Kicking Bombs

by Barry Stevens

  The next day I woke up to the sun shining brightly through a large hole in the wall. I could hear Boof moaning and moving around trying to shift the broken bricks from underneath him. Again I stayed perfectly still, trying not to draw attention to myself. I could hear a woman and a child talking in the room beside us when Boof softly pleaded for help. It must have been a huge effort for him to say anything because his plea was nothing more than a mumble. I slowly tried to open my eyes only to find that one of them was so badly swollen and had so much dried blood caked onto my eyelashes that they were stuck together. I could slightly open my right eye but could see nothing but the floor and the bottom of the wall.

  Surprisingly I heard the woman’s voice in the room with us talking to Boof. Although she was only speaking in Arabic she actually sounded as if she pitied him and was clearing the broken bricks from underneath his body. The next thing I knew she was rolling me onto my back. I did my best to make out I was still unconscious but uncontrollably let out a groan as I rolled over on top of a chest full of cracked and broken ribs. I opened the only eye I could to see a woman dressed in rags standing over me with a small child squatting beside her. I tried to say something but my lips were so bruised and swollen it was impossible. She started to softly talk to me in Arabic when a man walked into the building, shouting. The small child stood up and ran through the door past him and cringed as if he was expecting a back hand on his way past. The woman shouted back at him and lay my head back down on the ground. She stood up and faced the man only inches away from him and although I couldn’t understand a single word coming from her mouth I knew she was abusing him over the way we had been treated. She pushed her way past him and disappeared into the next room. A few hours later a group of men came into the building all screaming out ‘Allahu Akbar’ and dancing in the cramped room holding there AK-47s above their heads. Boof and I were rolled over onto our faces and the group of men danced around us like fools. I remember thinking to myself, I don’t dance like that even when I’m drunk, you morons.

  After a few minutes of this two men came into the room carrying a couple of carpets. Three or four men gagged Boof with a piece of rope and picked him up, carried him off the pile of bricks and lay him on the edge of one of the carpets. He screamed in pain as they shifted him. By now our muscles were unbelievably cramped from being tied up for so long; every muscle felt like it was on fire. And the wire had cut into our wrists and ankles; I was sure I could feel it cutting deeper into flesh every time I moved. The swelling around these wounds was getting worse, tightening the lashings and increasing the pain.

  They wrapped Boof up in the carpet like a Christmas bonbon and took him outside. It crossed my tortured mind that I’d almost got a job working with carpets before I chose adventure over security, and here I was going to be wrapped in one. When the men came back into the room I knew it was my turn. What I wasn’t ready for was the hard kick in my already bruised, cracked and broken ribs, which caused so much pain I felt like I was going to pass out again. In a way I wished I had; anything to relieve me of the never-ending crap that these bastards were throwing at me. Before I knew it I had a small plastic shopping bag shoved in my mouth and something like a piece of string or boot lace tied like a gag around my head holding the bag in. The worst was yet to come; two men grabbed my wrists from either side and another man grabbed the wire itself that was tied around my ankles and picked me up. I could feel the wire cutting further into the tender flesh. My shoulder joints felt like they were going to dislocate and finally, mercifully, I passed out.

  When I came to I could hear strange noises. It was totally black and I could smell the carpet and feel it wrapped tightly around my body. Suddenly I felt a sharp jolt and heard the distinctive sound of a car hitting a pot hole. I didn’t have to be a genius to know that they were moving me somewhere and I was in a car or a small truck. The sounds I could hear were the wind and the road noise. My suspicions were confirmed when I felt the momentum as the car turned a sharp corner. It was easy then to figure out what they had done. They had tied me to the roof wrapped in the carpet so I looked like just like another body off to the cemetery. It’s a daily event in and around Baghdad — people wrap the dead in a blanket or carpet and just tie them to the roof like a stiff piece of meat and take them away.

  Some even went as far as placing them in a very crude wooden box that looked nothing like a coffin and then tied that to the roof. This box often sat on top of very small cars or taxis with the ends of the box hanging halfway over the hood and right back as far as the rear indicators. On one occasion I had seen a wrapped body placed in a cardboard box and tied to the roof of a small Corolla; it didn’t have a roof rack so they tied the rope through the open windows and two blokes sat on the back door windows to physically hold on to the parcelled up corpse.

  I tried to move—just wriggle a little — but it became sadly obvious that they had me inside some sort of hard outer wrapping as well. I couldn’t move a muscle; in fact I was finding it extremely hard to breathe.

  I had no idea where they were taking me, but I knew it must be a long way from Baghdad as it seemed like we were driving for hours. It may have been a fraction of the time but when you’re tied up, suffocating in a carpet and in as much pain as I was, every second feels like an eternity. The road suddenly turned to dirt. I could feel the corrugations vibrate through and the car hitting every bump on the bloody road sent shots of pain through my body. Every jolt resulted in a low grunt and another tear of pain as the bag and the boot lace prevented me from screaming. As I lay there engulfed in the worst possible and most painful predicament anyone could ever dream of getting into the one thought that kept flashing through my head was, I’m going to beat these bastards and get home to my kids.

