A.N 131Once upon a time, when he was a very, very small boy, it had been taboo to talk about the civil war which would be known forever in Karasian history as
the Partition.
Sujir i-Harendo was not born until A.N 116, over 10 years after the war had ended. His older siblings, both born eight years prior, also had no recollection of the war, but were born close enough after the war's end where the populace was still shell-shocked from the event. The seriousness of the war was such that not even his older siblings, who had no wartime memories of their own, would talk about the war to him.
In an academic context, discussion of the Partition was limited to older students, typically of the high school and college level. Elementary school students were taught basic names, dates, and a very abbreviated timeline of events, but the subject was deemed too gruesome to explore further with primary-school children. Everyone in Nui-ta of his generation who wasn't a recent immigrant had someone older who'd fought through the Partition, or at least been alive to witness the events that came along with it. In Sujir's case, his mother was the only older relative he'd had who
hadn't fought through the war, although she'd been the Minister of Internal Affairs at the time. His father and two uncles had all fought through the war, and those of his grandparents who were alive at the time had been involved at the time. His maternal grandmother had volunteered to assist with triage efforts in war-zones as a civilian, while his paternal grandfather had a more daring job, overseeing the war effort as a high-profile General, before being involved in the Tarashka Conference
1.
By the time Sujir grew older and began high school, enough time had passed for the war to become less of a taboo topic overall. His history classes soon began filling in details about the Eastern and Western fronts, the bombings in Alin, the capture and re-capture of San Gajin, and San Talsankir (which were key military bases in the states of Sangaur and Rahku, respectively). He learned about the PAF-PZF occupation of Kaurizil, not far from his family's own hometown, where major military officers and government officials such as his own mother had to be kept in hiding. Most importantly, he learned about the events that had caused the Partition, such as the rising sentiment of a return to apartheid under Prime Minister xi-Sendres, counterbalanced by liberalizing social climates in other parts of the nation, and finally, the rise of Central Party's common-blooded Evan Isaci into the Prime Ministry --- a move which, while innocent in other countries, was polarizing news in Nui-ta at the time.
One thing that remained, and still remains taboo within Nui-ta, was to ask a Partition veteran about their specific circumstances during the war. This was due to a multitude of reasons, from the dodgy circumstances of the war, to the high amount of blood-shed and trauma collectively sustained by a nation, to rising instances of shell-shock, to other reasons that Sujir simply couldn't fathom, such as all of the "black operations" which occurred at the time. Wanting details, mainly for the purpose of competing homework for history class, Sujir confronted his older brother Crivan, who at that time was home from college.
For Nui-tan parents, it was unusual for children to completely leave home until after a child had actually started their work life, even if they were in college. Cultural reasons factored heavily into this matter, although the biggest factor in Crivan's case was that no one knew where Crivan, who was due to be conscripted, would be living after graduation day. It made far more sense in the long run to have Crivan stay close-by and await further instructions from the Ministry of Defense, then jump on an apartment lease in Rahku City, and be told the next day to report somewhere far away, like San Ushibria, for basic training. Their father had offered the same deal to Kana, their sister, but she had elected to attend military school and become a career soldier. As a result, she'd been told the details of her deployment the day after she graduated high school, and no further reason remained for her to remain within the proverbial nest.
"Crivan?"
It was a common sight to see his older brother surrounded by a wall of books, writing diligently unto a pad of legal paper. Their mother had been the same way, writing arguments and speeches for Parliament behind a wall of leather-bound tomes.
"Crivan?" He said again.
His brother turned over and looked at him?
"Yes?"
"Can you help me with my homework, janshau
2? Please?"
"Sure, but you have to make it fast. This entire thing has to be done by next week".
"You have a whole week to do it!"
"I have seven days to write 75 pages. That's 11 pages a day. So far, I've managed only five today".
Crivan held out one hand, indicating that he wanted to see Sujir's homework. "Alright Jan'u
3, hand it over."
Examining the paper for a moment, he pointed at an unanswered question. "This one, about the Tarashka Conference?"
Sujir responded, "I don't understand the purpose".
