“Look at that old devil-worshipper,” said Zirak with a grin and sat down beside me on the ground.
“What is he doing?” I asked. Until then I hadn’t seen the old man praying; he hadn’t really seemed religious.
“Well, he is worshipping the devil, or the peacock,” said Amanj, adding, sardonically. “Or what do the Yazidis worship?”
“The peacock.”
“Respect his religion,” said Husein, looking up while cleaning his weapon and turning toward Amanj.
“He doesn’t make snide remarks about the great Marx and Engels, either.”
“Why, just look at this, the Daesh agent has spoken, Have you already written off clowning about in the morning?”
“Fuck you.”
“OK, but that old Kakei has gone completely bonkers all the same.”
We watched as the old man repeatedly leaned down and kissed the ground. When he finished praying, he got on his green, military tunic, picked up his PKM from the ground, and headed our way. We all loved that old peshmerga, but everyone was surprised to see him praying.
“So, what is it, Sardar, did yesterday’s liquor get to you?” asked Amanj.
“Or did you hit your head?” Zirak doubled down. “Maybe you’ve got sunstroke?”
“Oh, cut it out already,” said Hussein, again looking up from his weapon.
“Good morning,” said the old man, leaning down to the tea kettle and pouring himself a cup. He was in an unusually festive mood. “I’m happy I’ll be passing this day with all of you.”
“Well, not me,” replied Zirak. “I’m sick of your ugly mugs. Being in my wife’s bed, now that would be the best.”
“You mean the bed of your brother’s wife’s?” quipped Hussein with a grin.
“At least we don’t have to take our women to nursery school afterward.”
They laughed heartily. The old man gulped from his tea.
“Last night Melek Taus visited me in a dream, and he said I would die today in battle.”
“I think it’s Johnny Walker who paid you a visit,” said Amanj with a grin.
“No. The Peacock Angel came, and said that today he would summon me to him.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“I love you, Brother Amanj, and it’s been an honor fighting by your side. There’s no problem.”
“You’re not going to die, you old schmo. This is just senility setting in.”
The old man smiled and lit a cigarette. Amanj sprang up from beside the fire and went to the jeep, and the others dropped the subject, too. Hussein finished cleaning his weapon, rolled up the blanket he was sitting on, and Zirak busied himself, too, packing his things in his military rucksack.
“Are all of you ready?” asked Hesin. Everyone nodded.
“We received an order to join the peshmerga gathering at Hosseinia and take part in the assault this afternoon. Amanj, Hussein, and the Hungarian will come with me in the jeep; Zirak and Sardar will come with the other vehicle.”
Everyone stood up.
“Let’s get going,” said Hesin. “Let’s go kill us a few Daesh.” He flung on his Kalashnikov and headed toward the jeep.
Hosseinia was just forty kilometers from the artillery camp we’d spent the night at, and yet it took us two hours of driving to get there. Mines and impassable roads made travel difficult. Hussein drove, the colonel sat beside him up front, and the two of us, Amanj and I, sat in the back.
“Do you think the old man really had a dream about his God?” I asked.
“You don’t believe in this nonsense, do you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Good, then. The old man is all worked up.”
“Why?”
“Because around here it’s all Yazidi villages.”
Images of the recaptured villages came to mind—the razed houses, the corpses of animals. Daesh made sure that even if the peshmerga won, there wouldn’t be anyone left to liberate. After each battle we saw only the dead, corpses flung into mass graves. I’d stopped keeping track of how many bodies I’d photographed in the days prior. Taking them had been a waste of time, since pictures of the dead can’t be sold, and yet by reflex I photographed every single corpse I saw. The peshmerga suffered considerable losses, too. They had neither normal weapons nor bulletproof vests. They shot with cheap, Chinese rifles or else what remained from the US invasion.
“He’s seen too many dead among his own people, which is why he thinks he, too, will die,” explained Amanj. “His mind is playing tricks on him.”
Hesin looked back from the front seat.
“Stop this talk now.”
“No way.”
