War Flower

by Brooke King

  Traditions

  When a child is born into the Islamic faith, they are welcomed into the world with a celebration, the tradition of Aqiqah, which consists of the father, on the seventh day after the child’s birth, slaughtering a goat or sheep to mark the occasion. The prophet Muhammad used to perform the ritual when he was bestowed with a newborn child. It is used to announce the birth to family, friends, and neighbors. It is a celebration of life and the bestowing of great honor by the Creator. Before the goat is slaughtered, the child’s hair is shaved and weighed to determine how much money is to be given out to the poor; an offering of alms must be made. It is suggested that the father sacrifice a healthy goat humanely while the child’s head is being shaved. While the slaughter is taking place the dua must be said:

  In the Name of Allah and through Allah, this is the ʿaqīqa of . . . [name of the boy], son of . . . [name of the father]: its flesh for his flesh blood, its bone for his bone, its hair for his hair, its skin for his skin. O Allah, let it be a protection of the family of Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his family.

  O gathering, I am free from what you associate; I turn my face to Him who split the heavens and the earth, a true believer and a Muslim, and not one of the polytheists. My prayer, my piety, my living, and my dying are for Allah, the Lord of the Words. O Allah, from You and to You, in the Name of Allah; Allah is greater. O Allah, bless Muhammad, and accept [this] from . . . [name of the child].

  Son of . . . [name of the father].

  After this rite of passage, the child, if male, is circumcised. It is customary that before the circumcision a prayer is said:

  O Allah, this is Your practice and the practice of Your Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), Your blessings be upon him and his family; obeying Your ideal and Your books is the result of Your volition, and Your will and judgment you decreed, a rule You executed. So take away from him the pain of the knife in his circumcision and his scarification through a command —You are more knowing of it than I, O Allah. And cleanse him of sins, prolong his life for me, drive away injury and pain from his body, increase him in wealth, and fend off poverty from him; for You know and we do not.

  These traditions are followed to ward off evil spirits from the newborn and the mother, as well as to protect and celebrate the coming of new life. The ceremony is performed in front of the village, everyone partaking in the festivities as a way of welcoming the child into the world, upholding the practices of Islam, and thanking the Creator for the bringing of new life.

  We did not slaughter a goat. But we prayed. We thanked God. We celebrated their birth. We counted our blessings. We shared the birth with our friends, and family, and neighbors. We took pictures, cleansed them of afterbirth, and named them five days later. We circumcised them. We cherished them as a gift from God.

  Alive Day

  There was a lull in the excitement; the bloody battle zone of birth was over. There was a coming home ritual, the bringing of the children into the house. I stepped across the threshold.

  Maybe it wasn’t so hard to come home, but the home had felt incomplete when I came back from Iraq, the longing for more than the house was before. Somehow, the children and James had completed it, rendered it full.

  I felt for the first time as though I was finally home, that the war might be behind me, left in the dust and sand of a world that I no longer inhabited, one that was across mountains, and deserts, and oceans, one that was starting to fade slowly out of the memories, replaced, supplanted by the two things swaddled tightly in hospital blankets, a place washed clean from my existence, the absence of time lapsed over, the faces blurring, the wind brushing my footprints clean, the roots of date trees branching over shell casings as they were absorbed into the earth to rust for eternity in the dirt of the Fertile Crescent. And maybe one day I would look back at Iraq, remember the faces, the landscape, the roads, and sunsets, and consume it all into my soul, committing the memories to a softer place in my locker full of hurt, but for now I was home, and I could not think of those things.

  Burying the Coffin of War

  It has been days since I have slept more than three hours. It has been months since I have thought of Iraq. Years since I have been able to laugh.

  *

  James was changing a poopy diaper on Zachary. The stench was foul, and he moaned when I told him it was his turn for diaper duty. We were talking about moving to Florida. The subject was too harsh to speak of in front of my grandparents, so we whispered, taking half breaths, pulling away from the smell of feces. I told him that I didn’t want to leave, that I finally felt at home, that moving would change all that; I would have to start over. I didn’t want to start over. I held Bowen. It was his turn next. The diaper was off and in the poop receptacle, which was supposed to keep the smell in but didn’t. James laughed at the stench; I was not fazed. I knew smells that were worse than baby poo: burning trash, port-o-shitters on a hot day, flesh rotting from sweat, socks after brigade runs, charred flesh, blood that has been sitting in a blown-out truck too long and had soured, tires when they catch fire, petrol on the skin, a dead body baking in heat with its innards gutted out onto the ground. All these things were worse than a child’s shit.

