His heart swelled within him. “You look as if you walked down that sunbeam.” Only five days he’d spent with Rosna, but he couldn’t imagine never seeing her again.
“Surely I have. I am from the people of the Peacock Angel. The sun is our heritage.” She laughed as she fingered the rich cloth. “It is a very beautiful present. Thank you.”
She was more beautiful yet, but he couldn’t say that to an unrelated woman.
“You are very kind, Ali the Wanderer.” She stepped in front of him. Respect shone in her eyes. “I will tell my children of you. How you were fearless against daesh. How you protected me when bombs fell from the sky and bullets flew by at our right hands. When I gather my children around the dinner table, strong sons and beautiful daughters who will bring me pride in my old age, then I will tell them of you.”
A knife stabbed through Ali. She’d never bear children. Her fiancé didn’t want her, much less any other man after her dishonor. If any other Yazidi men had even survived the daesh genocide, that is.
“My sons will rebuild the Mt. Sinjar villages. They will make the Yazidis a thriving people again. My firstborn son—” Rosna cradled her arms. “Before he takes his first steps, I will tell him of this day and of the great rejoicing when you brought me back to my people.”
Ali shifted his boots on the broken concrete. All around them, the noises of the marketplace rose loud, life returning to Eastern Mosul. Farmers would replant, business owners reopen shops, but the life Rosna wanted had been stolen forever. Her fiancé had rejected her. “What if it doesn’t work out?”
“You mean if Khadir has died?” Terror streaked across Rosna’s face. She started trembling. “The thought of my future children is what I grasp onto. I cannot go on without that future.”
He’d be delivering Rosna to her relatives only to have her fall apart. He’d heard stories of the other Yazidi girls who had been rescued in the siege of Eastern Mosul. They sat in their tents unable to move or even speak, mesmerized by the trauma they’d experienced and the knowledge that they never would claim what every woman wanted—children and a husband. Instead, shame would be their constant companion.
“Foolishness. I shall not entertain such evil thoughts.” She straightened the dress. “Perhaps by this time next year, I’ll hold my son in my arms. Kiss his cheeks.” Rosna held her arms across her chest, smiling down into them as if she held a baby even now.
“Marry me.” Ali’s voice was husky. With her, he’d have a purpose and a family to call his own. He’d have those sons she wanted. He’d hold their hands as they took their first steps and tell them stories of his smuggling travels as they sat cross-legged at his feet. He’d do all the things for them that his father hadn’t lived to do.
Rosna startled. The red scarf blew back against her neck, her hair as free as the Yazidi women wore it, no veil to conceal her beauty. A single strand of hair fell forward, caressing the ellipses of her pink cheek.
He laid his hand over hers, her slender palm engulfed in his. “You and I, we are a good team. I have no people or tribe to offer you, but I have a house and wealth. I would love you and be a good and faithful husband to you.”
“I am promised to Khadir.” Rosna stiffened in front of him, her fingers rigid between his.
“If he changes his mind because of . . .” Ali swallowed. Khadir would reject her for something beyond her control. Even so, she was lucky, for many Iraqi girls had been killed for losing their honor. Now though, because of the Yazidi emir’s ruling, dishonored women were “merely” condemned to life as second-class citizens. The dishonored women would wash, mend, and bake for some other woman’s family, taking the scraps that whatever uncle or male cousin who took her in provided.
He was Ali the Wanderer, a man with no people or tribe. He need not take regard of stigma or honor. Ali tucked one thumb into his pant pocket, his other hand still cradling hers. “If Khadir will not marry you because of daesh, then would you marry me?”
“You are not Yazidi. You are of the people of Adam and Eve, not the people of the Peacock Angel.” Rosna jerked her hand out of his.
“Now who sounds high and mighty?”
Rosna squared her shoulders, stretching the red fabric taut across her chest. Three years she’d been a prisoner of daesh, but even after that, her very stance possessed resilience, a fearlessness in the set of her chin. The clear skin of her neck stretched up to that chin where resolve mixed with beauty.
This is the woman he wanted as his wife. “We would be happy together, Rosna. I make good money smuggling.” Ali gestured to his truck.
