by Chuck Holton
The compound Task Force Valor occupied was a secluded cluster of corrugated metal buildings set at the very edge of the post, just across from the Macridge Impact Area. Signs along the road near the unit’s “shop” proclaimed, “Danger! Unexploded Duds! Keep Out! Trespassing or removal of any items from range is prohibited by law.”
Just the kind of place where bomb techs felt at home.
It was obvious something was up by the amount of activity around the small compound in the middle of the night. Men were securing supplies to large pallets, and a flatbed truck idled nearby ready to receive them. Other vehicles were already being lined up for the convoy to the airfield.
John parked his pickup truck in front of the faded yellow building that held the team room and administrative offices. Every light in the place was on. As he opened the door, he almost got run over by Frank Baldwin, who had his arms full of arcane electronics and slowed only long enough to say, “Hey, John, good to see you.”
All of the single men were present, most congregating around the coffeepot or rummaging in their lockers to make sure they had everything they needed for the deployment. They echoed Frank’s greeting, waved a hand, or grunted a welcome. Spending such large amounts of time together in very dangerous situations knit them together in a way most civilians couldn’t comprehend.
Task Force Valor had been created as a quick-response unit dedicated to stopping the terrorists’ supply of explosives by hunting down and eliminating bomb shops and suppliers around the globe. As such, they had to be more than just bomb technicians. They had to be able to shoot their way in, recognize and secure the munitions, and if need be, blast their way out.
They spent an average of two hundred days each year away from Fort Bragg, either training for or performing real-world missions, and John had to admit he preferred being deployed to garrison duty. The team’s op-tempo was greater than that of other Special Forces units, since Valor operated worldwide rather than specializing in one particular region of the world as did most. In the last three years, they’d been to both Central and South America twice, Africa three times, and had spent so much time in the Middle East John felt like he should buy land there.
A great sense of purpose went with this job. John had always hated bullies, and his membership in this elite unit gave him a legitimate outlet for those feelings. He understood that the war on terror was, in one sense, about sucking the poison out of the rest of the world by taking the fight to the extremists’ home turf so they would be too busy to bring the fight to his homeland.
The long deployments and unpredictable schedule made it all but impossible to have any kind of social life outside the unit. And since he didn’t drink, John ended up getting suckered into being the designated driver more often than he cared to think about.
As for women, he was resigned to remaining unattached for the time being. After he’d returned from that extended deployment to find Kim married to the insurance man, he’d had only a few dates. More often than not, women felt like more trouble than they were worth.
Then there was that brown-eyed girl. He wondered if the long months overseas had caused his memory of her to be more than the reality. Not that it mattered since he’d probably never see her again.
He dealt with his loneliness by throwing himself even more deeply into his job and his joy, rock climbing. He liked the immediacy of climbing. On the rock you just focused on the present. There was always a clear direction—up. And the rock didn’t complain if you showed up two days or two months late.
When John entered the room, Hogan and Sweeney were watching Fox News on a television mounted in one corner. John sidled over to them.
The bearded Hogan looked up and smiled. He held out a box of Krispy Kremes. “Doughnut?”
“I’ll pass. What’s the word?”
Sweeney tugged at his longer-than-regulation mustache. “Shoot, you know nobody ever tells us nothing. Did you meet our new medic?” He gestured to the lanky soldier on the other side of the room, who was at that moment closing his locker.
John recognized the man immediately. “Well, I’ll be—that’s Joe Kelly! He was in my Assault Climber class last year at Camp Merrill. He and I were the ranking men in the class, so they roomed us together.”
Kelly had to be the most optimistic person John had ever met, and they’d had a great time the previous summer at the two-week course, buddy-climbing on Mount Yonah in the North Georgia mountains.
Staff-Sergeant Kelly spotted John and crossed the room toward him, beaming. “Well, well, John Cooper. I heard someone messed up and put you in charge.”
John couldn’t help smiling back. No one could ever replace Vernon James, but if John had his pick of men to fill the position, Kelly would have topped the list.
“It beats buddy-rappelling with your fat butt strapped to my back! How are you, Joe? I thought you were getting promoted to Sergeant First Class?”
Kelly laughed. “I made E-7 two weeks ago, pardner. Just haven’t pinned it on yet. Been too busy getting moved over here from 5th Group.”
At that moment, Major Williams, dressed in black running shorts and a gray Army windbreaker, burst through the door carrying a coffee mug that must have held at least a gallon of liquid. There were two men with him that Cooper had never seen before. They both wore khaki cargo pants and black polo shirts. The major motioned to John and disappeared into his office.
“Who do you suppose they are?” Hogan mumbled through a mouthful of Krispy Kreme.
“I think I’ll go find out.” John turned and crossed the room to the commander’s office.
Sainiq Refugee Camp
LIZ DROVE THROUGH the gates in the fence that surrounded the Palestinian camp, her hands gripping the steering wheel, her stomach doing more flips than a gymnast performing a floor routine.
There were no two ways about it: This camp frightened her. She reached up to make certain that the scarf she had tied about her head was still in place. As a disguise, it was elementary, but combined with her fluent Arabic, it should do the trick.
