Resistance

“Resistance is … oh, to hell with it. To hell with my little joke,” I mutter to myself as I send another retort of gunfire into the night, “Not much of a joke anyway, just an old movie quote.”As the echo of gunfire leaves my ears the night became day and the inside of my nose burns with the smell of sulfur. I stand here alone, staring at the large piece of machinery that according to the US Army was worth more than my life. “I don’t know the reason I’m here anymore. Life, war, politics, it all just seems so meaningless; for me to be standing here at night shooting at phantoms on the horizon.”

I heave a slow sigh as I slid down the dirt wall of the dugout, coming to rest on a busted sandbag. I pulled a crumpled package of cigarettes out of my breast pocket; my left hand flips open my father’s worn old Zippo that was the only thing reminding me of my former life before I came to this foreign land. For a moment, my dog tags gleam in the light of the fire until the only light left was the soft glow of the cigarette. “I never smoked back in the states because the tax was too high, but here they’re so cheap it’s easy to pick up a bad habit. Mom would’ve absolutely hated knowing that I had started smoking.”

Finally, I lean back against the dirt behind me and blew smoke into the cool dry air. I gaze up at the stars. My fingers flick open and closed the worn lighter as I sit in the dark, making a snicking sound every few seconds. There’s no light pollution here like there was back at home; I can actually see all the stars clearly. Every time I look up it is like seeing the night sky for the first time, there are so many stars that it’s a wonder we even try to name them at all. “Cancer …Cassiopeia … Andromeda …,” I say to myself as I rub the spent butt into the loose sand that had spilled from the bag I am sitting on, “I remember sitting in the back of my astronomy class in college, Mr. Elbert would talk endlessly in the dark as we stared into the star filled ceiling. I didn’t think that I paid much attention in that class, but for some reason I can still hear his monotone voice echoing in that domed room.”

It wasn’t until I was sitting in this hole that I truly gazed into the night sky for the first time; I remember that all I could think about was how insignificant the stars made me feel. They twinkle and swirl around us like dust and stand testament to time beyond our imagining, while we spend our lives fighting over a dry piece of dirt. I see on the horizon a flash and in a moment I hear the echo of the explosion as it washes over the land. There was a pause, like a respectful silence, before the clapping of gunfire picked up again.

“Times moves on, but this little snow ball keeps rolling through hell, picking up new momentum. It’s the gift that keeps on giving,” I say in a whisper followed by a humorless laugh that sounded more like a cough. Hopefully it wasn’t a cough. “Who knew that our little war would in the end catalyze the world? First it was the Middle East with Iran, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey … then Egypt and into North Africa. Then into India and south-east Asia … China … Russia …Germany …” I felt compelled to stand up, like I was looking for something I had lost, I realized it was nothing and sat back down. I flicked open my lighter and stared into the flame, “the whole world caught on fire after London was partially leveled by North Korea. A dictator’s legacy, I suppose. What were we left to do? The world has always looked to us as some kind of equalizer, but we are no different; we all die just the same.”

I stood up from my make-shift seat and looked south were the moon was peeking over the dunes sending long shadows tumbling down the hills. Watching the periodic gunfire always reminds me of fireworks, they held a kind of terrible beauty. “’You’re not supposed to play with fireworks,’ you always told me. Mom always said that kind of stuff as we shot off bottle rockets in the country side. What would you say to me now?” I ask the cold air not expecting an answer, but I have a pretty good idea of what she would say, “War is no place for a young man like you. You’re supposed to be in college so you can start working for your father’s firm.” Well, that would have happened if dad hadn’t passed away two years after you died. I was just a lone kid who had dropped out of college. I had no obligations. I had no excuses. I was prime pickings.

“Draft,” I whisper the single word under my breath. The sound it makes is reminiscent of the last wheeze of a dying man. I wonder how a single word could be responsible for ending so many young lives—that steals them away and throws them into this death trap. Into a war that seals them away in this vast sandy tomb. I remember being back in college and joking with my friends that after Vietnam the draft would never come back. We were so sure of that, just like we were sure of so many other things. Now believing in anything is hard, I don’t know if I will ever find something to believe in again.

For a moment, a cutting wind blew across the desert basin lifting low clouds of dust, sand, and radioactive particles. You could sense the pause in the firefight as all parties held little blue masks over their mouth and nose. As soldiers, we are supposed to have them on at all times. It’s regulation, but they were too irritating to wear all the time. It was the dust that killed people here more than bullets. If you breathe in too much you contract lung cancer. That was too risky of a ticket home for most, so we hold those little blue masks to our faces every time the wind blew hard enough to pick anything up. Of course, it was killing us all anyway little by little.

The American government tried not to get too involved at first. We sent troops under the guise of restoring the peace – what little there was anyways. But that was all before Israel became a giant Golgotha. It was the fallout from the nuclear explosions that laced all the sand and dust east of the Jordan River with radiation and makes me wear this stupid mask. The devastation that fell on the Middle East was just one of the consequences. After Israel was wiped off the map all bets were off. It was like Pearl Harbor all over, the very next day we entered the war.

It wasn’t until later that we found out why we had so many aid troops. Too many years and too many lives later, but, as I’ve always been told, it doesn’t do any good to ask why you chose to cross a desert when you’re standing in the middle. Plus, it’s bad manners to talk politics or history here. There are too many mixed feelings here, too many restless souls looking for a way out.

I look at my surroundings and wonder to myself if I am one of those souls who are trying desperately to find their way out. I remember when I was just a freshman in college reading in the newspaper about what was happening in the world. It was everywhere. I could not go a day without seeing it on the televisions across campus or in the cafeteria. I remember hear about all the things that would one day affect me, thinking that it was a world apart. I made the mistake – we all made the mistake – of forgetting how small the world is. None of us knew that we were already more connected than could be said.

There is a story behind everything and to everything their own. This particular story just took a while to find its way out. We started to find out what had been really happening when a series of “undocumented” agreements were leaked. They were made years ago and were not in our favor anymore. In fact those agreements were starting to bite us in the ass. So what we did was start a little war, pitting one side against the other, so that when the dust settled we could go in, pick up the pieces, and be the heroes. We began sending in “peace-keeping” troops to protect our assets and hedge our bets rather than doing anything to stop the war that was rapidly becoming more unstable.

This war went on every so often a new country would join into the fray, sparking another join in opposition. They did it in some vain idea of fairness even though nothing is ever fair about war. Nothing. Given the few years in the meantime and this has become as much as a world war as any before, and for what? No one knows anymore, the whole world has collective amnesia. All anyone knows is that they have lost too much to simply walk away.

Finally the wind died down, and as the dust settled both sided resumed the meaningless gunfire. I left the one side of my mask hooked around one ear and let it dangle down on one side. I stood up to take a look at the moon again; it had risen a little higher than the horizon now, magnifying the contrast between the light and the dark. “We live in a vicious cycle. We’ve lost too much to leave, but the longer we stay the more we lose. Each day fueling the next, we are running in circles but we have no landmarks anymore to realize that.” I sat back down, leaning against the wall, to stare up at the stars once more. As the moon rose higher it became harder for me to see the stars but I still watched. “Time moves only one way,” I said at last, “resistance is futile …” This time I couldn’t help but laugh.