The Beekeeper

by Dunya Mikhail

  “He’s my brother’s son. They killed his father. What was I supposed to do? I feared for his life. I wanted him to stay with me. Please, I won’t ask you for anything. Just let the boy stay with me.”

  “If you want the boy to stay with us, and if you don’t want anyone to find out about this secret, you have to do exactly as I tell you.” I listened to him in silence, waiting to find out what he was going to ask of me, tears still gushing down my face.

  “You will love me. You have to come and ask me to sleep with you, to make love without ropes around your hands or feet.”

  “I’d like you to do me this favor of letting the boy stay here with me, but is it truly love if it’s commanded like this? Is a heart filled with sorrow capable of loving? They killed my mother and all of my brothers in a single day. I don’t know where my sisters are. You’re an American. You can’t know what it means for me to lose my virginity like this.”

  “I was once an infidel like you. But my life changed when I became a Muslim. I learned the meaning of God.”

  “But if I’m an infidel, why would you want to touch me?”

  “You’ll be purified by my touch. You’ll go to heaven. My touching you is like a prayer. Something far worse could have happened to you. You could have lost the child. Or you could have been killed for lying.”

  “I’m already half-dead without my family.”

  “I also left behind my family and my country. For God.”

  The Emir showed me photos of his family on his computer: his American wife, his one-year-old son, and his infant daughter. The two children were playing on swings in a park. He said he’d been a teacher in an elementary school.

  “Isn’t it haram for you to abandon two small children who might be wondering where their father is?”

  “I go to America every once in a while, to see my family, then I come back.”

  “I’d like to go to America one day.”

  “You can go to your room now.”

  I told Nada everything. She wondered if she was going to be raped, too. I told her: “He didn’t say anything about you, but if he does I’ll protect you the best that I can. I lost my virginity. That’s over and done. I won’t be able to keep him off of me now that he found out about the child. But you can still escape.”

  The next night he drugged me and then raped me five times. When he woke up in the morning, he said: “Don’t tell anyone that the boy isn’t yours. If the members of the organization find out, they’ll kill me. This has to be our secret.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “We’ll raise him together, you and I. But I’m going to sell Nada.”

  “No. Please. I need her. I don’t have anyone else. You go to work all day — I can’t bear to be here without Nada.”

  “It isn’t right to keep her here — she’ll need to be sold or married off. I’ll have to marry her if we want her to stay with us.”

  “No, you already married me. It wouldn’t be right for you to marry someone else. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “If that’s your wish, I’ll let her stay. She can be our jariya, our servant — she can cook and take care of the house.”

  “Yes, she’s our jariya.”

  I went and told Nada that she was now our jariya. We laughed about it, and then we cried together. I joked that she would have to obey my orders, since I was “the Emir’s wife” and she was our servant.

  After living with him for two months we tried to run away, unsuccessfully. We tried to run away four times, but the Daesh police brought us back each time. And each time he punished me with a beating. On the fourth time he was so angry that he strung me up by my feet and beat me mercilessly. Even worse, he left with my nephew, and when he came back the boy wasn’t with him. I was beside myself. I begged. I wept. But he didn’t care. A week went by and he wouldn’t speak to me. He didn’t tell me what he had done with my nephew. I went into his room and kissed his feet. I said: “I’m begging you, bring back the boy. Tell me he’s alright.”

  Finally he brought my nephew back. I noticed that the little boy had changed completely since returning. He started asking me to pray and to read the Quran. The strange thing was that he had memorized selections from it. He started reciting them despite his young age. The little boy behaved like a very serious person, as if he were an old man. He acted like a little Daeshi, without the beard. He’d keep saying how much he loved Daesh for no apparent reason. I guess they’d force-fed him their teachings night and day for the entire week he had spent with them. The boy started praying alongside the Emir. Neither one of them knew how to read Quran, though, so they recited the verses they’d memorized by heart. I would pray with them as well, but I wondered when all of that was going to end, when I would be able to regain my freedom.

  After my nephew had been taken, we were reluctant to run away again. I was afraid the Emir would take him away and not bring him back this time. But one day an opportunity presented itself that we couldn’t pass up. It was 9 p.m. when he called me into his room. He said: “We’re going to Kobani to fight. We might be gone four or five days. I’m going to lock the doors. You can’t go out — not at all, not even to buy bread. Do you need me to bring you anything before we go?”

  “No. We have everything we need. Thanks.”

  We made a plan to break down the door and run away. We got our Islamic clothes ready and started looking for something to break down the door. We found some small metal tools and used them to smash it. We had to work at that for hours. We didn’t go to sleep until we managed to finally break down the door at four o’clock in the morning, but waited until eight so we wouldn’t raise any suspicions. We hurried as far away from the house as we could. After about two hundred yards we saw a cell phone shop with a sign that read “International Phone.” We went inside. I still remembered the phone number given to me by a woman in that building where we’d been detained before we were sold. She told me: “Memorize this number.” Then I gave it to somebody else and told her: “Memorize this number.” I repeated the number in my head every day so I would never forget it. We were a few steps away from the phone. I told the shopkeeper that we wanted to use the phone but we didn’t have any money. He said: “Sorry. No free calls.”

