The evening breeze whipped across Rosna’s face. All around her in the refugee camp, eyes turned toward her. Women tsked, men looked twice. They knew she had been contaminated by daesh.
A cold feeling started in her fingers. The feeling spread through her arms to her chest.
A matron jostled her baby higher on her hip. “You were one of the Islamic State’s sabaya, weren’t you?”
Sabaya, sex slave, she’d thought she’d never hear that term again. Rosna’s sandals melted into the hot dirt as her heart pounded wildly.
A grandmother with a white shawl around her shoulder clacked her tongue. A teenage girl sat cross-legged beneath a goat as milk poured into her tin bucket. That girl was still virtuous, no shame, no dishonor. The grandmother turned away from Rosna.
Her heart beat as if to break through her broken ribs. She sucked in air, but her lungs could not hold the breath. A buzzing started in her ears. The ground shifted.
In her mind’s eye, she saw an image of Ali’s face. You are strong, he said, his white teeth glistening as he spoke the words. Rosna clenched her hand. Ali had given her the strength to find her home. As soon as she saw Khadir, all this pain would pass. If only Ali were with her now, only, of course, he couldn’t be, for he was an unrelated man and a Muslim.
Rosna turned away from the women and walked forward, back straight, head held high.
Perhaps when she married Khadir, then the insults and jibes would end. Perhaps? Surely she would not pass on the stigma to her children.
Uncried tears pounded within her. She could not bear if her children too bore the pain of daesh’s crimes. Her uncle called her name.
Rosna turned back.
“We are glad you are home.” Tired lines creased her uncle’s face beneath his checkered turban. He extended his weathered hand to her.
The white metal of the container house reflected the heat. Sickle grass protruded in clumps from the dusty yard. The white flowers of wild garlic plants raised their heads around the stone step.
A man rounded the northwest corner of the container house.
Khadir! His blond hair reflected the sunshine of Melek Taus. His shoulders were broader than when last she saw him, his mustache thicker.
She dashed toward him. Her one sandal flew off as she sprinted across sun-dried dirt. Arid grass stabbed her bare foot, but she ran until she reached him.
He froze, sadness in his eyes.
“I feared you dead.” She flung her arms around his neck. Inappropriate, certainly, but they’d marry very soon. Could they have the ceremony tonight? She had nightmares each night when she lay down alone. Perhaps Khadir’s cheer would drive away the evil that tormented her. He always made her laugh.
Khadir untangled her arms from around him and looked down at her. Wrapping his callused fingers around her right hand, he squeezed it tight. “I wish I could have protected you.” A tear rolled from his blue eyes, down the bridge of his nose.
That fateful day in her village swept back over her like the Tigris’ waters. Daesh had demanded the men give up their guns.
Cold chills ran through Rosna. Sweat streaked its clamminess against her hands. “When should we set our wedding day for?” Please let him say tonight.
Khadir shook his head, flopping the waves of his hair against his forehead. “I cannot marry you now.”
Her heart stopped. All blood left her veins. Her voice trembled like a bird in flight. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t marry you. Not after the stigma, not after you were a sex slave.” An unfathomable sorrow tinged Khadir’s voice, but it did not waver.
Pain bit into her face as sharp as the metal implements the terrorists had tortured her with. He couldn’t mean it. He couldn’t! Khadir loved her. Rosna shuddered before him.
Was this what Ali had meant when he said, perhaps you do not wish to marry? Ali had met Khadir. Had Ali known all this time that Khadir would reject her? Ali had tried to spare her by making that anathema offer of marriage, which had tempted her despite its inappropriateness. Yazidis did not marry Muslims. Her pulse throbbed.
Desperation ran through her. She squeezed her legs tight together, blocking out the sensations of all that had happened in three years. “Please, Khadir. You said you loved me.”
For certain, other Yazidi men had chosen not to honor their betrothals to Yazidi women who had been sex slaves. But Khadir and she had a stronger bond than mere family-arranged betrothal. He loved her.
“I do, I think I always did.” Pain burned in Khadir’s blue eyes. “But Rosna, you’re no longer pure.”
