by C. E. Smith
When they stop at an abandoned farm for a meal of beef jerky and bottled water, the jihadists’ phones chirp with news of a drone attack on the compound – a bombing within hours of their departure. There were no survivors. Nibras and the driver beat their chests and tear their tunics while swearing revenge.
Burkett and Nick have been permitted to remove their burqas and blindfolds. It is a relief from the heat, but their uncovered faces only stoke the rage of their captors, who reflexively blame America for the problem of drones. Nick provides a running interpretation as the jihadists consider the retaliatory justice of killing their prisoners. Even if Djohar’s cowardly soldiers flew the drone and pressed the button to drop the bomb, is it not the US that props up his secular regime – that supplied it with that very drone and so many others just like it? The driver, probably in his early twenties, shoulders his rifle, but Nibras urges restraint: the millions in ransom would far outweigh the pleasure of killing these Americans.
The weapon pointing at Burkett has the look of something other than a Kalashnikov. An M-16 perhaps, not that it matters, for in the end there are only two types of gun: one aiming at him and one that is not. It is a binary code, he thinks, a dash or a period. No, not a period: with the vertical sight, the end of the barrel looks more like an exclamation mark.
The man shifts his rifle from Burkett to Nick and back again. Only after firing a skyward round does he set aside the weapon. He leans against the SUV in the attitude of a man spent, as if pulling the trigger had been the necessary release to an exhausting urge.
Another SUV pulls into the clearing, smoke roiling from its hood.
Nibras mutters praises to Allah as three Arabs emerge. The jihadists greet one another by name and embrace with somber affection, the new arrivals obviously aware of the recent bombing. One of them has a scar that distorts his face, creating a pinkish gap in his beard. He is the shortest of the three, and also it seems the least sociable, but the scar lends his reticence a quality of battle-hardened seriousness. While the others talk, he inspects the smoking engine, pouring a bottle of water into the coolant tank.
Burkett and Nick help transfer the crates of bottled water and MREs from one vehicle to the other. Burkett has no particular attachment to the gregarious Nibras, but for some reason this new set of jihadists gives him a sense of foreboding, particularly the one with the scar. He wonders if he and Nick have been sold to another faction, perhaps more militant. Or maybe these men merely represent another cell of that larger organization calling itself the Heroes of Jihad.
Once again in burqas, they travel east with their new captors. They have been spared the discomfort of blindfolds, perhaps an oversight on the part of their new handlers, but Burkett can’t imagine any strategic advantage in knowing the monotonous scenery. They drive nearly an hour without passing a single building or landmark that could feasibly serve as guidance in any future attempt at escape.
The vehicle lurches nauseously on dirt roads till they reach an isolated compound about half a mile from a tiny village. The house sits on a steep incline, and the tilting wall around it gives an impression of inevitable collapse despite a diagonal array of makeshift support beams on the downhill side.
Akbar, the one with a scar on his face, orders Burkett and Nick to carry supplies into the compound, the bottled water, MREs, blankets, and cans of petrol. The largest room contains a fire pit and a gas lamp, which Akbar lights even though it’s not yet dark out. A narrow passage gives way to another room with gaping holes in the ceiling and some kind of mural on the plaster wall, a rudimentary depiction of green hills, a pair of robed figures by a meandering stream. Off the hallway is an alcove where bags of rice are stacked under a wooden counter.
Burkett and Nick are assigned to a basement chamber with stone walls and a dirt floor. They’ve grown accustomed to the lack of running water, but in their previous compound they at least had electricity for some portion of each day, a bare bulb to illuminate their cell. This place offers nothing of the sort – although the cans of petrol raise the possibility of a gas generator yet to arrive. They seem to have undergone a staged withdrawal, a weaning from all modern amenities.
Yet another deprivation comes later that evening, when they are forced to relinquish their shoes. Burkett’s soles have begun to detach, but he could have repaired them with the duct tape he noticed among the supplies in the SUV.
