CHAPTER 1
Sassi Cavezza
Alessandra Cavezza knelt in the dirt road that smelled of burnt tires and urine as she brushed away the grime from the young girl’s bleeding face. Big doe eyes stared back at her, unblinking.
Who could do this?
On only her third month in Syria with the United Nations, Sassi, as her friends called her, had resettled hundreds of families that had fled to Europe and were now returning home. These were peasant kids, cannon fodder in the riptides of war that crisscrossed this country. Ten miles north of Damascus in al-Ghouta, a shantytown filled with tin roofs and adobe huts, Sassi had methodically worked her way through the village with her interpreter, Hakim. Now she was bandaging the shrapnel wound on Fatima’s forehead.
Standing above her, Hakim said, “Sassi, we must go.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. Hakim’s outstretched hand pointed at a dust plume in the distance, coming from the east, out of the hills. Two T-72 Russian tanks were rolling toward them from about a quarter mile away. The lead tank commander stood tall in the hatch like a conquering hero parading his recent victory.
Russians? Syrians? Turks? Americans? Hezbollah? She knew the differences between the forces, but they were all singularly unhelpful to the olive-skinned girl in the potato sack dress with matted black hair standing in front of her. Several of them used the Russian T-72, which made the equipment less of a clue than she might hope.
“Help me,” the girl whispered, looking over Sassi’s shoulder. “I can’t find Aamina.”
The tanks were returning, it seemed. Today she was operating in the Russian sector, but the lines were always changing. She did her best to keep abreast of the political and military shifting winds in this once vibrant country. Fights raged back and forth. Peace treaties came and went. UN resolutions and orders were issued from on high quicker than they could be printed and disseminated. What was the current status? Well, for today, Russia maintained this sector, but it wouldn’t be long before even that changed.
What Sassi cared most about was human dignity and serving the oppressed, such as the young girl standing before her with her face full of mud, dried mucus, and salty tears.
“What’s your name?” Sassi asked.
“Fatima is her name,” Hakim said impatiently. Then, “Sassi, this is not good.”
“Fatima, what happened? Who is Aamina?”
Fatima pointed over Sassi’s shoulder at the tanks. Tears bubbled from her eyes.
The UNHCR had assigned Sassi and Hakim this sector as part of the resettlement plan, placing families back into the abandoned dilapidated neighborhood. Three months ago, it was a ghost town, fresh off the heels of the UN chemical cleanup after Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s troops dropped sarin gas in the neighborhood. Sassi had been here in a hazmat suit two years ago, men, women, and children dead in the streets, dried blood and mucus running from their noses; sarin gas didn’t discriminate. It was the single most lethal tactical weapon of mass destruction.
Now thirty-two families were hiding in their homes with intermittent electricity and only communal potable water that Sassi had established with water trailers dotted throughout the neighborhood. She had contracted with a company to haul in fresh, clean water from Damascus daily. Fatima had been drinking from the faucet when a mortar round exploded twenty meters away. Shrapnel had sliced her forehead. In one sense, she was lucky. In another, of course, not. Fatima’s misfortune ultimately was that she lived here.
Sassi had served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans over the last fifteen years. She understood the hardship that came from being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a fresh college graduate from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, her idealism had propelled her to Iraq, thinking she could make a difference in the wasteland of Anbar Province. Sunni warlords had detained Sassi and thrown her into a dank basement for days with just bottled water, until American forces rolled through and claimed the land in what eventually became a vacant Hollywood set. Fallujah was unlivable for the most part. But she had dusted herself off and then began executing her mission during the Sunni Awakening, moving families back into the city of rubble. Day by day, she had helped restore services, coordinate with American forces, and especially secure clothes and books for the children, to help them read and learn about something beyond the war-torn walls of the city. Today she was a weathered and rough-hewn veteran of military action. Sassi knew firsthand war’s human toll, and she had stood up to larger forces than two tanks.
Fatima shook as the tanks squealed to a stop behind them. Hakim’s hand was on Sassi’s shoulder, but Sassi’s eyes remained fixed with Fatima’s.