"Good news is, it's a law question," Crivan smiled, "so I can explain it. The Tarashka Conference was a series of trials, charging instigators of the war for all of the deaths and crimes against humanity they caused. You know how a lot of people died in the Partition, right? Not just soldiers, but civilians who got caught in the crossfire. All of those deaths happened because of the people who started the war, so it's basically murder".
"So why were they charged with war crimes, and not murder?"
"Murder as a result of starting a war is a war crime, not a stand-alone murder".
"Oh..."
The two of them talked for a few minutes, discussing how that information pertained to the specific question of
Why was Thaddeus Romeria charged in the Tarashka Conference?".
"Didn't granddad have a part in the Tarashka Conference?" Sujir said.
"Granddad?" Crivan said, "yeah, he was one of the people who spoke against the defendants."
"Like a lawyer?"
"More like a witness. I think Granddad was working at San Gajin when it got taken over, so he must have seen a lot of stuff".
Sujir pointed to another question. "Here's one more I wanted to ask you about,
why was Kaurizil of such importance during the war?"
"Well, the obvious answer is that it's where the Emperor lives".
"The teacher told me I can't use that answer
because it's obvious".
"Oh," Crivan trailed off, before answering "I don't know war strategy. Ask Kana".
"She's at San Gajin," Sujir whined, lamenting that his sister, who was a soldier and therefore more familiar with military tactics, was stationed away from home.
"The only other soldier in the house is Da..." and with that, Crivan trailed off, realizing the taboo in asking their father, who'd served in the Partition, about the war.
"...maybe if you mention it's just for homework..." Crivan said.
A couple of years before their mother died, Crivan and Sujir remembered that their father Hariem had declined to extend his term of service with the military, and shifted his focus to becoming a house-husband and the primary caretaker for their mother Trenta.
When Trenta i-Harendo eventually died, there was only a short lull in activity with the family before Hariem then began working in finance, switching into the role of a civilian worker, in order to place himself in a better situation to be a single father to three children. Although his role as a father continued into these days, the older children had now grown enough where Hariem's role in their lives had almost entirely shifted from "guardian" to "adviser". Only Sujir, at fifteen years of age, was still considered a minor, and that would change next year on his sixteenth birthday.
His father was sitting at a desk in his office, looking over paperwork involving various monetary figures, dressed uncharacteristically in a suit and tie, sans blazer, wearing a pair of reading glasses. This was very different from Sujir's vision of his father as a soldier.
Janshan4.
Hariem's response was immediate, looking up towards the door to face his youngest son.
"Yes?"
"Could you help me with some homework?"
"Did you ask Crivan?" It wasn't that Hariem was uninterested in helping with Sujir's school life, so much that the father and son had gone to different types of secondary school. Hariem's own education at Sujir's age was military-dominated, with only "necessary" emphasis being placed on general education. His sons both attended secondary schools with an academic orientation, while his daughter opted for a military lifestyle, but did so in an era where the expectations for a military education were more diverse.
This made Crivan (and Trenta, back when she had been alive) more suitable candidates to assist with homework. Of course, this did not mean that Hariem wasn't ignorant or unread, nor did it mean he wouldn't try to help if his help was needed.
"I did, but there's one question he's not sure of".
"Okay. What is it?"
Sujir gulped, before nervously asking, "why was Kaurizil of such importance during the war?"
"What war?" Hariem asked, raising an eyebrow.
"The...uh...the Partition".
"Oh," Hariem said, rather emotionlessly, "the Emperor lives there. The King's Council also convened there. Since it held a lot of executive and judicial power as a city because of this, it was a valuable political target as a city for the pro-apartheid and pro-Zanzeanic forces".
"I'm not allowed to use that answer because it's too obvious. The teacher said to give her a different reason. Crivan says he's not too good at military strategy, and Kana's not here..."
Hariem nodded silently while thinking for a moment.
"Well, there were other reasons too, Sujir. Obviously you know that Kaurizil is the capital of Sangaur, right? I mean, we do live in the suburbs..."
"Yeah..."
Hariem continued, "well, as a capital city, it holds a lot of state power, and in the days of apartheid, Sangaur was a very rich and powerful state in Nui-ta. Controlling Sangaur meant controlling a lot of political and military resources which could be used to overtake the rest of the nation, which is what the PAF-PZF wanted. It also meant having control of a city with a couple million people, not to mention all the resources within the city".
