A Cave in the Clouds

by Badeeah Hassan Ahmed

  The day after a girl or woman had been chosen and assaulted, she would disappear. Navine said they were sold to their buyers as slaves and then likely resold again and again.

  “We are sabaya,” Navine said, shaking her head. “In old times, when women and children were caught up in battle, the victor divided them among its soldiers to encourage them to keep fighting. It’s as if the past two centuries don’t exist for these men, as if they don’t know that slavery has been abolished. We were not caught up in battle with our side being the loser. We were brutally kidnapped. These men are human traffickers. Most Muslims and mullahs say Daesh is not Islam. If Daesh wins, the world will be a dark, horrible place.”

  I thought of my father then because he had said the same thing. My chest felt like it was caving in. I knew Hassan must be very worried about where all of us were. Fallah, too. Fallah must be worried sick about Eivan. I closed my eyes and prayed silently that a message had reached Fallah that Eivan and I were together.

  “I pray, too,” Navine said, startling me. My eyes popped open, and I looked at her questioningly.

  “In my head, when I hear the Adhan,” she continued. “I say our prayers, what I remember being taught of them. I didn’t pray much until I was taken hostage. Now I pray all day long.”

  “I imagine I am at Lalish,” I confided in her.

  Eivan no longer played with the other children. Maybe the screams of the girls and women had scared him. He held onto me at all times. I could see by his panicked eyes that he was constantly afraid.

  We ate the cold pasta, rice, and tomatoes we were served on plastic plates. But despite how much we ate, it was never enough. All three of us were fading. Our movements became slower and our speech more lethargic. I could feel my ribs, like sharp knives, starting to stick out.

  It was dawn. I’d been in Raqqa for about a month, I estimated, based on the evening Muslim calls to prayer that I had managed to count.

  The rising light cast long, gray shadows on the walls. I wanted to wake Eivan, to tell him it was a good time for shadow puppets.

  But then I stopped. I wasn’t sure where I was. It was as if I was stuck in some hazy dream.

  “You’re in between life and death,” I heard my mother say.

  “Don’t leave me,” I whispered.

  Adlan appeared in front of me then. She was wearing a white dress, just like the Faqras, the women who devote their life to spiritual enlightenment, did at Lalish. But a black sash was tied around her waist, indicating that someone had died. My mother looked young again.

  “Are you dead?” I asked her.

  She motioned for me to come.

  I started to crawl toward her. Then I felt a hand grab my hair and pull me backward. It was the guard who had given candies to Eivan. Taking my arm, he yanked me to my feet and pushed me toward the other side of the room. Navine was stirring by now, with Eivan lying on the floor beside her. Seeing me, Eivan threw sleep off and kicked himself loose.

  “Mama!” he was screeching as the Daesh guard led me from the room. “Mama!”

  “I’ll go back for the boy,” I heard the guard say. “Just keep quiet for now.” His hand, stinking of gasoline, covered my mouth.

  Outside, the air was cool and infused with the aroma of baking bread. I heard dogs barking and women clanking pots as they started their morning fires, boiling water for tea and coffee. Men’s shirts, children’s pants, and a girl’s dress shimmering with dew hung from a nearby clothesline.

  The rising sun flooded over a barren field of swaying grasses. My eyes darted side to side, taking in my surroundings.

  “I want to save you,” the guard said into my ear. He removed his hand from my face. “I’m taking you somewhere where you and your son can be together.”

  Deep down inside me, a scream grew.

  Chapter Ten

  Awakening

  Your mind plays tricks on you in captivity.

  As the Daesh guard dragged me down the road, I remembered Navine’s words from days earlier. I had been counting the cracks in the wall, thinking I might disappear into them, and she had slapped my cheeks until they stung. Come back to the living! Come back!

  The guard quickened his pace as we rounded a corner, heading toward an old black car.