“It’s not my fault.” She dragged her hand across the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I tried to fight them off. I tried to commit suicide. You must believe me, Khadir. I tried to preserve my honor.”
Khadir’s broad shoulders sagged, defeat in his eyes. “It is what daesh planned. Kill our men, destroy our women’s honor so they could never bear pure sons. Daesh wants to extinguish the Yazidis from existence in a genocide of our people.” Khadir waved his hand out across the barren plains in this refugee shelter where hope had died.
“Don’t let daesh win. We can still have sons.” She caught his hand, her clutch desperate. Her whole life she’d planned to marry, bear children, have a home. Daesh couldn’t take that from her!
If Khadir, who loved her, refused to marry her, no other Yazidi man ever would. That is, if any marriageable Yazidi men had even survived daesh’s rampage.
Khadir contorted his face. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he stroked his fingertip against the edge of her forefinger.
A surge of hope rippled through her heart. “We are the children of the Peacock Angel. We can bring new sons to that race. We can renew our people and heal from this genocide.”
Sorrow swam in Khadir’s blue eyes, like a reservoir at flood stage when the waters overflowed. Khadir dropped his hand and his flesh lost contact with hers. “I cannot, Rosna. I wish I could, but I cannot.”
Cold evening air stung her empty fingers. The half a pace between them grew into a vast unknown. She choked. “But Khadir, what will become of me?”
“Germany is offering refuge to those that ISIS . . .” Khadir swallowed, “dishonored. They will give you money.”
“Go to a foreign land? Forget my people and my faith? Never bear sons and raise a family as Melek Taus smiles upon me?” Her chest ached from sobs. Tears stained the neckline of the beautiful dress Ali had bought her. A Muslim man had bought her clothes and she’d driven with him overnight. In the old days, that alone would have been enough to make any fiancé break a betrothal. Now though, it felt like nothing compared to her other shame.
No wonder Khadir couldn’t marry her. He couldn’t bear the thought of the torture she’d endured. It was not his fault. He’d said no words of blame to her. He merely followed the way of Iraq.
“The day the white Jeeps came, they took that away from you. Daesh, not I, destroyed your dreams.” A sigh passed through Khadir’s lips. He looked thinner now than three years ago.
Khadir spoke the truth. How could she expect a man to marry her without her honor? Tears streamed down her face. She crumpled.
He extended his hand to her, but she let herself fall to the ground.
Oh, to give up now. To give her life over to the grave and come back reincarnated as some pure thing. Clouds darkened overhead, the evening shadows growing longer.
Khadir knelt by her. He touched her shoulder. “There is a social worker who travels the camp each afternoon. She will have the paperwork for Germany.”
Instead of Khadir’s voice, which was tart like cinnamon, she heard Ali’s words, bold, undaunted. You are strong, Rosna.
I am but a woman, a Yazidi woman of peace, she mouthed as she heard Ali’s voice ringing in her thoughts.
Through closed eyelids, she saw a vision of Ali taking her hand as he had so many times in the last week.
Reaching up, she rubbed the tears from her eyes. She pushed her hair out of her
face and forced herself to a stand. Back straight, head high, she looked into Khadir’s eyes. “No, I will spend my life avenging my people against daesh. I will rescue the rest of the Yazidi girls who were taken.”
“What?” Khadir stared at her.
“I will join the Sun Ladies of the Peshmerga. Often in my captivity, I heard the daesh fighters talk about how they feared them most.” The first man who had claimed her body had said if a woman shot a daesh fighter in battle, he’d be barred from jannah. She’d dearly love to deny those fiends their paradise.
“Yazidis are not warriors and you are a girl.” Khadir brought his eyebrows down in a disapproving line.
“Not by choice, but when necessity arrives, Yazidis answer the call. Daesh will rue the day they kidnapped me. I will be the knife in their back, the lightning that strikes at noonday, the sand storm that leaves desolation.” Rosna choked back her sobs. Her sister was dead, but if her cousins still lived, she’d find them.
Khadir stood tall. “Our people’s women are not soldiers. Stay at home with your uncle.”
