Scattered showers of shells fell on the outskirts of the town but government forces largely bypassed us at the start. My curate said We really ought to leave. I told him go if he wanted. I declared my church a refuge for all. Mass would be said daily and devotions would be at the usual time each evening. I hurled my sliotar up against the transept wall for thirty minutes after devotions without fail. Government forces woke fully to our town, realized we had become a stronghold, a hotbed, an enclave. Short warning was given, a helicopter gunship on a reconnaissance flight above us was shot at by hotheads and that was all that was needed. The gunship retraced its earlier route, lower, its nose angled more steeply down as though the machine itself was peering, searching. Again the rebels fired on it and on its third looping sortie it was spitting death. The olive plantation lorries that had returned two days previously were rolled to the town square and ancient-looking mortar cannons were taken from beneath the tarpaulin on their flatbeds and embedded in the hard ground. Three-man mortar teams were assembled. Coordinates were hastily applied, and the rebels began a vaguely aimed pounding of guessed-at government positions.
My curate begged me to stay inside, to join him as he sat worrying his rosary beads against the stoutest column in the nave, beneath the sturdiest centre arch. Let them come, I roared, and swung my hurley as fiercely as my muscles would allow, and sweated in the still dry heat. People carried children and belongings through my church’s door and camped beneath sheets between pews shoved back to back. I asked nothing of anyone. Government troops laid light siege at first, tightening inwards slowly with the days. The rebels held the centre.
They came in ragged battle dress through our gate three days ago, six of them, in two rows. Halim was left half-forward. There were Christians and Muslims and agnostics at shelter from the storm of fire in the coolness of the inside of my church. The big lad at full-forward swung his arm back and caught Halim by the front of his jersey and dragged him forward and out to the front. Halim looked at the ground before him and up at me and around at his cowering homeless neighbours and he pointed up at Our Lord, a long finger unfurled from a shaking hand. His other hand gripped the wooden stock of an automatic rifle. Leave this place, he roared, and the suddenness and the pitch of it startled me. I wasn’t sure in my shock was he addressing Christ or me. Leave this place, FATHER, and he didn’t look at me but he spat the word. His comrades stood behind and before me; I was shoved in the back and shoved from the front until my knees weakened and I was suddenly kneeling. A rifle-butt struck the floor before me. Your saviour-on-a-stick won’t help you if you’re still here tomorrow, a voice not Halim’s said. And Our Lord on His Cross was taken from above my altar and smashed and splintered across the flagstones. As they left I saw Halim stop beside the holy-water font. I saw him see his gift and the words along it and he looked back at me and his face had a shadow across it not made by the sun. And then he was gone.
They came again the next day, and this time there were no words spoken to me. Four of them had their rifles slung across their backs while two of them flanked and pointed, swinging their barrels around in slow, threatening arcs. I recognized one of them as one of our earliest hurlers, a friend of Halim’s, a happy, smiling fellow who had always worn an Arsenal jersey and asked me once could I tell him the best way to become a doctor. How swiftly men are robbed of light. The four scanned the refugees on the floor of my church and grabbed a man each and dragged their prisoners crying away. I stood in the doorway, my brave curate to my right, and he was shot in the chest and the round made a hole in him through which I could briefly see the sixth station of the cross on the far wall and the word KINDNESS carved below it and the butt of a rifle sent stars and sky reeling down around my head.
I rose from the floor a short while ago and saw my church was empty of living people, abandoned belongings scattered and streeled. I walked slowly across the courtyard to the gate and looked through my half-open eyes along the street. The Orthodox priest who kissed me and embraced me one time not so long ago and called me Brother and umpired a long puck competition or two is sprawled on the path before his church, a billow of black smoke behind him, a halo of blood around his head, dancing flames reflected in his open unseeing eyes. Icons have been arranged around him in a circle and set alight, accidentally almost heart-shaped. Accidentally I think, anyway. It’s hard to know now. Probably it always was. I just never knew before how hard it is to really and truly know anything.
I’m settled now in the nave, in the seat left empty by my curate who lies still where he fell, and I see through the porch and the open door that they’re back, and all I have as weapon against them is this hurley, with the words Halim Assam, All-Syria Long Puck Champion 2012 inscribed along the perfect shaft of it in beautiful calligraphy.
Losers Weepers
THE WORLD IS FILLED with unwelcome words. Insolvent. Bankrupt. Unfriended. Someone did that to my daughter yesterday, and she’s been pale and silent ever since. All I could do was say Don’t worry, love, my love, don’t cry. He couldn’t have been your real friend to start with. And she sobbed and nodded and tried to hide her pain behind her laptop screen.
There’s a shadow moving slowly outside in the orange arc-sodium light. Up and down the cul-de-sac. A neighbour who’s lost her engagement ring. It’s worth seven grand. I know because she told me in a desperate whisper as I helped her search for it earlier. Oh, God, I know, it’s only a ring, she kept saying, it’s only a ring. Her husband’s working in Canada.
Unfriended. It’s not even a proper verb, only an ugly confection of a word to describe the deletion of a thing that never really existed. Amber looked at me as she told me about it through eyes ringed with livid red and she was a child again. I wanted to run to the place where the unfriender lived and kick down his door and choke the life from his miserable teenaged body. But all I could do was say Don’t worry, love, please don’t cry.
My neighbour couldn’t say the words for a while. She was careful with them. She didn’t want to cry in front of me, this stranger she’d been living not thirty yards from for at least four years. My … engagement … ring. I’d been meaning to get it reduced. I was walking, just up and down the cul-de-sac, with the buggy. Trying to get my little man off to sleep. He’s a pure little crank, so he is. It must have just … slipped off. I’d never have left the house without it. And she placed a long and delicate-looking hand across her mouth and squeezed her eyes closed for a second or two, a flimsy barricade hastily thrown up against a procession of tears. How can I not find it? How can it not be here? How did I not feel it slipping off? And she looked accusingly at another unaware neighbour, driving slowly towards home. I never saw so many fucking cars around here, she said, and looked suddenly shocked at herself. Oh, no, I just meant … you know. I know, I said, and smiled at her and looked quickly back at the ground.