“Cut the fucking shit. Sardar is a Kurdish peshmerga. We’re all Kurds. And that’s all that counts.”
Hussein nodded from behind he wheel. His satisfied expression was more than evident in the rearview mirror.
The bombed-out houses were a reminder that some months earlier Hosseinia had been a village. Two weatherbeaten T-74 tanks watched over the paved road that led from the guard post toward Jalawla. They could no longer move, but the peshmerga used their cannons and machine guns. Gathered behind them were the Toyota pickups that had transported the fighters for the assault. The guard post was on the hill opposite the village ruins. A large, military tarp had been stretched out on the hillside. The men were waiting under it.
We arrived at 1 PM. Not a shadow was to be had; the air was trembling from the heat. After parking the jeeps, we went to the guard post. The peshmerga were sitting under the tarp, eating. The food was simple: beef soup and bread. Two women were ladling the soup out of two huge pots. They were dressed the same as the men. After introducing myself to each of the fifty or so peshmerga one by one, I sat down to await the briefing.
Amanj showed up with Zirak, both of them holding mess kits. Amanj handed me one of the two bowls he had with him and plopped down beside me. Hesin and Hussein sat on the other side of the tarp, talking with the others.
“Eat, Kak Sardar,” said Amanj.
I ate. The soup was hot. It burned my mouth. We broke off bread from the same loaf.
“Where is the old man?” I asked.
“He’s praying,” said Zirak with a grin. “To placate his God.”
“Won’t he eat with us?”
“He’s fasting,” said Amanj with disgust, slurping up what was left of his soup. He wiped his face and lit a cigarette.
“Religion is the opiate of the masses,” Amanj added. “This whole war is because of religion. Because of fucking God. Humanity is killing its own on account of made-up fathers and uncles, but if you believe in God, you don’t need to have a conscience.”
“So you don’t believe in a thing,” said Zirak.
“I believe in people. That eventually we’ll get beyond class struggle and selfishness. According to Marx, that’s inevitable.”
“I don’t believe in people. If God didn’t exist, we’d make something up so we could kill in its name.”
“Then what do you believe in?”
“In my rifle.”
They choked with laughter. The last thing I wanted was to get caught up in discussing religion. I stood up and left the tarp.
Behind the tanks were adolescents and old folks with determined expressions, and I photographed them until a gunshot rang out by the tarp. This signaled the start of the briefing. It was on my way back to the tarp that I noticed old Sardar. He was sitting on top of the hill, staring at the sun, not bothered one bit by the scorching heat.
The briefing was held by a mustachioed, silver-haired colonel wearing a traditional Kurdish outfit. It wasn’t overcomplicated. Because we were only sixty kilometers from the Iranian border, a US air attack was completely ruled out. Though all of us knew this, he repeated it for the officers all the same. The plan was simple. The jihadists had begun their retreat, and had entrenched themselves in Jalawla for house-to-house fighting. The general staff did not anticipate significant resistance. The peshmerga missi
on was to capture the checkpoints by the viaduct five kilometers outside of town, thus opening the road for heavy artillery. The colonel showed the location on Google Maps using his iPad. According to intelligence reports, the checkpoints were defended by about twenty men and two 50-caliber machine guns fixed into concrete barricades. The battle plan was that the fifty peshmerga would approach over the hills, and from the height nearest the bridge, they would take out those 50-caliber machine guns with rifles and RPGs. Then the four jeeps, equipped with air-defense batteries, would finish off the surviving jihadists and ensure the advance.
After the briefing the religious peshmerga gathered beside the tent to pray. They stood in a long line beside each other. They put their weapons behind themselves. I lit a cigarette and watched them for a while.
After smoking the cigarette, I headed back to the jeep to get my IV bulletproof vest. Amanj, who’d beaten me there and had already donned his black, Russian-made vest, was carrying over my equipment. I pulled the vest around me tight, securing its velcro fasteners, and then clipped on my helmet. In front of the tarp the peshmergas were double-checking their weapons. They then lined up on each side of the road, behind the hills.
