by David Hearne
He took another sip of arrack and washed it over his stained teeth. For a few long seconds, he sat quietly looking out the window at the barefoot children running alongside the noisy convoy.
“Iblis will take advantage of the confusion and death that surrounds the Iraqi people and his evil will embrace them like the swirling sands of a sandstorm.”
“What is Iblis?” Kat asked.
“Iblis is the name Islam gives to the devil. Iblis will tempt the spiritually weak and many will follow his directions and more blood will flow. Insanity will prevail with Sunni’s killing Shiites and Shiites killing Sunni’s.”
Katherine took one more sip of arrack and closed her eyes again, but the scene stayed vivid in her mind. She had come to realize that war was a nightmare kingdom deep in the darkest forest of man’s insanity. Katherine had experienced the smell of cordite, blood and the stench of rotting flesh riding upon God’s scorching breeze. Here was a land where trees and grass shriveled and died from man’s evil leaving withered trunks with gnarled branches veiled in gray mist. A dominion whose streams became rivulets of slime, shit and blood winding through a netherworld that stretches out its tentacles to all of humanity. This was Katherine’s awakening that war is the collision of our world with another that moves in dark shadows.
This savagery was not a horror movie, it was real life, nor was its God’s will that we slaughtered one another. Something else sparked this. Something that mutates the soul and consciousness to the point where the spread of misery and death is as fulfilling as the rapture of one’s first love. Kindness and mercy becomes Evil’s abomination. This evil spirit spreads like some loathsome cancer ravenous for new souls and minds. Its sacrament is spilled blood of the living. Katherine knew from her Catholic upbringing that only one demonic spirit strives for the death of all mankind and that is Sorat who is more destructive than Satan or Lucifer. In his world all that once was held sacred falls like dust as Hell metamorphoses into a heaven of darkness here on earth. Blood and gore become the nourishment of Sorat’s being. A part of her fought to believe that evil is an entity that has substance or is real, but then why does man kill one another? It was a question she could not answer.
The next day Kat found herself heading north of An Nasiriyah on Route 7 shrouded by orange dust. Gale force winds picked up the rusty dirt and pummeled anything in its path. The ferocity of the swirling sand would make your face and hands tingle or often sting from its impact. The whole train of vehicles was blanketed in thick orange dust that made it nearly impossible to see. The reduced visibility forced the convoy to move at what seemed like a snail’s pace. Occasionally, the dust thinned and they got a glimpse of reality. But what they saw didn’t seem real. Corpses along the desert road, flashes of light as radio propelled grenades sparked in the distance, burned out vehicles and the fleeting sketch of an animal or person silhouetted against the curtain of orange.
As the storm approached, the swirling orange sky darkened until blackness swallowed everything.
Kat could tell that some of the Marines felt fear for the first time in the campaign. It was probably the perception that God had now joined forces with the Iraqis plunging day into total darkness with a howling sandstorm of biblical proportions. The slow going of the convoy had given these Marines more time to contemplate their tenuous situation. Their defenses were seriously affected by the storm, and they felt more vulnerable to attacks from the elite Republican Guard and Iraqi irregulars. The convoy started receiving 122 mm Katyusha rockets and heavy artillery, but the Iraqis overlooked that the marines counter battery radar, U-2, and EP-3 aircraft with guided munitions system were unhampered by the storm. The unit Kat was with quickly targeted the Iraqi’s positions and obliterated them.
As they rumbled through one small village, a young man stepped out from behind a tree and leveled a weapon at the Convoy. Before anyone could respond, a burst of light accompanied by a loud boom signaled a RPG’s blast. A building behind the convoy exploded from its impact and several Marines leapt down from their Amtracs to engage the gunman. Shots rained down from Iraqi gunmen hiding behind the rooftop parapets of cement buildings lining the road. The pandemonium of gunfire and explosions intensified, as more Marines joined their comrades in battle. Then incredibly the buildings, rifle flashes and explosions faded from view as the storm worsened leaving only the cacophony of noises signifying the battle. For a short while more, shots were fired blindly until a sergeant ordered his crew to cease-fire and move out. As they loaded into their vehicles, AK-47 rounds continued to whiz overhead and ricocheted off the cement walls, but the Iraqis were also firing blindly.
