The Girl Who Escaped ISIS

by Farida Khalaf

  What I loved most of all about Lalish were the evenings, when there was traditional dancing. Seven men, swathed entirely in white clothes, ceremoniously danced twice around the sun symbol to the music of the Qewels, the holy singers who preserve our religious knowledge. They followed a fakir, a holy ascetic, who wore a dark fur and a pointed black hat, like the one it is said that Melek Taus himself used to wear. I found this ritual, which lasted all evening, both mysterious and fascinating.

  I’d often slip away with Nura and Evin to meet our friends under the cover of darkness. Sometimes we got to meet children from other villages this way too. The adults frowned upon this, because they were afraid of illicit friendships between the members of the two sexes. But in the overall chaos and euphoria of the pilgrimage they couldn’t prevent contact altogether.

  These encounters were invariably harmless in the end. After all, my friends and I had been brought up strictly according to our community’s code of honor, in which a bride’s virginity plays an extremely important role. For us, premarital relationships were out of the question. So it never got any further than us teasing the boys of our own age or at most exchanging stolen glances.

  { Two }

  One Final Wonderful Summer

  At school they called me “Calculator.” My math teacher gave me this nickname because I was the cleverest in the class. Whenever Mr. Siamand gave us a problem and none of my classmates could solve it, he would finally turn to me. “So, Farida, what do you think?” he asked. “Would you show the others how to do it?”

  “Of course,” I replied, striding confidently toward the blackboard. With a stick of chalk I wrote up the individual stages in solving the problem, while explaining long-windedly how to get from one stage to the next. Behind me I could hear my classmates grumbling. They were annoyed that I was better at math than them, especially the boys.

  “What’s going on? Farida’s not our teacher!” they complained. Their voices oozed envy. But Mr. Siamand always came to my defense. “Just concentrate and listen to how Farida works out the answer,” he advised them. “She’s a wonderful teacher. You know, she’s even better at math than I am.”

  Each time I would turn bright red. Of course I was delighted by the praise. But to be honest, I don’t have to try that hard at math. I love this subject; everything’s so clear, so structured, so logical. It seems strange to me that someone can’t understand this beautiful, ordered world. I find it all so simple.

  I was particularly good at exponentiation, which we were learning in spring 2014. While my classmates frowned and chewed their pencils as they struggled to work out the answers, I saw them in my head in a flash. My classmates thought it was magic, but I just found it pretty satisfying.

  Physics was my second favorite subject. I found this easy too. But unfortunately our physics teacher, Mr. Khalil, explained everything in such a dull, laborious way. When he came into our classroom after the math lesson I would lay my head on the desk and groan to Nura, “I’m going to have a nap. Wake me up when he’s finished.”

  She would giggle and sweep her long brown hair from her face. With her light skin and button nose, Nura was by far the most beautiful girl in our class. But unlike me she really struggled in both subjects. Occasionally when she was sweating over some problem or other, she’d look over at me in despair. “How on earth do you do this?” she whispered. “Have you really got a calculator in there?”

  “No!” I assured her. “If you come by this afternoon I’ll explain it to you.”

  Of course, studying together was just a pretext. I was always delighted when Nura came to visit. My mother was pleased too. As my father worked shifts—and would regularly be detailed to the Syrian border for ten days at a time—we women were occasionally very lonely. In our society, moreover, we believe that guests bring a blessing to the house.

  So after school we went up to the roof with our math books and buried ourselves in the units we’d studied in the morning. I tried my very best to help Nura grasp the secrets of math and physics, but the stuff would not stick in her head. It seemed as if the light breeze drifting over to us from Mount Sinjar carried my words away before they got to Nura. I blinked in the sun and listened to the tweeting of the birds in our garden. I decided it was really too nice a day to waste on studying.

  “Come on, let’s have a break,” I suggested.

  Nura agreed at once. We closed our books and went down into the garden. From the kitchen I fetched a carafe of lemonade that my mother had made freshly that morning. I poured us each a glass and garnished it with mint leaves that grew in our garden and smelled wonderful.

