Mohammed Maguire Read online

  'We'd better hurry,' she said.

  Mohammed Salameh nodded then let go of her hand. Although they were recognised as partners, they kept even the most innocent of intimacies for the privacy of their romps in the surrounding desert, or for those few nights when the camp was sufficiently empty for them to sleep undisturbed in one of the huts.

  As they jogged together into the central quadrangle one of the guards on the surrounding hills blew a whistle; they increased their speed then parted wordlessly as they approached their respective enclosures. As soon as they entered the doors were closed quickly behind them. Now they would spend thirty minutes in the dark while the CIA photo-reconnaissance satellite passed overhead. Then they would return to business.

  There were nearly a hundred international terrorists present at that time, in that camp, some vastly experienced in their abstract theatre of war, others ambitious fledglings wanting to fly or at least to be trained in preventing others from doing so. They came from the Palestine Liberation Army and the Hizbollah in Lebanon: there were Kashmiri and Punjabi separatists, and members of the German Red Army Faction and the Red Brigade in Italy. And of course the Provisional IRA, for whom Octavia would shortly qualify for her fifteen-year membership badge. Octavia, born on the Falls Road in Republican West Belfast, had joined the IRA straight from school and had been attending Colonel Qaddafi's summer camps for ten years. On her first year, a fledgling then herself, she had met and fallen in love with one of her instructors, Mohammed Salameh, now a leading figure in Sheikh Abdel Rahman's militant Egyptian fundamentalist group, Al-Gamaat Al-Islamia. Their affair had continued annually ever since, nearly twelve years now.

  In the gloom of the hut Octavia did not realise for a few moments that he was not there. The five Irish lads she had brought with her this time were on the floor playing Monopoly. They had, of course, adapted the game to their own circumstances, re-evaluating the houses and hotels in terms of the economic loss the British economy would suffer if they were bombed. Chance cards now referred to the likelihood of apprehension by Scotland Yard. Terrifyingly few went straight to jail.

  'Where's . . . ?' she began, but her words suddenly trailed away as they all looked to the door. Outside: the dull thump of an explosion. Distant, but . . .

  And closer.

  The Monopoly board hit the floor and thousands in worthless cash floated briefly as the boys grabbed their weapons.

  'Easy!' Octavia yelled. 'Easy!'

  But they had their fledgling adrenaline and the door was open and they came spilling out into the quad before they were half ready; two hit the deck immediately, blood spurting from head wounds, no time even to scream. Octavia held back in the shadows. Outside she was sad to see the general hysteria of her own squad's reaction repeated across the camp. Dozens of half-dressed and hastily armed young zealots raced back and forth, anxious to shoot at something, anything, but unable to find a target; they shot into the air anyway, as if whatever it was would be scared by the noise. There were two slight indentations in the march-hardened sand near the centre of the quad, the puffs of smoke above them already dissipating. The machine-gun fire had come from the surrounding hills. Then, above the screams, she heard the unmistakable clatter of a helicopter gunship.

  It appeared suddenly over the brow of the hill. Outside they saw it too. And they yelled, and screamed and hurled abuse and pointed and fired and hurled some more abuse when they saw the American flag on its side. They weren't scared at all: what fools the Americans were to send one gunship against them.

  Octavia shook her head. The Americans would never send one gunship; it was either piloted by some foolhardy nut well ahead of the main attack force, or it was there to lure them out into the open. As if to prove her point, seven gunships roared into view across the other side of the camp.

  Fuck, she thought. She stepped from the cover of the hut. 'Boys!' she barked 'Get on your bikes! These guys mean business.'

  'We'll fight every last . . .'

  'Fuckin' move it! If you scatter, some of you'll make it! Move!'

  They were up and running. To her left three of the huts suddenly disintegrated. She ducked to the ground as debris flashed around her. Jesus. She ran forward, pulling the grenade launcher up to her shoulder.

  Through the confusion Mohammed Salameh came to her.

