The Road to
Author: Doqz
Fandom: Lost
Rating: U Gen
There is no God but God and Mohammed is His prophet.
There was never any
doubt about what he was going to be.
"We have been warriors
since the beginning of time." Grandfather would always pause, fingering
the hilt of the dirk that, as the family legend had it, was taken off a corpse
of British officer by Sayid's great grand-uncle in
the Great War.
His father
and his father's father and all the men before him. Warriors all.
Serving the Turks, the King and finally the Republic.
Sayid was ten when they came
for Grandfather.
"Treason."
His grandmother cried and
clutched at him but the old man just frowned and pushed her away, glaring at
the soldiers. "What is this? Where's my son?"
"Treason."
Ali ibn
Hassan,
was an officer and a good Ba'ath comrade who married
a niece of a member of the Revolutionary Council that sided with the wrong
faction at the wrong time.
They didn't pray. Mother had
a degree in philosophy from Sorbonne and was weaned on secularism and socialist
ideals. Going to the mosque? What nonsense.
Grandmother would have but
the house was being watched.
They were lucky in the end.
Ali came home. Pale and broken, his left hand shaking uncontrollably, he would
stare at Leila with hurt, uncomprehending eyes. "I told them... I kept
telling them. Comrades, I said... I told them... I would never... I would die
for the Party. For the revolution. A
spy? Me? I kept telling them..."
Grandmother died three days
after they were allowed to reclaim Grandfather's body.
Two months after that Ali
hit Leila for the first time, for calling Saddam a traitor. She fell, heavily,
and he stood over her, shaking with rage and screaming vile, horrible things
about her and her uncle.
Sayid remembered tugging at
Leila's skirt and crying and then Ali was hugging them both and weeping too.
The next seven years
unrolled slowly, every day weighing heavier as the old life receded beyond
recollection.
The American Chevrolet, the
great status symbol, the envy of the entire neighborhood, was the first to go.
Ali's reduced rank brought
less money, and Leila was quietly requested to quit the school. No one felt
easy about their children being taught by the niece of the Zionist spy.
Two weeks after his 13th
birthday they left
His 3rd day, on the way home
from school he was cornered by his Kurdish classmates. The beating was silent,
savage, unforgiving.
"Our
land. Go home,
pig-breath. Kill you next time, son of a thousand fathers."
He told Leila he fell. Ali
just drew heavy, trembling hand lightly through his hair and began to teach him
boxing.
There would be no Al Rustamiyah for Sayid. Instead of the military academy whose
walls he would eye since his Grandfather first showed it to him when he was
three, he was conscripted at 17.
The last two years of the
war with
He made lieutenant.
He missed his father's
funeral.
The end, the retreat along
the highway of death was not the worst.
The worst was being in the
tank battle. They fought bravely, they were the Guard.
But the Americans... he
remembered Aziz swearing in disbelief over the radio
as the tank shell hit the Abrams that finally ambled into range. Finally, after ten agonizing minutes of shredding their formation
with impunity from unreachable range. One shot was all they needed. They
were the Guard.
The shot was perfect, even
in the dark, and Aziz whooped and then, then he
swore... the shell clanging and bouncing off, the ugly turret swiveling with
monstrous slowness.
Flash.
Farewell, brother.
He was in
Kurds, Mehmet
spat.
He wondered sometimes if his
old classmates were there. Watching his mother burn alive
inside the house.
He never went back.
There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His prophet.
The muezzin's voice cut
through the busy
His flight was leaving in an
hour.
He bought a ticket to the
farthest destination he could find. Without thinking, without
planning. Let God direct his steps.
New life. New beginning.
Inshallah.
-fin-