Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I was new, fresh from camp - only three months from training into the conflict. I was finding my feet, as they say. Already, I was sick of these harshest of mountains. I was yearning for home. The smoke of battle drifted about the shell of the town, some forsaken place called Arrahd, or something. At midday, after prayers and a little food, Karashi spluttered past us on a little Kawasaki. Karashi, wrapped in a long black coat but helmetless of course, bread crumbs hanging in his beard. Karashi, the legendary but disgraced commander of the cruel Wahid Platoon, who now fought single handed, a lone assassin of the Russians, seeking death and his couch in Paradise. He shouted to me and the lads of our group as he rode past:

     ‘Our communications are down - Radzi and Brahdi are in flames. Napalm!’

     Coat billowing behind him like a horseman's cloak, he rode away - Karashi, black from head to foot, eyes like live coals. He had slaughtered a whole betrayer's village-full of women and children without a blink of remorse, or so it was said.

     The brigades were reassembling on the flat plain above the winding pass. The sun was prowling through a crimson haze, as if licking the snowcaps of the mountains. In ditches wounded men were taking a bite. Laying about on the grass were blood smeared nurses, resting, singing softly. These were claimed women, all hard as iron, and none of us dared approach them unless with a bullet or shard of shrapnel hanging from some wound. Yabhrim's scouts were trawling the fields below in search of dead Russians and equipment. From the bodies we took good uniform to confuse them in operations. We stripped down to their gold teeth and underwear, and if we had the means we set them ablaze there and then, or opened them up for the birds. Yabhrim himself rode past within a metre, paused his bike and spoke to me without turning his head:

     'We got them today, but lower down we're getting it in the neck, as sure as the sea is wet. There's snipers with lasers higher up. The men aren't easy yet. We're going up there. I've heard that you're handy and OK.'

     This was a great compliment and I would have died for him there and then.

     It turned out that the Russians had landed from gun-ships about six kilometres from us further up the valley and were settled in with machine guns. We had to send somebody up and behind them to take them out before we could get home again. Every now and then bullets whined past us, further away guns rattling as some skirmish for the shelter of a rock or a ledge took place. Bullets struck the earth around us, exploding up little clouds of dry dust, but we ambled about as if they were nothing, trusting in Allah to protect us.

     Dashinda, my pal and our regimental commander who had been snoring in a ditch, cried out in his sleep then woke up, eyes filled with panic. He strode across to a spare motorcycle and mounted it, attempting to kick it to life. His face was crumpled, lined with red streaks from his uncomfortable snooze.

     'Fucking son of a bitch! ' he cried, and spat into the dust. 'What a mess. Come on, we're pulling out. Come on, come on…’

     'We're moving out?' I said, perplexed because he had never been one to run from a bit of danger.

     'We'll see what's up there,' he said, then cried wildly, 'Come on, mothers! Injured stay here with the nurses. We'll be back for you this evening, Inshalla.'

     The group formed up in a column, too big a target, I reckoned. Out of a slimy ditch near to me crawled a wounded man, an African brother, black as a crow. I did not recognise him.

     'Looks as if we're going to be left behind?' he said to me. It was a question, and he was amazed. Usually we shipped the injured along with us.

     'We'll be back,' I said, crouching for a quick look over his wounds. He was bandaged up but still bleeding, time against him.

     'Got a feeling we can't look after ourselves,' he said, looking up and about the mountains. 'Napalm, ' he said. 'These girls…’

     'Stop whining there,' Dash screamed at him. 'We'll be back for you, and that's that.'

     The bike was kicked over, engine rattling. He waved an arm, those lucky enough to be on bikes clustering and revving about him, the rest setting off at a fast marching pace.

     We soon ran into fire, and I saw a brother's head pop then explode just a hundred metres along the track. But we were hard at them, faithful and rage fuelled, up behind them, around, picking our way up impossible rock faces to take them out a sniper at a time, cutting their throats with sheer pleasure if they were only wounded. Slowly, slowly, we made our way up the valley. My own gun blazed. I shot a blonde boy full in the face. My bullets were not wasted that day.

     Come evening, as the temperature plummeted, I found myself holed in with Yabhrim and some of his band, scoffing down dried fruit and biscuits, hanging about between two walls of fire before we could get up further at the now desperate Russians. Their air support had not materialised. They were caged-in rats, awaiting the kill. Brothers chatted battle talk from the crevices in the rocks.

     'They'll be calling for helicopters by now.'

     'They always run. Always…’

     'We'll take them out further down the pass - our lads down there are well equipped now.'

     'It's true. These days those Americans give us what we ask for.’

     Yabhrim spat at the mention of America. On the larger and the present scale we were caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place. Between two walls of fire. Between Russia and America. Between our lives and our deaths. A fragile predicament. I thought on this as we waited, and wondered after my own distant family.

