“What great deed?”
“I told you, driving the Americans out of Biafra and thereby winning the war for United Nigeria!”
The coffee had restored me to the point where I was thinking coherently enough to become impatient with what was beginning to seem like Hamza’s deliberately teasing mystification.
“Would mind telling me how I accomplished this impossible deed?” I demanded.
“It was you who started the great oil fire, wasn’t it?” said Hamza. “That’s what the Americans claim.”
“Great oil fire? I did manage to destroy a junction of the pipeline running south with the main one from Warri to Port Harcourt, break it open and set the oil coming from the west on fire—”
“That’s the one!” said Hamza. “In fact it’s the only oil fire the satellite images show.”
“I saw that it lasted for days, but just how great did it become?”
For the first time, Hamza’s ebullient enthusiasm became tempered with puzzlement as he cocked his head to one side and shrugged.
“Strangely enough, not as great as the Americans made it sound,” he told me. “It’s still burning in the swamp, no one can get near the break, Warri can’t pump oil to Port Harcourt and neither can most of the oil fields north of the break, but the fields closer to Port Harcourt haven’t been touched or the off-shore wells, and there’s nothing to keep their tankers from loading…”
He shrugged. “Well, I suppose they’re even bigger cowards than we thought,” he said, returning to his blithe pleasure.
I was beginning to smell a less pleasant odor than the meal his cook now set before me. “Perhaps you will now explain to this hero of Nigeria how an oil fire he set has won the war?”
As I ate, he did.
The Nigerian thrust along the Cameroon border towards Calabar had been the expected disaster, with the five divisions being attacked by hundreds of Falcons and perhaps a score or so Vultures before they had even gotten seventy-five kilometers south of the Benué. When the Americans realized the magnitude of the force, probably believing that it really was an attempt to take Calabar and threaten Port Harcourt, they threw in hundreds more Falcons, and Vultures dropped perhaps a hundred of the terrible fuel-air bombs. The advance was broken before the Nigerians ever even got within two hundred kilometers of Calabar.
But instead of fleeing back north as fast as they could, the combined Nigerian divisions held their ground, or at least refused to be routed for days, according to my disastrous plan, keeping the drone aircraft of the Great Satan occupied far to the east while the Ski Mask Jihadis attempted to wreck the oil fields and pipelines.
“How bad?” I demanded, fearing to learn the answer.
“Not as bad as it could have been,” Hamza said without being able to look me in the eye. “Since it really wasn’t a question of holding ground, when it got really bad, the commanders dispersed their divisions into squad-sized units with orders to simply hide, and since this wasn’t the Zone and there hadn’t been fighting there before, there were still forests and brush.…”
“How many Nigerian lives did this great victory cost?” I demanded more insistently.
“Something less than eight thousand so far…” Hamza muttered. “But there are very many critically wounded and missing and unaccounted fors.…”
“And my own men…?”
Hamza shrugged most uneasily. “They were deep inside Biafra…and you yourself have just returned…more may show up later.…”
“How many have returned to this side of the river so far?” I demanded more harshly still.
“Almost a hundred…” Hamza whispered with downcast eyes.
I lost my appetite entirely.
Well over two hundred jihadis sent south.
Less than half survived to return.
And what had their deaths accomplished? From my own experiences, I was all too sure that I already knew the answer, but I had to ask anyway.
“And what other damage to the oil fields?”
Hamza sighed. Still he would not meet my gaze. Now he would not answer either.
“Tell me!”
“Nothing significant enough to show up on the satellite images,” he finally admitted.
“You are telling me that eight thousand Nigerians sacrificed their lives so I could send over half of my men to die to accomplish nothing!” I cried in anguished self-loathing. “And that makes me a hero?”
“But you did not accomplish nothing, Osama!” Hamza exclaimed, finally looking me in the eye. “What you did won the war! And those soldiers did not die for nothing, they died so you could do it.”
