| By: DoA Worrell |
1
The breeze lifts entire blankets of sand off of the ground like sheets waving over an unmade
bed, obscuring most of the sunlight and bending the remainder into twisted, diluted shafts of light.
At moments the sand looks like a whirlpool, swirling like a pallid urine around the latrine, yet even
when it’s static it’s like a saffron fog, thick at its thinnest point. And as the Iraqi dessert erupts into
this frenzy, a silhouette of the breeze is revealed, finally exposing the curves and contours of a
wind that often hides itself in nothing.
My brother and I weather the storm in the Humvee, cringing as the sand spatters against the
windshield. A sound reminiscent of the shower of shrapnel that might spray off of metal dumpsters
or burnt out jeeps during a firefight.
We’ve all been hit once or twice. For me it was a pipe and bits of the drain. All I heard was the
gunshot snap into the morning noise. Barking dogs, dripping water, distant conversations, all
silenced as the sniper’s bullet shattered the pipes and drains behind me. And even under my thirty
pound MTV, modular tactical vest, the shattered metal sunk so deep into my back that I though
they were bullets. I thought I was dead.
After the surgery the doctors insisted the nerve endings on the tattoo of scars laced down my
back were numb but I swear I could feel them twinging now, sitting between this tango of wind and
sand.
“That’s thirty minutes.” My brother’s voice rattles me from my distant gaze.
“What?” I ask, groggy, like someone who had just woken up.
“Delta hasn’t carried out radio check in thirty minutes.” He looks at the Rolex our father bought
him last Christmas. “Thirty minutes and some change.”
It’s just like Jamal to be overly precautious. The oldest of three children I guess he’s always
felt responsible for his siblings. Picking on my bullies, fighting my fights even our younger sister
criticizes his use of military tactics on her boyfriends. And it’s the same here. Even with the cadets
who are a few years older than him he treats them as if they were his kid brothers. Snapping
orders like a superior officer. It embarrasses me to no end when he instructs a fellow private to
make up his bed or tuck in his shirt, yet for some reason I have yet to grasp they all listen.
“Dorian,” he shouts. “Start the pre-emptive protocol.”
“The black out period is thirty minutes and it’s only been thirty minutes, Jamal. Someone’s
probably just taking a piss.” My tone is dawdling, dry and almost melodramatic.
“You’re always so god-damn laid back,” he barks as he reaches over me and grabs the radio
from the dashboard on the passenger side. “Just like dad always said you --”
“Look, don’t even bring that shit here, okay?” I cut him off before he has a chance to lecture
me for the hundredth time.
Jamal almost hits me with the radio as he drags it to his lips.
“Delta this is Hermit-Crab -- Come in -- Over,” Jamal says with a methodical stress on each
word.
“The Brits, French and Canadians came in yesterday, Jamal,” I emphasize with my tongue
hanging on the edge of every nation state.
“Delta this is Hermit-Crab -- Come in -- Over,” he repeats, ignoring me completely.
“As easy as we made it into the capital, with the U.N. and European forces now, it’s overkill.”
And it’s true. There hasn’t been an American casualty in six weeks and after defeating the
Taliban in the nest of their terrorist network it’s been smooth sailing. So smooth in fact that the
Europeans finally decided to get their hands dirty. Four European countries, in addition to
Australian and Canadian troops have adding three thousand land and air forces in the past two
weeks. Things couldn’t be quieter, but leave it to my brother to go looking for noise.
“Delta this is Hermit-Crab -- Come in -- Over.” Jamal says again but only static replies, hissing
and crackling from the receiver.
“Will you shut up,” I whine. Though I’m confident he won’t.
“Something’s wrong,” he whispers to himself. It’s a habit he has, muttering to himself like it
were some dramatic soliloquy, hoping that I would probe his opinion or at least ask what’s wrong.
But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction today.
“Will you calm down,” I say with my head now resting in the palm of my hands.
“Call it in,” he declares with this sort of epiphany.
“Call what in?” I snap back.
“They’re not replying. Call in the preemptive protocol!”
“Call what in? Nothing’s happened --”
We’re interrupted by a crackling from the radio, a sudden bubbling of static. I smirk and poise
to gloat but the static lingers over the speaker, loudening with each passing moment, almost as if
the static itself is inching closer towards us. This sound begins widening and even consumes the
noise outside. I have never heard anything so loud. The sound is like an aural froth overflowing
from the speaker, bubbling and crackling to a climax and then it just pops. The sudden silence is a
bit unnerving.
“What was that?” My brother says to himself then turns at me. “What the hell was that?”
A voice comes over the radio, drowning in static, slipping in and out of reception, and hollering
and rambling indistinguishably. We both lean closer to the speaker. It sounds almost like a foreign
language but it’s not. Full of “what’s” and “that’s”, it’s definitely English but we can’t make out
much meaning from his rambling, except for one word. Just one word is recognizable. He says,
“Retreat.”
2
In every language and at every frequency they shout it, retiro, ruckus, retraite, and we do.
Rattling from side to side of the Humvee as it bounces and wobbles over the dunes and dips in the
unpaved road. Helicopters cut at the air above us and storm by, we don’t see them but watch their
shadows waving over the uneven terrain. And with all this noise clattering around us, I hadn’t
noticed how quiet my brother and I had become. We haven’t said a word since the first call for
withdrawal, him focusing on driving, me switching comms. There seems to be this unspoken
understanding that brothers have. And since our infancy, my mother often tells us, we have been
like an unrehearsed duet, even crying with each other on cue.
“They have a nuke,” Jamal professes, with his back and neck lurched forward, completely
focused on the road.
I glance at him without a reply. Jamal just has a habit of assuming the worst. I remember back
in college he had a migraine for about a week and was so convinced it was a brain tumor that even
I started believed him.
“You hear me?” he asks.
“Yea, I hear you,” I reply, unconcerned. I don’t even glance over this time, as I begin picking
up something on the radio.
