Beyond the depths of lacerations

The rancid stench of corpses hung stagnant in the air filling my nostrils with an atypical mixture of biochemical reactions gone mad, of fermentations gone wrong.

Forget about your 250USD perfume. This is the perfume of death, the fragrance that accompanies you to the next life, if you believe there's any.

For the record, i only use Dashing 'talcum untuk jejaka' and sometimes, an aerosol spray of cheap deodorant every morning. And i smell 3 times better than you with your perfumes on.

Nothing brings you closer to death, than death itself lying motionless in front of you in forensics classes. Basically, in simpler words, a part of forensics is the study of 1001 ways to die. But beyond the homicidal and suicidal cases, deeper than the lacerations and punctured lungs, there are questions unanswered. Some remain there unanswered.

There's this feeling of emptiness , that nothingness of seeing a malfunctioned body. How he got that purplish red bruise on his forehead? More importantly, why? Was it a random hit and run or was there foul play, a history of bad blood with an old nemesis?

Once a body bag arrives, the language of forensics come to play.

"Hello there Mr. Ivan Ivanovich. I will be dissecting your body today." Except there was no reply. A complete hush. The pathologist started to describe every detail that would aid investigations. Sometimes they would tape record these descriptions for court usage. Age. Approximate age. Ethnicity. Height and weight. Appearance from the head to toe. Any wound noted for its form, shape, length, width, colour, consistency and possible origin. Chopped. Cut. Axed. Contused. Hammered. Punched. Knifed. Stabbed. Spooned, as in spooned eyeballs.

I wish i could have Sherlock Holme's analytical acumen to conjure up a theory just by observation. Sometimes i do wonder what pushes a man that far to incite such a murderous response. But evil itself does exist, as early as the annals of human history. A more appropriate answer would be 'why does it exist?'

From the Qur'an, in Surah Al-Ma'idah , verses 27 til 31 explained what could probably be the first documented murder in the history of the world. Cain, who presented God with an offering of plants, was jealous of God's acceptance of Abel's sacrifice which was, according to Ibn Kathir's 'Stories from the Qur'an' a fat she goat, while his got rejected. It angered him and he went on to murder his brother, Abel who offered little resistance even after knowing Cain's intention. "Be sure i will slay you." in verse 27, while the 28th verse contained Abel's response. "If you do stretch your hand against me, to slay me, it is not for me to stretch my hand against you to slay you."

The same story is mentioned in Judaism's Torah and Christianity's Holy Bible.

From a narration of a hadith presented in the book, they fought over a the rights to marry one of their sisters (and yes, they were allowed to in the early periods of creation), of which the Prophet Adam suggested them to offer their sacrifices to Allah. The chain of transmission might be disputable and that the Qur'an itself offers little information regarding the details of events that took place. Cain regretted his action and finally he learned how to dispose the body by burying it.

How many of you could take criticisms right in your face, let alone being rejected by God himself? No matter how truthful they are, criticisms, be it constructive or deconstructive are hard to take and it is the nature of human beings. It's probably the case of a big ego in Cain's case.

There is of course an element of jealousy, that someone else is better than you in certain things. Don't confuse jealousy with competitiveness, because one leads you to good things and the other, to nowhere land. The antidote of jealousy is contentment and a reflection of how lucky we are, and to differentiate between our wants and our needs.

In this case, Cain channeled his anger and murdered Abel. There's always patience, but he chose to follow his hatred. But how many of us are able to think rationally in times of pure emotional outbursts?

The extremes of good and evil are exposed in this story of Cain and Abel. There's a lot to learn from the stories of the Qur'an, and amazingly, you'll find a different perspective as you grow older and wiser.

But i gave up on the reason why evil does exist on earth. We could postulate that it's just God's lesson to human beings, that beyond these manifestations of weakness and frailties of His creation, lie a much deeper reason unknown to human beings. That human thinking is limited.

In the end, after all the forensics classes, i came to the conclusion that i've forgotten almost all of my anatomy knowledge!

PS : According to a friend, a Yale professor explained that the story could be seen as a sign of development of human into a more stratified society, with a social structure based on professions. In this case, Cain was a farmer of sorts, while Abel was a shepherd.