‘No … no dead runaways. No wolves, I haven’t seen a wolf in years,’ Memu replied, ‘just a pack of starving dogs. Don’t let them get too near.’ He fell silent, and then added, ‘There are no werewolves, Cotkar.’
‘I know that.’
‘Why do you go on about werewolves?’
‘I don’t … I said wolves.’
Memu smiled and put his finger to his nose, tapped there, ‘I remember the nightmares you had after you saw a wolf man movie.’
Cotkar felt himself bristle, but what could he say? He had nightmares, but that was a long time ago when he had been just a child.
‘No wolves, but say your prayers … this place is alive with ghosts at night, Cotkar.’
‘I’m not a child, Memu.’
‘Say your prayers.’
Silence.
It would take Memu an hour to descend, longer if he delayed to speak with anyone along the way, but that was a rare happening. He watched his brother leave, tired and slightly hunched over, astride the mule. He was wearing a smile now that he was on his way home to be fussed over by their mother and their grandmother. He would drink tea by the wood stove, smoke cigarettes and eat a hot meal. They would tease him about his stubble. And just as he readied himself to get up, they would insist that he drink fresh tea and warm the cold from his bones. Having teased him enough, they would then start to praise him for how hard he had worked, the fine man he had turned into.
The shepherd’s camp was a small clearing enclosed by grey boulders, a mud wall that had once been a gable end of the family’s former home, and a copse of spindly pine; a flatbed truck stripped of its tyres served as a half-gate, the other half, made up of oxide sheets of corrugated iron framed in by and nailed to wooden beams, was dragged across before dark. It was there to illustrate that the property was owned more than as a security measure. A loop of blue rope served as a handle to pull it open then drag it behind. Its rut of passage ran four fingers deep in the soil. The tiled roof had long gone from the two-room home. Pitched on its concrete floor was a five-man canvas tent, army surplus, and draped over its leaky patches were strips of yellow tarpaulin. The cab of the flatbed was in good condition; its doors could be secured, and under the seats Memu liked to hide his secret things. He was unaware that Cotkar had a spare key. On some windy nights, the cab made for better shelter than the tent.
The snow had retreated back up the mountains a kilometre. Grass and purple flowers were beginning to show through the slush. Landmines hidden by the snow had moved in the melt onto the dirt road, a few anti-personnel, a smaller amount of anti-tank. Cotkar had seen them on the verges – Memu had shown him these some days ago – warning him to keep the goats and himself clear of there and other certain patches of ground.
On the trails beyond the camp, in the copse of the pine, his goats nibbled; to draw them to him he would tinkle a bell or rustle a bag of feed or spread hay in a line. Close to darkness, he would corral them in the crude wooden pen that had a natural cutaway in a boulder, and into this narrow space they would cram at night, or earlier if it rained or lightning forked and thunder clapped. Or if they caught the scent of danger.
This would be his fourth occasion to spend two days with the flock. Rafik, his grandfather, was now too sick to work, and was in hospital in Sulaymaniyah, near death. He did not mind the shepherding so much. He had the radio for company and also the dog, the shotgun for protection. He had food, and his mother’s and grandmother’s prayers. Like they had done with his brother, they would make a fuss of him when he returned home. They would tease him, but not about his beard, for he had hardly a fuzz – instead they’d tease him about the girl. They would not do that, of course, if his father was present. He was a very serious man, who wasn’t happy unless he was talking about serious matters. He did not like the Iranian soldiers in town, nor had he liked the Iraqis who had been there before them. But lately he had come to hate the Iraqis because they had murdered Kurdish people and levelled Kurdish villages. They didn’t want Kurds living within twenty-five kilometres of the Iranian border, and they believed that by doing this they would quash the Kurdish resistance, the Peshmerga, allies of the Iranians. He tried not to display his hatred because he had always taught his sons not to hate any living being. A distance outside of town, battalions of the Iraqi army’s northern division had dug into long, serpentine and deep trenches. On the other side, close to the border, the Iranians were holed up in similar conditions. They preferred to kill each other from a distance as it was easier, it meant fewer of them died, and they didn’t have to think about the killing – they had only to worry about hitting the target and not of the consequences of success.
