by Raja Alem
“You should both eat camel and stand up like men. Weakness won’t help us if the worst happens,” she would say, stuffing pieces of leathery meat down their throats and forcing it down with fortifying camel milk to strengthen their hearts.
“Perhaps we will wake up tomorrow and Dajjal will have come. What will we do? Will we run away like pampered women? Absolutely not—we will fight to the death!” Or another time: “On your way to the market, or to the mosque, do not trust even the most trustworthy citizens. Keep your eyes open; it’s not impossible Dajjal will cross your path.”
Bunduqa was a terrifying storyteller, and she succeeded in planting Dajjal not just in the heads of her two children, but also in the heads of all the women of the tribe, who went on to instill it in their own children.
She was totally serious in her ominous stories, so her children saw Dajjal in every shadow that moved, and in every sandstorm that approached their path. They passed their whole childhoods in a self-created war camp, where they were trained as fighters in the army against Dajjal. Bunduqa’s faith in this war became a source of inspiration to the tribe, and it strengthened her position as a “woman worth a thousand men.”
Her fortunes would have improved if not for the shadow hanging over her: the female buried deep within Sarab, which was determined to breathe despite all her efforts to smother it. This feminine side came upon her unexpectedly, ruining her dream of mothering heroes and killing machines. In contrast to her older brother Sayf, Sarab didn’t show the same affinity with weapons—a flaw that shocked her mother when she discovered it as Sarab turned six.
No one could have known that Bunduqa wasn’t absolutely fair to both her children. She gave them both the same opportunities to realize her ambitions and carry their father’s legacy. So she began to train them like two princes from a race of kings. She dressed them both in the same pure-white robes, cut off above the ankle as a sign of piety, and over their shoulders she would throw a head covering belonging to Baroud, white spotted with red from their father’s wounds in battle. Whenever they went outside she would make them walk in front of her while she followed meekly behind, in order to accustom them to leadership. The tribe observed her in amazement while her children walked ahead of her, puffed up like two young cocks, and she followed them, dressed in black from head to toe. In contrast to her children clad in blazing white, she was like a ghost. She encouraged them to borrow her light to eclipse her. It was thought they were twins who shone with the same wondrous halo, until that fateful day when Sarab was six.
The day began with a promising sunrise, the horizon revealing all the hunting targets like a magnifying glass. They only word for it was “perfect"; it could have been made on purpose for them to hit a record number of targets. Bunduqa had carefully selected that day to train her children in desert hunting, and, with Sarab’s first shot, a bird fell at her feet.
“Yooohooo! You little warrior, you’re the apple of your mother’s eye, Sarab!” Bunduqa exploded with pride, incredulous at Sarab’s luck, while the girl stood rigid with fear, having only just realized what it meant to fire a gun. She stood goggling at the torn wings and the blood dripping on the sand, and the bird’s agonized spasms made her burst out crying.
“You coward. Come on, shut your mouth—hurry up and wring its neck,” her mother hissed, hurrying her along, but she didn’t manage to wrench Sarab out of her stupor. At once Sayf stepped forward, bellowing with laughter and stung by envy. He knelt beside the bird, whose chest had started to rattle, took hold of its neck, and snapped it cleanly.
“That’s my man!” Their frustrated mother applauded encouragingly, while Sarab broke into a hysterical howl. Turning to Sarab, Bunduqa pointed an accusing finger at her. “You’re nothing but a girl!” she screamed. “You didn’t come from this belly!”
Sarab had ruined the trip for them all.
In the following days, whenever Bunduqa tried to make Sarab fire the gun, she would start trembling and burst into a frantic fit of wailing, almost turning blue.
The mother despaired utterly of Sarab when she discovered that she had hidden a bird with a broken wing and was secretly nursing it in the hope that she could get it to fly again. Her face pale with exasperation, Bunduqa stood in front of the box where the bird lay. She saw Tafla’s ghost rising before her, dragging the fate of defeat she had so nimbly escaped.
“Weasel heart!” She rammed a finger into Sarab’s chest with the utmost contempt, resisting an urge to sink her claws into it, tear out the heart, and remold it from steel.
From that moment, Bunduqa severed herself from Sarab. Her daughter was an encumbrance that hampered her star from rising. She dedicated her princely care to Sayf, who was proving to be an unadulterated copy of her own self.
“You disgrace!” Sarab never stopped hearing this lament; the words swelled until they encircled the frustration the child bore. Bunduqa never wearied of exacting perpetual revenge on Sarab, calling her attention every moment to the fact she would never be forgiven for being born a girl and one with a mouse’s heart.
Above all, Bunduqa resolved to keep referring to Sarab as a boy, as if she was trying to imprison the girl in the other sex. She developed a way of talking about Sarab in her presence as if she weren’t there, as if she were invisible or nonexistent.
“I am a true martyr. It is decreed that we face the scales of our sins on Judgment Day, but God has already sent me the scales. Here are my sins, walking on two feet in this world.” Her eyes flickered to indicate Sarab, but she avoided looking at her.
