Chapter VIII. The Son of a vacuum

Among the tall trees he sat lost, broken, alone again, among a number of illegal immigrants, he raised his head to him without fear, as nothing in this world is worth attention.

-He said: I am not a hero; I am nothing but a child looking for Eid.

The Turkmen of Iraq, are the descendants of Turkish immigrants to Mesopotamia through successive eras of history. Before and after the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, countries crossed from here, and empires that were born and disappeared, and still, preserve their Turkish identity. Although, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the division of the Arab world, they now live in one of its countries.

Kirkuk, one of the heavens of God on earth, is one of the northern governorates of Iraq in which they live. The Kurdish race is shared with them, a race out of many in Iraq.

Two children of two different ethnicities, playing in a village square in Kirkuk province when the news came from Baghdad, of a new military coup.

Without delay, Saddam Hussein took over the reins of power, and faster than that, Iraq was plunged into successive wars that began in 1980 with its neighbor Iran, a war that lasted eight years. Iraq barely rested for two years, and in the third, a new war in Kuwait, which did not end in the best condition as the leader had hoped, as he was expelled from it after the establishment of an international coalition to liberate it, led by the United States of America. Iraq entered a new phase of suffering, a siege that lasted more than ten years, and ended up with the removal of Saddam Hussein from his power followed by the US occupation of it in 2003.

As the father goes, he returns from this road, there is no way back but from it. As the date approaches, the son stands on the back of that hill waiting for him to return. From far away he waved a longing, with a bag of dreams in his hands, a bag of candy in his pocket, and a poem of longing by a Turkmen poet who absorb Arabic, whose words danced on his lips, in his heart.

-When will you come back, dad?

-On the Eid, wait for me on the hill, you will see me coming from the road, waving, carrying your gifts.

The father bid his son farewell to the Arab Shiite city of Basra, on the border with Iran, after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, as the homeland is calling its men, or perhaps the leader is calling his subjects. In Iraq, as in many countries of the Arab world, the homeland is the leader, and the leader is the homeland.

Months passed, the child eagerly anticipating the coming of the feast, but the father hurried to return without an appointment, loaded on the shoulders, the passion reached its extent in the martyr’s chest, with a sheet of paper in his pocket on which he wrote:

Every morning takes me nostalgic for you,

to the jasmine flower,

oh, melody in the heart, oh balm I sip every while,

To you, I extend a hand and a fire that ignites in the soul a buried love,

night shakes me with tears in my eyes,

my longing for you has shaped me into dreams,

stretching footsteps to the left and to the right, gleam,

calling out for me, you scream,

waking me up to the glimpse of the light of life in your face,

a thousand sparkles, in your eyes, a meaning of survival, a smile, and a glace,

Eid comes to you as a companion, without, life yet has no trace,

for roses, necklaces of love, so that you amaze.

-Where is Ruslan?

On the morning of the feast day, at the door of his house, the kids asked his mother,

-with tears in her eyes: He went to meet his father.

A moment of silence fell over the children,

-Raman, with a little gut: Aunt, do you mean he went to the cemetery?

-Mother: He went to meet him at those hills.

Rushing toward his friend as if he races the pain races to him, struggles with sorrow. Raman crossed the green fields between them. Since they met, they did not part, and they vowed not to do so.

-“I will not leave him alone, I will be his father, brother, and friend”,

this is how he took a vow to himself when he saw his friend crying and complaining about his father’s departure to war. Thus, he renewed the covenant on the day he saw him silent and alone, with his mother placing in his hands the farewell poem.

A hand patted his shoulder, wrapped towards him, and hugged him

– my friend, he is gone.

– he will come back, Raman, my father promised me that he will come back on Eid morning.

– Ruslan, he can’t keep this promise anymore. Now, it is Eid, let’s play and have fun.

No, Eid will never come unless my father comes, Eid will never come unless my father comes.

As feasts passed by, he was searching every feast for his father, without avail.

a young man in his second decade, without a brother to hold him tight, nor a girlfriend who comforted his ailing heart with a kiss, he used to sit on the hills, searching in the horizon for the unknown, contemplating the finer details of nothingness.

” I wish I could turn back, hold his hand, embrace him once and for all, kiss his cheeks before the farewell. I wish the past was before me, I wish I could walk into him.

The paper is still in his pocket. He pours it out whenever he feels lost amidst the devastation that has befallen Iraq since the series of coups began decades ago. The paper is still a source of tenderness, serenity, and comfort, looking far into the horizon, chanting the words of his Father. He didn’t witness the horrors of leaving, so he kept waiting.