  “Studying makes you hungry,” I said to Nura with a wink. She laughed. We always used this as an excuse when we were caught on a kitchen raid. Both of us adored snacking and, irrespective of whether we were at her house or mine, we’d plunder the fridge or harvest whatever delicacies the garden had to offer.

  Nura particularly loved our raspberries, which glowed in soft hues. “Your roses are even more beautiful this year,” she said.

  “Yes,” I replied proudly. “But have you seen our lilies?” I pointed to the precious blooms that grew in the widest array of colors. Nura sniffed them and gently stroked a petal.

  “They’re really extraordinary,” she had to admit. I broke off a yellow flower and placed it in her math book. “So you’ll be able to do the next test blindfolded,” I promised her.

  She plucked a flower too and put it in my book. “Even if you don’t need it, it’ll remind you of me.”

  At that moment I heard my mother’s footsteps behind us. A checked scarf was tied around her head and she was carrying a mattock. She must have been weeding in the vegetable patch behind our house. “You two aren’t thieving again, are you?” she asked. We held our math books up to our chests and shook our heads in sync.

  My mother eyed us suspiciously. She knew how much we enjoyed giving each other flowers. But she couldn’t convict us of any crime. “You should at least give them a chance to grow,” she said, to be on the safe side.

  We looked indignant.

  “But that’s what we’re doing!”

  SHORTLY BEFORE THE summer holidays a math teacher from another village came to our school. Mr. Ahmed was responsible for providing our annual exam. He was a vertically challenged, bearded, and very portly man who had a reputation for being particularly hard to please. And he took pains to convey this impression. “If just one of you in this class manages to get 70 percent in my test then you’re not so bad,” he bragged.

  Along with his tests, Mr. Ahmed arrived in our village with a whole host of prejudices too. Like so many Muslims, he probably thought that we Yazidis were completely uneducated because we lived here in such isolation.

  All my classmates quivered in awe. Nura’s face was as white as a sheet. But I pretended to be unimpressed. “What are you talking about? I’m brilliant at math. Of course I’ll get more than 70 percent.”

  Mr. Ahmed looked at me in amazement. “Hmm, you seem to be very sure of yourself,” was his not very friendly reply. “But we’ll soon find out how good you actually are.”

  He collected our math books so no one could cheat. When Nura held out her book the pressed lily fell on the floor. The color of my friend’s face turned from white to bright red. She hurriedly picked up the flower and put it on the desk. I took the flower she’d given me from my book too, before handing it in, and placed it right beside hers. “Nothing can go wrong now,” I whispered to Nura.

  Mr. Ahmed handed out the test. “It’s really very difficult. So don’t fret if you can’t manage it,” he reiterated. He did seem to think we were idiots!

  I was determined to prove the contrary. Focusing myself, I dug into the questions. Obviously the format of the test was somewhat different from the ones Mr. Siamand gave us. But all the same it was far from impossible. He really hadn’t concocted anything devilish. I worked everything out and then checked my answers. A sideways glance revealed that Nura was,
as usual, struggling with the questions. I tried to arrange the sheet of paper with my answers on it in such a way that she might be able to take a peek. But Mr. Ahmed’s eyes were vigilant. He’d already noticed that I’d stopped working. “Well, well, given up already?” he sneered.

  “Absolutely not. I’ve finished.”

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You can hand your paper in, then,” he said, and ordered me out of the room. Nura followed soon afterward.

  We waited anxiously for the results. A few days later Mr. Ahmed returned our marked papers. He grinned beneath his beard as he handed mine back. I found this hard to gauge—was his smile malicious or benign? There were lots of red ticks on my paper. Right at the bottom he’d scribbled my mark: 99 percent. My heart leapt for joy. Nura had actually managed to do a third of the questions—and she passed too.

