The Weapon (59 page)

 

The pickups career across the desert, throwing up a dusty smoke that smells of death and terror. It catches in Ghedi's teeth, scratches under his eyelids. He coughs and coughs as he and two other boys slide on the sand that coats the jolting bed. A brown she-goat with a red ribbon plaited around her throat pants at their feet, blood pumping from a slit that looks like another ribbon. Her frantic eyes search theirs. The oldest boy swings himself out of the gate. He hits the sand running, but another truck swerves instantly to smash him down.

Rocks fly out of wheel wells, dust boils, shots crack in the adobe murk. The men shout and gesture to one another as they drive. They're stringy, dark, with white cloths wrapping skulls shaped like ax heads and burning black eyes that turn now and again to look back at their captives like the hungry eyes of locusts.

The goat kicks, the blood pumps. Then it slackens. The animal relaxes. Her gaze goes polishless and fixed, filming with the dust that throngs the dry wind.

Ghedi screams without words, looking back into the boil that writhes and tumbles in their wake, blotting out everything
behind them. The road, the clotted multitudes of refugees. Who'd scattered, screaming, clutching their pitiful belongings, their children, their feeble elders, as the trucks first circled, then, seeing no one armed, screeched around to plow into the crowd.

Right into where he'd left his brother and sister. “Let me go,” he'd screamed, struggling with the man who'd hauled him up by one arm kicking and struggling into the bed of the truck, like a fish suddenly jerked into a fine thin element where breath itself could not be had.

Now that man smiles, showing yellow fangs like a hyena's. His fingers dig in like the cold claws of a rooster. He leans till his lips brush the boy's ear. His breath smells rank, meaty, like old blood.

“You do not jump off, like that fool. You look like a wise, brave boy. Yes? We will see how clever you are. And how brave.”

They ride locked gaze to gaze, Ghedi looking back into those eyes as if reading that which is written and must come to pass. His gaze slides down long bare forearms, scarred and puckered with old burns, to dusty, mahogany-toned hands.

To the weapon they grip, its blued steel worn to silver. The stock scarred where something very hard and moving very fast tore through the fibers of heavy-grained wood. The doubled jut of the barrel. The black curve of the magazine.

The man pulls a fold of fabric up over the lower part of his face, and shoves Ghedi down into the rusty bed.

 

The camp's a rock-walled ravine only partially sheltered from the rising wind. Heat radiates from it as from a burnt-over field. As the trucks halt beneath an overhang the bandits leap out, carrying the weapons they've picked up from the floorboards. Some pull drab tarps from behind the seats. Others cradle rifles as the boys climb slowly down. They huddle coated with dust like tan flour, sticklike arms and legs quivering, hugging themselves as they wait for what comes next. Ghedi glances at the sun, figuring the direction
back to his brother and sister. But surrounded, boxed by steep stone, he doesn't dare make a break.

The fighters' voices are loud. Their dialect's different from that of his village, but he understands them. They pour water into radiators from goatskin bags, pry rocks out of knobby-treaded tires with knives, refuel from battered orange metal cans stacked in the shade. The odor of gasoline tinctures the wind.

Presently, when the trucks are cared for and covered, the tarps pulled tight and then carefully disarranged so no straight lines are left, their attention turns past the captives, to where woodsmoke blows from, and merry voices and music.

And presently, the scent of roasting meat.

 

The boys wipe their lips with their hands, leaving smudges across their faces. They stand where the smoke blows. They've stood so long their legs shake, their heads spin with thirst and hunger and fear. Two younger fighters, one in a white robe like the drivers, the other in ball cap and T-shirt with interlocking colored rings on the breast, sit with terrible motionlessness against the ravine wall, weapons across their knees. Their jaws contract endlessly, chewing the wads of leaves called fat.

The other rebels are feasting. They toss bones over their shoulders, but none of the boys dares move. The fires crackle. Gradually the sky turns a darker blue. Shadows submerge the ravine.

A boy begs timidly for water. The young guards beat him with rifle butts until his head breaks like a clay bowl. He lies shuddering, eyes rolled up to blank whites, bare feet kicking as if he's running. A darkness grows under him. He jerks, then goes still.

That was hours ago. Since then not one boy's moved from where he was told to stand, not one has spoken.

Ghedi waits with them. His mind is reflectionless as the surface of the canal on a day without wind. He breathes in
smoke and the smells of meat and smoke that come now and again like memories half remembered.

The dark comes, and stars sprawl above the firelight as light bleeds from the world. One burns brighter than the rest above the ravine walls. He fixes his gaze on it and listens to hyenas bark far off, the sound carrying across the desert for miles.

At last the man who pulled him off his feet hours before hoists himself from his crouch before the fire like a bundle of sticks wrapped in white cloth reassembling itself. He stretches, looking about, pushing dates into his mouth, sucking the sweetness from each finger. At the sky. The top of the ravine.

At last, as if remembering, he saunters toward the boys. Five are still erect, one lying in the sand, head shattered. The dark puddle has already vanished in the terrible dryness, sucked into the dust that looks white in the firelight, the light of the stars.

“You.” Seizing a small bandy-legged lad by the neck, he walks him to the fire, then past it, around a blind curve in the rocks and out of sight.

