Deserts of Fire Page 14

  She walked into an oven. The place of healing and respite was stuffy and the air she breathed suffocated her; through an open mouth, she took deep gasps of air and felt no relief. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead. An old woman walked out of the door as Inaya was walking in; her face was drenched, and Inaya wasn’t sure if the woman was sweating or crying.

  Bodies ground against one another and doctors shoved their way through anyone who wasn’t bleeding. Inaya pictured a line of ants fractured when someone upsets their daily routine.

  Hooded and veiled women outnumbered the physicians; their black clothing a grim counterpoint to the white coats. Multiple hands clasped at the doctors as they raced by, pulling them into an abyss of questions.

  Inaya heard shouts. She turned to her left and saw an old man arguing with a surgeon. The man—slouched, tanned, face a roadmap of wrinkles—held the surgeon’s wrist. “You know nothing,” shouted the old man. “How can you be a doctor?” The old man let go of the surgeon’s wrist and started to cry; the desperate attempts of a father, no doubt, trying to deny death its due. The man in green scrubs put his hand on the old man’s shoulders. The old man in his last denial at the truth, spat in the surgeon’s face and walked away. What lied beside him was a man, possibly in his forties. He looked asleep, but his lungs never rose or fell.

  The women, also, looked into the faces of the hundreds of wounded, the dying. And each encounter was over in less than a second: if it wasn’t someone they knew, they left the patient abandoned and alone.

  Inaya had never seen so many patients, and never so many missing limbs. Some of the wounded had stumps for arms and would shoulder the burden of phantom-limb syndrome for life. This was a departure from runny noses and scraped knees. In some cases, she thought, it looked like sacks of meat had been placed on gurneys.

  She looked through the faces, holding up her brother’s picture as she walked by. One man caught her attention. The first thing she noticed was his face; or what little of it was left. He looked at her and opened his mouth. A tongue writhed about in the toothless gape. The man spat out low guttural moans and nodded his head. He was trying to speak through what little was left of his face. Inaya clasped at her mouth and tried not to cry. He was just a boy in his mid-twenties, broad shouldered, and the uniform he wore had been cut up the middle, exposing his bare chest where two punctures adorned his heart—where emblems and medals would have been. Every time he took a breath, blood pumped out in trickles.

  Inaya approached him and every step she took squeezed at her heart tighter and tighter. She gripped the picture of Hakeem and hoped under her breath that the faceless man was not her brother. She held up the photo and compared. Hakeem had light brown eyes, and if the sun hit it at the right angle, it sometimes looked green. He also had an oval face and a neatly trimmed mustache. She looked at the dying man in front of her: most of his face had burned and looked like the ground meat they sold at the markets. If this man had a mustache, it was singed in hellfire. One of his eyes was sealed shut and the brown one that looked at her was fighting to stay awake. They said that eyes were the windows to the soul, and Inaya wondered if this man still had one.

  “Hakeem?”

  The soldier shook his head. He opened his jaw, forcing his tongue to form sounds. He tried to say something, maybe his name, but he spoke in the language of the dying.

  Inaya shook her head and placed her hand on his. He closed his eyes and Inaya hoped he dreamed of a place better than this.

  She looked around again, but, her brother was not among the men whose shredded clothes might have once been uniforms.

  She made eye contact with a doctor. He looked and anticipated her question. She wanted to ask about her brother but she knew: he would have no answer about a specter that was not here. Her face shifted away from his eyes and calmly walked away from the purgatory they called a hospital.

  On her way out she eyed a mangy dog on the street; its brown and spotted fur, the perfect camouflage for the dirty streets. Among the crowd, he simply stared into her eyes. Just hers. It broke its gaze and departed to some westward street.

  This unsettled her.

  She flagged down one of the black-veiled Muslim women. “Sister, my brother has gone missing and he is not in this hospital. Do you by chance happen to know where else I may look?”

  “There is a mass grave the army has dug not far from here, just by downtown.”

  Inaya said nothing for a while and just stared back. She mustered, “Where?”

