Sand Queen

by Helen Benedict

  Zaki, if only I could summon you home with this guitar the way Aladdin summoned the genie with his lamp. Come home, little brother, and be a child again. Come home, Papa, and take us in your arms. Come home and bring with you peace and an end to all this fear and suffering.

  [ KATE ]

  IT TAKES ME all the way till July—five months in this fucking dust bowl—to finally see a bird in Iraq. I spot it from my tower, but at first I assume it’s a chopper far in the distance because you can’t measure the size of anything against this hard, blank lid of a sky. A fly can look as big as a plane, a plane small as a fly. But when the thing comes spiraling down, I see it has wings like shaggy black sails and I get all excited because I think it’s an eagle.

  Then it comes closer and I notice its long skinny neck and hooked beak. It isn’t an eagle at all. It’s a vulture. And I know what it’s looking for.

  A lot of firefights have been going on in Basra the last few days, as well as over in Umm Qasr, this port only two or three miles away from us. We’ve been hearing the booms every night, close enough to shake us in our racks. Last night a bunch of us ran out of the tent to take a look and we saw the black sky flashing red and orange, and bullet tracers like strings of pearls shooting up to heaven. It was ridiculously beautiful for something that only means death. Plenty of Marines have been getting killed in those fights. Civilians too, of course.

  Vultures go for your soft parts first, you know that? Eyeballs and lips and genitals. I read that back in high school, in a book about some other fucked-up war. Then they burrow through your asshole and pull out your guts. War brings out the worst in animals, I guess, just like it does in humans. In the convoy here from Kuwait, we saw a dog eating a human hand. Just chewing on it, like it was a rubber toy. DJ was so disgusted he shot the dog’s head off.

  I wouldn’t mind shooting a dog myself, to tell the truth. Not that I have anything against dogs, unless they’re eating humans, of course, but I need some way to get out my frustrations. For two months now I’ve been stuck up in my tower like a scarecrow on a broomstick while those prisoners fling shit and spiders at me all day, and I’m sick to death of it. I feel like Hester Prynne in that book we read in high school, the girl who had to stand up on a pillory so the whole town could jeer and throw things at her ’cause she slept with a priest or something. Only I’m not noble and long-suffering, like her. I’m mad as a pit bull.

  It doesn’t help that I’ve been hearing some pretty scary rumors about the prisoners lately. Apparently, the ones on clean-up duty have been rifling through our garbage, finding our letters from home and copying down the addresses so they can send people to the U.S. to kill our families. I don’t know if it’s true, but if those maniac terrorists could take down the Twin Towers, why shouldn’t they be able to find our families and murder them too?

  Truth is, we never know what to believe around here, since nobody tells us anything. The Army is like a cross between high school and prison, all gossip and scuttlebutt and rules that make no sense. One day we’re told to shoot escaping detainees on sight, the next never to shoot the fuckers at all. And now that the Red Cross ladies have arrived, things are even more confusing. They’re always yelling at us about the Geneva Conventions and accusing us of doing all kinds of crap I know can’t be true. For example, they said four guys from the 320th MP Battalion beat up a prisoner, spread his legs and kicked his balls to mush. That has to be bullshit—our soldiers know better than that. And they made us stop using the steel containers off the backs of our trucks for solitary confinement because they said there’s no ventilation. But how else are you going to punish a prisoner with solitary when everyone’s in a fucking tent? The Red Cross is so busy trying to make us look bad that they never even acknowledge the good stuff we do. Like the fact that we feed the prisoners much better food than we get, that we built them showers and crappers way before we built our own, or give them blankets for free when we have to buy ours with our own frigging money. Nor do the Red Cross ladies give a shit about how those prisoners treat us—pooping in the sand, exposing themselves. Why do those guys act like that, anyhow? Is it just because they hate Americans? Or is it because their culture doesn’t give a damn about toilets and cleanliness and behaving like human beings instead of filthy monkeys? I have no idea. But it’s getting to the point that all I can think about is ways to take revenge. Poisoning their cigarettes. Burying toe poppers in their compounds. Shooting off their fingers, one by fucking one.

  At least the radio Tyler gave me distracts me a little. I found a Kuwaiti station that plays country and classic rock, which gives me something to listen to other than all the sick thoughts wheeling around in my head like that vulture wheeling in the sky. But then “Tears in Heaven” comes on this morning, that Eric Clapton song about when his fouryear-old son fell out a window and died, and it gets me real upset. It makes me think about April and how I’d never be able to keep going if anything like that happened to her. Never. And then it makes me realize how little kids like her belong in heaven, like the song says. But fuckups like me definitely don’t.

  “Hello? Excuse me?” It’s a prisoner standing under my tower, calling out to me in English while I’m listening to the song. I hate it when those bastards interrupt my private thoughts like this.

  “Get your ass away from me!” I point my rifle at him. “And no, you can’t have my fucking cigarettes.”

  The man shakes his head. “No, no. I only want to hear the song. It is a beautiful song, yes?”

  I peer down at him through the dust. He isn’t the starer or the jerk-off. He’s some other guy I don’t recognize, a decrepit old geezer in hajji pajamas. He speaks creepily good English, too, not that I give a shit. “Shut up and back off!” I raise my rifle again.

