Secondhand Sorcery

A handmade banner, made from something like bedsheet material, stretched across the road between two streetlights. “Konfederalîzma Demokratîk a Zîlan,” it said, and then under it in smaller letters, “Kurdistana Serbixwe.” All written in black marker, flanked by paintings of two different flags. On the right, a green, white, and red one with a gold sun in the middle. On the left, a red star in a gold circle, inside a solid red field.

“Kurdistan Worker’s Party,” Kemal said, pointing to the latter.

“Communists?”

“Once. Maybe still. They speak less of it, now that there are no communists in Moscow. All know who pays them.”

Nadia looked down from the banner to the men running the checkpoint. They had rifles, but their clothes were mostly civilian—big puffy jackets and wool hats. Their breath clouded in the cold air, when the wind did not simply whip it away. She felt a very small pang of sympathy for these men—though they were probably the same sort of common thugs who went for Praetorian work—who had to stand out in this weather all day. “Do they report to Russia, then?”

“Not these men. Their master’s master’s master, maybe. And there will be many spies here.”

“Here, and everywhere else.”

“Yes.”

The line of cars advanced slowly; every driver had to stop and argue with the armed men. About half of them made an awkward three-point-turn and went back the way they came, looking grumpy through their windshields. Kemal already had a suitable stack of lira bills at hand. The rest of their funds were hidden in various places throughout the car. He would not tell her, but Nadia had an uncomfortable feeling that all those stacks of money represented a large percentage of the old man’s retirement funds. Prices were high, especially gas.

If it reunited their family—if it stopped all the deaths—then it would be worth it. Maybe. They might find a way to get him his money back in a way he would accept, if the five of them got together again. Anyway, after everything that had happened, she could not stand to do any less.

After another fifteen minutes—at one point they simply shut off the motor to save gas while an obstinate motorist harangued the men—their turn arrived. Kemal cranked down his window, letting in the bitter mountain air. “I am only passing through,” he said, keeping his hands on the steering wheel.

The man in charge was the only one wearing an actual military uniform, old fatigues with the flag patches taken off the shoulders, and an insulated vest over it, and a bright red beret. He snarled something back in a language that wasn’t anything like Turkish.

“I am sorry, but I do not speak Kurdish,” Kemal answered.

“Then what do you want in Kurdish land?” another man demanded, jabbing his AK in their direction.

“I am only passing through,” Kemal repeated. “My brother lives here, and he is in trouble. He has no money. I go to get him out.”

“And the girl?”

“My niece. I could not leave her home alone.”

The men held a brief muttered conference in Kurdish. The man in uniform turned back to ask another question, and stopped short when he saw the money in Kemal’s hand. He took it, counted, frowned, then shoved it in his pocket and waved at his men to search the car. They did so roughly and quickly, pawing at their various bags to check for the hard bulge of weapons. In the process they unearthed another stack of bills, which was confiscated. Kemal had carefully divided the money into small enough portions that the discovery of any single one would not be a terrible loss, or tempt the finder to continue searching.

“You will be out in three days,” the man in uniform told them, and waved them through. Kemal thanked him, rolled up the window, and drove on before he could change his mind.

The checkpoint did not seem to have been placed at a site of any real significance; the land behind it was mostly empty stretches of dry grass with mountains in the distance, the same as the land before. The temperature outside was barely above freezing. In the spring, she imagined, there would be sheep grazing those fields, and traffic would stop to let the flocks cross the roads.

They passed a brown cardboard sign, which Nadia squinted at but could not quite read in time. It had been done in marker, like the banner. “What did that say?”

“The same thing as the sign it replaced,” Kemal said, “but with the Kurdish names for all the places.” A few minutes later they came across another sign, and he slowed down enough for her to read it.

“Melezgir,” she read aloud. It wasn’t clear what the sign referred to; there were some pine trees, and a few small shacks, so she supposed they were coming up on some small town.

“Malazgirt, in Turkish,” Kemal added. “You have heard this name?”

“No. I have never been here before. Is it important?” It didn’t look it.

“This is where Turkey began. A thousand years ago, a great battle, your emperor and ours. He had a larger army, but ours won. Turkey was the prize. The Sultanate of Rum.”

“My emperor?” Nadia smiled. “I am Russian, not Greek, and I have never served any emperor.” Not one the rest of the world recognized, anyway.

“Not important,” Kemal said, slapping the steering wheel. “All began here. Your emperor called to the West for help, when he lost the battle. The Crusaders came. That was a longer fight, but we won it too. And the Turk is still here.” He sighed. “Or was.”

Nadia didn’t know what to say to that, and they kept driving in silence. The famous battlefield was now a small town like a dozen others they’d passed through already, and went by in less than a minute. Many of the houses by the road were small and shabby, but there was no sign of fighting, at least. No spiderwebbed windows or collapsed walls.

