The Demons of Holy Land

War torn and scarred father and son story.

“. . . I could only hear the loud and exploding pops of bullets all around me. I remember thinking, ‘Nothing else matters. This is all that can happen. And it happens now. We were in a village of violence and vile people who held their vendetta against the US.’

            “My train of thought was interrupted by a rock blowing up next to me. The top of the rock. I was scared to look out and over my safe place. I didn’t want to kill anyone. I couldn’t believe that all of this was happening to me. I didn’t know where any bullets were coming from and I didn’t know if I was going to come out of here living or dying. I could feel a lump in throat building up and making it hard for me to breath.

            “‘MOVE FORWARD!’ I heard someone say. I jumped up and over my safe place (a rock) and ran forward as bullets flew by me and jumped forward behind another safe place. I thought about praying. If I did, would that make this place a sanctuary? I hoped that God wasn’t here. If he was, I wouldn’t want to believe in that kind of god. In fact, it was hard for me to accept that there could be a God who would support acts such as these.

            “Another explosion shook the ground I was squatted on and I almost fell over. There were suddenly less gunshots being fired. I heard yelling in Arabic, but I wasn’t able to hear it well enough to translate. Carefully with caution, I looked over the side of my safe place. I could see one of them standing with a gun, leaning against a wall.

            “’This is my chance,’ I whispered to myself. I could bring myself honor and pride right now by defending our nation. High on a drive or an instinct, I fell to the ground and shot the man in the head. A spray of blood popped out of his head, like confetti come from a cannon, and he dropped. There was suddenly a bunch of men yelling as they ran over to him. My drive took over once again. Two. Three. Four. I think I started to cry, I can’t really remember. But what I do remember was that I was smiling.

            “The yelling had ceased. I had an internal desire for more. I could feel the sweat dry on my skin and saliva filling my mouth. I was scared to breath. My muscles tensed and my adrenaline pumped through my body. The silence seemed to grow loud and become something that was in my face and irritating me.

            “’*Pssssssh*’ the radio said, ‘The ragheads are down. We are free to move in.’ said our leader. Now I could hear soldiers running into the village. I heard doors being broken down and soldiers yelling at the innocent civilians to shut the f**k up and stay the f**k down.”

            I just stared at my father with blank horror. Fear came over me and I looked over at my dark green duffle bag, trying to not make eye contact with him. But when I looked back at him, his eyes were away from the notebook and looking at me. No words needed to be spoken. He continued:

            “I felt sick to my stomach. I could barely comprehend what I had just done. My hands were beginning to sweat now; it felt like a slippery layer of slime had surrounded my hand inside my glove.

“I wanted to run away and cry. My heart was telling me to run to find some form of peace in this world. Something far away from all this violence. My mind was telling me to run into the desert and starve myself, die of thirst. Maybe then God would forgive me. But my body was telling me something else. My legs ran themselves forward and my lips and tongue formed words that I don’t even recall.

“I smashed myself through a door of one of the houses and shot a couple of times. I saw no one in the room. ‘GET THE F**K OUT HERE SANDNIGGERS! WE’LL KILL YOU!’ No one came out. I ran up the stairs, shot a couple more bullets and then I heard a scream down the hall. I shot again. A whimper and a whisper. I shot again. A moan and a groan. I knew where they were.

“’Get your sorry Asses out of there, NOW!’ I shot again. The power is unbearable for any human to hold. I remember my eyes were getting blurry through tears. But I still smiled as the woman and her two children run out the closet and into the corner by the stairs. The woman was holding her children close.

“My soul was being torn apart here. Physically, mentally, and spiritually everything was being jeopardized and disorganized. I wanted to thrust my gun into the woman’s face for being part of a horrible society and I wanted to take away her children and save them into a good country. One with morals. But I also wanted to tell them to runaway, run far away from here and don’t ever come back. ‘Save yourselves from us,’ I would have told ‘em . . .”

My father’s lips trembled. His face was red and he opened his mouth, trying to say what he wanted to say but he couldn’t get himself to do it. “Dad,” I said, “you don’t have to tell me anymore.”

“No son,” he said, a teardrop fell off his face, “I would be killing myself by not telling you the truth of what you could be in for. I want you to know the reality and I want you to know how you can change that.” He paused again. Then continued:

“The mother whispered something in Arabic to her children and she started crying. The eyes of the children were lost with fear and terror; but most of all; they were lost with confusion and sadness. The mother stared at me for mercy; I could hear all these non-spoken words and cries for salvation, forgiveness, even sympathy for her and her children. And in my heart, I wanted to save her life.

“I stood there for a short period of time, but it felt like eons of my life were sucked out of me during my time with this family. Every heartbeat seemed to beat out less and less blood in my body. My bones felt like they couldn’t hold me up and my muscles were weak. The tears came harder and my face distorted itself, but I had so much pleasure at holding the gun into their faces. It’s holding a persons life in the palm of your hands. Fate is taken away from them and you are God now. It’s your will and they have no say in it.“

Pause.

“And I f*****g,” he paused again. The tears were dripping off of his check bones and on the notebook paper, “D****t . . .” He said. “One of the little boys got up and the devil took over me and I shot him.”

There was silence. It almost seemed like I could feel that very same demon that my father had lurking in the air. I could feel my throat close so tight that I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to say anything.

“And then,” he continued, “the mother yelled at me and I shot her, too. I shot them both right in the f*****g head.” He paused again. “God d****t! I will never forget the look of the daughter’s face. I lost myself there and I fell down to the floor crying and I couldn’t control my emotions anymore. I did the worst thing that any person could ever do and there’s nothing I can do to change it.