“That’s the only reason they’d call for a full retreat,” he says or maybe even asks. As I’m
barely listening to him I can’t quite tell.
Jamal continues talking erratically, speaking hills and valleys, whispering then exclaiming
without warning. I catch a word here and there, but he might as well be speaking to himself. His
voice, the wind, the bumps and clanks all merge into this one noise that seems to hide, muffled
behind my ears as I tune into comm 11.175, an Mhz frequency. I hear something, not the standard
call for retreat or typical military jargon. The voice is frantic and frightened and difficult to make
out. Every word is accompanied by a puff of static.
“How they found a God damn way --” His panicked voice flares into shrill snap on the speaker.
“Near Geneva, between France and --” Static drowns out the rest of his words. “The whole,” he
says under a sea of interference, then again his voice surfaces, “Because the whole.” His voice
drops out and the static clears for the shortest moment. “We found the God...” And with that his
voice begins to fizzle out.
“Are you listening to me?” Jamal shouts as he shoves a dessert eagle in my face.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yelp, startled but not scared. My brother’s antics rarely go
this far.
“Hostile at your six,” my brother shouts again, gesturing for me to take the gun.
I grab the gun and wrench my neck and waist to glance out of the back window. It’s a Nissan
pickup, fading red paint, skipping over dunes and splashing into the puddles of sand. In the back a
GAU-17 gatling gun and a gunman, with his turban unraveling and waving in the wind, struggling to
hold the gun steady and straight at us.
I roll down the window as they pull up beside us. Sand streams in like a graveled fountain,
spitting up from the tires churning at full muscle. Well aware that a handgun doesn’t stand a chance
against a gatling gun, I hesitate in lifting the gun out of the window, knowing that shooting at them
would prompt the gunner to return fire immediately. Our survival now is completely dependant on
my brother’s ability to drive.
I lift the gun out of the window with my arm dancing to the rhythm of the Humvee. It’s difficult
to get a clean shot with the tires popping in and out of every depression or bump in the sand. As I
begin to anticipate the sways and hops in the terrain and come close to something called aim, we
abruptly swerve left. The Humvee charges into the rougher patches of sand where Jamal knows
the pickup can’t follow. My hand slaps against the side mirror, nearly rattling the gun from my
fingers. But Jamal’s maneuver does begin to make some distance from the pickup.
We continue to veer left into rougher and thicker patches of sand and even contemplate taking
in a sigh of relief. Then there’s a rumbling in the distance. Jamal and I seem to notice it
simultaneously. I glance back. Jamal looks to the rear view mirror. Another two pickups are
following not far behind us. One is dirty and white with a gatling gun fixed in the back. The other
pickup behind it is empty on it’s tailgate but a gunman sits on the passenger side.
The two pickups charge forward in unison. One skids in front of us from the left and the other
lingers on the smoother sand to our right. We hear another vehicle behind us and turn back to see
not one but two more pickups racing towards us under a haze of kicked up sand and exhaust. And
all of a sudden we’re flanked from every corner and angle in a war against an army with nothing but
a handgun.
3
There’s a small town off in the distance. It’s tallest apartments, cement-gray and unpainted,
peak over the sandy mist. The sand hugs the unfledged city with a thick halo that smudges out
even the slightest outline of the smaller buildings. And though we’re speeding directly towards this
metropolitan oasis, neither my brother nor I take notice of it. Our eyes are lost in the muzzle of
guns.
“Hold your fire,” Jamal whispers, as if the insurgents outside could make out a thing he’s
saying.
I peer out of the window. The helplessness seems to suffocate me and my panting puff into a
haze to the window. I catch notice of an insurgent. We lock eyes for a moment or less but in that
time I see something peculiar. And perhaps it’s the brevity of the glance or the distance and the
sand or the inconstant wobble of his vehicle and mine but he seems to stare back at me in
absolute terror.
“Dorian,” Jamal says tapping me on the shoulder.
“What do we do?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says with something else on the tip of his tongue. Then he eventually sighs
and says, “I’m sorry.”
A couplet of words I haven’t heard my brother say in almost fifteen years. Back when he hit
me with a mirror for stealing the allowance he hid in an empty tomato sauce can in the back of the
cupboard. I remember he argued with our mother for hours about how selfish I was and how I
deserved it but in the end he gave up and apologized. And I think he’s given up again.
Our speed begins to drag on a steep incline of sand. The tires slip on the loose and sagging
patches of earth. The trucks in turn draw alongside and eventually overtake us, surrounding us with
their heavy weapons, taking aim and shouting, their voices echoing between the rackety metal.
I try not to cringe in front of my brother but my fingernails compensate and sink deep into the
neoprene car seat covers. The sound is a lingering scrunch but barely audible over the hollering
and seemingly arguing insurgents. And as they steady their guns and get us clearly into their sights,
they all speed off into the distance, none of them firing a single shot.
My brother slows down but doesn’t stop, veering right and getting back onto the more even
yet still unsteady, makeshift road. The sand is now giving way to stones and soil as we approach
the town ahead. The yellow begins dimming to brown and the broad wobbles adjusting to a slight,
steady rattle. We stay quiet for some time, following the trails of tires and exhaust towards the
town, though keeping a safe distance from trucks ahead of us.
“They were running,” Jamal says abruptly.
“How can you be sure?” I reply, reaching for the radio in front of me.
I remember the signal I picked up a few minutes earlier and turn up the volume hoping to find
the voice on the same frequency. But now all that echoes is that ever loudening static that seems
to reach out from the speakers and hum against the drum of my ears.
“From what?” Jamal asks himself. “What are we all running from?”
I turn back and peer into the sand storm we just emerged from. It’s higher than I though, the
sand still swirling at least fifty feet in the air. Slight tornadoes pirouette for a second or two then
unpeel into strands of a broken breeze.
