War, horror of mothers, wrote Horace. The shock of mortars, the roar of machine guns, the crack of rifles, these things all agree. Even she would say no differently. War is terror, war is privation, war is desperation. Yet she has come halfway across the world to a homeland unknown, bound to it only by the blood coursing through her veins and the fire that burns within. War, horror of mothers, is a choice, if not one always made by both sides. She has made hers, rifle gripped so tightly in her hands that her knuckles seem polished ivory and she cannot feel her fingers, that cold dread in her stomach.

One morning I woke up,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,
One morning I woke up
And I found the invader.

It is the place where heaven meets hell, though not heaven in terms of pleasure or relief. It is instead so because of the rapture of purpose and the angels it illuminates. For every demon, it seems, someone rises to be its opposite. Everything seems to matter more here, perhaps because she is a hair’s breadth from the cold talons of death. Even the slow wrapping of her scarf over her hair feels purposeful, part of preparing to go on patrol, where anything may happen. Her hands tremble as they move the fabric, but more and more often they steady after a moment, as War becomes home in a twisted way. 

O partisan, carry me away,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,
O partisan, carry me away
For I feel I’m dying.

Sometimes she thinks back to her life before this life. It seems surreal, how placid it all seems, perhaps stagnant. Here the flash of tracer rounds and the roar of a rocket are so vivid that they sear themselves into her soul and send adrenaline crashing through her system like the current of a powerline trapped in her body. Her heart pounds and she feels so frighteningly alive even as her hands quake, fumbling, and she knows at any moment, she could be the next victim in this forgotten war, forgotten except by those who know why they are fighting. The world is willfully blind, she is not.

And if I die as a partisan,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,
And if I die as a partisan 
You have to bury me.

There is no glory in war, she knows, as her patrols take her by the bodies. Some are whole, others are not. It is hard not to look, not to imagine the blood mingled with earth, the shattered white fragments of exposed bone, the holes and gashes that mar their flesh, are hers instead. The truth of fear, though, is that it cannot last forever. As the days become weeks, the weeks become months, death becomes a fact of life, a companion closer than her own shadow.

But bury me up in the mountain,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,
But bury me up in the mountain
Under the shadow of a beautiful flower.

Sometimes it is difficult to remember why she has come. Sometimes she quakes and weeps until she feels like she will collapse in on herself from anguish. How many friends now are gone, leaving only ghosts of memory and their likenesses painted onto walls, captured images of those called martyrs. Sometimes she just wants to run as fast as she can, run south, run and run without ever stopping. Instead, though, she stays. Not because she thinks she will die in the desert alone, but because her brothers and sisters are depending on her.

And the people who will pass by,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,
And the people who will pass by
Will say to me: “What a beautiful flower.”

This war is fought not for nations, not for power, not for profit. It is to resist, to defend, to survive. She knows the hammer will fall on them soon, as they stand alone against a power that has tried to exterminate them before. Everything they have built, every scrap of freedom, every word spoken in an “illegal” language, every family bond and friendship forged in the face of extinction, all these things will be destroyed. What will it matter then, who she is or what their fight was? She cannot bring herself to care about posterity, though, even when it crosses her mind. Instead, heat blooms through her body as the distant sounds of approaching artillery grow closer and closer. It is time. It is time for months of dodging death to come to an end, not for glory, but to protect where heaven touches hell. 

This is the flower of the partisan,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,
This is the flower of the partisan
Who died for freedom.