  'I can't find him . . .' she said.

  He shook his head. 'He must be outside camp. If he's outside, he's okay.'

  Salameh pulled his own grenade launcher up onto his shoulder. They looked at each other; a little smile. She knew it would end, one day, and in a way she was glad that it would end here, together, not with a bullet in the back of the head on some lonely Irish road, or with a quiet march down a long corridor to a firing squad, but here in the desert, buying time for their comrades.

  He fired first. He missed.

  A second later she pulled the trigger, letting out a little yelp as one of the gunships burst into flames then exploded.

  'You always were the better shot,' Salameh said.

  She gave the briefest smile, then aimed again.

  The US Marines tagged sixty bodies, roughly half killed in the camp itself, the others shot down as they tried to escape into the open desert where they'd encountered the troops who had lain camouflaged in the surrounding hills for the past four days.

  Two walked up the line of dead terrorists. Near the end, one kicked at a boot. 'That's her,' he laughed. 'Even if we don't get a goddamn medal for this, at least we come out of it with an excellent porn video.'

  The second rolled Octavia over with his boot. 'She was beautiful,' he said.

  'Yeah, and great tits.'

  The remains of the solitary downed gunship and its thirteen occupants would be lifted back to the deck of the USS Leonard, lying one hundred miles offshore. Medals would probably be given and full military honours bestowed, but it would be logged as an unfortunate accident and quickly forgotten about.

  After the gunships departed: movement in the ruins.

  He had been asleep in the Tamil Tigers' recently vacated hut when the attack had begun. The force of a direct hit on the hut next door had forced in its walls. He had heard their screams but did not himself make a sound, even though he knew he was injured; a broken arm at least, and somewhere the throb of hot blood. He tried to move but found himself trapped by the weight of the corrugated iron on his legs. The rest of his body was covered by army canvas. All he could do was lie there and listen to the sound of the massacre, and weep silently.

  Then there was an eerie silence, which seemed to last for an eternity, but which he later thought was only minutes. It was broken by bullish, gloating American voices, laughter and the pitiful groans of his injured comrades. And then some more gunfire, and the groans ceased.

  After a while the voices diminished and he heard the helicopter gunships depart.

  It grew cold and he shivered. He did not think that help would come. Not here. Not even the Libyans. He worked at freeing himself, pushing up and down and across. He suddenly felt claustrophobic; he needed to see the sky. He changed the emphasis of his struggle from the corrugated iron to the mass of canvas pinning him down. Using his good arm he managed to loose a little square of the aging material, then sucked greedily at the night air.

  Above him the stars: so beautiful. He had spent entire nights just staring at them.

  There was a sudden groan and the corrugated iron shifted. He winced but remained silent, fearful that whoever was rooting through the wreckage wouldn't take kindly to discovering a survivor. But there was no further movement, no furtive sounds; the wreckage of the hut had shifted of its own accord, or perhaps his own struggles against imprisonment had started something long before and were only now bearing fruit. Whatever, he could now move his legs. Gradually, an inch at a time, he was able to push himself backwards, up into the canvas, and from there his head, then his upper body, broken arm, then legs forced their way through into freedom — and the scene of the massacre. r />
  His arm was hurting now; he examined his leg. There was a long tear along his khaki trousers and a black scab had formed along his calf. He stood, stretched, and then began to check the remains of the camp. Thankfully, it was all somehow less horrific than he had feared: the sounds of the massacre had forced all sorts of bloody pictures into his mind, but the reality was that there were some smoking ruins and a long line of bodies. Nothing moved, nothing threatened. It was cold. It was dead.

  He found an assault rifle lying in the sand. He picked it up, checked that it was loaded, then dusted it down.

  He walked along the line of bodies, recognising faces, uniforms, boots; some he had known well, many had only arrived in the last few days. Near the end he stopped where he had hoped not to stop at all, lowered his head and said a quiet prayer. Octavia Maguire lay with her eyes open. He hoped her final sight had not been of the body that lay exploded behind her. He hoped they had looked at each other, kissed and expressed love before the end.