For their waste, they are given a plastic bucket that, judging from the smell, others have used for the same purpose. A proper toilet sits in the cowshed, though disconnected from any pipe or water supply, perhaps left there by some former occupant whose plumbing endeavors never came to fruition.
The next morning they sit in the courtyard and watch their two guards wrestle in the dust. The third, the one who drove, seems to have left sometime during the night. Burkett recognizes the style of wrestling, their movements like an echo from his past. They wrestle at the level of decent high school competitors. His own muscles twitch in occasional sympathy. Sajiv, the tall one, looks at least ten pounds heavier, but Akbar makes up for the difference with speed.
Sajiv has Greco-Roman tendencies, exposing his legs as he positions himself for unlikely headlocks and upper-body throws. Burkett remembers working as a coach at a wrestling camp one summer during college. He would encourage the boys to stick to the basics – what he called ‘high percentage moves’ – but the less experienced wrestlers could hardly resist the brutal appeal of a hip throw, the kinetic beauty in the rise and fall of an opponent’s body. How rarely physical reality allows the perfect move, but Akbar’s rigid, linear style – his head-on attacks and delayed counters – might give Sajiv just the leeway he needs to pull off one of those flamboyant throws.
‘Watch his hips,’ Burkett calls to Sajiv, unable to resist even if neither of them can understand. And yet the comment draws Sajiv’s attention, as if he knew it was meant for him. He turns to Burkett, distracted, and Akbar takes the opportunity to dive for an ankle. Burkett almost smiles at the awkwardness of it, the moment of imbalanced wrestling when one man stops while the other persists. It reminds him of his brother, how he always made a point of ignoring the boundary and the sound of the whistle, how he’d keep wrestling till he felt the hard gym floor or the referee’s hand on his back. Burkett in contrast felt safest when skirting the edge of the ring, his back to the edge, such that any attack by his opponent would carry them out of bounds.
Now the wrestlers are sitting upright, Sajiv’s hand on Akbar’s shoulder, the look on his face asking, Do you hear that? Both men stare at the sky, waiting and listening. And then Burkett hears it too: a distant buzz. He realizes he could hear it even before they stopped wrestling – it’s been getting louder – but still Akbar and Sajiv listen with strained expressions, as if doubting the sound’s very existence. Akbar doesn’t seem to hear it at all, not yet. Perhaps they’ve suffered auditory damage from overexposure to guns and bombs – or perhaps it is the rush of blood from wrestling, their own panting breath. And finally the buzzing sound brings them to their feet, and they herd Burkett and Nick down the stone staircase and into their basement cell.
While they wait, an image of Akbar’s face lingers with Burkett: a look of complete terror. That buzzing sound, almost like a taunt, a harbinger of destruction. The sound that so frightened Akbar, that seemed to make his very eyeballs tremble. But why must a drone make noise at all? Are the surveillance drones not notorious for stealth, for hovering in silence outside windows? He thinks of the Phantom gliding like a fish through water. Perhaps it is too expensive to equip the long range bombers, the high flyers, with stealth technology. Or perhaps it is merely a form of intimidation, psychological warfare: perhaps the government in the north sends out noisy drones for the sole purpose of instilling fear.
Where is the drone now? Could its ordnance be aimed at this very house? There is no reason to think Akbar and Sajiv, mere foot soldiers, wou
ld qualify as high value targets. But how would he know? After the destruction of the last compound, a satellite or drone could have tracked them all the way here, perhaps mistaking Burkett and Nick for jihadists, or in their burqas as the wives of jihadists.
High value target: a phrase he no doubt picked up from the news media, like collateral damage or surgical precision. This last he finds particularly absurd, his profession a metaphor for killing. A profession that is anything but precise: he thinks of all the complications he’s seen, all the collateral damage from surgery. Postoperative infections, disfiguring scars, and bowel obstructions. And all the mistakes – the inadvertent clipping and slicing, the wrong-sided operations.