He watched his brother until he disappeared around a bend in the track. The way was empty. Suddenly, a stabbing pang of loneliness visited. A sigh escaped him. It was a sigh that seemed to come from the well of his soul. For minutes he stood rooted to the same spot, looking at the emptiness; he did not want to turn about or avert his gaze out of fear of losing something precious.
He wore the clothes his brother had worn until he had outgrown them; his grey woollen hat, brown jacket, baggy black trousers. He was in his father’s brown leather ankle boots that had had two owners before his father. Tattered, the brown was scuffed away at the toes and heels. He had good black shoes for weddings and funerals and celebrations, a pair of trainers and another of rubber boots. He shared a bedroom with Memu, a small room with two beds, a single bedside locker carrying a brass ashtray and a lamp, and a wardrobe with no doors. On top of the steel wardrobe was a tan leather suitcase, which Cotkar believed had never gone anywhere. His father had bought it many years ago in the event of someone someday having to go somewhere. It held spare bedclothes, and there was thick dust on it. Cotkar used to wonder if that was what happened to people who stayed in the one spot for all of their lives.
He made tea, and ate a round of pitta bread before going to walk among the goats, to see if any were ailing and that none had wandered. He carried the shotgun barrel broken over his shoulder, a pair of binoculars, and sweets in his jacket pocket. Half an hour earlier he had found his brother’s porno book rolled up in his sleeping mat, but had put it away for later, when it was dark and he could see the pictures under torchlight. He preferred it that way. It seemed natural. It was an old porno book, the words were in English, and he could not understand them except for ‘Fuck’ and ‘Fuck me’ and ‘Vagina’. ‘Pussy’. His friends had told him what these words meant. The girls in the pictures must be, he thought, as he climbed toward a rocky vantage point where he could look down on Halabja, very old women by now. Perhaps 40. What would their husbands think of them if they saw these pictures? Their children? He did not think it was right, and yet it was so nice to look at the ladies. The women lived very far away – it wasn’t as though they lived in the town and were the mothers, daughters, sisters and wives of people he knew – so there was no harm in kissing these naked women, especially the blond woman, and in pushing her to his penis. He was at odds with himself though – he liked to say prayers last thing at night, before he pulled the zipper of his sleeping bag over his head, and he felt ill at ease switching from looking at dirty pictures to saying his prayers to the Yellow Serpent and the Peacock Angel, prayers for his family, his hopes, for good fortune. Prayers taught to him by mother, of the Yezidic religion, who believed that God made the world and then entrusted it to the care of seven holy angels. There was no resolving the dilemma. He had tried before to ignore the magazine and had failed, and so he decided to simply keep the two apart – distinct and separate actions.
He sat on the spur of rock, and sucked on a toffee sweet. His fur-rimmed hood covered his head like a religious cowl. He liked to smoke, but again he didn’t like to until it was dark. Two sides to me, he thought, the daytime me and the night-time me. He looked at the town below: khaki-coloured houses, all level-roofed, made of mud and stone, some wi
th TV aerials, the streets measured the same. The town was devoid of character, of dominating features. A population of 70,000 souls. Every house looked the same, the streets smelled of poverty and make-do. It resembled a place shaken out of God’s boot. If you wanted colour, you needed to look to the sky or to the mountains. Especially the mountains after the sun had peeled away the snow. The sun up and the sun down, he loved these. Night of the full moon, too.
He saw it then. Beautiful. In full flight. He picked up his binoculars, zoomed in. A golden eagle soared across the blue heavens high above the town. Casting its shadow on the rooftops, the school, market area, waterhole, cemetery, on its way to its eyrie in the mountains. The glide, the lazy flap of wing, a king of the sky. Alone, aloof. He had never seen one fly over the town – it was usual to espy one sweeping over the plains, throwing its shadow over the grasslands, the minefields, the burnt-out tanks and other military vehicles. But not over the town. A portent? As with his brother, he watched until it had flown out of sight. In its immediate absence, he experienced another fleeting sensation, not of loneliness, but something else entirely – panic. He bit hard on his sweet. A shard of it lanced his gum. He cursed, and pressed the tip of his tongue to the cut, panned the town with the binoculars, hoping to see the girl or her brother, the lazy shit.