“And the survivors who watched them die and escaped with their own lives,” I said sneeringly, “I suppose I’m a hero to them now too?”
Another Hausa regarded me now, the tank commander who had seen Nigerian armor so thoroughly destroyed in battle that there had been no tank units left for him to command.
“You are now, Osama,” that Hausa told me. “You certainly were not when a shattered army limped back across the Benué with nothing to show for it but terrible casualties. Then you were the heedless fool who authored the catastrophe and General Moustapha was likewise hated and loathed. But when the Americans withdrew and the war was won, he got his fourth star and might win a presidential election if we ever have one, and Osama the Gun became the hero of that victory. And rightly so.”
“Rightly so! What cynicism!”
“Not cynicism, Osama, war. When it’s all added up, perhaps ten thousand soldiers will have died in a few days to bring victory, but in all the previous months, many more died to bring nothing but defeat. Now the war is over and the troops who were not killed are soldiers of a victorious army, and no soldier asks for more than that.”
His words had the ring of truth, but still…
“I can’t deny that you’re making sense to me,” I admitted, “but there’s something missing here that—”
“Of course there is, Osama the Gun!” Hamza declared. “You are forgetting your own personal victory and the victory of Islam! I have been speaking as a Nigerian general, and I would not say this in public, but I am also a Muslim and your brother hadji, and the truth of this victory is that it is not merely victory over the Biafran rebels by the army of United Nigeria, but victory of the Holy Warriors of Islam over America, the victory of the Ski Mask Jihadis of Osama the Gun over the Great Satan itself! And the world knows it, for it has been admitted by the Americans themselves.”
He beamed at me, his eyes positively glowed, and this was as sincere as I had ever seen this man become.
“Allahu Akbar, be of good cheer, my friend!” he proclaimed, clapping me on the shoulder. “Allahu Akbar!”
“Allahu Akbar,” I replied a good deal less fervently, not understand why the words rang hollow in my ears.
* * * *
After my first good meal and coffee in days, I became drowsy and all too aware of my state of fatigue, so I innocently made no objections to Hamza’s diktat that I should sleep where I was that night and rest myself for the trip back to camp on the morrow. I was driven back to camp with Hamza after lunch, and as we were about to arrive, told to don my mask for a proper hero’s welcome.
I was both dismayed and pleased to see that there were television cameras at the gate to broadcast my arrival live, or in some some cases record it, for in addition to UNT, there were crews from CNN, Al Jazeera, the BBC, and even Caliphate Television, and they followed me as Hamza led me through the camp to the parade ground.
There were numerous tents set up as field hospitals and convalescent housing for the recovering grievously wounded, and bandaged soldiers sitting about who greeted me with salutes, waves, and cheers I could still not believe I deserved, and when the procession reached the parade ground, I saw that these were only the men not ambulatory enough to stand, for it was f
illed with troops turned out in fresh uniforms and orderly ranks.
General Moustapha, in a gaudy uniform bedecked with gold braid and medals that I had not seen him wearing before, stood before the troops, flanked by a Nigerian flag and that of the Ski Mask Jihadis. My remaining men stood in the front ranks with stony but prideful expressions.
Hamza held me aside until the various television crews had properly set up and then propelled me forward. General or not, Moustapha paid me the honor of saluting me first, and when I returned it numbly, there was great cheering, and then the chanting of “Osa-ma the Gun, Osa-ma, Osa-ma, Osama the Gun!” to the rhythm of unseen and possibly recorded drums until the General raised his hand to order a silence which was immediately forthcoming.
“The brave soldiers of United Nigeria have at last prevailed over the American invaders and their Biafran puppets, a victory not only for Nigeria but for all Africa over neo-colonialist forces who sought to steal African riches and thought themselves invincible!” he declaimed, regarding not me but the bouquet of cameras. “Long live United Nigeria! Long live Africa!”
“Long live United Nigeria! Long live Africa!” his troops shouted to a man as if this had been rehearsed, as it probably had been. “Long live General Moustapha!” perhaps a third of them added, certainly a piece of rehearsed spontaneity.