There were rumors that up to five hundred plain-clothed Fedayeens were mingling with the townspeople in Ash Shatrah and preparing to attack the convoy. But the raging storm that once had disturbed the marines now seemed to be a neutral menace making combat equally as difficult for either side. They were battling a common enemy, as well as each other.
The weather deteriorated further with strong winds blowing in from changing directions. Rain mingled with the dust, creating thick mud that stuck to anything it touched. Men took shifts, standing outside to man their observation posts and then retreating into their vehicles to steal a moment of warmth and reprieve from the incessant wind. Weariness plagued many marines as they shivered in the cold. A few still wondered what advantages if any the Fedayeen could gain from this storm. This was their backyard and surely they were more experienced in how to utilize a sandstorm to their advantage. The Fedayeen were thick-skinned and better able to brave the nasty weather, a Marine claim. Kat couldn’t help but grin, when she heard another Marine reply, “They may have thick skin, but ours is thicker. We’re Marines Goddamn it!”
Along with the winds of the dust storm came the clattering of helicopter blades. Two CH-46s swooped down to carry off the wounded. The evacuees were not only Marines, but also Iraqi civilians and enemy combatants. It amazed Kat that this sanity and humanity were displayed in the hell of war. Outside, Marines joined up with the evacuation crew to load the wounded into the helicopters.
As the convoy crawled further north, a Humvee pulled over to inspect a wrecked car burning on the side of the road. A line of bullet holes stretched across the driver’s door. Dangling from its shattered front windows were bloodied bodies, unmistakably dead. One corpse was completely missing its head with the black hole of the trachea leering out from between the shoulders like an eye. A coating of sand plastered their bloodied clothes and the vehicle’s roof. The winds had been very active indicating the killings were recent or the vehicle would have been coated with inches of sand. Kat had never seen anything as gruesome so close. She averted her eyes, but the image floated about in her mind. She violently shook her head, but the vision remained accompanied by an ominous stillness that swallowed all sounds except the light howling of the wind and sand.
The marines exited their Humvee and cautiously approached the smoking vehicle. Something important or someone breathing was still in it. Whatever sat inside the car was apparently more horrific than even the corpses hanging from its windows. Because as the marines reached it, one of them started gagging and then stooped over vomiting. Kat could taste the bile in the back of her throat as the sounds of him gagging filled the silence. A tall marine of Chinese heritage quickly shattered the vehicle’s rear window with a jack handle. Just then sand swirled around the vehicle, veiling the activity momentarily. When it subsided, the Marine was holding in his arms a little girl, dressed in white with the severed head of a woman taped to her torso. He was yelling to another marine to cut the tape securing the head to her body. The second marine tried to cut the tape, but the girl struggled to escape them and shrieked in terror.
Kat could not sit as a spectator any longer in the Humvee. The girl’s screams and shrieks were tearing her heart out. Kat’s eyes were glazed with tears, and she grabbed Bakr’s hand and said, “Please come with me and tell that little girl that we are here to help her.”
Kat sort of
skipped with her leg in the brace over to the side of the car and asked Bakr to tell the girl that they wanted to help her. Bakr tried to comfort the girl, but her shrieks were so loud that she probably could not hear what he was saying. Bakr told Katherine that the girl was saying, “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. I want to live. Allah please don’t let them kill me.”
Katherine tried to get closer to the girl without getting kicked by her flaying legs. She was motioning to the girl with her hands and her mouth to relax and Bakr was talking to her in Arabic trying to comfort her. Suddenly, the severed head broke loose from the tape and fell to the ground. It rocked back and forth between the two marines helping the girl. Katherine yelled at them, “Move her away from the head. She is terrified. Move her away.” Just then, the girl kicked one marine in the face making him lose his grip. She fell from his arms and sprinted away screaming something in Arabic. She headed toward some houses set back off of the road trailed by the four marines closing in on her. Then it came to an end, as a single shot cracked in the distance and the girl’s head burst open with blood and brains spraying out of the back as she skidded to a stop on her face. The deadly silence swept back again as everything just stopped. Katherine stood transfixed, as the girl just laid there with a tiny fountain of blood barely visible spilling her life in to the dirt. Katherine’s eyes narrowed their arc of vision until only the girl’s body was visible. She started to hobble to where the girl was laying, but immediately tripped over rubble. Paul grabbed her as she teetered and his strong arms steadied her. He pulled her upright and yelled to her over the staccato of the marines’ firing machine guns to cover their retreat.