“You are not my husband, so you have no say in the matter.” Turning her back on Khadir, she took a step toward the container house.
Her uncle stood in the backyard, not two paces from her. Had he overheard her entire conversation with Khadir? Her uncle frowned. “You are not serious about this plan.”
“Actually, I am.” Rosna blinked as her own words sank in. She took a deep breath. Pain shot through her ribs.
“You cannot join the Peshmerga. You are a woman. It is against nature.” Her uncle drew back from her.
“What I’ve experienced these last thirty months, it also is against nature.”
“No, I cannot allow this. You will stay here. I will care for you, protect you.” Her uncle wrapped his arm around her shoulder, like a mother hen gathers her chicks. He nodded to the house. “Come now. Your aunt has made fresh baked naan.”
Her entire life she had paid respect to her elders, obeyed her father, planned to obey Khadir. Though her head did not come but to her uncle’s shoulder, she shook it and her hair brushed against her uncle’s smoke-tinged jacket. “No, I will take up arms and protect our people.”
Turning from him, she broke every tradition, every custom, every thought ever implanted in her mind.
Would Father be proud of her if his reincarnated self could see her, or would he despise her for dishonoring his brother so?
Her uncle raised his voice. “The Peshmerga doesn’t even have money for body armor. You will die.”
Rosna set her jaw. Father had moved on to the afterlife and all that entailed. Daesh had thrown away his body and she could not even visit his grave to honor him. She, however, still lived and she had to make this choice for herself.
How though? Panic swelled through her. She had no gun. No money to buy uniforms. She stiffened her spine. She had survived thirty months as a prisoner of daesh. She could figure this out. “Farewell, Uncle.”
Across the bluff, a thin trail of exhaust puffed up as the dusty shadow of a truck passed.
Gathering up her red skirt, she sprinted toward the shadow. “Ali. Ali!” she screamed into the wind. The stubble of dry dirt and grass turned into the hardness of a road.
Ahead of her, the truck jolted to a halt. The truck door flung open and Ali sprang out. His eyes were wide. He crossed around the truck to the roadside and then bent over.
Hot exhaust rose up around her as she ran to where he knelt on the road.
As she came up to him, he stood. Inside his broad palm lay a flowering sprig he must have plucked. The tube-like flowers of blue woodruff filled his dark hand. Ali’s eyes gleamed with a mysterious light. What drug smuggling mission was he off to now?
“I need a ride. Will you spare a few of those twenty thousand dollars to give me one?” She forced her voice to harden. Whatever tender thoughts she’d nurtured about Ali must be suppressed. He was not a Yazidi.
Ali startled. The whites of his eyes contrasted with the darkness of his skin. “Where to?”
Rosna twisted her fingers together and willed a strength she did not feel to resonate in her voice. “The Peshmerga forces. I think they’re somewhere near Tal Afar.”
“Your fiancé said no?” Ali rested his hand on the bed of his truck. His body loomed over the vehicle.
She brought her chin up, then down, shifting the red cloth he’d bought her. She should not have allowed him, an unrelated man, to buy her a dress, only she hadn’t wished to greet her fiancé in the black garb of her slavery.
Soon, she’d wear camo and don pants for the first time in her life. The Sun Ladies of the Peshmerga did not have fiancés. Those women foreswore marriage and had no children to light their days with smiles or care for them in their old age. Then again, most Peshmerga fighters died before old age came.
As a Lady of the Sun she’d have a legacy though, a legacy of driving the blight of daesh from her homeland. Rosna steeled her heart and forced courage into her aching lungs. When she aimed a Kalashnikov at a daesh fortification, no one would care about her stigma. They’d only care how many bullets she could land inside the monsters’ hearts.
She’d never shot a gun before. Her hand trembled. She knew how to cook and weave, how to cook naan bread and be an obedient daughter and wife, not how to wield a gun and raise a war cry.
Removing his hand from the truck, Ali dropped it to his side. His skin absorbed the rays of evening light. “My offer still stands.” Reaching into his jean pockets, he extracted a small silk bag. He opened the drawstring. The gold jewels of a bride fell onto his hand.
