Sarab

by Raja Alem

  It was without doubt the long-anticipated attack. As armored cars and heavily armed legions of the army rushed forward, the National Guard and Special Forces tore open the huge doors simultaneously. Sarab made her way step by bloody step toward the Sa‘a Gallery, where the principal attack was expected. Around them on every side the sky rained down human frogs, who opened fire as soon as their feet hit the ground, and more and more bodies fell in the arcades and the marble passages. Again, Sarab felt like she was in a theater of torture where lice and frogs and blood rained down on heretics. Great strain wrapped the unreal scene, where everyone seemed to be moving in a dream; souls detached themselves and floated in the air, dispassionately watching their bodies fight on ferociously without them, while the army, with growing impatience, intensified the attack until it seemed like Judgment Day had come.

  “Retreat to the cellars!”

  Sarab ignored Mujan’s sharp order, which had been given so late that withdrawal was now more or less impossible.

  “We will fight on from our graves!” Mujan’s cry rang out in the infernal chaos, and his order moved along the barricades. The great retreat began. Two days previously, when reckoning on the worst, Mujan had appointed twenty suicide fighters to cover their withdrawal should they be forced to it. Five of the most committed fighters had been stationed on each side of the mosque, their machine guns trained on the courtyard to block the advance of the state forces, while the others retreated with a feeling of ignominy and Mujan’s shining words rattling in their throats.

  Mujan looked back once at the men, the Mahdi among them, who continued to fight and had now lost even the possibility of retreat. Certain of his divine immunity, the Mahdi was moving among the fighters with a courage that bordered on recklessness, exposing himself to bullets in the certainty that he could not be killed. It was this faith rooted in the Mahdi’s skin that motivated the fighters to voluntarily stay on the roofs and fight, sure they would eventually succeed in blocking the attack. They had even smeared their faces with tar so they could blend into the shadows and surprise the attackers. Meanwhile, Mujan reached the cellars with around two hundred of his men, who locked the door behind them.

  “You disgrace!”

  Under the dense hail of bullets, Sarab ran; her mother’s cry of contempt lashed her onward and drove her to prove herself worthy of her lineage. She stumbled over the body of a soldier from the National Guard, and without thinking she sat back up and began to strip him of his uniform. Hands trembling, she put on the clothes saturated with sweat and smoke, which would make her indistinguishable from the torrent of attackers.

  In this uniform, she hurried on and spotted the Mahdi in the Sa‘a Gallery, where the armored cars had succeeded in breaking through. The Mahdi was leading the remnants of his men in desperately trying to stop this advance. They succeeded in setting fire to one lot, but the stream of vehicles was uninterrupted and shielded yet another wave of attacking troops. The moment Sarab looked out onto the arcade, a hand grenade fell directly in front of her. She made out the metallic tick through the darkness and realized she was dead. She wasn’t frightened of dying so much as frightened for the Mahdi; he rushed out of the darkness to snatch up the grenade, and before she could blink had thrown it back where it had come from. An explosion roared and bits of the attacking troops were scattered around them. Sarab stood there, unable to join in mowing down the soldiers who were advancing in darkness and fighting ghosts, of which she was the feeblest. The state forces kept advancing, tossing grenades among the arcades to ensure they were purged of the Mahdi’s men. Under Sarab’s paralyzed gaze, the body of the Mahdi bent over each grenade, one after the other, and threw them back, killing those who had thrown them. A sigh rippled through the rebels, confident in the miracles of their Mahdi who couldn’t die. Suddenly a grenade fell on the opposite side, and the Mahdi stumbled on his way to pick it up. At once Hamidan ran forward; he was a fanatical supporter of the Mahdi, and even resembled him, with his white skin and long, smooth, black hair. In the darkness, underneath their tar masks, it wasn’t easy to distinguish between them. The moment Hamidan picked up the grenade it exploded, shredding the lower half of his body and those around him. A tremor ran through the few survivors; to them, it appeared that it was the Mahdi who had been torn apart.

