A Bone to Pick (Amirah al-Qitaal)

Written from a rebel fighter's perspective, this is an introduction to my favourite character, Commander Amirah al-Qitaal.

Covered in dirt, driving a dirt-covered truck, she skidded to a stop & opened the door, stepped out with one dirt-covered boot, and by the time the other hit the ground, commanded the full attention of everyone on the base.

"We move in 20 minutes. Be ready by the time I return,“ she addressed everyone quietly. Despite the soft tone of her voice, they listened. Shops began to close, families went back into their houses, and 30 men suddenly disappeared from the street.

I'd been following my brother around since yesterday morning. He was showing me how things went here, introducing me to people, and telling me what to do and when. But he hadn’t said anything about her.

He lead me to a back alley, a shortcut away from another path in the glaring sun. I walked beside him, inquiring the identity of that rather terrifying female we had seen earlier. He ignored me at first, but our father had always said that persistence was my worst, yet most defining characteristic.

I’ll tell you if it’ll get you to shut up……. Well, nobody knows her name. She says we don’t need to. Don’t know how she got here or when or why. The guys who’ve been here longer than I have say that once, she sat in a hollowed-out wreck of a car beside a highway near the southern area of the province. Supposedly, there was a ceasefire agreement, but the locals were still complaining of horrible mistreatment by government loyalists still in power. So she literally sat there for 3 days with the Remington she bought off the black market and waited for the convoys to drive by. Since they believed the locals had been subdued and beaten into submission, they didn’t bother transporting tanks or even heavily armed trucks to the town. She waited, then picked them off one by one. Those who clambered out of the passengers’ seats and surrendered like the cowards they were; she let them live. Well… most of them.

She’s fair, compassionate, honest, and kind, just like you’d think a girl would be. However, let me tell you, when she kills….. She usually does it quickly, quietly. Says there’s no honor in prolonging a conflict. She knows a conscripted soldier when she sees one and usually she has mercy. But there are some men…. some men she has a bone to pick with. I don’t know how she gets their names or what they look like. God, I don’t want to. But even if it looks like we’re going to win, she will get in a truck and drive just beyond the perimeter of the battlefield to find her targets. Then……

My brother pauses, taking a deeper breath.

….. she rids the earth of them. What she does…. it’s… it’s…. it’s awful… I….

I’m getting impatient with him again. How do you know what she does is so bad?

He blinks heavily, staring somewhere past my shoulder and into the vast desert behind me.

I’m the one who picks up the bodies.