How could anyone look at this woman and feel anything but pity? Maybe he shouldn’t gripe so much that he didn’t have the respectability of Sheik Al Harbi and instead start praising Allah for all that Allah the Rewarder of Thankfulness had bestowed on him.
Not only had Rosna been shamed, and lost so many family members, she, along with all the Iraqi Yazidis, was homeless and destitute, thanks to daesh.
A strange feeling roiled inside him. Guilt? Ali glanced to where a white sliver of the moon showed its face in the darkening sky. He’d always pitied himself for his fatherless upbringing, yet he had everything compared to this woman.
Straightening, Rosna took the juice from him. She drank deep, the rich liquid spilling over her shapely lips. Her blue eyes possessed the stunning beauty of flowing rivers as the setting sun made her hair sparkle.
Ali dug his teeth into a date cake. The sweet goodness flaked off in his mouth. When he was a kid, he’d salivated over cakes like this, but now he had enough money to buy whatever he wanted. Yes, he definitely needed to thank Allah the All-Aware more for that. His phone beeped.
Twisting, he tugged it out of the back pocket of his designer jeans. Another request to smuggle alcohol into Saudi Arabia. The Saudi prince offered eight hundred dollars. Ali rolled his eyes. A prince could do better than eight hundred.
Ali tapped his thumb against the keyboard. Make it eight thousand and I’ll take the offer.
No response.
Fine, he had someone begging him to smuggle arms to Iran. Let the Saudi prince stay sober.
A tiny sigh came from the left. Rosna’s shoulders collapsed forward, her ugly black dress hanging on her frame. Turning her face toward the sinking sun, she pressed her fingers to her lips.
“Okay there?” Ali hovered one thumb over the Iranian arms dealer contact number.
She looked up through tear-stained lashes. “At least Khadir lives. He has waited many years for me. We will wed when I return.”
Ali swallowed. Not what Khadir had said. How did he break that news to her? “Perhaps you do not wish to wed.” Ali clicked send on the text. He could get Kalashnikovs for the Iranian, no problem, but if the arms dealer wanted machine guns or drones, he’d have to find a new supplier.
“Why would I not wish to wed?” Rosna stared at him, her skin as clear as the skies above. “It is every woman’s dream. To bear sons, create a legacy.”
“After what you have endured from men, perhaps you do not wish for marriage.” Ali flipped to the weather alert on his phone. With all the newspaper reports, people at the refugee camp would only have to take one look at the returning Yazidi girl to know she’d lost her honor. Pitiful woman.
Red flushed across Rosna’s cheeks. She tucked her arms in tighter, chin tense. “I will marry Khadir. Together, we will raise up a new generation of Yazidis.” The lines around her mouth relaxed as she sucked in a breath. “The people of the Peacock Angel.”
See how crazy that Yazidi religion sounded? He followed Allah the Mighty. Ali covered his snort with a cough and grabbed another date cake. “Perhaps you’d rather be a teacher. They have grants for former daesh sex slaves.” As a teacher in Baghdad or Basra, she could have a good life. She should set her mind on that goal.
“Do not call me that!” Rosna sprang up, the darkness of her tattered dress flapping out around her frail ankles. “I am a Yazidi, one of the pure people of the Peacock Angel.”
No one in all Iraq would see her, a former daesh sex slave, as pure. Ali’s stomach churned with the desire to puke up those date cakes. He sighed, breath blowing over the crystal pomegranate jar. None of this was his problem. He was only here to collect his twenty thousand dollars.
Still, that poor girl. “Want a smoke? It’ll calm you.” Ali reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
Collapsing forward, Rosna hid her face in her lap. Shrill sobs rose as her stooped shoulders shook. Hair falling around her face, she trembled in the evening wind.
Ali touched her shoulder. What words of comfort could he say? He couldn’t tell her that she’d get her life back, because she wouldn’t. He pressed his hand against her shoulder, willing the warmth of his broad palm to bring some kind of comfort to this broken woman. “I’ll have you back to your uncle in two days.” His voice sounded husky. Curse daesh and all they’d done to the people of Iraq. Curse daesh for destroying this woman and leaving but a hollow shell.