Who was the high value target in that last compound? The old man with missing fingers? Certainly not those poor ‘kids’ working the computers, not the twelve-year-old with the Kalashnikov. How close Burkett and Nick came to becoming collateral damage – an hour, two at the most. Is it possible that the drone waited for them to leave before dropping the bomb? Far more plausible is the explanation of chance – simple luck they left when they did.
Nick has his eyes closed, probably in prayer. Perhaps he is preparing for the bomb, preparing his soul for a fiery release. Burkett imagines the collapse of the roof and walls. He would rather die in the initial explosion than bleed out or starve under a heap of stone. The minutes pass in silence, and finally the sounds from upstairs – Akbar and Sajiv all but laughing in relief – announce the passing of danger. Nick lifts his eyes to the ceiling and smirks. Burkett sees in his face not just resignation but also disappointment, as if death from above were their best hope of escape.
15
Akbar and Sajiv sit near the cowshed, cleaning their teeth with twigs. A battery-powered radio plays the Arabic version of Voice of America. At the news of a suicide bombing in Israel, ten dead, they stand and shout praises. Akbar turns to Burkett and Nick, as if suddenly offended by their presence, and orders them to say the words Allahu Akbar. With a shrug Burkett complies, but all Nick will say is, ‘God is great.’ Even after Akbar slaps him across the face, Nick utters the English version.
‘Why not say it?’ Burkett asks. ‘I thought you said your God and his had the same name in Arabic.’
‘They’ll take it as praise for theirs,’ Nick says. ‘Which in itself doesn’t matter, but they won’t see our faith – my faith – as having value unless I’m willing to suffer for it.’
It seems like pointless bravado, even a contradiction: Burkett remembers Hassad and Abu, how Nick approved of their Muslim rituals despite their Christian beliefs. Akbar seems prepared to strike him again, but a knock on the door stays his hand.
Someone outside, another human being: the first in the week since their arrival at this remote outpost. Burkett’s mind churns through the possibilities – a goatherd asking for directions, more journalists on a guided tour. He steels himself for the inevitable gunfire. Could this be the final raid, the incompetent rescue operation that will culminate in death for all of them? Would the raid begin with an innocent knock?
Sajiv slides back the shutter and peers through the slit in the door. He has to wait while Akbar digs a key from his shirt. Akbar makes a point of checking the aperture for himself before unbolting the door. Burkett wonders how it was decided that Akbar would keep the key, that source of authority, when he seems the less intelligent of the two. Perhaps it has something to do with the scar, a higher rank earned through combat.
A teenage boy carries in a large stainless steel pot by both handles. After lowering it to the ground, the boy stares curiously at the barefoot Americans sprawled against the wall. Behind him stands a figure in a burqa, perhaps his mother or sister. In silence she turns and disappears behind the doorframe. Only after the boy is gone does Burkett notice the lidded basket she left on the threshold.
The pot contains lamb stew, the basket flatbread and apples. Also in the basket is a handwritten note which Akbar and Sajiv burn after reading.
Sajiv hangs the pot from a gambrel over the fire, but before the stew has time enough to warm, they begin scooping it directly into their bowls. To Burkett it tastes bland, in need of salt, but after a week of nothing but MREs he savors the feel of the stringy meat and soft carrots on his tongue.
‘The boy and the woman live in the neighboring house,’ Nick says, listening to Sajiv. ‘It’s about a half mile to the north.’
‘How often will they bring us dinner?’
‘They’re supposed to come twice a week till the rainy season.’
‘The rainy season? When is that?’
‘Two months away. But he says we’ll be long gone by then.’
Burkett sets aside his bowl. He moves closer to the fire and prods the embers with a charred stick.
‘Can they not give us something to read?’ he asks. Nick directs the question to Sajiv.
‘He’ll send a message,’ Nick says.
‘Tell them I’d love to read the Qu’ran if they could get me an English translation.’
‘La!’ barks Akbar, who till now has remained silent.
