After several weeks, the woman introduced Kamila to others who had been victims of the Russian infidels. These others invited Kamila to begin training as part of the Black Widows, an exclusive group of Chechen women who had lost their husbands and families at the hands of the Russians. They had one purpose: to inflict pain upon the Russian people equal to what they had suffered themselves. When the Russians held their own dying husbands, children, and mothers, only then would they understand.
Motherly Chechen women had taken Kamila under their wings, but the training was mostly done by men. During her instruction, they fostered her resentment and focused her mind. From the time she awoke until she slept at night, the leaders had total control over Kamila and the other recruits. There was nothing for her to decide, nothing to do but obey. With no wrong path to choose—because there was no choice—Kamila felt as free as she had since she was a child, since before the Russian bombings began. With her mind focused on this one act, this one purpose given to her, even the voices had faded into background noise.
As they approached the airport’s passenger drop-off area, the explosives seemed to close a notch around her abdomen. This was her moment. How long had she waited to make a difference, to show the world that she, Kamila Shishani mattered? In a few hours her face would be on every television and internet news site in the world. Kamila imagined Marcus’s reaction when he learned about what she had done. What would it be? Sadness? Remorse? Not apathy, because he couldn’t ignore this. Her father would learn of the news too. What had he said to her? We have news up here in the mountains too? No, he would not approve, but she had met others who did approve of her—the spiritual teachers and those who had trained her for this moment.
The driver slid the car into a row of cabs at the airport entrance. “Get out, quickly.” he said. Kamila hauled out the heavy suitcase and, before she had closed the door, the cabbie pushed on the accelerator.
Even now, at the end, weakness and doubt pried into her thoughts. Was she doing the right thing? Thinking about what she was about to do only caused confusion and, as she had been taught, confusion was her enemy. She refocused on the bombings; the terror the Russians caused...the dead bodies in Grozny...her mother and sister. This was the right thing to do.
Kamila took a deep breath and felt for the button on the suitcase. In her left hand a wire stretched down her arm into a little handheld trigger for the explosives wrapped around her midsection. The combination of explosives and shrapnel was enough to kill hundreds. All she had to do was walk into the crowded entrance and push both triggers simultaneously.
“You won’t feel a thing,” they had told her. She embraced the idea, repeated it in her mind and on her lips...won’t feel a thing. Something she had craved for so long: numbness.
Kamila entered the airport slowly, looking straight ahead, beyond the mass of bodies before her. Her instructions were to get as far into the crowd as possible. She pushed forward, past couples and families, businessmen and women. Russians. She stopped. She had reached the point of most damage. Kamila ran her thumbs, first the left, then the right across the small buttons that were the triggers. She took another deep breath and closed her eyes. This was it...
“Mama...mama...” a small voice shrieked from behind Kamila. She turned instinctively. There, sitting on the ground was a girl about three years old. The girl looked up at Kamila. Her eyes were raw from crying, her face wet. “I want mama...”
Kamila surveyed the area, no sign of a frantic mother. The girl went on with her crying and kept repeating, “Mama...” Kamila wished the girl would stop, but everyone around her took no notice of Alyssa. A man talking on a cell phone passed by and nicked the girl’s shoulder with his briefcase. The girl fell back and began wailing even louder than before. The man turned, lifted his phone a few inches from his ear and looked down at the girl, then returned to his conversation and walked off.
How could these people treat a child like this? She put the suitcase down, stepped past the girl and thrust her free hand between the man’s shoulder blades.
He turned and faced Kamila.
“You knock over a baby...then you walk away?”
The man stared back at her. She sensed that it wasn’t anger, but embarrassment that was coloring his face. He shrugged his shoulders then turned to leave. The toddler’s screeching distracted Kamila from the urge to pummel the man. She turned back to the girl who was standing now....next to the suitcase. Kamila leapt toward the girl and moved the suitcase aside.
“Don’t touch that!” she said.
The girl stood staring up at Kamila. Her sobbing had stopped momentarily.
Kamila asked, “What does your mother look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you not know what your mother looks like?”
“I don’t know...” she said, huffing again.
What was she supposed to do? Kamila couldn’t take her to security. She was covered in explosives.
“Okay...let’s just wait here.”
“Is my mommy coming back?” the girl asked.
Kamila paused. The words reverberated through her, ricocheting off every cell. She could answer the question for herself—a question she had asked a million times, already aware of the truth. Kamila’s mother wasn’t coming back. Her trainers had taught her to embrace the hatred that surged within her every time she remembered what they had done to her mother. Right now, they were waiting for her to exact revenge for the years she had lived without a mother’s love, a mother’s touch. But right then, at that moment, she imagined the girl’s mother torn in pieces just as her own had been. Many mothers—and little girls—would die today.
“Let’s sit down here and wait.” She took the girl’s hand and guided her over to a row of seats. They sat down and the explosives, long and stiff, pushed up against Kamila’s breasts.
“I’m scared," the girl said.
“I have an idea,” Kamila said softly. “Let’s play a little game.”
The girl stared back at her.
“Let’s each pick a color and whoever finds the most people wearing that color wins.”
“Ok...”
The girl calmed and after a few minutes of red, blue, yellow, Kamila letting her win each round, the distress faded from her expression.
“Katarina!” A voice called in their direction.
“Mommy!” the girl shouted. They embraced as Kamila stood and watched their reunion.
“This nice lady helped me not be afraid,” she said.
“Thank you so much,” the mother said to Kamila. “I don’t know how I lost her...”
Kamila nodded and lifted the suitcase. She watched the girl and her mother fade into the crowd.
Later that day, world news reports indicated that the airport had been evacuated after a janitor found a suitcase bomb and a vest lined with explosives in a trash bin near the airport parking lot. A Russian government official claimed that the materials were similar to those used by Chechen terrorists. At the time of the news release, it was as of yet unknown why the terrorists had abandoned the bombs.
***
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