  The car stopped and I heard a voice welcome the occupants of the car in Arabic: ‘As-salam alaykum.’ The driver responded with ‘Wa alaikum assalaam.’ All seemed quite normal as if the person the driver was talking to had no idea what was going on. I tried to move, just a little. I thought that if I could kick the box this person might become suspicious. Hopefully it was a soldier at a checkpoint or something. I shook as much as I could and did feel the box move a little sideways but to my intense disappointment the only response I received was someone bashing on the side of my carpet shell with something hard and yelling something in Arabic.

  Everything went quiet. Then I could hear them untying me from the roof and dragging the rope across the carpet. Suddenly I felt myself being dragged backwards over the rear of the car and slammed onto the ground. Again the pain was unbearable. For the first time I could feel blood flowing freely from my wrists and soaking the carpet around my lower back. The thud caused me to gasp and I sucked the bag back into the rear of my throat. Now I couldn’t breathe. I started constantly groaning as loud as I could, trying to scream as I thrashed about, suffocating. I felt someone kick me but I continued to flail around inside the wrapping.

  Thankfully one of these morons must have had enough of my insolence and unrolled me across the ground to give me a beating. It must have been obvious to even these screaming cretins that something was wrong, because one of them quickly untied the bootlace and pulled the bag from my mouth. I could feel the bag slide out from deep down in my throat. As soon as it cleared my mouth I sucked in what would have to have been the deepest breath of air I ever have inhaled in my entire life. I was so relieved to be free of the bag and the choking that I very nearly thanked them for pulling it out. Thankfully the deep-seated hatred I had for them overtook the reaction and I just lay there and sucked in the air, saying nothing.

  An old man wearing what Tripod and I always called a man dress and a red-and-white checked shemagh stooped down beside me and said in very clear English, ‘You have been brought here to serve Allah, blessed is his name. Dead you can be of no benefit to him. I suggest that you do as you are told and you will be treated well. We are his holy warriors; if you disobey or offend us these men will make you wish you we
re dead. Unfortunately for you that wish may come true. Pray to your God that if it does happen it will be swift and painless.’ At this point all I wanted was to be rid of the wire that was the cause of a large percentage of my grief. I looked at this man square in the eye and said, ‘Please. Can you please cut the wires off? They’re cutting through my skin.’

  He stood up and said, ‘All in good time. But now you should be thankful to God that you are here and not dead.’ As he was walking away he stopped and slowly turned around and said, ‘Never speak to me again. Only if I ask you a question will you ever talk.’ And he turned and walked away.

  The two men beside the car who had pulled the bag from my mouth started talking, which soon broke into a loud argument that caused others to come out from a door that was set into a long mud brick wall. The argument soon got worse until everyone was acting like they were in a shouting competition. The old man appeared and walked over to the group and softly said one phrase which instantly quietened the crowd. He said a few more words and all but two of the men went back in through the door. He came over to me, leant down again and said very softly, ‘These men want to kill you and avenge a friend who was murdered this morning by the Americans in Tikrit. Two more of their brothers were taken prisoner. We think they have been taken to a prison in Samarra run by the dogs of the Iraqi Army. If this is true then they are already dead. I think that you and your friend may be the same before night. If Allah wills it!’

  My friend? Boof must be alive and somewhere within the enclosure. As he was walking away he said something to the guards and they began to untie the wire around my ankles. The dry skin that had now hardened between my flesh and the wire pulled away, causing the wounds to bleed profusely. For the first time since I was tied up I managed to lift one leg slightly so I could look at the wound. It was incredibly swollen, bruised black and had blood oozing from a deep gash.

  Before I could look at the other the men took an arm each and lifted me to my feet. I screamed in pain and immediately fell back to the ground. It was if someone had sliced a sharp knife down the backs of my legs. My feet were so swollen I couldn’t bear to put any weight on them. Both of these bastards chosen to bring me inside the enclosure started shouting and abusing me. One man sank his boot deep into my stomach and the other grabbed an AK-47 that was slung behind his back, pulled back the cocking handle and released the working parts forward allowing a round into the chamber. He pushed the end of the barrel repeatedly into the side of my head and face, while all the time continuing to scream like a madman. The other man with him was screaming as well but to a far lesser extent, just trying to keep up a tough appearance in front of his loud-mouth friend.

  Again the old man came out, but this time he wasn’t as cool as he had been in the past. I could see by the look on his face that he was extremely pissed off at these two wannabes and was intending to give them a serve. He walked straight up to the bloke with the AK and took it off him. He grabbed the sling of the weapon and swung it around his head once and threw it into a drain about 15 metres away. He turned to the now unarmed man and slapped him hard across the face, knocking him down onto one knee. The other man kept moving backwards away from his elder constantly grovelling in Arabic in an attempt not to get the same as his peer. Regrettably for him the car that brought me to this place blocked his escape and the old dude must have slapped him at least a dozen times in the side and back of his head as he cowered beside the rear wheel in an attempt to protect himself.

