Wrath & Righteousnes Episodes 01 to 05

by Chris Stewart

“OK, an average question. Not original, but safe. A casual ice breaker, good enough to get things started, but certainly not going to break any rules.”

  “OK,” Luke laughed, “I’ll try again. So . . . tell me about your father. Is it true he’s an American-hating French industrialist whose grandfather helped the Nazis during World War II?”

  She stared at him, and then started laughing.

  He only smiled in return. But it was a good smile. His face was dark, his eyes bright and friendly.

  She bit on her lip. “I guess I’m a little bit like you. I come from all over, not from only one place.”

  Luke hesitated. “Your father was in the military?”

  “Hardly!” she laughed.

  “Then, I guess . . . .”

  “Let’s not talk about that,” she cut in. “What I want to know is, how many times you have met the president?”

  He hesitated again, surprised. “A couple. How did you know?”

  “Oh, I know about you, Luke Brighton. I guess lots of people do.”

  Luke was dumbfounded. “I didn’t think you knew who I was.”

  “Of course I do,” she laughed. “I did a little asking around. It wasn’t hard to find out. In a school with a lot of famous people’s kids, especially from the government and the international diplomatic corps, how many of their fathers had direct access to. . . . . . the. . . . . . president.” It was clear from her emphasis that she understood.

  Few people recognized what it really meant to work for the president, to actually have access to him, to talk to him every day. Few people really understood what kind of power that could bring. Very few had the rush of adrenaline that came from being near the man.

  Alicia understood it. He didn’t know how, but somehow she understood.

  She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “My father hates the president, I must tell you. I mean, he has such a deep-seated, visceral hatred for him, it almost makes him sick. Now, don’t get me wrong, he’s never met the man, so it’s not personal. He’s met the last three presidents, but he has never met this one. He’s from the wrong circles, you understand, the wrong pack and all, but he would pay a million dollars to spend an evening with him. Not just to share a photograph opportunity at a fund-raiser; that’s not how my father operates. He is much more intimate, much more . . . you know . . . friendly than that. But if he were to ever spend an evening with the president, heaven knows what he might say! He thinks the president is deranged. Thinks he’s damaged the world. He considers the president as evil as anything since Hitler, and on a bad day, maybe worse than even him.”

  Luke’s defenses shot up. His shoulders squared and his jaw set. Then he looked at her smile, her blue eyes and soft hair. She watched, and then leaned toward him. “Don’t worry, Luke Brighton, I’m not like my father,” she whispered.

  Luke pulled his head away from the soft whisper that touched his ear. “Who is your father?” he asked.

  She punched him on the shoulder. “Why does he keep coming up?”

  “Because you keep bringing him up,” Luke answered with a grin.

  “Well, yes, I suppose I did . . . .”

  “Debonei . . . Debonei,” Luke thought out loud. “Duh! I know your father. He owns Capital Media Group. How could I be so stupid! It’s only, what, the second largest—no, the largest media empire in the world.”

  Alicia nodded weakly, again, all an act.

  Luke shook his head. “I’m sorry. I should have recognized you,” he apologized.

  “You’re kidding!” she answered. “Like you should apologize for that?”

  “Well, you know, I just suppose that you couldn’t go many places in the world and not have people recognize your name.”

  She shrugged her shoulders, uninterested. “Enough about me,” she said. “Unless you have a fascination with money, and I’m hoping you don’t, then who my father is isn’t any big deal.”

  Luke glanced at his watch. Class in three minutes. “Our econ quiz,” he said.

  Alicia didn’t move. “We can make it up tomorrow. I’ve already talked to the professor. He said sure, no big deal.”

  Luke nodded happily. He figured Alicia asked a lot of favors and wasn’t disappointed very often. But that was fine by him. He could use another day to study anyway.

  “So, are you going to be a hotshot pilot like your father?” Alicia asked. “Isn’t that what he was before he became a hotshot presidential aide.”

  “Don’t know. Maybe. I love flying, but I haven’t decided. I’ve got a little time to think about it, I figure.”

