The Perfection Of War
Part 2: The Crossing
This article follows Part 1: Snowfall in Anatolia
The Crossing
After a few weeks, I passed the baton. Someone else came to assume command.
We had set up three camps: Uzumlu, Çukurca, and Şemdinli.
I boarded a Chinook helicopter with a few British special forces; they were heading toward Şemdinli, closer to the Iraqi border.
I had met the crew before. They loved working here, less red tape, something real to be proud of. They were grateful to help.
The crew chief left the cargo door open and winked, inviting me to join him.
We sat with our legs hanging, watching the mountains roll beneath us.
Above all, they loved to fly, and they loved to share that freedom.
They dropped me near the camp where my friend Hervé had been stationed for some time. He had already found a guide for me.
Nothing official. No papers. No visa.
Just a teenage guide with a turban and a semiautomatic pistol he carried in his hand. He didn’t speak English.
We walked in silence, stepping between green canisters dropped by planes, landmines, hundreds of them.
He walked casually, the pistol swinging, the black hole of its barrel winking at me every few steps.
I had no idea what I would find on the other side, hopefully not Iraqi soldiers.
The plan, if there was one, was to reach Erbil, then Kirkuk, Sulaymaniyah, and the Iranian border, and make a better assessment of the situation.
First Meeting
By evening, we reached a small tent where a few men offered tea. They had no food themselves. Gunfire echoed through the night, and now and then tracer rounds looked like shooting stars across the sky.
Everywhere, the hospitals were full.
Patients on the floor, in hallways, in courtyards.
Flies thick on open wounds.
Some bodies already cold.
Doctors worked without gloves, IV lines dangling from nails in the wall.
No one spoke of rest. There was no space to think of such things.
I had little to offer, but I checked where the needs were greatest, where it might be possible to open a base for civilian support.
I made contacts, took notes, and prepared what would come next.
From that work, several missions were born.
Fear
The body knows what the mind refuses to hear.
Fear had a bitter taste at the back of the mouth.
Courage to face it smelled like acrid sweat. That scent clung to my clothes, to my breath.
For days I was sick with diarrhea, unsure if it came from bad water or my own nerves, a way to discharge the toxicity of fear.
I never walked so carefully in my life, stepping rock to rock, avoiding the patches of green grass.
The adult version of hopscotch, with higher stakes.
Each step toward heaven or hell.
Anke
I left Iraq taking the road west to Syria and reached Diyarbakir in a day.
I had met Anke earlier, in Ankara, she led another section of the organization I worked for. Instant recognition. That strange vibration that travels through the air before words exist.
We spent a day together, visiting camps, sharing cigarettes, stories, and that quiet electricity between those who have lived through so much.
That night we became lovers, a rare moment of permission to be human again.
We knew something deep connected us, but our dedication came first.
At dawn we parted without promises, knowing love was another frontier neither of us could cross. To this day I remember her as someone from a parallel life, wondering what would have happened if we had let our hearts speak louder than our mission.
Someone sent my bags from Van. Inside, the same plastic bag of clothes I’d washed the day I left Paris, they never really dried.
Another cargo plane circled above. Ankara. Then a Turkish Airlines flight to Paris.
Once again, that almost painful return to civilian life.
Once again, I was just another person, unnoticeable human among others.
Years Later
Years later, the memories still don’t fade, they seep in.
They weave their own network of reflexes and responses, building habits in the nervous system long after the mind has moved on.
The images dissolve. The sensations don’t.
And with them, emotions resurface, intense, unstoppable.
Waves of sadness and despair. Repressed anger. Confusion.
The weight of the air before the blast.
The numbness after.
The buzz in the inner ear.
The sound of tears from men who don’t cry, like rain in a desert.
These are not stories.
They are moments of presence, scattered through time, ghosts of alternate realities migrating back and forth between worlds.
People asked, Why did you go?
“I wanted to see the world,” I tell them. “All of it, not just the filtered version.”
And what did you learn?
That everything can and will collapse, the patient, the doctor, the man who fired the bullet.
We are all equal before pain.
When everything falls away, what matters is simple:
Water. Food. Warmth. A steady hand.
The rest is noise.
And yet, within that noise, something pure flickers.
In the apology of the disillusioned surgeon.
In the scream of the father lifting his child.
In the heartbreak to leave someone fade in the past.
Life spoke through its own ruin, calling for our attention.
But we are too busy to listen.
And the message is lost.
The Perfection of War
War is not the opposite of peace.
It is the echo of our disconnection, like pain to a wound.
The body of the universe inflamed where love has gone numb.
The pain is not a curse; it is feedback, as honest as a wound.
When we forget that we are one, the universe reminds us, fiercely, perfectly.
War is the mirror showing how far we have drifted from each other.
Its perfection lies not in cruelty, but in honesty,
the intensity of the pain proportional to the depth of the wound.
It reveals exactly where we are divided.
And until we remember, it will keep reminding.
For even in war, the universe still wants us to remember.
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Resonates!
Life spoke through its own ruin, calling for our attention.