After “Melezgir” the signs pointed them on to “Panos,” where Kemal had arranged a place for them to stay. Every hotel was packed these days, and you couldn’t trust the other guests, but a friend had a cousin out here who could put them up for a couple of nights. Where they went from there was anyone’s guess. They were here to stop the violence, but the violence seemed to have already happened. The Democratic Confederation of Zîlan was something like a week old now, and controlled an area the size of Belgium. Mostly “control” meant they renamed everything and scolded people for speaking Turkish in public—or so it was said. It could get ugly very fast, but for now the region was quiet.

On and on they drove, and Nadia shifted in her seat to try and find a comfortable position. At least they were comfortable with silence now. Kemal wasn’t a sociable man, and the first day’s babbling had been simply painful. It was better when he said what he wanted to say, and then shut up, and they were both fine with it.

Now he braked the car, and pointed off to the left of the road ahead. “What is that?”

Nadia leaned forward and squinted. “I don’t see anything.”

“There was something. Little black dots, in the air, very low. Several of them.”

She looked again, shook her head. The sky here was enormous, bigger than the land, a pale pristine blue. “Sorry, still nothing.”

“They are gone.” He considered a moment, then shut off the engine, and cranked down his window again.

“Hey, it’s cold!”

“Shh! Listen, child!”

She pulled her jacket tighter, and obeyed. There was something, a distant rattling sound, and a few thumps, laid over a low, rhythmic noise. And, now that she was looking, a faint haze on the horizon, like dust rising into the sky. Dust, or smoke. “Oh, God. God, it’s happening right now. Go. Go now.” Kemal looked at her wide-eyed, uncomprehending. “I said go! We need to move!”

His only answer was to gesture vaguely up the road, and then back the way they had come, and then shrug helplessly: where was there to go? His right hand clenched the steering wheel; the left trembled violently.

“Come on, this is what we are here for. I can’t run that far, that fast. We need to get moving now.”

He still stared, as though he did not understand. A few mumbles came out of his mouth, but nothing more. Both hands lifted from the wheel now, to spread out expressively, taking in the whole horizon, then rise up as if in a plea to heaven: what are we to do with all this?

“Where is your jihad talk now? This is it, this is the moment. Don’t you see that? Those were ... oh, damn.” Back to the dictionary, ripping pages in her haste. “Helikopterler. You understand? I can stop them but I need to be closer.”

At last he found his voice, croaking out: “They will kill us!”

“No, they won’t. Ézarine will knock them out of the sky. Do you know what they are doing now?” She did. She had memories from their year in Syria. “Your friend’s cousin is going to die. Let me stop it.”

Kemal sat back, and put the car in park. “Why am I here?” he said, not looking at her.

“You are here to—“

He talked right over her. “My girl, she has a boy on the way, my grandson—and I am here! Why am I here, hadha sakhif, Allah yarhamuni—ah!” He jerked in his seat, clapped a hand over his shoulder where she’d punched it. “What do you do, you mad child?”

“You are being a coward. Qorqaq, you understand? Qorqaq!”

“You do not hit your elders, ungrateful girl! Shame on you! I take you all this way, I give my money—”

To hell with him. She wrenched her door open and took off running down the side of the road. The smoke was clear on the horizon now. She would take a half-hour to get there at least, and arrive exhausted and half-frozen, and the murderers would be long gone, and she would do no good. It would be no better than staying where she was. But she would not stay in that car.

Before she’d gone a hundred meters the engine roared behind her, and the car came rushing down the road again. She moved over to give it room, but kept jogging. Kemal pulled alongside her, stopped to crank down the passenger window. She kept running, leaving him behind again. Turkish curses erupted from the car before it lurched into motion once more, coming alongside her and keeping pace as best it could.

The old man leaned over to shout out the window. “Get in here! You will die of cold. This is no place for a little girl!”

“I know! That is!” She pointed down the road. Still running.

He rushed and swerved ahead of her, forcing her completely off the road. She merely turned again to go around him. There was plenty of open field to run in, nice hard ground. “Get in, you foolish brat!” She shook her head, kept going. He had to turn the car again to avoid running into her, put on more gas, swinging back and forth until he was once again between her and the road. “I will take you there! Just get in!”

She opened the door in triumph, sat down demurely, and cranked the window back up as he slammed his foot down on the accelerator. Kemal unleashed a steady stream of invective from the driver’s seat, cursing her and her descendants for multiple generations to come for a stubborn, crazy, selfish child. He was going to die and leave his family alone and it would be her fault.

There was a bit more in Arabic which she assumed was even worse, but she did not care, because they were going more than a hundred kilometers per hour in the correct direction. She pulled her wall up in her mind as they drove, piling it high. Frustration and rage were not hard feelings to conjure up at the moment.

