Carnage
Najiyah Diana Helwani – Syria

Idris Ahmed wondered what had happened. At first there was just bewilderment. A sense that something huge had happened … but beyond that, just a void. All he remembered was buying vegetables. Then the pain clued him in.

Only when the pain hit did Idris process what had befallen him — and what would befall him next. He wondered how violent people lived with themselves, and he cursed every son of a bitch who had turned his country into a living hell.

Through the pain, he remembered the last time he’d gone on vacation with his family. It had been in 1999, before the fall of the government. He didn’t wonder why that particular memory surfaced, as we might. He didn’t wonder what it said about him as a person or as a Muslim that he should remember their last holiday at this particular time. He just let the memory soothe the pain.

Leena had been pregnant with Rami then. They’d gone to Mosul to see her family. Idris remembered sand pelting the windshield of the Toyota pickup on the way there — the Toyota he’d driven when he’d worked for the generator company.  He remembered sneezing all the way to Mosul, even though the windows had been rolled up and the AC turned on. He’d been stuffy when they arrived at Leena’s father’s house, and couldn’t even smell the fish the neighbors were frying.  Leena had told him to be thankful for small miracles.

That night, though, he’d been able to smell Leena’s hair, lying beside her in the tiny twin bed she’d slept in as a child. Her hair had been a surprise for him when they’d married. Even though she could have removed her scarf in his company after their engagement, she had almost coyly asked him to wait until their wedding night. Idris had been half happy to wait until their wedding to revel in her full beauty — and half afraid that she was hiding something. Was she bald? Ali, Leena’s dependable, down-to-earth older brother, had assured Idris that he would be glad he waited. So he had. When he removed her scarf on their wedding night and she let her river of straight, black, coconut-scented hair unfurl to her waist, he had literally basked in the knowledge that this treasure was his alone. A year later, in her bed, he could smell her hair even with his stuffy nose. Either that or he knew the smell so well he could imagine it as soon as he got near her.

The scent of her inspired him to reach out, and he rubbed her bulging tummy. She turned over and draped one leg across him. Even in the overbearing heat, he welcomed her relaxing onto him.

They had picnicked on the banks of the Tigris that week, and had served as picnic food for the mosquitoes. Idris remembered lighting the coals for shish kabob and fanning them to red-hot with a straw fan he’d bought at Al Shorjah Souk back in Baghdad. He could almost taste the comforting tang of the charcoaled meat and the smooth coolness of the yoghurt they’d dipped it in. He pictured Leena laughing as she popped a grilled onion she had peeled for him into his mouth. That was the last time he remembered eating grilled onions.

Idris remembered seeing his father-in-law cry not long before they had left to go home. Idris’ mother-in-law, a portly combination of caretaker and colonel, had died only a year earlier, of breast cancer, and Idris had taken his still mourning father-in-law to the cemetery so they could read Qur’an and pray for her. Idris remembered how uncomfortable he’d felt when he saw the older man’s tears — as if a mountain were melting before his eyes. He hadn’t known where to look. He remembered concentrating hard on redividing the meat they had brought to distribute among the needy after they left the cemetery.

The next day he’d gone out with Ali. They’d set up their hookahs in a cozy corner of the neighborhood coffee shop — the one next to the florist's. Idris remembered playing backgammon with some of the “uncles”. Their opponents were regulars at the café — so regular they were almost a part of the place. Idris only came to Mosul a couple of times a year, and even he knew them all by name. Abu Ziyad, Abu Yusuf, and Abu’l Khayt. Abu Ziyad’s oldest son was Ziyad, Abu Yusuf’s oldest son was Yusuf, but Abu’l Khayt was a tailor who had never married, so he was called Father of the Thread.

Eventually the conversation had turned to politics. International politics, of course. The safe kind. The men began to banter back and forth about whether the US would attack again. Abu’l Khayt was sure they would. “This son of a dog is a bigger dog than his father was. And revenge is a powerful motivator.”

Idris had scoffed. He and his brother-in-law argued that it was too simplistic to think that Bush would attack them, just to “finish what his father started”. Idris’ own naïve words echoed back at him as if they had come from the blast he’d just witnessed: “The international community won’t allow it. The Arab world won’t allow it. The Americans know better.”

Abu Yusuf had shaken his head. The old men had lived through coups, world wars, and the Revolutionary Guard. They knew better. They knew history. They knew human nature. And they knew the luck of their country.

Idris Ahmed remembered praying the Friday prayer in Mosul that week. The imam was an old classmate of Leena’s who’d lost his father and his sister in the war. He talked about the responsibility of raising children. Everyone in the country was worried about their children’s physical needs, he lamented, to the detriment of their spirits. People were so worried about getting their kids’ teeth fixed, their shoes repaired and their bellies full, that there was no time or energy left for reading about the life of the Prophet — peace be upon him — or memorizing Qur’an.

The imam had acknowledged that the country was undergoing a big test, but told his congregants to be grateful they were tested in this manner instead of like the poor, misled Saudis and Kuwaitis — people whose test was wealth and leisure. The Prophet — peace be upon him — had said that wealth was what he feared most for his ummah. The imam assured the assembled men — ragged and careworn as they were — that they were the most blessed in the Muslim world. Along with the Palestinians, the Chechens, and the Kashmiris, they formed an elite club of those whom Allah loved enough to test with trials like those of the first Muslims: war and oppression and privation. Yes, they were in good company.  

Idris remembered wondering how he would be able to provide for his new family either physically or spiritually. The responsibility felt like much more than he could ever hope to live up to. He remembered sending up an urgent plea that day, that Allah would send him the strength and wisdom it would take.

After the sermon he’d found enough courage to ask Ali for a loan. He cringed at the salty disgrace of putting himself in the position of the lower hand, but the one-room flat he and Leena were renting would soon be too small for the Ahmed family, and it was time to build on the land his father had left him. Despite his best efforts, Idris hadn’t saved enough yet to begin, so he turned to Ali that week and humbled himself for the sake of his family.

His brother-in-law, tall with a broad beard and a smile to match, had been great about it, not rubbing Idris’ nose in it either then or later. But his wife Jumanah had known about it — and that meant that the rest of the family did, too.

Idris smiled, remembering the day he had paid back the last of the loan six years later, when Rami was five and they’d lived in their new home for four years. He had immediately felt the morbid weight of debt lift off his heart, and had become closer to his brother-in-law than ever, now that they were back on an equal footing. Talking to Jumanah had still tripped his gag reflex though, and he tried hard to forgive her and remember that her indiscretion was just part of the test.  

Idris wondered what his home looked like now. He pictured it before it had fallen victim to the Americans’ peculiar form of liberation. He saw Leena watering her plants, Rami coming up the stairs, back from Qur’an class. But then the bunker buster had come to visit, and they’d had to move in with his sister and her family. Amira’s family had welcomed them with open arms, but the stress of living in cramped quarters was taking its toll on everyone.

Something bright flashed near him and jolted Idris back to the present. He was bombarded at once with the violent sounds of the blast’s aftermath — sirens and shouting and scraping metal. He remembered that he had gone to the market to see what half dead vegetables might be available for Leena and Amira to make some sort of nameless stew from. He had just bought a half a kilo of potatoes and a wilted bunch of cilantro when the blast had hit.   

When he was able to focus on the flashing light he found it was a camera, wielded by a silent young female reporter. He wondered what she was doing in a war zone if she didn’t have to be there.

The woman focused her camera on Idris Ahmed — on his body and his severed leg several feet away. She snapped her shutter as he raised his right index finger and spoke something she couldn't hear. Then his body became another piece of rotting carnage.