The Beekeeper

by Dunya Mikhail

  “Yes, I did. Just imagine if Daesh actually became a state, with an airport and passports,” I said.

  “What a disaster.”

  “It’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like as a nine-year-old girl who’d already lost her father, then her mother and her brother and her sister, and then finally finding herself all alone with this terrifying man who just savagely beat up her mother.”

  “Which is why, as soon as that monster took off, Nazik ran out into the street and kept on running for hours. She had no idea where she was or where she was going. She wandered the streets until it got dark. On some dirt road Nazik saw a sheep. Before she knew it, she sat down on the ground and fell asleep.”

  In her dream,

  she was safe

  inside her mother’s belly

  “When Nazik woke up the next morning, she found herself on a couch in a modest house full of children: two were about the same age as her brother and sister, and there was a little girl not much older than her. They were all awake already, and when she finally got up they were staring at her. After a moment the older girl said to Nazik, You were sleeping outside our house. We tried to wake you up but you wouldn’t move, so Baba carried you inside. The younger girl ran into the other room, shouting, Baba! The girl’s awake! A huge man came in to join them. After examining Nazik, he asked, Where’s your family? Are you from around here? Nazik didn’t reply. She broke down into tears. The younger girl came closer and asked, Why are you crying? A few minutes later their mother came in carrying a large tray, which she placed on the floor. Nobody went near it; the other children were all glancing back and forth between Nazik and each other. Their mother approached her, saying, Come on, my child. Have something to eat with us. But Nazik couldn’t hold back her tears, which were streaming down her face even more profusely. The woman took her by the hand and brought her to the bathroom, turning on the faucet. Nazik was refreshed after washing her face. When she got back into the living room, the mother pointed down at the breakfast tray. As soon as Nazik sat down beside it, the rest of the children joined her. The older daughter offered her bread; the mother pushed the bowl of qaymar toward Nazik and she smeared some of it on the bread. It’d been a very long time since Nazik had eaten a breakfast like that, but it was the very same food she remembered from back home in Kocho, where there was a woman who would go around to all the houses in the morning calling out, Qaymar, fresh qaymar! Nazik’s mother would step outside to buy some. The woman would then tip the tray that rested on top of her head over and pour some qaymar into her mother’s bowl. After breakfast the father repeated his previous question: Where are you from? Nazik told them her story in a mixture of Kurdish and Arabic. Come with me, the father said. I have a Kurdish friend. Maybe he can help. He invited his eldest daughter to come with them. Once the father started driving away, he turned around slightly and said to Nazik, If someone stops us, we’ll tell him you’re my daughter. For three hours they drove down the dirt road and then stopped outside the garage of a house that belonged to his friend, who welcomed them warmly and kissed the father on both cheeks. The man invited them inside, where his wife served everyone tea, which the two men sipped as they chatted with one another. They both looked at Nazik from time to time. It was clear that they were talking about her. After a while, the father said he had to be going; he and his daughter left, while Nazik would stay with this new family who didn’t have any young children, but did have some young adults. They tried to console her by speaking in Kurdish, telling her she wasn’t going to be with Daesh anymore. The man asked her if she wanted to go back to Iraq. Nazik nodded. She wanted to go ‘home’ but she didn’t know if anyone was there.”

  At this point Abdullah said he had to go because he had received a few voice messages. We agreed to pick the conversation back up when he had some time.

  Back in Michigan, time was flying. It was after two in the morning and I only had a few hours before I had to go to work. But instead of going to sleep I made some Turkish coffee and sat down to transcribe Nazik’s story from the recording I’d made. Sometimes I can’t transfer the feelings so I just stare at the walls instead, the walls of a house filled with people who can’t be bought or sold — at least that’s what we believe.

  Through the Eye of a Needle

  “Would you like to speak with Nazik’s father?” Abdullah asked me two days later.

  “What do you mean? Nazik’s father is alive? Wasn’t he among those men who were murdered in the giant pit?”

  “He was — but he didn’t die. He played dead. He was very badly wounded but managed to survive with someone else’s help.”

  “Did he ever see his daughter Nazik?” I asked

  “The Kurdish family took Nazik to Kobani, and from there to Nawruz Camp in Derika Hamko, where hundreds of displaced people lived, including Nazik’s uncle. He found her there and then called her father.”