Palm out, he extended the jewels toward her. Unlike her people, the Muslims gave jewelry to their fiancées.
The necklace glittered in the sun, inches from her hand.
“For you.” He smiled at her.
At the side of the road, the cliff fell away, the sheer rocks leading to the dry valley below and the shadows of houses. Here though, it was only the two of them, no male relative or village authority to make this decision for her. Rosna looked into Ali’s eyes.
His outstretched palm was pink, so different than the rich black of the rest of his hand. If he’d been of her people, she, (well, her male relative), would have welcomed his offer. His sons would have the same sturdy frame as Ali and his daughters would inherit his shining black eyes, which always brought a smile to her lips. If only he were a Yazidi.
Sweat misted on his dark forehead. With Ali, she felt safe and his laugh rumbled through her to her innermost being. But Ali was not of the people of the Peacock Angel. A Yazidi who married outside the faith would be cast out forever and their children would not inherit the earth.
“I need a gun, not jewels.” She walked around to the passenger side of Ali’s truck. Yanking open the door, she hopped up on the much abused seat of the old vehicle where white fibers of stuffing poked through holes in the canvas. He did still intend to give her the ride, right?
Maybe? She couldn’t stay at the side of the road all night and she didn’t have money for bus fare.
Ali swung into the truck and shoved open the back window that led to the truck bed. He flipped open a tool box. The black metal of two Kalashnikovs reflected back the intense heat. He closed his big fingers around the gun. “One for you. One for me. We’ll drive the plague of daesh out of Iraq together.”
Jaw loosening, she shoved back against the window. “What?”
“I’m going to join the Peshmerga.” Ali’s eyes had the strangest gleam. “You coming was God’s sign to me.”
“You always pursue wealth. The Peshmerga don’t even get paid.” Unbelieving, she stared at him. The Kurds and the Yazidis were not his people, yet he’d give his wealth and life to fight with them to protect their people?
“Hey, even an ingrate can change with the right motivation.” He smiled at her.
Rosna straightened, her fingers clenched around the lip of the bucket seat. “If you do this, I still will not marry you. The Peshmerg
a’s Sun Ladies turn their back on love. No marriage, no relations with a man.” She blushed scarlet at the frank talk.
“One obstacle at a time.” Ali reached across the truck console and laid his hand flat against the rubber armrest, palm up, inviting her to lay her hand in his, like she’d seen on those Western movies on the TV screen.
She stiffened. It was wrong of him to do that. They were unrelated. She should not even be in his truck, except she had no choice. “Do you know where I can find body armor or a uniform? My uncle said the Peshmerga has run out.” The Peshmerga had to buy all their own uniforms and gear, yet still they fought more fiercely than the other, well-equipped forces. When they lacked gear, the Sun Ladies went into battle all the same, fearless in the face of death.
“One million dollars says the Peshmerga will be fully equipped for the battle of Mosul.” Ali sighed.
“What?”
“Who needs gold plates anyway?” Ali gave her a crooked smile. “I will invest my money in human lives.” He held his hand out still, palm open on the armrest dividing his seat from hers.
For the briefest of seconds, she laid her hand in his. The warmth of his presence pulsed through her. He smiled at her as the wind chapped his face.
Straightening on the seat, she removed her hand. Before another day dawned, she would give her entire life to the fight to drive the blight of daesh from this land. She had no room for love.
CHAPTER 15
Mosul, Iraq
All but three mattresses in the women’s dormitory stood bare, no sheet covering their broken coils. The mattresses were proof all the other women had been married off to ISIS fighters. Jessica drew her knees up on the desk chair. The warm feel of drying blood trickled down her back. A headache that five aspirins hadn’t extinguished pounded through her head as she stared at the computer monitor.
Umm Sultan towered over her, hand on the knife on her belt. The woman’s black veil covered all but the leathery folds of her eyes. “You will marry, Jessica.”
All breath left Jessica’s lungs. She gripped the computer mouse like death itself. She never would marry again, not after last time. “I am serving Allah in the Al-Khansaa brigade. I cannot marry.”
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