He smiled a little. "Is that answer better?"
"Yeah Dad, thanks, let me get that all down," Sujir said, quickly moving closer to the desk and re-stating the answer which Hariem had just explained for him.
He looked up curiously at his father. "Hey, Dad? Can I ask you another question?"
"Sure? I thought you only had the one question on your homework that needed answering".
"This isn't homework. I'm just...um..."
"Why was Sangaur so much more important than the other states, like Rahku?"
"A million reasons," Hariem said. "The PAF-PZF wanted to restore things to the ways of legal apartheid. You know all about legal apartheid, right?"
"I thought legal apartheid ended a long time ago".
"Just over 50 years ago, actually," Hariem nodded, "as a matter of fact I was born right before the legal apartheid ended," Hariem said, before gasping a little that he was now over half-a-century old ---
am I really over 50 already?He digressed, "but after that, there was still a period of about 20 years where people acted like the apartheid was still in effect, even though legally, it wasn't anymore. This is the period in which your mother and I grew up --- and it's also really what caused the Partition. People were still allowed to discriminate against each other in society, and told to keep to the roles they were born into, even though it was supposed to be a fair and equal society. In those 20 years, different groups began forming that wanted to end the discrepancy between the law and social policy, although how exactly they planned to do this depended on which group they were in".
"When Prime Minister Evan Isaci was elected, he and his administration --- which your mother was a part of, by the way --- sought to help change social policy to match the law, so that people would be more equal. Then there were the pro-Apartheid forces, which you might know as the PAF, that wanted to see Isaci ousted, and wanted a return to the legal apartheid. In addition to this, there was the PZF, the pro-Zanzeanic forces, which also wanted to see apartheid return, but they wanted superiority over the Sangauranic populace, instead of the other way around. The PAF and the PZF joined together and made the plan to split the nation in two. The PAF would rule the eastern portion, and the PZF would rule the western portion".
"Finally, there was the JCSF, the Joint Colonial Separatist Force, which were colonists. You remember when Nui-ta still had Kavia and Tuvia as colonies, before they became states? Right? Well back in those days, Alinia wasn't a state either, it was a colony, and it was a big portion of western Nui-ta where the PZF wanted control. When the PZF started taking over and pushing all the Hadinians, Kavians, and Tuvians out of their homes. the JCSF rose up to fight back --- the problem with them was that they began attacking the Nui-tan government as well. This turned it into a three-way war, although the JCSF were really only the western front's problem".
"Western front?"
"The war is considered to have taken place on two fronts," Hariem explained, "the eastern front, which was the pro-government forces against the PAF-PZF, and the western front, which was the three-way war. Sometimes, when people talk about the western front, they change the name of the PAF-PZF to PZF-PAF, because the PAF were more prominent in the east, and the PZF in the west. I call them the PAF-PZF because I was on the eastern side of the war".
"Where did you go, dad?"
The room went silent. Sujir had just crossed from the boundaries of academic discussion into asking about circumstances specific to Hariem. He could see his father pause for a moment and take a deep breath, and as Hariem took this deep breath, Sujir prepared for what he thought would be a stern reprimand.
What he got instead was, "Crivan, stop spying on us and get in here".
Sujir turned around, surprised, to see that his older brother had been listening in on the conversation. Crivan i-Harendo silently walked into the room, with the same look of surprise on his face.
"You're gonna have to learn to be less obvious, I saw you back when I started talking about the importance of Kaurizil!" Hariem said, switching from a stern tone to something more sardonic. He returned to a more commanding voice and continued, "shut the door on your way in, Crivan. Sujir, pull up a couple chairs. Both of you, sit".
"There's no one else here," Crivan protested, only to get a much sterner voice than before from Hariem:
I said, shut the door. Now.When the door was shut, and the two sons now sitting in front of their father, as if this was some sort of business meeting, Hariem took another deep breath and composed himself.
"Sooner or later, I figured you'd both want to know about the war. Your sister asked me about the war as well, the day before she joined the service. I've kept from saying anything about it from the two of you, since you're both planning on leading civilian lives".
