------------------------------------------------------------------- [u][b]September 11th: Jijiga, Adal Province, Ethiopia [/b][/u] ------------------------------------------------------------------- She'd never seen a town so alive as sleepy Jijiga. The people hid, but the streets hummed with soldiers, desert warriors, and the cities worth of people they brought with them. Warriors came with their wives, their children, and their servants. Every manner of nomadic convenience appeared in the dusty camps east of town. Jijiga was a large village, but not unlike the others that dotted Somalia. It was in a bowl of granite mountains, trees rare, the desert covered in thirsty thorn bushes and dead grass. The drabness of stone and adobe was not enough for people who lived here their entire lives. They white-washed the buildings, painting doors and windows bright colors, and they brought the town to life by their work. The center of Jijiga was an orderly grid. All of the roads were dirt. Azima watched from in front of her tent as a horde of black-robed cavalry rode past, ululating and shouting praises to Allah, some holding glinting sabers aloft like they were charging to battle. One of them held the red banner of Oman. The Sultan of Muscat rode past, followed by the beautiful young men of his guard. He saw her and hooted a war cry. "We will have tea in Harar!" he said, his eyes burning like those of a Jinn. There was no place for her to respond. He rode toward the lead of the thundering Omani. His robes billowed behind him. They were storm clouds on horseback, their swords flashing like lightning. Those men were going north, to the village of Chinaksen, fifteen miles up the spine of mountains that protected the ascent toward Harar like a wall in the desert. Chinaksen pass, and the nearby Marda pass just west of Jijiga, were the only real gates in that wall. She knew all of this, the whole layout of the Somali war effort, because her father had brought her in to every meeting. She knew how their forces were dug in on the plains between the pass and the town. She knew the first trench was a half mile in front of the second, providing an open space. Hassan had meant that place to be dry. An unseasonal monsoon blew in from the northeast and drenched the desert so that the river bed between the trenches now trickled with a shallow stream pulling dust with it like syrup. She could see it all, the layout of the land, like she were a General in the field. She could imagine it all. And, though she hated to admit it, she loved it all. When she was a child, she'd beaten a servant boy with a stick until he bled. Neither had been older than six, but she still remembered it vividly, and she could remember exactly how she felt. Her blood had been up. And though she'd felt bad for him afterwards, her father hadn't let her show it. He was proud. She had his blood. His warrior blood. She felt like that now. The glint of steel, the sight of the dust and the guns, the knowledge that something great was going to happen here, she could feel it all. It was the feeling of being entirely alive, her heart beating with the heart of the universe. Her entire body reacted. She wanted to murder. She wanted to smell the flowers. She wanted to fuck in the open air. But it was all wrong. She could feel a part of herself fighting this feeling, a part like a child trying to hold onto leashed dogs. This wasn't her, was it, this feeling pulsing through her flesh? It was him. Far to the west she could hear gunfire. It sent chills down her spine every time. There hadn't been a true battle yet, but the war bubbled out in places, like it was a force erupting from the earth. Men shot at each other in the hills. Nobody took land. The lines were not so obvious yet, because religion was playing a roll. Her father presented his war in the name of the faith. The Muslims of Ethiopia were put in a strange place, instantly suspected, having to uproot their lives and gamble on who would win. Some rebelled or came over to the Somali army and fought for the faith. Others stayed in their suspicious land and fought for their country. The recent storm had brought life back to the desert. The acacias and thorny myrrh bloomed green and obscured the countryside. She walked toward the command tent, a long staff in hand as if she were training, her robes girded around her loins and a turban around her hair so she looked like a skinny goatherd boy. The men knew her, showed signs of respect, and tried to ignore her. [i]Doorfarkas[/i] passed by, machine guns rattling on their mounts, loose chains hanging from support beams by big steel hooks. She reached her Father's tent. Hassan's physical presence dominated everything around him. He was a block of a man, not unusually fat but none the less heavy, his body a lump beneath baggy fatigues. "Do not engage the armor." he told an officer she did not recognize, though she knew he was an officer by his fatigues, standing out from the Bedouin-like dress of the common soldiers. Hassan did not notice her. He continued. "Tell your men to hide. Your trenches are