Shock and Awe

                                                                                                   

                                                                Shock and Awe

                                                                              by John Rogan

            

       James cooked the grenade. He watched the meter go into the red. Automatic fire was coming from the balcony above. James got cover behind a stone pillar after tossing the grenade. Leaning out from the pillar James emptied his gun into the automatic muzzle flashes coming off the balcony. Reloading behind the pillar, he heard his grenade go off, and turned to fire. There was a wounded guy who shot him with a pistol on the ground. James shrugged off the shot and beat the guy dead with his rifle. More fire starts coming from the balcony and James empties two clips into the cement the shooters are hiding behind.  He picks up the RPG. The first rocket sails deep through the sky above the balcony followed by a disappearing white smoke. The guys on the balcony are out from cover. James is trying to get his RPG reloaded. It takes so long. He is taking heavy fire. He forgets the RPG and switches to his rifle. Firing around the pillar he sees one of the guys on the balcony exposed and steps out from cover. For a half second James has the uneasy anxiety of a metal clunk around him. Maybe a grenade? James flies across the street his rifle falling in front of him and his vison blurs to a black screen that says: Mission Failed When an enemy grenade is close by hit R1 to throw it back, Loading…. If James could get out from those pillars and fire form a different angle. The screen loads, James runs forward, and his Mom tells him to shut off the t.v. his father will be home soon and he wants to watch the News. James ignores her. She shuts off the t.v. and James makes a big stink like he is defeated. He waits for his mother to leave and turns back on the t.v. and begins trying to kill the guys on the balcony. His Mom walks in the room at the same time Dad is coming through the door.     

            “All he does is play video games. Turn this crap off. I told you not all afternoon. It’s almost dinner and the kids glued to the set like a zombie.”

            “I turned it off. He must of turned it back on.”

            “Ya, look he doesn’t even say hi. He just stares. Hi its Dad! ” James mouth twisted and he was getting upset. James realized Dad was yelling and did not realize it. “The guy who gives you this lifestyle!”  The water in James’ eyes spilled over onto his cheek. And Mom was scolding Dad. And Dad was mad at Mom for taking James’ side like she always does. Dad did not understand why he was always the bad guy. James did not think his Dad was a bad guy he liked his Dad. His head hurt and his parents started arguing over money and a job and things he did not know. “Don’t order something, make something!” James’ Dad yelled pulling onto the couch. “Hey little buddy, don’t listen to your mother.” But James liked his Mom too. James was relieved as his Dad fumbled for the remote and a child-like playful smile ran across his face. “Here we go little buddy.” His Dad was actually excited hitting power on the t.v. It was black and said INPUT 2 in green letters. His Dad got all upset again, “mother****er! God Damnit!”

“Sorry!” James exclaimed in a girly whine he was surprised to hear leave his mouth.

            “I’m going to put that thing in the trash.” His Dad said slowly with that scary darkness under his eyes. James’ palms were sweating and his hand started to shake as he was hitting the buttons on the t.v. James held his wrist to steady his hand. Finally it clicked on to cable and like nothing had happened James’ Dad’s tongue slipped up to the corner of his mouth. His Dad instantly was fixed on the t.v. James watched as he slowly walked back from the television set to the couch. A huge explosion ignited yellow and white in a big, dark city. Smoke mushroomed into the air and James could see a row of tiny little palm trees super-imposed against the enormous rising cloud of smoke from the explosion. Tracer rounds filtered into the sky like lighting bugs. Three explosions went off next to each other each pluming, mushrooming, and illuminating the darkened city. James looked over at his Dad smiling, wide-grinned, and lost in thought. Noticing James was staring at him his father turned to James and said slowly, quietly: “Shock and Awe.”

