The Convoy Shooting
Bray pays solatium and the Falcon convoy kills Ghanim.
Ahead of the arrival of the trucks, A man named Bray, an Army colonel, came From Airborne high command to meet with Nantz And so assuage or calcify some doubts As to the conduct of the infantry Inside Fallujah since they’d first arrived. Within the Baathist office near the school The large man, Bray, received a due salute From his subordinate, the Falcon head, When he walked into Nantz’s planning room, Which sat upstairs and overlooked the square. Bray was, like Nantz, a Carolinian, But his line came from Africa in chains, With such complexion as, in times of old, In Dixie and the Arab world alike, Would likely damn him to remain a slave. With pain in his round face, he chastised Nantz For not ignoring Bremer’s dragging feet In getting allocated widow funds Paid out to fam’lies of the recent dead. With great conviction, Bray stood over Nantz And opened up a lockbox on the desk To pull out stacks of bundled petty cash Intended for the odd brigade expense And counted out two thousand dollars flat To hand out to the women in the hall Who waited, wearing headscarves, to get word Of justice for their husbands and their sons. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I know, it’s not enough, There’s no amount that makes this right. I know,” Bray said to each, solatium in hand, And took their shouts and blame without retort As he bowed on the dingy lobby floor. Amid it all, as Bray gave out the cash, The convoy of supply trucks entered town On schedule, just as Sanchez had arranged, With Falcon Humvees bringing up the lead. Each Humvee had a soldier at the wheel Inside the open, rumbling truck’s cab, And one squad leader armed with an M4 To check the map and use the radio And shoot a person if the need arose. Above them and behind, a gunner stood And manned an M2 Browning turret mount, Belt-fed with huge, sharp fifty-cal’ber rounds, And zero armor plating to be seen In such a fashion that he was exposed Like one lone bobblehead atop his truck For thousands of Fallujans to come jeer. In their long column, at slow speed, they drove With kids and men in strange clothes all around, A scene that seemed to these young US troops Drab, dour, harsh, and needlessly austere. Two blocks from where the shooting had transpir’d, Just down the street from dove Jumaili’s mosque, The tall imam had whipped up quite a crowd With signs, hand-painted, mourning all the dead Held up by loyal congregation men. In tow, Imam Jumaili dragged along His son of nineteen, awkward young Ghanim, Whom he felt played Nintendo far too much And could do well to march a bit for God. The driver of the leading Humvee rig, Named Pilter, also nineteen, much preferred The Xbox to Nintendo Sixty-Four, And often said Nintendo was for queers When sparring in a console war debate. Despite this, both young men, in idle times, If forced to play the other’s favored brand, Would soon have gladly settled in a groove Of laughing over split-screen GoldenEye Or Halo: CE whether in the home Of Ghanim or of Pilter in Des Moines. “Fuck. Big-ass haji crowd,” dry Pilter groaned To his squad sergeant, laying on the horn. “Fuck off, you fags! Come on! Don’t you have jobs?” “Don’t aggravate them, Pilter.” “Sorry, Sarge.” The crowd, when the Americans arrived, Had grown to such a size that their lead man, Jumaili, that defiant dove imam, Laughed joyously at what he had achieved, Examining the hundreds of strange men From other mosques and local neighborhoods Who’d come out on short notice just to say That shooting innocents was not God’s will. “Oh! Fadl!” he cried out with proud surprise On seeing Sheikh Janabi’s dastard rogue, “It’s good you came. Here. Ghanim. Make a friend,” Too blinded by the moment to be wise. Already, as the Humvees neared, the crowd, Without paid provocation, picked up stones And Fadl grinned as the imam yelled, “Don’t!” And heavy rocks were cast toward the truck. “Gah. Jesus. We forgot something. Oh. Doors!” The driver, Pilter, groused while ducking arcs Of rock that may have been at one time trod By Mongols or by kings of Babylon. He slowed up more, and, gazing o’er the dash, Caught sight too late of a high-sailing brick That shattered his front tooth, and knocked him back With striking force that left the man concussed. “Hey. Pilter! Yo!” his sergeant shouted out And checked him with a pawing, urgent hand As, half-awake, the driver gently veered And then corrected, braking to a crawl That rippled down the fern-green convoy line. As agitated men picked up more stones, Ignoring protestations from their dove, A lilting Arab voice joined in the choir, As aggravated as the Sunni lot But far apart in styling, cleanly shaved: The neighbor of Bilal, of Baathist ilk. “Saddam will triumph! US dogs! You’ll see! Saddam is not gone! He will have revenge!” He shouted, standing cluelessly among A dozen men from Great Fallujah Mosque Who’d seen Nazzal and other old imams Shut down and threatened by the Baath regime. “Go home, nobody wants Saddam ’round here,” They muttered, and when he did not withdraw They set upon him, first with fists, then kicks Spurred on by eager Fadl and his gang. “Sarge, look, the haji dress-guys got Saddam, They’re kicking his dumb ass,” dazed Pilter laughed. “Stop jerking me and say if you can drive.” “I can. I’m good. But look.” And sergeant did, And then yelled through his bullhorn handset mic, “Hey. Back up from the guy. Put down the sticks,” As Ghanim and his father tried in vain To stop the beating of the Baathist man, Which only further cleaved the messy crowd And added to the melee’s disarray. “Fuck. Give ’em warning shots,” the sergeant told His gunner at the sight of Baathist blood And, from behind, the kid on the M2 Let off a deaf’ning burst into the sky. Now, at the rear of this new, unplanned stall, A second Falcon Humvee sat in wait Between tall buildings, fearing an attack And greatly hoping that the leading truck Would get its shit together and advance. Then all at once there was a fearsome crack The rear squad knew was M2 Browning fi’r And properly deduced was from their side But thought was shots-on-target in response To armed attack from this thick protest crowd That seemed to be engaged in beating up A man they figured was American. At this, with thoughts of that truck driver Joe Pulled from his cab and half-lynched on the streets Of Compton under TV cameras’ eyes, The gunner of the rear truck’s M2 gun, Without an order from his LT, squeezed The trigger and let off a thick barrage Of armor-piercing fifty-cal’ber fi’r That blew apart the son of the imam, Who’d never finish Zelda’s new campaign, And Sunnis who were raising sticks and stones To batter the collapsed Saddamist man. Sixteen were hit, in total, by the burst And rushed in bloody shape from fraught downtown Toward the king of Jordan’s hospital With panic that was now too sickly rote For anyone to stomach for too long.
This is Canto 9, part of Book III, from Cantica One: Army, part of the Fallujiad. New cantos are published on Mondays and Thursdays.
The Fallujiad is an ongoing epic poem in blank verse about the Iraq War by Cairo Smith. Read the author’s introduction to the Fallujiad here.