Tales of War

By Kim Ekemar

Seven stories about war and its consequencies . . .

The Dowry; Afghanistan, 1980
War makes a cynical suitor. The future of a young man of marriageable age as seen from his pragmatic gunpoint view. An incident that never made the news, as recalled by a war correspondent.

The lasting logic of a chance challenge; The Chinese-Russian border, the 1890s
Death for stakes to prove a point: a story about opposite approaches to a deadly game that can be played two ways.

The Realm of the Black Eagle; Nature; today
The true ruler of this mountainous region is a black eagle, until one day humans decide to invade his corner of the world. The eagle has no choice but to turn into a stealthy guerrilla warrior in his struggle to recover his kingdom.

The Paper War; Stockholm, 1978 – 1992
The Swedes have two main topics – the weather and their oppressive tax system. Often they find these subjects more important even than death. The question is: what can be done about them?

Two Lives and the Camp of Death; Poland, 1943
Gerber, the merciless commander of a World War II concentration camp, doesn’t see himself as part of a greater human community, but as a skilled administrator looking for solutions. In the village nearby a homely woman and her children welcome their husband and father as he arrives from work. In the warm atmosphere of their close-knit relationships they all avoid thinking about the ongoing war and the incineration of its victims in the camp next door. It is a dark story about shutting out a brutal reality, or thriving on it.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place; Paris/London, 1997
The killing game is not for amateurs. Killing for a living, the hired assassin reasons, must be better than living to be dead. Murder Inc. makes the step into the Internet age. In this cat-and-mouse narrative the challenge is as taxing for the cold-blooded killer as it is for the target of his contract.

Carved Out for an Infinite Game ;Cathay, Persia, Florence and Buenos Aires;
475 BC – AD 1939
The art of warfare when it has taken on the stylised form of chess. The methods used to wage war may have become more sophisticated over the millennia, but the desire to conquer remains unchanged. Four historic flashbacks in which a chessboard plays the central role.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kim Ekemar
• Release date: Oct 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463271339

Kim Ekemar

I've been fortunate with opportunities to travel the world, counting Mexico, France, Sweden and Spain as my home at one time or other. In the past, a good part of my life was dedicated to business ventures: an art gallery, an advertising agency and commodity trading, among others. My travels have taken me to faraway places and amazing situations. I arrived in Mongolia just as the revolution for independence from the USSR started. I have been taken up the Sepik river by crocodile hunters in Papua Guinea. I've climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya, gone horseback riding to where the Río Magdalena in Colombia begins, crossed the Australian desert, hiked the Inka trail the wrong direction in Peru, and much more. However, the experience with the most impact that I've lived through was to be arbitrarily jailed in a centre for torture in Paraguay during the Stroessner dictatorship, under the absurd accusation of being a terrorist. (More about this in my illustrated non-fiction book in Spanish about the dictator, "El Reino del Terror".) During the past two decades, I've been focused on artistic expressions – painting, photography, design and architecture, but mainly on writing. The sources for the things I'm interested in writing about are the passions of people; places and customs that I've experienced around the world; and stories or situations from life that intrigue me.

Book preview

Tales of War

by

Kim Ekemar

TALES OF WAR

Copyright © Kim Ekemar 2010

All rights reserved.

Without the express permission in writing from the author,

no part of this work may be reproduced in any form by printing, by photocopying, or by any electronic or mechanical means. This includes information storage or retrieval systems.

Go to www.kimekemar.com

for more information about permission requests.

Edition: 1910-01

Published by

Bradley & Brougham Publishing House

2010

Contents

The Dowry; Afghanistan, 1980

War makes a cynical suitor. The future of a young man of marriageable age as seen from his pragmatic gunpoint view. An incident that never made the news, as recalled by a war correspondent.

The lasting logic of a chance challenge; The Chinese-Russian border, the 1890s

Death for stakes to prove a point: a story about opposite approaches to a deadly game that can be played two ways.

