All Our Broken Idols

by Paul M. M. Cooper

  ‘Abu Ammar,’ she tried, ‘you can’t do this. The boss … you heard what he said.’

  ‘We’re nothing to him,’ Abu Ammar sobbed, and Katya noticed that one of the lenses of his glasses had a crack running down it. ‘They’re going to start burning people, you know. Like your friend back there. They want me to do it tomorrow.’

  Katya felt in her pocket, and turned on her phone, its precious battery nearly gone. It buzzed to life in her hand, and she glanced down, trying to hide its green glow inside her pocket. There was some signal. She looked at Abu Ammar and tried to tap out a message by memory and the feel of the buttons.

  ‘I don’t understand …’ she said loudly, to cover the noise of her typing. He was rolling his head around on his shoulders as he swerved from one side of the road to the other, as they crossed the bridge and headed off in the direction of the old city.

  ‘The real war is coming,’ Abu Ammar said. He slammed on the brake, and the car skidded to a stop. ‘A war that will wipe the earth clean. And we’re just the beginning.’

  He took the keys from the ignition, got out of the car leaving the headlights on, and she heard his footsteps trudging around the vehicle, coming to her door. She pulled out her phone and checked the message she’d written.

  ’Salim,’ it said, ’they got me. go without. love’

  She pressed send just as Abu Ammar thrust the door open and grabbed her by the arm, causing her to drop the phone into the foot well. He dragged her out into the hot night and the full intricacy of the stars.

  ‘The dajjal is coming soon,’ Abu Ammar said, his voice high and deranged in the dark beyond the headlights. ‘The son of Satan will walk the earth.’

  They were in the ruins of Nineveh. The huge ancient walls loomed around them in the dark, the ravaged statues up at the gate, the palace’s shattered remains. Abu Ammar pressed the gun into her ribs and held her by the arm, pushing her up the slope of the ancient wall. Katya kept her eyes on the ground to avoid stumbling in the dark. They carried on in silence, but when they topped the slope, with the ruins stretching out behind them and the patches of city light shimmering in the hot air before them, Abu Ammar began to sing very softly. It was almost a whisper. He turned his back to Katya and faced the city. She thought about rushing at him, trying to hit him with a rock or piece of brick, but she could only stand and watch. Far in the distance, there was the howling of jets, and then plumes of brilliant orange burst along the city skyline. They sent sparks into the air, and lit up the ruined place for a moment, the booms following soon after.

  ‘This is how the world ends,’ Abu Ammar slurred to her, and stumbled a little on the unsteady ground, the broken bricks underfoot. ‘We can both die up here, if you want. Would you like that?’

  ‘Abu Ammar,’ Katya whispered, but she had no idea what to say.

  ‘Do you know, I have this dream sometimes?’ Abu Ammar said, and scratched his head with the barrel of his gun.

  ‘A dream?’

  Abu Ammar’s knife was in his belt, Katya saw. Its handle jutted out just below his elbow as he stood there. Her eyes wandered over it, illuminated for a moment in the bomb light. She could grab it, she thought. The image of Lola flashed into her head, her clothes covered in blood, the way her whole body shook. The palms of Katya’s hands began to sweat. How hard would it be? How drunk was he?

  ‘Tell me about your dream,’ she said.

  ‘I wake up in a city,’ Abu Ammar slurred again. ‘I don’t know where it is, but it feels like Mosul. Like Mosul might have been a thousand years ago, many thousands. And I hear the sound of water …’

  ‘Of water?’ She took another step closer.

  ‘Yes. But not a sound like rivers make. It’s a sound like the sea. And I wander outside, and I see that the city is sunk. Sunk beneath the ocean. The waves are enormous. I feel so afraid. I want to scream. And then I run back inside, into these dark halls, like a maze. And I hear footsteps on the ground.’

  ‘Footsteps?’ She edged closer.

  ‘And I turn around,’ he said, ‘and do you know what I see?’

  He turned slightly towards her in the dark, and Katya knew that this was the last moment she might ever get. For an instant, without knowing why, she thought of what a precarious thing a chariot is. How unstable. How fragile.