"Wow, really?" Crivan asked. "You haven't told us anything because we're not careers?"
"It's fine that you don't want to be a career soldier. Believe me," Hariem said, "I am going to be the last person to ever force you to take on the military lifestyle. If it were up to me, I would outlaw conscription, even, but I guess I'm still grappling with the fact that you'll both still eventually have to do three years before the government really, truly leaves you alone".
"With your sister, she
chose to become a soldier. And between the three of us, our little talk about the horrors of war, uh...might have been a last ditch attempt for me to get my only daughter to change her mind about becoming a career soldier".
Hariem took off his reading glasses, muttering a bit, "with all three of you, it's not a thought that sits well with me..."
"You're a career though, Dad? Wouldn't you want us to be like that too?" Sujir asked.
"Well let's start these ramblings of mine at the beginning," Hariem said. "Do the two of you think I...
chose to become a soldier?"
Crivan and Sujir both stared at Hariem cluelessly, unable to fathom the thought that their father, a strong, broad-shouldered Major, a political bodyguard, and a war veteran, hadn't chosen that lifestyle for himself.
"Let's start there. Things were very different under apartheid, even during the age of "soft" apartheid when I was a little boy," Hariem explained. "Even then, unlike now, your life was dictated by the circumstances of your birth, and who your parents were. Being the child of your grandfather, a military officer, I was expected to be one of two things, either a soldier, or if I'd been born a woman, then a military wife. Obviously, you can figure out what happened next".
"Privileged jobs, like being a government official, or being in the military, meant that the government prioritized your well-being. For this reason, the wealthy and esteemed nobility --- our ancestors --- had way more money, power, and privilege than, say, your mother, who came from the common-blooded, working class. While I'm not going to be blind and say that I had it as bad as your mother, all of the wealth and attention that I was given as a young boy were
contingent on my filling the role expected of me from the moment they said "it's a boy".
"For example, remember when you finished primary school, and you got to
choose what kind of secondary school you would attend? Remember being told that you could be whatever you wanted to be? That didn't happen for even the richest of us, when I was a boy. Military school and a military career were guaranteed for me, but they were also the only option, no matter how much or how little I studied".
"It's not that I would have become something
different, given the choice back when I was a kid," Hariem continued. "However, in those days, I didn't even know that it was a life decision that was meant to be thought about --- who you would become as an adult. I just had a path and a life all written up for me, and I followed along".
His eyes shifted towards Crivan, who had just turned twenty-two.
"I did this until I was about your age...
mostly".
"When I was 16, I finished military school, as I was supposed to, and I got this crazy idea to go off to college and push my enlistment off by four years. Dad --- your grandfather --- he wasn't too thrilled about that, but I was able to convince him, given the tensions of the time, that if something happened to me where I couldn't serve anymore, having some sort of college education would allow me to still function in society. It took even more convincing on my part to get him to allow me to cross state lines and go to University of Rahku, instead of Sangaur State University".
"How'd you do it?" Crivan asked, curiously, prompting a huge grin from Hariem.
"Dad's probably rolling in his grave," Hariem sighed, "but...I told him I'd take entrance exams for SSU if he let me put in Rahku as a back-up. Then I purposefully failed SSU's entrance exam. Obviously, I tried much harder for University of Rahku, got in, packed my bags, and was out on my own for the first time to explore my own life instead of the one being handed to me. Your uncle Sijur pulled a few similar strings, and it was the two of us in a dormitory in Rahku State before we knew it, both with extensions on our draft cards that allowed us to remain civilians until after we graduated".
"In those days," Hariem continued, "freedom of movement was very different as well. You
could go to other states, since legal apartheid was no longer a thing, but you weren't encouraged to leave your home state. To be honest, I think part of the reason we weren't being given too much trouble, Sijur and I, is because our little joyride came with a time limit: we had to return and enlist after graduation. Until then, from age sixteen until age twenty, we were two teenagers --- technically adults, but really just overgrown boys --- and society just thought we were sowing some wild oats and getting all of the rebelliousness out of our systems".