  The old man said something to them, and although it was stern and to the point it was said in a hushed tone as if he was sick and tired of their crap. Obviously it wasn’t the first time he’d had to reprimand these two. As soon as the old man left the area both of these now very calm idiots rolled me over onto my stomach and untied the wire from my wrists. The relief was instant, until I tried to move my arms to the side of my body in an attempt to sit up and then the same burning feeling shot through my muscles again. I found that there was no way I could move my arms. It was if I had suffered a stroke and my arms where paralysed. One of the men looked down at me and said something to me in Arabic and gestured with his hands for me to get up. I did what I could, but as much as I tried, as much as I wanted to do whatever I needed to just to avoid another bashing, my body just wasn’t up to it. One of the men grabbed me under the armpit and sat me up against the front bumper of the car. One of my legs was stretched out in front of me while the other was awkwardly bent and tucked in underneath the other. Nothing that I could do would straighten them out.

  It was then that I noticed that my jocks — the only piece of clothing I had. They were black with dried blood. All around my groin was stained with dried blood and the hair on my thighs was thickly caked in it. It was then that I realised that my injuries were far worse than I originally thought. All of the beatings and the constant kicks into my stomach and kidneys must have ruptured something internally. I had no idea how long I had been bleeding out of my backside, or even how much blood I had lost, but I did know that if I copped any more vicious bashings they wouldn’t have to shoot me to kill me; I’d just die from the inside.

  This new assessment of my condition just increased my resolve to survive this whole thing and do whatever I had to do to comply with my ‘hosts’ for as long as I could until I regained my strength and hopefully escaped. Again the two men tried to pick me up and again I screamed in pain. Finally they got the point and understood that no matter what they said to me I physically could not stand up, let alone walk. Each of them lifted my arms and placed them over their shoulders and again I screamed and felt faint. This time the pain was excruciating; far worse than any of the other times.

  Unknowingly the incredible pain that they’d just inflicted helped me out no end; they basically twisted the muscles in my arms and shoulders back into line, pulling the tendons, badly knotted after being tied up in such an unnatural way for so long, straight. Definitely something I couldn’t have done by myself even if I wanted to.

  Still, I could not stand the pain that I had to endure to place my feet flat onto the ground. They finally realised that there was no way I was going to walk by myself into the enclosure so they got either side of me and picked me up, dragging me with my feet scraping the ground behind me.

  11

  The Mud Hut

  Iraqi Bomb, 250kg, Chemical, Model Unknown

  Made in Iraq. During the Iraq–Iran war, Iraqi Su-22 Fitters attacked Iranian troops in the northern Iran–Iraq border area. Between 1983 and 1988, the Iraqi Air Force conducted at least 10 major incidents of chemical weapon use, during more than 100 aircraft sorties. Although aircraft were just one of several chemical delivery options available to the Iraqis, aircraft were the only means of accurately delivering chemical weapons beyond artillery range. Iraqi Su-22 Fitters and Mig-23 Floggers conducted most of these air-launched chemical attacks. There were chemical weapons stacked to the roof in dozens of bunkers in Iraq when the US invaded, but the us made sure the Iraqis didn’t have the aircraft to carry them and drop them against their own troops.

  As I was dragged into the open compound I noticed a lot of people dressed in both police and Iraqi Army uniforms all squatting around in little groups. Mixed in amongst them were men dressed in the standard black PJs and schemags — the green or red checked scarf that is wrapped around the head and face — used by all of the Arabic races all over the planet and in this case the Mahdi Army. This lot, the Mahdi Army, was a so-called Iraqi paramilitary force created by the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in June 2003. It was these bastards who spearheaded the first major armed confrontation against the US led forces in Iraq and were the forerunners of dozens of other groups that copied them.

  As I was hauled in through the gates everyone stared at me and started to talk softly as if they didn’t want me to hear what they were saying. I guessed there would have been about 25 in total and every one of them had an AK-47 lying across his lap. There were a couple of men with RPG-7s slung acr
oss their shoulders and a young boy who had hold of an AK almost the same size as he was. He also had a canvas satchel of Soviet design on his back that held four RPG projectiles. He would have been only twelve or thirteen years old but looked like he was humping these rounds like it was some sort of an honour.

  I was pulled inside a small tin shack about three metres square that was leaning against the wall in one corner of the compound then dropped on the ground. After saying something in Arabic followed by a very poor attempt to spit on me the two men walked outside into the courtyard. There was no door or gate on this small shed and I noticed that although there wasn’t a window as such there was a big hole in one wall where a piece of iron had fallen off. Every once in a while someone would come and stick their head through the hole in the wall or stand in the door and stare at me. I’m not sure if I was put there on purpose or simply shoved out of the way until they figured out what they were going to do with me.