  ‘Do you know what I see?’ Abu Ammar said again, a snarl entering his voice. Katya lunged forwards. She gripped the rubber handle of his knife, pulled it from its sheath with a slick noise. Abu Ammar stumbled back and made a noise of surprise, turned halfway to face her. With a shout, Katya drove the knife as hard as she could into his side. There was no resistance at all. He could have been made of butter. He let out a little whimper, hoarse and half-strangled.

  ‘What do you see?’ she breathed, and pulled the knife out, then drove it down into the top of his shoulder, beside his neck, right down to the hilt. His whole body gave a jerk and a shudder, and he reeled around slowly to face her, putting his hands on her shoulders as if he was going to kiss her. His breath still smelled of lemons. The knife stuck out of him, and Katya felt its handle slippery in her hand. She let it go. She stepped back, filled with horror, and Abu Ammar’s hands dropped to his sides. He gave a little croak, and she saw too late that his right hand still had the gun in it. He raised it and pointed it at her.

  ‘I see a lion,’ he said. Katya never heard the bang. There was a blinding flash that lit up Abu Ammar’s frightened face for a moment, imprinting the image in purple on to her retinas: the knife still sticking out of his shoulder, his horrified expression and wild eyes, the sheen of sweat on his skin. At the same moment, a searing pain burst in Katya’s left thigh, as if an enormous beetle had crawled up inside her trousers and sunk its pincers into her skin.

  Abu Ammar slumped to the ground, but didn’t make a sound. All Katya could hear was a single pure white note, singing ‘eeeeeeeeee’ in her ears. She tried to take a step, but her left leg crumpled beneath her, and she fell. Nearby, Abu Ammar’s body was motionless, but she couldn’t see anything in the dark. She lay there breathing in the clay and grass, the tang of blood all around her, the sickly smell of summer flowers and the gunshot’s firework smell in the night air.

  ‘Get up, Katya,’ she whispered to herself, but her body didn’t move. ‘Get up. It’s time to get up.’

  Every muscle felt weak. Her skin was buzzing. She heard her father’s voice in her throat.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Katya, get up.’

  She lifted herself to her elbows and rolled up to sit. She reached around for something to help her walk, and found a piece of old planking, hauled herself to one foot with its help. Sweat broke out all over her body. Her left leg was limp and useless, waves of heat pulsing from the wound. The bullet must have grazed the bone. Her makeshift crutch dug painfully into her armpit as she limped back over unsteady ground, stumbling on debris and litter, panting and sweating in desperation, leaving the body of Abu Ammar lying there in the ruins.

  ‘I can still make it back,’ she moaned to herself, her voice torn with pain. ‘Maybe they haven’t left. I can still make it back.’

  She stumbled down the slope to Abu Ammar’s car. He hadn’t locked it or turned off the headlights, but there was no key in the ignition. It must be back on his body. She would have to go back into the ruins to get it, and she cursed herself for not searching him. She opened the door, fished around in the muddy foot well for her phone. She found it, turned it on, and it gave the dim glow of low-battery mode.

  ’1 new message’

  She opened it. It was Salim.

  ’Katya. They came to the museum. The skull man. We had to leave. My heart is breaking. Do not go back there. Please survive. I will never stop looking for you.’

  The phone’s light died in her hands. She mashed the buttons, but nothing happened, and she screamed at it, hurled it back into the car. She knelt there for what seemed like for ever, the pain in her leg now red hot and thumping with her pulse. Her trousers were
soaked with warmth; it felt like she’d pissed herself. She cried in exhaustion until she had nothing left.

  ‘Get up, Katya,’ she moaned to herself again. ‘Get the fuck up.’

  She staggered to her feet with the help of the crutch, and saw all the way along the road ahead, illuminated in the car’s headlights, a group of men with guns hanging low in their hands, walking slowly towards her and pointing.

  ‘Fuck.’