As she once again followed Nabila’s directions to Hanan’s home, she was appalled at the evidences of poverty all around her: the littered streets; the children’s worn clothes, washed so often they’d lost color; the dogs so skinny their ribs looked like fur-covered ladder rungs.
The homes were built of supplies scrounged from dumps, bombed buildings, anywhere there was a sheet of metal, a pile of cinderblocks. Originally meant to be temporary dwellings, they had become home to several generations of refugees. Clustered one upon the other, it was clear no one had bothered with a plumb line in the course of erecting the shelters.
Liz felt hemmed in, claustrophobic. With each breath she tasted the hopelessness and despair carried in the air like a lethal virus. No wonder the shebab became terrorists or freedom fighters. What other future was there for them?
And the young men had it good compared to the girls and women. Suddenly Liz saw Hanan’s occasional trips to the souks in Sidon in a new light. Relief from the congestion. A temporary feeling of freedom. A change of scenery. By contrast she thought of Annabelle and Nabila going to the modern stores in Beirut any time they wanted.
She thought of herself in Philadelphia, amazed and appalled as she walked South Street, delighted as she toured the historic district or went to a play at the Walnut Street Theater or the Kimmel Center, sated after a dinner at one of the city’s multitude of restaurants.
Constraint versus independence.
Scarcity versus plenty.
Limits versus opportunities.
When Liz reached Hanan’s, she pulled her car as close as she could to the front wall of the house. When she climbed out, she checked carefully to make certain there was room for another car to pass her. Satisfied, she knocked on Hanan’s open front door.
Hanan welcomed her with reserve, obviously not certain what to expect from this American reporter. Liz was struck by how much Hanan resembled her cousin Nabila.
“Please, have a seat.” Hanan gestured to the only overstuffed chair in the room. “It is my husband’s chair.”
Liz was being given the seat of honor, and she took it with a smile. She reached into her bag and got out her Steno pad and pen as well as a small tape recorder she placed on the scarred end table beside the lamp. “May I? I do this so I will not make any mistakes about what you say.”
Hanan was quiet for a minute, clearly unsure. Then she gave a quick nod. “May I offer you some tea?”
“Thank you.” Liz smiled again, hoping to put Hanan at ease. “I’d love some.”
As Liz waited for Hanan to return from the little kitchen added to the back of the house, she looked around the main room and thought that much as Hanan and Nabila looked alike, they couldn’t have been living in more different circumstances. Nabila’s rooms at Charles and Annabelle’s house were filled with light and color, and just steps away was the courtyard with its flowering orange trees and tinkling fountain.
Hanan’s place was small, cramped, and dark with electric lights lit even at midday. There was also very little ventilation. Outside Hanan’s home were potholed dirt roads, piles of refuse, and festering anger.
“I am sorry about your sister and her husband,” Hanan said. “Nabila wrote about the fire.”
“Thank you.” Liz swallowed back tears. “We have reason to believe that Julie escaped the fire, but we don’t know what happened to her.”
“The police have not found any clues?”
Liz shook her head. “La. Every day it gets harder, just waiting. Every day I get angrier over the lack of progress.”
Hanan sighed. “It seems unreal, I imagine. Like Zahra’s death.”
Now there was a tragedy. “What has happened to your aunt?”
“She is at home.”
Liz made a sound of disbelief.
Hanan held up a hand. “Wa’ef. Stop. It is not as you are thinking. She will be tried for murder.”
“Good. I was worried there for a minute. How about her little girl? I have thought much about her.”
“Salma is at home with her mother and father. For the moment there is some semblance of normal. But not for long.”
There was a knock on the door, and two of Hanan’s neighbors came in.
“I never knew an American,” one said.
It was obvious that she was disappointed in Liz, so Liz asked her why.
“You look nice, normal.” The woman frowned.
“Thank you. What did you think I’d look like?”
The woman shrugged. “I do not know. I have always heard so much about America and Americans, and what I am told is not very nice.”
Liz didn’t argue the point. “You see pictures of all the worst things. Remember that America is very big, and the pictures you see represent only a very, very small group of people. It’s like something bad happening on the other side of your camp. It only involves a few, not the whole camp.”
She nodded, accepting the analogy, but Liz knew by her stubborn look that she held deep convictions against the United States.
“America supports the Zionists and Israel.” She said it as an accusation.
One of the most difficult things for Liz to adjust to when she became a Christian was the ardent support American Christians gave to Israel. Her whole life she’d been taught to sympathize with the Palestinians, not the Jews, and her outlook had led to many a debate. The establishment of the nation of Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy took her some time to accept, and she still tended to be critical of many of Israel’s inciting actions or the overreactions to Palestinian provocation.
“Yes, America supports Israel, but it also supports the Palestinian right to a homeland,” Liz said.
“And how can we have a homeland with the Zionists on the land that was our forefathers’?”
Liz had no answer. Her only comfort, warped as it was, was that the politicians of the world hadn’t found a workable solution either.
