by Kahn, Denise
“What is it, Amor?”
“There, there’s Max!” They watched a group of Marines who were standing next to prisoners kneeling. They’re hands were tied behind their backs.
“How do you know? They all pretty much look the same.”
“A mother knows her child.”
“My God, you’re right! It is him.”
“Oh, Alejandro, look at him!”
Alejandro’s eyes were wet as he watched his son with great pride. In the hell they called war Max was handing something to one of the prisoners, maybe food. His body language portrayed the goodness and humanity that can still exist in times of battle.
The proud parents held each other even after the news program ended.
The next day Alejandro went to Spain. As the Spanish Ambassador he would have to go back and forth several times a year.
Davina dreamed of a military car stopping in front of their house. If the two Marines were in dress-blues Max would be gone forever. If they were in fatigues, then Max would have been wounded, but how bad would be the question. Would he be burned? Would he have lost a limb? Would he be blind? She couldn’t see the uniforms. Stop it! She commanded herself. He’s fine. He’ll come back safe and sound, and as handsome as ever.
But she wanted to see him, to hug him, to kiss him. She wanted to know that he was alright, but it was impossible to communicate with him. Even with all her connections no one would tell her of his whereabouts. She didn’t really want to know where he was, she just wanted to hear his voice, and know that he was okay. And then an idea started to form in her mind. Davina picked up the phone and called Jacques, her manager.
♫
IRAQ 2004
CHAPTER 23
The CSH team landed in Kuwait. They disembarked and gathered their belongings. They were also told that the casualties and wounded were growing by the minute and they were to immediately set up the hospital. The team quickly donned their gear, helmets and Kevlar vests, boarded the trucks and started towards Baghdad. A phalanx of dozens of trucks caravanned up the highway towards the capital. Along the road they came face to face for the first time with the annals of war. Exploded, overturned and still smoking vehicles of all sizes, military and civilian, lined the sides of the highway. Monotonous, dreary caravans of small groups of men and women, young and old, followed the asphalt next to the desert toward indefinite destinations. Some were on foot, some rode camels, others ran alongside the military convoy and begged the Americans for anything they could spare—food, water, one dollar bills, and hope.
“I’m glad I’m here,” Sam said to Chantal.
“Me too, but what makes you say that?”
“Look at these people. They’re the descendants of one of the oldest civilizations in the world. They should be basking in comfort. Its criminal they’ve been put in these circumstances. How can one man create such misery toward his own people? And Why?”
“Well, Saddam Hussein isn’t the first son-of-a-bitch to do that. Remember Hitler, Pol Pot, the South American dictators? Hell, I could go on and on. History is full of these assholes.”
“I know, I know. And the worst part is history repeats itself. Why don’t people ever learn?
“Well, at least we’re here to help this oppression, maybe restore some of their civilization, and do the best we can for them.”
“Yeah, I’m glad we did this, Chantal, and I’m grateful that we’re doing this together.”
“I’ll second that, Sam.”
The women stared out of their trucks. Every once in while they would see a real caravan, one with camels. The animals seemed to glide across the desert of Iraq as their ancestors had done for centuries. The camel guide waived to the convoy that would maybe bring peace to the land where he and his family had always lived. The Americans waived back. The herder turned towards Mecca and said a prayer he fervently hoped Allah, the Merciful, would hear. The newcomers, as well as his own people, would need all the help they could get.
The drive from Kuwait to Baghdad took three days. They were on such a tight schedule that they only stopped for physical necessities, and a real pit stop it was—a hole in the ground that they, of course, had to dig themselves. Men went to one side of the highway, women to the other. Once back on the truck Chantal started giggling.
“What’s so funny?” Sam asked.
“Well, that was definitely al fresco.”
“Well, it wasn’t that cool, it’s blistering hot out!”
“Yeah, but what little wind there is kicked up just enough sand to imbed itself in places I didn’t even know existed in my body.”
Sam and others, who were sitting as close as sardines in a can, all laughed out loud. They continued telling jokes for several hours. Laughter was one of the best medicines and stress breakers in the world.
“Alright, I’m going to get some sleep. Wake me up when we get to the Ritz,” Sam said.
“In your dreams.”
“Exactly.”
“Can I take the floor for a while,” she asked the group.
“Sure thing.”
Sam put her backpack on the floor of the truck, carefully stretched out, put her head on the makeshift pillow and immediately fell asleep. She didn’t mind, or even felt, the pairs of boots that were next to her ribs. Chantal and two other nurses did the same thing. There was just enough room for four people, and they were spooned together. In two hours they would shift with four others and sit back on the benches. In these circumstances those two hours were as powerful as a full night’s sleep.
The convoy arrived on the night of the third day, at an airfield on the outskirts of Baghdad. It was an ideal location for a CSH, as helicopter ambulances could easily bring in wounded and large aircraft like the Air Force’s Hercules 130 MEDEVACs could fly the more severely injured out to larger hospitals in Germany or the United States.
The men and women of the Combat Support Hospital jumped off the trucks and followed orders to crawl into their sleeping bags and get a few hours of sleep. They did just that and with great anticipation. They hadn’t really had any semblance of a decent amount of sleep since they left Kuwait, and they were soon fast asleep.