  She pulled herself painfully to her feet and limped off with her crutch in the opposite direction, her heart pounding. The glare of the car’s headlights would hide her for now, but she was slow and the strength was fading from her body.

  ‘Fuck fuck fuck,’ she gasped. She didn’t know where she was going. She was going to die. The khaki of her injured leg was stained black, and the blood was turning cold in the night air, droplets ticking on the road. She struggled through the streets, crutch thumping noisily on the road, in and out of pools of light. Gnats swarmed in her vision. She looked back along the street, and saw the men reach the abandoned car, casting long shadows, looking around inside the vehicle with a torch. She had to get out of sight. She reached a complex of cinder-block buildings and barbed-wired yards, and ducked into an alley, sitting for a moment on a heap of cement sacks. She tried to catch her breath. Sweat coated her whole body.

  She worked up the courage to glance back around the corner, and she saw the men – still over a hundred metres back, but beginning to walk in her direction. How did they know where she was? She crouched breathless with terror, watching them. They were pointing at the ground as they walked, their torchlight licking the road, and she realised that they were following the trail of her blood. With a moan of fear, she recognised the man with the skull balaclava leading them. She had to move. And she had to stop the trail she was leaving. She limped through the alley until it opened out on to the road leading to the bridge, each step an explosion of pain in her leg. She pulled off her left shoe, blood pooling in it, and then she threw it as far as she could. It spun through the air, leaving a long skein of blood along the dusty road. A false trail. Then she tore her trouser leg using the bullet hole for purchase and tied the remaining fabric into a tourniquet. She set off in the other direction, cupping her free hand beneath her leg to catch the blood still welling up from the wound in her thigh. And it worked, just about.

  She made it to the bridge before the blood started dripping on the ground again, overflowing in her cupped hand. The street lights on the bridge were out; it was dark, and the shadows hid her. The great expanse of the river opened up beneath her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the men back at the alley mouth. They turned left after the false trail, then stopped. They were confused, pointing at the ground where the blood stopped and shouting at each other. Would they find the shoe? How long would that buy her? The breeze blowing across the river washed cool on her sweat-covered body.

  Katya limped on as silently as she could, cleaving close to the bridge’s barrier and trying to stay low. Her good leg was starting to tire, but somehow she made it over, her left leg boiling, and she turned with a shudder of dread to see the men back on her trail, just beginning to cross the bridge. She hobbled through the maze of alleys until she turned a corner she recognised, a street of old iron railings and concrete pillars, the multi-coloured bulbs strung along the eaves of some riverside restaurant still lit by generator fuel. There was the smell of frying fish and petrol smoke. She couldn’t remember why she knew this street, but she followed the landmarks she recognised: the cartoon of Mickey Mouse drawn on the school wall, the old lime tree with one half dead and the other heavy with leaves and fruit. She turned a corner, and another, and then she saw Dr Malik’s old house, the grand riverside manor with its garden sloping down into the reeds. Lights were on inside, the steady chugging of a generator nearby, and loud laughter coming from within.

  She crept into the garden. It was overgrown with weeds now, but the statue of Gilgamesh strangling the lion still loomed in shadow. She could make out the shape of gunmen inside, dressed as they always were, drinking and singing. They’d taken over the house. She stumbled as quietly as she could through the long grass to the statue, feeling her whole body tingling and numb, no longer able to hold herself on her crutch. She ran her hand over the hero’s concrete legs and felt the pocks where the men in the house had been using it for target practice. She listened to her heart booming in her chest and tried to breathe.

  As she sat there and hugged the statue’s feet, someone opened a door, and a wash of light spilled out into the garden. Loud voices drifted on the air. Katya whimpered and dragged herself out of sight behind the statue, leaving her crutch behind. The fighter slung his gun over his shoulder, unzipped and pissed with one hand into the weeds and long grass. Just then, there was the sound of running feet and the men who had been chasing her arrived. The pissing man stopped, threw out a question to them. The man with the skull balaclava shouted something back. Inside the house, the music stopped and men came outside one by one, their laughter stopping.