Now she could hear the helicopters properly, and see them too, with the town they were destroying; in the time they wasted arguing they had worked their way down to the south end of Panos, and swung back for another pass, then north-to-south again, firing bursts from the guns in their noses. They could hear screams as well, and see black smoke pouring out of houses, trees smashed to splinters by rotary cannon fire. Kemal had given up cursing, and switched to pure Arabic, breathing fast, the sweat pouring off his forehead as he rattled off every prayer he knew. But they were still driving towards the town.

“I’m bringing her out now!” she shouted. The car was manual transmission. “Do you understand?” He nodded, braked for a second. There was a thump on the roof as something about heavy landed. “Go go go!” The tires squealed.

The choppers were old models from the seventies, used American surplus. Whatever electronics they had on board were not essential to fly them. They wobbled a bit when the halo washed over them, and that was all. “How many?” Kemal screamed the question, far louder than necessary to be heard.

“Five, I think? Maybe six?” It was hard to count with all the smoke in the air, and they did not hold still. The nearest swiveled in their direction, trying to bring its gun to bear. The car’s suspension creaked from an abrupt decrease in load, and something shining white appeared on the gunship’s tail, right next to the rotor. It went into a wild spin at once, and its nose dipped, clipping its main blades against a rooftop. Ézarine leapt free, landing easily on the roof and peering down to watch it smash to bits in the street.

Kemal shouted his satisfaction from the driver’s seat, hammering the horn with his fist. They were still getting closer to the town; Nadia put a hand on his shoulder, and told him to stop the car. The streets of the town might be impassible, and she did not want to be trapped, or lose sight of the enemy behind buildings.

Another pilot peeled away from the slaughter to avenge his friend, firing rockets from his stubby wings. Was he an idiot, or simply panicked? Either way, the streaks of fire veered completely off-course, one detonating in the street, the other blowing up a strand of trees. Ézarine flickered in front of his craft and let out a shout, shattering the windscreen, then vanished again before the clumsy thing could hit her with its blades as it fell. Two down.

At least one other gunship was out of halo range, and turned to run away back north at maximum speed, putting on a little altitude for good measure. Two others were not, and far too angry to act so sensibly. One turned and lifted its chin to try and hose down Ézarine with its gun; she popped right into the cockpit to hammer the pilot with punches, breaking free as soon as the vehicle had spun too far out of control to recover. The last helicopter simply doubled down, unloading its whole armament into the town willy-nilly to do as much damage as possible before its pilot and gunner died. Ézarine moved to the inside of the craft, into the very center, and let out a single short scream. It was enough. Fifty feet of metal came crashing down into a line of townhouses, and Panos fell silent at last.

Nadia waited a moment, to see if anything else came. Nothing did. The skies were clear. She let Ézarine go, flopped back in her seat, and shut her eyes. She couldn’t really see through her familiar’s eyes; all she got was a very rough sense of where Ézarine was and what was around her. So she didn’t know what Panos looked like now. She preferred to keep it that way.

From the driver’s seat, Kemal groaned. She heard a gentle thump, and a tiny squeak from the horn, as he leaned forward to slump over the wheel. Then, for a long time, he said nothing, and neither did she. Nothing to say. They could be comfortable in silence now. As comfortable as you could be, at a time like this.

At last he groaned again, and straightened up. “That was the Turkish army,” he said. “Yes?”

“I think so. The Kurds control this town. We just passed the checkpoint, didn’t we?”

He ignored the question. “They were not fighting anyone. Nobody shot back. I saw no attacks on the helicopters.”

“I didn’t either.” The militia at the checkpoint had been a bunch of men with rifles, only one in a uniform. Possibly somebody in the town had got off a shot with a portable launcher, but she hadn’t seen it. Whatever had been defending Panos, if anything, it hadn’t been effective.

“So … they were …”

“We don’t know who they were. They might not have been obeying the main army anymore. Or they might have been Russians, making trouble.” In multiple Turkish army helicopters? She didn’t believe that herself. The Russians didn’t need to stir up this region any more. The likeliest explanation was that some number of angry Turkish soldiers, seeing the horrible Kurds try to break away with a piece of their country, had decided to send a message. Or else this was just the first step on the road to removing the Kurds from the picture entirely.

Ethnic cleansing. What a bland phrase.

Kemal had already moved on to another subject. “I am a coward,” he reflected mournfully, still half-lying on the steering wheel. “I allowed them to die.”

“No. You were frightened. But you kept driving.”

“I needed a child, a girl, to tell me what must be done! What man does that?”

A fifty-seven-year-old retired harbormaster with a grandchild on the way. A man who had never been part of anything more violent than breaking up fights between angry stevedores. A man who thought that, because he was a man, he knew more about war than she did, and had just found out he was wrong. Well, if he wanted to beat himself up for it now, that was his problem. She didn't have the energy to coddle him further.

“Let’s go,” was all she said in reply. “Your friend’s cousin. We need to check on him.”