Sarab didn’t realize she was female until her first period came, when she was ten years old. That morning they were in the desert and she had bent down to gather some wood when the silence was rent by Bunduqa’s crow-like scream.
“Stand up straight, you filthy idiot. Turn around and come here. Hurry! We’re going home—stay in front of me. Hurry up, now.” She pushed Sarab ahead of her and walked close behind, hiding her backside with the ferocity of a lioness. She kept responding to greetings as people passed them, even when the door of their house closed behind them. She fixed Sarab with a baleful glare, ripped the white clothes off her body, and hurled them into the trash. Picking up a strip of elastic and a square piece of fabric from a special cupboard, she began to fold the fabric into layers, making it into a long, diaper-like pad.
“As many layers as possible.” She kept folding the fabric until it turned into something like a cushion. “We won’t let a drop of blood betray us,” she muttered doggedly.
The girl mastered her shock and asked, “What blood?” Her frightened question went unanswered.
“Tie this elastic around your waist like a belt, you idiot, and hang this pad from it.”
Sarab obeyed, not understanding what had roused her mother’s anger. What sin had she committed? Why the pad?
Bunduqa supervised the positioning while Sarab tied the elastic around her waist, and she instructed her how to pass the long pad between her legs so that the ends hung out of the front and back of the elastic belt. Sarab felt the primitive, many-layered pad like a stone between her delicate thighs, a punishment for her disruptive femaleness.
“We won’t let any stain appear on your clothes like it did today. We were sullied by this blood.”
Sarab stood there trembling; fear amassed heavily on her thin shoulders, sending a thick trickle of blood between her legs. A cramp tore through her pubic area, and tears fell down her cheeks. She felt very small under the weight of her mother’s disdain.
Bunduqa went on: “Wash the fabric when it is soaked in blood and change it for this other one.” She handed Sarab an additional strip of fabric. From that day, Sarab carried the two strips of fabric, but however much she washed them, they were still stained with faint traces of blood. She carried them like a banner of her nullity. She would see them hanging in the small bathroom, hidden behind a curve in the bathroom wall, and was overwhelmed with violent hatred for the faint smell that no washing could remove, ev
en if she scrubbed till her hands were raw. She hated the blood that defeated her every month, without delay or truce. It confirmed that she was female, and roused secret envy toward her brother and his superior sex. Every month it brought hatred, envy and humiliation, and intensified her feeling of sin.
The blood on the white, male clothing formed an additional badge of shame for Bunduqa. She faced it with resolute denial, burying it in layer after layer of pads, as if by ignoring Sarab’s femaleness, she could make it disappear and invert the girl into a boy overnight. Sarab submitted to being despised, as punishment for having failed to induce her body to swap its gender.
Countdown
At dawn the darkness was split by a roar of rotors; black metallic bodies were hovering in the skies over the Grand Mosque. The helicopters managed to land a team of paratroopers, trying to spread them out over strategic positions on the roof of the mosque. The machine guns in the minarets fired wildly, but while they mowed down large numbers of the suicide teams, another group of paratroopers succeeded in securing control of the courtyard.
The courtyard of the mosque turned into an inferno, surrounded by silence. Muhammad assumed his strategic position in the well amid the chaos, secure behind piles of furniture and prayer rugs. He was an open target there and, afraid for him, Sarab crawled in his direction. She made her way under the bombardment until she reached the top of the stairs leading to the well. She saw him standing there, aiming his machine gun at a helicopter. Despite his absorption, he spotted her and beckoned her closer.
Day after day she had been gnawed by the struggle between her attraction to Muhammad and the doubt that he was really the Mahdi, but in that moment her only thought was fear for his life. The only thing she cared about in this fight was keeping him and her brother alive. Their safety came before hers, and she was ready to sacrifice everything to achieve it; they were her battle.
Heavy fire from the helicopters forced the rebels to retreat inside the well. Bullets scorched the barricades they had erected, and the government forces intensified their assault on the well, aware that the most important pockets of resistance were there.
“If we are defeated, please don’t let them take you alive. God will be merciful . . .” She didn’t know how she could have uttered those pitiful words; she seemed to be begging for Muhammad’s attention. But as soon as she spoke them, the words lost their triviality; they hung in the air like a premonition.
“It’s up to God whether we are destined to remain or to depart this world.” He couldn’t help staring deeply into her eyes, a look that pierced her like a spearhead. Usually he avoided her gaze, but at that moment, when death was tangible, he wanted to fix his faith inside her.
“You truly seek martyrdom, and by God’s will you will be called on for it.”
She lost all control of her senses and began to drown in those thickly lashed eyes, her body ablaze and melting in the flames kindled by his gaze, while his husky voice rushed tremulously through her veins.
“Don’t think of victory or defeat—fix your heart on Heaven, whether in this life or the next. And if the opportunity comes, get out of here. Don’t think of it as cowardice or creeping away. You were made for a different fate, something beyond all of this.”
They were interrupted by a thunderous explosion, and Sarab was blown from the top of the stairs to the bottom of the well. Muhammad rushed toward her as she lay there in shock.