  Katya was barely twenty metres from them. She dropped low again, and dragged herself as silently as she could through the long grass and weeds, trying not to disturb them as she crawled down to the river. It was her only hope, she thought: to hide in the reeds on the riverbank, to lie there and let sleep wash over her, and hope that the men wouldn’t find her. As she got closer to the river, the mud beneath her became damp, smelled more like water and sewage and oil. She brushed through the thistles and chickweed, and her fingers sunk in the earth as she pulled herself along, silt beneath her nails. Torch beams lanced through the garden. She heard footsteps approaching steadily behind her, and glanced over her shoulder to see the men walking through the long grass and weeds in her direction, forming a line, their guns and torches out.

  Katya dragged herself into the riverbank reeds. She slithered over the mud and into the shallow water, which washed over her wound like a pack of ice. She sighed at the cool touch, a sheen of oil glimmering in rainbow colours on its surface, and that was when a torch beam washed over something sitting there in the shallows. A large white shape. Katya looked at it for a few moments, not understanding what she was seeing. Its own reflection was wobbling in the water that she’d disturbed. It was Dr Malik’s boat.

  Katya crawled towards it, the water lapping all around her, feeling her hands moving out in front of her like two balloons floating away from her. She reached for the edge of the boat, which gave a little thud as she slapped her hand down on it. It was real. She heaved herself inside, her muscles straining and quivering with the effort, and the little craft rocked beneath her weight. Then with the last of her strength, she reached up and untied the mooring rope, took the heavy boathook from beneath its tarpaulin and stabbed it into the mud. She looked back up at Dr Malik’s house, lit up like an ancient palace at night. She watched the men combing its garden, their torchlights slashing through the dark, their shouts of confusion and anger. And then she pushed away from the bank. The boat bobbed out on to the water, light cut out in little crescents all along its black surface. Just as she pulled away from the shelter of the reeds, a torch beam in the garden flashed over her, a sudden sunburst that made her blink and cover her eyes. Shouts of anger rose up in a chorus. She fell back into the boat, and pulled the tarpaulin over her, smelling the dried mud on it, and the blood still seeping from her leg. The river rocked beneath her as it drew her into the central flow of its current, and the stars overhead moved steadily north. There was the rattle of a gun, and she didn’t even jump, just lay on her back and listened to the fizz of bullets hitting the water around her, a few loud thuds against the boat, one ricocheting off the hull and spraying little pieces of wood dust on her face. She blinked and watched her hands float out in front of her as the river carried her southwards. She reached up to her neck, and touched the cylinder seal hanging there as one of Mosul’s bridges passed overhead, a lode of iron, a blackness cut from the billion stars. She imagined f
or a moment that she could see the dust from space falling from the sky and settling over everything. And hadn’t it all happened like this before?

  Aurya

  Aurya went alone to the mason’s workshop, to give Sharo the King’s demands. She rode on a donkey she hired from a porter near the docks, and brought crusts of old emmer bread with her, expecting to see the beggar children that always used to gather on that hilltop. A great fear rose in her heart as the donkey rocked beneath her along those old streets, all her memories overlapping, all the times she’d climbed up that hill after exploring the city, looking for her mother. The houses there were crumbling, brick walls repaired with mud, but pots still hung in the eaves and matted reeds laid out to dry. In daylight now, Aurya saw the palace of the King’s father that had scared her so much as a child, with its cracked blue tiles and yawning dark halls. It seemed dead, as if its ghosts had been banished. The beggar children were nowhere to be seen, so she fed her bread to the birds instead.

  When she arrived at the workshop and tied her donkey, she found Sharo already at work, his skin covered in the white dust. He was wrapped in a number of woollen cloaks though it wasn’t cold, and hunched over a wide piece of stone lying flat on the ground. All around the workshop, children were working, playing or dashing about. They swept dust, sharpened tools, washed stone and took measurements. There were cats too, and dogs missing patches of fur. Aurya stood there in the gate and watched the chaotic scene for a little while before Sharo noticed her.

  ‘Aurya,’ he said, without feeling. She gestured at the children running everywhere.