She paused for a moment. The women did not stir, nor did they take their eyes from her face. “I am proud of you,” she said. “All of you. There have been those who have looked upon us with disdain and skepticism. They have said that women, especially Arab women, could not make good soldiers, that they were only fit for cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children. We have proved them wrong. You are members of Al-Ikhwah. You are the equal of any man in our armies. You have completed the same training as the men have and you have done as well as any of them.”
The women were still silent. The CO began again. “You will have exactly one hour to pack your personal belongings and be ready to leave. I will see each of you individually to give you your next assignment. This assignment is not, I repeat, is not to be discussed among you. It is your own, and highly secret. Any discussion of your individual assignment will be regarded as treason and will be punishable by death—for one poorly chosen confidence can cause the death of many of our comrades.”
She walked back to the door, then turned to face them. “An-nasr, I salute you. May Allah protect you.” Her hand snapped up in a salute.
“An-nasr!” they shouted, returning her salute. “Id-bah al-adu.”
The room filled with their voices as the door closed behind her.
“Something big must be in the wind.”
“This is a month earlier than we had been told.”
“Something is wrong.”
Leila didn’t speak at all. She opened her locker and began to take out the clothing she had worn on her arrival. Silently she laid her uniforms and fatigues in a neat pile on the bed. Even the brassieres and panties, shoes, boots and stockings were placed into a neat stack.
She opened the small suitcase that she had brought with her. She took out the blue jeans she had bought in France just before she came and put them on. It was then that she realized how much her body had changed. The jeans, which had once hugged her, were now big around the waist and in the seat. Even the shirt was loose, and she rolled the sleeves because they seemed to have grown longer. She tied the shirt across her waist and slipped into the soft sandals. She packed her comb, brush and cosmetics, then carefully checked the locker. It was empty. She snapped the suitcase shut.
She sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. The other women were still debating what to take and what to leave. Soad looked across at her. “You’re wearing your own clothes?”
Leila nodded. “The CO said personal belongings. These are the only things that are mine.”
“What about the uniforms?” one of the others called.
“If they wanted us to take them they would have said so.”
“I think Leila is right,” Soad said. She turned toward her locker. “I think I won’t mind getting into my own clothes for a change.” A moment later she gasped in dismay. “Nothing fits. Everything’s too big!”
Leila laughed. “It’s not too bad.” She put out her cigarette. “Think of all the fun you’ll have getting new things.”
As she walked out of the building, the sun was coming up over the mountain. The morning air was fresh and clean. She breathed deeply.
“Ready?” Hamid’s voice came from behind her.
She turned. She was leaning against the building, the ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.
He looked at her steadily. “You’re not like the others, you know that.”
She didn’t answer.
“You didn’t have to do this. You’re rich. You could have everything you want.” The mercenary’s eyes were appraising.
“Could I? How do you know what I want?”
“You don’t believe all this empty talk, do you?” He laughed. “I’ve been through three wars. Each time it has been the same thing. The slogans, the shouting, the threats, the promises of vengeance. Then when the bullets begin to fly it’s all over. They turn and run. Only the politicians go on forever.”
“Maybe someday it will be different,” she said.
He fished another cigarette from his pocket and lit it from the butt of the other. “What do you think will happen if we take Palestine back?”
“The people will be free,” she said.
“Free of what? Free to starve like the rest of us? With all the money coming into the Arab countries now, the people are still starving.”
“That will have to be changed too.”
“Hussein, the oil sheiks, even your father and his prince, do you think they would willingly share what they have with the masses? At least now they have to do something. But if we win and there is no pressure on them, what then? Who is there to make them share? No, they will only grow richer.”
“It will be up to the people to change them.”
Hamid laughed bitterly. “I’m almost sorry to see this job finished. It was a good one. Now I’ll have to find another.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Don’t they have another assignment for you?”
“Assignment?” he laughed. “I’m a professional. I got paid. One thousand Lebanese pounds a month for this job. I don’t know any place where I can make that kind of money.”
“Surely there must be a place for you in the army?”
“For one-fifty a month I can get my ass worked off,” he said. “I prefer the Brotherhood. It pays better. They always seem to have lots of money to throw around.”
“Don’t you believe in what we’re doing?” she asked.
“Sure I do,” he said. “I just don’t believe in our leaders. There are too many of them, each busy lining his own pockets while trying to become the top dog.”
“They can’t all be like that.”
He smiled at her. “You’re young yet. You’ll learn.”
“What happened?” she asked. “Why the sudden change in plans?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. The orders came last night and the CO seemed to be as surprised as any of us. She was up all night getting things ready.”
“She’s an extraordinary woman, isn’t she?”
Hamid nodded. “Maybe if she were a man, I would have more faith in our leaders.” He looked at her quizzically. “You know you owe me something.”
“I do?” she asked, puzzled. “What?”
He gestured at the barracks behind him. “There are fourteen girls in that platoon. You’re the only one I haven’t fucked.”
