Spoils

by Brian Van Reet

  However, my thoughts on his marriage were all wrong. Rather than drawing him out of the war, becoming a husband invested him more fully in it. Now he had Chechen in-laws.

  That winter, I was called away from the aul by Emir Khattab, who was then at the head of all the brothers in the Caucasus. Khattab summoned me to a shura of field commanders from around the country. A council of this magnitude was unusual and seemed to forebode momentous events. I said as much to the brothers before I set out for the shura, to be held deep in the mountains.

  “Dr. Walid will act as emir while I’m away. It’ll only be a few days, but let’s see if we can’t finish shoring up the tunnel in the meantime. One more thing. Under no circumstances are any of you to provoke the Russians. That’s straight from the council. No offensive operations until further notice. Big plans are in the works. We don’t want to muck them up.”

  The brothers told me not to worry and wished me well. My son especially was in high spirits. Since marrying Ayeesha he’d blossomed rapidly into manhood; seldom had I seen him happier or more confident. Why God so often chooses to lay low the high and pure and noble while allowing the basest iniquities to go unpunished, I couldn’t tell you. In my absence at the shura, something terrible happened. Three Russian soldiers, drunk to wickedness on vodka, left their post and went on a spree. Like us, they knew about the village in the dell, and their eyes, like my son’s, had been snared by Aquil’s daughters. They arrived at their farm and as a pretense asked to buy some food. When they were rebuffed, they drove their UAZ through a neighboring pasture, tearing up the field and machine-gunning the better part of Aquil’s herd. This was a man who’d never opened a bank account, who dealt rarely with paper money but who was considered rich by the standards of his place and time. That day, in one fell swoop, he lost most of a great fortune.

  Ignorant of all this, I was making the return trip from the shura. The day was clear and cold. I drove the mountain road in an old panel van, creaking and swaying unnervingly on the curves. Emir Khattab’s news hadn’t been good: at any moment, the Russians were expected to unleash a major offensive to retake Grozny. Despite it, I was in a fine mood. I’d made good time and expected to rejoin my men sooner than I’d thought.

  On the winding road to the aul I was met with a gruesome sight. I drove closer, and my hopes were dashed that it was some kind of prank, the work of local boys, a scarecrow emplaced to startle passing motorists. I stopped the van and got out. By the side of the road hung a corpse, Russian, by the look of his bright-blond hair and blue eyes. He had been crucified on the sagging lower boughs of a pine. A crude sign hammered to the tree read, The fate of all criminals and invaders.

  The sign was written in Arabic, and immediately I suspected the brothers had done this. Rage took me; they’d violated my order to lie low while I was away. I cut down the body and dragged it into the forest so it was no longer visible from the road, where the van was still idling, the driver’s door hanging open. I climbed back in and hurried on to the aul. For the first time, the thought entered my mind that my son could’ve had a part in this.

  Dr. Walid and I hoisted our rucks and hiked into the forest, the light falling through the pines, our breath crystallizing in the freezing air, little clouds of it hanging over the steep rocky trail as we passed. Even with the weather, after a few kilometers I worked up enough body heat to make my field jacket uncomfortably warm, and we stopped so that I could take it off. We’d climbed above tree line and were nearing a pass. The brothers had fled the aul, fearing reprisal, relocating camp to the cut on the other side. Dr. Walid was leading me there.

  I was still reeling from the news he’d delivered: seeing what the Russians had done to Aquil’s cattle, my son had conspired with his father-in-law and some of the other villagers to take revenge. Under Hassan’s direction, they’d set an ambush on the road, killing five and taking one prisoner, the man I’d found crucified. For a ragtag force, it was a spectacular victory. It was also an act of insubordination in direct defiance of my authority, and my emotions, normally so controlled, now oscillated wildly between grief, disbelief and anger. I felt light-headed, my skin clammy, as if I’d been struck with a bout of mountain sickness.

  We arrived in camp, and no one was pleased to see me. The men were right to be afraid of how I’d react. Before even dropping my gear, I ordered them assembled, questioning them, and specifically Hassan, to learn the particulars of his outrage.