“Extorting money from the desperate.”
Okay, so he had done that with her uncle. “I will not anymore. Besides, I’ve accumulated most of my wealth from extorting corrupt governments and dishonest men.”
“You are Muslim. I am Yazidi. You are from the people who killed my people.” The red scarf blew around Rosna, flapping against her cheekbones. Her dark lips pressed together, yet even when she shoved them into a straight line, she could not eliminate the roundness in their contours. Her long lashes swept up above her eyes.
“I’m from people who abandoned me at an orphanage where I dug through the trash to eat. You have your shame. I have mine.” Ali gestured across the ruins of Mosul. “We are a match, the two of us.”
“You are Muslim. Even if you wished it, you could not become Yazidi. The people of the Peacock Angel take no converts.”
“Who knows for how long? I’ve been reading this book. It talks about Jesus, peace be upon him. I never heard such stories.” God’s son had appeared to him that night in the daesh jail. Could it really be true that God had a son, this Jesus who said He too was God? After that vision, he intended to read more of this Bible.
Rosna shifted to her other foot, body rigid.
“I want to marry you.” He caught her hand and pressed it against his heart. Marry her so she could have her dream of those ten kids, not the harsh reality that no Iraqi would marry her now. He loved her.
“Stop pressuring me. You are all the same, Muslim men. You always want something from me.” She fought against him.
He dropped his hand. “How could you compare me to those monsters who imprisoned you? They are not even true Muslims.”
“Kamal sure sounded Muslim as he rolled out his prayer rug.” She stood stiff, thin elbows pressed against her sides. The hem of her pantaloons blew against the rubble that marked what had once been a thriving city.
Should he feel anger or pity at her statement? With a groan, Ali turned away from her and looked off into the brilliant blue of the Iraqi sky.
“I am sorry I said that.” Rosna clasped his arm. With rushed footsteps, she hurried in front of him. Her sorrowful gaze fixed on him. “You have been my protector and my liberator. It’s just . . .” Her lower lip trembled.
“What?” Ali looked down on her, hands by his side.
“We had neighbors. They were Muslim. My brothers and I played with them as children. I watched their babies, fed them cucumbers and eggs from my own hand.” The tendons in Rosna’s hand stood out from her pale skin as her every muscle tensed.
If only he could wash away her pain.
“When daesh came, our Muslim neighbors welcomed them. The Muslim neighbor . . .” Rosna plopped to a seat on a piece of debris. Gaze on a tiny sprig of grass that poked up between broken concrete, Rosna whispered the last words. “When daesh encouraged him, he used me as a sabaya too.”
Ali knelt by her on the broken concrete of what used to be an alleyway. Hot sun fell on the few weeds that had managed to spring up. “I am sorry. It is not Islamic. It is evil what they did.”
She swallowed slowly, then she looked him in the eye. “I do not hold your religion against you. I know you are a good man.”
Pain seared through Ali. Rosna needed to agree to marry him. He could rescue her from the shame and whisk her away to his Saudi house with its great pillars and gold finery. He did not even care if she converte
d to Islam or not.
He had no family to please by his choice of a wife. He had no interfering cousins or mother to despise Rosna for being Yazidi, or insist she veil herself like a good Muslim wife, or fast during Ramadan. She really shouldn’t leave her hair completely uncovered though. It was a profligate Yazidi custom.
In Saudi Arabia with him, Rosna would have a fine house and wealth untold. They could talk by starlight beside the poolside in the evenings and watch whatever TV shows they wanted, because even though Saudi Arabia blocked almost all TV channels except religious ones, he had a satellite to get around Saudi’s inane broadcasting restrictions.
“If things do not work out with your own people, then marry me, Rosna. I will love you like the prophet, peace be upon him, loved Khadijah.” Rising, he stretched out his hand to her.
Rosna stiffened. “Yazidis only marry among themselves. Now take me to my people and collect the reward you have long desired.” She jumped up and grabbed the handle to the passenger door of his truck.
An hour of driving would take them to the refugee camp and he’d collect his twenty thousand dollars, though it would still add up to a loss of over forty thousand.
