Immortals

Book I of 'The Domus' Series'

Prologue

The Jihadi

Kismayo

Southern Somalia

November 1995

‘One… Two… Three…’

Saiyad al Mahmud Abdi counted the seconds under his breath as he waited for the ninth.

He counted up to eight and then ducked, dropping on his right knee and then turned around, just in time for the 7.62/51 mm NATO round to whizz past his ear, missing the occiput of his skull, where it had hit him in his previous life. Abdi rolled further on to reach for cover behind the mangled and contorted metal of a derelict UN Toyota jeep. He took his position behind the jeep and took aim at the enemy rifle fire. The bullet that had missed him had, by now, given Abdi an estimate of its trajectory. The trajectory translated to the pock-marked, bullet-ridden facade of the erstwhile Radio Mogadishu station.

Abdi had an M40-A3 with him, a prized possession that he had taken from a dead US marine two years ago. He set his left eye to the crosshairs of the M40, and through it he could see the muzzle of the gun that had taken the shot at him.

It was still pointed in his general direction.

The enemy sniper was hiding in a window on the fifth floor of the Radio Mogadishu station. Abdi steadied his aim and waited for his moment. For a fleeting second, he could see the sniper’s head rising against the sill of the window when he had probably just shifted his weight to his other leg.

That was enough for Abdi. He took the shot. The rifle jolted on Abdi’s shoulders and the sound hung above his head. He saw the shell case, through the corner of his eye, drifting in slow motion on to the ground. Abdi’s eyes were still glued to the crosshairs of his M40. The enemy sniper’s gun tumbled down from the window and fell on the ledge jutting out of the floor below.

Abdi smiled, content, as he mentally pictured the brains of the sniper scattered around him in the room in the distant building.

He cursed and mumbled, ‘One infidel less to fight!’

Abdi was committed to fight the holy war, which the infidel wacals had brought to his door, his home, and his country. He had fought the war for Allah’s cause and had happily martyred himself the first time for the cause, two years ago.

But Allah had had other plans for him…

The benevolent Almighty had sent him back from his martyrdom. He had been to heaven, had bathed in the heavenly white, and then he had been sent back on the Earth to continue Allah’s fight.

The kind Allah had performed another of his miracles, and Allah be praised that he had bestowed on him the honour of so many martyrdoms in this holy war.

Urban wars could be tedious. Abdi knew that but patience was something he was not in short supply of.

He had been fighting this war for the past five years.

The intemperate rage of his youth had given way to a very balanced head on his capable shoulders. He was widely respected by his fellow fighters as a fearless and feared soldier of Allah. But he had never fought seeking that respect.

He truly believed in the cause.

He had been devout in his upbringing, being the son of a pious Islamic cleric who had preached and practised surrender to Allah’s wishes and His ways in order to attain salvation, to attain the proximity of Allahtallah Himself, to attain the fruits of Jannat, the paradise. He had educated his kids about the corrupt and heathen ways of the white men, and had filled them with a lifelong contempt of the enemies of Allah.

Abdi had risen from being a mere soldier to become now the commander of a sizeable Jundullah – an army of the Almighty’s soldiers. Abdi was himself a very wise and learned man and his hours off the battlefield were spent in prayer and meditation. His true self was reflected on the battlefield and he was quiet, unassuming, generally reserved in his demeanour, traits that complemented his dynamism, quick-footedness, wisdom, and patience on the battlefield. He believed that Allah had helped him achieve whatever he had. It had been Allah’s will and Allah’s gift, and he was just the means.

On that particular day, he and his troops had been engaged in a routine patrol of the northern parts of the territory held by the UIC (Union of Islamic Courts) when they had come under sudden sniper attack in the rundown urban landscape of Kismayo. He had already lost five soldiers in the surprise attack and the rest of his troops had splintered from the group and had taken refuge behind the rubble of the erstwhile bustling city, still under the sweep of sniper guns from higher up in the buildings.

Abdi had taken two of the snipers down but it had cost him two of his lives. He had heard of the proverbial cat having nine lives. By the blessings of Allah, he had had many more than that. Abdi had no illusions of immortality, but he had no idea of how many more lives he was going to have. It was for Allah to decide, and therefore he never worried about it much.

Each time he had died in this holy war, he had come back to life awakened from his previous sleep, generally a few hours ago in time, refreshed and undead. The time that he gained varied from minutes to hours depending on when he had slept before the time of his death. All that time was for him to spend again in any way he wished to, to learn from and to undo his previous mistakes. It was like a cassette rewinding and replaying all over again but unlike the cassette repeating the same melody over and over again, Abdi had a say on how the re-lived hours played out the second time.

A lesser, faithless mortal, a kaffir, would have gotten crazy to understand why it happened, the thing that happened to him. A lesser mortal would have usurped territory and amassed wealth, using the power of the gift; but not Abdi – he was no kaffir. He understood it as one of the many bountiful miracles of Allah and that understanding just pushed him deeper into his faith and deeper into the holy war, which he believed was the purpose of the gift with which he had been bestowed.

He understood that his duty was to thank Allah for considering him fit to receive his bounty, and therefore it was his sacred duty to dedicate all of his many lives in the Almighty’s service and sacrifice.

There was not a moment that he did not think about what was known to him and him alone.

Right then, on the battlefront, he knew that he would have to expose himself from his cover and take yet another bullet to expose and kill possibly the last sniper.

He would have to die another death, then get up from sleep, back again in his camp that morning, and play out the day to reach the point where he had got shot, and then armed with the foreknowledge of the shot’s direction and time, try to not get shot, and in the process get to kill yet another infidel.

He stepped out from his refuge into the open, his legs wide apart and raised his hands to heaven.

‘Allahu Ak…’

The first bullet struck him in his neck before he could finish the holy incantation.

The next one slammed right into his gut.

Abdi made a mental note of the direction of the bullets, and counted the seconds that had passed since he left his cover from behind the jeep until the first bullet that hit him.

There was a faint smile on his lips as he fell to the ground, committing the details to his dying memory, a memory that he was soon going to put to good use.