     The firing waned. We scampered out, one at a time, clattering like frenzied scorpions amongst the rocks. We advanced upon the outskirts of another deserted village where a couple of Russians were holed up in the cemetery. No guns here - a coordinated volley of grenades saw them Hellward. Through the rancid smoke I wandered as if in a dream, Darra made AK47 spitting out flame tailed bullets at nothing in the haze. The smoke drifted clear and there against the cemetery wall I came upon Karashi, his motorbike discarded and crumpled in the middle of the road. His eyes were blazing, but I could see that he was clutching at his stomach, and that his black coat was wet with blood. He had obviously been there for some time.

     'Karashi! ' I cried, and ran across to him, risking a bullet, but the Russians were done for and no shots rang out.

     'Karashi!'

     'What a bastard game,' he answered mournfully. He could see his own death striding down the valley toward him with the coming of the night.

     'Let me take a look,’ I said.

     He shook his head and pressed his red hands tighter against his body.

     'It's the end of us! ' I shouted, seized with a mad panic and mortal frenzy, for here was Karashi, the legendary Karashi, fading before my eyes.

     'It's the end, certainly, my friend. For me anyway.'

     I stood up, threshing my fists at the darkening mountains.

     'Death to Russia!' I screamed. 'Death to America! Death to the fucking world!'

     He laughed grimly.

     'Yes, my brother. That's it. That's it. Death to the world.'

     A pink trail lit up the sky and died out again. Far up the pass there was massive explosion, echoes thudding down the valleys. High above stars were out, and The Milky Way was draped like a frail silk scarf throughout the brightest stars.

     'Makes me fucking laugh,’ said Karashi, pointing a wet finger at his ruin of motorbike.' A puncture. No cover. Brother, I'm afraid you'll have to waste a cartridge or two on me.

     Yabhrim and two of his men were approaching, arriving at my side as I stared so horrified into the eyes of the mythical Karashi. They scuffed their feet about in the dust and looked pitifully on the wounded man, shaking their heads, silent. Karashi sighed and leant back further into the wall as if hoping to sink into its cold silence. Without lowering his eyes from mine he warily rolled open his black coat and drenched shirt. His belly had been torn out. The entrails hung over his knees, and the heartbeats were visible amidst gleaming tubes.

     'Bastard Russia,' he said. 'Here, Specs. You take my papers. Write to my mother and wife. Tell them how things were here today.’

     ''No,’ I answered. I stood up and took a few steps away. 'Not me. Not this. Not me.'

     Karashi set his wet palms on the earth and gazed at the back of his crab-like hands. 'Sneaking off, you motherfucker?' he muttered, sliding further down. 'Well sneak off then, you pig.'

     Sweat prickled down my body. Up ahead machine-guns were hysterical, rattling away again, rapping out faster, drilling cracks out through the hard twilight. Out of the sunset Dashinda came roaring toward us, teeth grinning brilliant white against that
blackness of his beard.

     'We're giving them good shit,' he cried, almost merrily. His bike screeched to halt beside me. 'Hello, what's this mess then?'

     I pointed out the mortally wounded figure of Karashi, muttered something about his exposed entrails, and strode on, further away. Dashinda dismounted and walked over to Yabhrim and the huddle of men. They spoke briefly. No words reached me. Karashi held his papers out to my commander. Dashinda accepted them with a nodding of his head, tucked them away into the back of his left boot, then shot Karashi once in the mouth. That was that. They all came away from the wall. I had stopped to watch this scene.

     'Dashinda, , I said with a wry smile, and began to walk toward the striding Mujahidin.

     'Get out of my sight,' he growled, growing pale, teeth gritted. 'Or I will kill you.’ You guys in glasses. You fucking little intellectuals. You've no pity; no soul. You come here, thinking it's all some big adventure. Some little fucking holiday from life.’

     He cocked his Kalashnikov. I walked slowly away, sensing my dishonour, slinging my own gun over my shoulder, feeling the chill of death in my back.

     'Hey you!' shouted Yabhrim behind me. I glanced back. My commander had his gun barrel trained right at my back. 'Stop fucking around!' Yabhrim yelled, grabbing Dashinda by the arm.

     'The bastard! ' Cried Dashinda. 'He isn't going to get off like that. He knew what he had to do…' But he lowered the gun. He stormed back across to the bike and made off without even another glance at me, or at the corpse of Karashi.

     I strode on hard up the track toward the fighting, and there were tears in my eyes, tears spilling hot upon my cheeks. Death to the world, I was muttering. Death to the world. Death to the mother fucking whole wide world.

     Yabhrim rode up beside me on the bend after the village and stopped his bike in my path. He gazed upon me, but there seemed to be no malice in his eyes.

     'There, you see, Yabhrim,' I said. 'Today I've acted without honour. Today I've lost Dashinda, my commander and my closest friend.’

     Yabhrim nodded. He clucked and tutted, rolling his eyes skyward. At last he smiled. From the folds of his jacket he produced a bottle of water and three dusty blue pills from a polythene bag.

     'You can fight with us from now on,’ he said, handing me the pills. 'I think you're OK. Here, take these. Eat them. You'll need them. That's it. Now have a drink. Go on, have a drink. We got some work to do up here tonight.'