Ghedi has a sudden sharp memory. A lamb he'd grown to love, that he'd thought had been given to him. Then his father put the knife in his hand, and told him: this was Eid-ul-Zuha, and all belonged to God; and in His name the lamb was to die. He'd cried and begged. But at last, after it was explained, he understood.

God did not need the lamb. God had made all lambs, all human beings too. Ibrahim had been called by God to sacrifice his only son, Ismail. Ibrahim had shown his willingness, and God had not required that death. Now he, Ghedi, was called to do the same. What he loved most was the most acceptable sacrifice.

He remembered his father's hand on the knife with his own. The feel as the blade punctured skin. The bleat, the twisting muzzle, quickly clamped shut by his father's work-scarred hands. The smell of hot blood. The way the beast had looked up, trusting him.

He remembers the she-goat, in the bed of the truck.

And his own mother's eyes.

 

A staccato of gunfire. The men at the fire glance that way but do not move from their relaxed crouches, their stone perches.

The tall one strides back alone. The folds of his
maahwees
whirl behind him. He swings one of the ugly rifles in one hand, muzzle down.

“Follow me. You boys! This way.”

Ghedi's legs pop as he takes his first step in hours. He sways and almost goes down. Another boy catches his hand. They squeeze each other's grip tight and stumble along together. The two guards fall in behind the little group. Curious gazes trail them as they pass the fire. A woman in the long colorful dress of the nomad crouches picking scraps and bones out of the dirt and placing them in a red plastic bowl. Only her eyes show beneath her shawl, and she does not look up as they pass.

“You're nothing,” the tall man says conversationally. “You have no land, no clan, no weapons. You've pissed your pants. What sort of men are you? Are you men at all?”

None of the boys answers, and maybe he doesn't expect them to. The smoke eddies around them, hanging in the ravine, drawing stinging tears.

When they turn the corner he lifts the rifle and they shuffle to a stop. Ghedi feels the hand gripping his tighten.

The boys stand shoulder to shoulder, barely breathing. Covered with the dust, they might be terra-cotta statues in the dark. Save for their wondering eyes. Then the guards shove them from behind, rifles out stiff-armed. They swim through the gathering shadows, through the last of the fire-smoke. Gradually he makes out what fills the depression ahead. The mass of blackness seems to crawl, a living blanket.

It's a crowd of women and children, squatting in what little light falls from the stars, from the single burning planet that hangs directly above.

“Yes, look on them. These are your enemy,” the tall man says. He doesn't even sound angry. Only tired. “The enemy of all Ashaari and of your country. The government took it in their name. The government, that steals what is ours in the name of fairness. Does this seem right to you? Does this seem just?”

These people don't look as if they took anyone's land. The boys peep at them from the corners of their eyes. The women rock, black-draped, bare heels flashing, holding their children close. One wails, beginning a general outcry. The high thin sounds mount to where the moon rises close and pale.

“The time for blood-compensation is past. When an injury is done to our clan, do we not have blood? Or are we its sons?

“I want all those of noble clan to my right. All those who are
sab
, to my left.”

The
sab
are those who are not of the pure clans, the proud tall nomads who come out of the
geelhers
, the camel camps, the high desert.

The boys edge apart. The hand gripping his loosens, then slides free in a whisper of dry skin. There's no possibility of pretense. Each boy holds in his brain the chain of genealogy that defines his clan. More intimate than his bowels, as impossible to disown, this cannot be denied or lied about.

But his people have not been nomads for many generations. He's proud of his line, but what will this man judge, when he asks its name? Time narrows down, narrows down, to a spider-thread glistening in starlight.

He stands where he is. The tall man asks his clan family, and when he says it, nods slightly. “Yes,” he says. “You are welcome with us.”

“I am proud to stand with you,” Ghedi says, the words from which old tale of camel raids and flashing swords he can't recall.

The tall man blinks. “Remember when you were small, and your father and uncles showed you how to give honor to God.”

The weapon feels heavy, awkward, for a moment. Then it seems it's lived within his skinny arms forever. Its weight makes something move inside his chest. Something that lifts, under his heart.

He's pointing it when a short bandit in a dirty Western-style shirt suddenly slaps him on the ear. He staggers, head ringing. The man grabs the weapon back, shows him how the brassy shining rounds lock into the magazine, the magazine locks into the gun, the bolt snaps forward and the lever on the side goes up and down. “Now it's ready to kill,” he snarls. “Are you?”

The smoke eddies in his eyes. The whimpers come louder. He aims the rifle again.

Then lowers it. “I have no quarrel with these,” he mutters. “Soldiers in trucks drove us from our land. Not these.”

The men smile grimly. “Then don't kill those,” the short one says. He looks past him, at the boys who stand to the left. The one whose hand he was holding stretches out his arms. Their gazes lock.

“Were you not taught that he who does not strike back when he is offended against is unworthy of the name of Ashaari?”

He remembers his father's face. Wonders why he wasn't there when the soldiers came. If he had been, would they still own their land?

The tall man slaps his face. “Well? Speak up!”

Ghedi's voice sounds muffled in his own ears. “He did so teach me.”

“Then show us what he taught.”

Before the tall man's finished speaking the gun's jerking in his hands, deafening, like holding thunder itself. Its flashes show him the eyes of those he kills.