---------------------------------------------------------- [u][b]October 27th, 1916: The Battle of Segale[/b][/u] ---------------------------------------------------------- Hassan al-Himyari was only fourteen years old the first time he mounted a horse for battle. His strongest memories of that time came from the harrowing ride from Hargeisa to the mountainous homeland of the Abyssinian Christians in the fall of 1916. So many years later the pain and hardship of that time melted into vague impressions, but the romantic was magnified until it became dominant. The tribal infantry of his grandfather's army had been left behind by the flying cavalry. They rode on swift horses, their ammo limited to what they could carry in a single pouch, a scimitar hanging by their side to do the rest. They wore no armor, no steel helmets like the Europeans on their Western Front, but only the white linens of desert dwellers to protect them. Most of them were armed with Mauser carbines of the kind that had once outfitted Bismarck's cavalry, but this was the only modern aspect to this army. Otherwise they looked like they'd rode straight out of [i]Arabian Nights[/i]. The romanticism especially touched the younger members like Hassan. It was buoyed by the chanting of prayers, making it easy for them to imagine themselves in the place of those first Muslim warriors who struck out from the deserts fifteen hundred years before, riding toward battle with the infidel Persians along the ancient banks of the Euphrates. Their destiny was much more muddled than the simple truths of holy warfare. Their leader, Khalid al-Himyari, Hassan's grandfather, had launched them into the middle of a civil war between their Christian neighbors. They rode through hostile territory, eyed suspiciously by the women and old men whose husbands and sons would be either with them or against them when they arrived on the battlefield. Their flapping banners presented sayings of the prophet and prayers to allah, reminding the natives of older battles between the two faiths, battles that lived in the persistent memory of East Africa; a land keenly aware of its living past. The call "Allahu ackbar" rose up lyrically in the roaring wind, and Hassan added his cracking voice. He kept up the best he could. Amongst all of these veterans, he felt like an imposter, unready to be a warrior. Would he ever be ready at all? But he was here, driven by the intense passions of youth, and the pressure of his birth. Most important to him, he wanted to see history, and was afraid that it would leave him behind to rot as an inactive observer in Hargeisa. "Allahu ackbar!" they cried out. The valley filled with their manly worship. Hassan questioned if his voice added anything at all. The battleground came at them in slow, awe-inspiring pieces. They heard the muted thump of artillery from far away, and saw a stream of frightened refugees fleeing. An unnatural dry-season rain fell around the battlefield, leaving only the places where troops fought dry, as if Allah set an arena of lightening around the fight as a backdrop for greatness. Next came the appearance of Ethiopian soldiers, going to or limping from the field. These were wild looking men with months of untamed growth on top of their heads and along their faces, pointing out wiry and wooly as if they had been hit by the lightening. They wore sturdy clothes, mostly homespun, wrapped in shammas and strung with bandoliers. The peasants had given their Somali visitors weary looks, but the soldiers looked surprised, even delighted. Rifles cracked and machine guns quaked. The smoke produced by the fight rose into the air and obscured the distant lightening, creating an otherworldly sky that seemed like the very ceiling of hell. The Somalis ululated, announcing their arrival. Khalid mounted a knoll so that he could be seen. His white beard and stoic expression made him look like the resurrected ghost of one of the Rashidun. He barked orders, but Hassan could not hear him over the fiery warfare. The men in the front of the riding column split from one another and dismounted, advancing up the hill and toward the battle on foot. The rest, including Hassan, lurched forward on the swift war horses. War-cries called out. Hassan imitated. Down along a river belching with unseasonable rainfall was a battle scene from a Boschian nightmare. The splendid parade-ground images of war were replaced here with a chaotic killing field. Bullets whizzed by, and the mechanical jerking of machine gun fire spoke of a terror newborn to the world. The screaming Muslim riders charged with a force that felt like they were being pulled by a runaway train. Hassan pulled out his scimitar and wailed. His hand gripped the hilt of his weapon so hard that his fingers went white, but he could not feel them. His extremities were numb. A man fell from his horse, a spurt of gore leaving his back like an exhaust jet, and his confused horse ran wild out of the column. Hassan passed by stunned enemies, but the war was going too quick for his battle-addled brain to comprehend, and he held his scimitar steady in front of him and screamed for his life, swinging at nobody. It all ran together; the bloody water kicked into the air, the screams rushing by so fast that Hassan couldn't run together context, the sight of mangled bodies and his comrades falling into the muck dead or wounded. It was over when they wheeled back around and took a stand of artillery sitting on top of the hill. After that the battle seemed to dissipate in the way a thunderstorm does. In the end, Hassan didn't kill a man at the Battle of Segale. He didn't even swing his scimitar. Even as he grew older, this would be come his deepest secret, the thing about his life that shamed him the most. He would make his battlefield kills later, but those future fights carried none of the greatness of Segale, where the fate of East Africa for all the twentieth century was decided. He did nothing there but use his voice and shadow the men who really did make a difference. -------------------------------------------------------------- [u][b]May 1960: The Deserts of northern Somalia[/b][/u] -------------------------------------------------------------- Hassan sprinted forward and threw his scimitar. It whistled through the air, struck the hanging target, and split open the bag. Sand spilled out, making a satisfied hiss as it returned to the desert from whence it came. Several other bags hung next to it waiting