The General motioned me forward. “But this is not a victory of black men over white,” he declared, “but of liberty and justice over exploitation and racism, for the triumph of the Nigerian Army owes a great debt of gratitude to the assistance of men of many races and nationalities fighting for freedom and justice and national self-determination from all over the world, to the heroes who stood by us to defeat the greatest military power on Earth, to the Ski Mask Jihadis, and their fearless leader, Osama the Gun!”
And he produced a gold medallion depending from a ribbon with the green and white colors of the Nigerian flag. “And so, the grateful Army, Government, and People of Nigeria, are proud to honor Osama the Gun with the first Medal of African Victory, especially minted for the purpose,” he said, and he pinned it to my chest to the drumming and the chanting of “Osa-ma, Osa-ma, Osa-ma, Osama the Gun!”
This went on for quite a while, too long for the television crews, two of whose directors ran impatient fingers across their throats. Moustapha responded by signaling for silence himself, which once more was smartly forthcoming. “Say a few words,” he commanded in my ear, and only then did I realize that I was going to have to speak.
And only realizing that, did I realize why I had been standing there with a certain ire souring my pleasure during this pompous show put on before the cameras to reward me with glory and General Moustapha with its reflection. That the General was putting it to personal political use did not trouble me, for he deserved such reward as much as I deserved a gold medal. But he had saluted the Nigerian Army, all of Africa, liberty, justice, and even my jihadis and myself, without so much as even uttering the words “Islam” or “Allah.”
This, wittingly or not, he had left up to me.
“I thank General Moustapha and the people and government of Nigeria for this fine medal, and I accept it not only as Osama the Gun, not only in the name of the Ski Mask Jihadis, but for all those brave men who died to make this victory possible,” I began blandly enough.
“But I and my men did not come here as mercenaries to fight for the victory of United Nigeria over the rebels of Biafra, not because we despised New Biafra for its rebellion whose politics we scarcely understood, or even because we hated the Igbos for being infidels. Ten thousand brave Nigerian patriots may have died for that cause, but a hundred and more jihadis died for a greater one.”
I could see from the uneasy faces of the thousands of Nigerian soldiers marshaled to honor Osama the Gun for the cameras and from the scowls of the television crew from UNT that this was not going down well, but I didn’t care.
I was speaking for my own men, those who were left to stand before me, and as far as they and I were concerned, I wasn’t speaking for the political fortune of General Moustapha or Nigeria, I was speaking for Allah.
“We came here to Nigeria as jihadis to fight beside you not against the Igbos of Biafra, but against their master, the Great Satan, in the greater war in which your struggle has been but one battle, the Jihad of the Holy Warriors of Islam against the soulless djins and robots of satanic darkness, the Holy War that began when Allah spoke the words of the Koran to Mohammed, and will not end until the forces of Satan and his final champion are defeated and the Word of Allah spoken to the Prophet, all blessings to him, at last becomes the Light of the whole world.”
“Allahu Akbar!”
My jihadis shouted it in unison as if they had been as rehearsed to respond to my words as the troops of General Moustapha to his. But they had not been. This came from the heart.
“Allahu Akbar! Death to the Great Satan!”
And they fired salutes from their guns into the air.
Though most of the Nigerian troops stood there silently at ordered attention, here and there, there were those among them who shouted the words too, though none dared fire salutes unbidden in the presence of their commanding general, who, I saw with a sidelong glance, did not seem too pleased.
But from the looks on their faces and the rolling gestures of their right hands at me, it seemed that the television directors were both pleased at the action, and displeased that their cameras had not caught it all, and wanted more.
My mind had known that I was speaking not only to these thousands, nor to the millions of Nigerians, but now my soul fully understood that through their machineries I was speaking to all of Dar al-Islam and the world of the infidels beyond, to the Faithful and our enemies, and to those who were now neither but could be moved to become either by the words that I spoke.