  After the lesson Mr. Ahmed beckoned me over. “I’ve seldom encountered a math genius like you,” he told me. “Have you ever considered becoming a math teacher when you’re older?”

  “That would be my absolute dream,” I stammered in delight. “Do you think it might be a possibility?”

  “Of course. Mr. Siamand or I could nominate you for a grant.”

  I nodded enthusiastically. I considered it a great honor that this strict teacher thought me capable of becoming a math teacher myself. No one in my family had made it that far before.

  I come from a modest background. My ancestors were small farmers and never received any sort of formal education, as we belong to the lowest of the three Yazidi castes. Among the older generation, even learning how to read and write had been frowned upon. Hymns and prayers were simply passed down orally from our sheikhs and pirs (the higher two of the main Yazidi castes, with the third being the Murid caste). It only changed in 1970, when Saddam Hussein introduced compulsory school education. After this a school was built in Kocho. But the teachers had always come from outside—until now. Would I, perhaps, be the first person to become a teacher in my own village?

  I hurried home as proud as could be, looking forward to telling my parents the good news. This summer was going to be terrific, I thought, throwing my head back and shouting with sheer delight. Life was being kind to me.

  OVER THE HOLIDAYS, things proceeded at a leisurely pace at home. I relaxed, slept late, and met up with Nura and Evin. We’d organize picnics, browse fashion catalogues together, and dress each other’s long brown hair, pinning it into elaborate updos. We would keep our hair like this all day until one of our mothers put her foot down. “Farida, untie that bun and give your hair a good brush!” my mother might remonstrate. “Or are you going to wait until you’re infested with lice? You’ll bring bugs into this house!” I’d grumble as I brushed out my hair and bid goodbye to my dream of not only being the first math teacher in my village, but also the most elegant.

  I also enjoyed helping Mom with the housework. As a daughter this was my duty anyway, and I didn’t consider it too much of an effort to lend a hand with cleaning, washing, chopping wood, or weeding.

  But most of all I loved cooking for the family. Mom began teaching me at a young age how to prepare a variety of dishes so that later on my husband would be pleased with me, as she put it. I was particularly good at making a local dish we call kamalles, fried chamomile flowers. And my kebab of fresh lamb was also famous—in the family, at least. When the spit sizzled over an open fire its enticing aroma wafted through the entire house, making everyone salivate. My four brothers would buzz around me like pesky flies and could barely wait for me to announce, “It’s ready!”

  Unfortunately, our father didn’t spend as much time with us as usual that summer. All the soldiers along the 605-kilometer border with our neighbor Syria had to do extra shifts, as the situation was tense due to the civil war raging there. Over the past two years Sunni terrorist groups had conquered large swaths of northern Syria. The central government of President Bashar al-Assad now only controlled the area around Damascus. The Islamists, who had seized power in the north, were forcing the population to follow strict Islamic codes of behavior, while also hunting down all Christians and those of other faiths.

  The most successful and brutal of these terrorist groups was an organization called al-Dawla al-Islamyia fil Iraq wa’al Sham—Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—or Daesh for short. In Europe the abbreviation ISIS or IS is more common. These terrorists had more money and better weapons than all the other Islamists. In the past few months they had conquered many cities on the other side of the border. Large numbers of Shias, Christians, Druses, and Alawites tried to flee their rule of terror, otherwise they risked being killed.

  “It pains me terribly to have to send these people away at the border,” I heard my father despondently tell my mother on one occasion when he was at home briefly. “These fanatics show no sympathy to them.”

  “Isn’t it our duty to help them?” she asked.

  “We have to be very careful,” he replied. “ISIS has grand plans. Some of these supposed refugees are their Trojan horses. It’s their job to start new terror cells in Iraqi cities.”

  “Do they intend to seize power here too?”

  “They certainly would if they could. They want to bring the whole of the Middle East under their control and here in Iraq they’ve put out their feelers. They’re already established in Fallujah and Ramadi. And apparently they’ve also got sympathizers in Mosul among former Saddam loyalists.”

