Sand Queen

by Helen Benedict

  When we grew older, Zaki would tear off for a game of soccer with the village boys while I stayed behind in the kitchen to help Granny cook and listen to more of her stories. I delighted in these times alone with her, rolling those delicious date balls in sesame seeds or sugar while she regaled me with the ancient tales of her village: naughty children eaten by demons, unfaithful husbands cuckolded by traveling merchants, genies rising out of earthenware pots to grant a wish.

  I remember once Zaki was feeding a newborn goat just as Granny called us in to supper. He tucked the kid inside his shirt, where it fell asleep, lulled by his warmth, and came in. The kid slept unnoticed through most of the meal, but finally awoke and began to struggle and kick its tiny hooves. We all stared, but Granny did not turn a hair. She regarded the strange jumping and poking inside my brother’s shirt and said calmly, “Zaki, it appears you have eaten too much.”

  All that is gone now. The goats slaughtered for their meat. The fruit trees shredded by American bombs. The boys Zaki played with imprisoned, exiled or killed. And Granny Maryam is too unhappy to joke or tell stories. Just as Mama and I are too unhappy to listen.

  [ KATE ]

  WHEN I GET back from my run with Yvette and Third Eye, Mack’s still asleep. He always grabs every last second of shut-eye he can, usually sacrificing a wash to do it—no doubt why he stinks so bad—but it’s just what we want right now. Yvette winks at us, puts her finger to her lips and quietly fishes out some dental floss from her duffle bag, gesturing at us to get ours. Then, quick as a flash, she wraps the floss around Mack’s legs, tying them down to his cot, while we do the same to his arms, stomach and chest—he sleeps like the dead. The guys in the tent gather around silently, grinning. In no time at all, ol’ Macktruck is tied up tight as a pork roll.

  The next thing Yvette does is pure genius. She points her rifle at an open flap in the tent, screams “Attack!” And fires.

  Mack’s eyes fly open in terror and he tries to jump up. But he can’t, of course. The look on his face! He struggles for a few minutes in such a panic I almost feel sorry for him. Almost. The rest of us fall around, laughing.

  Once the ruckus has died down and we’ve left the guys to untie Mack, which they don’t do till he’s seriously late for his shift, we females douse off our running sweat with bottled water, ignoring the shouts of “Wet T-shirt time!” and take out our T-Rats. Morning is the only time I can really chow down, before the heat and my nerves get too bad—if you can call T-Rations chow. Tubes of green eggs that shake like a fat lady’s flab, mushes of unidentifiable—well, mush. I shovel it all in anyway, needing the strength. Then we’re off to our squads, and that’s the last I’ll see of another female till tonight—an American female, that is.

  By the time my team arrives at the checkpoint, not only are the usual civilians already there, but I see that girl Naema right away, too. I’m heading over to say hi when Kormick barks, “Brady!” At least he didn’t call me Tits or Pinkass.

  I turn and trail back to him, the moondust puffing around my boots like talcum powder, wondering what crap he’s going to load on me now.

  “Take this. See if it calms the hajjis down.” He shoves a piece of paper at me, his jaw hard under the blank of his sunglasses. “Now move.”

  I look at the paper he’s given me: a hand-scrawled column of about fifty names. That’s it, the promised list? Fuck.

  When I get up to the wire, Naema greets me with a cool look. She’s standing in front of the crowd this time; I guess the people recognize her as their interpreter now. Her head’s wrapped in a lavender headscarf that doesn’t look as good on her as the blue one did. It turns her skin sallow and makes the circles under her eyes look like bruises. Or maybe she’s just too worried to sleep. I would be, if it was my dad and brother in here.

  “Salaam aleikum,” I say again, and try once more to shake her hand.

  She avoids it as coldly as ever, but at least she returns my greeting this time. “Aleikum salaam.”

  We’re wishing each other peace, which, under the circumstances, is pretty ironic.

  “They’ve given me a list of the prisoners today,” I tell her. “Or some of them.”