Sam woke up the next morning only because her arm was moving. Why was it doing that? She wondered. She opened her eyes and found herself staring at Chantal who was shaking that very same arm.
“What is it?”
“Rise and shine, sunshine, the Riviera of sand beckons,” Chantal answered.
“Do we have to?”
“If you don’t want to get screamed at, you’d better move.”
“Alright, I’m up,” Sam moaned. She had been dreaming about Robert. Where was he? Was he alright? Was he in Baghdad? It would be so nice to see him, she thought. She put her dream aside for another time and concentrated on the present. “How did you sleep, Chantal?”
“Well, the sleeping bag didn’t do too much for the dust and sand. I think half of the Iraqi desert wound up in there with me. And the latrines, well the holes in the ground that is, were quite primitive.”
“Oh, great. That’s my next stop.”
“Oh, just think of it as a camping adventure,” Chantal said, laughing.
“Chantal, do you know my definition of camping?”
“Tell me.”
“Bad service in the middle of the night at the Ritz.”
“Right. Welcome to the real world.”
The entire team was present and ready. It would take three days to build the CSH. The men and women were all medical specialists but they became construction workers, from the newest privates to the commanding Colonel of the deployable facility. The entire hospital was packed in military containers. Once opened most of the units became three times their original size and were used as fully functional, climate-controlled operating rooms, ICU’s, laboratories, X-Ray and CT scanning, a pharmacy and dental units, as well as accommodations for the staff. Whatever a fixed hospital could provide the CSH could as well.
The te
am went to work. They marked the spots where each tent would go with little red flags. Dozens of the staff carried huge, long, rugged material that would be used as panoplies. They looked as if they were carrying an enormous almost stadium long cigar. The containers and tents would be interconnecting, creating a mini village of beige and green shelters. Nothing was missing from this CSH, from the hospital to the offices to the sleeping quarters, and it provided its own power from generators. The men and women finished their hospital in three days.
On the fourth day most of them were relaxing in their rooms, or in a folding chair in front of their tent. Although they were ‘open for business’ no casualties had arrived so far at the hospital. Sam and Chantal were reading, sitting in chairs when a mortar exploded a short distance behind them. The women immediately fell to the ground and covered their heads. Shrapnel flew everywhere. Everyone at the base was running to take cover.
“Lord have mercy!” Chantal yelled.
“My thoughts exactly,” Sam screamed back. “Hey Chantal, on a scale from one to ten how scared are you?”
“Shitless!”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Why are we doing this again?”
“Hippocrates?”
“Sounds right. If I make it out of here alive Tyrone is going to kill me.”
“Chantal?”
“Yeah?”
“Promise me that I won’t have to make a trip to New Orleans to see Tyrone and Aunt Clo on my own.”
“If those assholes who are dropping bombs on us would be so kind and cooperate, then I promise.”
The two women stayed there for a few minutes until it was all clear and then quickly scrambled to see if there had been any wounded. They found one just a few feet from where they were, and thankfully no one had been killed.
“I never thought our first cases would be some of our own,” Sam said, tying a tourniquet on the wounded man’s leg.”
“I’m going to get a dolly,” Chantal said, “I’ll be right back.”
Sam nodded, never taking her eyes off of the man on the ground in front of her. “Hey, Doc, it’s not too bad. Looks like a piece of metal flew into your leg. I don’t think we’ll even need to operate. We’ll give you a shot for the pain, clean it and sew it up and you’ll be like new.”
Chantal returned with a patient transport dolly. With Sam’s help they lifted the injured man onto it.
“Loss of blood?” The doctor managed to ask through pain and clenched teeth.
“Nothing we can’t take care of. Now, shut up, Sir, and stop wasting energy.”
♫
BAGHDAD 2004
CHAPTER 24
Max had been promoted to corporal and the leader of the fire team that included Haferty, Stapleton and Honey. They were efficiently checking broken, bombed out empty houses and stores. The area had been declared deserted, but they were sent in for a last reconnaissance. The four Marines entered into a store through the front window that had been blown out and now lay in thousands of pieces on the ground. And then Max gasped. In the hell that was this war Max found himself in a little piece of paradise. This shop had at one time been a music store, and still housed a few exquisite Iraqi musical instruments. He took a deep breath. He could smell the exotic aroma of the woods that the instruments were made of. Most prominent were apricot and sandalwood. As he looked at the wall where the string instruments were hanging he had to smile, as they reminded him of notes on a page of sheet music. Some were short, others long, and each one beautifully crafted by what Max knew could only be a master craftsman. He secured his M16 and made his way to the wall, making sure he didn’t trip over parts of what once used to be, he was certain, a fine-looking store. He looked closer and marveled at probably twenty different music makers, lovingly touching the indigenous beauties.
“Hey, Haf, look at these! They’re absolutely stunning and all handmade!”
“They look pretty funky to me. Those guitar-like ones seem to have huge half apples on their backs,” Jock said.
“Yeah, those are ouds—amazing instruments.”
“This one only has one string, maybe it’s missing some.”
“Nope, that’s a rababa, Jock-Strap, used by the Bedouins.