  “I didn’t do it as your soldier,” he said, making no effort to deny responsibility. “This was a family matter. It’s between me, Aquil, and the Russian.”

  “You may be married to a Chechen, but you’re here as a mujahid. You don’t get to pick and choose when you belong to this brotherhood. If you want to be a farmer, go farm.”

  “Those farmers and I killed six of the dogs without taking one casualty. Can you say that about any attack you’ve led?”

  He had never spoken so harshly to me in his entire life. It took a moment for me to regain my composure. “You were given a clear order. You chose to disobey it. There are consequences for that.”

  “You should be celebrating my victory. I think you enjoy shaming me like this. You know what I think? I think, Father, you’re jealous of your own son.”

  “Today, you’re not even my son. Today you’re a scoundrel and a scapegrace.” Even then it occurred to me to wonder if he was right, not that I envied him—it wasn’t that simple—but maybe I was being too harsh with the boy precisely because he was my flesh and blood. Sometimes we hold our families too highly and are therefore more disappointed than we should be when they reveal themselves as only human. I should’ve listened to this voice of mercy but believed it was more important to demonstrate my impartial adherence to the law. As emir I’d punish any of my men who went against my orders, including my own firstborn. For me to do otherwise would be disqualifying.

  Hassan and I faced off. The men lingered at the margins, no one speaking, watching us in the embarrassed yet enthralled way of those who unexpectedly find themselves spectators to what should be an intimate confrontation. I thought to dismiss them and continue with Hassan in private, but that would have only undercut my authority further, making it seem like I was trying to downgrade a soldier’s mutiny into a domestic squabble.

  Seeing things escalating, Walid stepped forward to placate me. Perhaps he worried that I would blame him, the one who’d been placed in command during my absence, for the lapse in discipline. Perhaps his motives were more sinister and shrewd, and he knew patronizing me in that moment would tip the scales.

  “My emir, you’re exhausted from the trip. Maybe you should—”

  “No,” I said calmly, not looking at him, still focused on my son’s defiant face. “I am not tired at all. What I am is disgusted. He admitted he disobeyed me. You all heard it, and you can see he shows no remorse. So, here is my judgment. He will no longer serve me as a mujahid. You are banished, boy: leave Chechnya and return to your mother. In time I might reconsider and send for you, but only if I feel you’ve truly repented and made great strides to purify your heart. Until then, be gone.”

  “You can send me away,” he said. “But I won’t go home. My place is here at the front, fighting to protect these people. I’ll show you I’m no boy. You’ll see what kind of a man I am.”

  We said no farewells. He made quick work to tear down his tent, pack his gear, and set off down the trail. As he hiked up to the ridge, I’d already begun to reconsider, hoping he might turn back and throw himself on my mercy. I might’ve let him stay if he’d begged, but neither did I call out and plead with him not to go, to tell him I’d spoken too severely, both of us prideful beyond repair. I thought of my own father and how we’d parted with cross words. Before I left the second time for Afghanistan, he told me I was wasting my life, and in turn I told him he was a corrupt money-grubber who never cared about anything enough to fight for it.

  The trouble with angry words is you never know if they’ll b
e your last. Hassan disappeared from view in the upper forest, and I saw him no more. He was killed a week later in the Siege of Grozny; I’m told it was defending a trench outside the city. Those who were with him near the end say he never thought to retreat or surrender, even when it was very clear the battle was hopeless. They say his dying words were the Shahada. I tell myself he’s the lucky one, resting beneath that ice-hard field. I never found the exact spot where they buried him, though I heard generally where he fell and how he fought when the Spetsnaz broke through the rebel lines. You were a lion, my son, who teaches me every day how to die.

  In the late afternoon there is a knock on my door, which alarms me until I remember I am in fact expecting someone, the errand boy who helped me the other day in the bazaar. He arrives carrying a heavy-looking duffel bag.

  “Sorry it took longer than I told you,” he says after I let him in. “I didn’t forget.”

  “I didn’t think you had. Here, one moment.”

