These Were Moments When We Missed Death

Abstract

We were greeted by a noncommissioned officer and a couple of experienced soldiers, who said, “Welcome to hell!” Nice joke! The military has a structure of its own. You go into it and disappear. I disappeared. I was on the verge of crying. There is no such thing as avoiding military service. Moreover, I did not think military service would be like this. I did not expect it to be like war. To avoid going there, I would either need to bribe someone or get an “unfit” report, which is not an honorable thing. It is difficult to get the report and the people discriminate against those who don’t do their military service. If this discrimination and this whole honor thing did not exist, ninety percent of the youth would avoid military service. Even if you don’t believe in all those things they say about military service, you have internalized the idea. Before I went, I was expecting it to be a different kind of environment. I was expecting to march in my boots, “rap, rap, rap.” I had at least minimal sympathy for it. But I had no idea it would be this way. When the team sergeant lined us up to ask us what we were thinking about, it turned out that everyone was thinking about their civilian lives. He said, “You will forget about your civilian life. You will forget about your loved ones, your mother, your father, everyone … “It was true. By the ninth month, the forgetting process had begun. I even forgot the names of my own brothers. I tried to make a list of all the girls I had gone on dates with, marking them out as “the most beautiful” or “the most sentimental” so as not to forget, but it turned out to be incredibly difficult to remember their names. I spent days trying to remember.