The Realm of the Black Eagle; Nature; today

The true ruler of this mountainous region is a black eagle, until one day humans decide to invade his corner of the world. The eagle has no choice but to turn into a stealthy guerrilla warrior in his struggle to recover his kingdom.

The Paper War; Stockholm, 1978 – 1992

The Swedes have two main topics – the weather and their oppressive tax system. Often they find these subjects more important even than death. The question is: what can be done about them?

Two Lives and the Camp of Death; Poland, 1943

Gerber, the merciless commander of a World War II concentration camp, doesn’t see himself as part of a greater human community, but as a skilled administrator looking for solutions. In the village nearby a homely woman and her children welcome their husband and father as he arrives from work. In the warm atmosphere of their close-knit relationships they all avoid thinking about the ongoing war and the incineration of its victims in the camp next door. It is a dark story about shutting out a brutal reality, or thriving on it.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place; Paris/London, 1997

The killing game is not for amateurs. Killing for a living, the hired assassin reasons, must be better than living to be dead. Murder Inc. makes the step into the Internet age. In this cat-and-mouse narrative the challenge is as taxing for the cold-blooded killer as it is for the target of his contract.

Carved Out for an Infinite Game; Cathay, Persia, Florence and Buenos Aires; 475 BC – AD 1939

The art of warfare when it has taken on the stylised form of chess. The methods used to wage war may have become more sophisticated over the millennia, but the desire to conquer remains unchanged. Four historic flashbacks in which a chessboard plays the central role.

The Dowry

I began covering the war in Afghanistan in 1980 as a correspondent for AP. Before I left London my divorce from Clara had been finally decided. Although it broke my heart when she left me for another, it made it so much easier to accept the challenge of being a war correspondent having no family to care for.

The war showed and taught me many things: human misery at its worst, cruelty, religious fanaticism, power plays in faraway places. It was incomprehensible for the solitary man standing his ground in front of his little cabin while pathetically trying to protect his undernourished family. Yet, after all this time, I've come to wonder about the inspiration in man's heart after a small, apparently insignificant incident that never made the news. It started early one day just as my second year in the region had begun. Dawn was …

… breaking as the Afghan army vehicle slowly made its way around the bomb pits in the road. Winter was approaching and the landscape bleak. Barren mountain peaks towered over the valley where the lorry was travelling. Even those trees that had escaped scars from missiles were desolate and twisted. Apart from the diesel engine’s drone there were no sounds at all, not a single bird’s twitter.

I was tired, hungry and wore a three-day beard. In another two weeks I was due to go back to London for a spell – I had by now spent more than a year reporting from the war. I was freelancing for AP, a news service I liked because they did not attempt to tell me how to do my work and because they genuinely seemed to appreciate the material I sent them.

The lorry was heading back towards one of the guerrilla bases. With the headlights turned off it had been a slow progress through the starless night, but this was the safest way to travel, so as not be shelled or shot at. During the time I had spent in Afghanistan I had seen enough anguish, helplessness, carnage and meaningless violence to last me several lifetimes. Of late I had frequently been thinking that I was not cut for this kind of missions: landmines, children's legs torn off, rockets launched from miles away splitting people in two, politicians playing games with the lives of human beings for the sole sake of power. The list of examples can be made endless, but what's the use?

In the faint light I wearily studied the company riding with me. Two children sleeping innocently in the arms of an elderly lady who probably was their grandmother. Three burnoose-clad, stern-faced mountain men with ample beards and turbans – of course with the inevitable rifle across their laps. Finally three soldiers from the camp I had been visiting the last two weeks, one acting as my translator. They wore clothing similar to that of the mountain men.