This what it was to become a Madhi for this age, if only for one shining televised moment, no more than a microphone through which Allah might speak as he had through Mohammed, but with the magical machinery of a different age. For as television had made itself my machinery, so might I become His.
“I call upon all Muslims to join us in the Holy War fought by Saladin against the Infidel Crusaders, fought by Osama bin Ladin against the atheists of the Soviet Union and the inheritor of those Infidel Crusaders, the United States of America. Nigeria has won its war, together we have defeated the Great Satan, but only on one field of battle. Jihadis from all the lands of Islam have fought and died, at the side of their Muslim brothers in Nigeria. We have won you your war. Now I call on you, Nigeria, on you Dar al-Islam, to fight by our side in ours!”
I pointed to the flag that General Moustapha had given us, the green of Islam emblazoned with the white crescent, giving the television cameras the picture to go with my words.
“That is the banner given by Nigeria to the Ski Mask Jihadis of Osama the Gun as our battle-flag in this war!” I shouted.
“But it is also the flag of the guardian of Mecca and Medina, the host of the Hadj, the Caliphate that was, established by the Prophet as the holy government of the lands of Islam, the flag of the Caliphate that is, reborn by the Sons of Osama, and the flag of the Caliphate that will be, that must be, when Muslims throughout the world unite to make that flag what Allah means it to be, the flag of a Dar al-Islam united as Nigeria is now united, the flag of Islam itself!”
And I tore the Medal of African Victory from my breast and held it aloft to the Nigerian soldiers, to the cameras, to the world beyond.
“This medal has been awarded to a humble boy from the Caliphate whom Allah chose as His instrument to bring you your victory in your war! To a man He chose to wear the mask of Osama the Gun. But this medal rightly belongs to all who would fight under that flag in the greater war, the Holy War! Let it no longer be the Medal of African Victory! Make it the Medal of Islamic Victory! Let the mask that conceals my face become the mask worn by a
multitude that reveals the face of the many made One! The face of the Jihadi! The face of Islam! The true face of Osama the Gun!”
And I threw the medal on a high arc into the midst of all those men before the cameras that would broadcast it to all the world. All the world might not see the faces that I did, regarding me as if they beheld a madman or a Madhi. But all the world could not but hear that moment of utter silence. And so could I. And hearing it emerge like a dervish collapsing out of his whirling holy dance.
“Allahu Akbar!” my jihadis and those who joined them within their hearts shouted.
As if ordered up by the television directors, the drumming and the chanting began.
“Osa-ma, Osa-ma, Osa-ma, Osama the Gun!”
As for me, all I could do was shout “Death to the Great Satan!” turn my back, and walk away.
CHAPTER 33
Where to walk away to was the question, and it seemed to be without an answer, for the remnants of the Ski Mask Jihadis and for myself. The Igbos were negotiating the terms of their surrender, the war in Nigeria was over, the Americans had been driven out, and we had been deprived of a battleground on which to confront the Great Satan.
I had used the power of television to remove my unknown self from within the mask of Osama the Gun and pass it on to whatever multitude might choose to wear it and march off to Jihad. hoping to create army of Holy Warriors to fight the Great Satan wherever American interests might be found, in the manner of Osama bin Ladin’s Al Qaeda, but with an immortal leader who, being no living man, could never be slain.
Perhaps there would arise a legion of small boys in the Caliphate and in the world of the Umma beyond, masking themselves to play at being Osama the Gun and growing up to truly inhabit as men that which they had donned as children. Had such a game existed when I was a boy, I would have played it, would I not?
But what of me and the remains of the men I had led in Nigeria? I was told that as the hero who won the the war, I could accept Nigerian citizenship, and retain my commission in the army along with my lieutenant colonel’s salary, or retire on a full colonel’s pension. My men could do the same, and remain in the Nigerian army as lieutenants or retire as captains.
Osama the Gun Page 31