  He lifts his hands in a shrug, palms out. “I only wanted to ask if you would turn up the volume so we can hear the music.”

  “I said back the fuck off!”

  The man drops his arms and trudges away, head hanging. Who the hell does he think I am, the Prisoner Entertainment Committee?

  After that, though, the prisoners try to mess with my mind even more than usual. The starer shouts threats at me in broken English. “I kill your father! Fuck your mother in the ass!” That kind of thing. The jerk-off does every obscene thing he can think of. The other guys throw their usual snakes and scorpions. And so it goes on, hour after hour after frigging hour.

  By the end of the day I’m in such a pissy mood that I don’t feel like talking to anybody, so I lie on my rack reading Pride and Prejudice, which I brought here to keep myself from going brain-dead, and try to ignore everything around me: The rows of guys sprawled on their cots in their underwear, reading porn or playing video games, scratching their balls and belching. The usual group of gambling addicts in the corner, playing cards and dice. The sand-covered plywood floor that bends like a trampoline when you walk on it and shoots splinters into your feet. The sagging walls and ceiling, snapping in the wind and grating on your nerves. The stink of unwashed bodies, dirty socks, cooked air. The restlessness. The boredom. The heat.

  Yvette walks in about twenty minutes later, back from her mission up at Baquba after a three-day absence, and I’m so relieved to see her in one piece that I actually get up, tired as I am, and give her a hug. Every time she goes out on a convoy, I worry that she’ll never come back—it gnaws at my guts all the time. She’s so bony that hugging her feels like squeezing a bag of clothespins.

  “You don’t wanna hug me, I need me a shower bad,” she says, pulling away. She looks like hell. Lips cracked and eyes red and puffy, circled with blotchy dark patches. “I gotta relax a second.” She collapses onto her rack.

  I sit on Third Eye’s cot—she’s still out at the checkpoint—and look at Yvette with concern. “Was it hell out there? You get any sleep?”

  She shakes her head. “You didn’t hear what happened?”

  “No, what?”

  “A fuckin’ IED hit our lead truck, that’s
what. Killed Colonel Borden outright. Blew off both of Halberg’s legs and his right arm. I never seen so much blood.”

  She rubs her red eyes, hard. “I don’t know if the poor sucker’s gonna make it or not. And if he does, he’s only gonna have half a body.” Her voice trembles. “He’s got a new baby back home, Kate. He showed me her picture. How’s he gonna play with that baby now?”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. Wish He’d fuckin’ been there.”

  I glance up at Mom’s crucifix on my tent post, right above Fuzzy, who’s all shriveled now, his pale legs dry and curly. I don’t know which of them looks more useless.

  “You ready for that shower?” I say. “Might make you feel better. I’ll go with you.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” Yvette heaves herself off her cot and the two of us pick up our rifles and helmets and head outside.

  “You know somethin’?” she says after a few minutes, while we’re tramping through the sand. “I made myself a decision out there in that truck, waiting to see who was gonna die next.”

  I look over at her, expecting to hear her say that she’s changed her mind about the Army, that she’s going to quit the minute her time’s up and never look back. That’s what most of us are saying these days.

  “I made me a bargain with God,” she goes on. “I said, Lord, if You get me out of this war in one piece, I’ll go to school and train to be a medic. And then I’ll sign up to come back to this sorry-ass place so I can put poor bastards like Halberg back together. I mean it, Lord. You listenin’?” She looks over at me, her dry mouth set tight.

  “I guess He was, since you’re still here.” I smile at her. But at the same time I feel this sheet of ice drop through my chest. Because while Yvette was out there in all that danger, making her sweet-hearted deal with God, I was sitting up in my tower, snug as a bug, dreaming about shooting people’s fingers off.

  After we get back from the showers, I lie on my cot trying to sleep, but it’s hopeless. The prisoners are making an unbelievable racket, much worse than usual. Screaming, chanting, shrieking. But it isn’t only that. On my left, Mack’s fiddling with himself and grunting in the most disgusting way. On my right, I can sense Third Eye wide-awake, tense and miserable. And over beside her, tough little Yvette is lying with her face in her pillow, trying to muffle her sobs.

  The next morning, Yvette has to leave on an early convoy— no rest for the weary in war. But before she goes, I lift Mom’s crucifix off my tent post and hand it to her. “This is to keep you safe out there, okay babe?” What I really want to do is wrap my arms around her and make her stay with me.

  “You sure? I thought it was real important to you.”

  “Yeah, but you need it out there more than I do. I’m stuck in my tower all day. Come on, take it.”

  She hesitates. “I don’t think I should. It’s yours.”

  “No, I really want you to have it. Please? It’ll help me feel better when you’re out there. Do it for me, Yvette, okay?”

  She studies my face a second, her tired eyes serious. “Okay, Freckles. Thanks.” Pulling a length of string from her pocket, her expression solemn, she threads the crucifix on it like it’s a precious jewel, not just a piece of crappy white plastic. Then she hangs it around her neck, gives me a wave and leaves.