skinny. They will pass right over them. Only come up again to hold back the enemy on foot." The officer nodded. His eyes betrayed Azima's entrance. Hassan turned to her and greeted her with unusual warmth. "My daughter." he said, "I am told they are coming. This man is going back to report to his superiors." Hassan paused. The unfamiliar officer turned and left. "They are coming." Azima repeated. Her heart thumped harder. "Where am I supposed to be?" Hassan picked up a coiled hook and chain, like something made to fish leviathans out of the sea. He put it over his shoulder liked it weighed nothing. "You will command the reserves. That is your place. When I call for them, you will send them." "I have no place in the battle?" she felt both relieved and disappointed. Her mind and her feelings pulled in separate directions. "The reserves is a place. Not everybody brings out their swords. The washer women and doctors are warriors of a kind." "Not the kind I practice to be." "I will be on the battlefield." Hassan said. They were walking toward a [i]doofarka[/i] now, men already sitting inside. Soldiers saluted as they passed. Hassan ignored them. His attention was for her alone. "Being in the field means I might die. And if I die, what then? My struggle becomes yours. We are making a home for our people and a legacy for our names, my daughter. You are the promise that my legacy can continue. If I die, you need to live." "If you die the struggle is lost." Some light went out of his eyes. Hassan lost his warmth then. "That's not true." he said, voice wavering "Tell me this is not true. You will always struggle." She felt he'd said more truth than he realized. "I will." He smiled and patted her cheek. [i]Doorfarka[/i] engines rattled. The air smelled of dust and gasoline. She saw horsemen riding out, armed with swords and hook-chains. "Today is the beginning of greatness. You will see." He climbed in the back of the sputtering buggy. It took off, speeding in the direction the horsemen had went. She went the other way. Gunfire was picking up. She heard big booms that sounded like holes being made in the universe. The ground shook. There were slimy sand-laced puddles in places, and she could see the water ripple. It was the Ethiopian New Year: [i]Enkutatash[/i]. A year of shattering promises gave way to a year of blood. Hassan picked this day because he thought the enemy might be drunk. She thought about these things. About the forward trench. About the Omani in the north. All these things woven together. It was beautiful, and her mind wanted to stay there, to forget about her fears and disappointments. She found where the reserves were camping. Guards and officers came to her like flies on camel dung. Soldiers sat in the dust and mingled. There were few dervishes here, but most of these men were conscripts, called from their villages to serve in the war, not adjusted to such things. Hassan required all men to undertake a certain amount of drilling, but that only went so far. These peasant men, hard-faced and anxious, were no true warriors. The smell of smoke filled the air. Machine guns rattled in the distance. She listened and time passed. The first wounded came on patchy trucks, old things made of spare parts and thrown together by men who specialized in makeshift automobile construction. Azima went to attend to them. Women surrounded the trucks, making it difficult for the orderlies to unload them. A Red Crescent station, lonely and understaffed, tried their best to cope. Azima helped to clear a path as wounded men were unloaded, her entourage making themselves useful. Flies buzzed. The crowding women shouted at the men, asking about their own. The wounded and dying were brought into the safety of the field hospital. Azima helped stand guard. A white-robed soldier was put on a cot next to the door. His chest was bloody. He looked horrified, his eyes bugged out, his hands shaking unnaturally. The doctors were alarmed at his heart beat. All that from a wound? Azima felt sick. The smell of blood grew overpowering. Time rolled on. Men died or were moved. A second ambulance came up. Azima made herself known to the driver. "What is the battle like?" she asked. "Their armored attack was broken. Our warriors have made off with many of their tanks. But our first line has broken, and the enemy is trying to overtake the second." he reported, taking on the countenance of a man being held for questioning by a magistrate. "You know all this?" "I have heard it." "What have you seen?" "Haze. It is hard to see in the places where the gunfire is." When would she get the call? That was the way she would see it. Night was coming. Had they thrown the enemy back? There was no news, even as more wounded poured in. Night came, the desert cold crept in, and she was forced to find a warm place to sleep. There would be no call. She went to her tent. Her entourage stayed outside, but now she was in the company of her handmaids. They dressed her for sleep. She tried to sleep for a long time but struggled to keep her eyes closed. When they were open, she would see the fabric