Money, that’s what he’d wanted when he undertook this mission. Ali touched his gaze to Rosna’s fair face.
She clenched her fingers on the edging of the passenger seat.
Money seemed a dull recompense now. Circling around the battered, far from luxury, pickup, he swung into the driver’s seat and cranked his key in the ignition.
CHAPTER 13
Smoke puffed out from the truck’s exhaust as Ali let the vehicle roll up to the container house inside the refugee camp. The afternoon shadows grew long around him and Rosna. A dull pain beat against his chest.
Rosna sat ramrod straight, hands in her lap, gaze fixed ahead. Already, refugees’ gazes wandered to the truck. Soon tales would spread across the camp about Rosna and her identity as a daesh sex slave.
Ali strangled the steering wheel. In a few more moments, he’d deliver the Yazidi man’s niece as he set out to do and return to smuggling and bounty hunting. He’d need a few extra months of income to recoup his losses on his truck, then he could finish his house. He’d have the mansion no one ever would have dreamed the Sunni orphan brat from Basra could obtain.
An empty mansion with no family, no people, and no tribe. Ali swallowed the ever present dust. Pain roiled in his chest, as familiar now as when he was an orphaned child. He’d imagined Rosna could ease that pain, but perhaps she was right that such talk was idiocy. He’d never see her again after today.
A man walked out of the container house, Rosna’s uncle. A tiny new rose stem crept up around the doorway, pink blossoms opening their faces to the sandy waste. Cucumber vines clung to the edge of the house, knee-high now.
Without a glance to Ali, Rosna pushed open the truck door and stepped out. Her dress wafted around her figure, red cloth frolicking in the soft wind, but Rosna’s face was tense.
They’d not even get a goodbye then, not here in front of her family. Ali grasped the door handle. He couldn’t blame her. It was shameful that she had appeared here with an unrelated man.
Then again, everyone in this refugee camp would know she was one of the Yazidi girls who daesh had used as sex slaves and no shame could top that.
Ali slammed the truck door and circled around the vehicle toward the container house.
“Niece.” Rosna’s uncle wrapped her in a hug. His mustache touched her face as tears rolled down the man’s cheeks. “Your aunt and cousins are waiting for you.” Rosna’s uncle pointed behind him to the container house. Its metal door was closed tight.
As a foreigner, he’d not get an invitation inside. Ali squared his shoulders. So this was goodbye to the woman who’d captivated his thoughts these past days.
For a moment, Rosna flicked her gaze up over her uncle’s shoulder and caught his. Her hair blew back across her temples. The failing sunshine turned the locks of her hair to burning fire.
She turned her gaze away as was appropriate with an unrelated man and looked to her uncle. “Where is my fiancé?”
Her uncle’s Adam’s apple shifted as he swallowed.
A small boy, a cousin perhaps, ran around the corner and pointed with a dirty stick. “Khadir lives in that container.”
Gathering up her dress, Rosna ran toward the door. Her crimson skirt swished around her legs with each step.
Would he ever see her again? No. Would Khadir at least phrase his rejection with kindness? He’d break her heart.
Anger surged through Ali, anger at daesh, at this genocide, at all Rosna had and would endure. If only he could go with Rosna and help her bear the news. As an unrelated male though, he’d only bring her more shame if he went near her now.
“Here.” Rosna’s uncle walked toward him, footsteps heavy on the sandy dirt. “I have your money.” He held out a yellowed envelope overflowing with paper bills.
With twenty thousand dollars, he could buy a gold-plated watch or a designer suit. Rosna’s uncle could buy back a life. The words from the vision he’d had that night in the daesh jail echoed in Ali’s mind.
Go and do likewise. This Jesus had freed him. Surely he ought to free others. Ali looked at the old Yazidi man, his back bent from many years of toil, and shook his head.
“Use it to buy the freedom of one of your relatives.” Ali pushed the envelope back into the old man’s hand, crumpling the money.
Turning, Ali walked toward his truck. All around him, children played in the weed-spotted dust. Laundry flapped around container houses.