  A pebble was stuck in my shoe. I asked the guard to stop so I could remove it. Once he did, I cemented my feet and then kicked him hard in the groin. His grip on my arm loosened. I slapped him across the face, then started to run, but he was too fast. He grabbed me from behind.

  My eyes fell on a girl’s dress on the clothesline. I remembered something I had heard back in the building. A woman had been talking to Navine about how, unlike Daesh in Iraq, who were mostly Iraqi Arabs supportive of Saddam Hussein, Daesh in Syria were foreigners. Most Syrian Muslims, the woman said, didn’t support Daesh. Syrians wanted the fighting to end.

  I screamed louder than I ever had before, hoping, praying, that someone, maybe the female owner of the laundry, would hear me and come to help.

  The guard pushed me. I fell, stones digging into the palms of my hands, my knees, and the burn on my leg. I cringed from the pain shooting through me.

  “We can make a home together,” he said, leaning down close to my face. “Can’t you see I am trying to help you?”

  “No,” I yelled. “Not without my son.”

  “You have my word I will go back and get him. Just do not make any noise.”

  I stared at him, panting. “How can I trust you? You people have lied to us from the beginning.”

  The guard reached down to give me a hand, then suddenly stepped off to one side. Behind him emerged two Daesh soldiers.

  I stayed on the ground, averting my eyes.

  The guard, speaking fast, explained that he had been ordered to take me somewhere. “Ask Emir,” he said, using the Arabic word for ruler or commander.

  “Don’t lie! You’re taking her for yourself,” one of the soldiers charged.

  I heard a whizzing sound, a fist moving through the air, then a thump.

  I glanced over and saw the guard lying on the ground. He was holding his stomach where the soldiers were kicking and punching him.

  Hands grabbed me under my armpits, pulling me up. One of the soldiers continued to beat the guard while the other shoved me in the direction we had just come from.

  As we walked, I strained to look around. The cement building where we were being held was tall and long, maybe an old factory or farm. I could see at least three stories. Its large windows were covered in metal bars or boarded up. There was nothing much around us except fields and a few homes.

  Back inside the building, the soldier forced me down a short corridor, then into a room where Daesh soldiers were drinking tea, eating, and smoking. About half a dozen men lounged on chairs and sofas. A large-screen television was tuned to an Arabic news channel.

  The smell of their food made me nauseous. I pulled my hijab tight around my face, curving my shoulders inward.

  I heard a door creak open.

  “This is Emir,” said the soldier, pushing me from behind.

  My knees buckled. I dug my nails hard into my palms, hoping the pain would stop me from fainting.

  The man called Emir stepped in front of me. I kept my eyes down, noticing that the cuffs of his green army pants were speckled with mud.

  Emir ordered me to hold out my trembling hands.

  As he examined my fingernails, I felt bile moving into my throat. I forced it back down.

  Emir spun me around, slipped off my hijab, and looked at my hair.

  “You’re dirty,” he exclaimed, clacking his teeth.

  I said nothing. I kept my eyes steady on the ground. My body was shaking. I was sure I was going to urinate on myself the way I had seen other girls do.

  “One of the guards wanted her for himself,
” the soldier behind me said.

  “How old are you?” Emir snapped.

  “Twenty-eight,” I mumbled. I was so frightened now that my teeth were chattering.

  “You look younger,” Emir said. “I know these Yazidi sabaya are lying about their ages. I want the buyers to see her when they next come.”

  He then motioned for me to be returned to the others.

  As soon as the door to the big room swung shut, Eivan ran up to me, his face swollen and drenched in tears. He flung his arms around my legs.

  I bent down and picked him up, hobbled back to Navine, and collapsed beside her. Eivan opened his tiny hand to show me five chocolates, mashed and melted. “The guard left them for me. He said he was going to take you out first and then we’d be a family.”

  I bit back a cry of anguish. What had I done? Maybe the guard had been our freedom after all, and I had blown it. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly.

  “I want us all to escape,” I told him. “We can’t leave without Navine. Next time, she goes with us.”

