. Translation copyright © 2025 by Maisaa Tanjour and Alice Holttum.