  The woman, whose brown eyes cut through the black shroud, pointed behind her and said, “West.”

  Inaya paced for miles in the prime of the sun and her feet ached and felt too little for her shoes.

  A crowd of men in rolled up sleeves and weeping women crowded the fence of an empty plot of land. One of the men vomited to the side and another man with a shovel discarded it and simply walked away in anger.

  No one in the crowd seemed to want to cross the threshold, as if the land were tainted.

  She nudged through the crowd. The black of the veils around her blotted the sun and reflected the heat ten-fold. She reached the front of the crowd and tapped a man on the shoulder.

  He turned his pale face, the sweat dripping off his mustache.

  “Is this the grave?” Inaya asked.

  “I don’t know what this is anymore.”

  Many holes sprung from the ground like giant anthills. Bloodied clothing lay strewn like the remains of a landfill. Limbs and heads and what might have been torso’s lay scattered across the plot like weeds growing in an unkempt yard.

  Inaya caught a whiff of death on a breeze that blew sand into her eyes. She turned away from it instinctively.

  “What happened here?” Inaya whispered to no one in particular.

  One man, staring straight ahead said, “We buried these men here last night. They were members of the army and Saddam’s guard. We clashed with the Americans last night. We dug this grave as quickly as we could … but at least we buried them. We buried them!”

  Another man tried to calm him. He turned to Inaya and said, “We buried these men last night. When relatives returned to pay respects this morning, we found this.” He nodded at the grisly scene. “The bodies have been re-dug and it looks like they have been … eaten.”

  Inaya stared at the scene.

  Little birds landed on the bodies, pecking. Flesh hung off their beaks.

  The man tried to shield her view from the carnage. “You are too young for this, child.”

  “The ghouls …” Inaya said to herself.

  “Yes. The Americans are monsters, little one.”

  “No. The Eaters of the Dead. They are here.”

  “Child, these bodies were dug up by the invaders and left as carrion for the dogs.”

  Inaya turned away from the crowd. She left the rotting carcasses and knew in her heart her brother was spared a fate as cruel as this. He had to be. He was her brother.

  She looked back and saw the crowd fall silent. The men kneeled and bowed their heads. It was the prayer of Dhuhr, the prayer of noon.

  While the men whispered to Allah, Inaya wondered: if Shaytan truly was here, who did he whisper to?

  She spotted the ugly brown dog off in the distance. Or she thought she did; the heat rose and mangled the air like a hallucination.

  She turned around.

  As her city crumbled around her, she continued to walk.

  The afternoon took her through many streets. She caught her first glimpse of uniformed American men. Some were as white as the moon and others as black as the night. It was a strange sight to her eyes. This day was a fever, a mirage in a city between two rivers.

  Word spread that the Americans had taken the airport, and many Iraqi fighters were held captive in a makeshift prison there.

  Crowds gathered and marched to the airport like a divine pilgrimage. Inaya, seeing no alternative, traveled with them.

  Inaya looked at her brother’s pictur
e. She reunited with him again, if only in spirit. He was her guardian and her rock. In Allah, she did not believe; in their blood, she found a truth that could not be turned away. No science could disprove their bond; no book-burning mob could douse their history.

  But the afternoon grew late now, and the sun started to sink somewhere into the desert sands.

  Inaya couldn’t bear her feet anymore. She was sure her toes were blistered and maybe bleeding.

  The wind began to stir; it lifted dust and sand and hurled its fury at the pilgrims. The weary men and veiled women pushed on against the rising sandstorm, like nomads.

  They came upon a checkpoint. The crowd of about thirty, stopped at a roadblock of sandbags and barbed wire. One of the older men from her group spoke to an American guard. Inaya did not understand the exchange of words. The old man lifted a picture of what Inaya presumed to be his son. The American had a conversation through his radio and after a few moments let the crowd pass. The guards shadowed her every step towards the airport.

  When they arrived at the entrance to the airport, the old man spoke to more guards. He turned to the crowd and said, “They will let us visit the prisoners. Do not cause a commotion. If your loved ones are not here, turn away and leave.”