Then I glance up and for the first time today see the sky, partly cloudy with the sunlight dulled
but visible. And something else, something I’ve never seen before, parting the clouds and swirling
mists of sand. I couldn’t see it exactly but I could see it’s influence on the things around it, pushing
forward, pushing towards us.
“We’re in enemy territory, Dorian. Keep your eyes on the damn road,” my brother says as we
hit the dirt roads and potholes of the sprawling ghetto.
The streets aren’t particularly busy. Men and women stand on balconies and glare as we drive
by. Barefoot children scurry across the streets and veiled women hug the sidewalk to avoid our
forty mile per hour hooks around the tight backstreets and alleys.
We swerve back onto the main road and nearly hit a human roadblock. My brother slithers in
and out of the men, women and trolleys that occupy the road. It’s as if the entire town clustered
onto this narrow road just to stand still and stare.
At first I think they’re staring at us, two Americans in a NATO military vehicle swerving
dangerously through their streets. Though I eventually notice the tilt in their necks and the focus of
their captivated eyes. They’re looking behind us.
I turn back, following their eyes with my own but in the nucleus of this town, the high buildings
and inconstant direction of the Humvee block a clear view of anything.
“What do you see -- What do you see?” Jamal says, still crushing the pedal with his heavy
feet.
“Not a damn thing,” I snap back, my head bobbling left and right. “Slow down.”
“Not a fucking chance,” he snarls and presses on the gas, finding another opening on a near
empty street.
I spot a young boy juggle a soccer ball on his knees on the road ahead of us. He stands out
from the other few pedestrians shuffling by mainly because we’re racing directly towards him, but I
place my faith in my brother’s ability to drive, trusting he would quickly veer left, but he doesn’t.
“Jamal?” I call and turn towards him.
“Holy Mary and Jesus,” my brother exclaims. His head is turned and staring out of the back
window, terrified and distracted by something behind us.
“Jamal,” I scream, realizing he hadn’t noticed the boy.
Jamal whips his neck back but not in time. I reach for wheel and wrench it left. We sideswipe
the child, his knee snaps against the bumper and the rearview mirror shatters against his face. The
Humvee dips then slants violently and suddenly we’re on our side. We whirl upside-down and the
windshield shatters, spitting back into our faces. We continue hurdling and spinning as the Humvee
begins to crumple around us. The roof crooks in. The doors burst inwards. The minced glass
rattles inside the Humvee as if it were a raucous maraca. All I hear are cracks and snaps and this
escalating bang until suddenly everything is silent.
4
I think I hear a voice whispering my name and I open my eyes to a squint. But there isn’t much
light and barely a sound, so that the voice must have been the last word at the end of some dream.
The first thing I notice is the taste of smoke and charred metal. My nostrils must have gotten
congested while I was unconscious because now I’m breathing through my lips. I cough and spit
with saliva dribbling off of my chin and at the same time I squint, trying to squeeze the haze out of
my eyes. My pupils eventually dilate into focus and all I see is glass, twisted metal and blood.
The Humvee is tipped on it’s side with the driver side window shattered and slumped in soil. I
see my brother out of the corner of my eye, moving but barely. I’m hanging on my waist, still
strapped into the seatbelt, feeling a sore bruise on my side where the seatbelt holds the brunt of
my body’s weight. My neck is cramped as well, from hanging limp for who knows how many hours.
“Dorian,” Jamal groans. It was his voice a moment earlier.
“I’m alright,” I say with a viscid dribble of blood and saliva dangling from a split on my bottom
lip.
“I’m stuck,” my brother whimpers, not crying but sharpening his tone as he tries to yank his
bleeding leg from under the contorted metal to no avail.
“Hold on,” I reply.
I unbuckle the seatbelt and nearly topple down into the Humvee. Then with a grunt I lift myself
out the shattering passenger side window above me and flop onto the dirt outside. The fragments
of glass decorating the soil crackle as I flounder under my sleeping feet.
“You out?” My brother asks, his voice muffled from inside the car.
“Yea, I’m out,” I reply, taking a look at the empty and silent surroundings.
My feet are still asleep but I manage to get myself up quick enough that I feel a little
lightheaded. I stumble into the street even as I hear my brother mumbling something to me in the
background.
The roads are completely barren with only the evening shadows making their way across the
streets. There’s no wind either and nothing moves. Everything is like an impressionist painting, with
all the fine details of realism but still lacking some aspect of life. I step into doorways and glance
into windows, all of them appearing like giant frames for well drawn but irrevocable unnatural works
of art.
“Dorian!” Jamal shouts.
I almost forget my brother in the maze of dirt roads and side streets. I scamper back towards
tattered Humvee that looks even worse from afar, warped and wrinkled like a raisin of its former
shape.
My brother’s arm is hanging out of the front of the Humvee where the windshield used to be. I
step under the shattered windshield that on its side almost looks like an small doorway. The glass
crumpling under my every step is the only noise and the silent town seems to have taken a hold of
Jamal. He looks up at me but doesn’t say a thing, glancing around at his helpless situation,
reluctant to ask for help.
His left leg is jammed between the seat and the door, forced together under the pressure of
the collapsed metal. His other leg is pinned between two pieces of metal that have been stripped
into jagged teeth and clamp-down on either side of his bleeding leg like a makeshift bear trap.
“Hold on,” I say, trying to look at his legs from every possible angle, trying not to cringe as I
look at the blood and shredded skin and then it hits me, I don’t think I can get him out.
I wrap my fingers around the grated metal and immediately feel the pinch on my finger tips. In
mere anticipation of the sting I wince then pull the metal upwards but it just a shifts back slight then
shudders back into position. My brother screams.
“Okay -- wait -- okay. Sorry -- no -- relax,” I plead, shouting out a hundred words but not one
sentence.