  “The Mahdi has been killed.”

  The phrase swept through the company, more searing than gunfire from the armored cars, and the rebels’ faith in their savior collapsed. One band disappeared to take the news to Mujan, and another lot threw down their weapons in surrender. They were mown down by government troops, wary of the tricks and repeated ambushes that had killed so many of their comrades over the previous days.

  Sarab found herself with the Mahdi. The arcade had collapsed, trapping the attacking forces. Realizing the danger of his position, the Mahdi retreated toward the courtyard, rounding up the last band of volunteers and concentrating them around the well.

  Sarab needed time to grasp what had happened. When she awoke from her torpor, she rushed straight for the courtyard, disguised in a National Guard uniform. She ran risking fire from the state forces that were advancing to clear the courtyard and protect the Kaaba.

  From his position in the well the Mahdi unleashed gunfire on a torrent of soldiers. Sarab rushed headlong toward the well, risking fire from her fellow rebels barricaded inside, and took advantage of an attacking wave of National Guard troops to approach the entrance.

  Launching herself forward, Sarab broke through the burning barricades. There was utter chaos as attackers fought hand to hand with the rebels. Sarab was looking for the Mahdi; from her position at the top of the stairs she saw him at last, standing in the middle of the entrance to the well, recklessly exposed to gunfire, aiming his bombs at the first wave of troops trying to descend the stairs toward him. She froze, blinded by fear and dazzled at the sight of him. She could swear that his eyes were sweeping the scene with an inhuman glow. And at that moment, a bullet struck his head and his body fell to the ground.

  Blackness enveloped Sarab. Behind her, bombs continued to explode and further blinded them with smoke. Tear gas had been released into the inner hall of the well, forcing the rebels out of their hiding places into a dense barrage of bullets. Fear eliminated all rational thought among the soldiers, who were hoping for a quick, decisive victory.

  Sarab was paralyzed where she stood; as the soldiers rushed past her they urged her to advance, believing she was one of them. She became aware of a second wave of her comrades emerging from their secure defenses in the inner areas of the well. Eyes streaming, they came out with hands raised over their heads in surrender. Blows from the soldiers’ gun butts rained down upon them and they were dragged away, coughing and retching from the gas. The soldiers lost interest in the well once they had cleared it of that lethal resistance; it had been the scene of some of the most savage fighting in the whole mosque.

  Sarab still stood there, incapacitated by misery. She was three meters from the body of Muhammad bin Abdullah, the Mahdi who had lost his life, whom no one had realized was the pivot on which the whole war had turned. One glance at that handsome face struck her with the realization that life had no meaning, that everything around her was senseless folly. Nothing mattered; nothing could cause pain or anger, or provoke envy or desire. It was a moment when feeling was obliterated, apart from a sense of total liberation from her weakness and her ties to the world. In those moments, when she was separate from life and its currents, her soul began to float upward and she saw everything that was happening in every part of the mosque. She saw all the bodies falling from the sky and all the bodies running and crawling, the yelling mouths, the bulging eyes, the broken hearts. What were all these bodies struggling for? What was life if it deserved all of this? Was it the devouring of everything, simply in order to reach old age and death?

  Everything appeared startlingly blank. Not blank in the sense of sterility, but in the sense of renewal, a sort of rapture; the readin
ess to be filled again with something new.

  This freedom lasted for a short while, but before long Sarab’s soul descended to her body. Remnants of the pleasure she had found in that brief escape made the death coursing all around her seem less frightening. She knew, with total acceptance, that only truth had been returned to her body; that her brother Sayf was still alive up there, still stationed in his minaret, still struggling. His life was the only one that deserved incarnation; the only one, now, to keep living for. He gave meaning to the act of mindless devouring, of reaching old age; she wanted to see him as an old man.

  She stood, rambling through these small, trivial thoughts. She didn’t dare to approach the body of the man whom she had believed was an emissary from God. She had been so sure, and the emissary was now dead, having conveyed his message only to the bodies around him.

