WE WERE JUST FIGHTING

  “It s too cold Ma, I am freezing to death,”Amina lamented. “Ma, why was I not born in America?”

  “What type of question is that?”

  “I don’t like it here Ma, there is too much suffering,” Amina said. “When I watch films I see a real heaven in America. There life is beautiful- not here where we are killed like cockroaches.”

  “Craaassshhhh,” a bomb exploded a hundred yards to the right. Amina cringed in horror like a rabbit escaping from the claws of a rampaging lion.

  “Don’t worry my daughter……,” Dainess tried to reassure her daughter. “One day our country will also be a paradise with Idlib as the capital....”

  “Boom! Boom!” a huge rocket exploded drowning her voice. It demolished the next block, wailing voices of dying people filled the air.

  “Maweeeeeee!” Dainess wailed in fear but quickly checked herself. “I should be a good example to my daughter,” she told herself. Her teeth were clattering like chains due to a fear she was trying to hide but she was failing woefully.

  “Ma, you are scared,” Amina said, her tiny voice punctuated by the sound of shrapnel ripping through the window .In the darkness it flashed like a meteor before it killed a beautiful parrot, their only pet.

   “These disgusting Russians,” Amina cursed. “What do they hope to gain by killing so many people in Idlib?”

   “They are not alone my daughter. Even your beautiful Americans are mixed up in this up to their sweet necks. They supply the weapons prolonging the war…”

  “Ma, I don’t get it,” Amina threw her swirl of hair about. “Americans are civilized people.I know they can’t get themselves mixed up in this kind of madness.”

  “No one is arguing with you my daughter….,”Dainess said. “But maybe ask yourself what civilized people would steal oil from a country bleeding from a traumatic war lke this one?”

   “Anyway, I am very hungry,” Amina changed the subject. “…are we ever eating anything today?”

   The two women were huddled in a detached cabin ten yards away from the main house. They could not stay in the main house because, being white, it would be the main target for Russian bombers.

   “Get me that little tin over there...” Dainess was pointing at an empty tin of paint that was blown away from a the rubbish heap by wind.

  “What is the tin for, Ma?” Amina taped the tin playfully producing a clonking sound.

   “Hush! Hush! No noise. I want to mix the dough for a cake for our dinner my daughter.”

   “How can you cook in here?” Amina turned her little nostrils disdainfully.She was speaking in whispers. “There is no stove.”

  “Get a few old rags from there,” Dainess pointed at a pile of used rags  while nodding her head indulgently to her daughter. “We must make a fire using these.”

    Amina obeyed her mother. She started gathering some old rags and then brought the little bundle to her mother. Dainess pulled out a box of matches from her blouse and immediately started making a fire. After making the fire, she made a stand of three bricks where she started her baking. She wanted to just bake a little cake because she did not have enough flour. It would be a funny cake because she neither had yeast nor sugar. The little water was obtained from a leaking pipe.

    “Ma, are you baking without either sugar or yeast?” Amina protested. “What type of cake are you baking Ma?”

   “Don’t worry my daughter; hunger is the greatest appetite...” Dainess assured her daughter. She wrinkled her forehead as a grey-dark curtain of smoke shot up engulfing her whole face. She broke out into a violent bout of coughing with tears flowing freely from her eyes.

   “There is no spoon, Ma,” Amina continued her questions. “How will you mix the ingredients?”

   “Didn’t I see you with a wooden ruler from school,” she said. “I will use it as a spoon….”

   “What ..?” Amina protested ….. Ma… No!”No!”

   “I have no choice …”Dainess assured her daughter. “Besides you are hungry, aren’t y….?”

   “Braaaaaaaboom!” a huge bomb dropped on Amina’s main house, the one painted white and turned it into a thundering fireball. Within minutes it was completely razed to the ground. They looked at each other in agitated dread as the roaring flames lit their faces.

   “Ma! They have destroyed our house…” Amina cried in a low tone. “Ma we now have no home, where are we going to live?”

  “Don’t worry my daughter….at least we are not dead...”Dainess was now crying, her tears streaking down her moon shaped face. Involuntarily, she hugged her daughter,more to reassure herself that she was still alive than to cool down the small girl. She hurriedly wiped off tears using the back of her hand to prevent Amina from seeing her crying.

    They took ten minutes watching their house burning and completely forgot about the cake on the fire.

  “Ma something smells badly, in here” Amina said tearfully “Oh!…it is the cake Ma. It is burnt to ashes.”

   Dainess took the smoking tin from the fire and indeed the cake was blackened on the bottom side. She preened her neck examining the cake for edible parts before scrapping off the darkened parts-unfortunately the whole cake was useless as food.

  “It is gone my daughter, burnt to ashes,” she said with a gaunt face elongated like a jackal missing a puppy. “Pass me the lamb chop...yes that strip….”

    “I don’t like roasted meat, Ma…”Amina complained. “Especially meat roasted on old rags. Won’t it smell like the rags themselves?”

    “I will make sure it smells delicious not like rags...,”Dainess said.

    “Whooooshhhh!” a plane zoomed past sending Dainess crashing down in fear. The meat, temporarily forgotten, dropped from her hands and flopped to the floor like a wet cloth. It gathered a lot of sand on the dirt floor. She tried cleaning it by hitting it against her knee before cutting it nicely to apply some salt.