Jamal lays on the ground like a worm cut in half, squirming from his waist up and griping
inaudibly after every moan. His hands muffle his voice and cover his eyes but I can see the tears
running down the side of his face.
“Jamal.” I tap him on the shoulder. “Jamal, you’re going to have to help me.”
My brother takes his hand from over his face and stares at me. He’s not crying but his eyes
are watering and the mingling of saliva and mucus caught between his lips and nostrils flails every
time he breathes.
“I think it’s on the bone,” he says, under heavy alternating breaths, in through his lips and out
through his nostrils. But all I can seem to stare at is the ever growing dribble of pallid yellow mucus
swinging and bubbling every time he breathes.
I’ve never seen my brother like this before. Lying there on a mattress of shattered glass he
seems so small. I don’t even realize I’m doing it at first but subconsciously I tilt my head away
from him and don’t make eye contact, except for a glance or two from the corner of my eyes. I just
can’t stand to see him like this.
“You’re going to have to help me okay?” I say to my brother as he stares dreamingly out of
the broken glass window. “Jamal, come on, you have to help me.”
“Run,” Jamal says as his eyes reel from something outside back to me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Run, go, leave me! Retreat, remember? Retreat!” he begins shouting.
I stare through the jagged edges of the window into the abandoned city. It’s still like an image
in shattered frame. I immediately notice what I only assume just frightened brother and an icy chill
rides up the back of my neck.
The shadows from behind the alleys and corners begin to fade, though there’s no change in
the amount of light coming from above. Something is moving towards us and whatever it is, it’s
frighteningly close.
“You have to go now!” My brother shouts.
I hear him but nothing registers. My mind muddles in panic and I think, for a moment at least, I
lost my mind. Without a thought I reach under my brother’s armpits and yank him violently in last
second act of desperation. I can almost hear his bone grating against the metal, like chalk
smearing across a blackboard.
My brother hollers, spitting up blood and saliva as he shouts, “No -- just go -- Dorian, please --
let me go!”
It feels like I’m making progress, like he’s slipping out of the clutches of the wrecked Humvee
but I soon realize that he’s just slipping out of my hands. I look down at his feet, gushing blood in
spurts and realize that he hasn’t moved an inch. I can’t get him out.
I can feel the approaching silence now like a fly crawling on the back of my neck and that’s
when I do it. I let my brother go.
I turn to step out of the windshield of the Humvee and don’t so much as glance at Jamal. Even
though I hear him say something to me indistinctly, I continue forward, hesitant but I don’t look
back. I can’t look back, not with tears swelling and bubbling on the cusp of my eyelashes and this
uncontrollable sniffling clogging my nose and tightening my chest. I haven’t began to run but I am
already short of breath.
I cut my arm on the edge of shattered glass as I step out of the windshield but I barely feel it. I
can’t feel my feet under me either, though I know they’re there, running and fast as they can but
everything seems so surreal and twisted. I hit the ground a few times, stumbling like a drunk and
swallowing bits of dust but I find my way back up. All the time thinking about my brother lying
quietly behind me, alone and awaiting something unknown. The very idea makes me sick and I
think about turning back a thousand times but I don’t.
5
I don’t just stick to the streets or back alleys. I jump through windows and climb onto balconies
when I run into a dead end. I don’t have time to run in circles around the empty city streets.
Something is right behind me.
I scramble through a cotton door. The makeshift entrance is a blanket hanging from a pole
above the doorframe. Scrambling through a maze of improvised bedrooms, bathrooms and
backrooms I realize that I’m not thinking clearly about going in any direction. My mind is racing
faster than my feet. From the call for retreat to this thing behind me, my thoughts are a whirlwind of
contemplation and I keep coming back to one thought in particular, Jamal.
Thoughts of my brother are like an echo that just keeps coming back. I wonder whether or not I
could have saved him, whether or not he’s alive. Part of me fantasizes about him getting away and
following close behind me. Part of me thinks he’s already dead. While the last part of me is trying
to convince myself that the choice I made was the right one. That I couldn’t have gotten him out
and that wherever my brother is, he’s at peace.
I finally pop out of a back bathroom window with toilet paper still fettered to the bottom of my
shoes. I skid down a slight hill in the narrow alley and I run around a corner at the bottom of the
incline. Suddenly I’m blinded by flashes of light that brighten the dull grays of the evening. With the
light comes echoes of thunder that seem to all resound at once and I fall to my feet.
They merge into focus, a woman and the three children standing behind her. The boy looks
about seven while the girl, who’s maybe nine, is holding a now crying baby. Their mother, I’m
assuming, is holding something. But as I’m kneeling down and propped up on my arm I can’t quite
distinguish what it is. Then as I peer closer and she steps nearer to get a better look at me, I see
the smoke belly dancing from the muzzle of her gun.
I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t even notice the blood running down my chest and settling into a
puddle in my underwear. I just stared at the MG4, the German machinegun hanging from this Iraqi
woman’s hands. All I think about is how rare it is to see German made guns in Iraq. And that
thought seems to stretch on for eternity. Perhaps that’s what happens to the last thought you have
before you die.
She makes sure I’m dead or close enough to it that I couldn’t shoot back. Then the frightened
woman gathers her children and charges down another alley. Seemingly more scared of me dead
than alive.
I think about dragging myself further down the alley as I notice the shadows disappearing
behind me accompanied by an approaching silence. But now, feeling weak I consider not what I’m
running from but what I’m running to. I’ve spent so much time mulling over what’s behind me that I
hadn’t pondered on what’s ahead. I ask myself this question, if what I’m rushing towards is that
much better than what’s behind me and staring at the blood settling into a pool around my legs, I
think maybe not.
I lay my head against the wall behind me as my arm flops against the bloody pavement and
my fingers, holding life in their tight fist, unfurl like wilting petals. I keep my eyes open as I die
though and watch breeze push by. I can see it now, the wind, and the color of nothing.