Everything went smoothly at first. I’d been able to go along with the march for three kilometers when Hesin stepped over to me.
“You stay here with the colonel on that hill. From here you’ll see everything.”
He wasn’t telling the truth. He knew that and so did I. I didn’t have a telephoto lens.
“Don’t you worry so much about me, Hesin.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about. You’d simply be a burden to the men. You’re not fighting.”
“I wouldn’t be a burden.”
“I’ve decided. If you want to get yourself killed, do so when your ass isn’t sewn to my neck.”
He smiled.
“Or not even then.”
I nodded. Arguing was pointless. I stepped over beside the colonel, who nodded and pointed out the hill we had to climb. We left the procession and headed upward. Even through my shoes I could feel the searing heat of the sand.
It really was possible to see everything well from the top of the hill, only that we were too far away to take pictures. I saw clearly the viaduct’s arches, the 50-caliber machine guns in the middle of the road, and even the black, Islamic State flags on the barricades. I cursed myself for not having brought along a telephoto lens. There was no choice now other than to set my camera at its highest resolution. The colonel and his two assistants, lying on their bellies, positioned themselves comfortably atop the hill, took out their military binoculars, and extended the antennae of their satellite phones. We waited.
The assault began with shouts of “Allahu Akbar” erupting from several throats. Then came the crackling of the machine guns, the sizzling of the RPGs, and the blasts as the grenades hit their targets. Smoke rose from above the machine-gun nests, and I could see barely a couple of enemy muzzle flashes. I heard the colonel, beside me, talk into his phone and give commands. A couple of minutes later, the machine-gun-equipped Toyota pickups sped by us on the road below, the gunners in the back having begun shooting at the viaduct even as the trucks raced along.
Characteristically, it all went to shit when things were just about wrapped up. Two armored Humvees seized from the Iraqi Army emerged from under the viaduct’s pillars, equipped with 50-caliber cannons. In the space of a moment they shot out the Toyotas and forced the men back behind the hills. The sky filled with the greasy smoke of the burning vehicles. Such a Humvee, I knew, could withstand even two RPGs by the time it gave up, providing it is hit to begin with.
The dead were brought back from the front on a pickup. It made four trips back and forth, its bed becoming slick with blood. Those among the injured who were unable to walk were brought back on the same vehicle. The peshmerga lost fourteen men, and the number of injured exceeded twenty. That was the cost of taking the viaduct.
I waited outside by the tarp for the guys to return. Inside, the two women who’d ladled out the soup were now preparing to tend to the injured. The were gathering up medications, anticoagulants, American battlefield first-aid kits.
Amanj arrived looking at once sooty and pale while suporting Zirak, who’d been shot in the hand. As frail as Amanj seemed, after one of the women peeled off his tunic, it was apparent that the bullet which had passed through him had gone through the shoulder, only breaking the bone. Hesin and Hussein had pulled through uninjured, while old Sardar had received a nasty shot in the chest. Ashen gray, he just stared blankly ahead as four men carried him off the truck and lay him down under the tarp.
“We can’t help this one,” shouted one of the women. “He’s got to get blood and be operated on!”
“How much time does he have?” asked Hesin.
“An hour,” said the woman. “We’ve clamped the artery, but he needs surgery immediately.”
“We’re leaving,” said Hesin, and headed down the hill. Amanj helped Zirak up off the ground and they followed Hesin.
Hussein and I set the old man onto a camp stretcher. The Yazidi was a large, strapping man, well over two hundred pounds. His tunic was blood-soaked, which left my hand bloody.
“Don’t leave his rifle here,” said Hussein before we lifted the stretcher. I leaned down, picked up the PKM machine gun with its sawed-off barrel, and, holding it by its sling, flung it over my shoulder.
By the time we reached the bottom of the hill, Hesin had agreed with one of the peshmerga that we would take his pickup, that the peshmerga would come along in Hesin’s vehicle, and that in Khanaqin they would switch back. Carefully we lifted the old man’s body onto the bed of the truck. Hesin drove, with three of us sitting inside: Zirak, Hussein, and I. Amanj sat by Sardar in the back.
