Sabiha, who was twelve and very beautiful, had stopped combing her once glossy mane of dark hair. ‘Too much comes out on the comb,’ she wailed. Her teeth had begun to grow loose. Silently, Hassen cursed her for her vanity. At meal times, his mother now refused to eat her share, dividing it equally among her children. Hassen could not swallow a morsel.
As colour drained from the landscape, hope deserted Hassen too.
On the day Hassen finally decided they had no choice but to leave, he saw a cloud of dust in the distance. It was moving closer, and something gleamed as Hassen ran to fetch his father’s rifle, sending the girls scurrying inside to their mother. He doubted such a visitation could be auspicious. Poised with the rifle cocked, he waited as the engine’s hum grew louder.
Hands clammy with fear, his fingers slipped as he pulled the trigger and the first bullet bounced near the front left tyre, forcing the Mercedes to swerve to an abrupt halt.
When the dust cloud dispersed, a bearded figure emerged from the driver’s side, both hands raised above his head, swaying slightly in the violet shadow of the door.
The man spoke in a voice which was all at once both strange and yet familiar. ‘Please don’t shoot my Mercedes,’ he said.
Hassen loosened his grip on the trigger and watched as the figure stepped forward into the sunlight.
‘And is this the way in which you greet your brother?’ The voice was now indignant.
Hassen dropped the gun and started running towards him. ‘Abbas!’ he cried.
As Abbas shuffled towards him, Hassen couldn’t help noticing how one arm hung, useless, the hand bent back like a lever.
‘So you know me after all,’ Abbas said with a laugh, embracing his brother with his good arm. ‘Two years, and now you are taller than me!’
When they eventually stood back from each other, Hassen saw how much Abbas had altered. The eyes appeared to have retreated into their sockets and there was a grey tinge to his skin, as if he had been exhumed from the earth. But he had kept his promise. Nothing else mattered for the moment. Abbas was triumphant.
‘I always said I’d come back. I told you I’d have a Mercedes. Just wait until they see.’ Abbas nodded in the direction of their home, looking suddenly uncertain. ‘I hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive me, too.’
Hassen remained by the car while Abbas went inside. He did not want to have to be the one to tell Abbas their father was dead.
When he eventually re-emerged, flanked by his mother and the girls, Abbas’s face was set in stone. He knows, thought Hassen bleakly.
‘We’re going to the new settlement,’ Abbas told him as he threw their few possessions into the vast boot. ‘I have already made arrangements.’ Hassen helped him, glad he did not have to make the decisions any more.
Abbas and Hassen surveyed the deserted village as it groaned in the dry wind. ‘Do you think we will ever come back?’ asked Hassen.
‘I promise you we will,’ replied Abbas. ‘And you know I never break a promise.’
The girls clasped each other, slithering around on the leather seat, shrieking with laughter as the car lurched forwards with a purr from the engine. But next to them sat their mother, rigid with fear, her hands clapped over her eyes.
They drove towards the place where the sun fell off the edge of the world, because Abbas said they needed to get away from the marshes now.
Hassen sat next to Abbas in the front, his heart skipping a beat as the car accelerated away from the past. Much faster than a canoe – now he understood why Abbas had yearned for this thing called a Mercedes! He ran his hand over the cool walnut dashboard, but sprang back with fright when a voice came out at the turn of a knob. Abbas laughed, telling him it was only a radio. But Hassen wasn’t convinced.
‘There must be a man in the engine,’ he declared, peering into the air vents.
Abbas switched to some music. ‘So where have I hidden the orchestra,’ he asked, eyes twinkling with mirth.
When Hassen saw his mother and sisters had fallen asleep in the back, he asked softly, ‘What happened, Abbas?’
‘You mean this?’ said his brother, glancing down at the withered arm which hung, useless, on his left side.
‘I was handed to the military police for a handful of silver.’ He spoke slowly, with great effort, as he described his betrayal by the driver when they reached Baghdad. ‘They wanted information, but I had nothing to tell them – even when they broke my fingers and threw me into jail.’ Abbas gave a hollow imitation of a laugh.