The breeze lifts entire blankets of sand off of the ground like sheets waving over an unmade
bed, obscuring most of the sunlight and bending the remainder into twisted, diluted shafts of light.
At moments the sand looks like a whirlpool, swirling like a pallid urine around the latrine, yet even
when it’s static it’s like a saffron fog, thick at its thinnest point. And as the Iraqi dessert erupts into
this frenzy, a silhouette of the breeze is revealed, finally exposing the curves and contours of a
wind that often hides itself in nothing.
My brother and I weather the storm in the Humvee, cringing as the sand spatters against the
windshield. A sound reminiscent of the shower of shrapnel that might spray off of metal dumpsters
or burnt out jeeps during a firefight.
We’ve all been hit once or twice. For me it was a pipe and bits of the drain. All I heard was the
gunshot snap into the morning noise. Barking dogs, dripping water, distant conversations, all
silenced as the sniper’s bullet shattered the pipes and drains behind me. And even under my thirty
pound MTV, modular tactical vest, the shattered metal sunk so deep into my back that I though
they were bullets. I thought I was dead.
After the surgery the doctors insisted the nerve endings on the tattoo of scars laced down my
back were numb but I swear I could feel them twinging now, sitting between this tango of wind and
sand.
“That’s thirty minutes.” My brother’s voice rattles me from my distant gaze.
“What?” I ask, groggy, like someone who had just woken up.
“Delta hasn’t carried out radio check in thirty minutes.” He looks at the Rolex our father bought
him last Christmas. “Thirty minutes and some change.”
It’s just like Jamal to be overly precautious. The oldest of three children I guess he’s always
felt responsible for his siblings. Picking on my bullies, fighting my fights even our younger sister
criticizes his use of military tactics on her boyfriends. And it’s the same here. Even with the cadets
who are a few years older than him he treats them as if they were his kid brothers. Snapping
orders like a superior officer. It embarrasses me to no end when he instructs a fellow private to
make up his bed or tuck in his shirt, yet for some reason I have yet to grasp they all listen.
“Dorian,” he shouts. “Start the pre-emptive protocol.”
“The black out period is thirty minutes and it’s only been thirty minutes, Jamal. Someone’s
probably just taking a piss.” My tone is dawdling, dry and almost melodramatic.
“You’re always so god-damn laid back,” he barks as he reaches over me and grabs the radio
from the dashboard on the passenger side. “Just like dad always said you --”
“Look, don’t even bring that shit here, okay?” I cut him off before he has a chance to lecture
me for the hundredth time.
Jamal almost hits me with the radio as he drags it to his lips.
“Delta this is Hermit-Crab -- Come in -- Over,” Jamal says with a methodical stress on each
word.
“The Brits, French and Canadians came in yesterday, Jamal,” I emphasize with my tongue
hanging on the edge of every nation state.
“Delta this is Hermit-Crab -- Come in -- Over,” he repeats, ignoring me completely.
“As easy as we made it into the capital, with the U.N. and European forces now, it’s overkill.”
And it’s true. There hasn’t been an American casualty in six weeks and after defeating the
Taliban in the nest of their terrorist network it’s been smooth sailing. So smooth in fact that the
Europeans finally decided to get their hands dirty. Four European countries, in addition to
Australian and Canadian troops have adding three thousand land and air forces in the past two
weeks. Things couldn’t be quieter, but leave it to my brother to go looking for noise.
“Delta this is Hermit-Crab -- Come in -- Over.” Jamal says again but only static replies, hissing
and crackling from the receiver.
“Will you shut up,” I whine. Though I’m confident he won’t.
“Something’s wrong,” he whispers to himself. It’s a habit he has, muttering to himself like it
were some dramatic soliloquy, hoping that I would probe his opinion or at least ask what’s wrong.
But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction today.
“Will you calm down,” I say with my head now resting in the palm of my hands.
“Call it in,” he declares with this sort of epiphany.
“Call what in?” I snap back.
“They’re not replying. Call in the preemptive protocol!”
“Call what in? Nothing’s happened --”
We’re interrupted by a crackling from the radio, a sudden bubbling of static. I smirk and poise
to gloat but the static lingers over the speaker, loudening with each passing moment, almost as if
the static itself is inching closer towards us. This sound begins widening and even consumes the
noise outside. I have never heard anything so loud. The sound is like an aural froth overflowing
from the speaker, bubbling and crackling to a climax and then it just pops. The sudden silence is a
bit unnerving.
“What was that?” My brother says to himself then turns at me. “What the hell was that?”
A voice comes over the radio, drowning in static, slipping in and out of reception, and hollering
and rambling indistinguishably. We both lean closer to the speaker. It sounds almost like a foreign
language but it’s not. Full of “what’s” and “that’s”, it’s definitely English but we can’t make out
much meaning from his rambling, except for one word. Just one word is recognizable. He says,
“Retreat.”
2
In every language and at every frequency they shout it, retiro, ruckus, retraite, and we do.
Rattling from side to side of the Humvee as it bounces and wobbles over the dunes and dips in the
unpaved road. Helicopters cut at the air above us and storm by, we don’t see them but watch their
shadows waving over the uneven terrain. And with all this noise clattering around us, I hadn’t
noticed how quiet my brother and I had become. We haven’t said a word since the first call for
withdrawal, him focusing on driving, me switching comms. There seems to be this unspoken
understanding that brothers have. And since our infancy, my mother often tells us, we have been
like an unrehearsed duet, even crying with each other on cue.
“They have a nuke,” Jamal professes, with his back and neck lurched forward, completely
focused on the road.
I glance at him without a reply. Jamal just has a habit of assuming the worst. I remember back
in college he had a migraine for about a week and was so convinced it was a brain tumor that even
I started believed him.
“You hear me?” he asks.
“Yea, I hear you,” I reply, unconcerned. I don’t even glance over this time, as I begin picking
up something on the radio.