    “I hate the evil Russians,” Amina said. “When I grow up, I want to join the army so that I can kill them all. The bastards killed Dad and have made us homeless.”

   “And who will let you commit that kind of suicide?” Dainess asked her eyes popped out in real horror. She was stretching the meat to check for any dirt in the little light from the burning house outside. “When you grow up you are going to Zambia, a peaceful country.

  “I don’t want to go anywhere, Ma,” Amina said with the determination of a ten year old. “No one kills Daddy and expects me not to kill them back.”

    Dainess looked at her daughter in the little light as darkness had covered the place like an evil blanket. The determination on her tiny face was frightening making her shrink in horror. Twisting her eyes into narrow slits, she held the strip of meat at both ends and spread it on the fire. She contorted her face in pain as the fire burnt her hands. She almost dropped the meat but quickly put it on the brick. Then an idea struck her.

    She broke Amina’s ruler into two pieces and pricked the meat at the ends. Then she stretched it over the fire for it to roast safely. The lamb chop roasted to a golden brown as Dainess rotated it to ensure all parts received enough heat. That done, she looked at her daughter and said, “Darling, go wash your hands there where the pipe is leaking.”

  “But Ma, there is no tomato, how can we eat this …?”Amina reminded her mother as she ran to wash her hands.

  The question was still on her lips when the tiny door was flung open. Two English speaking soldiers entered.

  “Who goes there?”The elder one shouted waving an M16 rifle. Amina had watched a lot of American films, she could tell the M16 apart. Her heart leapt with joy, the joy of seeing her legendary idols suddenly come to their rescue.

“These are American soldiers they don’t harm anyone,” some voice was saying. "How glad you are that they have come ahead of those murderous Russians. Greet them with open arms.” However, something fluttering in her stomach like hot gases checked her excitement; she was very scared, wary of her American heroes. Strange thing really. Are these not American soldiers,her heroes? Why should she fear them? The next words cleared all her doubts in a flash.

   “Two bitches are hiding here, ha!”The young one said. He was slouching folded on one side to reveal an evil twisted mouth.

    Now Amina became really worried. The word bitch did not just escape from anyone’s mouth unless some violence was afoot.

     She watched him cup his hands to light a cigarette and then take a long drag. In no time smoke was streaming from his nostrils .As if that was the drug he needed to start the violence, he suddenly aimed a kick at Dainess with his military boot like a footballer taking a penalty.   “There is nothing I hate more than an Arab bitch, only a kaffir back home in the states gives me the same abhorrence.”

     “Hey, Tom don’t kick …..,” the old one was trying to say something as the kick lifted Dainess from her knees and hurled her forwards like a plastic projectile.

  “Why not? These pigs cry for land from our Israeli friends,” Tom was saying as he disobeyed the old soldier. “Seldom have I seen rats that breed this fast. If we kill many of them we reduce the land squabbles. Don’t you think so colonel Sanders?”

  Dainess flew from her knees and found herself sailing helplessly in air towards the extended arms of colonel Sanders. For his part, colonel sanders looked with horror at the impudence of the young soldier as he quickly swung his gun away to receive Dainess before she could fall down heavily. He managed to keep her from falling-holding her firmly with arms that shook with animated anger.

  “That was quiet mean,too mean even for a stinking gay bastard!” he rebuked his friend dropping the most sacred army principle of not referring to the sexual orientation of fellow soldiers.

  “I can’t believe it,” Tom sprang back like a tiger. “Leaving the states to come here for one mission; kissing Arab bitches .Tell that to Trump.”

  “I am not saving any Arab bitches at all,” colonel Sanders rejected the accusation. He was holding the woman close. She was trembling with fear, looking very vulnerable.Her eyes with pupils dilating in fear making her more beautiful. If she was black one would think Oprah had gone back in age.Handled properly, his night would just turn out right. In the arms of this beauty.

  As if by cue, the woman started getting warm against his hard muscled body. Her breathing started coming in gusts reminiscent of an asthma patient. The colonel felt the woman's heat seep through into his cowboy skin.His own temperature also started rising; he was getting excited,excited by an Arab bitch-what a traitor he was. He stole a glance at the Arab bitch as Tom had called her.

 Tom picked the roasted meat and tasted it.He immediately spat it out.

"The bitch is a terrible cook,why all the sand?"

Frustration grew on him like a tumor-he started raving in anger;I don't do women and this place is such a dump.

"Ok I will kill Colonel Sanders and the bitches then go back home.Yes back home to the States to my gay friends-away from this war.Hell!"

He did not realise that as he raved he became angrier.Anger led to idiocy.Laughing like a zombie, he slung his rifle and started shooting in reckless abandon.The first shot blew off Colonel sanders' head.

the old soldier,took the shot like a real man;looking into the eyes of the killer without flinching.Dainess received hers in the stomach.She keeled over like someone retching before she collapsed on the ground.

Amina was screaming her lungs out while running towards the door when the slug ripped through her neck.The bullet splattered her blood on the wall.

Young Tom joked to New York Times reporter: “we were just fighting.”