Our line spaced out with me at the rear, behind Ale. At every intersection I looked both ways. The moon lit everything in blue-gray and I imagined how I’d look through the scope of an enemy sniper. Before each crossing, I slowed and spaced out to run through the intersections without hitting Alejandro’s back. We stopped at an ISIS berm stretching across the street–this one still intact. There was a footpath over it and along the left, that we trekked quiet and slow. Once over, a wide highway crossed in front of us. A tall building on our left was the last piece of cover.
Everyone sat, crouched, or otherwise made themselves small. Our faces were gray with moonlight but I could recognize my boys. They were all alert–a stark contrast to their usual laying around and bickering. In the silent city every noise was amplified. Dry dirt crunched under our steps, or even just shifting weight. The LED on top of Sason’s radio flashed for every transmission. The volume also felt too high.
I reckoned that if ISIS was nearby, they could hear and see us by now. I flipped up my night-sights but a comrade behind me wagged his finger and flipped them back.
“Not yet,” he told me, though I didn’t understand the words.
Sason stood at the corner with the thermal, scanning the highway and the open stretch of sand past it. I could see tall buildings again behind that, and a slope to go up before them.
Sason commanded us up while leading from the front. We moved swiftly across the highway, but a low, stone wall–acting as a guardrail–bunched up our line. I broke formation for an empty patch of stone wall. There was the risk of it being mined, but I chose that over standing in the open and waiting to be shot. I spun on my ass over the smooth ledge and landed my boots in sand. My backpack and carrier jolted, but this was bearable. I put my back to the barrier, taller on this side, and pointed my rifle out while the rest of the boys crossed. Rusted hulls of cars littered the sandlot.
I rejoined the line as we moved up the slope, which I could now see became a shear wall with a six-meter crater hollowing it. We hiked single-file along the right edge of the crater. Once over, I saw we were inside a curving wall of mudbrick, two or three meters thick. Only then did I realize this must have been the old city wall–the Rubicon.
Enemy contact became, suddenly, very concerning. I imagined ISIS in high positions around, devious and invisible. The world became only good places to step and bad places to step. Which was which I couldn’t tell, so I stepped only where those ahead of me did.
We followed the road left–south–before turning right again–west. Shemas checked on me.
“Dijwar. Shlonak? Tû başî?”
“Erê.” I kept my trigger-hand high on my grip, and my left hand poised for raising. I flicked down my safety quietly so that no overbearing comrade would hear, and tried carving a mark in my mind that I had done so.
An order to halt came down. An exchange went on in the gate to another compound–a small residence to our right. The exchange was quick and they called us in. Our line climbed over a bent door and a washing machine jamming a hallway. Safety back on.
We were led to a garden where there were men dressed like us, but with slight differences. Some had sandals instead of sneakers; some magazine racks weren’t standard; some had mismatched or different camouflage entirely. We rested under open sky as Sason worked the radio. He seemed frustrated, restless. From what I could gather, we were waiting for another group to get in position. In much of Rommel’s Infantry Attacks, he explains suffering the same thing. I remarked how easy it had been to come this far. Could it be just as easy to put ourselves behind enemy lines?
We were called back up. I worried about snagging my bag on the ragged metal door, so I held my left arm over to keep it tight. It worked in protecting my bag, but a piece of twisted metal cut my knuckle on the way out. I felt blood running down my thumb. It didn’t hurt yet. Using my tongue, I found the cut just beneath where I chopped the fingers off my gloves. I felt like an idiot for that, but I had to wonder if my hands wouldn’t be pruning in sweat otherwise.
At the end of the block, we stopped at another compound on our left. This one was spacious and breezy, but I could see signs of intense fire. A room smoldered and radiated heat across the courtyard. I took the time to rinse and wrap my thumb.
I hadn’t gotten a tetanus shot before my journey, and couldn’t remember my last one. I considered if I might die sooner from a rusty door than from ISIS. Was the world that tragic?… Yes.
Before I finished mourning my death, Sason asked to see my medical tape. He was fiddling with the battery pack they had jury-rigged for the radio. I didn’t exactly want my medical tape being used for that, but I gave it up so that I wouldn’t appear stingy. I had seen the boys make the packs during the day. They took massive D batteries and linked them together like Legos with copious amounts of packing tape. Then with a couple wires, they connected them to the contacts on the bottom of the radio. Of course none of them had thought to bring a roll of that same cheap tape. And the only local boy with a bag was the bisfîngjî, and his was purpose-built to carry only rockets. Fortunately for me, Sason only needed to reconnect a wire.