  Eivan, exhausted from all his crying, soon fell asleep.

  After I recounted what had happened, I told Navine the time for us to escape had come. “Outside, there are fields, as far as I could see. The guard led me out a back door, not through the front where the Daesh soldiers stay. I saw laundry, a girl’s dress. Surely a mother would help us if she knew we were being held against our will.”

  Navine leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.

  I shifted in close to her. “I may have found the weakness in these men. The guard”—I pressed on—“when the guard comes back, I’ll tell him I want to leave with him.” My heart was beating fast. We had to escape before the next round of buyers came. “I’ll tell the guard I will go with him willingly, but that he has to take all of us. I’ll tell the guard you’re my sister.”

  Navine’s eyes popped open. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Yes. You looked after Eivan when I couldn’t. You tell me things I need to know.”

  “The guard may do things to you, Badeeah,” Navine said, shaking her head.

  “He seems different. He’s not respected by the others. If I can get him to take us out of the building, maybe he’ll let us go. Maybe he’ll even help us return to Iraq. It’s our only hope.”

  Navine’s lips were quivering. “If you’re sold and Eivan is left behind, I’ll say he’s my son. I’ll watch over him if you can’t. I will get him home to his mother. But if you and Eivan can escape, go . . . leave me behind. Don’t wait for me. Don’t make the guard take me too.”

  I blinked back tears. Navine had become more than a sister. In that moment, I didn’t know where I began and she ended. We had become one. Wherever I went, she would be with me, about that much I was certain.

  Five new women arrived later that day.

  My heart pounded. One of them, I was sure, was a relative of ours named Salwa. I waved. Salwa looked right past me. It was as if she didn’t see anything at all.

  I inched toward her. There was something about her appearance that gave me chills. But there was no doubt in my mind about who she was.

  “Salwa?” I said when I drew in close. My voice was wobbly.

  When Salwa turned toward me, I could see that her dark-brown pupils were enlarged. She was still drugged. One of her eyes was swollen and red.

  I gathered up my skirt and sat down beside her.

  Salwa parted her dry, cracked lips. But no words came out. She looked into my eyes intently.

  “Where have you been?” I asked. She flinched as I touched her bruised cheek.

  Her lips trembled and parted again. “We were sold at market, like goats. Because I had never been with a man, I was sold for the highest price. But I don’t want to talk about that,” she said in a distant voice. “How did you end up here with Eivan?”

  So she’d recognized us after all. “Daesh thinks he’s my son.”

  Salwa grabbed my hand, squeezing my fingers. “They’ve killed the children. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen them do it. I miss home so much . . .”

  I stared at Salwa’s battered face, waiting for her to continue. After a long silence, her eyelids fluttered.

  “When were you taken?” she asked.

  “August 15 . . .” Just remembering the date caused my skin to burn. “Daesh first came the day after Chilé Haviné. They knew we would all be home celebrating.”

  “I was caught on August 8, trying to escape to the Shingal Mountains,” she told me.

  “I don’t know where Adlan or Hassan are, or Fallah . . .”

  “I don’t know where anyone is either, Badeeah.”

  “Salwa,” I said, touching her shoulder gently, “you need to remain strong. I know they are doing terrible things to you, but you need to keep your hopes and dreams safe, hidden, inside you. Most of all, keep them alive.”

  “I want to leave,” she whispered. “I want . . .” Her eyes welled.

  “We all want to go home,” I said softly. “And we will.”

  “No,” she murmured, shaking her head. “You don’t understand. I want to die.”

  The hinges on the main door squawked. Daesh was coming. I looked over, hoping it would be the guard. But it was the man the soldiers called Sheikh.

  “You can’t give up, Salwa.” I wanted to tell her of my visions of Adlan. I wanted to convince her to stay alive.

  “You need to remember a number,” Salwa said as Sheikh stopped in front of one of the new girls. “Please, Badeeah. Listen carefully. The number is 07500851411. Repeat it back to me now.”