  “Where is that camp? In Syria?”

  “Yes. It’s a historical site that dates back to the year 1300 CE. At first it was called Dayr Hammo, which is a Christian name. When the Kurds arrived they changed it to a Kurdish name, making it Derika Hamko, and when the Arabs arrived they changed the name again, this time to al-Qahtaniyah.”

  “It’s more or less the same way Kobani got its name. I looked it up because you mentioned it was a strategic location on the escape routes. I found some interesting information about the origin of the name: it’d been a headquarters for a German company that had won a contract to build the railroad between Istanbul and Baghdad by way of northern Syria. The inhabitants of the region heard the word “kumbani” (that is, company, in English) from the employees. That word started to circulate, then stuck to that area. Over time the name was changed to Kobani. There’s another story, though, which claims that there was a spring where Arab herdsmen traveled to water their sheep, and so the Kurds called it Kania Araban, and then the Arabs adopted that name and translated it into Arabic, so they began calling the region Ayn al-Arab, or spring of the Arabs. These days Daesh calls it Ayn al-Islam, spring of Islam.”

  “Daesh has unleashed a fierce assault on the region, cutting off the heads of Kurdish fighters, besieging the shrine of Sulayman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire.”

  “Have those attacks also affected the human trafficking operations around the region?” I asked.

  “Definitely. Smugglers don’t pass through there anymore. They use a different route through eastern Syria.”

  “I wanted to ask you about Nazik’s mother, sister, and brother. Have you heard from them?”

  “No, not yet. Poor Abu Nazik also lost his mother and his siblings and their families. The only ones left from the extended family are he and his daughter.”

  “Did you tell me I could speak with him?”

  “Yes, but there’s only one problem: he’s in the refugee camp and only has access to a telephone at certain hours. Because of the time difference it will be four in the morning for you when he’ll be able to talk. Or maybe that works?”

  “No problem. I can talk to him then. You do that most of the time, too. And besides, it’s not a big deal to wake up early once in a while.”

  “I’ll send you his number. His name is Khalid.”

  I set the alarm for 3:55 a.m., and spent five minutes getting ready to call.

  “Hello, Khalid. How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “Abdullah told me you were shot at by Daesh.”

  “They forced us down into a pit and fired at us. They told us in advance that we should get ready because they were going to aim for our heads.”

  “What were you thinking in that moment? Did anything specific come to mind?”

  “Just my family, who were still upstairs.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Daesh had separated all of our families inside the Kocho school. They took the women
and children upstairs and held all the men on the ground floor. There were about four hundred men. They took away our cell phones and whatever was in our pockets.”

  “Cell phones would come in handy at a time like that.”

  “The phone’s the first thing we thought to take with us when we left the village.”

  “You left in early August 2014, right?”

  “There were maybe two thousand people in a caravan heading into the mountains. I was with my family, my siblings, and their families. We were under siege for two weeks in the mountains; we ran out of food and water. Some of the sick died. Children cried the whole time. A rumor started to spread that there was no longer any danger, that it was time for us to go home, but we didn’t know what to do. Then, after a while, once we were on the move, Daesh captured us and made us choose between converting to Islam and going to Zakho, in Kurdistan. We said we’d rather go to Zakho. But when we saw their giant trucks coming we felt like we were still in danger. The men were separated from the women, and they crammed us into about a hundred vehicles. There in the school building, the sheikh’s son shouted at them, You told us you’d take us to the mountains, to Kurdistan! We will, one of them replied, but in a little while. But instead they took us to pits on the farm that were supposed to be our graves.”

  “Was that farm near the school?”

  “About fifty yards away. Sometimes the peasants worked in those agricultural basins, but after the attack the peasants abandoned it and the land dried up. They threw us down there in shifts. Every fifteen minutes they would lower down about a dozen men from the outcropping and open fire on them. They arranged us into rows, telling us to line up next to each other so it would be easier for them to shoot us. My brother was in the first shift. My other brother was in the second shift. I was in the third. I knew everyone down there with me; they were my neighbors and friends. After they shouted Allahu Akbar, the sound of gunfire rang out, and once they had finished shooting us one by one, I was swimming in a pool of blood. They shot at us again, then a third time. I shut my eyes and prepared to die, as one must.”