"Only, we weren't. Well, maybe he was, but for me it quickly became different. Yes, I did stupid things, because I was young, and my youth afforded me some stupidity, but moving to Rahku State for four years did something more profound to me. Other than the war, and starting a family with your mother, I rank this as one of the most influential moments of my life. Rahku City was one of the only places in which apartheid, even social apartheid, was less stringent. Being away there was the first time I was forced to make my own life decisions, and if even for a moment, decide who
I wanted to be, and what I wanted with my life".
"And I did something I was never supposed to have done, in the last couple years of my time there. I made good friends with commoners. One of them was your mother, although I don't think I realized I actually loved her until after the war...but again, with apartheid, you were told to keep to your own, and as far as society was concerned, Trenta wasn't one of my own. She wasn't my class, and she technically wasn't even my race, being part Zanzeanic and all. Yet she, and other people, not just your mother, became friends with me on equal terms. Suddenly, in my mind, the apartheid meant nothing to me, but I was still just some young boy with no understanding of how things would change".
"And this," Hariem paused, "is where we get to the war. Any questions?"
Both boys shook their heads.
Hariem nodded, before once again continuing, "when I graduated, I went back to my regularly scheduled life. I didn't like returning to Sangaur and being pushed back into certain expectations, such as being a career soldier for the rest of my life, or leaving behind friends and having to retreat behind class line. I returned anyway, because I figured that even if I didn't want to be a career soldier, I'd still have to at least complete my minimum three years, just like the two of you will unfortunately one day have to do".
"I reported to San Gajin for my first tour of duty --- the main military hub of Sangaur, as you might know. Since I didn't have a preference as to which service branch I wanted to enter, I was placed in the army by default".
"Oh, Crivan, speaking of which, you're graduating soon, and you're likely to have to make that decision. Army, Navy, or Air Force. Decide now, unless you want them to decide for you. Just a thought".
Hariem returned to his story. "I was twenty, and it was A.N 100, the year before the Partition. That first year of my three years was monotonous, full of military drills, and being made to do repair work on tanks when I wasn't being drilled. Now, I'm sure the two of you both know that in peacetime, the conscription period is three years, while if you're conscripted in war, you will likely serve through that war".
"Shortly after the start of my second year of service...I remember that day.
October 6th, A.N 101, I was woken up early in the morning, before daybreak, to the sound of gunshots and sirens. There wasn't any warning, boys. The previous day had been very quiet. The Commandant, Maran ri-Tarhavae --- I will
never forget that name --- had been planning in secret to overthrow leadership in San Gajin, where myself and your Uncle Sijur were stationed, San Talsankir in Rahku State, where your other Uncle Alec was stationed, and San Jarahi, out in Yevzar".
"Whatever his plan was, it must have taken months, because it went off without a hitch. Soldiers who fought back were shot. Sijur and I had the dumb luck to still not have to wake up for another hour, so when PAF-affiliated soldiers who were taking over the base stormed into the dormitories and saw that we were two, young, inexperienced and shocked young Sangauranic men ---their ethnicity of choice --- , so they gave us a choice. If we didn't give them any problems, they wouldn't shoot us in our faces".
"Obviously, I had no intent to join the pro-Apartheid forces. Something in me wanted too badly to see equality remain in Nui-ta...what little equality we had, anyway. If I hadn't gone out to Rahku and seen the whole of society, I'd probably have been in a very different place when I was told to make the decision on whether to join the PAF or not. Thankfully, I wasn't".
"But most importantly, getting shot in the face wouldn't help anything. It was very clear to Sijur and I that we and many others at San Gajin were simply caught off-guard at that moment, so we feigned compliance. We didn't give them any problems --- we
couldn't, and even us, two able-bodied enlisted men, had to watch helplessly among others as all of Sangaur, and most of Yevzar and Rahku State were overrun. Your poor mother had to go into hiding, since she was part of the government, and run the Ministry of Internal Affairs from some hole in the ground or another".
"In the meantime, slowly, and very carefully, Sujir, myself, and a bunch of others like us started seeking out other like-minded individuals --- people who were ideologically aligned with the government, and with a post-apartheid Nui-ta, but had to pretend otherwise while on base. Over the next several months, I kept doing grunt work and keeping a low-profile with the PAF in the daytime, and then in the nighttime, instead of sleeping, I'd help sort out and smuggle out every bit of information that our more allegiant group, maybe a few hundred of us, had collected for the government".
