Read Online The Weight of a Mustard Seed by Wendell Steavenson - Free Book Online

Koran. It was his dearest ambition to commit the entire knowledge of the Koran to memory; he often told Dr. Hassan he wished he had learned the Koran when he was young and his mind more impressionable for the imprint of the verses. He asked him to pray with him, but Dr. Hassan demurred. He had his Valium instead. “It is because you are a Shia,” lamented Kamel Sachet. He wished Dr. Hassan was not Shia. He told him sadly, almost with regret, “You are my best friend but it is wrong that you visit these shrines and pray to those imams.”
    Kamel Sachet submitted to Islamic fatalism: “What is written on my forehead is written by God for me.” In battle he always held his head up, eschewing a helmet, wearing only a beret, and led his men from the front. Many times, he recounted, he had heard the bullets whistle close to him, sometimes so close they burned his tunic, but he never wavered. “If I die at that moment then it means that is the time for me to die.”
    Dr. Hassan found his certainty unnerving, almost supernatural. Kamel Sachet’s self-belief was rock. He was the champion marksman of the whole army. “I never miss a bullet.”
    â€œIf you become afraid, you have lost the battle.” he explained. “You have to think what your enemy is thinking. What would your enemy expect? They would not expect an Iraqi officer to walk alone with his head held up straight through their gates!”
    War is psychology, Dr. Hassan agreed. He told Kamel Sachet how he had once managed to persuade a captured Iranian fighter pilot to broadcast a short statement on Iraqi television. “I befriended him.” He told him how he had devised propaganda leaflets to drop over the Iranian trenches. Kamel Sachet was impressed and surprised by Dr. Hassan’s world of psychiatry. He said, “I know the other commanders don’t understand you, but we need more of you.” He concurred that men were better rewarded than punished. He himself commanded loyalty with good treatment. He always made sure his men had enough rations, that their boots were the best available—there were some commanders who stole their units’ meat and front line soldiers were left to subsist on rice and soup. Dr. Hassan nodded at these things, he had visited the front and reported on morale. He said he had seen a platoon with only a single chicken between them every two weeks because the thieves in the commissary sold what was requisitioned.
    â€œIn Mohamara,” Kamel Sachet pronounced with pride, “I treated wounded Iranian prisoners as if they were my own sons and I punished those of my own men who were looters and rapists.”
    They talked over many long weeks. They discussed command and psychological warfare, authority and its exercise, they talked about their families and their lives before. Dr. Hassan told Kamel Sachet about his time in Munich and the easy interaction between European men and women, without shame! “Shamelessness!” Kamel Sachet told Dr. Hassan that he had been attached to the vice squad when he was in the police, and had witnessed the corruption of alcohol, the self-degradation of women, the effects of sexual assault, such stains that could never be erased—he shook his head. Dr. Hassan told him that he had tried to counsel victims of rape. Kamel Sachet narrowed his eyes and shook his head again, for him, death was the only sanction.
    They did not talk about the regime. They did not talk about Saddam. Kamel Sachet remained steadfast in his loyalty, commanded by President, father, sheikh or God, the requirement of his duty was the same. A general’s great glory, enshrined in the Koran and Islamic conquest folklore, was obedience to his ruler. “Who by God obeys God and his Prophet and those in command of your affairs,” quoted Kamel Sachet. His country was at war, the Iranians were the same Persian enemy that the great Kaakaa had destroyed, morphed