A sideways look, beyond the window. Somar speaks slowly, with the certain words and cadences of those he has seen. He is a survivor, the only one of the 21 men of his platoon.
Everything happens in an infamous night a few months ago, halfway between Homs and Palmyra. These are the days when the Western news rebounds news from Palmyra, horrifying behind a display.
For 6 days, the deliveries are systematically destroyed along with aircraft and crews and the whole Somar department is fed with snakes and other desert animals. A tremendous moment for the Syrian Army.
Absolute darkness among the tents of soldiers set up near a broken-down T55, blocked for days by a breakdown and now silted up. One, two, three ... For the Isis snipers, the sentinels and all the comrades of Somar are an easy target. Some are chilled in their sleep. A massacre without escape.
When the slaughter begins, Somar tries to rescue the nearest of his affected comrades. Nothing to do, is hit first in the chest (the doctors will extract a stroke to 2 centimeters from the heart), then the left foot. The assailants have luminous intensification viewers and optics. Who considers Isis a band of brigands, is out of the way. Weapons and equipment come from afar and some know how to use them.
Syrian 21 fires shots of AK in the dark. The acute sound is lost in the intense emptiness of sand and dust. For Somar the clash closes with a bullet through the head between the front and the left eye.
Look out again. He touched the end with both hands and the track remained in his voice. He says that he fell in the dark and thought about his wife and three children. He cries inside without being moved.
When everything seems finished, rescue from heaven arrives. A plane unhooks heavy around their position to protect them. But it's a blind launch. Blind like the darkness around. In the darkness, the short flashes of explosions and sparks go off in the gray mounds that rise at random. Streams of yellow and pink light look like traces of a friend nightmare.
6 hours pass before the day arrives and earthly aid arrives with the clear light of the desert. Of the companions of Somar, extinguished one by one like candles in the wind, nobody remains.
Somar says he regained consciousness in the hospital. It took 8 months to leave the bed, surrounded by the affection of his wife and three children. Somar is not twenty years old, he has 35. 14 was released years before the three-year leverage ended. And he could have stayed at home with his family if someone had not allowed killer animals to approach a few miles from his family. Volunteer, blind to one eye and limping, admits without hesitation that he would immediately make the choice because "the family of a man is also his own country, his land".
You never stop learning from this people. Like Somar, there are thousands of them, unknown, lost, who knows where, less fortunate. He says that in the future, once Syria is pacified, it will not take vengeance on the killing beasts of ISIS. His Arab traits, raped by horror, reveal a good heart.
He is not a Somar hero, but an honest family man who defended something, probably everything he had and still has. It would resume a rifle just to defend Syria. As he looks out with his lopsided face, he seems to think about it and still convince himself. There Suriia as the Arabs say, it is a refrain that always comes back. An ancient name, stainless in the heart of simple and anonymous men, but with great feelings. He smiles for the first time and almost thinks about it, he says that the rifle would still take him to help the Russians, the only ones who help his Syrian brothers. He smiles again and starts looking out.
Who knows what he thinks, who knows what comes back to his mind ... Stuff of men. Stuff of soldiers and people for good ...
(photo: Andrea Cucco)