of her tent, the moonlight creeping through, the universe of battle still echoing somewhere far away. But she did, eventually, sleep. She woke before sunrise, the desert still cold, the first pale crown of sunlight appearing in the east. She dressed in the same uniform before, though her clothes had been washed. Outside, A man came to her with a message from the north. Battle was met at Chinaksen. The Omani met stiffer resistance than anticipated. They could not take the pass. Fears crept into Azima's thinking. "Forward this message to the Emir. You'll find him on the front." she ordered. The messenger scurried off. Hassan went into this war thinking himself invincible. He didn't say it, but she could feel it all around him when he spoke. They were going after a better armed foe. A modern military, essentially. They went after it with armies unchanged since the colonial wars of the Mad Mullah and her grandfather Khalid al-Himyari. The stars were just starting to fade when a lone bi-plane passed over, its wings colored like desert dust and painted with the flag of Oman. It puttered. She could still hear the nearest fighting. Tanks rolled through. They were scraped and battered. She saw Ethiopian flags painted on them and grew alarmed, but her fears were negated when she saw who manned them. Dervishes sat all around their surfaces. They seemed to have trouble, the machines starting and stopping awkwardly, the dervishes holding like men on bucking horses. But these were her men. The machines were taken from the enemy. Praise Allah it worked. She couldn't believe it. If her father could pull that off, what other miracles might come of this day? She walked to the north of the camp and looked across the plains. If the Omani were beaten, would the enemy come across this field? If she needed to mount a defense, where would it be? A single line of shallow trenches defended the camp from this direction. It was not enough. She ordered more. Men of the reserves went to work with spades. They dug overlooking a river bed already drying up, no longer flowing, holding only puddles now which would be gone in the summer light. She hadn't eaten. That hadn't crossed her mind until now. She hadn't eaten in a day. But she didn't feel hungry. Still, she forced herself to have a bite of hard flat-bread. At noon, the call came. Had things went wrong? She kept part of the reserves in their newly forming trenches. The rest would come with her. She knew she wasn't supposed to go; Hassan didn't want her at the front. But she would go, she would see it, and maybe she would fight. The regiments came together haphazard and marched in rough columns. Hassan had, over the years, turned the Somali army into an heir of Prussian efficiency. They entered Jijiga. The white-washed walls were chipped with stray bullets and marred by the rare stray artillery crater. The Ethiopians had brought artillery, but they did not sound to Azima like the stories of Verdun, or even the long guns over Paris near the end of that war before Europe burned. Too scarce. The people hid, and were replaced by stragglers and the wounded. Azima brought a pistol, but besides that, all she had was her staff. A half-dozen dervishes had joined her when she gave orders, becoming her personal body guard, and now they followed her silently, all big men who dwarfed her. She gave her orders silently, self conscious of her shrill womanly voice when she yelled. Hand gestures was enough. The men around her would make sure they were carried out. They came closer. There were manned barricades in the town. Men ululated as they passed, but there was no sign anybody had fought here. The dead began to appear. A bled-out body was slumped in a doorway. Had the man fled to this spot like a wounded animal, or had he been dumped? Five tanks passed, jolting forward as awkwardly as the first she'd seen that day. They had Ethiopian flags painted on them, but they were scratched out. She heard the men in the barricade ululate the coming of the captured tanks behind them. Azima's men marched steady toward the doom. Her heart beat faster. The sound of battle was closer. The trenches spread out like a disaster had been visited upon the earth. They moved according to the terrain, zigging and zagging in both directions. The buildings directly behind were shot away. Everything looked like it was subjected to a wind of knives. And they'd only fought for one day. Azima watched her soldiers march, standing stoic. Their orderly lines had mostly fallen apart. The parapets were made from random things, bricks and bags and scrap. There was a car scoured to shiny steel, and a dead camel flayed to the bone. It smelled like smoke and body odor... and guts. Guts had a smell. More than just blood. It was blood that'd went to rot. Axmed Haji Siad commanded here, a native Somali rather than one of the al-Himyari clique. He had a pointed tuft of hair on his chin, but he kept his hair clipped short in the way Hassan preferred. He met Azima like a grave-digger returning to his shovel. "These are the men he sent for?" Axmed asked. "Where is he?" "I