She laughed. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” he said half-seriously. “Thirteen is an unlucky number. Something bad is going to happen.”
“I don’t think so.” She smiled. “Look at it this way: You have something to look forward to.”
He grinned. “I’ll strike a bargain. If we ever meet again—no matter where—we’ll do it.”
She held out her hand. “Agreed.”
They shook hands. He looked into her eyes. “You know, you’re not a bad soldier for a girl.”
“Thank you,” she said.
He glanced at his watch. “Do you think they’re ready?”
“They should be,” she said. None of them had very much to take.
He threw his cigarette down and turned and opened the barracks door. “Okay, girls,” he shouted in his field voice. “On the double!”
***
It was almost two hours before they were ushered into the CO’s headquarters. While they waited, the camp was being dismantled before their eyes. Men and trucks were moving everything—beds, clothing, weapons—out of the building. Already the camp was beginning to look like a ghost town. And with doors and windows open, the desert sand was swirling in, anxious to reclaim its own.
The women stood outside headquarters watching truck after loaded truck pull away. The headquarters building itself was the last to be dismantled. Furniture was being moved out as they were ushered in.
Following alphabetical order, Leila was the first to be called. She closed the door behind her, stepped to the CO’s desk and saluted smartly. “Al Fay reporting.” Someh
ow it didn’t seem as proper in blue jeans as it had in uniform.
The CO returned her salute wearily. “At ease. An-nasr,” she said. She looked down at the sheet of paper before her. “Al Fay, is that your name?”
“Yes, ma’am.” For the first time Leila thought of her as a woman. The CO was tired.
“You are to return to your mother’s home in Beirut,” she said. “You will be contacted there and directed to your next assignment.”
“Is that all, ma’am? Nothing else?”
“That is all at this time. But don’t worry, you’ll hear from us.”
“But how will I know? Isn’t there a code name or some way that I will be sure of—”
The CO interrupted. “When the call comes, you will know,” she said. “For now, your assignment is to go home and wait. You will not involve yourself or go near any political groups no matter how sympathetic they are to our cause. You will keep your own counsel and remain in the normal social confines of your family. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The CO looked at her for a moment. She seemed about to say more but then she stopped. “Good luck,” she said. “Dismissed.”
Leila saluted, executed a smart about-face and left the room. She walked through the outer office. The other women looked at her with curiosity, but she didn’t speak.
There was a truck parked outside. Hamid gestured toward it. “Your limousine awaits.”
Leila nodded, silently climbed in the back and sat down on one of the rows of benches. It took less than a half-hour before the truck was filled.
They were peculiarly silent. Suddenly they were all strangers, bound by their orders, afraid that they might unwittingly reveal something.
It was Soad who broke the tension. “You know,” she said in her coarse Egyptian voice, “I’m really going to miss this place. It wasn’t so bad and I got some of the best fucking I ever had.”
With that, they all laughed and began to talk at once. There were so many things they had to remember and joke about—the accidents, the mistakes, even the hardships. A half-hour passed and still the truck hadn’t moved.
“What are we waiting for?” one of the women called to Hamid.
“The CO,” he replied. “She’ll be out in a minute.”
He was right. A moment later she appeared in the doorway behind him. The woman fell silent as they stared at her.
It was the first time any of them had ever seen her out of uniform. She was wearing an ill-fitting French tailored wool suit. The jacket was too short, the skirt too long. The seams of her stockings were crooked and she walked uncomfortably on the high-heeled shoes she wore to give her height. Somehow the commanding presence she had in uniform had disappeared. Even her face looked pudgy and uncertain.
If she were a little heavier, Leila thought, she would look no different than my mother. Or any of the women in my family.
Hamid opened the door and she got into the truck beside the driver. He ran around to the back and climbed in with the women. “Okay,” he called to the driver.
The last of the furniture was being removed as they drove onto the road and fell into line behind the other trucks. A moment later the last truck came up behind them and blew its horn as a signal. Up front the first truck began to move and soon they were all rolling down the road toward the coast.
They had their last glimpse of the camp as they turned the curve around the mountain on the southern end. It was as empty and deserted as yesterday. Again the women were silent. There were no more jokes. They were all preoccupied with their own thoughts.
They had been on the road for less than an hour when they heard the sounds of explosions coming from behind them in the area of the camp. A moment later they heard the whine of the aircraft and just as suddenly the planes were upon them. Up ahead a truck burst into flame.
Hamid stood up in the back of the truck. “Israeli fighters!” he shouted to the driver. “Get off the road!”
But in the roar and the noise the driver didn’t hear him. Instead he put on a burst of speed and crashed into the truck ahead. At the same time another jet made a pass low over the convoy.
More bullets whistled through the air. Another truck was struck and blew up. The women were screaming and trying to get off the back of the truck.
“Over the sides!” Hamid yelled. “Take cover in the ditches!”