            Nimr had been playing soccer all day. The people came through Fallujah at a trickle at first. Tired looking people. Then a whole flood all in one day. Tons of  kids. Nimr had played a soccer game with two teams and as more kids came into the city during the day they would just jump on one team, so by night fall there were more kids than he could count running up and down, kicking, stealing the ball, and getting confused over what goal was theirs and who was on who’s team. Nimr felt tired and drained in a good way returning to his parent’s apartment. His mother laid out Fasoulia soup and some rice and Nimr ate it in under ten seconds. Looking up from his plate he saw his mother speaking to herself, wringing her hands, and pacing up and down their small kitchen. “Where’s Dad?” Nimr asked. Nimr’s mother looked shocked when he spoke, her big empty eyes fluttered uncertain over the scared O shape to her mouth. Nimr heard a jet screech overhead and looked at the ceiling annoyed, furrowing his brow. “Why are there so many kids to play soccer with?” Nimr asked. “People are just getting out of the city.” His mother winced “Your father…is meeting…I don’t know where your father is.” Nimr moved into the next room and the small t.v. showed Al-Jazeera and the yellow, white explosions mushrooming into the air. Nimr saw explosions all the time in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon but these explosions caused his mother to stare out the window and talk to herself. These explosions filled their town up with people. These explosions made Nimr’s Dad have to meet with people during dinner. The explosions looked the same as the ones In Israel or the Golan Heights or the Gaza Strip. These explosions were different. Nimr felt static in the air and his body began to get hot, dinner turned uncomfortably in his stomach. He looked over at the walls. He heard his mother muttering in the kitchen. His father was not here. The room was darkened and empty except for the blue glow of the television. Nimr’s Dad always watched the News with him at night. His eyes followed the wall up to the darkened ceiling of the t.v. room as he heard jets screeching distantly above. He turned fixed to the television and his stomach began to hurt. Quietly pulling his legs up on the couch he curled up. Explosions radiated thought the darkness of the t.v. room and Nimr wondered how a soccer game would look tomorrow.

            James lived with his Mom now. Mom and Dad split up at the end of his Junior year of High School. James wished they had done it earlier and felt guilty about being relieved the fights would be over. He was glad he would no longer be a part of their fights, but he cried when no one was around because his family fell apart. He was not sure if since he was happy, if it was his fault or it was just all his parents’ fault, so he should just hate them. James did not want it to be his fault or his parents’ fault, but everything fell apart. James hated his Dad’s stupid, young, little girlfriend. James had just graduated from High school and the guy his mom was dating was a contractor and offered James a job he did not want. The guy his Mom was dating told James what to do one day and he exploded kicking the guy out of “his house.” There were kids he knew from his high school baseball team who all joined up. James’ uncle Teri, who had been a Marine in Vietnam, came by now and then when Dad moved out to help Mom. He would tell James stories about shooting fish in rivers with Ak-47s, smoking dope with prostitutes, and how scared he was during a Viet Cong mortar attack. Although his uncle Teri never held a job for long and his Mom would scold him all the time, James thought Teri was the toughest guy he ever knew. Not a yellow belly coward - that’s a Teri phrase - like James’ father had been abandoning the family; abandoning James like he did. James was just sitting around the house and his Mom was getting anxious for James to start working for her new boyfriend so they would get along, so James left early one morning and went to the Marine Corps recruiting station in the strip mall down the street and enlisted.

            The people came into Nimr’s house and took everything.   Nimr and his mother hung to each other on the street watching their television, their carpets, and their furniture be carried away by strangers. His mother gasped when she saw her grandmother’s afghan disappear into a crowd of young men grappling and fighting over it. His father and a couple of the Sunni and Baathists showed up with guns and the looters went away. His father was able to locate and punish those who had stolen things. Nimr’s father was a commander in the Baathist Popular Army and had been defending the Sunni community from retributive violence. Nimr, his mother and father were Sunni. Word from Baghdad was the Americans had the Shia in power. They were all very afraid. Nimr’s father organized the militia to stop the looting and stop the revenge attacks against Sunnis. Saddam, their Sunni ruler, was missing. The Americans just declared Shia government in Iraq. Nimr’s father spoke with a worried look about Dujail. Saddam had massaced  hundreds of Shia after an unsuccesfull assassination attempt in the Shia city of Dujail a couple of years before Nimr was born. Saddam continued to massacre the Shia when they tried to rise up after the Invasion of Kuwait in 1991.  Saddam was weakened by the loss of Kuwait to the Americans, but he kept Baathist-Sunni control through terror, murder, and torture, killing tens of thousands of Shia.  Nimr could remember his father being an important man in the community. His father, long ago, had returned from prayer with men who admired him and the apartment would fill with talk of Pan-Arabism, Politics, Israel, Sunni-Shia relations, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Faith and Iran as his mother laid out Klecha and cool tea.

            Now things got worse. There was spray paint across their apartment when Nimr’s father left in the morning. “Leave or Die Sunni” Nimr’s father spent the day hunting for Intel on the men who had done it. Men under his father’s command started leaving for Syria saying it was not safe for Sunnis here. The Americans were in control now and they put the Shia in control. Nimr’ father called these men defeatists, cowards, and reminded them this was their home before never seeing them again.