“It’s over Katherine. She is dead and we must get out of here immediately. The next bullet might be for you or for me.” Katherine realized Paul was right, that there was nothing she could do for the girl now. “Let me help you back to the Humvee.” Paul added. Bakr appeared at her side and put his arm around her also and the two of them helped her back to the Humvee. The four marines that had tried to save the girl cautiously retreated back to their vehicle while scanning the terrain for any sign of the sniper. No gun smoke or movement could be seen in the houses lining the road, but somewhere within them the girl’s murderer hid.
In the Humvee, Kat still shaken asked Bakr, “Why did they do this to the girl? Why were they so cruel to her?
Bakr looked at Katherine. He saw the anger, confusion and pain in her eyes. He wanted to comfort her, but what could he say that could make her understand the chasm between the Sunnis and the Shiites. “Katherine some Sunnis believe that Shiites are infidels, and that Allah desires them killed. Bakr’s disgust was evident and in his lap his large hands were clenched into fists. Many Mullahs actually claim ‘He who kills even one unbeliever…shall be rewarded by Allah.’”
“So this is Sunni killing Shiite? I still do not understand why they would be so cruel to even a little girl.” Katherine replied.
“The subject is very unpalatable to me Katherine, but I will tell you what I think. Many of my Muslim brothers have been surrounded by this darkness of death, hate and revenge for so long that when they kill an unbeliever their gloom is brightened by the agony they inflict on their victim. The kaafir’s life is now more miserable than theirs and that is uplifting to them even euphoric. They are convinced that this bloodletting pleases Allah and endears them to him.”
The Iranians have a saying ‘Saints fly only in the eyes of their disciples.’ In America, those ‘saints’ would be called sociopaths and locked in institutions, here they are called martyrs. These bandits of life feel no more sympathy slicing open the throat of a child or woman than squashing a roach. They are void of soul.”
There was a disturbing moment of silence and Katherine searched for something to say to Bakr, but he broke the silence and continued. “I use to detest that Irish politician Connor Cruise O’Brian because he said, ‘A Westerner who claims to admire Muslim society, while still adhering to Western values, is either a hypocrite or an ignoramus, or a bit of both … Arab and Muslim society is sick, and has been sick for a long time.’ When I see what we do to each other in the name of Islam, I can understand why O’Brian said that.”
“As Muslims we must rid ourselves of those abominations that destroy Islam and turn it into a religion of death.”
“War is horror, but it is even worse when people kill others because they are told that their God wants them to. Muslims are taught, ‘Doubt is the key to knowledge,’ but they fear to question these calls to kill. Why would a God, the only God need mere mortals to do His killings?”
“Some have told me that at first their mind goes in circles thinking and rethinking their killing of a kaafir. They may have killed at first out of fear of Allah, but soon it becomes their addiction. While you will have insomnia from this and awake from sleep touched by her spirit, her killers will be immune from her visitations because they no longer serve Allah, but instead Iblis. The Prophet said that Allah does not allow those to enter Paradise until they believe, and you cannot believe until you love one another.”