All this balance hides a child who has been stuck in the past, at some point perhaps, growing up to be a child in the shape of a young man, suffering from something that seems to be a time disorder but he was smart enough, as he managed to hide, and nobody noticed. Sometimes here, sometimes there, no one knows where he is but him, or perhaps his time, with us and not with us, the same place, but is time? Who knows…?

make fun of you that your father is calling,

sweets are full in pockets,

you run but roads stalling,

to repel all evil on you, son

I would be fallen

leave your thoughts behind,

you will have your answers tolling.

Yes, Father, all the ways disappointed me, none of them brought you back. you are a martyr, not for the leader, not for a country that belongs to him, but for me, to protect me from all evil and to defend me in all wars. But this time! It makes me crazy, if you are my past then why do I feel like you are over there sitting on that rock in front of me? Why do I feel today is yesterday? It’s like the past is in front of me, the future is behind me, something above, and something below!

Nothing in this world prompts existential questions for brainstorming like a vacuum, it is the greatest of all, what is emptiness, what is nothingness?

Over the hill, there became a small hut, and year after another, this child was called Sheikh Ruslan; he found the way of God; his hut became his world; there he worshiped and contemplated. He started his third decade with no one, not even a wife. Of course, how can a child get married? He is really a child, stuck at the moment his father said goodbye to him and did not come back, his life stopped there. Ruslan has not grown up since then; maybe just his body according to the laws of nature but he is still that same child. Maybe if his father had returned with the piece of candy he was still waiting for, everything might have changed, maybe that piece of candy would have been the reason for his survival! How could he have a hive still stuck in that child on that hill, waiting for Eid to come as if time had stopped on its own? Ruslan may not survive unless his father brings back that candy bag. Yeah, a bag of candy could turn a whole life around. That bag as imprisoning him at some point in time will one day free him from all times.

His only friend is Raman, who is a graduate of the Faculty of Media at the University of Kirkuk and a journalist. Ruslan, on the other hand, is still studying at the Faculty of Nothingness, the vacuum Department, the major is the unknown.

Their children were fighters, this is how Turkmen and Kurds are described. Among them, Saladin al-Ayyubid, the Islamic leader who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders, Turkmen Ruslan, and Kurdish Raman, as they came to be called, fought most bravely, not for the homeland, nor for the leader.

Screw the homeland and the leader. We fight for God and religion. With these words, Ruslan and his friend announced that they joined the leader of the Kurdish group Ansar al-Iraq in northern Iraq in 2003, leaving Kirkuk with memories of the ruthless mountain range between Iraq and Iran.

In 2004 the American invasion of Iraq began, the leader fell, and the nation quickly fell under occupation, a single militant group carrying a religious ideology, organized and ready to fight, Ansar al-Iraq.

America did not give it the desired opportunity to get to the north. As soon as Iraq fell, the American Tomahawk missiles began to destroy the mountains where they are, as they are the danger there.

They were in the mountains wrestling with destruction. After dozens of religious and legal courses, the saturation of Islamic jihadist thought, and fighting for the cause of God, nothing under the sky no longer frightened them. Not even the most destructive missiles on Earth.

The group held until they were able to transfer their theater of operations from northern Iraq to the heart of the capital, Baghdad, and there they changed their name and became Ansar Baghdad. The two friends participated in the most operations. The two friends participated in the most destructive operations against the occupying army, planting explosive devices, hitting columns, and destroying tanks. The Iraqi resistance is at its height, and almost all of the Iraqi people are following it. They did not part, not even in their combat operations, such was the covenant.

Soon, Ruslan found a foothold in the Al Qaeda extremist group, as the market was the market for war against America, its timeless slogans and organizational alphabets, and the occupation of Iraq was carried out under the pretext that the extremist organization will strike the Manhattan towers on September 11, 2001.

And the competition began, the resistance market is open, and only the brave, are its clients. Ansar Baghdad, the extremist organization, and the Mujahideen Army, many groups organized their ranks at the heart of one man, to respond to the aggression and liberate Iraq from the American occupation, or so most of them imagined.

October of 2005 came a tight ambush they had planned for two months, in the high-end neighborhood of Al-Mansour. This is where a column of US forces passes every Wednesday loaded with supplies and equipment. The civilian investigators told them this, and the operations commander of Ansar Baghdad confirmed the matter himself.