  Sarab sensed death fanning out behind her with extraordinary speed. It would drown them all; she had to hurry to save her brother. The moment she emerged from the quietened well she was blinded by the savage sunlight, a light she couldn’t ignore from behind the smoke. Suddenly the rifle at the top of the minaret where her brother was barricaded fell quiet beneath the roaring rotor of a helicopter that had just launched a TOW missile; those missiles, guided remotely by demons, had already wiped out most of their legendary snipers in the minarets. Despite the din and the smoke, Sarab’s soul caught that sudden silence, and a freezing shadow swooped on her heart. Throughout the siege, she had been listening for that horror-filled silence.

  She began to forge a path through the thick smoke enveloping the mosque. She couldn’t see where she was walking and stumbled over bodies while bullets whizzed past her head. She leaped up the stairs of the minaret, half-blinded by the burning in her eyes. Her body outstripped her mind. At the turn of the stairs she saw her brother’s rifles, the bolt-action sniper rifle DM/S-R and the M240, her brother’s lifelong companion and his pride and joy. Both were just lying there. Her sinking heart nearly stopped beating, but a superhuman force pushed her up the remaining stairs to face the scene in which the fears that had terrified her most since childhood were made incarnate. There was her brother, his head blackened and burnt, lying in his own feces, which were spilling everywhere because the bucket she had not had time to empty this morning had overturned.

  The sun was beating down on the top of the minaret; the scorching heat fused her brain and she was roasted by the smoldering embers of her brother’s body. His entire skull was shattered; if it weren’t for the skinny frame whose every detail was imprinted on her heart, she wouldn’t have been able to identify it as the brother who had never accepted death. Sarab collapsed, overcome with exhaustion. She couldn’t even cry to alleviate the burning agony gushing through her veins; she was dried out from the same fire that had burned her brother.

  She stirred and moved closer to the corpse with the obliterated head. She dipped her chest to his, sensing death in the flat silence she found there. Suddenly she became aware that their souls were clinging together in the form of a huge bird; it escaped from their bodies and soared through the sky, sucking up the burning heat of the sun, before swooping back down like a shooting star to penetrate her guts. Possessed, she let out a cry that tore the air.

  She became her murdered brother Sayf, and the girl Sarab was buried inside that charred corpse. Without hesitation she plunged her fingers into his chest pocket and pulled out his identity card. Sayf had not been present at the ritual where rebels and hostages tore up their identity cards after they first stormed the Grand Mosque; he had already taken up his position in the minaret. She stuffed the card into her jacket pocket and hurtled blindly down the stairs. At last she had become what she had always wanted to be: she had become Sayf, and she sensed his vengeful blood pulsing through her veins.

  She crossed the courtyard, armed with her brother’s identity card and the machine gun that had annihilated every spark of life. Despite her skill at using the heavy weapon she was dragging behind her, she couldn’t stop to shoot. Sarab was invincible as she ran through the gunfire, forgetting that the khaki National Guard uniform she wore protected her from their attacks. She could have made her way safely out of the mosque in this uniform, but her brother’s will drove her toward suicide. Burning with pain and rage, she urgently needed to kill or be killed like her comrades.

  In the cellars, Mujan had succeeded in regrouping. The remaining fighters erected barricades in the interconnecting prayer cells and labyrinthine vaults of that miniature underground city, preparing for the interminable resistance.

  Avoiding the soldiers as they mercilessly combed the arcades for anyone holding out, Sarab headed toward the cellars, worming her way through the secret passages behind the loudspeakers. She slid from an air vent across some pipes and landed in an abandoned part of the vaults; she risked being shot by one her comrades if any of them spotted an unexpected National Guard uniform.

  Time had stopped in that underground city, and it was submerged in total darkness. She listened but no one had seen her; the rebels had been careful not to light even the smallest torch. A suicidal spirit had settled over them, and she could almost hear huge drops of sweat crawling over their skin.

