Scorpion Sunset

by Catrin Collier

  Then he heard it. A loud inhuman groan, resounding eerily from the black void. Seconds later there was a harsh crack.

  ‘A whip?’ Greening asked.

  The lieutenant barked another command. The guards inched forward, reluctantly continuing their inspection. The lieutenant shouted again. A herd of camels charged out of the darkness and bore directly down on the Turks. The crack of a rifle shot was swiftly followed by another and another.

  Greening yelled, ‘Hit the ground, sir!’

  John flung himself on to the desert floor. Greening landed next to him with a thud. Gunshots continued to be fired overhead. John turned his head and found himself staring into Greening’s eyes.

  ‘Bedouin by the sound of them,’ Greening whispered as the assailants shouted to one another in Arabic. He raised his voice. ‘Williams, Roberts, Baker, Dira, Jones?’

  ‘Lying low, sir,’ Baker’s voice echoed over the ground.

  ‘Any lower and we’d be under the worms, sir,’ Jones added.

  ‘If there are any bloody worms in this gravel.’ Roberts added.

  ‘Enough, Roberts. Stay put the lot of you,’ Greening ordered.

  ‘We weren’t planning on going anywhere, sarge,’ Baker called back as more bullets whistled overhead.

  John heard camels snorting, and boots hitting the ground as the tribesmen dismounted. He raised his head again and saw a brown Bedouin hand extended towards him.

  ‘You can get up now, Major Mason. Your Turkish guards have all been killed.’

  The desert between Baghdad and Turkey

  July 1916

  Mitkhal and John sat beside the fire Dira had lit in front of John’s tent. The Bedouin who’d ridden in with Mitkhal were crouched around Dira’s cook fire, sharing their food and the Turkish brandy and raki they’d found in the Turks’ saddlebags with Sergeant Greening and John’s orderlies.

  ‘There’s no need for you to continue on to Turkey, John,’ Mitkhal advised. ‘We can get you and your men back through the Turkish lines to the Tigris and Basra.’

  ‘If my men want to go with you, I won’t stop them, but I won’t abandon our men who’ve been marched into Turkey. The way the Turks are treating them they’ll be in dire need of medical care.’

  ‘You’re the only doctor who can give it to them?’ Mitkhal questioned.

  ‘There’s a shortage of doctors. Townshend sent too many downstream with the sick.’

  ‘They say Townshend didn’t care what happened to his men. He was too busy being feted by the Turks at welcoming dinners. Apparently the Ottoman government has set aside a fine villa for him overlooking Constantinople.’

  ‘Who’s “they”?’

  ‘Officers and men of the Relief Force.’

  John nodded. He envied Mitkhal’s freedom which enabled him to roam from British, through Bedouin, to Turkish encampments at will. ‘Townshend might not have given a damn but I do. Have you seen many of our men in the desert?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In bad condition?’

  ‘The worst were bones, the ones who still breathed not much better. Your Indian troops, the ones that aren’t Muslim, are being treated very badly. We buried twenty yesterday, not ten miles from here. Your rank and file aren’t being cared for any better.’

  ‘Who was looking after them?’

  ‘No one and they had nothing. Everything they possessed had been stolen from them by their Turkish and Arab auxiliary guards. The sick die where they lie from starvation and dysentery.’

  ‘If I’d been there …’

  ‘You have food and medicines?’ Mitkhal interrupted.

  ‘Some.’

  Mitkhal glanced at the two mule carts. ‘Not enough for thousands of men.’

  ‘But enough for a few, and every life is precious,’ John countered.

  ‘Harry always said your greatest fault was putting every other man before yourself.’

  ‘You haven’t mentioned our officers.’

  ‘They are faring better. They have been given horses and mules to ride into Turkey to the prison camps.’

  John leaped to his feet at the sound of camels’ hooves.

  ‘The other half of our party.’ Mitkhal carried on smoking his cigarette.

  ‘How many men do you have with you?’

  ‘About a hundred, all Shalan’s men.’

  ‘Scavenging from the Turks?’