The second neighbor who wouldn’t tell Liz her name stepped in front of the argumentative woman and placed a shaking hand on Liz’s arm. She spoke in a whisper. “This is more important, what I am about to say.”
The arguer snorted but moved aside.
“Please speak for us,” the woman said. “We cannot speak for ourselves without endangering our lives and making things worse for our daughters.”
“What are your dreams for your daughters?” Liz made believe she didn’t see the bruised cheek the woman tried to hide by bringing her head scarf forward.
“That they escape the life I have lived.” The woman spoke simply but with tears in her eyes. “I have four girls. The oldest is approaching twelve years, and they follow one right after the other. Eleven, ten, nine. My husband complains all the time about how costly they are. He wants to marry them off as soon as he can. I plead with him to wait. Let them get educated. Let them grow up. Let them pick their own men. He says they do not need an education and we cannot afford to wait.”
“What does your husband do for work?”
“Whatever he can.”
“He has no regular job?” Liz was careful to keep any kind of censure from her tone. Jobs and Palestinian men were often mutually exclusive, not due to lack of ability or initiative but politics and prejudice.
“Our men are not allowed work permits. Even if he does get a temporary job, he has not the papers to satisfy the soldiers at the road blocks. They humiliate him, sometimes hit him. After all, who can he complain to? Often they will not let him pass to get to the job. Once they stripped him.”
The problems in the camps were interdependent, and Liz knew that no work permits meant no incomes which meant no monies for taxes which meant no sanitation services, minimal educational programs, next to no medical care, sporadic electricity, and boredom. Hopelessness.
“I used to think that it was the will of Allah that women are undereducated and kept in seclusion,” Hanan said. “Husbands are the masters. They can do whatever they want with their wives. It is what the Koran says. Now I do not think so. I think that is just one interpretation.”
“Hanan, do not say such things!” Her neighbor with the bruised cheek was appalled.
“It is only us women.” Hanan drew a circle in the air with her finger. “Are you going to tell anyone what I said?” She looked a challenge at both her visitors.
They both shook their heads but continued to look worried.
Fascinating, Liz thought. Women uniting against the men, against the system. Sisterhood in spite of differing opinions.
At the thought of sister, pain squeezed Liz’s heart so abruptly, so powerfully that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Oh, God, please!
Eyes swimming, she studied her pad like she was reviewing her notes while she waited until she could speak calmly again. “What changed your mind about the place of women?” she finally managed to ask Hanan.
“My daughters.” Hanan looked at the two small girls playing with a much used, almost hairless doll and a blanket that had once been pink.
“They are beautiful little girls,” Liz said. Their dark hair curled around chubby cheeks, and their eyes sparkled even in the twilight of the room.
“They are smart,” Hanan said, making a statement of fact, not a bragging comment. “They ask such questions. Why would Allah give them clever minds if he did not mean for them to use them?”
“Shh,” said the nameless neighbor, her agitation growing. “Someone might hear.”
“I do not care,” Hanan said, but she looked to see if anyone lingered outside and might have heard her defiant words.
A car pulled up in front of the house, its motor knocking loudly.
Hanan’s friends looked at one another, faces filled with alarm.
“Out through the back,” Hanan said.
Quickly the women left, shadows disappearing into the gloom.
“Should I go, too?” Liz asked. “I don’t want to make things difficult for you.”
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br /> “Let me see who it is.” Hanan walked toward the door. She peeked out, and the tension in her shoulders left. “It is Ali, my husband. He knows you were coming.”
Liz rose. “He would probably prefer that I leave now that he’s home.” She reached for her tape recorder. “May I return another day? I have many more questions to ask you.”
“Please. Stay and meet Ali. He is a good man. He does not want to live as he does any more than I want to live as I do. I want you to write that there are fine Palestinian men.”
Car doors slammed and Liz heard men’s voices. They didn’t come closer, so she assumed Ali wasn’t coming in this very minute. She checked her list of questions, glad she hadn’t turned the recorder off. “How much of your situation or the situation of Muslim women in general is the result of the Islamification of the camps?”
Hanan clapped her hands at her daughters, who grabbed their doll and blanket and ran for a side room Liz assumed was a bedroom.
Hanan frowned as she thought of what to say. “It is true that things here have gotten very strict, but many are cultural Muslims. They say they believe, but they don’t practice their faith. They drink if they think no one knows. Or they take a woman who isn’t their wife. Can you understand that?”
Liz nodded. “Many in the United States call themselves Christians, but you see no evidence of it in their lives.”
“But here even those who do not practice much of anything will use the Koran to keep women subject. It is an issue of control, not faith.”
“You’re very outspoken, Hanan.”
She shook her head, her eye on the door. Was it Ali she didn’t want to hear her thoughts or Ali’s friends?
“I am rebelling in here.” She touched her heart. “It is Nabila who had the courage to actually stand for her convictions.” She smiled sadly. “I am afraid to pay the price.”
A man in an open-necked, short-sleeved sport shirt entered. A boy of about six followed him. Liz couldn’t help compare Hanan in her all-encompassing clothes and head scarf with the man and boy in their much more temperature appropriate dress.
