Bad dream
Bad Dream - February 2023
He felt a liquid flowing down his right arm. He wasn't in pain. Above him, a lamp glowed, casting the room in a yellowish light. He tried to sort through his memories. There was Munich, the hall, his long speech, the prolonged, unanimous applause from the audience. Then, the return on the presidential plane. After that, a complete void. What had happened? He remembered falling asleep immediately after takeoff. Had the plane been hijacked? Had there been a crash?
Yes, that was it. The plane must have crashed, and he had been injured. Perhaps by a missile fired by extremists. He had survived—that was the essential part. But where was he? He had no idea. Were there any other survivors from the presidential plane?
He tried to sit up to see better. But a sharp, stabbing pain shot through his shoulder and right arm, and he collapsed instantly back onto his cot. He waited several long minutes until the pain subsided, then, using his left arm, began to explore the right side of his body. He found tattered pieces of his shirt, damp. Probably blood. On the upper arm, there was a tourniquet. Definitely a tourniquet, a surgical device with a cold metal part and a key used to tighten it. His hand moved lower. He discovered a bone protruding from the wound, nearly ten centimeters long.
He didn't want to explore further, afraid of what he might find. Anyway, he no longer felt his right hand. He couldn't move it at all. He reasoned that the tourniquet must be causing both the numbness and the loss of muscle control.
Someone entered. He heard voices speaking in a language he couldn't understand. But clearly, it was a language from an Eastern European country. Before crashing, the plane must have been hijacked, on the return from Munich. But where?
A face leaned over him.
"I speak a little French, but very little."
"Do you speak English?"
"No, no—only a tiny bit of French."
"Where are we?"
"We're going to operate on you. The arm—yes, the arm. And then?"
"Your arm is bad. We're going to cut it off."
"Cut it off? You're going to amputate me!?"
"Yes. Too broken. Explosive device, you understand? Massive damage. Many fragments. Your right hand is severely shattered. But your left hand—good!"
"What? The plane crashed? Are there survivors? What about the others?"
"I don't understand. Not a plane! It's... war..."
"War!"
"I'll get morphine. You won't suffer. It'll be okay. It'll be okay."
The man's face disappeared. He tried to fix his gaze on something. With superhuman effort, gripping the frame of what looked like a camp bed, he managed to tilt slightly to his left. The room was in complete disarray. There was a weapon on a table—a automatic firearm—next to several magazines. And many glasses, with a bottle half-empty. Probably alcohol. On the wall, a map marked with pins showed locations—clearly a front-line map. Good heavens, where had he landed? On the Ukrainian front? But if so, which side was he on—the Ukrainian or the Russian side?
There were words written on the map. But he knew well that Ukrainians use the same Cyrillic alphabet as Russians. Exhausted by the effort, he collapsed again onto the bed. He closed his eyes and suddenly heard a female voice:
"Mr. President, Mr. President, I'm sorry to wake you, but we'll be landing at Roissy soon. I must ask you to fasten your seatbelt."
Wars follow one another and resemble each other.
They have the coldness of bomb metal.
They have the dull, gray hue of coveted silver.
They extinguish the flickers of truth and rekindle the embers of hatred.
They suffocate, asphyxiate, bury every possible joy, except that shared together.
Whoever falls, it will always be a human being.