  “07500851411,” I said slowly, rolling the digits off my tongue. “But what is this number?”

  “Ameen’s. It is Ameen’s cell phone.” Ameen was a distant cousin of ours. “He’s with other Yazidi who are coming to get us. Find a phone, call him.”

  Once I understood how important the number was, I decided to use a trick I knew to commit it to memory. I associated each digit with a birthday or a special holiday. The first four digits of the phone number were the same for most of Iraq. I could remember to add another zero, and after that, the eight followed by a five stood for my birthday: the eighth of May. I was fourteen when I realized I had feelings for Nafaa. Both Eivan’s birthday and my parents’ wedding anniversary were in November, the eleventh month.

  “Now go,” Salwa said, shoving me away. “Don’t let Daesh see you close to me. These men don’t like relatives being together.”

  Within an hour, Daesh had come and taken Salwa. She departed the way she had come: like a ghost.

  Chapter Eleven

  Immortal

  Whenever I heard the room’s main door open, my pulse quickened. Part of me was hoping it would be the guard; another part of me was terrified that it would be him and I’d have to go through with my plan.

  But neither the guard nor the buyers came. As the days wore on, I grew nervous. What if Daesh had ordered the guard never to come back? What if they had killed him for trying to take me? What if I had missed our one chance at freedom?

  I realized one day that in my daydreams about my homecoming with Eivan, I had forgotten what the people close to me looked like, even Adlan. Unless her spirit was standing in front of me, I found it hard to picture her face, the lines of her neck, the curves of her body.

  I confided this to Navine one night. “Majida, Fallah, Hadil, Adil, Hassan . . . even Dake,” I said to her. “I can’t see their faces anymore. What if I don’t recognize them? What if they were never real?”

  Eivan was still awake, lying on his stomach beside Navine and me. On impulse, I handed him his toy taxi. It was the first time I had dared to bring it out. But Daesh had only one guard on duty, and he was sitting at the far end of the room, near the toilet, because a girl had tried to hang herself there the day before with her hijab. The guard’s l
egs were spread apart, and his head was lolling back and forth. He let out an occasional snore. I lectured Eivan about not making any noise and cautioned him only to move the taxi a few inches along and then back again.

  Clearly, my nephew had also been listening in on our conversation.

  “Babo has whiskers,” Eivan said, referring to Hassan. “When he puts me on his lap, he flutters his eyelashes against my cheek. He calls it butterfly kisses.”

  I smiled, remembering how Hassan had done that with me, too, when I was little. Recalling it gave me an idea.

  “Let’s play the finger game,” I said to Eivan.

  He parked the taxi next to my leg, then perched himself in front of me, locking his fingers together.

  Navine was starting to drift off. “How do you play?” she asked groggily.

  “I point to a finger and Eivan tells me who lives in that house,” I explained. “But let’s add a twist. Let’s say something we remember about the people who live in the house.”

  The first house was Eivan’s home in Shingal.

  “Baba has warm hands that cuddle me and peppermint breath,” Eivan began.

  I laughed, remembering how much Fallah liked mint candies. Then it was my turn. “Fallah is aware of everything going on around him. Just like you,” I added, ruffling Eivan’s hair. “He never makes enemies. He’s liked by everyone.”

  “Mama next,” Eivan said excitedly. “Mama makes me safe. She smells like flour, too.”

  “Samira has a kind heart,” I said about his mother. “She is soft-spoken and patient.”

  “Mama is soft like the coat of a deer,” Eivan added.

  As we went on playing, I realized it no longer mattered that I had forgotten people’s faces. Who they were, their essence, was much more important.

  “Majida,” I said to Eivan, “is bold. She is modern. She is forward thinking, encouraging girls to have their own identities. Hadil is a billowy, fast-moving cloud on a sunny day. Adil shows people the way. Adlan is like warm bread, pomegranate molasses, an angel.”