  “You act like a fighter pilot, did you know that? A little bit arrogant, but in a nice sort of way.”

  Luke faked a hurt expression. She kept on smiling at him.

  “So,” she nodded to his textbook, “do you like our econ class?”

  “Yeah, I actually like it a lot.”

  “I hate it. And I’m not stupid either. I’m not your typical empty-headed blonde, but there’s just something about it that I don’t understand. All the numbers. All the theories. I like things that are more tangible, you know, something I can really think about.”

  “Have you declared a major yet?”

  “Oh, definitely.”

  “And that is . . . ?”

  “Political science.”

  “Really!” Luke answered. “Why poli-sci?”

  “Because I love politics. All kinds of politics. And I’m good at it.”

  Luke laughed out loud. With her father’s money and that smile, she could dazzle her way anywhere. “I can see that,” he answered.

  “Bet on it, baby, I am.”

  This time they both laughed.

  The campus was quiet now. Most of the classes had started, so the sidewalks were almost empty; a couple of guys throwing Frisbees® to their dogs on the quad were about all that was left. “You taking Econ II next semester?” Alicia asked as they watched the dogs jump in the air.

  “I won’t be here next semester.”

  She cocked her head. “Had enough of school? Going to drop out and join the Army? Be like your dad? Heading off to hike around Europe for a while?”

  “Probably not,” Luke answered. This one was kind of tough to explain. One of the students threw an errant Frisbee that landed at his feet. He stood and threw it back; tossing a perfect spiral that hit the other guy in the chest.

  Returning to the bench, he sat down.

  “So . . . you were saying . . . ? Why might you not be here next year?”

  “I might take a little time off,” he said.

  She stared at him, tossing the hair out of her eyes again. “You’re rebelling. You little devil.” She was grinning wickedly.

  Luke watched the Frisbee floating back and forth. “Sometimes I wonder about things, you know. My parents. What my dad does. The things they ask of him. The price we pay. I don’t want my life to be like that. Way too much of some things. Way too little of some things else. I wonder sometimes if . . . .” He hesitated.

  Alicia smiled as if something were clicking inside her head. She thought a moment, and then made some kind of decision. Glancing at her watch, she said, “It’s almost lunch. You want to go get something to eat?”

  SEVEN

  Khorramshahr Refugee Camp, Iraq/Iran Border

  The Khorramshahr refugee camp was named after the Iranian city half a day’s walk to the south. One of Persia’s major ports, with a huge, smoking oil refinery sitting on a small island in the middle of the Kārūn River, Khorramshahr had been an early target when the Iraqi army advanced during the opening weeks of the Iran/Iraq War. The entire Iranian population had fled the city, leaving an empty shell behind for the Iraqi army to loot. Devastated during the fighting, the city remained a ghost town after the Iraqis withdrew until, in 1983, relatively confident they would not be overrun by the Iraqi army again, Iranians slowly began to return.

  Khorramshahr was a small camp set up along the Iraqi/Iranian border. Administered by the U.N., but ove
rseen by the Iraqi government and protected by the U.S. military, the camp sat on a small plateau overlooking the Wawr al Hammār marshes that fed on the brackish waters of the southern tip of the Tigris River. One hundred ten kilometers southeast, the Tigris River flowed into the Persian Gulf. Behind the camp, the Zagros Mountains rose out of the rolling plains; west and north were the salt flats and marshes that defined the border between Iran and Iraq. Built on a barren prairie, the camp was suitable—except when it rained (at which time it became a sucking mud hole), or when the wind blew from the mountains (at which time all of the tents would blow down), or during the annual locust infestations (there was no way to keep them out of the food), or during the freezing temperatures of winter or under the burning summer sun. All in all, Khorramshahr was a great location for a refugee camp—for about three weeks a year.

  A “temporary” camp that now housed a second generation of refugees, Khorramshahr had been established originally to protect the Iranian Balgus expatriates who had taken the opportunity during the chaos created by the First Gulf War to flee religious persecution in their homeland. Ignorant and wildly optimistic, they had hoped to enjoy a better life in a freer Iraq once Iran got rid of Saddam Hussein.