  There was the sound of water trickling. James was still talking to me of moving. We were lost in conversation, but the sound of water stopped us both. James turned around to Zachary. He was peeing an arched stream over James shoulder onto the carpet. James put his hand up to stop the pee, but it deflected into his mouth. James was screaming, trying to cover Zachary’s penis. I was holding Bowen, laughing. James was spitting piss onto the carpet. Zach was crying because James was yelling obscenities as loud as he could. Bowen was crying because my laughter startled him. Nana and Grandpa ran in. They started laughing too when James told them what had happened. I could not help myself. I laughed and laughed, and I did it until tears of happiness, of joy, of repressed years of not laughing spilled over. I let it happen. James was the only one not laughing, but he turned to me and saw I could not stand up straight because I was laughing so hard. He stopped cursing. He turned to me and smiled, on his mouth the still lingering smell of piss as he kissed me on the forehead. It was the first step, letting the laughter in, but as time went on, the next laugh became easier and easier until I remembered what it was like to laugh again.

  But the bombs did not stop falling on Baghdad. The death toll, beyond the count of grief.

  *

  As a child, I remembered the sirens outside my window from the nearby fire station waking me up at night. I would run to the window in my bedroom, pull back the curtains, and watch as the red lights reflected off the tops of the trees down toward the highway. I would pray for the people who needed help. Ask God to watch over those who tended to them. To keep all those in need alive.

  In Iraq, the sirens were the same, the lights the same, but the ambulances different. The Humvees barreled down the main drag of Camp Liberty during the night, sirens blaring loud enough so that you couldn’t hear the soldier dying in the back. I would run out to the road every time, watch the Humvee bear down on the road, tires screeching around corners to the CASH, the lights flickering red and white in circles, pinging reflections of the dying onto the barriers, trucks, and buildings. I would pray for the soldier inside. Ask God to make it a quick death. I would pray that the doctors do what they could to make the soldier comfortable, that the chaplain would hear the siren too and make it in time for last rites. But I never prayed for survival; it was a fate worse than death.

  *

  I was walking the floor with Zachary tucked neatly into the crevices of my arms. His eyes were slowly fading down to sleep. My heartbeat comforted his fragile body. His eyes finally closed, and it was then that I watched him sleeping and envisioned him much older, around my age, standing next to me, asking me about the war. I imagine that after all these years, I cannot bring myself to answer the question in full honesty. I tell him instead about the J
ericho rose, the resurrection flower. I tell him that the desert flower survives by lying dormant, curled up in a state of limbo for many years before opening up and turning green once again. That in the desert, if there is no water, the rose will tumble for miles, picked up by the wind until it is placed near a water source. When it opens, in the middle, a small lilac-colored rose blooms, a rare desert flower that I found once while walking in Iraq.

  Legacy

  I sat on the back porch next to Grandpa. He was on his second drink. I was finishing my first. And even though the children were only a few months old and I was still trying to breastfeed, I brought the Johnny Walker to my mouth once more, considered the scotch, the ice cubes, and the three-drink rule. I looked out over the canyon wall toward the VA hospital that loomed in the distance of Mission Valley and thought of another Iraq veteran bringing whiskey, or rum, or vodka to their mouth. They do so to drown the pain, the pills, or maybe the memories of the soldier who once stood next to them. And after the drink is done, they walk away from the bar and wander down the street, stepping out onto the ledge of the bridge, letting gravity take away the weight of silence. And somewhere across the country, another is setting the glass in the kitchen sink, kissing his children and wife goodnight before he steps outside to the bitter cold night with his service revolver shaking in his hand and wraps his teeth around the cold steel, bearing down on whiskey lullabies. It is like this all over the country and in parts of the world that time has forgotten. England, Vietnam, Germany, Poland, Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, Japan, and countless more. They take it all in.

  And I sat there, clinked the ice cubes in my empty glass, and remembered. Three drinks. Three drinks to fall asleep.

  Sometimes I was in the kitchen. Other times I was standing in the backyard. I was sleepwalking through my nightmares. I was sleepwalking through my life.

  James stood next to me. Never touching me. He would call my name. Tell me I was here, but in my mind, I was somewhere in Iraq standing next to a blown-up vehicle. The bodies inside burned alive. There was no more backyard, no hedgerow to peer over, no silent house, and no freeway noise; there was only shrapnel, and dismembered bodies, a mission, a consistent line to toe that deepened moments of humanity into unfathomable despair. He leaned in close to my ear and said, “Let’s go home.” He knew where I was. He saw it in my eyes when he looked at me; the unfolded body bags on the ground, unzipped, and waiting for their occupants. He noticed the shaking of my hands, the impossibility of his statement, and yet I turned and walked into the house. And though I was still nursing, I took one of Nana’s sedatives. Two, maybe three that night. Each night was different. I washed it down with Johnny Walker. Only one drink this night. I sat on the edge of the bed unable to forget. In a few moments, once the sedatives had kicked in, I would lie down, close my eyes, and though they were closed, I knew James would stay up watching me, watching for the jitters, the shakes, the moans that turned to screams, the sweat trickling down my brow that braced the pillow before the unforgotten memories broke the seams and busted open the insides. He would stay up and watch all of this because he knew in moments, I would be in front of a Stryker burned out and blown up and staring at a hatch where three bodies lay inside. He knew I would be covered in char and flesh, that my hands would stain blood into my cuticles, creasing it into the cracks. He knew that the stench of iron would fill my nostrils, push me past the point of gagging, that I would not keep the contents of my stomach down. He knew that I would feel the brush of bullets ricocheting off buildings, feel around bits of bodies lying scattered on the bottom edges of Humvees as I looked for dog tags, treaded gently around pools of blood baked and soured brown by heat, that Iraq would be inside me again, if only in my sleep.

