“It can’t be. It can’t be. What about their arsenal, what have they left you with?”
“Nothing. They took it all and left. Listen to me, Shaker—this will happen to you next. Today, tomorrow. In an hour from now. I don’t know. First they will take the south side, and then come around and attack the north. The desert is swarming with them. There is no one to protect us. It’s a bloodbath.”
“My God. You must get out, now—”
Then I lost him to vacant air.
And I ran.
Fast.
Chapter Fifteen
Shadow on the Mountain
FULL MORNING, ALREADY BAKING HOT. OUT IN THE ERUPTING streets, a live wire of unbridled fear surged, and the raw scent of animal panic engulfed every corner. People poured from their homes and charged into the melee, mouths slack and hanging open. Some climbed onto bicycles two or three at a time; the infirm were loaded into rusted wheelbarrows. There was no time for conversation—even the smallest children moved in stunned silence. Many would not speak again for weeks.
Every nerve electrified, I slid into the car, mind tallying the number of people that could cram inside it—five at least, and maybe three more lined up in the open trunk. I gripped the wheel to steady myself. In a satchel, I’d stuffed batteries for my cell phone and an extra magazine of bullets. The handgun and a hunting knife were tucked into my belt; I checked them now. Then I shoved the key into the ignition. My hands were shaking.
Click-click-click-click-click.
I tested the switch for the headlights—nothing. The battery was dead, and I knew it was over. Those who had vehicles were all long gone.
A full tide of dazed figures pushed past the open window of my useless car; their open palms hitting the metal roof sounded like falling hail. White eyes staring straight ahead; hands dragged gaping children, or hauled livestock from tattered ropes. The aged hobbled along, bewildered in the wake. From what we knew, ISIS was surrounding Mount Shingal like a lasso; our chances of a clean escape grew more tenuous by the millisecond.
Stepping out of the car, I moved forward and the horde swept me up and into itself. Blazing over the end of my street, I could see the banner of open desert sky and everyone pressing toward it. There were so many, an avalanche of human beings, the same loud animal instinct compelling us—get to the mountain. The scene was multiplying many times over, playing out in every nearby Yazidi village that ISIS hadn’t yet taken.
Then my cell phone went off in my pocket and I grabbed it, legs in a gallop.
“Mikey, it’s Rob. I got Jay on the line, too. What’s going on over there? We’ve been getting crazy reports.”
“ISIS has the south side of the Shingal,” I shouted over the static. “The Peshmerga abandoned their positions. We are next.” I was panting and it was hard to hear. “I don’t know any more yet.”
“So it’s as bad as we thought.”
“Worse. We have nothing. No one here to protect us.”
“You on the run now, brother?”
“Yes—to the mountain.” And I knew my voice was cracking. “Pray for us.” I could say no more.
“Go, Michael—just go.”
THE THRONG HEAVED forward, discharging into the searing gulf of desert. Bodies streamed over the flatland as though the heart of Khanasor had detonated, sending out a wild rush of human shrapnel. Soon, there were more than twenty thousand of us on the run, unleashing a tempest of sand that billowed up several stories. We all just dove into the violent haze, momentarily blinded. Inside the swirling dust, forms pushed past me: coughing children, a woman cloaked in sheets pushing a cart full of photographs. Four boys teetered by on a bike. Whole families coated head to toe hung together as they hurried along like pale figures made of clay. Wailing babies belched grime and then went quiet.
Soon, I sensed concrete under my feet and realized I’d forgotten to put on my shoes. I stopped by the road, pulled down the checkered scarf I’d coiled around my head, and spat out a glob of grit. Just then, I felt the thunder of armored trucks rising like a storm from the west, moving straight for us. Instinctively, we all gasped and broke out as a single entity, rushing across the open plain.
At first, the withdrawing units of Peshmerga didn’t slow, consuming both lanes of the freeway as they sped east on their way to Iraqi Kurdistan. As the convoy gusted through, I saw great oiled barrels of artillery rising from flatbeds and turrets; and the noses of machine guns jutted from the laps of fighters crammed into the personnel vehicles. Stock-still, the soldiers sat as silent and impotent as wax statues.