“I looked up and saw the girl sitting in the same exact place she was before, leaning against her mother. Her ragged clothes were covered in her innocent families’ blood and it soaked on the right side of her greasy hair. Her face was petrified. I wish I knew what she was thinking.

“Ya know, son, I wish God had controlled us with fate, I don’t think he would’ve ever let a good man like me do something so horrible. Free will is something too powerful and unrealistic for fallen mortals.

“In reality, we are all these primitive beasts who will rely on their instincts to guide them, no matter their morals or beliefs. But that little girl wasn’t a monster. She looked at me with a purely terrified and depressing eye. An unfathomable hatred was trembling at her lips and a fire from the depths of Hell itself was flooding the red in her cheeks. If I were she, I would kill me.

“’Af fli fle flicka,’ she said, I think. I’m not really sure exactly what she said now. But, at that time, I could properly repeat exactly what she told me and I think I knew what she was trying to tell me. Later, I went and asked a translator if he could translate that for me and he told me she said, ‘I forgive you.’ My internal understanding of her was correct. I got up and left her alone there with her mother and brother. It may have not been the smartest or safest thing to do but it was the best thing to do for both of us I think.

“’Hey, I shot all the ragheads inside that house. Let’s leave them there to rot and be eaten by the flies,’ I told one of my buddies when I got outside.

“’Good job, man! Show dem sandniggas who’s boss,’ he told me.

“‘We done here?’ I asked.

“‘Yeah man, we were all just meeting back up here and we were going to go and f*****g celebrate!’

“‘Great,’ I told him as I went back with him.

He paused again. He seemed to be deep in thought. “Anything after that doesn’t really matter,” he continued as he closed his notebook, “That day happened about two months into my enlistment into Iraq in 2003. I had another fifteen months of hell after that. But I felt proud of what I was doing and what I was doing for . . . America. Let’s see . . . That was eight years ago . . . You must’ve been ten, right?”

“Yeah, something like that,” I quietly said back. I remember my dad leaving. I didn’t understand why or what was going on. But I remember him leaving and I remember him saying that he’ll be back before I even know it. And to tell you the truth, it didn’t feel like it took all that long for him to come back. The only time I could really remember missing him was for my eleventh birthday party. It was an army themed party, I was so proud of my dad and my ma was so proud of me.

“I don’t really have anything else to tell you about my time in the middle-east,” he continued. He looked down at his closed notebook and opened it back up. For some reason I felt like blood was dripping out of the pages. I felt sick to my stomach. “Oh,” he was pointing his finger at the bottom of a page, “I want to tell you something else.

“When I got back, which was slightly earlier than you guys were expecting me to get back, six days to be exact, I was driving home to surprise you guys in the morning. It must have been 6:00am? But over the ocean, I could see the sun rising and I have never seen a sunrise like this before. The sky was flooded in the deepest red imaginable, like a waterfall of blood falling in a slow motion; it looked like you could hardly tell the sun was moving up and the sky was getting brighter. The ocean water was red and black and every wave seemed a gentle flap of a butterfly’s wing. It was the most beautiful gift from nature; and somewhere in my soul; it was the most terrifying gift from nature. I couldn’t help but continuously watch this sunrise as it faded lighter and lighter to create a less dramatic purple and orange color . . . flooding in the sky.

“I took this as God telling me that he is here with me and despite all the bloodshed, there was beauty left for me and for the world. I was heading back on the proper road of faith. But more recently, I have a different view of things.

“For a couple years, I was having these . . . I don’t know what they’re called . . . Episodes. You shouldn’t know anything about them; ma and I said we would not tell you about them.

“I couldn’t sleep for over a year and when I did I would constantly be waking up. I couldn’t keep a steady job because I just got so frustrated at all my co-workers and I could not control myself. I snapped at the littlest things and felt like I wasn’t even there with them. Then it happened, I’m sure you even remember this. We were here, watching TV and the announcer on the TV was talking about the war. There was gunshots and screaming in the background, live footage from the Middle East. It was as if I was still there, fighting. And my mind told me I was still fighting. And I lost it and I flipped over the table yelling horrible things about the Arabs--“

“You threw your plate and food at the wall above the TV too,” I whispered.

“Oh. Yeah. But I completely went mental. But I went and got help, and now, I feel like a completely different person. During my help, I realized that that sunset was God telling me that it isn’t over for me. This battle will never be over for me because it’s an experience that will change my life forever and allow me to see things differently. And honestly, I’m grateful for that blessing, a horribly cursed blessing.”

We both stood there in silence for a second. The night air on the patio was getting cold and the smoke from the cigarette was starting to not satisfy my nerves. I put the cigarette butt in the ashtray and looked over at my dad. He was staring intensely at our front yard and I could tell he was reliving (safely) the whole experience. I didn’t want to leave for the military. But I really had no choice now. I knew that I could get free college if I went, which I really need. I want to teach social studies, all the different kinds like psychology, history, politics, economics, all of that stuff. Anyway, I feel confident I won’t die and I also feel confident that it will be good for me, even when I don’t realize it.

But after listening to my father tell me everything--things I have been silently wondering about ever since he’s left and come back--I don’t know how I can handle leaving home and heading off to the same place where he ran into his darkest demons.

We both looked down over at my duffle bag and just stared at it. We looked at each other.

“Son, I love you.”

“I love you.”

Author's Note

I wanted the story to be an accurate (as you can be with dramatic stories) of a war and I tried to make the characters realistic as possible. I am open to any suggestions and comments.