  *

  When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no clapping, no thank-yous or handshakes. There was no reintegration. No pills. No VA forms to fill out.

  There was booze. A rattling of the brain. The violent, jostled thoughts that synced together in waves of remembering. There was a truth to their submission, their reason for surrender. There was hostility, and shame breathed embers into raging fires that seared down on their souls. When they walked the streets, they saw their victims’ faces in the reflections of windows, buses, and street shops. They saw their comrades, they saw the Viet Cong, the women raped and murdered, the children holding guns, and the distant glow of jungles burned black by napalm. They felt the heat on their tongues when they tried to speak of it to anyone who would listen. But the words were harsh, unflinching, the confessions of fear and repercussions. They felt the stares of a country that despised their existence, their questions made out like blame. Why did you go to war? Others at home asked where their sense of morality went, their ability to keep living with the atrocities, but the soldiers see only one-sided conversation that heaped guilt on like a military-issue woolen blanket, scratching at their words as though it were held tight against their mouth. They burned their brains full of answers unspoken, but still America demanded to know. And the vets, they stayed silent because the present was hard enough without having to look back and question their actions, beliefs, and their cause for suffering.

  When their silence became intolerable, when America pressed them even further for an answer, and when they could not produce a single syllable when asked, they stared blankly into their eyes as though they were children looking into the sun wondering why it burns the eyes to see. I am nothing, they would say. I am the fault of my government, my father. I am plagued with nothing but lies. I did what I was told. I did what you would’ve done. I am here standing when the dust settled, even though I am not living.

  And when America asked them to come back, to care, to be a part of society again, they said, “Someday I will be back from the dead.”

  Breathe through Your Mouth (#2)

  I was in Florida now, standing in my own home. I had been married to James for two years. The boys were almost three. I was a junior at Saint Leo University. I was studying literature. The nightmares had spilled over into my waking life.

  “Brooke, you awake?”

  I turned and looked at my husband, who had just walked into our bedroom. He walked over to his side of our king-size bed, plugged his iPhone into the charger on the wall, and turned to face me.

  “I took the trash out and checked on the boys; they’re sound asleep.”

  Sitting there in bed, I must have looked off because James gave me a look of concern. His cobalt blue eyes stared inquisitively at me, as if to judge the extent of how concerned he should be. I narrowed my eyes and furrowed my brow in order to keep from crying.

  “What’s that look for?”

  I frowned. “What look?”

  Insistent that there was something wrong, he said, “That look you just gave me. You okay?”

  Hesitant about telling him what had just happened, I said, “I’m fine. What about the boys?”

  “No, you look like you’re about to cry. What’s going on?”

  I thought to myself, Why did I have to marry the one guy who actually gives a shit?

  When James got back from Iraq, he didn’t have PTSD or anything resembling it. He had been an ordnance officer, and while he did go out the gate a lot during his first deployment, in 2004, his last deployment had been a desk job. Though we had shared a deployment together in the same battalion, living only five hooches away from each other, we did not share the same experience. Yet, even though he supported me through the tough times during our deployment, bringing me dinner and spending nights in his hooch holding me after a hard day, his hardest challenge was helping me now. There had been times in the beginning when he first came to California that I woke up hyperventilating from a nightmare and wished that he could have shared my pain, but I know now that I would not wish this struggle on anyone else. To have done so would have been to witness two trains heading toward each other on the same track, a wreck on a wreck. I could not imagine a family where both parents have PTSD. For our
family it would have been like living in a house where no one survived. The children would have been collateral damage to the horrific pain of a marriage forced apart by war and words unspoken.

  “I had a nightmare.”

  With one eyebrow raised, he questioned me: “I thought those stopped a while after the boys were born. How long has it been since your last one?”

  “A couple of months.”

  “A couple of months? How come you didn’t tell me?”

  “Would you have listened? Besides, they haven’t been bad enough that I’ve needed to talk, and to be honest, I’m not really sure why I just had one.”

  “You gonna be okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, as I thought about how different this nightmare was from the rest. It had been more emotional, like so many others lately. Yet it felt more real than the other nightmares I’d had in the past few years. Struggling with what the change meant, I decided it was time to tell James that the nightmares had changed.

  “This one was different. It was less graphic, less scary in a way.”