spirit of common struggle. Unless they handled it properly, this kind of rage would be the death of them.
Jamil turned the corner to Munir Murad’s house, and in his mind saw Midhat on the floor, holding a letter. He saw his cousin’s devastated stare. He felt the return of that ancient fundamental love that had shoved up inside him and turned his own eyes wet with surprise. Munir opened the door.
“Ta‘al,” called Basil from another room.
On the dining table lay a flaccid canvas bag with leather straps and a small wooden box lashed to two cylinders with copper wire.
“I didn’t pack it yet,” said Basil.
Jamil raised the bomb with both his hands. An expert from Damascus had helped them assemble it in the cinema last week with supplies smuggled in on the back of a vegetable cart. Basil held up the flap of the bag, and Jamil slid the box inside and levered the bag onto his back. Though it would not explode until the fuse was lit, at the weight his stomach lifted with apprehension. Basil passed over a rifle and a cloth bag of ammunition.
“You collected these in daylight?” Jamil checked the chamber and slipped in three bullets.
“They’ve all gone to the mountains,” said Basil. “Honestly, if we weren’t needed—I’d say we should take the Sports Club.”
“Munir, are you coming?”
“Next time, boys. Next time.”
They reached Zawata in half an hour. On the parched street, four fighters ran to catch up, wishing them peace. Two were young and beardless. One slim older man carried only a stick. After the greetings, no one spoke. The pale rumble of machine guns echoed from the distance, where a grey balloon of smoke was rising.
“I’ll take the bag for a while,” said Basil, and the younger heads turned. “Don’t wait for us.”
By the time Basil was digging his thumbs under the straps and their boots were thudding softly again on the dirt road, those four figures had shrunk where the road twisted to the main square of the village, halfway to the hillside of the battle. Two warriors vaulted past on whinnying horses, and as the hooves contracted into silence the gunfire thickened. At the edge of the village, peasant women were filling jars from a well. Three bowed and joined them, jugs sloshing on their shoulders, and they travelled the road in a silent line between the villages, and the shallow basin that preceded the wadi, stepping ably over the rocks. The rumble resolved into shots and human shouts. They held their rifles and began the climb.
Partway up, Basil slipped and gasped, seizing at a bush. Jamil lunged for his arm, careful not to touch the pack, heart high in his neck, and as Basil found his footing there was a racket of displaced branches ahead. A man in Turkish uniform complete with medals skidded down towards them. His arms flew up and a woman cried, “Ya Allah!” Blood was flowing down his face: his ear had been blown off. They swung apart to let him by. Guns snapped from the other side of the hill.
They had reached the summit. Prone rebels shielded by boulders were firing down the steep valley wall; some were throwing rocks. Jamil dived for shelter into a small ditch fringed with bushes, and pressed his face low to the earth to see.
Beneath the veils of gun smoke, some ten metres below, the convoy was stopped in the valley behind a roadblock of stones. The Lewis gun mounted in the foremost car was silent, presumably out of ammunition—or perhaps the gunman was down; but the car windows were alternating fire up at them. Behind three military vehicles stood the few civilian cars under their protection, but the rear of the convoy wound out of sight where the valley turned. Beneath Jamil’s courage, fear glowed. He broke the dry spray of a bush with his hands to make room for his body, and shifted his gun into the cleft beneath a boulder at the top of the ditch. He aimed at the windows of the second car. He worked the bolt back and forth, fired. Worked the bolt, fired. He had no idea if his shots were landing. There was a scream from further off. Someone ran past his left and a rock hurtled down onto one of the car roofs. The man fled the return fire, and stumbled, bellowing in sudden pain.
Jamil refilled his chamber and aimed at another window. On the opposite side of the valley, the