Leila moved automatically. She hit the ground, rolled over and scrambled toward the side of the road, diving head-first into a drainage ditch.
Another jet roared down on them. This time she could see the flaming trails left by its rockets. More trucks seemed to explode in clouds of smoke.
“Why aren’t we shooting back at them?” she heard someone shouting.
“With what?” someone else shouted back. “All the guns have been stowed on the trucks!”
Another woman jumped into the ditch beside her. Leila heard her sobbing. She didn’t raise her head to look. Another plane was making a pass.
This time a missile hit the truck she had been on. It exploded in a thousand fragments and anguished screams filled the air. The debris that fell around her contained scraps of metal and parts of human bodies.
She burrowed further into the ditch, trying to bury herself in the fetid earth. Somehow she had to escape death at the hands of the flying monsters.
Again the planes roared by, the shrieking whistles of their jets trailing behind them as the missiles tore once more into the convoy. Then they were gone as suddenly as they had come, climbing high into the sky and turning to the west, the sunlight glancing off the blue painted stars on their sides.
For a moment there was silence, then the sound of pain began to rise in the air. Moans and screams and cries for help. Slowly Leila raised her head from the ditch.
On the road a few people began to move. She turned to look at the woman who had jumped into the ditch beside her. It was Soad.
“Soad,” she whispered. “Are you all right?”
Slowly the Egyptian turned toward her. “I think I’m hurt,” she said, in an oddly soft voice.
“Let me help you,” Leila said, moving toward her.
“Thanks,” Soad whispered. She tried to raise her head then slipped gently back to the ground. A rush of blood bubbled up through her mouth and nose, staining the ground beneath her and then her eyes went wide and staring.
Leila looked at her. It was the first time she had ever seen anyone die, but she did not have to be told that Soad was dead. Leila felt a cold chill. She forced herself to look away and got to her feet.
She stumbled out of the ditch. The ground was covered with debris. In front of her was a severed hand. The diamond ring on one of the fingers sparkled in the light of the sun. She kicked it away and walked toward the truck.
There was nothing left but twisted wood and iron and around it were strewn broken and mangled bodies. She stared at it dully, then walked around to the front. The CO’s body lay half over the driver, half out of the open door. Her skirt was twisted obscenely over her pudgy thighs.
Out of the corner of her eye, Leila saw a movement. A soldier had found the hand and was pulling the diamond ring from its finger. When he had the ring, he threw the hand away, carefully examined the diamond, then put it in his pocket. He looked up as he became aware of her stare.
She didn’t speak.
He smiled sheepishly. “The dead need nothing,” he said. Then he walked behind the truck.
The nausea rose in her throat and she bent double with pain as she retched and spewed her vomit onto the road. She felt herself growing faint and was beginning to fall when a strong arm came around her shoulders.
“Easy,” Hamid said. “Easy.”
She was empty now but weak and trembling. She turned toward him and buried her face against his shoulder. “Why?” she cried. “Why did they have to do this to us? We never did anything to them.”
“It’s war,” Hamid said.
She looked up into his
face. There was blood across his cheek. “They knew the raid was coming, that’s why they were moving us out.”
Hamid didn’t answer.
“It was stupid then,” she said angrily. “Keeping all those trucks together on the road. Giving them a target like that.”
Hamid looked at her without expression.
“Is this what we trained for? To be slaughtered like sheep?”
“It won’t be like that when we listen to the radio tonight,” he said. “My guess is that we heroically shot down at least six Israeli jets.”
“What are you talking about?” She asked, bewildered. “Are you crazy? We never fired a shot.”
He spoke in a quiet voice. “That’s right. But there are one hundred million Arabs who were not here to see that.”
“The Jews. They are animals. We were defenseless and still they came.”
“Yesterday we won a great victory, according to the radio,” he said. “In Tel Aviv a school bus was blown up, killing thirty children. I guess this was their way of showing they didn’t like it.”
“The Brotherhood is right,” she said. “The only way to stop them is to exterminate them.”
He looked at her silently for a moment, then he reached into his pocket and took out a cigarette and lit it. He exhaled the smoke through his nose. “Come, little one, let’s leave this. There is nothing here for us to do and we have a long walk ahead of us.”
“We could stay and help bury them.”
He pointed behind them. She turned and saw men searching through the debris. “Right now, they are busy looking for whatever they can find. Later they will fight among themselves to keep what they find. After that there will be only you to fight about. You are the only woman left.”
She stared at him speechlessly.
“I don’t think your desire to give solace and comfort to our comrades extends to twenty or thirty men at the same time.”
“How do you know they won’t come after us?”
He bent swiftly and picked something up from the ground at his feet. For the first time she saw that he had an automatic rifle, then she saw the gun stuck into his belt.
“You expected this?”
He shrugged. “I told you I was a professional. I had these under my bench and grabbed them before I jumped from the truck. Besides, I had a feeling. Didn’t I also tell you that thirteen was an unlucky number?”
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