Acts of faith (109 page)

T
HEY RODE IN
a wadi, four abreast. Braids of brown water trickled through the wadi, and the wet sand between the braids muffled the clop of hooves, as the trees on both sides masked the riders from view. Under the morning stars Ibrahim and Hamdan, his staunch friend and ally, whiled away the tedious hours in the saddle with talk about cattle and women, the only topics that interested them. The two were bound together—the man without cattle was also without women. Young men riding behind them sang:

Carry the rifle whose fire burns the liver and sears the heart,
For I need a slave boy from the land of the blacks.
Hey! You sons of the Ataya,
You are the burning iron rod.
We long for the land without a people,
We long to live by the rivers of the south.

They were eager for the coming battle and the chance to capture cattle and women, though some, the zealous ones, were eager for martyrdom. As for himself, Ibrahim was eager to have it over with. Rocking with Barakat’s easy gait, he thought,
This will be the last one.
Then it would be a life of ease. A nazir’s house, his own lorry, and in the soft light of the cow-dust hour, Miriam would rub his legs with liquid butter.

When it grew brighter and he and Hamdan had finished speaking about wives and concubines, calves, milk cows, and breed bulls, Ibrahim removed from his cartridge belt the paper Kasli had written for him. He was memorizing the English letters painted on Miriam’s house.
G
-
O
-
D B
-
L
-
E
-
S
-
S T
-
H
-
I
-
S H
-
O
-
U
-
S
-
E
. Those letters and the green cross, the Christians’ symbol.

Kasli and his fellow deserters trudged on foot alongside the murahaleen, who regarded them with the special contempt horsemen reserve for those who cannot ride. When the time came, however, the Nuban turncoats would become passengers in the saddle, mounting up to ride double into the attack.

The radio carried by the militiaman alongside Ibrahim hissed, a voice came out, and the radio operator answered.

“Ya! Ibrahim,” he said. “It is Colonel Ahmar. He will soon be ready to begin shelling. He wishes to know when you will be ready.”

This was the first time Ibrahim had been issued a radio. He found it an annoyance. The colonel was always calling him about one thing or another. “Tell him soon.”

Today was the Christian Sabbath. Kasli had said the rebel soldiers would be relaxed, the townspeople would be not in their fields but drinking marissa in their houses. No one would be expecting an attack from the ground in the rainy season. Still, the colonel was not taking any chances. According to Kasli’s intelligence, the rebel garrison was unassailable. Except for a single narrow gap, it was locked on all sides by steep, well-defended ridges. To seize the garrison, the ridges would have to be taken first; to take the ridges, the defenders would have to be decoyed into leaving their positions. This was to be accomplished, inshallah, by Ibrahim’s murahaleen. They would attack New Tourom, which was on ground suitable for cavalry. The town was very important to the rebel commander—so Kasli had spoken—and he would rush men to meet the threat against it, creating breaches in the ridges’ defenses. The second column—the militia infantry marching a few kilometers away on Ibrahim’s left—would pour through the breaches and seize the ridges, then swoop into the valley and destroy the garrison.

The murahaleen would be given their usual license to loot and to capture women and children. No other prisoners would be taken, except for two—the rebel commander and his foreign wife. They were to be turned over to Kasli, who had asked for the privilege of executing them. That was to be his reward for his services.

Ibrahim was curious to see the foreign woman. Kasli had talked about her a good deal—a spy for the Americans, he’d said. What the Americans had to do with anything, Ibrahim didn’t know, but he intended to talk the Nuban out of executing her and give her to him. An American woman would be a very valuable prize, fetching a high ransom.

Clouds were forming, high clouds like horse-tails, portents of a storm. Hamdan noticed them too and frowned. As cattlemen, they prayed for rain; as fighters, for dry weather. They heard an odd sound in the distance, a ringing. Kasli came over and said it was made by the bell of the Christian church in New Tourom.

“We are close enough. You should make ready now.”