am not sure. He wants them in the forward trench. We have no fighting for them here." "I see. Is there fighting there?" "We have taken it, but there is still fighting." She turned to her Aides. "We are advancing." she motioned with her staff over the top. They nodded and turned to rely the orders. Was this a time for a speech? She saw the men holding this trench, their faces and clothes the color of the dirt, their eyes peering out like haunted jewels. It didn't feel right. She climbed over the parapet, her hand grasping what felt like a piece of fence. A voice in her head told her to hide. Her blood told her to go on. The first layer of soil was scraped from no-mans land. They'd only fought for one day. There were bodies, bloodied and ruined. At first glance dead horses looked more numerous than the people. What ridiculous thing had happened here? Was this how battle looked? It looked like a military disaster, a bloody folly that'd ruin the war for somebody. There were blackened tanks and [i]Doofarkas[/i] like tangled piles of wire. She heard sobbing. But she could only move, ignoring the smell, leading her solemn army through the haze. There was gunfire. Flashes of red, but no bullets. They approached the forward trench. The gunfire intensified. She jogged forward, and her soldiers followed. They flung themselves in. It was a different kind of trench, barely wider than a standing man, so that it was hard to move through. The firesteps, though present, were only enough for a man to stand on his toes. There were bodies buried in dust. Living soldiers looked at her with relief, and pointed her way. She went. She did not meet Ras Hassan, but the Arab Shakir bin Musa. He was young for his position commanding men on the front. She knew him, like all her father's top officers, and he recognized her on sight. His eyes widened and he pointed. "What is this!?" "What?" He smacked her staff. "This! This!" "It's my staff." "Are you training children? Are we dancing? There is fighting. You will die with that thing!" "I have a pistol!" "No!" Shakir pulled his sword. "This! Use this! Take it from me!" "And what will happen to you?" "I will live if Allah wills it. You need this! Things are not done!" He told what had happened. In the beginning, it was how Hassan had planned. The tanks came. Hassan's Dervishes came to meet them. The forward trench held back the Ethiopian infantry, but the Ethiopian armor charged forward, greedy to destroy the bigger prey they saw in Hassan's [i]Doofarkas[/i] and cavalry. And then Hassan took their tanks. But the Ethiopians did not give up. They launched assault after assault, bloody and destructive, until Shakir and his men were forced across the field. Many died. They'd only recently taken by the Forward trench, but the Ethiopians were still trying. They'd been fighting all night with the help of the chemicals Hassan had distributed to them. "They won't accept they have lost?" she summed it up for him. "Or they know something we do not know. This will be a horrible thing if it is always like this." "Why did we not use the tanks?" "We don't have men who know how to use them!" Shakir laughed as he said this. That made her feel better somehow. There was gunfire. It picked up like a light shower becoming a monsoon. Shakir held tightly to her staff. She pulled the sword and felt unbalanced by the weight in her hand. "Allahu ackbar!" she heard men shouting all around. But she heard something else too. [i]God commands thy strength, Strengthen, O God, what you wrought, [/i] It was in Amharic, the language of the Ethiopians, coming ghost-like from in front of them. The Somalians tried to shout over them, "Allahu ackbar! Allahu ackbar!". Guns barked. [i]At Jerusalem shall kings bring presents unto thee [/i] It was a hymn. The cacophony grew madder. It was digging into her brain. Why was she here? Why was she here! [i]Rebuke the company of spearmen, The multitude of the bulls [/i] And then it stopped. The Ethiopians poured into the trench, and she met combat in the face for the first time. There was hardly room to fight in the trench. Men sprang up on the parapets and fought there. She was in a battle, and men were dying. She held tightly to her sword. All she could feel was her hand gripping the hilt, her pounding heart, and a numbness where her mind should be. A man jumped in, wearing a European style uniform no Somali soldier wore, along with a pot-like helmet. She swung her sword and took off his fingers. He dropped the rifle. That's when she first noticed he had the rifle. He drew back, his hand red with blood. She swung again and opened his neck. The warmth went out of his eyes and flowed as blood. She'd killed. He died. She didn't think she could kill again. She'd spent herself. It was her turn. But it was over. There was ululating and praises to Allah. Blood dripped from her sword like oil. She wanted to vomit, or hide, or cease to exist. But as she woke up to who she was and what she'd done, her feelings changed. She felt powerful. Had any woman felt this powerful before? This fight was over. She'd conquered the world.