  ‘Doing what we can to protect our allies – the British,’ Mitkhal smiled. ‘But a hundred men spread between Baghdad and Turkey can’t accomplish a great deal against the Turks.’ He tossed his cigarette butt aside and went to meet the men who’d joined them. A thickset heavily built man ordered his camel to kneel, slid to the ground, and lifted a child from his saddle.

  ‘More Armenians?’ Mitkhal called.

  ‘We found three alive. But all are close to death.’

  ‘Get them into my tent.’ John looked at the young man holding the girl. ‘Farik, isn’t it?’

  ‘I am surprised you recognise me, sir.’

  ‘The time I spent in your master’s house in Basra just before the war was memorable and happy. How are you, Farik?’

  ‘As well as an Arab can be when his land is invaded by so many infidels, sir.’

  ‘With luck we’ll leave you in peace soon.’

  ‘I hope so, sir.’ He ducked under the tent flap and carried the child inside.

  John shouted for Dira who came running with water bottles.

  John followed Farik and examined the girl. ‘She’s just a baby, no more than three or four years old. Poor thing is skin and bone.’

  ‘The Turks don’t feed Armenians. Not even the babies.’ Mitkhal took a water bottle from Dira, opened it, and handed it to John.

  Farik left and returned carrying a middle-aged woman. She was unconscious and in the same deplorable starved and dehydrated state as the girl. Farik settled her on a blanket next to the child, before lifting a young woman from a man just outside the tent.

  ‘All three, even the child, have been raped, and brutally, sir,’ Farik informed John.

  ‘Then I’ll need to examine and stitch them. Dira, I’ll need catgut, needle, more water and gruel, and that cream the colonel gave us to put on sunburn. And bring more lamps,’ John added.

  Mitkhal entered the tent after John had examined the women. ‘Will they survive?’

  ‘Difficult to say.’ John moistened the woman’s lips. ‘They’re dehydrated like everyone and everything else in this damned country, even the camel thorn. They’re malnourished and exhausted, their skin is burned, and their feet like their genitals are cut to ribbons. The damage done to the child is significant, but there’s no sign of venereal disease, which frankly is a miracle after being raped by the Turks. I’m sick of seeing the signs in soldiers who’ve been used by the guards.’

  ‘We gave them sour camel milk. It was all we had,’ Farik said apologetically.

  ‘When did you find them?’

  ‘First light this morning. They were with around twenty others in a dried-up wadi about six miles from here.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘All dead,’ Farik said shortly.

  John continued to spoon feed the child water. Her eyes were closed but she was conscious enough to open her mouth and swallow. The two women were both comatose. Neither reacted when he wet their lips.

  ‘Where did they come from?’ John asked Mitkhal.

  The Arab shrugged. ‘Somewhere in Turkey.’

  ‘The Turks are sending their own women and children on death marches as well as British soldiers?’

  ‘They’re not Turks, they’re Armenians.’ Mitkhal said as if that were explanation enough.

  ‘I don’t understand. Armenian, Turk – both peoples live in Turkey, don’t they?’

  ‘Armenians are Christians. The Turks want a Muslim-only country. They’ve been killing them so they can steal their lands, farms, and houses.’

  ‘Openly?’ John was appalled at the idea of the slaught
er of an entire race.

  ‘Everyone who lives in Turkey can’t fail to see what’s happening,’ Mitkhal continued.

  ‘So they just march them into the desert …’

  ‘I’ve heard that first they order all the Armenian men and boys over the age of fourteen to report to the authorities in a hall, church, or the market square of their town or village. Then they take them somewhere away from the houses and roads and shoot them.’

  ‘What if the men and boys refuse to report?’

  ‘They kill the family of the men who object.’

  ‘How do you know?’ John was having difficulty believing what Mitkhal was telling him.

  ‘Furja’s father heard it from the American consul in Baghdad. Mr Brissel and the American missionaries in Turkey have been trying to help the Armenians as well as the British prisoners of war. Once the Armenian men and boys are out of the way and can’t protect their women and children, the Turks order the Armenian women and children to report. Then they march them into the desert. Some of the women have tried to give their children away, but the Turks shoot anyone who takes them – or in the case of American missionaries, deport them.’