The vehicle’s tires kicked up dust: Hesin didn’t want to lose even a minute. Zigzagging as he sped along, he kept honking to clear the traffic in front of us out of the way.
We were silent. No one was in the mood to say a thing.
The first checkpoints appeared when we left the war zone. We went by a guard shack without even slowing down, but ten minutes later a more serious one loomed up ahead, with concrete antitank barriers and a crossing gate. The checkpoint was manned by Shiite soldiers from the Iraqi Army. Hesin was fuming at having to slow down.
“Good day,” began the Iraqi soldier in Arabic. “We have to check the car for bombs.”
“Well, can’t you see, you moron, that we’re taking injured from the front and are in a hurry?”
“I’m sorry, but rules are rules.”
“If I have to stop here now, we’ll shoot you all to shreds,” said Hesin. Everyone knew he wasn’t kidding. Hussein raised his Kalashnikov at once and aimed it at the Iraqi soldier.
“No need to get so nervous,” said the Iraqi, grinning, and waving for the crossing gate to be lifted. Hussein lowered his weapon, and Hesin pressed the pedal. The sand dunes now gave way to scant vegetation, the huts to small towns. We raced along unabated. A half-hour after leaving the checkpoint, Amanj beat a hand against the car and shouted that we needn’t go so fast, because the old man had died.
It was dark by the time we arrived in Khanaqin. Peshmerga military headquarters was in a hillside villa on the city outskirts. After passing through the checkpoint that guarded the road leading to the hill, we parked by other cars. Medics came from the hospital, lifted off the dead Yazidi, and helped lead Zirak away.
Hesin and I went into headquarters to meet with the general staff. The Kurd leaders were getting ready for supper. Since I was a foreigner and, what is more, had returned from the front, they invited me to join them, too. They served exceptional Kurdish specialties, because the commander of the chiefs of staff had brought along his chef from Sulaymaniyah. But I had barely any appetite. When supper was over, I excused myself and, citing exhaustion, went out to the villa’s yard. On the way out, I lifted a bottle of J&B Scotch whiskey from among the many bottles of various so
rts out on the bar. No one noticed.
The villa had a large yard, with a colossal lawn where the army tents were pitched. Peshmerga were sitting around campfires. Shreds of patriotic Kurdish songs and the din of conversation filled the night.
I found Amanj in the parking lot, under the cedars. He was sitting on the hood of a jeep, smoking. Hussein was asleep in the back seat.
“So, what’s up?” I asked, and showed the bottle in my hand.
“Kak Sardar, you always know what I’m thinking,” said Amanj with a grin, taking the bottle from my hand, unscrewing the cap, taking a mighty swig, and giving it back. I drank, and then sat down beside him.
“It’s been a long day,” I said, taking out a cigarette and putting it in my mouth. Amanj lit it.
“That’s for sure,” he said.
The bottle passed between us, and finally Amanj broke the silence, after we’d downed half the whiskey. He took a big gulp, wiped his mouth, and said, “At least it turned out that there is a God.”
The Kingdom of God Is Approaching
The front ran along the Euphrates. The river here widened into a marsh. It rolled on, green, in the midday sun. Reeds grew lushly on the eastern bank, and thick shrubs lined the road. Waterfowl nested there, and tadpoles flailed about with their tiny fins in the shallow water so as to fend off the current. If you stared for long at the water, you could see the glinting bellies of fish as they bobbed up out of the mud to hunt.
The smell of boiled lentils was in the air. Two soldiers with the garrison were making soup. The men were excitedly leaning over the blackened cauldron, stirring and tasting. The September sun drew spots on their green coveralls.
Women were sitting about under a tarp on the roof of the unplastered concrete shack that served as the artillery battery’s main headquarters. There were four of them, and they too were wearing green coveralls. They were laughing while weaving each other’s long, black hair into buns. Only the oldest, an already graying woman, was keeping lookout, panning the western side of the marsh with binoculars.
The Most Beautiful Night of the Soul Page 4