The Beekeeper

by Dunya Mikhail

  I noticed that people in America don’t need censors like those in the Arab world: they watch themselves, limiting their speech within the boundaries of what’s acceptable. In the Arab world, censorship follows speech. In America, censorship precedes speech.

  People here have such beautiful dreams. To annoy Americans with our nightmares simply means inviting them into our underworld. America is still a young country, so it isn’t always easy for them to understand us — we are the older ones.

  I’ve heard from my relatives that Americans care more about their dogs than about other people. Maybe because human love is incomplete. As Iraqis, we don’t have the habit of caring for dogs. Perhaps dogs are what we really need, to know the meaning of unconditional love. A dog doesn’t care where you’re from, it doesn’t care about your race or religion or color. All the dog wants from you is to throw something toward the horizon, like a worry you finally brought out of your chest, so that it can run after that thing and grip it tightly between its teeth, panting and excited, as if the whole world has just been caught between its jaws.

  In Iraq, we don’t have the concept of “black” the way it is in America. The letter N doesn’t mean “Negro” for us, but still it’s a symbol of the enslavement of minorities and of genocide.

  And in order to survive, we pretend that we are dead.

  The last time I went to northern Iraq before leaving the country, I was with my family, escaping from the intense bombing of Baghdad in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm. We were in the war room — that’s what my mother called the little room under the stairs, its windows sealed with tape so it wouldn’t shatter, its door frame also covered with tape so that no chemical could get through, and its shelves stocked with bread and canned food. Our room was shaking so intensely that we were surprised the ceiling didn’t come crashing down on our heads. When the bombing quieted down, we headed to our ancestral town of Telkaif, north of Mosul — the birthplace of my parents. They moved to Baghdad after getting married, so my father could work in the capital. We arrived at my aunt’s house. She reassured us, as soon as we got there, that the fighter jets wouldn’t come to the village because “it’s too far removed from any danger in the world.” I remember how red her face was from being near the clay oven all day, where she baked for guests who filled the house. She refused to leave for Sweden with her eldest son, to join her other son there. “Sweden is too cold, my son, too cold,” she said, “just leave me here — otherwise, who will remain in the house? Shall we just leave it empty? They say anybody can come and take an empty, forsaken house.”

  My mother was born in that house. My aunt had inherited it from her father, my grandfather, because she and her family were the only ones who stayed behind in the village. Everyone in the area knew that house because it was much bigger than the neighboring houses, and it had a circular shape. In its center there was a large, open patio, surrounded by rooms on all sides, and there was also an adjoining field with separate shelters for the animals — one for the cows, one for the chickens, and one for the donkey. They told me that the donkey knew the way home, in case I tried to ride it and got lost. My cousin wanted to teach me how to milk the cow but I didn’t like doing it. My aunt would make yogurt from that milk — and no one could forget that taste. Now, twenty-three years later, the banner of the Islamic State was hoisted above the gate of Telkaif, and the cross was lowered from the church. My aunt and her family walked out silently, leaving the house as it was — with its clay oven, its stables, its many rooms untouched — overlooking the hill. I contacted them from Detroit to check in. My cousin responded immediately. There was so much eagerness in her voice, as if she were waiting for a call. “Where are you?” I asked her. “In Zakho now,” she answered, “but tomorrow God only knows. We all left as soon as we heard that Daesh had arrived. We didn’t take anything with us, not even the great golden halo over the head of the Virgin Mary. It was night, and the children were all asleep. Badri’s friend in Zakho told him, Those beasts buy and sell women, so Badri hung up the phone and told us, Get in the car right away. Leave everything, there’s no time.”

  I asked her about Badriya, her sister who lived in Mosul. She replied, “Badriya also fled. First she left Mosul and came to us in Telkaif, but Daesh followed us here, so we moved north, and then farther and farther north. We don’t know how far north we’ll wind up. What can I tell you about Mosul? They canceled school, gave students CDs to teach them about violence and crime. The children were confused, women saw with nothing but frightened eyes, masked fighters roamed the streets, giving strange orders over loudspeakers: Everyone must go and sign the repentance cards, otherwise they’ll face capital punishment. Cigarettes forbidden, birth control forbidden, music forbidden.”

  What hell it is to be a citizen in Mosul, I thought.

  But now, this particular bit of information I’m reading about the narjis gives me hope: one of this flower’s secrets is that even though it shrinks away when strong rains fall, as soon as the sun shines it blooms back again. Jinda, as they say in Kurdish, meaning “coming back to life again.” Maybe Kurdistan is a daffodil that has only wilted temporarily, only temporarily.

  The Infidels

  I didn’t hear from Abdullah for quite a long time. That worried me. He’d told me that he was busy trying to rescue his two captive nieces. “My daughter is going to be so happy to see them,” he’d said. “They’ve been friends since childhood.”

  After that long absence, he wrote, “I’m very sad right now. Daesh caught the two girls and imprisoned them.”

  I called him immediately. His voice was strained like never before.

  “I feel the same as I did on August third, when they were first captured.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear this news,” I replied.