Soon afterwards, he had been seconded, along with many other prisoners, and transported to a place called Nasiriyah, a sprawling building site in the middle of nowhere. He was put to work on constructing a mighty concrete dam designed to block the mouth of the Euphrates.
‘I knew I was doing a terrible thing,’ Abbas continued, his good hand clenched over the steering wheel. ‘How I wept inside as I helped cut off the lifeblood of the marshes. I felt like a murderer.’
He described how Saddam had exacted his ultimate punishment on the marsh people by building the Mother of Battles River to hoard the sapphire waters of the Euphrates, leaving the marshes to wither into desert.
‘Many prisoners died, weakened by hunger and disease and from hauling huge stones on their backs,’ he continued as they bumped across the shimmering landscape. ‘It was a terrible place. Who could you trust? There was always fear in men’s eyes. I learned to walk with my eyes to the ground.’
A boulder had fallen on him in the quarry, crushing his arm. So he was put on a truck with other sick and injured labourers. ‘We were told we were being taken to hospital. But I did not trust them,’ said Abbas. ‘Too many had failed to return from such journeys.’
Abbas resolved to escape. On impulse, he had hauled himself off the back of the moving truck, falling with a thud, on to the bumpy road, before limping off, unseen, into the night.
‘Did you find this car in the desert?’ asked Hassen.
Abbas stared grimly ahead. ‘Some questions are better left unanswered,’ he said.
As the sun sank like a huge blood orange they arrived at the edge of a sprawling shanty town which stretched as far as the eye could see. Row after row of rectangular shacks, all built with the same type of bricks, all with the same rusted, corrugated-iron roofs. A dull chugging sound filled the air – the chug, chug of ancient generators pumping salt water down hundreds of small irrigation channels.
The family was allocated a small space in one of the huts. And so began their new life, squeezed among strangers, tending to the small plots of melons, onions, plump scarlet tomatoes and rich green cucumbers that thrived on the saline water.
It was hard to live among so many and fights often erupted over nothing. Abbas and Hassen kept their heads down, tending to their crops, hoping – as the days turned into months and the months grew into years – that one day they would go home. The Mercedes rusted and fell apart. Abbas reluctantly sold off the parts for scrap.
‘So much for our dream!’ he muttered, kicking a rusty hubcap.
‘I never gave up after you left us, so you must keep faith now,’ responded Hassen.
Abbas felt suddenly ashamed.
It was only by believing this state to be temporary, Hassen could make himself rise up each new morning.
The shanty town was far from safe. Saddam’s henchmen came like flocks of crows in search of carrion. Sweeping in among the shacks, they beat and destroyed everything in their path, dragging off the young to fight their wars and build more dams. Abbas and Hassen grew used to hiding, lying face down in the shallow irrigation channels, concealed beneath the lush foliage.
American and British planes now came, dropping their loads of supplies randomly, leaving huge craters in which children played. Many became sick afterwards, but no one knew why.
Hassen tried to understand why it was that so many bad things happened in the name of peace. He had a radio now and followed the war as it unfolded. He yearned t
o return to Zayad and his dreams were full of star-filled pools where he swam, weightless and happy, with his father.
He was patient however. He waited as the years turned him from a youth into a man, and both Sadiya and Sabiha, dark and beautiful, married and moved to a new town. Tempted by the promise of a life that offered refrigerators and satellite TV, their mother went too.
But Hassen stayed. As he hoed the rows of vegetables, his mind wandered back through the reeds, along the silent waterways, until he reached Zayad, its huts drifting like a mirage above the mirrored surface of the lake.
Then news came that the war was over, and Saddam had finally been forced to flee his marble palaces. But there was little rejoicing. Years of uneasy silence had left Hassen, like many others, empty of words, dry of emotion.
But Abbas was jubilant. ‘We are going home,’ he told his brother.
Incredulous, Hassen thought he must have taken leave of his senses. ‘But it is a dust bowl,’ he reminded him.
Abbas just said, ‘Come with me and I’ll show you.’