On the dawn of March 27, 2003, a bright sun bleached away the red haze that had hidden the sky for the previous days. Kat accompanied by Bakr and Paul sat at the back of the amtrak shaded by a canvas canopy. They were sipping coffee and discussing the tactical situation that had developed. Nearby, Colonel Dowdy stood with some of his staff looking over a map in a plastic sleeve. He looked bleary-eyed and weary. The conflict and his unit’s casualties bothered him immensely. Kat wondered how a commander diminishes the feeling of guilt when their decisions or indecision bring death to their followers. She wondered how President Kennedy felt when his vacillation on the promised support for the bay of pig invasion into Cuba resulted in 68 killed on the beaches and over a thousand captured by the Castro forces. How did Clinton feel when his siege on the Waco Texas religious compound turned into a burning inferno killing 76 innocent women and children? How did Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, feel when he received a congratulatory letter after Christmas from, Brigadier-General, H. H. Sibley stating, “I have the honor to inform you that the thirty-eight Indians and half-breeds ordered by you for execution were hung yesterday at Mankato at 10 a.m.. Everything went off quietly and the other prisoners are well secured.” Kat remembered it was the largest mass execution in American History. She wondered if she could prevent herself from being manipulated into similar contemptible situations if she was elected. Her thoughts were interrupted when Bakr informed her that they were invited by Colonel Mayers to accompany him to a small Shiite village close by. His battalion was heading to secure a small intersection where Route 7 met 17. Mayers planned to use Route 17, which ran west of Route 1, as a short-cut to shuttle supplies back and forth to the division. Traveling up Route 7 they approached a small town. Kat was surprised at the starkness of this village, which was completely devoid of commercial buildings. It consisted of mud huts and open pits for bathrooms very much resembling a movie set of some African village. Slits were cut into the side of the huts to serve as windows. Primitive as it appeared, it did enjoy the luxury of electricity evidenced by a single power line snaking down the road through the town. Suddenly, a rocket propelled grenade shot out of one of the mud huts. It was a futile gesture because the convoy of tanks could have pulverized this town in minutes. Some Marines immediately dismounted and took up position to fire on the sniper. But before another shot was fired, a red Vespa with a young man on it sped away from the hut where the round was fired and was quickly out of sight.
The Marines decided to search the village for others and started to enter a hut when a toothless white-haired man, apparently the elder of the village, emerged. He carried the Koran in his right hand and uttered a “As-Salaam Alaikum” greeting to the soldiers advancing toward him. Bakr heard the greeting and responded with a “alikom elsalam.” The old man appeared to be a Shiite mullah. To the dismay of the marines, people began to exit the huts and clamored around the old man chat
tering to each other. The situation had an air of foreboding. Something about the village just made it feel sinister, like you were in some horror movie like “The night of the living dead” where the villagers would all attack with open mouths and bite into your throats. But nothing like that happened, and with the help of Bakr and another translator, they concluded that this was not a threatening situation, but simply an isolated act of defiance by a single person. The Mullah claimed that the only guns his people owned were for hunting and that the people of the village just wanted peace. Bakr did not really believe the man, but this desolate Shiite town really posed no imminent threat so the Marines moved further up Route 7.
The convoy rested awhile, it was a much-needed break for Katherine. Her cast was an irritant to her, and it was still difficult for her to move around. The stop lasted for several days. Longer than anyone, including Kat had expected. It had evolved into what was referred to as an “operational pause.” CENTCOM had ordered it insisting that some of the battalions needed to refuel. The pause in fighting was quickly portrayed by the media as a sign that the campaign was going bad. Some commentators claimed it looked like the Fedayeen and other Iraqi fighters had weakened or perhaps stopped the push to Baghdad. Cynical military analyst wasted no time in interpreting the pause as signs of weakness, questionable command decisions or lack of resources. A few days later the pause ended and the campaign continued toward Baghdad.
March 29th a new darkness was thrust upon survival in Iraq. The first suicide bomber attacked and killed four U.S. Soldiers. It was reported that at a check point near Najaf a taxi driver beckoned four soldiers to his cab and then detonated a bomb killing himself and the unsuspecting soldiers. Iraqi’s media described the suicide bombers as a martyr.
The attack reminded Senator Laforge of her talk with Bakr about Iblis and her muddled thoughts of how evil must exist as some entity that fills the atmosphere with venomous seduction. An energy that can possess a person just as love can seize our being. These suicide bombers were the new permutation of evil where man gives himself as a weapon to kill other humans. Her belief in the existence of these powers was something as frightening to her as the probability that this entity also shared our world. She wondered if she was just a foolish superstitious woman, believing in this Deity of darkness named Sorat, or was she aware of something others weren’t. If she was right, then these suicide bombers were the embodiment of the type of carnage that this destroyer of mankind desires. Sorat was a malignant fallen spirit that stripped humans of their souls, egos and all goodness. He could make horrible acts virtually impossible to eradicate because people would become unable to recognize their actions as evil. Above all she wondered how could one induce another to become a suicide bomber for some God’s mission whose purpose is to kill innocent people and blow yourself apart? How can the human mind become so clouded and susceptible to such evil and debasing acts? These questions bored into her mind, but no answer revealed itself.
