Duarte Peláez Santiago, Lost Brother

LOST BROTHER

Written By Santiago Duarte Peláez

Iwas sleeping very peacefully on my thin sheeted cot, the day before I had been training all day and doing A1 physicals, so my muscles and head were throbbing from the excess activity. Another day in the army base in Iran, and I felt like my sleep had renewed my energy and it woke me up from my dreams. I had been in Iran for four years now, serving in the military to pay off the university scholarship I want to attend when I arrive back home.

Home, the word home seem so distant as if it had been something that was snatched from the back part of my brain and taken to another planet or maybe the bottom of the ocean, I felt as if I haven’t seen my family in ages and I missed them like nothing else in the world.

It felt like I had forgotten about them, their little things. Back home, I have a mom whose name is Paula and she bakes the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever eaten, my father Mario, Who falls asleep reading the newspaper in his large armchair every afternoon, my younger brother José, who drinks cereal with orange juice and my younger sister Emilia who was just a baby when I left and now she’s four years old. It feels as if I’ve missed out on these last years of their lives even though I’ve been calling them and sending the messages almost every day, they send things back, But they feel empty as if they were a whisper of something that they were living through. I know they miss me my mother cries on the phone sometimes begging me to come back, but I can’t not until I’ve paid off my scholarship to study what I’ve always wanted to study, culinary. I joined the military to pay off a grant for the culinary school that I wanted to go to in California.

“SOLDIERS, UP!” The sergeant’s voice snapped me out of my daydream, and I am crouched for my car and stood in standard position, my hand against my forehead saluting the sergeant spot. I decided to walk down the long row of soldiers

just like me, all in front of their cots, looking pale and half awake. I knew I looked the same. I held my posture as a sergeant walked by me, he looked me in the eye and yelled: “ARE YOU DAYDREAMING AGAIN, SOLDIER?!”

I swallowed hard “No sir.” He turned his entire body towards me, and I knew I was in for it. “I CAN’T HEAR YOU, SOLDIER, WOULD YOU LIKE TO START YOUR DAY WITH 500 ROPE TWISTERS AND 700 NOMSKIS!?”

I looked the Sergeant dead in the eye and calmly but firmly said “No. Sir.” The sergeant kept walking down the aisle, and I knew I had been triumphant. I looked over to my right, my best friend, Diego Morales. I have known him since I came to the military and on my first day, he was the one that showed me around and taught me all the most important things that you ever learn about being in the military. Like who you do not piss off, what place in the lunch line is better, what day is the skipped lunch because it’s meatloaf, good hideouts to smoke a cigarette or two, and most importantly who to become friends with. Diego was always making me laugh, And reminding me of the life I had left outside the camp and everything that there was to enjoy about life. . as I looked over to him he smirked because he had always taught me that yelling back at a sergeant is never a good idea. Saying things calmly and firmly is a way to get to their head. I smiled back at him and after the sergeant had been done saying his morning prayer we went outside to begin training for the day. Little did I know that it would later become the worst day of my life.

As we were going outside and had already sat on one of the turned tires by an old tank name Shelley, A message boy came in from across the field and talk to the sergeant. What happened next happened in a flash. The surgeon told all of us to group up and go get our stuff, there had been an attack in a nearby US Army base Made by government officials of

Iraq, and we were to serve the country in this turn of events, Because there were Iraq soldiers all over the base that had been attacked. I grabbed my stuff and Diego and I quickly put on all of our equipment to go for the counter-attack. Diego turned to me as we were getting Onto the vehicle that would take us until the other base, and asked me to join him in a quick prayer. I obliged, though I was hardly religious at the time. He lowered his head and mumbled, “God give us the strength and fortune to fight on this day and come out alive, God rest the soul of any lives lost today, God willing, Amen”

I lifted my head to see the soldiers in front of us praying with Diego also, and at this point, I felt like my stomach dropped. I was going to be sick so I hung my head outside of the edge of the truck and puked onto the moving road below me. Diego patted my back and said that it was all going to be alright, and we would be in and out before I knew it. I only wish this were true to this day. We got to the army base and I could instantly see that this was going to be something that would change my life forever.

There was smoke coming out of all the holes in the army base civilians were screaming and running for cover, where I heard Iraq soldiers hovering over the base and American soldiers fought for their lives inside we got out of a ruthless vehicle, and instantly Got set into place for battle.

