A Token of Remembrance

“If it’s heads, I’ll stay. If it’s tails, I’ll leave.”

His nail hastily streaked the stainless steel token that resided between his nimble fingers, eager to earn a response to the answerless question that plagued his mind for years. But were the odds ever in his favor?

With a breath caught in his throat, his thumb met the rusted strokes of the Afghani reverse before tossing the coin in the heavy air. It was only when the brawl of dominance between the two faces of the two-Afghani coin had succumbed to the leverage of gravity had the realization of his senseless method of reason dawned upon him.

Before its inevitable fall to the ground, the penny is snatched into trembling hands, a pair of anxious palms enclasping its rugged sides closed.

The detonation of a grenade rings through the tense atmosphere, but he seems unfazed by the cries of a child in the boulders of the distance cliffs. Bellows of smoke settle in the once placid dusk of the town in ruins, and his heart pounds out of his chest for a brief stretch of time when tears gloss over his dark hazel irises.

He is a coward—and he acknowledges it.

He swore his devotion to his country with every wave of his flag in the solemn winds of his village, with every verse of the national anthem he recited under his fatigued pants as rings of torturous metal branded the worn skin of his back, yet his eyes trailed over the miles of concertina wire that wound the ingress to his escape. Despite his father’s absence, he sensed the weight of disapproval from the parent on his son’s flee, envisioning a vivid frown wrinkling the forehead of the deceased. He had grown accustomed to the traditions of his nation—the patrols of armed turbaned men on the narrow streets had been the only sight out his cracked window, the week- long curfews had confined him to the humdrum of his four frail walls, and the deafening clamors of ignited explosives had been tuned into monotonous background noise. His eyes darted to the dried crimson blemishes that speckled his skin as he traced his finger over the stinging scar that stretched across his forearm.

He is a coward, and he is also a terrible son—and he acknowledges it.

He despises himself for attempting to cross international borders without the knowledge of his mother and sister. He loathes himself for running in search of a living without the one who bore him life and the one who held his feeble fingers through life. He detests himself for leaving his mother without a child and his sister without a sibling—did they not deserve to start over too?

Successive honks of a beaten horn call him out of his guilt-ridden thoughts, and he eyes the battered, camouflaged Tata Prima 2830.K beckoning him to escape before the dawn’s rays enlighten the village of his disappearance.

He thinks his teenage mind can’t comprehend the gravity of his rash decisions, but the desire to flock to the other side of the coiled fence urged his limbs to move towards the beam of red taillights.

Perhaps new memories would sew the holes of his tattered perahan wa tunban. Perhaps the trills of robins would shelter the white noise he grew up listening to. Perhaps he could walk new roads which weren’t scattered with bodies drained of color seeking refuge underneath rubble.

Perhaps he could still make room for himself on the cargo truck.

His clenched fingers that tightly grasped the metal coin soon lost the strength they possessed, tumbling to the barren soil as he sprinted to climb the freight that symbolized his token out of his motherland.

The embossed coat of arms of Afghanistan faced the dismal expanse of the sky, wishing the prior warmth that engulfed it a farewell it had bid too soon.

Heads.