  “How long did you stay like that?”

  “I was bleeding there for almost five hours.”

  “Where were you shot?”

  “In three different places. Once in my foot and twice in my hand.”

  “And did everyone else die?”

  “All except for one other man, Idrees, a childhood friend of mine. His feet were injured. I tried to drag him out of the pit with me but I couldn’t because half my body — the left side — was bleeding. I couldn’t lift him with just one hand. Idrees, I said to him, climb up on my back, get on. But he couldn’t move. He was still alive but I wasn’t able to save him. I struggled to get out of the pit and walked away from the school. As I crossed the farm road, I heard the nonstop rattle of gunfire, and I dropped down onto the ground, which is where I stayed, hidden under the wheat and barley until the sun went down. When it was finally quiet, I started walking again, stumbling toward Sinjar, making it nearly six miles in the dark. The houses I passed were abandoned, the doors flung wide open, nothing inside but shadows. I almost died of thirst. I’d lost a lot of blood and my foot was so bad I could barely walk. I wanted to rest, even if I had to die right there, but I also wanted to struggle to find out what had happened to my family, to save them from Daesh. Eventually I saw a small ray of light coming from a house in the al-Qabusiyyah area between Sinjar and Kocho. I gathered all of my strength to make it to that house, even if I had to hop on one foot. When I knocked on the door, a middle-aged man opened it. Can I have some water, please, I said. He invited me inside. My clothes were covered in blood. He offered me new ones and helped me change. I glanced at the clock on the wall and discovered that it was almost midnight. The man sent his son to a relative’s house in the neighborhood to get some grape juice. You’ve lost a lot of blood, he said, juice will do you good. I was still bleeding, and my hand had swollen up to the size of a gas can. The pain kept me awake until morning. The man stayed up with me, checking in every half hour, always with a glass of grape juice in his hand. I was there with him for four days — the whole time he went out of his way to care for me. He introduced himself as Abu Ahmad, a Muslim Arab who had always lived among Yazidis. He seemed very sad about what the Muslims who called themselves the Islamic State were doing to us. Is there anyone else I can help? he asked. I told him how my injured friend was still out there in the pit. Well let’s go and get him out of there, then, he said. Maybe he’s still alive. Do you remember where it is exactly? Come on, let’s go. I nodded, but when I tried to get out of bed, I couldn’t walk. I fell on the floor. You need to go to the hospital, he said. Abu Ahmad called a few friends, and finally he managed to speak with someone in the Peshmerga, who promised to send a volunteer to drive me to a hospital in Zakho. The pickup was scheduled for the ridge at 10 p.m., which was five hours away. I thought that if the car was going in the same direction as the farm, that maybe we could pick up Idrees on the way. Sometimes Idrees would sit next to me at school. He was so innocent; he trusted everyone. Who could have ever imagined that one day we’d be lined up side by side near the same school with people shooting us, as we bled alongside one another, our blood mixing together in a pit? When it got close to 10 p.m., Abu Ahmad carried me on his back and brought me to the ridge, where a car was waiting. The volunteer stepped out and helped Abu Ahmad put me inside. Ahmad gave me his cell phone, saying, Take this, it might come in handy. Don’t worry, I have more. I asked the volunteer if we could take a detour to see if my friend was still alive. How long has he been there? he asked. Four days, I said. That whole area is crawling with Daesh, but we can try, maybe we’ll get lucky. The volunteer turned toward the road leading to the farm but we couldn’t find any of the pits. I didn’t know what happened. The volunteer kept going around in circles but there wasn’t a trace. He tried to steer clear of the scorched fields. I didn’t want to insist too strongly so I didn’t object when he turned the car around and headed back. I slept on the way, or else lost consciousness, because the next thing I knew I was in the hospital. My surgery took four hours. Afterward I learned that the nerves in my left hand had been severely damaged, that it was completely paralyzed. Thank God, at least I was alive. My eldest daughter Nazik made it back. Now I’m waiting to hear from the rest of my family. We’re here at Qadia Camp, in 3,000 military barracks, listening to each other, waiting here for our missing families to come back to us.”