“Are you wounded? Answer me!” He searched her body in terror, looking for wounds, and her shock was made worse by this unexpected and thorough handling of her body. His hands encountered her bound breasts, and his eyes gleamed when he realized what he was touching. His suspicions were finally been confirmed and, trembling, he withdrew his hands. Her voice came out as a squeak when she was finally able to speak.
“I’m fine . . .”
His chest heaved in a sigh and he helped her sit up.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded, and his hands sprang away from her shoulders as if they had been stung. Hoarsely, he ordered, “Stay here. Don’t move until the shock has worn off.”
He left her to take up his position in the battle to block the army’s attempts to land another wave of paratroopers in the courtyard. At last she managed to gather the strength to heave up her body and leave.
She crawled away, shaken to the core, propelled by a need to disappear and hide the delicacy and fragility that had suddenly appeared when least expected. She felt naked, as though she had uncovered herself in front of him, unveiled her attraction to him, in the midst of this massacre. No doubt he had seen the truth of how she felt, and now she couldn’t continue denying it to herself. She couldn’t face additional anxiety—her brother and now this man. Intuition told her they were hurrying to their graves.
At sunset, without warning, the intensive attempts to land troops slackened. A few individuals from the government forces had succeeded in descending to the southern arcades and were now trapped there by the rebels. It seemed that a new game plan was being drawn up outside. Sarab slipped out of the firing line to another gallery and hurried up the narrow spiral stairs of Sayfullah’s minaret. Exhausted by the stairs and her fear, she arrived panting at the top of the minaret and stood there behind her brother. She watched his face, colored red by the setting sun, and his eyes seemed to have widened into two pits of shadow, occupying most of his face. He seemed demented from lack of sleep and from having played the greatest role in eliminating the teams that had been dropped over the courtyard since dawn.
He was still firing while darkness slowly descended; he seemed unaware of his sister’s presence, or perhaps, as usual, he was nullifying it. Sarab could see nothing but him, while the features of the city were submerged in darkness made thicker by smoke from the continuous explosions. She could swear Sayf had stopped breathing while he scanned row after row of the surrounding rooftops and windows, waiting for any sign of life. The windows seemed to be playing a trick on Sayf’s overstrained senses, expanding and contracting and dwindling into the sky, luring him into firing eagerly and at random on any twitch of movement or tremor of light. The battle had moved on; it was no longer about establishing the Mahdi, but had become a bloody struggle between Sayf and the obstinate city that refused to surrender to his unerring bullets. Where there were no living targets, he aimed at the city itself. Sarab suspected that he was, as usual, aiming at the ghosts in his head. Standing there, for an instant she felt anger that verged on distaste for the two men who had violated her life and her peace of mind.
Sayf’s body was like a live wire, exposed and ready to shock, and Sarab was overcome with tenderness. She resisted the desire to come closer and stroke that jerking shoulder; she withdrew a step instead, convinced that his skinny body would explode if touched by even a mosquito. Like the rest of his comrades, Sayf was aware of the dangerous development in the attackers’ stance that day. It was clear that they had abandoned caution in attacking the Grand Mosque, ramping up their attempts to land fighters on the roof and apparently unconcerned by how many fell in their ranks. They concentrated fire on the arcades and the courtyard, aiming to force the rebels to abandon their fortifications and end the siege. Moving in the arcades was now suicide, and the makeshift muezzin had to take refuge in the cellar to raise the call to the evening prayer.
Sarab couldn’t bear to look at the muezzin; he was like a mole, lost in the infinite darkness of the cellars. Terror turned his voice into a screech, as if he were begging for salvation in return for raising the name of God in that hell. Sarab heard the call to prayer like a dirge accompanying them straight to Hell for having colluded with Mujan.
As the siege entered its third week, both the rebels and the attackers seemed to have reached a suicidal climax; all were determined to purge the scene and reach any end, as fast as possible, no matter what it might be and whatever the victory might cost.
Steel Clouds
As night fell over the insurgents, so did a profound sense of de
spair. The ground was trembling under their feet from the tanks that had begun to congregate around the mosque. It seemed that the hesitancy that had granted the rebels victories in the previous weeks had come to an end. The army had arrived. Heavy armored cars took up position around the mosque, tanks lumbered forward, fighter jets shrieked as they tore through the night, reconnaissance helicopters hovered ceaselessly overhead. It seemed clear that a colossal army had been amassed to destroy them utterly and completely. The rebels knew that their days were numbered; before long they would be wiped off the face of the earth. The darkness amplified their terror, and the sense of being surrounded gave their faces an ashen hue. When Sarab woke up that day, she was unsure whether it was dawn or sunset. A thin red line encircled the horizon, and despite the cold light she felt unnaturally warm; she was sure she was in Hell, and below her, bodies were melting in fire.
Sarab braced herself against the earth, trying to raise her body, but felt no solid ground. Wherever she placed a hand, it slithered over disintegrating flesh until she fell prostrate.
Helicopters roared overhead, their rotors covering the sky over the Grand Mosque with a steel cloud like devils’ wings. The ground simmered and boiled, explosions thundered, and shredded bodies flew through the air. From where she lay, Sarab could see dozens of her comrades scattered around, dead.