Always Standing Steady

Before Everything

021034BJUN12: June 2, 2012. 1034. Deir ez-Zor, Syria.

The thing about being the first woman in special forces is that I might as well have not existed at all. And being the leader of my team, forget about it. The day I lost my legs, my team was sent to Syria to hunt down the terrorist cell responsible for the attack on a Catholic school in Montgomery, Alabama. We had been flown in to DC from where we had been for leave then out to Syria. We flew in uniform like always and, like always, few people used any restraint. People on my flight had thanked me for my service, volunteered to pray for me, and expressed their gratitude that I was going after the cell responsible for the bombing--not in those words exactly. The thing about civilians is that their talent for racial slurs is only rivaled by their ability to generalize. As it turned out, my team shared this talent.

We started by ransacking the refugee camp where the cell had been traced to. As the woman on the team, I was in hijab and I searched the women's quarters. I was also the only one who knew Arabic, so I actually talked to the refugees and calmed down those who were afraid that we were there for them. We weren't, not that my team seemed to know that. One woman caught my sleeve as I past her. She explained that her daughter was at school. The school was beyond the the safe zone that my team and other soldiers had set up; they would not let her pass. She waved a hand embroidered hijab, one she made for her daughter's birthday. Purple was her favorite color. She asked me to go out to the school to make sure that her daughter was okay; she pressed the woven hijab into my hand.

When I returned to relay this to my team, they did not want to hear any part of it. The mission was to find the cell and handle them. The thing was that there was no sign of them; it seemed that our superiors had been wrong. I ordered my team to not do anything stupid until I get back--not that they were likely to listen to me--and set out to find the school. This was my job, I had reasoned. Four years in the military had taught me that I was not protecting my own freedom. I was merely an extension of the righteousness that American politicians got elected on. Taking out terrorists gave me no pleasure. The reason I was still in the game was because the men on my team were not about to storm brothels where teenage girls were being held hostage; they would not care about the women stuck in the ruins of cities, unable to free themselves from the rubble; they gave no thought to shooters entering girls' schools because those men did not believe women had the right to an education. Special forces had taught me that I was not here because I cared about the whims of men on capitol hill; I was here because terrorists do not get to reduce girls to nothing because they think they own us.

I saw why the soldiers had set up a barrier where they did, bombs that did not detonate littered the area. As if by a miracle from God did the one room school house still stand. I crept around the bombs; there was no way that the girls could have gotten to the camp. It was miraculous that I got around them in the first place. These were JDAMs--run of the mill bombs. I hadn't looked at them too closely then, but I would. The thing about war is that everyone likes to take credit; everyone labels their bombs.

I will never forget the faces that peered out at me. I banged on the door, explaining in slow Arabic that I was not there to hurt them, that I had been sent to lead them to the refugee camp. They opened the door and peered out at me. Fifty or so girls were all packed into the single room, they clung to each other, some prayed, others did not. I held up the hijab wrapped around my fist.

"Your mother made this for you," I told no girl in particular.

The woman's daughter ran to me; she spoke so fast that I could barely understand what she was saying. She told me how the soldiers had skipped over the school during the sweep, how no one would give them rations because they were girls; the relief workers had only ordered them to return with their father or brother. She cried for the mother that she had thought to be dead.