“Heaven’s blessings upon you, Ali the Wanderer.” Rosna’s uncle raised his hand in farewell.
The man had a family, a tribe, a purpose. That Yazidi man would spend the next months and years scraping up money and fighting to bring back his nieces and cousins. That goal would hurt him, eat at him, consume him. But, unlike Ali the Wanderer, the man would have a goal.
Someday perhaps Iraq would win the war against daesh, and this Yazidi man would restart a village in the new Iraq. Lucky man. Ali grabbed the door handle to his truck. He had no such purpose.
With a sigh, Ali swung the door open. Where should he go next? He could go to his house and eat mango slices off his golden plates behind locked doors without even an animal’s mew lending companionship. What then? Ali the Wanderer, men called him. He had no family to give him purpose, no tribe to fight for. He kicked the truck tire.
Would he ever belong to a people and a tribe? For a glimmer of a moment, he’d imagined it with Rosna. Ali ground the key in the ignition.
His cell beeped. He’d already advised all his clients of his new number. A text popped on the screen. The Saudi businessman still wanted his alcohol, but now for a fifty percent discount. The skinflint.
Beep. An arms trader in Germany wanted a shipment of ammunitions. Maybe.
Beep. An Iranian wanted undisclosed merchandise smuggled out of country. Definitely not the Iranian. He needed to know what he was smuggling.
He picked up a coin. Heads, Germany. Tails, Saudi. He twisted the coin between his thumb and forefinger.
Guilt burned through his soul. Rosna had called him a drug dealer, and though some of the laws he broke to smuggle helped others, like freeing her from daesh, many of his smuggling assignments brought darkness, not light.
Go and do likewise, the man robed in light had said. Do what, free people? This Jesus who claimed to be God’s son and God himself had spoken truly that Ali’s life, unlike so many other Iraqis’ lives, had been spared. Ali shifted on the truck seat.
He could go and free others. He could sell his mansion and join one of the coalition forces, the Peshmerga even. They were Kurds, but if he swore allegiance to them, the Peshmerga would probably take him.
Could he truly give up all that “filthy lucre” he had risked his life to accumulate and Kamal had condemned him for? Was this Jesus in his vision even God? If so, that would shake his entire world,
upend the one piece of identity he’d had since childhood—his religion.
He stared at the coral-covered clouds. “Jesus, if you are God’s son, then give me a sign and I will join the Peshmerga and go and free others like you did for me.”
On the ground, shadows grew longer. He’d wait until sunset for the sign. If he didn’t get one by then, he was smuggling the alcohol into Saudi Arabia and forgetting his brief escapade in daesh-occupied territory ever happened.
Ali spun the wheel right toward the bluff.
CHAPTER 14
Turning her head, Rosna watched the exhaust from Ali’s truck rise past metal container houses as he drove away. Her red scarf whipped up in the wind, the fringe blowing against her lips. Ali had asked to marry her.
Yazidi girls had been killed for less.
An ache spread through her heart as his truck turned toward the main road that led out of the refugee camp. Ali was a Sunni Muslim from the people of Adam and Eve. She was a Yazidi from the people of the Peacock Angel. Yazidis did not marry outside their sect.
If only they did. Pain burned inside of Rosna. What if she had said yes to him? An image of Ali’s dark hands reaching through the torrent of the Tigris wavered in front of her eyes. Her heart had soared when he’d plunged through that hospital curtain. He’d stared down the barrel of a Kalashnikov for her.
A warm feeling, like the coffee she used to pour for her father, heated her heart. Tears welled in her eyes. She’d never forget Ali the Wanderer and what he had done for her and Khadir. Ali had given her back her people and her life.
With Khadir’s permission, she would name their firstborn son Ali, for he was a good man. Ali’s hand had felt so strong as he wrapped his big fingers around her.
When he’d pulled her into his embrace, a sense of safety had surrounded her. For thirty long months as a prisoner to terrorists, she’d never thought to feel the warmth of another human’s kindness again. Rosna swallowed down tears. Each time she held her firstborn son, Ali, to her chest, she would think of Ali the Wanderer.
Veiled by Coercion (Radical Book 2) Page 11