  He stepped forward and gently closed Octavia's eyes. He put his fingers to his lips, kissed them, then put them to hers. He would have done the same for Salameh if he could have found a lip, even a face. He stood silently over them for a few moments, then turned away.

  Mohammed Maguire Jr, aged ten, put his gun over his shoulder and walked into the desert.

  2

  He is a tattered little soul, walking mostly by night, sleeping where he falls or when he has the strength to dig himself into the sand. He wears his green army uniform, the one his mother made for him, the cap, black boots. When he rests he is careful to protect his rifle from the sand. Several times he is caught unawares by the ghibli, the blast-furnace desert wind that races and burns across the sand; he cries in pain, but the tears are dry before they can fall. As well as the gun he carries with him a one-litre bottle of water and one family bag of Opal Fruits, which he keeps inside the bottle of water. By noon on the second day both are boiled in the 120-degree heat.

  He does not think of dying. That is not the way he has been taught. His father was a survivor. So was his mother. Although they are both dead now. He remembers what he ignored then, what his father told him: that we are all going to die, there is no escape, that it is the manner of your living that is important.

  The sun dips and he rouses himself. His arm aches still, but no longer seems broken. He sits on the desert floor, still as the night, and waits. Forty minutes pass and nothing, then some slight movement and his good hand shoots out and he has it. A gerbil.

  He thinks Rice Krispies. Snap as he breaks its spine. Crackle as he pounds the bones and pops the pulp into his mouth. He will survive.

  But he shouldn't. Here is where the hottest shade temperature ever known –136.4 degrees — was recorded. Mo walks through the exact spot. It is night, he's freezing.

  Libya, but they weren't taught about Libya. The struggle was about the wider world. About freedom, and rights, and the evils of capitalism and Jews and English men and their colonialism and Americans and their domination. Libya is just their desert home and the Colonel is the benevolent leader nobody really trusts.

  Mo walks east towards Egypt and he will keep walking until he gets there. His land is Ireland and you can walk to any part of it in a few days. He does not appreciate the sheer size of this country. He knows it is big, but not that it is bigger than all of Western Europe, and most of it desert. A ten-year-old's perspective on big is different. But he will not falter.

  He walks and he walks and he walks and he knows that the blood is drying in his veins. Death is marching behind him. He must not stop.

  On the fourth day a band of outcast Bedouin nomads keeping watch over a poisoned well two hundred miles south of Elgizira come across a dried-up little man dry-vomiting in the sand. They are scavengers by necessity and they make regular and occasionally lucrative trips to the well. This time the pickings are slim but not unuseful — a rifle and small boots. They will slit his throat rather than seek help for him; pity is a short word in more plentiful lands but a long haul in this box of sand. Then the boy gives one great heave; they cackle as the emaciated little body tortures itself, but as he rolls deliriously in the sand, unaware even that they are there, his cap comes off and instead of the black hair of the Arab there is the blond hair of the west. They stop laughing. They search him more thoroughly and discover a passport hidden in the lining of his jacket.

  For three days he remains delirious. They give him water, bathe him, pray over him. He lies in a bed that is dragged across the sand by two of the three camels owned by these Bedouin. The third camel is ridden by Mohammed Abu Al-Asad Al-Alem, half blind and sixty-five. Two of his brothers walk at either side of him. Behind their brother's camel is another bed loaded with the scraps of metal, plastic containers and unexploded shells they have scavenged from the desert. Behind the sick child's camels, watching for thieves who would steal from thieves, walk two cousins.

  When he wakes to the real world Mo is lying beside a weak fire. It is night-time and it is cold and there are dark figures hugging plastic plates of a foul-smelling substance. He lies still, as he has been trained to do, and listens; he understands little of what they say, and they say little. His body aches; the desert has sucked the life from it.