"Your grandfather actually had quite the role in this. After gaining some trust and pretending to be wide-eyed and helpless, I convinced a PAF soldier, about the same age as me, to allow me to make a "personal telephone call". When no one was paying any attention, I called your grandfather, and then I slipped him the details of everything that was going on. Now you must keep in mind, I wasn't
actually crying home to my father --- the PAF didn't realize your grandfather was, at that time, an active general in Kaurizil, with ties to more government resources. I told him what was going on, and he told General Umsan, which---"
"Wait,
the General Umsan?" Sujir asked, "like...the one who started the Umsan Project
5?"
"Oh, so you know about that!" Hariem laughed, before adding, "my only merit in life isn't marrying a Prime Minister, you know. You both are talking to the man who caused the information about San Gajin to make it onto Umsan's desk!"
"
Holy. Shit," the two boys said in unison.
"
Language, gentlemen," Hariem quipped. "Now, to be fair, I didn't do all the intelligence gathering. I just had the crazy idea about how to pass that information forward to Kaurizil. For once, being an aristocrat was helping me pave my own way, rather than dictating the road of my life for me. Anyway, to keep suspicions low, we agreed to only have one more phone call, from him to me, after a plan of action had been made. In the meantime, myself and the others were all ordered to continue playing the part of loyal PAF soldiers while awaiting further instructions".
"It took a lot longer than I'd hoped. Whatever information I did manage to pass unto Kaurizil at that time only
just beat the PAF there, and more prominent officers like Umsan and your grandfather had to go into hiding. In the meantime, the ranking officer among our group of one hundred or so, a First Lieutenant by the name of Kalsani, started organizing us into a battalion under his recognized command. He told the PAF it was because he liked us, and involved some privilege or another for an officer to choose his own men. In reality, it was just because we were all government sympathizers, and under the Lieutenant's command officially, we could work better as essentially a whole unit of double-agents.
"Did you do it?" Crivan asked.
"Thank the gods, no," Hariem said. "The day before Kalsani's battalion --- us --- were to be sent out to march through "enemy" waves to San Talsankir, I got a return phone call from General Umsan himself, posing as my dad. To this day, I don't know how he got to a phone. He gave us instructions to take a route that would be less patrolled by government forces, and to get to San Talsankir. Once there, we were to seek out others like us --- pro-government forces pretending to be PAF loyalists. I was given the names of a few specific people for Lieutenant Kalsani to report to".
"So we traveled to San Talsankir, which took a couple days. For the most part, because we were given a route which was less patrolled, we weren't bothered by people shooting at us --- but as we got closer to the base, we were attacked by government forces, and we couldn't give up the charade that we weren't really PAF soldiers. Lieutenant Kalsani ordered us to get as many people as possible to the base, taking as few lives as possible. Sadly, he was among a few of us that got killed in the process, despite being the mastermind behind the attempt to save as many of the people shooting at him as he could".
Sujir's voice could be heard, meekly saying "...woah..."
"Yeah, this is why I didn't want to have this conversation with you! War is hell! And that's not even when it gets violent!" Hariem quipped. Somewhere under the slightly sardonic tone, both boys could sense he really meant every word.
"The
Valentine's Day Massacre", Crivan mumbled.
Hariem's eyes narrowed. The room went not only silent, but very cold, despite it being a warm, summer day in central Nui-ta. Despite the lack of air conditioning (all three men in the room were used to the heat), everyone could feel a chill in the air.
"That was
you, wasn't it?"
Sujir immediately jumped and moved to hush his older brother. "Janhau,
shush!"
"Don't shush him," Hariem said quietly. "You wanted to know about my experiences in the Partition, right? Both of you? Well, this is the moment you were likely waiting for".
There was no paternalism in these next few sentences, as Hariem glared at Crivan, and Crivan back at Hariem. It was a coldness between them --- a soldier who had seen hell explaining his actions to an untested member of the next generation. In Crivan's eyes, it was the fire of an idealistic young man, who was somehow angered and upset to hear that his father was among the perpetrators of one of the most violent events in the war. In Hariem's eyes, it was a thousand-mile stare, as if the events of the massacre were repeating themselves in his mind.
