FORTY
The Syrian Army base at Quteife was little more than a few wooden buildings and rows of several dozen tents. There were two twenty-foot-tall watchtowers, one facing northeast and the other southwest. The perimeter was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence strung from ten-foot-high posts. The base had been erected eleven months before, after Kurdish troops from the Bekaa Valley had constantly attacked Quteife for supplies. Since then, the Kurds had stayed away from the large village.
The twenty-nine-year-old communications officer, Captain Hamid Moutamin, knew that the raids and then the peace were intentional. When Commander Siriner had decided where he was going to set up his own base in the Bekaa, he'd wanted the Syrians to establish a small military presence close by. Access to the Syrian military was an important part of Siriner's plans. Once the base at Quteife had been built, Captain Moutamin had used his ten years of exemplary military service to get himself transferred there. That too was important to Commander Siriner's plan. When both goals had been accomplished, Commander Siriner had gone ahead and estabilished his own base in the Bekaa.
Moutamin was not a Kurd. That was his strength. His father had been a traveling dentist who serviced many Kurdish villages. Hamid was his only son, and after school or on vacations he often accompanied his father on short journeys. Late one night, when Hamid was fourteen, their car was stopped by Syrian Army troops outside of Raqqa, in the north. The four soldiers took the gold his father used for fillings, as well as his tobacco pouch and wedding band, and sent them on their way. Hamid wanted to resist, but his father wouldn't let him. A short while later the elder Moutamin pulled the car over. There, on the deserted road, under a bright moon, he suffered a heart attack and died. Hamid returned to the home of one of his father's Kurdish patients, an elderly printer named Jalal. He telephoned his mother and an uncle came to get him. The funeral was one of sadness and rage.
Hamid was forced to leave school and go to work to support his mother and sister. He worked at a radio factory on an assembly line where he had time to think. He nursed his hatred of the Syrian military. He continued to visit Jalal, who, after two years, cautiously introduced him to other young people who had had run-ins with the Syrian military. All of them were Kurds. As they exchanged stories of robbery, murder, and torture, Hamid came to believe that it was not just the army but the entire government that was foul. They had to be stopped. One of Jalal's friends introduced him to a young visiting Turk, Kayahan Siriner. He was determined to create a new nation in the region where Kurds and other oppressed people would live in freedom and peace. Hamid asked how he could help. Siriner told him that the best way to weaken any entity was from within. He asked Hamid to become what he detested. He was to join the Syrian military. Because of his experience on the assembly line, Hamid was assigned to the communications corps.
For just over ten years Hamid served his Syrian commanders with seeming loyalty and enthusiasm. Yet during that time he secretly communicated troop movements to Syrian Kurds. His information would help them to avoid confrontations, steal supplies, or ambush patrols.
Now he had been given his most important assignment. He was to inform the base commander that by chance he'd intercepted a message from a Turkish Kurd. The man was alone, on the eastern side of the Anti-Lebanon range. He was a quarter mile west of the village of Zebdani, just within the Syrian border. Apparently, said Hamid, the man had been based there for quite some time and was reporting on Syrian troop movements. Hamid provided the base commander with the infiltrator's exact location.
The commander smiled. No doubt he saw a promotion for himself to a more prestigious base if he could find and break a Kurd spying for the Turks. He dispatched a unit, twelve men in three jeeps, with orders to surround and take the prisoner.
Hamid smiled inside. Then he took a break and made sure the motorcycle he intended to take was fueled up.
FORTY-ONE
Mahmoud was gently nudged awake after having slept for over two hours. He opened his eyes and squinted into a dark face framed by a cerulean sky.
"The soldiers are near," said Majeed Ghaderi. "They are coming, just as Hamid said they would."
"Allah be praised," Mahmoud replied. He took a moment to stretch on his grassy bed, then climbed to his feet. He wasn't rested, but the nap had been enough to take the edge off his exhaustion. Retrieving his canteen, he turned his face up and spilled water on his eyes. He rubbed it in vigorously and looked at Majeed.
Majeed was Walid's cousin and had been his devoted aide. He had been instructed not to wake Mahmoud until it was almost time to attack. The teenager had been quiet during the ride through the mountain pass, and his eyes were still red from crying for his dead cousin. But now that the moment was at hand, there was strength in those eyes and eagerness in his voice. Mahmoud was proud of the boy.
"Let's go," said Mahmoud.
Mahmoud followed Majeed. They crossed ruts cut by melting snows and backed carefully around large boulders to the PKK position.
There were fourteen Kurdish sharpshooters deployed in the low peaks. A radio had been placed beside a rock below. A campfire had been built and snuffed. The Syrians would spot those. Then, following regulations, they would leave their Jeeps and crouch behind them. They would set up a covering fire, and one soldier would walk ahead to examine the site. And they would find themselves in a lethal cross fire from fifty feet above. The Syrians covering the peaks would be taken out first. By the time the others shifted their fire to above, they would be dead. As many of the Syrians as possible would be shot in the head. Hopefully, their uniforms would not be stained with blood. The Kurds needed ten of them.
Mahmoud joined the others. They watched as the Jeeps moved in. They raised their weapons. They waited until the soldiers had climbed out and taken their positions. When Mahmoud nodded, they raised their rifles. When he nodded a second time, they fired.
Many of the Kurds on the cliff hunted wild turkey, boar, and rabbit to feed their families. And because bullets were scarce, all of them were accustomed to hitting their targets on the first shot. The first volley involved ten Kurds firing at the soldiers closest to the foothills, including the soldier who had gone to examine the campsite. Nine of the Syrians died instantly. A tenth was wearing a helmet. He took two shots to the throat before he went down. The remaining Syrians looked up. They froze for the moment it took them to spot the gunmen. In that moment the remaining Kurds opened fire. The rest of the Syrians went down.
Pistol drawn, Mahmoud led a contingent of Kurds down the hill. All of the Syrians were dead. Mahmoud waved to the others in the foothills, and they hurried down. Ten bodies were stripped, and then all of the dead were piled into one Jeep. Dressed as Syrian Army regulars, ten of the Kurds climbed into the remaining two Jeeps. As the rest of the team covered up all signs of the encounter, Mahmoud brushed dirt from his colonel's stripes and led his team through the arid plain.
Because Turkey and Syria had both closed their borders to tourists and travelers, the M1 highway was relatively deserted. Upon reaching the modern road, Mahmoud and his party of nine turned south for the twenty-five-minute ride to Damascus and the end of over eighty years of suffering.