  I asked him: “Do you know the Emir Abu Abdullah the American? I’m his wife. He went to Kobani. I need to call him to make sure he’s okay. I’m new here. I don’t know anybody else.”

  He said: “Well, since you’re the Emir’s wife, go ahead.”

  After I dialed, a man answered the phone. “It’s Badia,” I said. “I’m in Aleppo. I need a driver.”

  Even though I didn’t utter the word “escape” because the shopkeeper was standing right next to me, the man on the line understood and asked me for the address.

  I asked the shopkeeper’s assistant — a little boy — for help with the address, and he picked up the phone and recited it.

  Two hours later a driver showed up and asked: “Badia?” We got into the car and took off for another house, where they kept us for two days. Then he gave us a ride to Turkey, and from there to Iraq.

  In Turkey the smuggler asked me: “Why are you crying?”

  “I don’t have anyone left in Iraq. They murdered my entire family.”

  “You have a brother. He said he’d be waiting for you.”

  “No, they killed all five of my brothers. They threw them into pits. They killed them all.”

  “But one of your brothers was only wounded. He’s not dead. He managed to get away.”

  “Which brother?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never met him. But I heard about him from my friend.”

  I wanted to get there as soon as possible so I could confirm what the smuggler was saying. And as soon as I set foot on Iraqi soil I saw my brother running toward me. We spent a long time holding each other and crying. Khidr was one ye
ar younger than me. He’s the youngest in the family. I’m the youngest girl.

  * * *

  What about your nephew? Did he make it back to his mother?

  Yes. I stayed in touch with him. Later on I asked his mother if the two of them wanted to go to Germany with me, but she refused, saying she didn’t want to leave Iraq.

  And you went to Germany for medical treatment?

  That’s right. At first I stayed for nine months with my brother in a refugee camp. As you know, the situation in the camps is very difficult. It isn’t comfortable at all. There’s a shortage of water and electricity and everything. I left the country with the help of a German organization along with some other women survivors.

  Thank you so much, Badia. You’re a very brave woman.

  In Daesh’s Camp

  On the Turkish shore,

  A calm beautiful graceful child is on his stomach

  The wave caresses his tiny corpse

  He doesn’t seem to protest our ridiculousness,

  Though his face is turned away from us,

  From our lives overturned like a rusty boat.

  The remote control is in your hand. Today you are going to see who will survive the shelling or the flood or the terrorist attack or the new virus. Rowboats rocking in the river carry passengers who left their lives behind, bringing only themselves. But their burdens are heavier than what the boats can bear. For a moment life behind them looks like a lighthouse behind the boats swaying in the river . . .

  The headline today: Armed Attack on the Turkish Border. Turkish forces attempt to regain control of the borders. Every country has the right to defend its borders. But today I am overcome with extreme anxiety for another woman whom Abdullah had been trying to rescue recently: a mother who got left behind while her infant son managed to cross the border with another woman who was fleeing. Was she trying to cross right when they attacked the border? Three days passed since Abdullah told me he was able to receive the boy without his mother. “She was exhausted. The other woman had helped by carrying her five-month-old son as they were escaping. When the Turkish border patrol attacked, they all scattered. The mother wound up on the wrong side of the border, while the others managed to get across. I told the other woman that she should stay for a night or two in a safe house, and that hopefully the mother would be able to cross the border and join them,” he explained.

  The boy arrives but his mother is still on the road. His uncle on the right, Abdullah on the left.

  I hesitate calling Abdullah again because I’m worried I’ll prevent him from taking a call from someone asking for help or someone at the border who just received a survivor. Two more days of waiting before I sent him the text message: Good morning, I wrote, then I mean, good evening, choosing his time zone. There is a seven-hour time difference between America and Iraq. Good morning, he replied, using my time zone. Then he wrote, Call me if you have time.

  “I’m worried about the mother who was separated from her child. Did you hear anything from her?” I asked.

  “No. We’re still waiting. But the little boy I told you about made it, the one who was in Daesh’s camp. He arrived with his mother and his younger brother.”

  “They were training to fight, right?”

  “Yes. Ragheb was forced to train for four hours every day, learning how to kill, how to chop off people’s heads. They would also teach him Quran for two hours a day, and fiqh for another hour. They have classes on everything, from how to wash your hands to sex education, from impurity to handling an animal, from genetics to just about anything you can imagine — and things you can’t even imagine. And finally a personalized sermon to convince him to die for God, so that he’ll be rewarded in heaven. They have special passes to get into heaven that are handed out at the end.”

  “I wonder what’s on those passes? Do they have writing on them? Or a picture? A symbol?”

  “He never received the pass because he didn’t make it to the final stage.”