“That’s the only reason they’d call for a full retreat,” he says or maybe even asks. As I’m
barely listening to him I can’t quite tell.
Jamal continues talking erratically, speaking hills and valleys, whispering then exclaiming
without warning. I catch a word here and there, but he might as well be speaking to himself. His
voice, the wind, the bumps and clanks all merge into this one noise that seems to hide, muffled
behind my ears as I tune into comm 11.175, an Mhz frequency. I hear something, not the standard
call for retreat or typical military jargon. The voice is frantic and frightened and difficult to make
out. Every word is accompanied by a puff of static.
“How they found a God damn way --” His panicked voice flares into shrill snap on the speaker.
“Near Geneva, between France and --” Static drowns out the rest of his words. “The whole,” he
says under a sea of interference, then again his voice surfaces, “Because the whole.” His voice
drops out and the static clears for the shortest moment. “We found the God...” And with that his
voice begins to fizzle out.
“Are you listening to me?” Jamal shouts as he shoves a dessert eagle in my face.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yelp, startled but not scared. My brother’s antics rarely go
this far.
“Hostile at your six,” my brother shouts again, gesturing for me to take the gun.
I grab the gun and wrench my neck and waist to glance out of the back window. It’s a Nissan
pickup, fading red paint, skipping over dunes and splashing into the puddles of sand. In the back a
GAU-17 gatling gun and a gunman, with his turban unraveling and waving in the wind, struggling to
hold the gun steady and straight at us.
I roll down the window as they pull up beside us. Sand streams in like a graveled fountain,
spitting up from the tires churning at full muscle. Well aware that a handgun doesn’t stand a chance
against a gatling gun, I hesitate in lifting the gun out of the window, knowing that shooting at them
would prompt the gunner to return fire immediately. Our survival now is completely dependant on
my brother’s ability to drive.
I lift the gun out of the window with my arm dancing to the rhythm of the Humvee. It’s difficult
to get a clean shot with the tires popping in and out of every depression or bump in the sand. As I
begin to anticipate the sways and hops in the terrain and come close to something called aim, we
abruptly swerve left. The Humvee charges into the rougher patches of sand where Jamal knows
the pickup can’t follow. My hand slaps against the side mirror, nearly rattling the gun from my
fingers. But Jamal’s maneuver does begin to make some distance from the pickup.
We continue to veer left into rougher and thicker patches of sand and even contemplate taking
in a sigh of relief. Then there’s a rumbling in the distance. Jamal and I seem to notice it
simultaneously. I glance back. Jamal looks to the rear view mirror. Another two pickups are
following not far behind us. One is dirty and white with a gatling gun fixed in the back. The other
pickup behind it is empty on it’s tailgate but a gunman sits on the passenger side.
The two pickups charge forward in unison. One skids in front of us from the left and the other
lingers on the smoother sand to our right. We hear another vehicle behind us and turn back to see
not one but two more pickups racing towards us under a haze of kicked up sand and exhaust. And
all of a sudden we’re flanked from every corner and angle in a war against an army with nothing but
a handgun.
3
There’s a small town off in the distance. It’s tallest apartments, cement-gray and unpainted,
peak over the sandy mist. The sand hugs the unfledged city with a thick halo that smudges out
even the slightest outline of the smaller buildings. And though we’re speeding directly towards this
metropolitan oasis, neither my brother nor I take notice of it. Our eyes are lost in the muzzle of
guns.
“Hold your fire,” Jamal whispers, as if the insurgents outside could make out a thing he’s
saying.
I peer out of the window. The helplessness seems to suffocate me and my panting puff into a
haze to the window. I catch notice of an insurgent. We lock eyes for a moment or less but in that
time I see something peculiar. And perhaps it’s the brevity of the glance or the distance and the
sand or the inconstant wobble of his vehicle and mine but he seems to stare back at me in
absolute terror.
“Dorian,” Jamal says tapping me on the shoulder.
“What do we do?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says with something else on the tip of his tongue. Then he eventually sighs
and says, “I’m sorry.”
A couplet of words I haven’t heard my brother say in almost fifteen years. Back when he hit
me with a mirror for stealing the allowance he hid in an empty tomato sauce can in the back of the
cupboard. I remember he argued with our mother for hours about how selfish I was and how I
deserved it but in the end he gave up and apologized. And I think he’s given up again.
Our speed begins to drag on a steep incline of sand. The tires slip on the loose and sagging
patches of earth. The trucks in turn draw alongside and eventually overtake us, surrounding us with
their heavy weapons, taking aim and shouting, their voices echoing between the rackety metal.
I try not to cringe in front of my brother but my fingernails compensate and sink deep into the
neoprene car seat covers. The sound is a lingering scrunch but barely audible over the hollering
and seemingly arguing insurgents. And as they steady their guns and get us clearly into their sights,
they all speed off into the distance, none of them firing a single shot.
My brother slows down but doesn’t stop, veering right and getting back onto the more even
yet still unsteady, makeshift road. The sand is now giving way to stones and soil as we approach
the town ahead. The yellow begins dimming to brown and the broad wobbles adjusting to a slight,
steady rattle. We stay quiet for some time, following the trails of tires and exhaust towards the
town, though keeping a safe distance from trucks ahead of us.
“They were running,” Jamal says abruptly.
“How can you be sure?” I reply, reaching for the radio in front of me.
I remember the signal I picked up a few minutes earlier and turn up the volume hoping to find
the voice on the same frequency. But now all that echoes is that ever loudening static that seems
to reach out from the speakers and hum against the drum of my ears.
“From what?” Jamal asks himself. “What are we all running from?”
I turn back and peer into the sand storm we just emerged from. It’s higher than I though, the
sand still swirling at least fifty feet in the air. Slight tornadoes pirouette for a second or two then
unpeel into strands of a broken breeze.