“Hey, I like that name. And they only use one string, huh, weird.”
“Do you realize these are identical to what they used hundreds and hundreds of years ago?” Honey said.
“Let’s bring something back, you know, as a souvenir.”
“Naw, we can’t take anything, but boy would I love one of everything in here!” Max said, his eyes still dancing around the shop. And so would Mom, he thought to himself.
This was perhaps the first and only moment Max let his guard down, well almost, until a light gasp from behind one of the glorious ouds made him spin around. The hair on his neck stood up, a cold sweat trickled down his spine and his heartbeat stopped. Honey heard it too. The two men whipped around and pointed their M16’s at the spot where the sound had come from. A moan came from behind a row of overturned and mostly broken double-sided drums. They took a careful step forward and screamed at the spot: Erhad! Hands up! Erfaa yadaik! Come out! A young boy, no more than ten or eleven, slowly crawled out from behind the damaged drums. He held his thin shaking arms up as he whimpered in fear. Tears ran down his pale, mud caked face, and his once cream colored pants and shirt were a combination of brown filth, urine and crusted blood. He held his left arm up with his right hand as the fresh crimson liquid of his body streamed out of his arm and through his fingertips. The men continued to stare at the boy and asked him what his name was. The boy stared, unsure if these men were dangerous and were going to hurt him.
“H…Hamid,” he stammered.
“Ham? Your name is Ham? Jock asked pronouncing it with a southern accent that sounded more like ham and eggs.
“Not ham, Hamid, Hah…meed. He’s a Muslim, for God’s sake, they don’t even eat pork. You can’t call him Ham,” Honey said.
“Aw, but look how cute he is, how could he not be a ham.”
“Do you speak any English?” Max asked. The boy didn’t answer. “Inglisi?”
“La. No.”
“Where’s your family?” The boy didn’t answer. “Baba? Mama?” Max tried again. Instead of answering the boy started to cry, pointed to the street and made an explosion sound and threw up his one good arm. More tears streamed out of his young, pained eyes.
“Aw, shit,” Jock said, “they got blown up. Poor little guy.”
“So, what do we do with him? We can’t leave him here and we can’t communicate to find other family members,” Max said.
“Let’s take him to the CSH, his arm is in pretty bad shape,” Colin said.
“Let me see, Hamid,” Max said, pointing to his own eyes and then to the boy’s arm.
Reluctantly the boy pushed his arm forward with his good hand. It was bleeding profusely.
“That’s bad. He definitely needs to get this looked at. I’m going to put a tourniquet on him. That should at least stop the fucking bleeding,” Max said to his men.
“He’s lost a lot of blood, he’s really pale,” Colin said.
Max finished with the tourniquet. “Alright, let’s get out of here. Jock-Strap, get the jeep.”
“On it.”
I don’t know how long the tourniquet will hold.”
“Yeah, let’s get the boy to a doc and we’ll find an interpreter to help us out,” Jock said.
“Let’s go.” Max picked up the little body and carried him out to the Humvee. They drove directly to the make-shift hospital. As soon as they arrived the men jumped out of the vehicle and Max carried Hamid inside.
“Got a wounded kid! Some help over here!”
“Bring him here,” a voice said behind him. Max turned and followed the nurse wearing scrubs and a surgical mask who had just exited one of the operating rooms. He couldn’t see her face but he appreciated the perfect curves. She pointed to a bed and he put the boy down. “Do you
know if he’s hurt, other than his arm? The nurse said as she quickly, yet gently, prodded the small body.”
“I don’t think so, but he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Nice job on the tourniquet. You probably saved his arm,” she said, unwrapping the hasty bandage the men had applied.
“Thanks.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Yeah, Ham,” Jock said.
“Ham?” The nurse asked.
“Yes ma’am, like ham and eggs,” Jock grinned.
“Hamid, not Ham,” Max said.
Sam chuckled. “Okay. Do we know anything about him? His family?” She asked.
“Parents got blown up. That’s about all we could communicate—our three words of Arabic, his three words of English,” Colin said.
Sam turned to the boy and spoke to him in Arabic: “The men told me about your parents, I’m very sorry. Do you have any other family, uncles, and aunts?” The men looked at each and raised their eyebrows.
Hamid nodded. “I have an aunt.”
“Hey, you’re fluent,” Max said. “Are you an interpreter?”
“No, but I minored in languages. I speak Spanish and Arabic.”
“Gracias por el niño. Su nombre, Señorita?” Thank you for the boy. You’re name?” Max asked.
“Oh, your accent is Castilian. Are you Spanish?”
“My father’s from Spain.
“My name’s Samantha, but everybody calls me Sam. I bought a magnificent guitar in Madrid once. It was a really small shop, no wider than someone’s outstretched arms, and the old man making the instruments only made about one a month. It was a total work of art.”
“I know it well, it’s on Calle de…”
“You do?”
“I mean I’ve heard of it,” Max quickly said. Of course he knew it, all the best guitarists purchased from the old man, even his mother had.
Sam looked up for the first time and saw the name on his shirt. It read del Valle. And then she looked at his face, and stared just a second too long. Max smiled.