            Nimr’s mother had trouble sleeping and had aged considerably since the invasion. All the windows in their apartment had been broken by stones or bricks, so bricks and stones would come through the empty window bounce around inside the apartment as they all turned and heard a Sunni slur being yelled. Her mother and father began to fight. Something Nimr had never seen before. Whether they should go to Syria or stay. Nimr’s mother wanted to go to Syria. Nimr’s father wanted to stay. Al-jazeera told how Bagdhad was under America control, few car bombings anymore and a big area called The Green Zone where the artillery fired and helicopters took off to help Shia kill Sunnis. Nimr’s father said Saddam would be back. We could regroup in Syria and come back. Nimr and his parents began packing. Nimr did not want to leave his room. He had his great grandfather’s Quran, his desk, his bed, and the window he had looked out of over the city from, where he had thought and contemplated from for his whole life. Nimr did not sleep. His stomach hurt and he cried at random times. They would leave tomorrow. Nimr got out of bed to get a glass of water. His mother sat in the kitchen staring at the wall. She had stopped talking to herself. She had stopped speaking after her and Nimr’s father fought. She just softly said “Nimr” whenever Nimr was visible, no other signs she knew he was there. Nimr was worried his mother was having a nervous breakdown. His mother had always been a good cook and cared for Nimr and her father, but ever since the invasion and all the looting she has just been absent. Nimr’s father quietly began to bring home troop rations from the Baathist Guard since there was no more dinner being made.

            Nimr slowly sipped on the glass of water leaning up against the counter. His father was asleep after a long, chaotic day. He watched his mother stare at the wall. He sipped on the water hoping the stomach acid climbing up his throat would stop burning. He had lost weight relying on the old Baathist Guard troop rations for food. Then Nimr heard voices. A crowd. This late at night? Nimr’s stomach plummeted and acid felt like it rode onto his tongue. There was a smash that jarred even Nimr’s mother away from staring at the wall. Nimr’s father was up and confused holding a luger pistol and looking down the stairs with messy hair form just being asleep. There were more crashes. Nimr’s Dad yelled “God is great! And Mohammed is his prophet!”and began firing the Luger. The people were all in the kitchen fast hitting Nimr’s father over the head. They pulled Nimr’s mother out of the kitchen and several men grabbed Nimr. Nimr saw his father and almost as an afterthought, his father, beat, bloodied, held, hands tied behind his back, and heckled by his captors told Nimr “be brave.” Nimr was wrestled away from speaking to his father and watched his bruised face being painfully pulled up, and pushed out the door. Nimr’s mother was screaming the whole time before being silenced and carried out. Nimr remembers it was like a siren, a sustained high pitch in his mother’s voice before being punched, muffled unnatural into a gurgle. As they got out on the street so many men were yelling and celebrating and firing guns into the air. They held Nimr’s father up scolding, beating him, and mocking him as they carried him towards the Fallujah city center. Men grabbed Nimr’s mother and took her another direction. In all the confusion Nimr ducked under the adults. Hands tried to grab him and several began shouting at him, but they were confused who it was to grab. Nimr got away from the angry adults and ran and ran and ran until he was in a part of Fallujah he did not recognize. The next day he heard of the public execution of his father. He never found his mother again.

            James was afraid he would miss the war. By the time he went through boot camp and received his specialization in Infantry it was the end of 2003, Saddam had been captured and the war was basically over. On the first day he was in the green zone in Baghdad a car bomb went off and killed 22 people outside Iraq’s UN building. Orders were they were going North and West. There were bomb factories, block after block in Saddam’s old stronghold of Tikrit. In Fallujah four Black Water contractors had been pulled from their cars burned alive, dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge. James’ platoon replaced an Army unit that had been hiding behind a sand dune for 4 days returning fire against militants who jumped from window to window in the buildings on the outskirts of Fallujah. James’s unit traded fire with the men in the buildings for close to twelve hours. James launched a grenade at one of the buildings but it hit a palm tree in front of the building instead. Danny, the nice kid from Texas was grazed in the jugular and medics took him away not sure if he would be okay. After Danny they called in airstrikes. Day after day James’ unit watched as bombing run after bombing run destroyed everything in the city. James thought it was like watching a thunder storm. White phosphorous fires burned all over the sandy city.