Then I glance up and for the first time today see the sky, partly cloudy with the sunlight dulled
but visible. And something else, something I’ve never seen before, parting the clouds and swirling
mists of sand. I couldn’t see it exactly but I could see it’s influence on the things around it, pushing
forward, pushing towards us.
“We’re in enemy territory, Dorian. Keep your eyes on the damn road,” my brother says as we
hit the dirt roads and potholes of the sprawling ghetto.
The streets aren’t particularly busy. Men and women stand on balconies and glare as we drive
by. Barefoot children scurry across the streets and veiled women hug the sidewalk to avoid our
forty mile per hour hooks around the tight backstreets and alleys.
We swerve back onto the main road and nearly hit a human roadblock. My brother slithers in
and out of the men, women and trolleys that occupy the road. It’s as if the entire town clustered
onto this narrow road just to stand still and stare.
At first I think they’re staring at us, two Americans in a NATO military vehicle swerving
dangerously through their streets. Though I eventually notice the tilt in their necks and the focus of
their captivated eyes. They’re looking behind us.
I turn back, following their eyes with my own but in the nucleus of this town, the high buildings
and inconstant direction of the Humvee block a clear view of anything.
“What do you see -- What do you see?” Jamal says, still crushing the pedal with his heavy
feet.
“Not a damn thing,” I snap back, my head bobbling left and right. “Slow down.”
“Not a fucking chance,” he snarls and presses on the gas, finding another opening on a near
empty street.
I spot a young boy juggle a soccer ball on his knees on the road ahead of us. He stands out
from the other few pedestrians shuffling by mainly because we’re racing directly towards him, but I
place my faith in my brother’s ability to drive, trusting he would quickly veer left, but he doesn’t.
“Jamal?” I call and turn towards him.
“Holy Mary and Jesus,” my brother exclaims. His head is turned and staring out of the back
window, terrified and distracted by something behind us.
“Jamal,” I scream, realizing he hadn’t noticed the boy.
Jamal whips his neck back but not in time. I reach for wheel and wrench it left. We sideswipe
the child, his knee snaps against the bumper and the rearview mirror shatters against his face. The
Humvee dips then slants violently and suddenly we’re on our side. We whirl upside-down and the
windshield shatters, spitting back into our faces. We continue hurdling and spinning as the Humvee
begins to crumple around us. The roof crooks in. The doors burst inwards. The minced glass
rattles inside the Humvee as if it were a raucous maraca. All I hear are cracks and snaps and this
escalating bang until suddenly everything is silent.
4
I think I hear a voice whispering my name and I open my eyes to a squint. But there isn’t much
light and barely a sound, so that the voice must have been the last word at the end of some dream.
The first thing I notice is the taste of smoke and charred metal. My nostrils must have gotten
congested while I was unconscious because now I’m breathing through my lips. I cough and spit
with saliva dribbling off of my chin and at the same time I squint, trying to squeeze the haze out of
my eyes. My pupils eventually dilate into focus and all I see is glass, twisted metal and blood.
The Humvee is tipped on it’s side with the driver side window shattered and slumped in soil. I
see my brother out of the corner of my eye, moving but barely. I’m hanging on my waist, still
strapped into the seatbelt, feeling a sore bruise on my side where the seatbelt holds the brunt of
my body’s weight. My neck is cramped as well, from hanging limp for who knows how many hours.
“Dorian,” Jamal groans. It was his voice a moment earlier.
“I’m alright,” I say with a viscid dribble of blood and saliva dangling from a split on my bottom
lip.
“I’m stuck,” my brother whimpers, not crying but sharpening his tone as he tries to yank his
bleeding leg from under the contorted metal to no avail.
“Hold on,” I reply.
I unbuckle the seatbelt and nearly topple down into the Humvee. Then with a grunt I lift myself
out the shattering passenger side window above me and flop onto the dirt outside. The fragments
of glass decorating the soil crackle as I flounder under my sleeping feet.
“You out?” My brother asks, his voice muffled from inside the car.
“Yea, I’m out,” I reply, taking a look at the empty and silent surroundings.
My feet are still asleep but I manage to get myself up quick enough that I feel a little
lightheaded. I stumble into the street even as I hear my brother mumbling something to me in the
background.
The roads are completely barren with only the evening shadows making their way across the
streets. There’s no wind either and nothing moves. Everything is like an impressionist painting, with
all the fine details of realism but still lacking some aspect of life. I step into doorways and glance
into windows, all of them appearing like giant frames for well drawn but irrevocable unnatural works
of art.
“Dorian!” Jamal shouts.
I almost forget my brother in the maze of dirt roads and side streets. I scamper back towards
tattered Humvee that looks even worse from afar, warped and wrinkled like a raisin of its former
shape.
My brother’s arm is hanging out of the front of the Humvee where the windshield used to be. I
step under the shattered windshield that on its side almost looks like an small doorway. The glass
crumpling under my every step is the only noise and the silent town seems to have taken a hold of
Jamal. He looks up at me but doesn’t say a thing, glancing around at his helpless situation,
reluctant to ask for help.
His left leg is jammed between the seat and the door, forced together under the pressure of
the collapsed metal. His other leg is pinned between two pieces of metal that have been stripped
into jagged teeth and clamp-down on either side of his bleeding leg like a makeshift bear trap.
“Hold on,” I say, trying to look at his legs from every possible angle, trying not to cringe as I
look at the blood and shredded skin and then it hits me, I don’t think I can get him out.
I wrap my fingers around the grated metal and immediately feel the pinch on my finger tips. In
mere anticipation of the sting I wince then pull the metal upwards but it just a shifts back slight then
shudders back into position. My brother screams.
“Okay -- wait -- okay. Sorry -- no -- relax,” I plead, shouting out a hundred words but not one
sentence.
Jamal lays on the ground like a worm cut in half, squirming from his waist up and griping
inaudibly after every moan. His hands muffle his voice and cover his eyes but I can see the tears
running down the side of his face.