The sergeant had stayed behind with another troop that would be coming in five minutes later, so the soldiers that were in our truck went into battle in an organized way, Despite the constant training that we had gone through. It was heavily ironic, that we were just prancing into our deaths after having spent countless hours training for this kind of situation. As I went into battle with Diego by my side I could feel the heaviness of the four years that had gone past me, what is this? Had my dreams to go to culinary school finished amid an

hour? I couldn’t place my finger on it but I felt like I had been betrayed by myself. I closed my gun to my test and went into the Battlefield that had become the backfield of the base, the base itself was burning and American soldiers were coming out completely burned or scratched up from crawling.

I felt sick to my stomach again but managed to grab my gun and shoot at what I thought were some Iraqi soldiers, hit again with the irony of having been prepared for these types of attacks and not even being able to tell if they were your own or the enemy. Then again I have never really known who were my people or who are my enemies. My whole life I’ve been told that my dreams were a joke, that no amount of passion for food cooking and culture could pull a man like me through culinary school. I thought about how much I wanted to prove them wrong and how much I wanted to be able to show only to them but truly, myself that I was able to do something that I could put my mind to especially if I was passionate.

Before I would realize, I was zoned out again thinking about All of these things cluttered in my mind and hadn’t noticed that more Iraqi soldiers Coming out from the back part of the base. I shot at them I managed to hit some of them In the chest as I ran for cover the bullets showered the ground around me. I looked around for Diego and saw him battling hand on hand with Iraq soldiers, he seemed to be handling the situation well So I looked around for more targets as an American soldier leading out on the ground in front of where I found cover. I came out of my cover and went over to help him; “P-please, help m-me get to cover” he said desperately.

He was holding his ribs and they were teardrops coming out of his eyes, I grabbed him and slung his hand over my shoulder and moved him over to where I had found cover, I laid him down and looked at my handkerchief to put over his gun wound.

“Sit here, I’ll be back,” I said as if he could move. I ducked out of the cover and ran once again towards the Iraqi soldiers coming out of the back of the base, shooting at some of them and covering myself with my arm as I moved closer to the base. I heard a yell over my shoulder And looked over to see Diego shooting at Iraqi soldiers and heading towards me. What happened next, truly, woefully happened in slow motion, as he was facing his gun towards the opposite side to shoot some Iraq soldiers they were coming out of the burning base behind us, one of the Iraq soldiers coming out of their own tank managed to shoot Diego in the shoulder. I saw it happen in slow motion I saw the bullet left the gun and as soon as it did I knew that it was going to hit, I don’t know how, but I saw it hit Diego in the right shoulder And saw his knees buckle below him as his mouth slowly curled into an, “o” and his hand raised towards his already bleeding upper arm.

I remembered the very first time that Diego truly became my friend back at the military base. it had been a long cold day and it rained for around a week, and I couldn’t finish the rope ladder segments so I had to run 3 km carrying a duffel bag filled with sand in the rain. This was the old punishment for when a soldier could not complete a daily mission in physicals. I was new so my muscles had been sore since I got there and I was catching a terrible cold because of the rain and the cold. It took me five hours to run that 3 km because I kept stopping to throw up or pass out. The other soldiers had been heartless to me since I got there, because I made the mistake of sharing my dream of becoming a chef in California, and I had always been shorter and skinnier than everyone there. Once I finished my 3 km, there was no food left in the canteen that day, but Diego came over to where I was sitting and offered me a bowl of soup and some bread. He’s always been kind to me, and even though he wasn’t the most emotional person I knew he

showed his love in other ways and I knew that I would never find a friend like him again.

I snapped back Into the reality and ran over to my friend, who is laying on the ground with two other gunshots that had fired while I was zoned out. I kneeled next to him on the ground and pulled him over to a cover behind some sandbags that were laying by truck. I held his head up and Covered the gunshot in his chest with another handkerchief that I had in my pocket and grabbed his handkerchief from his pocket and put it up to the one in his low ribcage. I looked at his face and saw that he had started crying and his eyes looked glassy and bright. I felt my eyes watering

“Diego man, stay with me,” I said furiously.

Diego smiled, and said tremblingly “I know you’re going to be the best chef that the world has ever seen”

I started to cry and held his neck up with my arms “Don’t say that man, c’mon you’re going to be alright, let’s get you out of here”

Diego patted me on my arm and winced at his own pain “I’m dead weight now. It’s ok, Santiago, thank you for being my frie-end.”

He closed his eyes and went limp in my arms. I let out a sob mixed with a sort of scream composed of pure pain. Diego, my only friend, the best man I’d ever known, was gone. I knew I would never forget the day I lost my bro.