  “That’s a shame. So he’s not going to get into heaven.”

  “As you know, they use both carrots and sticks. Their instructions vacillate between brainwashing and promises of a happy afterlife, between death threats and saying, for example, We’ll send you back to your family in a trash bag. Ragheb was a little boy who’d never even seen a chicken killed before. He’d spent most of his time playing soccer.”

  “It’s horrible to be a girl with Daesh. But it’s even worse to be a boy.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Maybe Ragheb was in school before his imprisonment?”

  “Yes, in junior high in Kocho. Our best students are from Kocho. The village is about twenty miles south of Mount Sinjar. Everyone there is related, everyone is very open-minded; they’re the kind of people who solve their problems by themselves, they don’t wait for solutions from the government. They would personally provide everything that was necessary to the teachers who taught their children. It was rare to hear about a problem in Kocho. Their police were basically out of work. You’d never imagine a major problem like Daesh. Kocho was a place that didn’t have any problems.”

  “I remember you told me that many of the people there didn’t leave their houses, or that they went home again after a few hours.”

  “Yes, which is why so many of them were kidnapped and killed. They never imagined that Daesh would come for them. They’d never experienced evil in their lives. My youngest daughter Rula is six. She asks me if Daesh can get inside our house. When I tell her no, we won’t let them, she tells me she’s glad to know they’re not allowed inside. I buy them lots of toys, no matter how much they cost. When my mother complains about the price, I justify it by saying that it’s to make up for how much they suffered during those days in the mountains. My mother chimes in, Twenty years from now you’ll still be giving them things to make up for those days. My mother is sweet. She makes us laugh, in spite of everything. She tries to hide her tears from us, but I notice them anyway; and I notice the way her ears prick up whenever the telephone rings. Some people tell me that they switch off their telephones when they’re relaxing or sleeping, but I can’t switch mine off. How would I ever be able to sleep? And even if I did manage to fall asleep, I would be haunted in my dreams. My brother would come striding out of our childhood. I’d see him once again in our garden with our two trees, one beside the other. We used to sit side by side in the shade of the two trees. My father and my uncle had been working together on that garden since the fifties — they’d planted many olive trees. But my brother and I had planted different kinds of trees: mine was a mulberry tree and my brother’s was a chinaberry. I’m afraid to go back there one day and see all of those memories. In the old days the people in my village used to plant olive trees despite the fact that olive trees take a long time to bear fruit, sometimes even longer than the life span of the planter. That’s why they say ‘the olive grower isn’t selfish’; whoever plants the tree knows in advance that its yield won’t belong to him. Actually I no longer see the point in growing anything, even if it only takes a couple of days, because I can’t be sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. And I don’t like growing a tree that I’ll only have to leave behind.”

  “I know. Abdullah, you left behind your house, your garden, and all of your belongings in Sinjar. If you could be back at your house for one hour, what would you take with you from there?”

  “I wouldn’t take anything. I’d just want to water the plants, especially the mulberry and chinaberry trees.”

  After a moment of silence, one of those punctuating moments for which we stand and dedicate to mourning some kind of loss — the loss of a person or a homeland or a meaning — Abdullah returned: Let me complete for you the story of the two boys who were in Daesh’s camp. Their father Elias was a soldier in the Peshmerga. He lived in the village with his wife Kamy and their six children, three boys and three girls. El
ias decided not to leave the house despite the news that Daesh was coming. After four days, however, his fear for the children grew. Everyone in the area was leaving for the mountains, one caravan after another. They had to travel twenty miles to reach a safe place. Elias and his family walked less than a mile, and then returned home. They went back and forth several times, leaving and then returning, changing their minds about whether to stay in their home or leave it behind. Four days later they left by themselves late at night, walked two miles, arriving in an undeveloped area that was totally deserted. Just then they saw five large transports heading toward Kocho. They rushed to hide in a ditch surrounded by trees, holding each other tight. Elias told them not to move until the vehicles were out of sight. After he had assured them that the vehicles were far enough away they continued walking until they reached the village of al-Masiriyah, between Kocho and the mountain. Some of the people of the village were still there. They were preparing to leave at any moment. They were discussing what to do, discussing what could be done: to flee or to stay. When Elias got there the people crowded around him because he was with the Peshmerga — they thought that maybe he would know more about what was going on than the others. But Elias knew just as little as they did, and in the end they all decided to head west, going around the city and getting to the valley that leads to the mountain road. And that was how Elias and his family wound up as part of a caravan heading in that direction. On the way they were ambushed from the opposite direction by a battalion of Daeshis. They stopped them, asking, “Why are you leaving? Where are you going? You’ll die of hunger and thirst. Go back to your homes. Don’t worry, we’re not going to hurt you. Who told you that? We’re here to change your state, not your religion. Tell us what you need and we’ll help you. What did you say? A sick person needs blood? Go back home. We’ll drive the injured person to the hospital.”