  ‘The Turks shoot the women and children as well?’

  ‘No. Bullets cost money and there are so many of them it would prove expensive, so they just march them until they drop dead from hunger and thirst.’

  ‘All the Armenians?’ John sat back on his heels and stared at Mitkhal. He was still having difficulty comprehending the enormity of what Mitkhal was telling him. It didn’t help that the Arab was speaking in the same deadpan, heavily accented unemotional way, he used in normal conversation.

  ‘Not all, some of the pretty girls are kept by the Turkish officers, either for their own use or to sell as slaves. Furja bought two at the market last month because she felt sorry for them.’

  ‘How many people are we talking about?’ John asked.

  ‘The American Consul thinks that a million have already been killed. He also said the Americans, who run missions in the towns where the Armenians lived, believe it’s not the Turks who organised the killings but the Germans. It’s possible. They are allies.’

  John looked down at the small girl and the women.

  ‘The desert is covered with bones,’ Mitkhal said. ‘British troops, your Indian sepoys, Armenian men, women, and children, and Turks too, when your army gets the chance to kill them. It’s war.’

  ‘War should not be waged against women and children,’ John said feelingly.

  Mitkhal heard whispering outside and lifted the tent flap. He nodded to the person he’d spoken to and dropped the flap. ‘Can you do any more for the women?’

  ‘Not until they wake and they can describe their symptoms.’

  ‘Tomorrow you will move on?’

  John shook his head. ‘The women won’t be ready to move on for a few more days. That’s if they survive.’

  ‘Then we’ll stay with you, look around, see if we can find any more British soldiers for you to doctor. Can your orderly take over here for a while?’

  ‘I’d rather stay.’

  ‘I fetch you, sir, if one of the patients wakes,’ Dira offered.

  ‘I have a friend with me who would like to talk to you,’ Mitkhal said.

  ‘You are offering to translate?’ John asked.

  ‘If I need to.’

  John left the tent. A short, slight man was sitting beside the small tent Dira had erected for his use. The man turned towards him. John saw that he had an eye patch covering one eye. The man rose to his feet.

  ‘Harry …’

  John embraced his cousin.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The desert between Baghdad and Turkey

  July 1916

  John couldn’t look anywhere but at Harry. It was as though he were afraid if he glanced away from his cousin for a second Harry would disappear.

  ‘I’m real, John.’

  ‘Why didn’t you let me know you were alive?’

  ‘Because …’ Harry hesitated and when he spoke again his speech was slow, halting, heavily accented, and John realised his cousin’s lack of fluency was down to more than simply disuse. Harry was groping for words because English no longer came easily to his mind or his tongue. He was translating every word he said from Arabic. ‘Because I haven’t seen you.’

  ‘I was in Kut. We had radio contact …’

  ‘With Basra HQ, not with the Arabs. Harry Downe is dead, John. When the Turks tortured me they killed him. The survivor is the creation of the Political Office, Hasan Mahmoud. He was born in a paper file in an office,’ he held out his arms, ‘but now he lives.’

  John saw the bandaged stump at the end of Harry’s right arm. ‘How did you lose your hand?’

  ‘The Turks removed it for me. Quarter inch by quarter inch.’

  ‘Dear God, Ha –’

  ‘Hasan,’ Harry finished for him. ‘It was painful, but not as painful as losing my eye. They burned that out with a hot iron. There are other scars on my body, but the worst are branded on my mind.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘I hope you can’t. I wouldn’t wish anyone to live through that pain, not even in imagination. There is no need to look at me like that, John. The hurt is over. Now it seems like a bad dream. Unfortunately one I still occasionally relive in my nightmares.’

  ‘How did you escape?’

  ‘I didn’t. When the Turks believed they’d killed me they handed me to one of their Arab auxiliaries to bury. The auxiliary was Mitkhal. He’d followed me into the camp and waited his chance to get me out. It was Harry Downe’s bad luck that he was too far gone to be rescued.’