Hollering now, I raced toward the traffic, limbs pumping, fists clenched. I’d sucked in so much dirt; it coated the insides of my cheeks. My scoured gums had started bleeding. Arms raised, I stood in the road, not caring if they crushed my body—our last hope was hurtling past me in a hurricane of false promises.
“Stop—stop now!” I shouted against the wind.
One of the last trucks in the line slowed.
“What are you doing?” I hollered into the open window. “You can’t just leave us. You have to fight.”
“Orders,” the driver yelled over the din, shrugging. “Nothing we can do. Nothing.”
Gnawing at a chapped upper lip, the soldier in the passenger seat rammed his chin into his chest and sighed. Hard to tell what he was thinking.
“Orders from who?” I brandished the phone in my hand as though it contained the truth.
The driver signaled to the sky. “Higher up,” he said. “I can’t help you.”
The wheels began to turn faster, and I grabbed at the open rim of the window.
“They are shooting people in the villages,” I screamed. “Who gave the orders? How high up? Please—leave us weapons. Anything.”
Then the other soldier slowly shifted his downward gaze to me—eyes so clear, you could see the shuddering of a conscience like a second self within him. A moment later, he looked away.
“The top,” he said. “The orders came from the top. We can do nothing.”
The engine revved and the truck sped off.
THE RIVER OF evacuees split into a delta; one thin line stayed by the road, shuffling toward the Kurdish autonomous region; the other streamed wide, heading south into the deep embrace of the alluvial steppe plains that rose toward the foothills. I was on the rutted path for the mountain when we heard the low metallic groan of more trucks approaching. People stopped in their tracks in the coarse fog trying to figure out which direction the sounds were coming from, and what they meant—salvation or slaughter. Peering back through the murk, I saw a battered pair of pickups zigzagging toward us. Headlights beamed a dull yellow through the dinge. You could see men in black shamags standing like dark silhouettes in the flatbeds.
Then I heard the unmistakable snap of the first bullet buzz past my ear, and I threw myself into the dirt. For a moment, it was like being back in the helter-skelter of Anbar, the insurgency in full swing. I rolled over the ground and waited, hand on my weapon. Instantly, the energy of the mob shifted; a rogue wave of hysteria pushed them forward into a frenzy of thrashing limbs. As the rat-rat-rat of gunfire diced the air, a man standing next to me went down. Then others collapsed like felled trees. People wrapped their small children into their chests and tore ahead. A woman in dusty robes just stood in the lethal fracas, arms held out like wings, as she keened in Kurmanji to the sky.
I scrambled to my feet. We were running directionless now; every child baying in an eerie chorus. I could feel my shirt and pants stick to my skin as though they’d been glued on, and the naked heels of my feet burned raw. Forbidding miles away in the high heat, the ark of the mountain stood mottled and shimmering like an apparition. My mind beseeched it to come closer—we were still hours away on foot.
“What’s happening?” a young boy said, staring up and grabbing my hand; the vibrant blue of his lit-up eyes was shocking to see through the tenebrous dust.
“Just keep running,” I told him.
“I ca
n’t find my family.”
“We’re all going to the same place. Don’t stop. No matter what happens.”
Behind us we could hear the high-pitched war cries of the masked men as their trucks crashed into the teeming throng, resolute in their jihad.
“Allahu akbar!”
“Takbir!”
“Allahu akbar!”
“Takbir!”
Cyclones of bullets raised the ground to a raging boil and the masses reared up all around me. Chaos swallowed the boy; I felt his fingers slide away into time. I kept going with the pack, the shrieks of girls and women erupting from every direction. Voices cried out to God in heaven; the sun flared like a bloodshot eye through the gloom.