Crivan and Hariem were normally quite close. The tension in the air was enough at that moment to freeze every muscle in Sujir's body as he watched them glare at each other.
"All I want you to know," Hariem said, very quietly, "is that I am very glad that you and your younger brother are shocked and appalled. If you are, then you have maintained a level of innocence and freedom that my generation was not given. I can sleep at night knowing you don't truly know such cruelty in the world".
"The fact that you say that so calmly is kinda sickening, Dad," Crivan snapped.
"And as I said, the fact that you're angry is re-assuring. People like me, who were there in that...
deep pit of hell, we'll have to make our peace with taking very few prisoners in the re-capture of San Talsankir. In a perfect world, I would have been happier to take prisoners and see them brought to the Tarashka Conference and given a trial the fair way, but this was in the middle of a three-year war, and it was deep in the heart of
true enemy territory. Furthermore, the PAF and PZF weren't out to restore order to the nation. They were killing hundreds, maybe even thousands of civilians, establishing a dictatorship, and planning to rip the nation in two. Myself, and others like me, we had to fight and even kill hundreds of other young men and women like us, who thought they were doing a good thing by re-introducing apartheid...but we had to do it to save millions, who would have suffered, and starved, and died, if the war continued on, or if the PAF-PZF got their way".
Hariem laughed a little. "Y'know, it's been 30 years now, since the Partition began. It's been almost 30 years since the Valentine's Massacre. Before you think too badly of me, I know exactly where I stand as far as how good or bad of a person that the Valentine's Massacre makes me. I don't claim to be a saint, and it does keep me up at night. Seeing your mother, who would have likely been captured and killed as a common-blooded Minister in the Isaci Administration --- the Administration was public enemy number one of the PAF, by the way, ...it helped a little".
His eyes flashed to the look of concern that his younger son was giving him. "...and I've made my peace. I know the magnitude of what I did, but I also know the magnitude of
why. More importantly, those nightmares and horrible memories...they never stop. But they don't have to be every day".
"And what happened during the Valentine's Massacre?"
"
That, Crivan, might be too much for this conversation, and that is where I'm going to cut you both off. I have work to do," Hariem said calmly.
"I don't understand why you and the government had to be involved in something so violent. A pro-government group of 8,000 decimated a PAF group of 20,000. All of those people..."
"Hey, we didn't kill all of them, and we originally started with 1,500. San Talsankir had way more government sympathizers than San Gajin. We forced our way to re-capturing the base, and then forcing a surrender from the surviving PAF. Those people
were able to see the Tarashka Conference, and many of them even went on to be absolved of their involvement in the war, and returning to their normal lives. When the war was over, and the government won, that absolution became possible. If the PAF had won, it would have been a very different story".
"I still don't understand," Crivan snapped.
It was Sujir that spoke next. "Dad, neither do I...but I really hope that I never do". Somehow, the younger, more innocent son found himself capable of an understanding that was eluding his elder brother. The comfortable life they both lived, and their inability to fathom the horrors of the civil war were all only possible because the previous generation --- such as their father standing before them --- had sacrificed that innocence.
Innocence was bliss, after all, and as such, a loss of innocence was a sort of twisted sorrow, like a scar that would never heal or fade. The look on Hariem's face, calm, composed, and yet somehow haunted by war --- a truly evil thing --- said it all.
"I hope so too, Sujir," Hariem sighed, the fatherly side of his personality returning. "I hope you never live in a Nui-ta like that".
1 The
Tarashka Conference were a series of trials held after the war, convicting leaders of the losing forces for war crimes.
2 Janhau is a proper term of address for one's older brother.
3 Jan'u is a polite term of address for one's younger brother.
4 Janshan means "father" in Melodian, and is also the proper term of address for one's father (or father-in-law).
5 Project Umsan was a military operation by the pro-government forces, which was instrumental in allowing the government to regain control of San Gajin and San Talsankir, two important military establishments in the states of Sangaur and Rahku State.