  ‘But now you know who you are …’

  Harry shook his head and laughed. A sound that was all the more poignant because John thought he’d never hear it again. ‘Harry Downe is dead and will remain dead, John.’

  ‘The army wouldn’t expect you to serve again. With your injuries you’d be invalided out and returned to England. At the moment your parents, Michael, and Georgie all believe you to be dead.’

  ‘Michael and Georgie have seen me.’

  ‘You talked to them?’

  Harry shook his head. ‘I was boarding a boat with Mitkhal, Shalan, and Furja in Basra just after Kut fell. Michael and Georgie were watching from a window in Abdul’s. I know they recognised me.’

  ‘They didn’t try to stop you.’

  ‘There was no time. They saw me as our boat was casting off.’

  ‘You’ll look for them when the war is over?’

  ‘I’ll write to them and my parents and ask them to try to understand why I’ve chosen to live the way I have.’

  ‘Understand? I don’t understand why you’re walking away from everything and everyone you’ve ever known, and you’re here in person to explain it to me. Is it Furja and the children, because you could …’ John faltered.

  ‘Take them to Clyneswood? Can you imagine the expression on my parents’ faces if the parlour maid ushered me and my family into the drawing room? Especially if we were all wearing Arab robes.’

  ‘I remember you telling me when you married Furja that you promised Ibn Shalan you’d never take her to live among Europeans.’

  ‘It’s not just Furja and the children, although they mean more to me than anything in this world. I’m not sacrificing anything to be Bedouin, John. Sometimes think I was born Arab. That’s why I was always in trouble when I was growing up. I find it easier to live with the tribe, than to live with English people – particularly those in the school we attended. The tribe forgive me my faults.’

  He laughed softly again. ‘Most of the time I even manage to keep the tribe’s rules, something I never did when I was living with my father, or after I took a commission in the army. And, yes, I promised Furja and her father that I would remain with the tribe and bring up my children respecting their ways, but being Bedouin and being accepted by the tribe – it feels as though I’ve come home.’
r />   ‘But you can’t turn your back on your family,’ John protested.

  ‘My old family. I already have, John. Even if they don’t understand why I’ve chosen to live as Arab when they find out what I’ve done, I hope they will in time.’

  ‘I’m trying to understand. But …’ John fought a tide of emotion welling inside him. ‘I can’t bear the thought of losing you.’

  ‘You’ll never lose me, John. You, me, and Charles. What we shared – the brutality of English public school – all those nights of drinking and fun – the complete insanity of desert warfare – they’ll stay with us forever.’

  ‘It is a stupid, meaningless war,’ John agreed.

  ‘First it was “secure the oilfields”. That at least I could understand, pure greed on Churchill’s part: he didn’t want to pay for oil to fuel our ships. Then it was “let’s order Force D to go upstream and take Baghdad because the news from the Western Front isn’t good and civilians need something morale boosting to read in the morning newspapers while they consume their kippers and boiled eggs.” And now?’ he stared at John through his remaining eye. ‘A lot of good men have starved to death trying to hold on to Kut, a town that had little strategic value other than as a buffer to Baghdad. As if that isn’t enough, those men are now being ground into bones to carpet the floor of a desert they should never have been sent to in the first place.’

  ‘I’ll not argue with you. Not while I spend most of my time easing men out of pain and life. When you write to your parents and Michael and Georgie, will you write to Charles?’

  ‘I’d rather you told him I was alive. When the war’s over you might enjoy passing on some good news. That’s if Charles considers the existence of Hasan Mahmoud good news.’ Harry laughed. ‘I loved him dearly but he can be a stuffed shirt.’

  The ‘loved’ wasn’t lost on John. Harry’s pronouncement had brought the realisation that the Harry he knew had gone forever and the man sitting beside him really was someone else.

  ‘What are you doing for money? You must be owed a fortune in back pay, and if you’re determined to keep Harry Downe dead, his widow is entitled to a pension.’