  Leaning on a crutch, I go to retrieve what I owe him while he lays out the contents of his bag: a Kalashnikov, seven magazines with ammunition, four hand grenades, and a chest rig to carry it all.

  “Bulgarian,” he says, passing me the rifle and pointing out the manufacturer’s stamp. “My guy says they’re rare to find but much better than the Iraqi knockoffs, or even the Chinese-made.”

  “I’m grateful for it.” I inspect the weapon, then set it down. I hand over the satchel containing the four thousand dollars I stole from Walid less what I’ve paid for the room and other short-term expenses. “The other half of what I owe you, plus gratuity. I’d offer some chai, but my kerosene tank is empty, and there’re none to be had anywhere, for any price.”

  The boy opens the satchel and is astonished. He looks at me in disbelief. “This is much more than we agreed on.”

  “Yes,” I say, trying to sound lighthearted. “Very much more. Take it, I insist. Go get your mother and leave this place. Start again somewhere else.”

  He smiles skeptically, as if there must be some catch. But I offer none, only forbidding silence, and his smile slowly fades to a look of concern.

  “What are you going to do?”

  I say nothing; the armament he has laid out before me is answer enough.

  “But why?” he asks. “You can hardly even walk.”

  “Hardly is good enough.”

  “Sayyidi, with respect, I don’t understand. This isn’t your town. It’s not even your country. Look around you—there’s nothing left to fight for. Come on, I can show you a road out of here that the Americans don’t watch. Come with me.”

  “You’re striking cold iron,” I say. “My mind is made up. Here, there, it doesn’t matter. I’m not fighting for a place. Not the way you mean. Not money, power, or anything of this earth. I do it only for God.”

  As I speak these words it’s like another person is speaking through me, like I’m reciting a creed that I’ve uttered many times, but until this moment the words have been just that, an idea espoused but fallen short of embodiment. Only now do I know it as my life’s truth.

  The errand boy looks uncomfortable. He is obviously not a person who believes in the unseen, in making dramatic last stands, or in redeeming oneself in the eyes of the dead. I know he thinks the living matter infinitely more, that only a fanatic would squander his life like this.

  “For God, then,” he says, clutching the satchel, looking at the door as if already to make his escape.

  I limp around the room lighting candles so that I can see to prepare my kit. The Kalashnikov, the grenades, the vest. Soon I’ll go on and join the caravan: Field Commander Jawad, Emir Khattab, my son—my dear Hassan—and all the others too numerous to name who’ve meant something to me in this life, who’ve taught me the vital lessons, who’ve walked beside me on this path.

  How strange to think it ends here. I’d never even heard of Fallujah until I was well into my twenties and I met a mujahid in Peshawar who claimed it as his hometown. Iraq was not then a country I thought of much. As a young man, Afghanistan and the Caucasus were the places that commanded my imagination more. How guarded are our fates, how unknown, and strange.

  Even now I hear the night’s fighting beginning. An explosion, a few heartbeats of silence, then the gunfire like clipped shouting across the alleyways. However feebly, I’m ready to go into the streets and take part. I’ve lived past my time and put this off much too long—long enough to know the hardest fight is the fight against your own anger. Compared with that, this will be easy. This I’ll do without anger. I’ll do it with something like longing in my heart.

  17

  CASSANDRA: MOTHER OF AMMARA

  55 Days After

  IRAQ (UNDISCLOSED)

  Climbing into the scuffed metal bed of the pickup, Cassandra felt sure she was about to die. With each passing minute that she hasn’t, the panic dissipates a little more, the brain unwilling to allow itself to persist too long in that level of distress. They’re under way on a canal road graded like a rail line above the surrounding fields, the clouds huge, silvery and oppressive; crushed by the weight of sky, her lungs feel constricted, though no bindings shackle her in the truck bed, very exposed; they’re the tallest thing around except for a frizzy line of palms on the horizon toward which they travel. The road wind keeps blowing the abaya into her face, ruining the shot. Walid is annoyed.

  “Again,” he says, hunched against the tailgate near Hafs, who’s filming her with the handheld. She balances herself as they lurch over ruts in the road, readjusting her shoulders against the rear window to hold down the abaya, starting from the beginning.