  Her face brightens up at that. “May I see?” She holds out her hand. I’m not sure it’s protocol to actually give her the paper, so I look over my shoulder to see who’s watching. DJ’s my battle buddy this morning and he’s standing nearby, unlike zitface Rickman. I appreciate somebody doing his job for a change, but at the same time I wish he’d back off. He looks so fierce with his M-16 held at the ready, his face hidden under his Kevlar helmet and shades. He looks like the fucking Terminator.

  “Give it to me!” Naema snaps, and before I know what’s what, she’s snatched the list from my hand. “Yes, Zaki is here!” she says, running her eyes over it. “Thank God! But my father, where is his name? I cannot see it.”

  “It’s only a partial list,” I answer quickly. “More’s coming later.” The crowd’s pressing around us again, making me jumpy as a rabbit. I hope that woman with the stinky baby doesn’t show up again. “Read it out quick,” I say. “And tell them to back off.”

  Naema holds up the list till the people quiet down. Then she reads all the names on it aloud.

  Right away some people cry out, while others hang their heads and sob. I’m surrounded by suffering faces so worn and sunbaked and sad that the sight of them makes something crack inside of me. A certainty, perhaps, a sureness that I’m doing the right thing—I don’t know. Whatever the hell it is, I feel it break.

  The people are clustering around Naema now, shouting out questions like she’s the authority here, not me, which I don’t appreciate at all. “They are asking what will happen to the men you have in here,” she calls to me over the din.

  “We have to process them,” I shout back.

  She gives me a blank look.

  “I mean they’ve got to be questioned and—I’m sure the ones who are innocent will be freed.” What bullshit. I have no fucking idea what we’re going to do with the thousands of prisoners we’ve taken in. I don’t think anybody knows. But if they do, they sure as hell aren’t telling me.

  “And the boys? What about the children you have locked up in here like animals?”

  “Same thing,” I reply.

  Naema unhooks herself from the clutching hands and makes her way back to me. “Kate—you said that is your name, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kate, I was at Medical College before the war sent me here. I am not stupid. You must not lie to me. I ask you again: What are you going to do with our men?”

  “I’m not lying! I’m just telling you what they told me! I’m a junior enlisted. You know what that means? It means they tell me nothing, I know nothing. I’ve got no power to help you.”

  “Yes, this is true. You are nothing,” she says calmly.

  I know that should make me mad, but all I feel is tired. “Look, the only thing I can do is ask my higher-ups. They might not tell me anything, but I can try.”

  “And why should I believe you will do this?”

  “Because I didn’t make this war.”

  What the hell made me say that? I look around quickly, but if DJ heard he doesn’t let on. I could be court-martialed and thrown in the brig my whole goddamn life for saying something like that to an Iraqi.

  Naema gazes at me with her strange green-gold eyes. “You look very young to be a soldier,” she says then.

  That surprises me. “Well, I’m nineteen. But a lot of us are young.”

  “But why are you a soldier? Why, as a woman, did you choose such a path? Soldiers take life. Women give life.”

  I can’t answer that. I don’t even know what to think of it. “In my country, a lot of people have to be soldiers to pay to go to college,” I say lamely. “Women and men. And we want to serve our country, too, you know? Um, did you say you’re in medical school?”

  “I am. In my fourth year.”

  “Wow, I didn’t
know you could do that here.” It’s true. I thought Iraqi girls weren’t allowed to do anything except get married.

  Naema looks almost amused. The whole time we’ve been talking, she’s been standing tall and proud, her back straight, her gaze clear and hard. I feel like a hunchback next to her, dirty and sandy and loaded down with my sixty pounds of soldier’s gear.

  “Do you know nothing of my country?” she says then. “I come from Baghdad. My father is a professor of engineering and a poet, my mother is an ophthalmologist—or they were until your war took away their jobs. What do you think, that we are all goatherds?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. Sorry.” I try on a grin, but it only makes me feel more of an idiot than ever. “My mother’s in medicine, too,” I add, groping for some way to make this conversation go better. “Well, she’s a medical secretary, anyhow. She works for an obstetrician. And my dad’s a sheriff. You know, a policeman?”