to be opened, dangling testicularly from the barrel of a tank, which was colorfully painted in the Africa fashion. This particular one was made to look like a raging fire, though the dusty desert storms of central Somalia had scoured the paint and caused the original brown color to peek through. "Well struck." Rais Said said, his tone formal even though it was only the two of them. Rais was a thin and nearly hairless man, looking like a living mummy dressed up in a starched General's dress uniform. "Don't let them say that I'm old" Hassan replied, chuckling as he walked away from the target. Hassan wasn't old, but he was middle aged, a ring of salt and pepper hair clinging to his temples. He was a barrel chested man, and middle age was starting to give him a barrel gut to match. But there was a hardness to his face, a mix of Somalian black from his mother and Yemeni Arab from his father, and a battle-won scar on his cheek to compliment this hardness. Rais pulled a scimitar stuck in the sand beneath his feet and lined himself up with the target. His stance was rigid, but his method was precise, and when he threw, he stuck his target. The scimitar lodged itself in a bag and stayed there. "Good. Good. You're not old either." Hassan said. "Have you made your decision?" Rais asked. "About?" "Rhodesia." "Oh." Hassan pulled a scimitar from the sand. "Lutalo will veto it one way or another. I do not know what friends the Emperor expects to make with this move." "White faces." Rais said. "Yes." Hassan lined up and threw. His scimitar struck Rais's and sparked, making a shrill clang. Hassan punched the air and laughed. "That is how you do it, my friend. And look at that, I am spilling your sand." "Should you be in Addis Ababa then?" Rais said. "No need" Hassan leaned against the tank, "Lutalo's veto is enough. There is no point in me sticking out my neck. In politics, my friend, you only fight the battles you have to fight." "And what if Lutalo doesn't exercise his veto?" Hassan shrugged. "Then welcome white Rhodesia, welcome to the African Congress! We apologize for the sunburns, but our sun does not like white faces." Rais threw. It clipped the bottom of a bag, dumping its sand all at once. In the distance, the lyrical droning of an Islamic call to prayer came hauntingly across the dunes. "It's time" Hassan said. They picked up and left. The two men walked past the tank, passing a number of silent mud-brick buildings. Long diesel trucks sat in front, their beds outfitted with benches to carry troops, completely unmanned but recently used. The crying [i]adhan[/i] seemed to be coming from below. They walked up a dune until they came to a place where it ended abruptly. Below them was a giant corkscrew pit, large enough and deep enough that most of the buildings in Addis Ababa could be dismantled and thrown inside before it was filled up again. At the bottom, like men seen from the air in a plane, a larger number of small bright-white figures bent over in prayer. The Dervishes were the best warriors in Hassan's Somalia. The nation was held together by localized regiments of regular soldiers sequestered in barracks and given police duty when there was nothing else to do. It was only the best of them that had a chance at becoming a Dervish. These soldiers were clad in the white, the loose clothes hearkening to the Bedouin nomads, though the robes were replaced with shirts and pants. There heads were wrapped in a scarf so that only their eyes were visible. Whereas the uniformed regiments of the regular army were awkwardly armed, the Dervishes wielded new assault rifles and sharpened scimitars. Better then the glory and fresh equipment, the Dervishes were the only members of the Somalian government to receive a pension if they lived to old age. It was the most sought over position in Hassan's government. That was the way he wanted it. The pit was one of his gold mines. It helped him to pay the promised pensions that caused so much competition for Dervish service. He wondered, when he held drills out here, if their presence in the place that paid them had any effect in reminding them of their duty. "We serve Allah and the Emir" their voices said all at once, loud enough that Hassan and Rais could hear. Emir was one of his conflicting titles. To some, he was the Emir of Somalia to the Somali people, and he was the Ras of Adal to the Ethiopians. Hassan stood still, the wind scouring the back of his neck. For a moment, all was quiet. The men in the pit broke formation and spread out. They headed for the walls. A road corkscrewed into the pit, but they did not use it. Instead they climbed straight, moving up the steep walls like mountain climbers, their rifles on the backs and their scimitars dangling from their sides. Some, whether for dramatic flourish or to keep from getting snagged, held their scimitars in their mouths. "These men could take Mombasa." Hassan said proudly. Rais looked at him. "Is that your plan?" "No. No." Hassan said. His eyes stayed on the clambering Dervish troops. "Let the Reds do that. I have no friends among white faces or red flags." "They could take Mombasa." Rais agreed. Hassan had sounded liking a bragging father, but Rais sounded like a scientist giving a professional opinion. "If they had to swim." The Reds had asked him about helping with Mombasa. He'd ignored them. This was the normal dance among the East African Confederates. It was not a true confederation of course, but rather a vague submission to Addis Ababa, and once held together by a fear of recolonization that was beginning to fade in the modern world. Mombasa, where the last of the white settlers of Swahililand resisted the rise of Lutalo's reds, was under an uncertain siege by the confused Communist revolutionaries. That was fine. Let the Reds chew on Mombasa until their teeth were worn to the gums. Let them break in and in frustrated rage murder every last white man. The weaker they were, the happier Hassan would be in his power. He'd even throw them a bone or two if it helped make their conflict bloodier. But his Dervishes were more than a mere bone, and he would not throw them until it was worth it. When the Dervish soldiers made it to a stretch of the road, they dashed across it. To Hassan's pleasure, they treated this drill as a sort of race. "Could any man in Africa ever stand against these men?" Hassan asked. "Probably not." Rais answered. "Definitely not" Hassan said. "I'd pit them against the world. They would win."