Then the sound simply ceased—the earth at war fell silent—and I kept running through the preternatural hush. Suddenly, I no longer knew or felt anything. Time had collapsed, stretching formless into a bleak void. There was only the shared blood of our long-hounded ancestors, beating through our hearts and roaring through our veins. We had all been here before, many times: Yazidis reduced to hunted animals caught in a biblical stampede, fleeing for our lives—for who we were, as one.
Maybe the random killing was all part of the sport, or maybe they were just employing a guerrilla tactic used to great effect in the run-up to the invasion: after a targeted rush of carnage, the soldiers of the Islamic State simply moved on.
Minutes later, as the pickups sped away toward the road, we could hear the bloodbath start up again—across the barren miles, the muted cries of the slaughtered were unmistakable. When the last desperate echoes reached me, I ran harder.
HOURS LATER, BESIEGED villages burned. Mulberry trees smoldered and flocks of birds shot out of the smoke like eruptions of onyx beads. In the distance that we didn’t dare breech, squalid white flags drooped over houses, the occupants no doubt begging for the promised mercy that ISIS would never grant.
By now, the passing multitude had spread way out over miles, and we pressed onward under the open broil, parched and limping. Every so often, ISIS snipers took potshots at us and we’d all drop to the ground. Sometimes, dilapidated cars and tractors full of families rumbled by. Then, as though tearing out of a dream, a horse mad with fear galloped past me, kicking a path through the exodus. I stopped in the sand and watched the beast disappear as it thundered into a corrugated stretch of furrows that had once made up the lands of my father. I knew those undulating fields better than the creases over my own palm, and could only stare out in a near stupor of longing. Then I glimpsed a white shirt billowing along the tilled fields.
Suddenly a young boy again, before anything had ever happened to us, I ran out to him. Dressed in my sandals and cap, I dashed across the soft watered ground straight for my father, my king, calling, “Babo, Babo,” until my voice gave out. Standing there under his crown of silvery hair, he turned to me at last, kissed his hand, and held it out. Then the world went full white, and I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, the desiccated field was empty.
THE CELL PHONE started up, and somehow I knew it was her.
“Dil-Mir—thank God. Talk to me fast. I don’t know how long this signal will work.”
“Shaker. We are surrounded. On all sides.”
Her voice was like wind. I could hear people in the background jabbering.
“Where are you now?”
“In the house with the others.”
“You can’t stay there, Dil-Mir. You have to run—now.”
I was staring out at the formidable wall of mountain standing between us.
“No, no. It’s OK. They stopped shooting. Everything is quiet.”
“Dil-Mir, listen to me. You must get out of there. Don’t think, just leave for the mountain.”
“We put up a white sheet over the house like a flag. Those who do this will be spared.”
“No, no—that’s a lie, Dil-Mir.”
“It can’t be—they stopped shooting. Only the few who didn’t listen or tried to escape were killed. They told us to put up the sheet, and we are still all right.”
I was on my knees in the dirt. “The white flag is a lie. It’s a lie.”
“I have to go. There are trucks.”
“Dil-Mir—get out. Forget the flag. Forget everything.”
But she was gone.
And I could not move from the ground.
STILL NAKED MILES from the foothills, a hatchback raced past my pathetic form kneeling there, and stopped. Then a man got out, hoisted me up by the armpits, and helped me into the back seat, squeezing my body in next to three other men. Two women shared the seat up front.
Someone slipped a pair of sandals onto my ruined feet.
I heard a baby gurgle and the car started up.
A stream of tepid water poured into my mouth.
I gulped it down, gasping.
“Where are you from?” said the old man pressed against me. “Keep your head down in case they shoot at us.”
“Khanasor.” I was wiping the paste from my eyes. “Yaho, yaho…”
“We came from Kocho for the feast, and went to Khanasor to find our cousins. There’s hardly anyone left over there.”
“Do you know anything about the hamlets on the south side?” I asked.
“Those tiny villages are full of ghosts,” a woman muttered from the front seat.
I could see the back of her head; her wild conflagration of ruddy hair quavered as the car bumped over the ground.