When she glanced up, two fixed-wing drones flew circular routes in opposite directions. Sassi didn’t know her drones, but she tried to memorize all the new technology she saw when entering a location so that she could report it to headquarters upon return. These unmanned aircraft had about fifteen-foot wingspans and looked like stealth B-2 bombers. Some type of munitions hung below each wing, perhaps miniature rockets.
“Take me home,” Fatima begged.
“In just a minute,” she whispered. Sassi pulled the girl close, pressing Fatima’s frail chest against her shoulder, and then stood and turned toward the leering tank commander, blocking Fatima’s small body with her own.
“What is it today?” the commander shouted in broken English. “More al-kalb?”
Sassi knew enough Arabic to know the Russian-inflected voice had just called Fatima a dog, a high-order insult to Arabs of any stripe. Sassi could tell that Fatima had heard and understood the word by the way her small hands clutched Sassi’s cargo pants and how her frail body pressed into Sassi’s hamstring.
“This is a child, not a dog, Commander. And what it is today is to make sure she has enough water and food to survive.”
“Survive? No one survived this village after Assad’s attacks. Everyone left. And now you bring back. Better to leave them where they were in Turkish refugee camp.”
Their one common language was English. Sassi was mildly surprised at this low-level tank commander’s English proficiency but was glad to pursue communication.
“What is it you need today, Commander?” Sassi asked.
The commander leered at her from his hatch. His smile showed a couple of chipped teeth. He removed his tank crewman’s helmet and set it on the turret holding the long tank bore. She wasn’t sure of the size of the tube or the ammo it shot. It could spit flame and destroy buildings, and that was all that mattered to her.
“You, gorgeous,” the commander said.
A spider of fear crawled down her spine. Hakim was not a fighter. The families she had helped resettle couldn’t afford a public squabble with the Russians. These eight men might have been weeks or months without a woman, and she had witnessed the horrors and excesses of combat visited upon women, though she had never been violated in that manner herself.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” she said.
The tank commander cocked his head and laughed. “Now you’re calling me the dog?”
“Interpret that however you wish,” she said.
A harsh breeze was blowing from the north. Along with the smell of diesel, the wind carried the rancid body odor of the tank crew.
The commander pushed himself up onto the hatch and sat on the top of the turret, then swung his legs onto the deck of the chassis and stood.
“If we are all dogs, then we shall be in heat. No?”
“Sassi,” Hakim said.
“You smell worse than a dog, Commander.” Sassi laughed and retrieved a knife from her cargo pocket, flicked open the blade. “And you’ll have to fight like a dog for it, too.”
“Tough woman. I like it.” The commander began walking down the chassis, his hand along the smooth tank tube, a phallic gesture if she’d ever seen one.
The radio inside the tank squawked with something unintelligible to her, but obviously not to him. He stopped, looked over his shoulder, and then turned to stare at Sassi. He had a worried look on his face, and Sassi could only imagine it was some higher-level commander complaining about something. Nonetheless, she sensed for the moment she was spared.
“Saved by bell,” he said. “But I’ll return to kiss that beautiful face.”
“You can kiss my ass,” she said.
“That, too.”
He scurried into his hatch and the tanks quickly Y-turned, their tracks chewing up the road, spitting gravel at them, as they departed to the north. The drones circled high and lingered, as if covering their retreat. One of them swooped low along the middle of the street, buzzing just above them. Both then lifted into the sky and darted ahead of the tanks, leading the way back to their base camp.
“That was too close,” Hakim said.
“Another day, another tax-free euro, right, Hakim?” Sassi joked. Their pay as UN members was not taxed when working in hazardous duty zones, such as Syria.
“Not funny, Sassi. These Russians are serious. And those drones. I’ve never seen those before.”
“It’s all part of the show. Intimidation.” Sassi shrugged and looked at Fatima. “Show me what you wanted me to see, Fatima.”
The girl grabbed Sassi’s hand and walked her through a series of narrow alleys between adobe huts with tin roofs. Entering one maybe four blocks off the main road where they had been, Fatima let go of Sassi’s hand and pointed.
It took a moment for Sassi’s eyes to adjust from sunlight to the dim interior, but eventually her pupils dilated enough to let her see again.
“Aamina,” Fatima said, pointing.
Copyright © 2020 by Nicholas Irving