Patterns of grey smoke weaved from stove pipes, rugs spread on rooftops to dry, a butcher sliced strips of meat from the carcass of a hanging cow, chickens in wire cages, plastic wares for sale by his cousin. An Iranian army truck brought in rations for the Peshmerga manning the checkpoints at some road junctions. He watched the town come alive, and liked and at the same time disliked his remove from the activity; tractors and trucks coming and going on the streets, the marketplace yet to be at its busiest. Memu would be home by now, or at least very near to it – he would stop at Jaf’s stall and buy a newspaper and some cigarettes. It was old Jaf who had thrown the porno book in a barrel, and thought it had been burned to ash, but when the old man went inside to get more stuff to burn, all the while mumbling to himself about his useless son and his bad ways, bad books and bad video cassettes, Memu reached into the rusted barrel and said, ‘What bad ways is the old man on about?’ He hid the book in his jacket before the old man returned from his shop-cum-home home with a cardboard box.
Old Jaf often gave a story about his son doing well for himself in Germany, and Memu would nod and say that was good and ask Jaf to pass on his regards. No one was ever sure if Jaf liked to say these things out of pride, or to make people feel small, or to keep the memory of his son alive among people who would otherwise forget that he had a son.
He sighed, lowered the binoculars, and got to his feet. It had turned colder and he was hungry. His gum had stopped bleeding. He walked back along the trail, stopping once to scan the mountains, the woods, the rocks and trails. Looking out for wild dogs. Or wolves.
When he reached the camp, he put a tiny pot of water on the camper stove to make soup, and while waiting for the water to boil he fed the dog. The dog had no name. It was old and not able to walk very far, and he could not remember the last time he had heard it bark. Outside the tent, its flaps tied back to let in fresh air, he sat on a camping chair and ate his soup. The radio was on, playing a song his mother liked, which delayed him from searching for a station that played more modern music. The dog sat by his side, its paw on a bone she had long licked clean, the strips of cold chicken untouched.
‘If you don’t eat, you’ll die,’ he said. She was as deaf as his grandmother. ‘Are you suffering?’ he said. Her ears were turned down, and he had heard it said that this was a sign of an animal in pain. This time she looked up at him. ‘Well, I don’t know what I can do about that.’
Memu knew. He had said the day she was unable to walk he would shoot her. It’s when the back legs give out on a dog that you know for sure it’s cruel to keep her alive. Cotkar hoped he would not be around to see it happen – if he were present, Memu might insist on him pulling the trigger. The dog was deemed to be his because as a pup it had pissed on him, in this way claiming Cotkar as its master. It did not occur to them that his leg at that particular moment might just have been the handiest place for the dog to piss against.
After turning the key in the cab door, he slipped his hand under both seats and found the small tobacco tin in which Memu kept his hash. He took enough for one roll and left everything else as it had been, for Memu had a nose for things that were even slightly out of place.
Just before midday, the shelling began. First, there was the strangest of silences, and then into that silence fell the heavy thudding of artillery shells. The Iraqis were bombing the town. He hurried back to the spur, carrying only the binoculars, and stood staring at the bombardment. His heart beat wildly. They had bombed before, but not with such intensity – the barrage was relentless, and they were bombing the residential areas that hadn’t been at the core of their strategy before, but not near to where his family lived. Families were fleeing. Already there was heavy traffic on the roads, people hurrying on foot, leaving with nothing. He recognised very many of the faces. He knew they were screaming and shouting, that there was a furious revving of engines, people crying, but he heard nothing. Then, as suddenly as it had commenced, the shelling stopped. The panic activity of the people continued – it was as though they understood that the silence was an interlude, and they were right. Sporadically, for the next hour, the shells tore at the earth, at buildings, homes, and at flesh and bone. Cotkar wondered if he should return home, but his father had said that no matter what happened in town the work had to be done … the goats had to be protected from the dogs and from thieves still. His feet shifted from the anxiety that danced in his heart.