“What do you mean?”
“They just want the girls. Everyone else but the young boys are shot. It’s the same in every village.”
Two miles later, the car engine sputtered and wheezed across its final yard. We all got out, left the vehicle behind like a picked-over carcass, and started walking again.
WE WERE UP on the higher plateaus now, where groupings of dead lay scattered like mannequins. Flies were already buzzing; and the steady hum in the unforgiving swelter made the skin creep over my bones. Some of us stopped to bury the shot-up children, using flattened rocks to cut though the dirt until the pads on our fingers scraped away and we could no longer dig. All the passersby moving up the slope whispered out prayers and kept going. Under the pummeling sun, we piled stones in small mounds over the shallow graves. I thought I heard more wounded cry out from behind rocks, but when I looked, I could not find them.
“Is that all?” said an old man who’d helped.
“What else is there?” another one muttered.
“Those are someone’s kids.”
“Not any longer.”
“They belong to God,” I said. “And the mountain.”
Then I turned to face the rising cliffs.
Whatever energy remained in my limbs went into gaining a solid purchase on the steady climb up the first craggy slope.
NOW SHOTS WERE ricocheting right along the incline, as ISIS trucks full of shouting men marauded across the surrounding terrain. I came across the bullet-riddled body of a boy showing a wet chasm where his chest had been. I closed my eyes and crawled over him and kept going for the ridgeline.
As more ordnance hit the mountain, loosened mounds of rubble slid down the slope, pushing back climbing forms. At any moment, it could all be over, and I waited for the end to come. But thoughts of my Daki and Dil-Mir kept me climbing; nails broke off past the quick. Here and there the elderly who’d abandoned the arduous climb just sat dust-covered on the rocks.
“You must try,” I hollered to one woman.
“No,” she said. “My body says it’s enough. None of this is worth surviving.”
MOUNT SHINGAL, A long shoulder of desolate rock fixed to a sixty-two-mile range, rises from the prehistoric floodplains to a height of more than 4,700 feet. Over one hundred thousand of us made it to the summit, though no one would ever make an official record. Thousands perished in the cruel climb, including countless children. Prowling ISIS fighters shot many; others were simply too small or weak to withstand the diabolical elements. No
water, food, or shade—it was over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Up there, huddled on a parched ledge in the vacant sky, scores of families were trapped and people were dying by the hour. While the base of the mountain had become an ISIS slaughterhouse, the top was a merciless inferno.
I climbed way up to the crest of Shingal, now the rim of hell on earth, and stared across the unfolding scene. Standing there alone without any kin, without anything whatsoever, I bore witness to the forsaken horde of my people spread way out below for as far as the eye could see, all of them moaning and pressed together on the rocks into a single quivering shadow. Right then, I didn’t know how any of us were ever going to survive.
Chapter Sixteen
Taken
NIGHT FELL SLOWLY OVER SHINGAL, AND ALONG ITS DIMMING ether the baleful smog of war slid by, passing beyond the ridge like a callous afterthought. Far below, along the bleak moonscape of pulverized villages and ransacked squats, the black flags of the Islamic State were going up on water towers and electrical posts, unfurling over the sides of crumbling buildings. Gunfire flared across the blue twilight, and flames licked out the cores of whole villages, some of which were too insignificant to be found on a map. Many would never be inhabited again.
Those Yazidis who hadn’t managed to flee in time huddled in the burgeoning darkness, hoping Arab neighbors hadn’t lied during the days before the invasion, when they’d offered reassurances that ISIS would spare them. By now, I’d heard that story over and over again as countless numbers lay executed all over Shingal—another three hundred thousand of us were on the run.
My own family was hurtling along the setting eastern borders, trying to find a clean way into the KRG—at least, that’s what I hoped. From a prow of rock, I stared out over the panorama of Nineveh like a man trapped on a condemned ship, every square mile a death trap that had been laid months in advance, but prophesied and decreed for centuries.
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