  The band of relatives entered the airport, Baghdad’s portal to the outside world, now closed and turned to a prison.

  Before Inaya entered, she saw an American soldier bent over a mangy dog. His hand glided over its fur over and over. The soldier put his ear to the dog’s muzzle as if he were listening intently.

  It looked exactly like the dog she had seen earlier.

  The soldier looked up, his eyes deep and dark. A victim of sleepless nights.

  Inaya felt a shudder. She looked up; the sun, large and red, waned behind the Euphrates River. She took a breath and gripped Hakeem’s picture.

  American soldiers conversed in their English tongue and roamed freely. Tall, powerful men.

  One soldier approached the group and motioned for them to follow.

  They were led through elaborate hallways and descended many stairs as if to the bottom of some hell. If she had to guess, Inaya would say they were near some sort of basement.

  The soldier brought them to a dim-lit hallway with a handful of overcrowded jail cells; perhaps airport security’s old detention area.

  Americans kept watch over everybody in the room.

  Inmates pushed against their cages and gripped the steel bars. Bodies on both sides clambered over each other. Inaya was shoved by waves of mothers and fathers who waved photographs like banners of war. Arms reached through the bars, hands clasped.

  The Americans shouted at the crowd, but the point was moot.

  One voice reached Inaya’s ear like a subtle symphony. “Sister. Little Sister!”

  Hakeem reached a leathery hand out of his cell; Inaya wrapped her delicate fingers around it and smiled.

  “I have looked everywhere for you.”

  “Inaya, dear sister, I thank Allah you are here. But it’s too dangerous. There is a war out there.”

  Inaya paused and regained her breath. “Brother, the war is over.”

  Hakeem lowered his head and nodded.

  “At least you are safe, sister.”

  Inaya smiled.

  The American soldiers began to close in on the unruly crowd when they began to quiet down. The families of Islam kneeled and chanted in prayer. In unison they prayed the Maghrib, the meditation performed after sunset.

  The Americans looked in confusion. Inaya was the only person standing before the Submissive of Allah. She felt naked and alone to the on-looking soldiers.

  In strange tongues, the Americans squabbled amongst themselves. After a few moments they came to a verdict. They lurched ahead and began hauling the worshippers off the floor.

  The prayers were snuffed and gave way to screams. The prisoners pleaded with slurs and questioning hands; their relatives were dragged by limbs and hair.

  Amidst the screams, the Muslim men shoved the Americans away from the women.

  Soldiers drew their rifles.

  Inaya spotted the soldier from outside; heavy bags circled his eyes. He stared coldly at the crowd, eyes scanning across the room, person to person.

  He un-holstered his pistol slowly and took aim at someone in the crowd. Inaya didn’t know who, but his eyes seemed focused, obsessed.

  In the cramped hallway the piercing burst of sound followed by a moment of deafness. She didn’t see who was shot, but Inaya knew whoever it was, fell into the hands of Death himself.

  The crowd roared and tried to escape. The exit was bottlenecked by armed men who took aim. The air soon cracked with gunfire and charged with smoke. The bearded men, who were too close to be shot, were butted by the black rifles.

  Hakeem yelled amidst the chaos. “Inaya, get low to the ground. Get down!”

  She dropped, abdomen flat on the cold floor. Dozens of sandaled feet and torn leather shoes greeted her. Some of the feet lost balance and fell near her face. Most never got back up.

  Some prisoners retreated into the dankest corners of their cells, and the ones who reached an arm beyond the bars pleading for a stop caught the occasional stray bullet.

  Inaya saw an Iraqi man grab an American’s sidearm and shoot its owner’s face point-blank. That man was met by a flail of gunfire; his body shook like a palm tree amidst a sandstorm.

  Either man could have been a father.

  What were once women and men in the room were just now reduced to the living and un-living; those who breathed still, and those who ceased to breathe.