  “When the opportunity finally arose for the two girls to escape, the only thing they didn’t have was the Daesh outfit, a black dress and a burqa. I located them, and told them to wait at the Farouq Hospital in two hours, where someone would give them a bucket that is normally used to hold yogurt — inside they would find the necessary clothes. She rolled a black cloth around herself and went to the appointment, where she received the clothes successfully. The men had gone off to fight, and it was the perfect opportunity for the girls to run away. They wore the “shari‘a-appropriate” clothes and returned to the hospital. I managed to make a deal with an ambulance driver to move them quickly from where they were in Aleppo to the Mansoura area between Raqqa and Tabqa. The two girls arrived at a safe house, and I was supposed to pick them up the next day and take them to my house. I didn’t say anything to my family because I wanted to surprise my daughters. But someone from Daesh ambushed us. One of our smugglers had been waiting for some other captive girls, who were being monitored by Daesh. When those girls reached the smuggler, Daesh caught all of them. Daesh took the cell phone from them, and sent me a message after finding my messages on the phone: The girls are safe now. Where should we take them next? I gave them the location of my nieces, hoping that the other girls would join my two nieces as well. That’s how Daesh found them. It was my fault. I’ve paid for it in tears and anxiety during the past few sleepless days . . .”

  “Who would have known the message was from Daesh? It’s unimaginable.”

  “Daesh is very skilled with technology — they use the most up-to-date means to infiltrate their enemies. In fact, they keep gaining new members who are able to access meaningful information and use it to their advantage.”

  “I agree with you, especially when we consider their Hollywood style of self-promotion.”

  “So our work is not without its challenges. Our rescue operations have failed on more than one occasion. Several times I’ve lost money from my own pocket. This week, after the arrest of my nieces and their smuggler, in a moment of despair, I paid a very large sum of money to a Daesh worker as a bribe, so he would negotiate their release. But this Daeshi later
claimed that he had tried but was unable to do anything. He didn’t return the money I’d paid him. After a week of terrifying silence, someone else called me and said he was living in the house next door to the headquarters where my nieces were being kept. He sent me their picture and offered to assist in smuggling them out of Raqqa. He asked for six thousand dollars. I agreed again, as I would pay everything I had to bring the girls home — and to bring some happiness to my two daughters. He told me that he would drive the girls toward the Euphrates along with his wife so as not to arouse suspicions, since families in Raqqa usually go to that area for picnics. But after I had transferred the money to him, I realized that our messages were being automatically erased from the phone screen. I asked him about this. He told me that he had a program to delete them for security reasons. He wrote to me under the name ‘Saleh Shami,’ warning me, If you receive a message from me with a different name, don’t reply. That would mean that they’ve caught me. Anyway, he promised to take the girls away from Raqqa at 3:30 p.m. I sent my crew to the agreed place at the agreed time. The girls weren’t there. We waited three hours without any sign of them. I couldn’t fall sleep until dawn and he didn’t respond to me until six in the morning. In his message, he apologized for not responding earlier, signing off with the name ‘Ahmed Shami.’ I didn’t know if ‘Saleh’ got caught or if he had deceived me. Who are you? I asked him. I’ve got the texts between you and Saleh. We’re going to cut off his head, he replied. And things ended just like that. You see, there’s no law to protect us, and we’ll just have to take matters into our own hands. A lot of people in Raqqa work with Daesh, directly or indirectly. They’re all cousins. What can we do? We have to deal with them in order to save our people.”

  “It’s so much pressure.”

  “But I’ll never lose hope. Anyway, my nephew’s wife ran away from Daesh successfully thanks to a friend of mine. I’ll call you tomorrow to tell you her story and the story of Idrees, who helped her. How does that sound?”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  The next morning I was walking to the park in my neighborhood in Michigan. The birds were remarkably loud, and they attracted Abdullah’s attention when he called me. “Michigan must be fantastic with all those birds,” he said.

  “It is, especially in the fall. But it’s so cold in the winter. I hope you can visit us one day.”

  “Why not? And I want to visit Canada. I have friends there.”

  “Michigan is close to Canada.”

  “If only we had birds’ wings. Do you know the qabaj bird?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s one of the most beloved birds in Kurdistan. It’s said that hunters forget where they are when they hear its beautiful song, so they follow the sound of the bird wherever it goes, leaving everything behind. You writers are a lot like the qabaj hunters.”

  “I love this metaphor. I’ll quote it.”

  “And now, my friend, are you ready to hear today’s story?”

  “Of course.”

  Abdullah began: When my nephew Falah got engaged to Nidal, all the members of our tribe were astounded because she was seven years older than him — he was only eighteen years old. But he looked very happy on his wedding day. It was obvious that he was in love. The wedding was great and it was held jointly between them and another couple. We all danced the dabka in a large circle around the two couples. Nidal’s father was so moved because she was his only daughter. Her mother had died during her delivery.

  The couple was blessed with a girl and a boy. They named the girl Farah (Joy) because on the day of her birth her father got a job as a policeman on the border between Iraq and Syria. They named the boy Faraj (Relief) because his father escaped from the grip of Daesh just days before he was born. Falah was on a mission in the Ramadi Province when Daesh attacked the region and captured many police officers. Falah managed to escape with some of his colleagues, hiding in the valley for three days without any water or food. When they saw a wandering ewe, they milked her and drank the milk.