‘Why not?’ Burkett asks.
‘It would be unsuitable for you to touch the Holy Qu’ran,’ Nick interprets.
‘But how am I to learn about Islam?’
Akbar and Sajiv discuss the question.
‘If you want to read the Qu’ran,’ Nick says, barely concealing his amusement, ‘you would have to wear gloves while touching it, or listen to an audio edition.’
‘No problem,’ Burkett says.
‘And your reading would have to be supervised, in case you had plans to desecrate the book by urinating on it or throwing it in the fire.’
The idea of such desecration causes Akbar to moan and beat his fist against his own chest. The others watch in silence.
‘Does he honestly think I’d do that?’ Burkett asks.
Akbar scowls at the fire, as if searching there for smoldering pages.
Sajiv tries to ease the tension by smiling and patting Akbar on the shoulder. He sloughs past the fire, stepping over the stack of dirty bowls. He delves into his rucksack and produces not a Qu’ran but a box of polished wood. He removes the lid and unfurls two strips of intricately embroidered fabric. On the fabric he sets out clusters of wooden pawns, each crafted in the shape of a different type of fish. The largest pieces, one black and one white, are cycloptic sharks – the god Samakersh in his dual forms of good and evil. Sajiv explains that the game pieces have been in his family for many generations. The game is called chaupar.
At first Akbar is reluctant to participate in a game with pagan tokens and a board in the shape of a cross. Formed by the intersection of the two embroidered strips, the cross seems to bother him far more than the draftsmen, but Sajiv convinces him that chaupar pre-dates Christianity.
Within minutes Akbar is staring at the pawns in deep concentration. Burkett and Nick watch while their captors play. The room is silent except for the crackle of the fire and the tap of the ivory dice against the stone floor. Toward the end of the game Nick gets up and lights the gas lamp.
It is Akbar who asks Burkett and Nick to join in, the game being better suited to four players than two. This was likely Sajiv’s intention all along, but Akbar needed to come to the realization on his own.
Nick picks up the game far more quickly than Burkett, as if remembering it rather than learning it. Burkett isn’t surprised to be a slower learner – he refuses to feel embarrassed. Having never been one for games, he would certainly avoid this one if there were any reasonable alternative.
As they play into the night, the others disappear into the game. Where is the appeal? It’s as if they see in it some mystery – a puzzle demanding to be solved. More likely, the difference lies in Burkett himself. As he’s known since boyhood, he lacks something of that competitive urge possessed by most men. He is in the minority here
: the three of them bend so far over the board that their heads nearly touch.
His aversion to games is yet another difference between him and his brother, who in college could spend hours playing cards. It dawns on him that beyond the superficial resemblance Owen had more in common with Nick than with his own twin. Did Owen and Nick think of themselves as brothers, in a religious sense? Perhaps ‘brethren’ would be the more appropriate word.
How could such close companions in youth become so distant as adults? Owen might have begun the process of estrangement – by winning the greater share of their father’s love, or by being the better wrestler, or even by turning to Christianity, but Burkett has greater cause for guilt. Sleeping with Amanda Grey created a chasm between him and his brother that could never be bridged.
He should have put a stop to it that weekend at the lake house – not when he got up and went to her room, but earlier that same day, before the not quite accidental encounter in the hallway that led to their kissing. Better yet he should have stopped himself months or years earlier, at whatever point they began to joke, even affectionately, about Owen behind his back – laughing at his moral rigidity, his seemingly obsessive-compulsive work ethic. Burkett should have seen the different paths laid out before him. He was the spitting image of the man she loved, but without that exhausting expectation of holiness, without that unique gift Owen had for making the people around him feel inadequate. Long before that perfidious consummation they forged a bond under Owen’s very nose, convincing themselves all the while that they weren’t morally deficient after all, that in fact they had advantages over Owen – advantages of insight and wit and world experience. And Owen’s obliviousness to their developing attraction was yet another example of that naïveté they found at once so endearing and so annoying.