            The next day James platoon entered Fallujah. They arrested everyone in the hospital because an RPG had been reported to have been hidden there. James arrested and detained a lot of injured people and a lot of doctors who seemed like they were just being doctors. Stories circulated of mother’s with suicide vests, little kids with hand grenades, a Marine becoming careless, friendly and being shot, blown up or killed. James pointed his gun at anything that moved. Anyone he encountered he intimidated into submission. Casualties were heavy and getting heavier as they moved house to house. Four guys from the platoon were killed when their Humvee rolled and caught fire after getting hit by an IED remade from a bomb that fell from an F-16 but had been a dud. James asked a family to walk slowly out of their front door. The mother and the little girls kept screaming and jabbering with their hands up angrily walking towards him. He told them to stop. He told them to stop so many times. When they got 15 feet away he shot the mother in a quick 3 shot burst and all the little girls had the face of a kid when there ice cream falls off the cone. The little girls wailed and wailed trying to make the lifeless body of their mother lying on the street move, talking to her blank face and screaming out in disbelief at the immovable, dead-weight of the body which shortly before had been so animated. He stuttered into his radio “T-t-tango down! T-t-tang, tango down!” There was no bomb on the mother and his commanding officer said “this is war, rather them than you, right?”

            Nimr transported ready- made car bombs to the capital for the Al-Ahwal Brigades. Nimr knew if they could chase the UN out the Americans would have to stand on their own. Stand on their own in his homeland. When the majority of the U.S. troops left leaving only compound guards and advisors in Fallujah, him and all the other street kids, who were pushed out by the Americans and the Shia, started to attack anyone comfortable-looking, well-dressed and Shia. In order to start eating he started doing jobs for the various organizations that started offering money and food for jobs. The Walid Bin al-Mughirah Brigades declared an open contract to carry out a bombing and allowed Nimr to take it, Nimr made it clear no suicide vest would be used, so they agreed when they recognized his name from his father. Nimr left a back-pack in front of an Iraqi police Station in Kirkuk staffed with well-paid Shia. He climbed the stairs across the street. Then he waited for a police car to pull up to station then took out a cell phone and hit call. He wore earplugs and sunglasses and watched the bomb rip the car apart, shatter the windows to the front of the building, and was relieved when the pools of blood became visible once the smoke drifted off.

Nimr had started doing jobs for the money because he was hungry and homeless. He and a couple of his street friends fired an RPG at a UN convoy then took off on a stolen motorcycle to get the attention of  the Jeish Muhummad organization who they looked up to for the bombing of the U.N. building in Baghdad. News of the bombing of the UN building in Baghdad spread quickly, cheerfully and excitedly amongst the street kids. He ran over a dozen trips back and forth through the long, flat almost-white desert over the Syria and Iraq border for organizations working with Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn bringing them Machine guns, ammo, explosives, RPGs, and later when Iraqi security forces had been scared off pieces of artillery. Nimr shot two men in suits from the Shia government talking in a café in downtown Fallujah because the Mujahideen Shura Council offered money. Nimr’s friend who had a lot of connects in Jeish al-Taiifa al-Mansoura and the al-Ghuraba Brigades asked him to lead driving expeditions out of Turkey with guys from Lebanon, Yemen and all over. Nimr drove them across Syria and arrived in usually a kind of religious brotherhood with the men he traveled with and was greeted with a party in Fallujah when they arrived. He made ties with the powerful Omar Hussein Hadid who was impressed by his work. Nimr could not believe Omar Hussein Hadid had heard of him, he had been a powerful Jihadist, speaker and religious icon in Fallujah for Nimr’s whole life. Nimr remebered Hadid blowing up the only cinema in Fallujah when he was a little kid. Hadid got him in contact with some guys from the Black Banner Organization and he saw off two men blowing themselves up in trucks filled with Chlorine gas and Ammonium Nitrate. They blew themselves up in front of the Fallujah Government Center. Then two suicide bombers ran inside. Nimr along with ten other guys from the Black Banner Organization moved in, took cover across the street, and shot wounded and confused people coming out the smoking doors.

            Fallujah had gotten too hot. Nimr left when he saw the U.S. troops encircling the city. From Syria Nimr heard how the city was being flattened, burned, they found a mass grave full of Sunnis. Nimr felt powerless in Syria. He tried to not let tears invade his prayers, but when he knelt for prayer and faced east towards Mecca he could not help but think his hometown lied east too. White Christians like crusaders had come and destroyed everything. The hatred he felt welled up into tears. He remembered his proud father and his long political rants. He remembered his beautiful mother when he was just a kid. Everything he knew was gone. The sadness of it being gone gave way to the anger of it being taken, to overcome the sadness Nimr put more energy into his anger, organizing militias, transporting arms to the Iraqi border. Nimr joined the Free Syrian Army and began commanding troops to take down the Assad forces. But then Syrian forces under Assad began giving money and arms to Nimr’s unit of about 100 or so men about half of them Nimr knew from western Iraq. Nimr had the idea to not support Assad or support the Free Syrian Army, but do as his Dad had always said in Fallujah: “Got to Syria regroup and return.” Nimr wanted a Pan-Arab Islamic state just like his Dad had talked about when he was a kid. Nimr and his men swooped down onto Al-Tabqah, Syria and took the city so easily it surprised himself. Afterwards Nimr ordered all government officials, proud men, to be publicly executed. Nimr wanted the executions videotaped. Saying to the nervous, young kid with the IPhone: “public executions have a psychological effect on people. I want them to see it. I want them to feel it. Praise be to God.”