He then designated a scouting party of everyone but Ale, myself, and him. They soon left and we stayed with the garrison. I remember over the course of our conversation with these men, one of them said these two things: “I am QSD (Qe-Se-De),” and “Fuck you ISIS.”
Shots could be heard intermittently along with the occasional boom, but seemingly no closer than what we had been hearing the whole night. West from our noqta was a six story building towering over the neighborhood, with a minaret just beside that.
“Alî. Dijwar,” Sason called, “were-were.” We followed him out of the compound, past the minaret, and into the six story building. The first floor was in shambles. I could see from end to end due to it missing all of its walls on our side. At the center of the building was a stairwell that Sason went up. Of course, more stairs. My gear was still heavy, but I was strong enough not to slow down yet.
…
…
…
“Ohh shit…” I had forgotten. I pulled my phone from my pocket and hit record, aiming a small flashlight at him. “Ale.”
“Yo?”
“How old are you today?”
“Twenty-two now.” He looked over his shoulder at the camera, his face shining with sweat.
“And where are you?”
“I’m in the middle of Raqqa.”
“And what are you doing?”
“I’m drinking Pepsi!” He held up the can and we filled the stairwell with laughter.
Sason called me from the roof, imitating a camera. I got my NVGs and prepared to be useful. A PKM had been set up and they fired before I had the camera running. I was able to capture one shot, but out of focus. They didn’t risk firing much more.
Breaking the quiet, a singing voice played over a far off loudspeaker. I recognized the prayer, and knew it wasn’t our side. The voice stretched across the cubic gray landscape. Half a dozen more voices rose across the city. The eerie harmony coaxed bumps across my skin. I didn’t wish for it to stop. I hoped it would bring the enemy out.
A sharp, air-cutting howl interrupted, followed by a thunderous explosion. To the north, the small light came under a barrage of mortars, raining down like fireworks in reverse. They punched bright explosions into the building. Maybe nine shells came down. This summoned a dust cloud many times larger than the building. I still hadn’t seen any enemy, but the area felt more like a frontline.
Sason spoke of an airstrike to come. I understood “airplane,” “bomb,” and “north.” Tayara. Bomba. Bakurê. There was a Mosque in that direction, just left of the dust. It looked to be the largest and most obvious target, but I wondered if it was a crime or not to bomb one. With my night vision and phone, I began recording.
In the video, I pan to a heval on my right. He knocks a shoot-hole through the cinder-block wall. There’s a streaking noise and I swing back to the mosque just in time as an explosion as tall as the minaret splashes in a green flash through the goggles.
I never imagined seeing such a thing up close, let alone through night-vision.
“Ok, again,” said Sason. Tamam, dubarê.
The mosque’s upper floor lit and stayed on fire. Surrounded by the all-consuming dark, it appeared closer, as if pulling in my vision. An airstrike within 400 meters, I thought. That’s a first. (I would realize later this was likely just artillery.) Soon, smaller explosions popped in the flames like little fireworks–until they grew to be not so little. I reflected on how religious materials do not cook off and explode. I wondered if that meant it was a well-researched strike, or just simple probability.
There was almost no return-fire. I remember one or two red tracers headed the wrong way, all too high to be effective.
When I returned from a piss downstairs, I found Ale and a young heval from another group watching the flames through a break in the wall. I sat next to them and cracked open a fresh Pepsi. The mosque was still a torch, and it lit our faces from all the way over. We reclined, but I didn’t dare hang my legs over. I wished Ale a happy birthday and we laughed again, but it was cut short by the roar of a jet.
“Tooom!” A bomb splashed even larger than before. The three of us could do nothing but wince as pressure, light, and heat washed over us.
“Oh fuck!” I tried to slide back. Ale tucked behind the wall as pieces returned to Earth. Our heval ducked over with his mouth still hung open.
“Oh-fuck,” he imitated, and laughed.
Dawn came quickly, and thankfully a cool breeze with it. We walked back through the rubble-filled streets. At the crater I pulled out my phone to take a selfie.