He heard the helicopters before he saw them. The beating of their wings, the droning of their engines. He counted ten, then fourteen. He dropped behind the rock to its side, lying down, and trained the binoculars on the helicopters, his elbows serving as a bipod. The shelling had stopped. The helicopters were outside the perimeters of the town, hovering like dark green demons. Next he heard the jets and the impact of their loads – separate clouds rose about fifty metres into the air in a tricolour of yellow, black and white. He could not see through the dense cloud caused by the explosions. There followed a silence. Most silences actually say something, but this one said nothing. As the fog began to lift, the horror of what he was witnessing gradually increased.
‘No!’ he cried, on his feet, the helicopters withdrawing. The world in zoom. Graphic. People were lying dead on the ground. Not a few, hundreds. He saw dead babies with yellow powder about their lips, people spewing up green vomit. He saw people laughing and then falling down dead. He saw others walk their last step. He saw a family of children lying in the back of an open truck, people running, burning as they ran. The bombs had landed in his home street, but they would be safe, yes? He prayed. Father would have got them all out of harm’s way, yes?
No.
He ran till his lungs ached from the scalding by the harsh air, and then he stopped and walked until he was able to run again. He got a stitch that turned to cramp; his stomach heaved up soup and bread. Close to the town he saw streams of vehicles making for the Iranian border, and others coming his way in trucks, pulling over onto grassy areas outside the town. The mountain road led them nowhere, just to pretty sights, gorges and ravines and coldness. He walked into the crowd, mingled, but he could very well have been a ghost, for they took no notice of him.
Many were badly burned through their clothing. They stripped – their clothing had appeared normal, but underneath their skin burned. There were those in the throes of agony, and those who stood by, not knowing what they could do to help, and very many cried for those back in the town who were now lost to them.
Old Jaf came up to him, his leonine eyes glazed, and said on a cough, ‘Don’t go into the town, Cotkar.’
‘I must …’.
‘The poison gas has killed very many … stay with me until it has gone, then we will go back in … I promise. Stay with me. I have my car.’
Cotkar’s lips were dry and cracked. Now that he had stopped walking and running, his sweat was drying into him and he was beginning to feel shivery. The breeze was blowing a smell their way, one of horseradish, and another smell that was sweet but indefinable.
‘No …’ he said.
Old Jaf shrugged and said, ‘Okay, okay …’.
All around them, people were coughing, spitting up yellow liquid.
‘Is that what you want to be doing?’ Jaf said. ‘Your father would not forgive me.’
Cotkar was unable to speak.
Jaf threw out his arms and said, ‘I don’t know, Cotkar.’
He looked around, shook his head, and stroked his grey beard. Cotkar walked on towards town, pulling his scarf over his nostrils and mouth. Jaf hurried after him, touching his elbow. ‘No, wait. Think of what your father would want. He would want you to act like a man. To be clever. We must cross the border. The Iraqis will be here soon … we will come back when they have gone. The Iranians and Peshmerga have all pulled back.’
Cotkar pushed down his scarf and faced the old man. ‘I’m not crossing the border. I will stay with the goats in the hills.’
‘Good, good, yes … just don’t be here when those jackals come in.’
‘I won’t, Jaf.’
The old man pleaded with his eyes for Cotkar to come with him, but Cotkar was stubborn. Realising this, Jaf turned about and walked away, finding a path for himself in the bustle of all that was going on. People hurried to board the wounded and old onto tractor trailers, the backs of covered and uncovered trucks and into cars. Cotkar put his hands to his ears to block the urgent voices, the groaning, the screaming of those in agony from their injuries, and some wounded could not scream – their throats and mouths too blistered and still scalding as the gas burned its way through flesh. They tried to scream, but these were silent screams. Others’ screams were guttural, as though from an animal in its dying throes. Cotkar found this as unbearable to listen to as the loud cries. He picked up the reins of a grey pony and mounted, ignoring its owner’s calls.
Deadly Confederacies Page 11