  Things didn’t go as the refugees had hoped. Saddam didn’t fall. The Iraqi government didn’t welcome them after the war. And they couldn’t go back to Iran, not without fear of death. So they were left in the temporary camp until the geopolitical environment changed. Even after the U.S. liberation of Iraq, a fight in which, even after all these years, the outcome was still unsure, they were left hanging in limbo—not welcome in Iraq until the national government was on much more firm ground and yet unable to return to Persia, even if they had wanted to.

  International law guarantees refugees the fundamental right to safe asylum as well as the right of non-refoulement, meaning that they will not be forced to return to the country from which they had fled. But international law can’t force a host nation to absorb the huddled hordes in their refugee camps. So the Iranian expatriates were caught in no-man’s land, left to live for years in the “temporary” camp.

  During the early months of Khorramshahr’s existence, Iranian insurgents infiltrated the camp with members of the Absolute Committee of the Islamic Revolution, a clandestine group controlled by militants in Iran bent on punishing those who rejected the true laws of Allah. As a result, the expatriates lived in constant fear that they would be killed or abducted by ACIR members. The expatriates were forced to guard the children and to carefully taste their food, terrified that it might have been poisoned. Many expatriates were beaten randomly in the middle of the night. With ACIR’s help, Khorramshahr was also infiltrated by murderers, rapists, deserters, and thieves, as the Iranian government quickly learned it was cheaper to send their worst offenders across the border to Khorramshahr than to take the time to try them and then keep them in jail or execute them. Worse, Iraqi soldiers regularly launched military attacks in the area, injuring and killing refugees to stir up the ethnic hostilities that already existed between Iran and Iraq.

  In the early days, the Khorramshahr refugees also suffered from insufficient food, water, heat, sanitation, medicine, and doctors. The summer before Saddam Hussein was driven from power, a group of human rights activists from various European countries made an inspection of the camp. Their report described Khorramshahr as hardly more than a prison camp where children died regularly because of infectious diseases. The report stated that malaria, typhus, and dysentery were spreading among the refugees, while many were prohibited from attending the hospitals in the neighboring Iraqi city of Al Basrah. Three-quarters of the inhabitants of the camp were undernourished because of the insufficient rations, and the drinking water was contaminated. The ACIR had stolen what little the refugees had been given, and anyone who left the camp and was stopped at an Iraqi checkpoint risked prison and torture. Many disappeared without a trace.

  Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, after which the U.N. had taken responsibility for the camp, things had gotten immeasurably better. Khorramshahr had become tolerable because it can provide safety and the basic necessities. But it was a very long way from paradise. And it would never be home.

  * * *

  The young woman lay on her cot. Her eyes were closed, but she was not asleep and, as the darkness gave way to the early morning light, she opened her eyes and stared up.

  Lying quietly on her cot, when everything was silent and the shadows were full, when her mind was not yet occupied with all that she had to do that day, she was just beginning the battle over her emotions. The young woman realized it was a dangerous and unpredictable time of day.

  If she let her mind wander, who knew where it would go, especially after she had spent another anxious night fighting through the dark dream. She felt the thin blanket around her legs, tightly wrapped and damp, and remembered the dreadful feeling of waking in sweat.

  The dream didn’t change much. Sometimes it was raining, sometimes it was dry, sometimes it took place in the mountains, sometimes down by the stream, but other than the setting, the basics were the same: the same tree, the same flames, her father, the smell.

  So Azadeh guarded her thoughts carefully to keep the darkness at bay.

  She had learned it was just around the corner, always lurking. The darkness. The anger. A depression so deep that if she ever fell in, she knew she would sink down forever and never come up for air. It was always there, always simmering just below her smile. It was the first thing she thought of in the morning and the last thing at night. It was in the air she breathed, a secret part of her now.