  Six months later Daesh invaded the area, so the rest of the family ran away with the villagers who went to the mountain. Like the others who ended up with Daesh, the family was trapped at the edge of the mountain; then they were captured and separated from one another by sex and age. Nidal didn’t see her husband after that day. They took her to Talafar, selling her with the other women. The man who bought her had to stop in the middle of the road and take her to the hospital because she’d fainted. The doctor said her condition was critical, and he recommended that she be transferred to the Mosul hospital. The man took her there. Waiting in the lobby, Nidal saw Idrees, who is my friend; he’s from the same area as Nidal. He was sitting right there in front of her. As I told you, in our area everybody knows everybody. They only exchanged a few looks, however, too afraid to speak to each other. Idrees was able to write his phone number on a scrap of paper, and slip it in her hand when the Daeshi went over to the receptionist to sign a form. Nidal hid the paper inside her veil, which she’d been forced to wear by the man who bought her.

  After several medical tests, Nidal was diagnosed with severe dehydration. They treated her with a lot of fluids and medications. She felt better, but as soon as she and her man arrived in Raqqa, she fainted again. This time the man took her back to the Qaqa market and exchanged her for another woman. “This woman is sick,” he said, “and she’s no good to me.” Daesh are allowed to return and exchange women like we would something at the shopping mall.

  She was returned, and they assigned her to the kitchen to cook for Daesh and the other captives, since she was too skinny to be sold again right away. Food for the captives was very scarce, but she was sometimes able to steal some of the Daesh food and give it to her two children and the other captives. Five months after she was put up for sale again, Nidal and her kids were purchased by a man she described as “ugly and old.” Once they arrived at his house, he called his wife and asked her to “raise this infidel family.” He would beat her first, then have sex with her. Even after she got pregnant, he wouldn’t stop beating her whenever she refused to have sex, complained, or said she was sick. Even on the day she gave birth she wasn’t free from his commands. He took the newborn girl away from her and didn’t allow Nidal to breastfeed her or even hold her. “She shouldn’t drink from the milk of the infidels, only from the milk of the Islamic State so that she’ll become strong and, in the future, a martyr on the path of God,” he said.

  Nidal became even weaker and skinnier, and she was no longer able to do much of anything. This Daeshi also returned her to the Qaqa market, along with Farah and Faraj. A Syrian man bought them for two hundred and fifty dollars and took them to his home in Raqqa. He lived with his mother and his four brothers. His mother welcomed them, saying, “You are fortunate to be given shelter even though you are infidels.” Nidal recalled: His mother was very harsh with us. Whenever Faraj cried she would get so annoyed that she would ask her sons to get rid of the child. They would beat him and I could hardly protect him from them. One time when Faraj wouldn’t stop crying one of her sons picked him up and said, “I’ll toss him off the balcony.” I ran after him but not fast enough. He actually threw him off the balcony. I raced down; Faraj was moaning. He was not dead but wounded: his hand was broken. He wasn’t even two years old. They refused to take him to the doctor but the neighbors who saw me crying and begging for help offered to take him. The doctor treated his wounds and put his hand in a cast. The mother kept watching me all the time. Even when the neighbors went to the doctor with me, she sent a guard to look after me. I was fed up with life. I called upon the Lord to help us survive or die — anything other than living with that woman. One day I heard the loud sound of an airplane, and I wished that it would bomb the house, even if we all died. My wish came true a few seconds later. The plane bombed the building next door, and the house caved in on us. I lost consciousness for two hours, and didn’t wak
e up until I heard the voice of my daughter Farah. She was holding my face, screaming, “Mama! Mama!” The three of us got up from under the rubble, emerging from the big holes, all covered in blood. People from the neighborhood rushed over to us. That cruel woman was screaming and howling. Four of her children had died right in front of her. They were crushed under heavy blocks of rubble. One son, supposedly my husband, wasn’t in the house at that time. When he returned to find what had happened, his mother said, “You have to either kill or sell these infidels. I can’t look at them anymore.”

  Their next owner took them to the doctor to have their wounds treated. The doctor discovered that Nidal had an advanced stage of diabetes. “Maybe it was caused by the shock of the bombing,” he declared.

  The necessary insulin treatment wasn’t available in Raqqa, but it was in Mosul. The man sold them to someone in Mosul for the sake of the insulin. Finally, it was there that Nidal was able to use the piece of paper that Idrees had given her. She called Idrees and he gave her my number because he knew that she was my nephew’s wife. In those days Idrees was a recent survivor, having just made it back to our town. Nidal wasn’t able to write down my entire number because the Daeshi had seen her. He grabbed the phone away from her and reprimanded her. Days passed — he went off to fight in the Battle of Kirkuk, and he came back completely exhausted. He fell into a deep enough sleep that she was able to steal his phone, call Idrees, and write down my complete number. Just then, the man woke up and leapt at her, seizing the phone and my number. Nidal trembled in fear. She expected to be killed. “You’re calling someone in order to escape, aren’t you?” he said.