            When James got back to the states he never slept. When deep sleep came he was shooting the mother and all her daughters were holding him down to the ground and he could not move. He had a dream one of the little girls was making an IED just for him. She looked at him in his dream like out of a television screen, held out a pipe bomb covered in nails, and said: “this is for you.” James woke up a lot sweating and out of breath. He started drinking at night to calm down and fall asleep. When he woke up he started drinking because he was always nervous and he could not figure out why. It was like anything could explode and he would not have his gun and if he could just be back in combat and not surrounded by all these wussy civilians, who did not get it, he could just have a gun and be safe.

His friend from the Corps had gotten on the local police force. He heard James was having trouble so he talked to him how the Police was just like the Marines just easier, and yes he assured James he could carry a gun anywhere James wanted to.

James got on the force and one his first calls was to respond to a baby with a high fever. James calmed the hysterical mother, got the EMT’s on their way, stayed with the woman until they got there and heard the baby crying the whole time, a little girl. As James left the house and walked back to his cruiser he kept hearing the baby screaming or was it, James could not believe it, but the little girls? It sounded like the little girls in Fallujah. It was constant the screaming and crying mixing with the baby’s voice and the little girls trying to get the lifeless mother to move. James took out his gun and searched underneath the wheels of his cruiser for a while, taking each corner of the car, looking off into the trees, if someone was playing music or using speakers to play a joke on him. Dispatch clicked over the radio asking where he was. His shift had been over. Once he made something up for dispatch he put the radio down and heard complete silence where the screaming had been before.

James came home and turned on the news. There were riots against police officers. Ferguson, Missouri was burning to the ground. American journalists in orange prison suits were having their throats slit on video in regions of Iraq his platoon had captured by something called the Islamic State or ISIS. James could still remember friend’s faces and the sounds of their voices from the Corps, young guys who were dead now, killed around Tikrit or Fallujah during his tour. A cold sweat started in his back. Nervous fear. The little girls would be all grown up now. He thought of protesters saying: “hey pig!” and tossing him a grenade. At work he told himself he would not drink tonight, but he got up off the couch, turned off the news, filled a glass half full of whiskey, shot it back and exhaled.

Nimr entered Fallujah with a personal guard of 20 Islamic state soldiers. The Iraqi security forces crumbled, just like in Syria, but here the new American President had come in and again the American troops tried to leave. Nimr watched CNN, Fox News, CBS, ABC, BBC, and Al-Jazeera, once American troops diminished he pushed the car bombings and was one of the first to command a group of men that crossed over the Syrian border capturing the key city of Sinjar which paved the way for the success at Mosul. He read German books on military tactics and called the last couple months The Prophet’s Blitzkrieg. Nmir gave speeches in every town they conquered and after every fiery speech he had over 30 men in each small town wanting to join his forces. He ordered defiant Christians in Mosul to leave their homes with only the clothes they wore or face “death by sword.” A group of Sunni Soldiers began saying Nimr was too ruthless, crazy,  and strayed from the Prophet. Men under his orders took the mutinous soldiers from their beds late at night and shot them in the street. 600 Shia prisoners were taken to the edge of Mosul and shot in the head, their bodies rolling into a sandy-white ravine. Nimr staged many videotaped beheadings. It told people who was in power.

 Nimr went to his old neighborhood when he got back in Fallujah. He navigated the streets that had the same names but looked all different. Almost the entire city had been destroyed. Most people lived in tents. The place he had lived as a child was a nice building and was still partially standing. Gutted poppy addicts lay about the bullet holes and blasted out walls. Stepping over a passed out addict he climbed the mangled, crumbling stairs to his old apartment. He remembered seeing his bludgeoned and disgraced father in the apartment the last time. Nimr stood alone looking around his old home. The walls, the corners, the floor and the doorways were basically the same, white sunlight came through the bare windows, but it was empty.