  But she knew how to fight it. She had learned from her father how to keep the demons at bay. She had to keep the window closed and not let anything in. She couldn’t consider her situation or the sense of injustice would suck the life from her soul.

  So she forced herself to be happy. It was all she could do.

  She would keep on believing, keep on smiling, keep on trusting in something she couldn’t see.

  But sometimes she wondered what she would do if she saw him again. What would she do if she met the soldier who had assassinated her father? She could picture his face, his flat nose, greasy mustache, and dull, deadly eyes.

  Some mornings she prayed to forget him.

  Some mornings she prayed she never would.

  * * *

  Soon after arriving in Khorramshahr, Azadeh had fallen into a routine. The camp provided food and shelter but very little else, and her days had become very much the same: wake on her small cot with a thin, cotton blanket over her shoulders, stand in line to wash, stand in line for breakfast, stand in line for drinking water, stand in line to speak with a U.N. refugee worker, stand in line to glimpse a newspaper, stand in line for lunch, stand in line for another drink of water, stand in line, stand in line, stand in line . . . . Looking at the back of some stranger’s head defined her life now.

  Azadeh decided to write a letter to Omar, hoping against hope that he might be able to help her. As she stared at the single sheet of paper, she struggled to think of what she could say. Her mind drifted back to that horrible afternoon when the soldiers appeared at her house. She thought of Omar at their back door, coming to warn them, his hair wet with rain, the deep curls hanging in front of his eyes. He was sweating and panting heavily, his hot breath creating puffs of mist in the cold.

  “Take them!” her father had commanded Omar, pointing to the young Saudi prince and his terrified mother.

  Azadeh remembered Omar’s huge shoulders and thick legs propelling his weight up the rocky trail, holding the Saudi prince like a piece of limp baggage, the young boy appearing weightless under his powerful arm. The princess clung to Omar’s shoulder while holding one hand to her mouth. The mist gathered around quickly around them, and for a moment they looked like gray spirits moving through the orchard and across the wet grass. Omar had stopped and looked back, then turned and pushed them along, herding the princess and her son toward t
he rocky trail that led up the mountain. They were soon swallowed up in the mist, the sound of their footsteps quickly fading away.

  Sitting on her small cot, Azadeh wondered for the thousandth time if Omar had been able to keep his charge safe. If not, her letter didn’t matter, for Omar was certainly dead.

  But if he was all right, then where was he? Would he get her letter? Would it be safe to reply? She was just a young woman; she had no right to contact him in the first place. Such a great man as Omar, would he stoop so low as to answer her anyway?

  Then a dark thought occurred to her, leaving a cold pit in her stomach. Might the soldiers trace her letter to Khorramshahr and come looking for her?

  She thought a long moment, a cold shudder inside, then slid the pencil and blank sheet of paper into her small burlap sack and placed it under her cot.

  She considered for three days, then finally made her decision. That evening, when the sun was about to set and mourning doves were calling each other from the birch trees behind the last row of tents, she summoned her courage, feeling compelled to try. She took out the pencil and started writing, choosing her words carefully, the Persian script poetic and articulate from two thousand years of heritage.

  Master Omar Pasni Zehedan:

  It is difficult to consider the possibility that my words might not find you in good health or even find you at all, but I remember with such deep emotion that night that you came to our home and I felt a need to thank you for your sacrifice and what you were willing to do.

  My father, as you must know, has been called home to Our God. I think I knew my father as well as anyone on this earth and I can tell you without hesitation that he looked forward to your conversations on the old tower as much as anything in this life. It is my belief that he loved you, Master Zehedan, as he would have loved a brother had that gift been given to him, and I pray you will remember his soul in your prayers.

  I find myself in a situation which, though not home, is safe and tolerable. I am here in Khorramshahr. There is no school, and few young people my age, but it is safe and we eat, and are generally provided for, so I will not complain. What am I to do, I have not yet formulated, but I maintain my faith that, over time, Allah will light the way. I take one step into the darkness, and then wait for Allah light. Insha’allah. I trust in Allah’s will.