  Inaya started to cry. At first she didn’t know why. The horror was so sudden she didn’t have time to feel emotion. But when she looked at her shirt it was stained. The moist scarlet spot grew larger and larger until her shirt resembled a fresh dye-job. She was shot.

  Hakeem screamed but the words were incomprehensible. Soon, the sounds melded as one large chaotic jumble of noise and static. Her image became blurred, but what she saw next was unspeakable. An abomination to her logical mind.

  A mob, unlike either white or brown man, rushed into the room; half-naked men whose tanned bodies might have been spit from the sands of Egypt itself. Their gaze was that of rabid jackals, and their maws were dark and lined with jagged teeth. They looked like men, but they were not.

  Ignoring the anarchy that transpired around them, they charged the bodies of the deceased. They lunged at warm limbs and with the strength of their mouths alone, stretched and tore the skin away.

  In revulsion, the Americans stopped the gunfire. The wounded men and women of Islam stared in horror.

  Creatures tore at the necks of Inaya’s dead countrymen. The entrails of the Americans were chewed and swallowed. In Baghdad, the dead would not have peace tonight; the Cradle of Civilization was now its tomb.

  The Americans regained themselves. They shouted at the Iraqis and motioned with their rifles to move. Inaya’s brothers and sisters rushed out the room, bloodied, torn and tired.

  The repeating burst of gas and flame boomed through the prison. The rotating machine-fire of rifles, a hungry engine, spewed round after round into the men of myth: the Ghouls.

  But what are the weapons of man to the immortal flesh of myths?

  Lead smacked against demonic flesh. The popping sound of splintering bone now filled the air. But it had no effect on the starving ghouls. The bullets were ignored and the feast continued on the recently departed. The Americans, in fear, stormed out of the prison basement.

  One of the feral ghouls leapt at Inaya. Its lean body hovered over hers. It sniffed at her tummy and snatched her wrists. It felt for something, perhaps a pulse.

  Hakeem roared at the creature. “Get away from her, by Allah, get away from her!”

  The ghoul turned to Hakeem and spoke. “I will not feast on Inaya tonight. She still lives.” It turned its body and with the rest of the frenzied mob, dashed out of the room.

  “Inaya are yo
u alright? Can you hear me?”

  Inaya turned her shivering head to her brother and said, “Thank Allah, I think I am.”

  The lifeless carcasses of foreigners and countrymen lay on the floor. During war, Inaya supposed, enemies could find common ground: the red that stained their bodies.

  In a moment of silence, Hakeem sighed and sat his body down. He reached across the bars and held his sister’s hand. “Everything is going to be alright, sister.”

  “I know brother. Now that I have found you, I know.”

  Somewhere, off in the distance, Inaya heard the sound of ticking. Not like the ticking of a clock, but the sharp tapping of a dog’s nails. It neared like pebbles striking a concrete floor.

  A dog wandered in the prison. It disregarded the bodies and the prisoners.

  It approached Inaya and muzzled her face.

  “I know you. You are Shaytan.”

  “You know me? What is it that you think you know, Inaya?”

  “You are the Great Deceiver. You have caused all this. This destruction to our land, this profanity amongst our dead.”

  The dog lifted its muzzle and bellowed out a laugh that echoed through the iron bars. “I have done nothing, Inaya. You have done everything; you and your people. You simply invited me to watch. The One God gave me no power over you. Free will, you see. I have it, you have it. I simply suggest. I can be in your ear, and you can simply choose to listen … or to disregard. And as for the bodies of your fallen,” the dog looked around. “We are simply here to collect the scraps you have left us.”

  A. M. Dellamonica is a Canadian science-fiction writer who teaches creative writing at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Her first novel, Indigo Springs, was published by Tor Books in 2009. Her fourth novel, A Daughter of No Nation, was published in December 2015. Her first novel won the Sunburst Award, and her other fiction has been nominated for the Sidewise Award and garnered her a Canada Council for the Arts Grant.

  “Five Good Things about Meghan Sheedy” was originally published in Strange Horizons. It is a tale set in the far future about occupation, resistance, and terrorism.