  “I see.”

  What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  “You know what my brother, Zaki, wants to be?” Naema says then, her voice a little more gentle. “He wants to be a singer, like your Bruce Springsteen. He plays his guitar day and night. It drives us all crazy.”

  Iraqis know about The Boss? I try to hide my astonishment. “My fiancé plays guitar too,” I say. And for a second there, we almost smile at each other.

  “Brady, Sar’nt just radioed,” DJ calls out, startling me. “Says we gotta get these hajjis to leave.” I wish he wouldn’t use that word in front of Naema. “He says this is a security risk.” DJ raises his rifle in the air and waves it around, trying to shoo the locals away. I wish he wouldn’t do that, either.

  Most of the civilians duck and back off. But a few just stand there looking puzzled.

  “DJ, quit that!” I say quickly. “You’re gonna cause a panic. This girl here speaks perfect English. She can tell them to go, okay?”

  DJ looks at Naema curiously, but she ignores him, keeping her eyes on me. “You will have another list soon?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I’m sure we will. Tell these people they can come back tomorrow, but they’ve got to leave now.”

  She hesitates, frowning, like she wants to ask more. But DJ’s glaring at her now with both hands on his rifle, so she steps away and says something to an old man in front of her. He repeats it to the people behind him, and soon a murmur ripples over the crowd. One by one, they turn and plod away across the desert, Naema with them.

  “See you tomorrow!” I call after her. She doesn’t respond.

  “Don’t say ‘hajji’ in front of them like that,” I say to DJ once she’s gone. “It’s not respectful.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “And I suppose it was respectful when those motherfuckers blew up Jones and Harman last week? Jesus Christ, Brady, whose fuckin’ side are you on?”

  After Naema and the other civilians leave, things stay quiet for the next hour or so. Quiet enough, at least, to let me block out the sandpit and all the shit in it and float back into my memories. Tyler. Camping. The mountains. Sex. Only one car drives up the whole time, the usual rattletrap, this one driven by a little old man with no passengers. He speaks enough English to tell us that he owns a jewelry store in Basra and is trying to get to his family over the border in Kuwait. We search his car and find nothing but a bag of cheap silver rings, then send him on his way, although none of us thinks he has any more chance of getting over the border than we have of waking up in Oz.

  After that, I stare out at spindly little Marvin, trying to trick myself into thinking that this eyeball-shriveling heat is nothing but a hot summer’s day back at home. It’s hard to believe in this hellhole, but I used to actually love the summers. Being alone in the fields behind our house. Flowers. Cows. Thoughts. Lying in the grass watching birds or reading a book.

  The best summer of my life, though, was my first one with Tyler, the one after eleventh grade. He wasn’t any more experienced than me at being a couple, so we were high on everything about it. Waking up in the morning and remembering there was no school, but that we didn’t have to feel lonely anyway because we had each other. Lying under the warm stars, telling each other our secrets. Having a best friend you could kiss. Losing our virginity together in a field on a steamy July night full of fireflies and mosquitoes.

  I remember one time we went down to Myosotis Lake to watch the sunset with a bottle of tequila, because that was the most romantic thing to do around Willowglen. We sat on top of a picnic table, drinking and watching the gulls fly over the lake. The sun was already low in the sky, the air still and windless, so the water lay flat and silent as a sheet of silver, reflecting the rose and salmon pinks of the sunset without even a ripple. Then we heard a splash and a strange munching sound. “Let’s go look,” Tyler mouthed, and he put down the tequila bottle and slid off the table.

  We crept toward the noise, which was coming from a bank of weeds by the water. And there, under a fallen willow, we saw a beaver chomping on a branch like a hungry old man gobbling his dinner. We watched a long time, trying not to make a sound because beaver are shy. But the critter was slurping so greedily it made me giggle. Then Tyler caught the giggles too and we both spluttered into laughter, scaring the beaver into the water with a loud slap of his tail—loud as my M-16. In an instant he was gone.