Between 3:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., a convoy of five military Hummers guarding three military trucks loaded with supplies and equipment, all of them guarded from the sky by helicopter and drone, passing through Princess Street, named after the princesses of the Hashemite royal family living in it during the royal era before entering Iraq a series of military coups that settled in Saddam Hussein’s hands.

A whole group of Ansar Baghdad (Ansar al-Iraq), forty fighters, infiltrated over the course of a whole month to safe houses in the Mansour neighborhood. On the night of implementation, the Operations Commander met with the group leaders and explained the plan to them.

Three highly explosive remotely detonated explosive devices were planted on the starboard side of the road, 300 meters apart from each other. The previous operations taught us that American Hummers survive the devices on the side of the roads sometimes, and the drivers rush without any stop even if one of the vehicles breaks down, they do not stop voluntarily and do not put themselves in a tightly controlled ambush, running away, leaving the field for their marching planes and helicopters.

The goal is to force the convoy to stop. The order of its passage is, Hummer, Hummer, truck, Hummer truck, truck, Hummer, Hummer, so it always is, two Hummers in the front, and two in the back. And in the middle are three trucks, including one Hummer. And between each car and the next, a little less than 100 meters. The convoy cannot be targeted while it is on the move, they must be forced to stop.

Once the front reaches the third explosive device, all three are detonated together, and the front is then hit by RPGs from buildings on the right-hand side of the road, disarming the Hammers. Then the storming team begins their mission and clashes with them. When the distance between you and them is zero, the planes will make no movement, they cannot bomb the whole narrow area and kill their soldiers with you.

The sniper team is distributed in three locations, in each location there is one sniper and a fighter protecting his surroundings. The goal is to snipe as many soldiers as possible and reduce their number and disperse their ranks before the assault team arrives. Do not allow them to organize their ranks or escape between buildings, we don’t want it a street war, one quick lightning strike.

The missions have been distributed, the bomb squad has already finished its work, and it will take over the mission of the missiles and target the front of the convoy to ensure it stops, the incursion team was divided into three groups to hit the front, middle and rear of the convoy, and three sniper teams.

The choice fell on Raman Al-Kurdi to accompany the first incursion group. “You have to photograph the operations. The media is a battle no less important than the battles on the field”. As for Ruslan, he sat that night, carrying a Kalashnikov-type machine gun, in front of a hole in the wall of the second floor of a three-storey building, 200 meters from the theater of operations, accompanied by one of their most skilled snipers, Mustafa.

The hours of the night went slowly, followed by slower hours of daylight.

Mustafa sat with his back against the wall, feeling his sniper next to him as if she was his mistress, whom Ruslan separated him from.

Mustafa: Patience is the key to a successful sniper. Get down on the ground. Don’t make any movement. If necessary, for a whole day. Your prey is betting on your impatience. Be patient. Focus. See the target with your heart, not your eyes.

-Ruslan: Why am I sitting here with no vail while Raman is preparing to storm?

– I don’t know, brother, the operations commander believes that you would be a skilled sniper

-But I don’t want to be the one to do it. I want a face-to-face clash with the enemy.

-You should talk to him about this later, but as soon as the operation starts, focus on the task assigned to you. Protect my surroundings.

-Do you think I am fit to be a sniper?

-Yes, you are a very meditative person and have a strong focus.

He added with a smile: Perhaps one day you would be a famous sniper, we would call you the sniper of Mesopotamia, what do you think?

(The sniper of Mesopotamia), the name pleased him, he leaned his back on the wall, he began to improvise words and sing them, the words of an anthem not yet sung:

As tall as a falcon, that does not fear slain,

His eye is lightning and his palms are rain,

Sniping the usurper leads him to hell,

The sniper of Mesopotamia, excel.

-Mustafa looked at him: How sweet are these words! see? You are qualified, the sniper is a poet before he is a sniper, brother.

– A poet?

– Yes, you have to love this first. Whenever you love it, sync with it, it is going to rhyme out, it is going to be part of you, your girlfriend, your mistress, your inspiration, gently move his finger on the trigger, wink its waist at your fingertip, and it gives you bullets in the middle of the target. I’m telling you, Ruslan, every sniper has a poet inside.

He sighed and raised his head, and the sniper of Mesopotamia completed his first steps on a path that would make him the most wanted person in Iraq of America.

I trust in God and the manifest victory,

me bending my forehead to other than God, contradictory,

I will end the usurpers with a valedictory,

my revenge for symptoms and religion is benedictory.