...of shell-shock

Yes... somewhere, at some spot here on planet Earth, a shell is propelled out of the muzzle of a heavy weapon. A leaden shell, heavy and destructive. We don't know the exact circumstances, and perhaps the person who orders a firing button to be pressed doesn't know either. Maybe a switch is flicked up or down instead. How can we know? All we are interested in is what happened afterwards and who was responsible for causing these clouds of smoke and fire to rise up above a pass, a ravine, a chasm - in any event a target that did not appear to be an ammunition dump. What was this disaster that was unfolding before the eyes of a young man who had forgotten his own name, and his birthplace as well - who had just a random name, a meaningless word on his tongue, but who otherwise was completely mute, or rather dumb? Dumb and afflicted with instant loss of memory. Now his body felt racked with fatigue and aches, and his eyelids were heavy, weighed down by a thick layer of something whose colour he did not recognise, but which he imagined must be that of tar or - less dark - of smoke. He had been hurled into the depths of the trench, and each explosion had reverberated against an earthen wall whose surface was studded with stones and pebbles. He understands nothing now except that the world has been engulfed in such a ghastly silence that when he reflects upon it for a while, it appears to him more dreadful than the hell that went before. How much time had elapsed since it happened? Thousands of years or just a fleeting moment?

[Thirst, Dowlatabadi, M.]