  “Bismillah ir rahman ir rahim…”

  In the name of God, most compassionate, most merciful… She’s said the line enough times in the last few minutes, it begins to work. The calming force of repetition—passing time, this is just a moment in time and it will pass, things will be different—and it’s true she’s not quite so agoraphobic as she first was when they brought her out of the cell, upstairs, outside, into the light—intolerable—the guards loading gear into the trucks, packing everything up. Momentous change before her eyes, the lack of a blindfold—that they’re letting her see this—alarming her even more, none of the guards seeming excited to leave, grim faces and a feeling of desperation in the air. She stayed close to Hafs and listened in to every conversation she could, overhearing “Hool” said a few times in scorn, not knowing what to make of it. Walid was everywhere at once, a manic edge to the way he checked on the preparations and exhorted the men to work faster.

  “What’s he saying?” she whispered to Hafs. “Tell me the truth—I don’t care how bad it is.”

  “He is talking about the sword. The sword will not stop killing the heads of these—I do not know the English for this. People who say bad words for God.”

  “Blasphemers?”

  “Yes, I think.”

  When the guards finished loading the trucks, they mounted up, and she with them. Just before she climbed into the bed, Walid brought her a bulletproof vest similar to those worn by several of the men. She inspected it in a soldierly way, feeling the ballistic panels; it was Vietnam-era U.S. surplus—fucking go figure.

  “Am I actually going to need this?” she asked.

  “Put it on.”

  In a convoy of six trucks they drove down the canal road through an inundated rice field. As her prison receded from view she realized she was terrified to leave it. The presence of the camera and the vest are now the only clues as to what’s about to happen. Better the devil you know.

  They hit pavement, the highway, but follow it only briefly. The truck she and Walid are riding in slows, pulling onto the shoulder. The other five trucks keep on the highway while hers turns off, following a hardpack trail along another canal.

  This separation, the lone truck, seems to have been prearranged. Part of Walid’s plan, whatever it is. The camera trained on her is worse than a gun to the head.

  Hafs keeps the t
ape rolling. She tries the Basmala another time, gets it right, and without her abaya blowing around to obscure her face. Walid approves. She moves on to the next part of his statement. This is in English. Much easier to speak. Harder to say. He tells her to do it louder, over the engine noise.

  “I’m Umm Ammara. Today I join the fight against the American occupiers of this country.”

  A psychologist would call her affect flat. Acceptable to Walid and at the same time it might convey to the people she cares about that this person speaking isn’t really her. That she’s left already. As if there were any doubt about that, or her terror, which she suppresses in her voice as best as she can.

  You are still alive.

  They pass through a date-palm grove and come upon more rice fields, these fallow a long time. Beyond is no discernible attempt at cultivation, only a shaggy overgrowth of trees and brush, and the rich, earthy smell of a river that can’t be far. Headed lower, through marsh in some places, the truck eases over a muddy track. Before long they come to a stand of cypress that enfolds them under a tight canopy. Drooping feathered boughs lay tiger-stripe patterns of light and dark on the road, such as it is, which ends here. The driver—the guard who refused to talk to her in the shed—parks the truck and kills the engine.

  “Don’t try,” Walid says. “Running would be pointless, and we didn’t come here to hurt you.”

  This does nothing to alleviate her fears; she doesn’t believe him for a minute. “Then what are we doing here?”

  “You’ll see soon.”

  They clamber down from the bed, and Cassandra and the others follow Walid as he moves out on foot. No one speaks. The driver walks behind her, rear security, last in the column. They are going to cut off my head, she thinks. Something has gone wrong, and they’ve had to leave the prison and get rid of me on the way, and they are going to grab me from behind and cut off my head. Her legs feel wooden and unstable as she trudges through the stand of cypress, surrounded by low ground like a natural moat on three sides. The way Walid is leading them, they have to cross the marsh at a narrow but deep point, clinging to stands of reeds; once, she makes a wrong step and goes in the water hip deep, the abaya heavy and clinging as Hafs extends a hand to pull her up.