  We watched the glassy surface above him break into ripples, spreading its watery sunset into wider and wider circles. “Let’s go in with him,” Tyler whispered, and he turned and kissed me, peeling off my shorts, then my shirt and underwear, till I felt the warm, silky air of the summer night kissing me just like he was. He took off his clothes, too, and holding hands we stepped into the brilliant pink water and slid out after the beaver.

  We swam quiet as we could for a while, just listening to the night sounds: peepers echoing in the woods, an owl hooting. The sky darkened, turning the water from pink to purple. The fat moon stretched its shadows across the banks. Without needing to speak, we swam up to each other and Tyler pulled me to him, skin warm and satiny. And then there was no difference between his flesh and mine, our bodies and the lake, our breath and the night.

  “Hey, Freckles.”

  I blink and look around. It’s DJ. “I been calling you for five minutes. You asleep on your feet or something?”

  “What is it?”

  “Sar’nt wants to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “Fuck if I know. He says to go over there now.”

  “You coming?” I ask hopefully.

  “Nope. I gotta stay here.”

  “Sure?”

  DJ nods. He’s seen the way Kormick’s been picking on me lately—he understands. “I’m sorry, Freckles. Wish I could, but you know.”

  “Yeah, okay. Damn.”

  Kormick’s standing outside this time, his chest puffed out and his chin cocked high. “Brady, new orders have come down,” he barks soon as I come up to him. “You and Teach are rotating to guard duty—you’ll be assigned to a new team. We’re bringing in Third Eye to search the hajji bitches instead.”

  “Oh. All right.” I don’t bother to ask why we’re being switched like this because there never seems to be a reason for anything in the Army, although I suspect it might be ’cause they don’t like me getting friendly with Naema. But this is good news for me. It means I still get to work with Jimmy Donnell, the only truly nice guy in my squad, and it gets me away from two dickwits at once, Kormick and Boner.

  “So this is your final day with us, Brady,” Kormick goes on. “I’m sure you’re heartbroken. Come in here, I got more instructions.”

  Something in his tone doesn’t sound right. A shiver runs through me.

  “I need to get back,” I say quickly and take a step away from him. “DJ’s alone out there. Can’t leave my battle buddy by himself, right, Sar’nt?” I try on a grin.

  But Kormick isn’t having any of it. “Didn’t you hear me, soldier? I said come with me.” His jaw’s jutting out and his teeth are cle
nched, but I can’t see his eyes because they’re hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. Sand glitters in the blond stubble on his perfect chin. He’s always on edge, but I’ve never seen him on edge as this.

  I look around to see who else is nearby. Boner’s standing guard by the shack door, as usual, staring into space, flies buzzing around his numbskull head. The rest of my squad are out by the checkpoint.

  “I’m real sorry, Sergeant, but I promised DJ I’d be right back,” I say then, my nerves tightening. “I’ll check in with you later.” I turn to get out of there but Kormick grabs my arm and yanks me around to face him.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going? Didn’t anybody tell you back in soldier school that you gotta do what your sergeant says, Pinkass? Huh?” And still holding my arm, he drags me toward the shack.

  Now I’m really scared. Again, I look over my shoulder for help, but Jimmy and Rickman are still facing away from me and DJ’s searching a truck out on the road. None of them can see me. None of them can hear me, either.

  Kormick pulls me up to the shack, making me stumble. “Boner!” he barks.

  Boner snaps out of his trance with a start. When he sees Kormick gripping my arm with that weird clench to his jaw, he looks scared, too.

  “Want a little fun?” Kormick says to him.

  “What?”

  “Boner!” Kormick’s even angrier now. “Come on, you know what I mean. Do it!”

  “Uh, okay, Sar’nt. If you say so.”

  Boner steps up to me, looking embarrassed, but he reaches out anyway, aiming right at my boob. But just before he touches me, I hear this roaring sound in my head and the next thing I know I’ve wrenched my arm out of Kormick’s grip and I’m pointing my rifle right at his crotch. “Touch me and I’ll shoot your fucking balls off!” I shout.