My translator was a very likeable young man who spoke remarkably good English considering his background. His name was Hamid and he was barely sixteen years old. Among the many things we spoke of he told me he had learnt the foreign language from a British schoolmaster before the war began. What reasons the schoolmaster had for practising his trade in this backward, all-but-forgotten country before the Russians marched in, I don't know. Hamid, however, was always eager to chat with me in order to broaden his knowledge of ‘my devilish tongue,’ as he put it. Once, after I had won his confidence, he confessed he had come to realise he really had very few things in this world. Those he treasured most were his mother, his faith and the ability to speak good English. Few Afghans, he had then announced with a broad smile, could brag about prosperity equal to his. I naturally agreed with his intellectual pursuit, and did what I could to help him master my language. No matter what I taught him or whatever new idiomatic expressions he added to his treasure trove, he always surprised me by expressing himself with astonishingly poetic turns. I suppose he was only translating his native tongue into the foreign language, resulting in his delightful wording. Add to this his guttural yet lilting accent, and no wonder my ears heard my mother tongue take on a new dimension.

Yes, he was young. Yet in many ways he was older than my own thirty-six years. His life had been harsh from the day his mother had given him birth standing up, as determined by local custom. His first contact outside the womb had been with the exacting earth of his land. No caresses or tender preliminaries to soften the waiting hardships. The Afghans were fiercely dependent on the very desolate ground upon which they were dropped the day they entered the world. Of course they would defend it indefinitely; without it they would have lost the very essence of their existence, their soul.

Although he was not yet physically mature enough to grow the customary beard, Hamid appeared very much my elder. War had seen to that, since he had seen too much of war. As I, weary from a long night's uncomfortable ride, studied him through the slits of my swollen, dust-infected eyes, he unexpectedly broke several hours of silence. He had noticed me watching him, and since he spoke in English his words were obviously directed for my ears alone.

‘I will let you know,’ he spoke softly, ‘dawn is a soaring eagle that daily greets me.’

I looked beyond him and noticed a beautiful, vibrating warm red expand across the sleepy dark blue skies. The mountain peaks, still shrouded in black, serrated the light from the rising sun and cast their immense shadows across the arid valley through which we travelled. In half an hour the light would reveal burnt tree trunks, deserted farming plots, abandoned living quarters, pockmarks left by the fighting units. But at this moment it was awesome to watch the sun spread its wings of fire to take off for another day.

‘The time night crosses the threshold to become one with day is when I feel completely alive. I then board my eagle who flies me into the sea of dawning fire which cleanses me from all imaginable problems in this world, starting with the war.’

I nodded to Hamid to make him aware that I was listening.

‘So it was only natural that on a dawn similar to this, yet many times more beautiful, I made my decision to marry Azir in my home village. I don't precisely know what had kept me from taking this decision earlier, but being surrounded by a most perfect dawn certainly helped me make my decision. It . . . it dawned on me, so to speak.’ He laughed quietly at his play on words, his laughter being one mixed with adult responsibility and childish mischief.

‘When was this?’ I asked him quietly.

Before he had the time to answer the lorry suddenly veered to the left. There were some shouts from the cabin. I caught the important word: landmine. No wonder they preferred to keep the lorry at a snail's pace. After having fallen all over one another the passengers returned to their chosen seats. Since everybody was awake by now I did not expect Hamid to continue. I was wrong.

‘Oh,’ he chirped happily, his eyes trained on some faraway spot in the horizon, ‘some four or perhaps six or eight months ago.’ Hamid answered my question lightly, as if he did not mind me asking a question of no importance. He took on a dreamy look and continued to tell his story.

‘Azir was so special, her smiling eyes very intense and piercing – I always felt they were looking through me as if I were transparent. No,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘that's not right. She didn't look through me, but her eyes probed me till they found my heart.’ As it spoke the words the hard experience in his voice was transfigured into tenderness. Even his eyes, so much older than mine, lost their lines for a moment and relaxed. During the months I had known him he had never before let his guard down, particularly not before a foreigner like me.

Hamid was nevertheless in the mood to address the beauty of his soul mate. Most of the other passengers in the truck were still trying to nap while the lorry shook us violently every time it had to pass a hole in the road – a pothole due to last winter's