Blood and Ink

1. Ali

I lie on my front on the crest of the dune. The sand is hot against my chest, the goatskin satchel tight against my shoulders. I take a deep breath and pull a fold of my turban up over my nose and mouth. The newly washed fabric smells sweet, like victory.

“Are you filming?”

Omar holds up my phone and presses a button. “Now I am.”

My mission is simple.

Descend the dune. Cross the wadi. Scale the wall. Smite the enemy.

“Go with God, Ali,” whispers Omar in my ear. “Think of your namesake and the Battle of Badr."

I stand up and sprint down the dune, the sand sliding away beneath me. Lion of God with the strength of God. There is no one like Ali, and there is no sword like Zulfiqaar. Fast and light on the balls of my feet, I skitter sideways down the slope, all the way to the bottom. The dry riverbed lies before me, a jagged scar bisect-ing the desert. I speed up, shorten my stride, and leap.

Reach with the arms, pedal with the legs, land with a roll.

Perfect.

The next challenge is the wall. I drop into a crouch and reach over my shoulder into the goatskin satchel. Cord in the left hand. Claw in the right. Eyes on the parapet.

Five years of shepherding in the desert is good training for a warrior of God. If you can protect your sheep, you can protect your brothers. If you can master yourself, you can master an enemy. If you can kill the lion that threatens your flock, you can kill an infidel. If you can make your staff fly high and straight to knock down a baobab fruit, you can make a metal claw fly high and straight as well.

I take a deep breath and feel its weight in my right hand. Then I swing my arm and let it fly.

Up it floats, and hooks itself neatly over the top of the wall, as I knew it must. Alhamdulillah!

With my hands on the rope and my bare feet pressing against the hot concrete bricks, I climb. A mujahid is weightless. He is all spirit. With God’s help he can scale a high wall in a second.

At the top I reach over my shoulder and take out a second length of rope. I tie it to the hook, and rappel down the far side of the wall.I have breached the defenses of the camp. On my right, two large termite mounds stand on guard. On my left, two sacks of bambara beans sleep deeply. I reach over my shoulder one last time and draw from my satchel a pistol and a hand grenade.

Call on Ali, who is able to bring about the extraordinary. O Ali! O Ali! O Ali!

I line up the pistol sights and fire two bullets into the bean sacks. Then I pull the grenade pin with my teeth and lob the deadly fruit toward the termite mounds.

BOOM.

The rock quakes under my feet. Fragments of termite mound descend like rain. The enemies of God have been vanquished.

“God is great!” cries Redbeard, striding into view around  the side of the wall. He claps his leathery hands and a grin spreads all over his desert-hardened face. Behind him come Omar, Rashid, Hilal, Hamza, and the rest of the Brothers. Omar’s eyes behind his thick glasses look bigger than ever. He  is still filming.

“Forty-five seconds!” declares Redbeard, holding up his watch. “You, Ali, are my champion infiltrator.”

“Thank you, master.”

“Behold the infidels,” chuckles Redbeard, bending over the bambara-bean sacks and slipping a finger into one of the bullet holes. “I don’t suppose this one will ever eat pork again.”

We laugh obediently.When Redbeard straightens up, the smile is gone. “Tell me, Ali Konana, could you do it if the wall were a little higher? Could you hook it?”

“Inshallah, master. God willing.”

“What if it were night, with only half a moon?”

“Yes, master. With God’s help, I could.”

***

After infiltration practice comes target practice.

The fisherboys Hilal and Hamza shinny up the rope onto the top of the wall and edge their way along the parapet, setting empty tomato paste cans at equal distances. The rest of us fetch our weapons from the back of a donkey cart. My AK-47 is marked with the same lopsided cross I used to use for my cows. We sling the guns across our bodies and follow Redbeard across the shimmering sand toward a distant dune, no longer a ragtag group of teenagers but a proud, invincible battalion.

“Who can tell me,” says Redbeard, “why the AK-47 is the greatest gun in the world?”

“I know, master,” gasps Omar, his fingertips reaching for the sun. “I know, I know.”

“Go on.”

“Easy to strip, easy to clean, easy to fire,” chants Omar. “Spits out seven hundred rounds a minute. Never overheats or jams, not even in a sandstorm. A child can use it.”

“Even my little brother can use it,” whispers Hilal, “and he’s not much bigger than his gun!”

Hamza stares straight ahead, pretending not to have heard, but his nostrils twitch like they always do when he is angry. The fisherboys are twins, but they are not identical. Not even similar, in fact. Hilal is tall and Hamza short. Hilal is the comedian of the group and Hamza the thundercloud.

We trudge up the side of the dune and line up along the crest.

“Thirty rounds each on full auto,” barks Redbeard. “Go.”

We shoulder our guns and one by one we rattle off our rounds. Hamza is the best marksman of us all—five tins in four deafening seconds.

By the time it gets to be my turn, there are no cans left on the wall, so Redbeard tells me to pick out a brick instead. I kick off my sandals, rest my finger on the trigger, and fire.
In four joyous, bone-rattling seconds, my chosen brick and several of its neighbors dissolve to dust.

The other boys take their turns. We only built this wall yes-terday, and now it looks like one of Hamza’s fishing nets.

Redbeard goes last. With his thirty rounds, he strobes the weakened areas of the wall and reduces the entire edifice to a pile of rubble. Some of the boys whoop and slap each other on the back.

“Incredible,” I gasp.

“I know,” Omar whispers. “They say he once shot down an Algerian helicopter with that rifle.”

The cheering and clapping die down, and now there is anoth-er noise, an eerie rumbling sound that swells to a boom and then to a roar. It sounds like the voice of God himself.

Redbeard puts down his gun and stretches out his arms. “The desert is singing!” he cries. “Who can tell me why the desert is singing?”
“Our shooting disturbed the dune,” gabbles Omar, forgetting to raise his hand. “Billions of sand grains are sliding away from the crest, each layer of sand rubbing against the one beneath it like a bow against a violin. You can’t see the sandslide but you can hear the—”

“Nonsense!” cries Redbeard. “It is joy that makes the desert sing. She hears the gunfire of the mujahidin and she knows that a new day of faith and justice is about to dawn.”

He glares around him, as if daring anyone to contradict him.

No one does.