  “Hello, Abdullah.”

  “Hi, how are you?”

  “Fine. I spoke with Khalid, but the line was cut before I could thank him.”

  “If you have any more questions, I can ask him for you.”

  “I want to know more about what’s going on in Qadia Camp. Have you been there?”

  Qadia Camp

  “Yes. I have a lot of friends and relatives there, so I hear what’s good and what’s bad with them. I go to a lot of funerals. Death is very present these days, as you know. Imagine a camp full of people when it’s very hot and the electricity isn’t working. They have generators but half of them are broken. An hour crying. Then an hour laughing. They exchange clichés like: ‘I call every day but nobody picks up.’ ‘Thank God she made it back. I had a feeling she would. First she came back in my dream, then in real life.’ ‘Have you heard anything?’ ‘Stay strong. For the children.’ ‘Oh, please. I just did what I had to do.’ ‘This bread is for the missing. Take it and think of us.’ ‘Inshallah, he’ll come back soon.’ But the question they ask one another all the time is: ‘Who has come back and who hasn’t made it back yet?’”

  Who has come back and who hasn’t made it back yet?

  Abdullah began to tell another story.

  I met a mother and her children — perhaps you’d like to hear about them. It’s about a boy who didn’t see his father when he was first born. The boy’s father didn’t see his father when he was bo
rn either. And his grandfather was born without seeing his father either. War swallowed them all up. In the future, when people read stories about them, they might seem like fantastical tales of the djinn, but this is our reality today. It’s unreal . . .

  In the early 1940s, in a village in Sinjar — Khan Sour to be precise — there was a man named Saleh who married a young girl from the village named Zarifa. A month and a half after they’d married a fight broke out between a Yazidi tribe in Khan Sour and the Arab Juhaysh tribe. Nobody knows exactly how the conflict started. As you know, people here have hot tempers, and they’ll start fighting at the drop of a hat. Anyway, Saleh was killed in that dispute, leaving Zarifa all alone, one month pregnant. Their son Ali was born — he was raised by his mother. Ali got married in his midthirties, which was considered very late at the time. Zarifa waited impatiently for a grandchild but five years of marriage passed without children. Zarifa would wake up every morning hoping to hear the awaited news. When her patience ran out, she started urging him to remarry — that is, until his wife finally got pregnant; Ali heard about the pregnancy as he was putting on his helmet, in preparation to go to the front — the Iran-Iraq War had broken out and he was called to fight with the other men. Ali arranged for his leave to coincide with the birth of his much-anticipated son, Hasan. But when Ali returned two months before his son’s due date, his mother received him by wailing and slapping her cheeks, because he had come back wrapped in the Iraqi flag. They were given a black banner with white letters that read “Ali the Martyr Died Defending the Honor and Dignity of the People.” It was to be hung out in front of the house. The three women wore black, in mourning. As Hasan’s birth approached, Zarifa picked out a brown dress as a gift for Faheema, telling her, “You can’t welcome the birth of your child all dressed in black,” but Zarifa didn’t change her mourning dress until Hasan turned one year old. The day Hasan was born, Grandma Zarifa held him in her lap, cooing at him in a quavering voice somewhere between a lullaby and weeping: “Your father would be so happy to see you. He was born, like you, right after his father died.” And just like Zarifa, Faheema dedicated her life to raising her son, refusing to get married again. When he was in his midtwenties, Hasan married a young lady named Zuhour. The couple had been blessed with two daughters and were then expecting their third child. One day, the two girls were playing hide and seek, and as usual, they wanted their mother to join them, but she didn’t because the entire house was in a state of agitation. News had spread that Daesh was moving into the area, which totally confused them. They locked themselves inside their home; they decided to stay there because they didn’t own a car, Umm Hasan was sick and unable to walk, and Hasan was concerned about Zuhour walking long distances now that she was six months pregnant. After two days of self-imprisonment, their food and water ran out. All of the shops were shuttered. Everyone in the area had fled or was getting ready to go. In the end, they decided to do the same — Hasan carried his mother on his back, Zuhour picked up the little girl and took the older girl by the hand. They all headed down in the direction of the village of Kocho.