They hitched a lift with one of the many American convoys rumbling along the main highway. Hassen feared they might be shot. But the soldiers were relaxed, even friendly. They offered them gum and cigarettes, pulling them up on to the tank with beefy arms.
The road was filled with people walking – many of them empty-handed – back towards the marshes. It was not until the convoy had rumbled through Garmat Bani Hassan, a small village close to Zayad, that Hassen saw it. A vast canal, that ran in a straight line until it merged with the horizon. Giant rusted gates threw their menacing shadow across the dusty plain beneath.
Hassen watched Abbas disappear into the crowd now gathering to peer over the concrete parapet into the abyss below. He waited, without knowing what, exactly, he was waiting for. And then it came. A high-pitched wail – filling the air as a mist engulfed him. Hassen thought, So this is how the world ends!
But as the mist turned to rain, he saw Abbas, standing beneath a huge rainbow, pointing triumphantly to the torrent of water gushing through the open gates of the dam, and down on to the parched earth beneath.
Soaked to the skin, Hassen and Abbas decided to walk the last few miles back home. Hassen sighed when he saw their village marooned in the sand, huts the colour of bone. There was no water. So Abbas had been wrong after all. Both men fell silent. They had travelled all this way for nothing.
It was late, so the brothers resolved to stay one last night and then leave Zayad for good. Lying side by side on the bare floor, they talked of the past.
Abbas reminded Hassen of the time before he could swim, when he had taken the boat without permission. A storm had blown in across the lagoon, and Abbas, returning with other fisherman, had found him clinging to the sinking hull, retching with fright. He had never told their father how the boat came to be taken, wanting to protect Hassen from a certain beating. Their father had been a good man, they both agreed, but quick to administer punishment.
Hassen recalled how they both used to sneak up to the Mudhif, the large reed guest house in the village. Sneaking under the raised building, they would slither on their bellies through the mud to a point where they could hear everything in the room above.
Their mouths watered at the memory of the hours spent with their father, gun at the ready, crouching in the small hide on the lagoon, waiting for a plump duck to take the grain they had strewn, returning triumphant to their mother’s waiting fire.
Abbas, now just a shadow, laughed softly. ‘I would give anything to have our time again, wouldn’t you, little brother?’
But Hassen, exhausted, had already succumbed to sleep – a sleep in which his father came to him again. But this time he stood before him smiling. Hassen, suffused with happiness, stretched out a hand to touch him.
He awoke with a start and sat bolt upright. Through the broken roof he could see the moon had risen somewhere – and he could hear the calling of a bird. It was a marsh warbler and its sweet song stirred the empty air.
‘I must still be dreaming!’ he thought as he stumbled outside and stood gazing at the silvered river that now reached out towards him in the moonlight.
‘Where there are birds, there is water,’ murmured Hassen, rubbing his eyes with disbelief, as the stars began to dance to their reflection. ‘Where there is water, there is life.’
In a short while he would wake Abbas. Then they would begin their life again. But, for the moment, he would watch the water return to greet him like a lost friend.
Tony Bradman
Several things have gone into the creation of this story. Anyone who was born like me in the 1950s grew up under the long shadow of the Second World War. Both my parents were in the services and they told me many stories about London during the war. I’ve read a lot about it too, and realized that by 1944 millions of young men from all over the world – many of them Americans, and quite a few little more than boys – were waiting to invade Nazi-occupied Europe. London just before D-Day (6 June 1944) was actually a pretty wild place, almost like a frontier town in the old American West.
I also thought that war often brings people together who would otherwise never have met, and that those encounters must have changed many lives forever – a host of small stories enclosed within a single huge one. British kids did love American films, and thought American soldiers were wonderful, and there was also a lot of crime and petty thieving – times were very hard for everyone. And on D-Day, the Eighth and Sixteenth Infantry Regiments did land on beaches in Normandy, where a great many US soldiers were killed and wounded by the German defenders.
AMERICAN PATROL
Jimmy Wilson stood in a square of shadow cast by a wall a few yards from the corner of the main road. Most evenings the blackout meant the streets of Catford were in darkness, but tonight there was a full moon, a bomber’s moon, its eerie light turning south London silver and grey.