“Jamal.” I tap him on the shoulder. “Jamal, you’re going to have to help me.”
My brother takes his hand from over his face and stares at me. He’s not crying but his eyes
are watering and the mingling of saliva and mucus caught between his lips and nostrils flails every
time he breathes.
“I think it’s on the bone,” he says, under heavy alternating breaths, in through his lips and out
through his nostrils. But all I can seem to stare at is the ever growing dribble of pallid yellow mucus
swinging and bubbling every time he breathes.
I’ve never seen my brother like this before. Lying there on a mattress of shattered glass he
seems so small. I don’t even realize I’m doing it at first but subconsciously I tilt my head away
from him and don’t make eye contact, except for a glance or two from the corner of my eyes. I just
can’t stand to see him like this.
“You’re going to have to help me okay?” I say to my brother as he stares dreamingly out of
the broken glass window. “Jamal, come on, you have to help me.”
“Run,” Jamal says as his eyes reel from something outside back to me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Run, go, leave me! Retreat, remember? Retreat!” he begins shouting.
I stare through the jagged edges of the window into the abandoned city. It’s still like an image
in shattered frame. I immediately notice what I only assume just frightened brother and an icy chill
rides up the back of my neck.
The shadows from behind the alleys and corners begin to fade, though there’s no change in
the amount of light coming from above. Something is moving towards us and whatever it is, it’s
frighteningly close.
“You have to go now!” My brother shouts.
I hear him but nothing registers. My mind muddles in panic and I think, for a moment at least, I
lost my mind. Without a thought I reach under my brother’s armpits and yank him violently in last
second act of desperation. I can almost hear his bone grating against the metal, like chalk
smearing across a blackboard.
My brother hollers, spitting up blood and saliva as he shouts, “No -- just go -- Dorian, please --
let me go!”
It feels like I’m making progress, like he’s slipping out of the clutches of the wrecked Humvee
but I soon realize that he’s just slipping out of my hands. I look down at his feet, gushing blood in
spurts and realize that he hasn’t moved an inch. I can’t get him out.
I can feel the approaching silence now like a fly crawling on the back of my neck and that’s
when I do it. I let my brother go.
I turn to step out of the windshield of the Humvee and don’t so much as glance at Jamal. Even
though I hear him say something to me indistinctly, I continue forward, hesitant but I don’t look
back. I can’t look back, not with tears swelling and bubbling on the cusp of my eyelashes and this
uncontrollable sniffling clogging my nose and tightening my chest. I haven’t began to run but I am
already short of breath.
I cut my arm on the edge of shattered glass as I step out of the windshield but I barely feel it. I
can’t feel my feet under me either, though I know they’re there, running and fast as they can but
everything seems so surreal and twisted. I hit the ground a few times, stumbling like a drunk and
swallowing bits of dust but I find my way back up. All the time thinking about my brother lying
quietly behind me, alone and awaiting something unknown. The very idea makes me sick and I
think about turning back a thousand times but I don’t.
5
I don’t just stick to the streets or back alleys. I jump through windows and climb onto balconies
when I run into a dead end. I don’t have time to run in circles around the empty city streets.
Something is right behind me.
I scramble through a cotton door. The makeshift entrance is a blanket hanging from a pole
above the doorframe. Scrambling through a maze of improvised bedrooms, bathrooms and
backrooms I realize that I’m not thinking clearly about going in any direction. My mind is racing
faster than my feet. From the call for retreat to this thing behind me, my thoughts are a whirlwind of
contemplation and I keep coming back to one thought in particular, Jamal.
Thoughts of my brother are like an echo that just keeps coming back. I wonder whether or not I
could have saved him, whether or not he’s alive. Part of me fantasizes about him getting away and
following close behind me. Part of me thinks he’s already dead. While the last part of me is trying
to convince myself that the choice I made was the right one. That I couldn’t have gotten him out
and that wherever my brother is, he’s at peace.
I finally pop out of a back bathroom window with toilet paper still fettered to the bottom of my
shoes. I skid down a slight hill in the narrow alley and I run around a corner at the bottom of the
incline. Suddenly I’m blinded by flashes of light that brighten the dull grays of the evening. With the
light comes echoes of thunder that seem to all resound at once and I fall to my feet.
They merge into focus, a woman and the three children standing behind her. The boy looks
about seven while the girl, who’s maybe nine, is holding a now crying baby. Their mother, I’m
assuming, is holding something. But as I’m kneeling down and propped up on my arm I can’t quite
distinguish what it is. Then as I peer closer and she steps nearer to get a better look at me, I see
the smoke belly dancing from the muzzle of her gun.
I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t even notice the blood running down my chest and settling into a
puddle in my underwear. I just stared at the MG4, the German machinegun hanging from this Iraqi
woman’s hands. All I think about is how rare it is to see German made guns in Iraq. And that
thought seems to stretch on for eternity. Perhaps that’s what happens to the last thought you have
before you die.
She makes sure I’m dead or close enough to it that I couldn’t shoot back. Then the frightened
woman gathers her children and charges down another alley. Seemingly more scared of me dead
than alive.
I think about dragging myself further down the alley as I notice the shadows disappearing
behind me accompanied by an approaching silence. But now, feeling weak I consider not what I’m
running from but what I’m running to. I’ve spent so much time mulling over what’s behind me that I
hadn’t pondered on what’s ahead. I ask myself this question, if what I’m rushing towards is that
much better than what’s behind me and staring at the blood settling into a pool around my legs, I
think maybe not.
I lay my head against the wall behind me as my arm flops against the bloody pavement and
my fingers, holding life in their tight fist, unfurl like wilting petals. I keep my eyes open as I die
though and watch breeze push by. I can see it now, the wind, and the color of nothing.
| Retreat |
| February 2010 |
| Fiction |
| Copyright 2010 by DoA Worrell |