At Ibrahim’s arm signal, the riders wheeled out of the wadi, spurring their mounts up the bank and onto a rolling plain behind a low ridge, rocky and treeless. The town, Kasli informed him, was beyond the ridge, less than one kilometer away. Hidden by the rise in the ground, the murahaleen formed into battalions according to lineages and clans. Ibrahim’s lineage, the Awlad Ali, were in the foremost ranks. He looked back and was moved by the sight—mounted warriors massed on the plain, Kalashnikovs braced butt-first on their thighs, the manes of brown, black, and white horses ruffled by the breeze, talismans flapping from rifle barrels. He turned to the radio operator. “Tell the colonel we are ready.”

As he waited for the shelling to begin, he knew the battle would not follow the tidy plan—he had been in too many fights to believe otherwise—but if God were with him and the Brothers, they would prevail. The muted crack of mortars came from his left. The bombs burst atop the ridge, close enough to shower dirt and rocks on the murahaleen. Horses shied and whinnied. Barakat, accustomed to such noises, remained steady.

“Ya Allah!” he said to the radio operator. “Tell those fools they almost hit us!”

In a nervous voice, the militiaman delivered this message. A long silence preceded the next reports of mortars. Ibrahim heard the bombs thudding somewhere to his front—on the town, he assumed. The bombardment went on for some time, and he beseeched Allah to spare Miriam from harm. The radio spoke again.

“The colonel says he will now stop the shelling on the town and move it to the ridges,” the operator shouted, though he was barely more than an arm’s length away. “You are to attack now.”

Ibrahim held the chestnut stallion to a walk as he mounted the rise. The Brothers followed at the same pace, and the massed horsemen flowed over the crest. Ahead the land rose gently toward New Tourom. A few houses showed through the trees and the smoke from burning roofs. Ibrahim glimpsed people in flight. He almost laughed when one group came running straight toward him, and then, seeing murahaleen descending on them, turned tail. An automatic rifle rattled, bullets spurted in front of him—lousy shots, these blacks. Halting Barakat, he raised his rifle, and standing in the stirrups, his rear end thrust out, he looked back and yelled, “Follow my ass, O Brothers! Follow my ass!” “Allahu akhbar!” they yelled. He slacked the reins and gave the stallion his head.

T
HEY WERE RETURNING
home from church, sweating in the oppressive April air, pestered by swarms of mosquitoes. Michael was not a regular churchgoer, but Quinette had pleaded with him to attend and offer prayers for forgiveness. At the service Fancher had introduced St. Andrew’s new minister, a Nuban he had trained. The man’s homily had met with general approval—the congregation applauded, as if it had been a political speech. Quinette had understood not one word and afterward asked Michael to give her the gist of it. In the midst of his summary, they heard a boom, softened by distance, and then several more, one after the other. Hearing no more, they walked on warily and were approaching the gap in the hills when mortar shells crashed into the town behind them. The bodyguards closed ranks around Quinette and Michael and virtually swept them down the path and through the gap toward the headquarters building. Just as they arrived, two shells banged into one of the ridges above the garrison, while another landed in the village of camp followers and soldiers’ families. In moments, people were streaming out of their tukuls, carrying children, pots, and blankets. Off-duty soldiers, some wearing only their undershorts, flew out with their rifles, looking for someone to tell them what to do.

There was pandemonium inside as well, a radio operator talking frantically, officers gathering documents, apparently with the intention of burning them if necessary. A mortar landed nearby. Shrapnel clattered on the tin roof, pinged against the stone walls. Negev pushed Quinette down into a corner, and as she huddled there, her husband issued commands to the officers and into the radio. He put the handset down and turned to her.

“You have got to get out of here. Murahaleen are attacking the town, hundreds of them. If they break through to here and see you—” He left the rest unsaid and repeated that she must leave. Negev would guide her to a safe place. Murahaleen—she reacted to that word as would any Dinka or Nuban, with terror. Negev grabbed her by the hand. “Come, missy, hurry.”