Jimmy shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. He was supposed to keep watch while Stan and Frank broke into one of the shops backing on to the alley behind him. They were after cartons of cigarettes for Stan to sell on the black market – Stan the Spiv, with his flashy suits and loads of cash, the man Jimmy had hated from the moment Mum had brought him home.
Jimmy had known Stan was trouble, even though he’d been nice at first, ruffling Jimmy’s hair, telling him he was a good lad. One day Stan had got Jimmy on his own, said he had a little job for him, something he was bound to be good at, seeing as no one took any notice of kids – being a lookout while Stan and Frank ‘liberated some stuff’. Jimmy had realized Stan was talking about nicking, and said no, but that had only made Stan cross. And the more Jimmy had resisted, the worse Stan’s threats got.
Earlier that evening, Stan had come to the house and conned Jimmy’s dozy gran into handing him over. Usually, Jimmy went to stay with Marge if Mum had to do the night shift at the big munitions factory in Woolwich. Marge lived up the street and had taken care of Jimmy back in the early part of the war. In fact, during the Blitz she’d almost been a second mum to him, and Jimmy knew she would never have fallen for Stan’s old flannel. But Marge was busy, so Gran had been the one in charge.
‘Thought I’d give the boy a treat, Gran,’ Stan had said, smiling, showing his teeth. ‘There’s a Jimmy Cagney flick on at the Odeon, and you know how he loves Yank films. Oh, and don’t wait up. We might be back late.’
Jimmy would have liked to see Angels with Dirty Faces, but as soon as they were outside, Stan had grabbed his ear and dragged him along the road. Frank had been waiting by the pub on the corner, the King’s Arms. Jimmy hated the short, hatchet-faced Frank, too. Everyone said Frank was a deserter.
‘Right, you’re our lookout tonight,’ Stan had hissed, his eyes narrowed to slits, his mouth tight and mean as he twisted Jimmy’s ear harder. ‘And don’t even think about arguing. Not unless you want a taste of this.’
Stan had whipped his flick knife from his jacket pocket and clicked the blade
out under Jimmy’s nose. So Jimmy had done what he was told.
Suddenly Jimmy heard footsteps. Two policemen were walking along the main road. Jimmy retreated deeper into the darkness, rattling a pebble with his shoe as he did so. The coppers stopped, peered in his direction. Then Jimmy heard more footsteps – Stan and Frank coming back! Panic filled him. He knew if he moved or shouted, he’d give Stan and Frank away. But now the coppers were walking towards him. Towards the alley.
‘Hey, who’s there?’ one of them called out. ‘Show yourself!’
Jimmy turned and fled. There was nothing else he could do, even though he knew Stan wouldn’t see it like that. As Jimmy ran into the darkness, his feet pounding the pavement, he couldn’t stop thinking about Stan’s knife. He could almost feel the sharp steel carving into his flesh …
Private First Class Scott Francis Riley was sitting in a small compartment on a train to Waterloo Station in London. He figured it was meant for eight people, but there were twelve servicemen squeezed into it now, and the narrow corridor beyond was packed with even more guys in uniform.
Scott was glad he’d managed to get a window seat. Looking out at the neat little English fields rolling past had kept him calm since the train left Portsmouth earlier that morning, had kept him from thinking of the terrible things that had been filling his mind over the last few weeks.
‘Hey, buddy, got a light?’ somebody said, and Scott realized it was the guy sitting beside him. He looked round, saw a soldier a couple of years older than him with a fresh Lucky Strike in his mouth, ready to be lit.
‘Sorry, I don’t smoke,’ Scott said quietly. Sometimes he thought he was the only guy in the US Army who didn’t. He felt himself blush.
‘Too young to have any vices,’ said the guy, and laughed. A big sailor leaned forward and clicked a Zippo. ‘Say, how old are you?’ said the soldier. ‘My kid brother looks older than you, and he’s still in high school.’
War Stories Page 9