Jerking up, Rosna pushed his hand away. “It is inappropriate that I touched you earlier. My uncle, he will not be happy. Do not tell him.”
Ali stifled a groan. Sure, just the fact that she, an unrelated woman, sat here in his house without veil or chaperone violated every bound of conduct, but after what daesh had done to her, any other impropriety paled in comparison.
The sun sank low in the sky. Buzz! Ali’s phone alarm vibrated. 6:45 p.m. Only forty-five more seconds until evening prayers started.
Scrambling toward the porch, Ali threw open a plastic storage box and whipped out a prayer rug.
With a shake, he got it straight on the concrete, rug pointed toward Mecca. Not too many miles separated him from that holy city in this house. He raised his hands to his shoulders, palms up, and proclaimed, “Allah is great.”
He crossed his right arm over his left and then he bowed in the direction of Mecca. “Glory be to God, the greatest,” he said once, twice, three times.
Bowing, prostrating, and standing, he continued the prayers. Then he rose.
Now he was supposed to add his own prayers. Even as a child he’d never known what to say in this part of the ritual. He’d appeased Allah’s wrath with his five prayers, but what exactly would Allah want to hear from him?
Ali’s voice cracked. “Oh, Allah the Majestic One, I have saved a life today and I will donate alms to five—er—one beggar. An entire month—er—day of food to him. Allah Akhbar.” He rolled up the rug and turned.
Rosna curled in a fetal position on the concrete, trembling as tears streamed down her face. What!
He crossed to her. Squatting over her, he coughed.
She looked up slowly through tear-stained lashes. Scars ran down her neck. “They made me pray. Five times a day they made me. Melek Taus forgive me.” She drew ragged breaths, wandering eyes staring eerily from her head.
“There is no compulsion in religion.” Ali pointed to the house where he kept his Koran. Surely she didn’t think those daesh monsters represented true Islam?
She shivered.
Who knew? Maybe she did think the daesh death cult represented Islam. Yazidis were crazy.
The woman shook. Her eyes, which had shimmered like jewels, glazed over. Covering her head with her arms, she trembled over and over again like a seizure. The girl cried out, but no sound came. She fell back listless.
A groan slid through him. He’d be delivering a half-dead girl to her uncle. He shoved the emotions away. Either way, he’d still get the twenty thousand. He glanced up the terrace to where his house stood.
Pity washed over him. No one had ever believed in him when he’d been the black orphan boy begging on street corners. Every person needed someone to believe in him.
“Rosna Jaziri, look at me.” He sat down beside her. The rays of the sun scattered across her milky skin as she turned her gaze to him.
“Daesh,” her voice caught as she used the Arabic name for Islamic state, “took all my strength, my honor, my family.” Tears rained onto the concrete as her hysteric moans filled his veranda.
“No, they didn’t.” Ali looked straight at the girl whose thin arms showed how little food she’d had these past years. “You are strong. You survived thirty months with daesh. Do you think I would have survived that long?”
He glanced at himself. A burn mark ran down the skin of his left arm. A few knife wounds marked his chest, but his muscles bulged strong from food and exercise. He’d survived hunger and ill-use as a kid. As a smuggler, he’d risked death often enough. Never though had he bee
n imprisoned and tortured like she had. He stood.
The girl’s fingertips looked blue. A clammy pallor rose across her face. She shuddered.
“If you fall apart now, daesh won. They may not have your body, but they will have taken your soul.” Reaching down, he brushed his hand against her slender fingers. Shame flowed through him. Not her shame, but his. Allah had given him so much, yet he’d whined about his misfortunes and never given a single thought for those less fortunate.
Rosna bit her lip. Her arms palpitated. Slowly, she clasped her fingers around his and pulled herself up. Her celestial skin felt as if it would break at his touch. Her frame seemed too weak to carry her body. She blinked up teary lashes and tipped her face to him. “Did Khadir mention our betrothal?”
“Yes.” Ali jammed the heel of his boot against the concrete stair. Pain shot up his foot. It felt good. Of course, Khadir had the right to break the betrothal, duty even because of Rosna’s shame. It was the Iraqi way, but today it felt so wrong.