A
MACHINE GUN
opened fire. Horses to one side of him pitched forward, spilling their riders. “Allahu akhbar! Allah ma’ana!” Riding without his hands on the reins, Ibrahim fired his AK-47, spraying trees and houses. At full gallop, the murahaleen slammed into New Tourom, a shock wave of living flesh. The momentum of their charge broke against the town. Huts, animal pens, fences, panic-stricken goats, cows, and people shattered the horsemen’s mass into individual bands. Each one went about its own business, looting houses, seizing livestock and captives. It was this way on every raid—a melee.

Ibrahim rode on with his own band of twenty-odd men. They over-ran the rebel machine gun, killing two abid soldiers. Then he saw it—a round Nuban house with a green cross over its door and the letters
G
-
O
-
D B
-
L
-
E
-
S
-
S T
-
H
-
I
-
S H
-
O
-
U
-
S
-
E
on an outer wall. Barakat vaulted a stick fence surrounding the garden. A man’s body lay among the plants. Cries came from inside. Ibrahim dismounted and ducked under the low doorway, his rifle leveled. It was almost too dark to see. “Outside! Outside!” he said, grabbing people by their clothes and shoving them through the door. Two women, five kids, an old man. “Yamila! Where is she!” The idiots did not understand Arabic, or were pretending not to. He offered a language lesson by shooting the old man in the chest. The women shrieked. He cracked one in the face with the back of his hand. “Where is Yamila!” She shrieked again. It was no use. Ignorant savages. He ordered a Brother to tie them up. Farther on he saw the same letters and cross on another dwelling, and on yet another, and both were empty. That damned Kasli—
G
-
O
-
D B
-
L
-
E
-
S
-
S T
-
H
-
I
-
S H
-
O
-
U
-
S
-
E
was written on half the places in this town.

The snap of incoming bullets gave him something else to think about. They were taking fire from their left, heavy fire. To the inexperienced ear, the sound of the bullets would be indistinguishable from the crackle of the flaming grass roofs. A wounded horse screamed. Ibrahim rallied his band and joined up with another. “This way, Brothers! Follow my ass!” They rode forward, then wheeled to charge through an orchard, toward what Ibrahim believed to be the enemy’s flank. Before them, on open ground, stood the infidel church and several other buildings, two on fire. Rebel soldiers had taken cover behind one of the buildings that was not burning. The murahaleen galloped down on them, AKs blazing. Surprised to be attacked from the side, the abid broke and ran, some pausing to shoot at their pursuers. A horse and rider went down, another, and then the Brothers were in the middle of the retreating enemy, shooting at point-blank range. Some, their magazines empty, slashed with pangas and swords. They swept through as a wind through the grass and came to the far end of the town, where Ibrahim halted. Ahead was a tent-camp, burning and empty of people. Kasli had mentioned this—a settlement for refugees. Beyond it rose one of the ridges encircling the rebel garrison. Ibrahim saw the gap, the gate to the valley, but it was so narrow he could pass through it only single file, which would be suicide. Nor could he take horses up the ridge.

He commanded the Brothers to turn back. As they did, in a confused, jostling mass, the air came alive with bullets, swarming like angry bees. A mortar bomb burst among the horsemen. Wounded mounts made a horrible sound, and one ran off, trailing its guts and dragging its rider. Ibrahim whipped Barakat with his quirt. “Ride, Brothers! Ride out of here! Back into the town!” Suddenly he flew over Barakat’s head and landed on his belly. The wind was knocked out of him. He thought his chest was crushed, but it wasn’t. He rose to his hands and knees and saw the fallen stallion, blood pumping from the holes in its shoulder, its fierce golden eye still. A great horse, but there was no time to mourn him now. As he stood, Hamdan came alongside. Ibrahim grabbed the back of the saddle and, with a strength born of fear, vaulted onto the horse’s back. Riding double, he and Hamdan pressed forward and escaped the withering fire. Returning to the Christian church, they came upon a great many murahaleen guarding the captives, possibly two hundred altogether. Ibrahim leaped off the horse and looked for the radio operator but could not find him. Kasli was there, however, standing over the bodies of two men whose light skin marked them as foreigners.