  What I don’t tell her is that I can’t stand the sight of that thing any longer. Can’t take Jesus looking down on me while I fill up with hate. Specially not Mom’s Jesus.

  After Yvette leaves, my team picks me up as usual and we drive to our compounds. “You all hear that ruckus the hajjis were making last night?” Jimmy asks us once I’m squeezed into the back next to Mosquito.

  “Yeah,” Creeley answers, steering us bumpily down the sandy road. “What the fuck was their problem, nothing good on TV?”

  Jimmy chuckles and shakes his head. “Henley said the whole fucking compound was out of control. Throwing rocks and hollering. One of our guys got hurt, couple prisoners got shot. So now we’re in deep shit with the Red Cross.” He turns to face me and Mosquito. “But it means Hajji’s real riled up today, so you two need to keep an extra eye on your compounds, okay?”

  “Got it, Sar’nt,” Mosquito says. “Moral: don’t shoot a fuckin’ sand nigger while the Red Cross is watching.”

  Sure enough, soon as I get to my tower I sense that the tension’s much worse than usual. The starer’s glaring at me like a snake, and the other prisoners keep bursting into angry shouts, although mostly aimed at each other. I scan the compound, doing a quick count. Forty-four of those suckers are out here today, two entire tents’ worth, and every last one of them is strung tight as a slingshot.

  Settling onto my chair, I lay my M-16 across my knees and stare down at the corral of sand between the tents and the wire. I know each grain of that sand by now, each pathetic tuft of dried shrub, each spot of rust on the wire’s razor blades. Our little world.

  The squabbling goes on a while. Sometimes it dies down for a few seconds, but then it flares up again worse than ever. The prisoners keep gathering in clumps, too, waving their arms and yelling, which I don’t like at all. I can feel the mood tightening around my skin like a rope. Gripping my rifle, I move to the edge of my hot seat.

  A second later, two of the prisoners start a furious argument. They thrust their faces up nose-to-nose, hollering and shoving and jabbing at each other, until a bunch of other guys come running up to join in. One punches another in the jaw and in a flash the whole damn pack of them erupts into a full-scale brawl.

  I jump to my feet and yell into my walkie-talkie, telling the MPs inside to get their asses out here and break up the fight, but the stupid piece of crap isn’t working, of course. All I get is static. I try yelling at the prisoners at the top of my voice, too, but that doesn’t do anything either—they can’t even hear me, they’re making such a rumpus. They’re out of control now. Noses bleeding. Guys rolling on the ground, punching and clawing, kicking in ribs, stamping on hands. I don’t know what to do except stand up here waving my arms like a retard. So I flick the safety off my weapon, point it up into the air. And fire.

  It’s only a warning shot but it stops them dead. All the prisoners duck and freeze, searching the sky for where the shot came from, looking scared and confused. And, well, I know this sounds bad, but they look so ridiculous for a moment, like a bunch of Chicken Littles trying to see the sky falling, that I burst out laughing.

  Wham! Something hits me on the cheek so hard it spins me half way around on my feet. I drop to my hands and knees, stunned. Am I shot? I don’t feel anything except a scary numbness on my face. I touch my cheek—blood! But before I have time to react, a hail of stones comes flying at me, pelting me hard all over, banging off my helmet like bullets. Where the hell are the other MPs when I need them? Where’s my team? Fucking bastards!

  I lift myself to my knees, the stones still coming at me, close my eyes. And fire again.

  But this time I don’t aim into the air. I aim right at the compound.

  Then I drop to the floor, cover my head with my arms. And wait.

  Silence. Not even the echo of my shot, since there’s nothing for it to echo against. No sound but the ringing of it in my own ears. No more stones. Nothing. I try to make myself open my eyes and look. But I’m too scared.

  Please God, don’t let me have hit anyone. Not even the jerk-off, not the starer, none of them. I don’t want a body on my conscience. I don’t want to get into trouble. Please.

  I wait and wait. The stillness is eerie. Nothing but the desert whistle and the crack of the shot still pulsing in my head.

  Finally, I force my eyes open. Stand up and look.

  No dead body. No pool of blood. Only a few MPs, who’ve appeared at last to see what the hell’s going on and are herding the prisoners into their tents.

  Ah, the power of a gun.

  Jimmy turns up a few minutes later, carrying a can of Coke. “You okay?” he calls from the ground. “I heard the ruckus. They got
the whole compound on lockdown now, giving them the third degree.” He climbs up the ladder. “Jesus, what the hell happened to you?”

  I’m sitting on the tower floor, rifle right next to me, trying to stem the bleeding on my cheek with my sleeve. “The fuckers hit me with a stone.”

  “Shit. You all right?” He crouches beside me.

  “Yeah. But where the hell was everybody? Why’d the MPs get here so late?”

  “They were dealing with some trouble on the other side. Sure you’re okay?”

  “Uh-huh. You think the hajjis’ll come back out soon?”

  “Not for a while. Here, let me take a look.” Jimmy puts down his Coke, takes off his shades and peers into my face. His breath smells of Coke and tobacco, but somehow it’s kind of pleasant. He lifts my jaw gently, turning my wounded cheek toward him. Nobody’s touched me like that for months.