“Khadir loves me. If I give up now, Khadir will have waited thirty months in vain.” Rosna took the hem of her sleeve and wiped at her tears. A grim determination rose over her lovely face and, for the first time, the faintest gleam of hope shimmered in her blue eyes.
To survive these next years of stigma, she needed that hope. Khadir would kill that hope. A knife stabbed through Ali’s stomach wall same as it had two years ago in UAE when he’d narrowly outrun the local police force. “You have to hold on for yourself, not for someone else.”
“I am not strong enough to hold on for myself.” She held her chin up, but barely, as if in moments her head might flop forward as she crumpled to the ground, her soul used up. “For my future husband and children, I will hold on.”
Here he’d been griping about bullies he’d abandoned ten years ago and this woman had endured abuse so tragic she’d lost the will to live. Ali leaned back against a concrete pillar as he watched the trembling girl.
“Come,” he gestured toward her. “I will show you to the guest room. In two days, I will deliver you to your uncle.”
“And I will see my Khadir.” Tears streaked her cheeks, her skin blotched from crying, but as she looked up to him, a smile trembled on her lips.
What would she do when she realized Khadir had rejected her? If she only held on for her dream of marriage and kids, when she learned that dream had disappeared forever, she’d lose all will to live. Pain stabbed through him.
Ali shook his head, banishing the feeling. It wasn’t his problem.
Rosna placed one foot in front of the other, each step up the incline appearing as laborious as a thousand.
A knife blade twisted inside his heart. He felt something he hadn’t felt in a very long time—compassion?
CHAPTER 4
A soft lamp lit the extravagantly decorated bedroom. Closing her eyes, Rosna soaked in each sensation, the coolness of the silk sheets beneath her hands, the refreshing splash of water against her face, the scent of jasmine hanging in the air.
The ugly dress a daesh murderer had forced on her wrapped its black cloth around her, strangling her. A scream stuck in her throat.
No! Rosna shoved at the memories, trying to force them away.
Panic rose through her. She glanced left and right around the strange room. She should not be here with an unrelated man, a non-Yazidi, with no chaperone. Good Yazidi girls did not do that. Good Yazidi girls learned how to run a household, nurture a child, see to their husband’s comfort.
Falling into the empty bed, Rosna felt the tears rise inside her, waves of tears, rivers of tears, oceans of tears. Her chest heaved with sobs. Would her people reject her for what she had been contaminated by?
Could she find purity in the Lalish Valley shrine again? At least she wasn’t pregnant with a non-Yazidi outcast, was she? Icy fear shivered through her limbs. Rosna tucked her knees up tight to her chest as her breath came in pants. Her people would never allow the child of a foreigner, let alone a child of daesh, to be part of their people.
Slowly, the panic receded, leaving only emptiness. In her mind, she held Khadir’s face up before her eyes like a talisman.
Once she reached Khadir, she would cling to him and his love would be her strength. She cradled her arms tight against her rib cage. She’d hold their child on her hip and curve her hand around a broom handle as savory kibbeh fried in deep pans of olive oil. When she mixed together the naan bread for her family, she’d make the rhythmic motion of kneading until at last she’d be able to forget. Khadir would be her strength as he protected her like a husband should.
Ali’s face shone before her. You are strong, he’d said. Though Ali was a stranger, his voice had possessed as much kindness as a brother.
Rosna’s hair flapped against her cheeks as she shook her head. She wasn’t strong enough or she’d have rescued herself, not have needed a foreigner with his shining guns and pickup truck and brawn to save her.
Familiar despair sank over her, blacker even than the dress she wore. She wasn’t strong enough or she’d have found the courage to kill herself those first days after daesh captured her rather than let her family’s name be dishonored.
She wasn’t strong enough or she’d have resisted the terrorists to the point of death, not just to the point of broken bones, starvation, and beatings. Her tears drenched the bed, swelling up into a flood to drown her.
Even with the coverlet wrapped tight around her, Rosna trembled on the silk sheets. Khadir had paid the money for this bounty hunter to free her. Khadir loved her and his love would give her courage.