  His body is racked by coughing, and they know now that he is awake. They greet him, and offer him a plate of the stew. He smiles and nods and gobbles it down and is sick again. They all laugh. An hour later he tries another plate, smaller, and eats it down, slower. This time it stays where it is. He sits up, dizzy still, and they give him water and then a dessert made of mint tea and hazelnuts.

  Three tents are set up around the fire. After an hour of murmurs from which he can decipher nothing, one of the brothers leads Mo to the tent closest to the fire. There is an evil-smelling rug on the ground. The brother points at the rug, smiles, bows and leaves the tent. Mo still feels weak and does not hesitate to take the opportunity to sleep. His mother once told him, 'The Bedouin are no Dr Barnados,' so he will remain on his guard, but he must build his strength while he can.

  Some time later Abu Al-Asad enters the tent and kneels beside him. He pats Mo's hair and massages his back and says something he doesn't understand. Then he lies beside him and goes to sleep.

  He plans to be up before the others, to steal some food, retrieve his gun and disappear again into the desert. But he sleeps late and is roused jointly by a shake from the old man and the accompanying bellow of an old camel being beaten with a stick. The old man smiles and speaks, then leads him outside where they eat a dry breakfast before mounting up and resuming their journey. Mo asks where they are going. They do not understand, but he works out from the sun that the direction is east, so he decides to risk another day with them. Mo rides up front on Abu Al-Asad's camel. From time to time the old man reaches forward and massages his shoulders. Walking at his side, the brothers look up at him. He doesn't like their eyes; they are narrow and rove over his face and body as if they are thinking of eating him. Throughout the day the brothers reach up morsels of food to him — dried meat or nuts — and he takes them without acknowledgement, repelled by their crooked yellow-toothed smiles and the way they grasp his hands as he takes the food.

  He tells himself he must not judge them like this. His father would not have allowed it. But then his father was a proud and mighty warrior, and these appear to be crap Bedouin.

  Towards evening an ill-humoured Libyan army patrol stops the little caravan and rifles dismissively through their cargo of scrap. Mo is wearing Bedouin clothes now, his uniform stowed in a bag of rags tied to one of the camels. As the Libyans approach, his hosts hurry to hide what little valuables they have in the nether regions of their camels, to which the camels object violently. His hosts hover defensively about Mo's camel; Abu Al-Asad performs his usual massage, but this time his long fingernails grind into his back and Mo has to bite his lip to stop himself crying out. The old man is nervous.

  The soldiers agree to trade so
me army rations for the unexploded shells, then move on.

  That night the Bedo are in good humour. The fire is larger than usual. They eat all of the army rations and Mo is happy to eat more than most. But he is not stupid. He supposes they are treating him well because he is a Westerner, and therefore of value to someone. They have his passport, so it will only be a matter of time before they find out who he is. He supposes they will cross into Egypt before seeking to trade him in.

  He supposes wrong.

  As the fire dies he is led to his tent by the brothers. There he changes out of his Bedouin dress and is given fresh clothes; they are white, pristine. He is confused. Perhaps they are nearer the border than he thought.

  The remaining brothers and the two cousins enter the tent. They form a circle and sit, with Mo in the centre. They offer him water. He refuses.

  Then Abu Al-Asad enters the tent. He is also wearing white robes. He takes Mo by the shoulders and begins to massage him, then begins to sing softly. The others join in.

  Mo doesn't like this much.

  Then the old man removes Mo's robes and when Mo tries to resist he grips his legs and begins to kiss his white skin. Mo tries to push him away but the old man laughs and pulls his legs from under him, then flips him onto his stomach.

  Then he violates him.

  As Mo screams the others laugh and the old half-blind Arab grunts and kisses and dribbles and fucks.

  When he is finished the old man rolls off and gets stiffly to his feet. Mo lies bleeding on the ground. Abu Al-Asad leaves the tent and the others take their turn.

  He has never known such pain.