  My mother shook herself, as if to shoo away an ominous feeling. “Who on earth are these people?”

  My father sighed. “The same ones who made our lives hell during the American occupation. Do you remember Zarqawi, who carried out bomb attacks and murdered Shias and Christians a few years back?”

  My mother nodded. His name was well known and infamous in Iraq. “He was the former al Qaeda chief in Iraq, wasn’t he? Didn’t he die some time ago?”

  “He did,” my father confirmed. “But he has a successor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Believe you me, he’s every bit as brutal as his predecessor. This man comes from Samarra in central Iraq and he spent five years rotting in an American military prison. His movement was as good as dead when the Americans pulled their troops out. But then the civil war broke out in Syria, and Baghdadi sent the few remaining militias to the battlefield on the other side of the border. There they and other jihadis were given support by the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular. But Turkey sent weapons too, because they wanted to topple Assad and strengthen the radical Sunnis in the country. And they succeeded! Today Baghdadi’s men wield more influence than all the other groups in Syria. They’re battle seasoned and just swimming in money and arms. That’s why they’re so dangerous.”

  “But not for us, surely?” my mother asked anxiously.

  “No,” my father laughed nervously. “It may be different in the south. But here they don’t have a chance. My colleagues and I will make sure they don’t come over.”

  My mother fell silent; she didn’t seem entirely convinced.

  “Or do you think that 350,000 armed men can’t deal with a small bunch of terrorists?” my father said to reassure her.

  I was surprised by the undertone of concern in my parents’ conversation. It had never occurred to me before that jihadis could pose a threat to us in the village. The Syrian-Iraqi border that my father guarded was only about fifty kilometers from Kocho, but it felt much further. I’d never been to Syria. And the civil war there was taking place somewhere on television, far beyond my own reality and my everyday life.

  THIS BEGAN TO change when the flash points got closer. “Have you heard?” Nura asked just as Evin and I were coming into the house from the garden to deposit our apricot harvest in the kitchen.

  “What do you mean?” I said, carefully flapping my left hand to shoo away a pesky bee, which was showing an interest in our fruit. We were planning to make jam from the sweet apricots today.

  But our friend was fixated on the television in the sitting room,
and had put her bowl down on the floor. “Turn it up a bit,” she instructed my little brother Keniwar.

  The news was on. “The Golden Guard has flown in helicopters to the city,” I heard the newsreader say. The camera showed soldiers leaping from Iraqi helicopters, dressed entirely in black. The elite forces of the Iraqi army were carrying machine guns.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Shh,” Nura said, staring in concentration at the screen.

  The footage was from Samarra in the Iraqi province of Salahuddin, which is in fact a Sunni metropolis, although it houses one of the most important Shia shrines. Trouble had often broken out there in the past between Shias and Sunnis. So at first I suspected that Sunnis might have attacked the shrine. But from what the newsreader was saying, I gathered that a convoy of vehicles carrying heavily armed terrorists had invaded the city that morning. Now the soldiers were trying to retake control of Samarra. Many had already been killed and wounded on both sides.

  “I hope nothing’s happened to my cousin,” Nura whispered. “They only recently transferred Ibrahim to Samarra.”

  Evin and I looked anxiously at Nura. We could well understand her unease. Working for the Iraqi security forces was a much sought-after job among Yazidis, and almost all of us had relatives in the army. I was also afraid that the terrorists might attack the border posts and something would happen to my father. Over the last few weeks and months there had been several attacks and skirmishes there with the jihadis. It seemed as if the area controlled by the Syrian terrorists was not big enough for them—as if they were determined to carry the conflict over to our side of the border too.

  “Why don’t we go and see your aunt?” I suggested. “Maybe she knows more about him.”

  “And maybe she knows absolutely nothing,” Nura said. “If she’s heard nothing about it, we’d only be worrying her unnecessarily. If something has happened to him, we’ll find out soon enough.”