Sliding off the bed, she knelt before Melek Taus, though his shrine was far away indeed. “I thank you, Lord Melek Taus, for sending this man, this black angel to rescue me.”
Drug smuggler, criminal, or whatever else Ali was, she welcomed his ill-gotten guns and disreputable vigor, for he had saved her from pure evil embodied in human form.
Tucking the covers tight around her, she prepared for sleep and the inevitable nightmares. Fear shook through Rosna. Every night, she relived thirty months of hell. Every night, she had to fight each moment to prevent the fear and anguish from pushing her over into madness.
Her teeth bore into her cracked lips as a familiar despair sapped all her will to live. No! She must keep on, for Khadir waited for her.
Ali shoved his Colt Python into his shoulder holster as the sun rose outside the floor-length windows.
A footstep sounded on his staircase. Rosna’s black dress wrinkled around her as if she’d slept in it last night. Her light hair fell loose around her cheekbones. Dark lines rimmed her eyes, contrasting with her skin, which gleamed paler than the moonlight.
“Meet me outside after you eat.” Ali pushed a plate of hardboiled eggs and cucumbers across the counter.
With a clank, his front door gave way to his push. His truck idled out front. Rolling out a prayer rug, Ali crossed his right arm over his left. He bowed in the direction of Mecca. “Glory be to God, the greatest,” he said once, twice, three times.
The prayers slid from his lips as familiar as the skin he’d lived in for twenty-four years. He said the last word. Now came the time to add his own prayers.
Ali prostrated himself on the prayer rug. “Oh great Allah, Allah the Just. I’ll donate a day of food to all five beggars, not just one.” A warm feeling rose through his heart. Rosna’s story had inspired him to be a more grateful and obedient Muslim. It felt good to devote service to Allah.
He rolled up the mat, the fibers comforting between his fingers. The most faithful Muslims, Shia or Sunni, were always the ones who had shown him the most kindness as a boy. After prayers at the mosque, they’d given him meat or dates. He could still feel the hunger pangs of childhood when he thought of those days.
He shoved the prayer rug back into the gravel-covered space underneath the half-finished entrance stairs. His hand hit something. He tugged out a book.
The Christian’s holy book looked up at him. Twistin
g up the right side of his mouth in distaste, he flipped open the cover with his thumb.
The pages crinkled under his fingers. He’d smuggled a shipment of Bibles for a Saudi and he’d wondered what kind of book would inspire a man to pay five hundred dollars for a single copy, so he’d kept one. Never read it though.
Arabic words stared back at Ali. He should get rid of the Bible. The book was illegal here in Saudi Arabia. He flicked the crumpled pages. The cheap paper smudged beneath his sweaty fingers. These Christians sure didn’t respect their god to go printing his words on some leftover paper scraps.
Did they conduct their church services the same way? Just have their imam preach a sermon in a dusty basement or shack? Muslims served Allah well. They built him great mosques and printed his words on beautiful parchment and vellum.
Guilt churned in Ali’s stomach. He needed to serve Allah better. He glanced to the rising sun. During the next of the five daily prayers, he’d promise Allah the full month of provisions for those five beggars, not just a day. He would work on becoming a less self-centered person and serving Allah well.
Perhaps Allah allowed him to meet Rosna to increase his gratitude and inspire him to share his wealth.
Ali skimmed his gaze down the crumpled Bible pages. Jesus reached out his hand and healed a sick man. Ali nodded. Jesus was a prophet, but never the son of God. Jesus would be appalled to know what stories the Christians had made up about him. Jesus worshipped Allah the same as Moses and all the other prophets.
With a flick of his thumb, Ali turned the page. These gospels had a lot of errors. The Koran gave the true story of what happened with Abraham, Moses, or Jesus. The Bible page told a story about Jesus. A sentence jumped off the paper, dancing in the hot air. Jesus’ words emblazoned the page. “. . . the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.”
What? Ali dropped the book. The spine broke as the pages flapped open on the driveway. The sole purpose of man was to serve God. How did one have a religion where God served man? Not that Jesus was god, but the Christians believed he was.
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