  She heard someone moaning as if deranged: “The Mahdi was killed in the Sa‘a Gallery. He was blown up by a grenade.”

  The voice exploded in the dark tunnel. A rebel had managed to survive the hell above and had brought the news with him.

  “The Mahdi was killed in the well. He was shot in the head,” an echo retorted from another tunnel.

  Without a moment’s hesitation Mujan took aim and shot both, to the shock of his men. In a voice like a knife blade, he carved his statement into everyone: “The Mahdi cannot be killed.”

  Those closest to Mujan clustered around him, consumed by doubt.

  “If the Mahdi has died, does that mean we have sinned?”

  “This fight has taken us off the true path. Our stubbornness takes us farther and farther away.”

  Even the most stalwart supporters were tempted to lay down their weapons.

  “Don’t let doubt creep in.” For the first time, Mujan begged his men. “God adjures you to repress this fitna.”

  But despite his attempts to quash it, the grim news coursed through the shadows and into the veins of the men, who had already noticed the Mahdi was missing among them. At that moment, Mujan could not escape facing his men.

  In a steely voice, deeper than the grave, he pronounced, “You saw for yourselves—here, someone saw him blown up in the Sa‘a Gallery, and over there, someone else saw him shot in the head in the well. Who is this person who was killed twice? He was blown up and he didn’t die; he was shot and he got up. He is living still; without a doubt he is still fighting in the open air. He is protecting us with his unparalleled courage, and even if we are wiped out, he will go on. He will break the siege, and he will appear, and he will save the world from idolatry. You saw what happened to those who told us these lethal falsehoods, and anyone who dares to circulate similar rumors will meet the same fate.”

  In her distant corner, Sarab choked bitterly on Mujan’s words. He really was mad. He was still dreaming of being rescued by the Mahdi and refused to face the truth: that he had failed in translating his theories to the real world. His voice burrowed into their heads to destroy the phrase “the Mahdi has been killed.” The Mahdi’s death was more terrifying than the nightmare of being besieged in the cellars and mown down like rats by the army.

  Sarab was isolated from the danger all around her by the embers of her brother’s body, which had bored through to her core. Her soul was in a state of flux and her body had shed its coating of torpor; staying alive seemed a trivial endeavor. All the while, her mother’s curse reverberated around her head, freezing her: “What are you waiting for? You should die. If you were made of stone like your martyr brother, you would follow him.”

  Despite their desperate position, the rebels were able temporarily to turn the battle to
their advantage, thanks to their knowledge of the cellars. The army lacked the maps that would have allowed them to concoct a plan to break the underground resistance. The army’s attempt to storm the cellars brought about disaster; both the cellars and the rebels’ ambushes swallowed up the soldiers as they stumbled around in blind ignorance. They were an easy target for Mujan and his men, who were able to exploit the narrow passages of that maze, and the army sustained an enormous number of casualties.

  After a week of ruinous battles and heavy casualties, certain CIA operatives were invited to join the special taskforce. After pronouncing the article of faith that would enable them to declare themselves Muslim, they were brought into the Holy City. Following their advice, vast quantities of tear gas were released into the cellars through its many entrances, while barricades sprang up feverishly below. On Mujan’s orders the men dedicated themselves to constructing barricades from carpets and furniture and boxes—anything that might block the gas in the narrow passageways of the cellars. The men moved like frightened giants, each face masked with a water-soaked head covering to protect them from the gas. Their bloodied eyes receded while their skulls bulged with soaked cardboard masks; some limbs were swallowed up by randomly applied bandages and others had swelled with a rotten-looking blue tinge, a warning that not even amputation could save them now.

  Those ghosts did achieve a victory from where they lay in their graves, because the light gas rose to the ceiling of the Grand Mosque, where it enveloped the army, who had not been equipped with gas masks as they could not be fastened over their long beards. An entire battalion was put out of action. The gas spread to the areas surrounding the Grand Mosque and the ensuing uproar sped up the evacuation of the area.