Umm Sultan struck her and her chair rolled back from the computer. “You failed the Al-Khansaa brigade when the slave escaped on your watch. You are fortunate you merely received a beating. If you’d like to avoid more, I suggest you become better at pleasing a husband than you were at guard duty.”
Allah, preserve me! Jessica flinched from the leader of Al-Khansaa. Three long years ago her boyfriend, a Somalian immigrant named Taban, had invited her here. She’d worked with him at the grocer down the street from the English village where she grew up.
When he’d called her from Syria, her stomach had already swollen into a third trimester baby bump. The month before, Mom had kicked her out on the street for truthfully accusing her latest “stepdad” of molesting her.
Taban had said Islamic State would give them a house, a well-furnished kitchen, and a monthly check. Her boyfriend had offered marriage and to be the kind of father to their son that she had never had. What pregnant seventeen-year-old would refuse that?
Jessica forced her chin up to meet Umm Sultan’s gaze. In Islamic State, tears only invited abuse. “I do not wish to marry, Umm Sultan.”
“Do I look like I care about your wishes?” The woman landed a blow on her jaw.
Jessica’s teeth jiggled in their sockets.
“Convince the recruit to fly to Turkey.” Umm Sultan stabbed her finger at the open computer screen, her other hand on a knife.
Jessica glanced at the open telegraph app. PrincessAva14, the screen name said. Her avatar showed a Hello Kitty image. The girl shouldn’t come here to this death trap.
When Jessica joined ISIS, she’d envisioned a tranquil home and loving husband. She’d never imagined the kind of savagery Rosna had experienced.
Fighting back tears, Jessica moved the computer mouse and started to translate. “Ava asks if she may choose the man she marries.” The girl had written it in all-caps along with five dozen exclamation points and heart emojis. How old was this Ava?
“Tell her, of course, she may choose her husband. There is no compulsion in marriage in Islamic State.” Umm Sultan’s Arabic had a faint accent, but she couldn’t place it. French? German? The woman never unwrapped her niqab.
Heart numb, Jessica drummed her fingers against the keyboard. A month after moving to Mosul for Taban, she’d given birth to a baby boy. The child had died three days after his birth. Perhaps if she had been in Britain with proper hospital care her baby would have survived. Jessica swallowed uncried sobs.
Ava’s avatar blinked. My mom’s coming. The computer screen went dead as the fluorescent lights overhead flickered.
Pain burned through Jessica’s searing back. Marriage had been hell. Nothing she did pleased Taban. She’d borne the mark of his beatings, feared his angry shouts, and longed for the days he left on jihad.
When he left though, the walls of their lonely house would press in around her. No human companionship cheered her stay in that isolated darkness. The noise of her mind had driven her insane until she welcomed his return, only to have him cast her aside with angry words again.
All that she’d endured with a man she knew, whom she’d dated for a year before the marriage, and now Umm Sultan wished her to marry a stranger?
Perhaps she bore the blame. She must have had a heart of sin and failed Taban as a wife.
Jessica clenched her trembling hand against the desktop. No matter how much Umm Sultan pressured, she would never agree to marry again.
With a crunch, Umm Sultan swept the mouse and keyboard into her gaping handbag and locked the computer screen. “Go to bed. Your groom will wed you when he returns from battle.”
“I refuse. I will not say the wedding vows.” Jessica clenched the chair’s armrest, the plastic laminate stretching beneath her stranglehold.
Umm Sultan flicked the light switch off. Only a glimmer from the edges of the window curtains illuminated the room. The woman’s pale eyes glowed in the hazy darkness. “It doesn’t matter if you consent. The imam has chosen a husband for you.”
“You said there is no compulsion in marriage!” Jessica jumped up. Her black skirt twisted about her legs, but even it could lend no protective shield. Her throat constricted. She couldn’t breathe.
Folds of black cloth fell around Umm Sultan’s shoulders as she shrugged. “We need more recruits. How would we get those without offering them women?”
Jessica’s heart thudded against her dress. Her breathing came in gasps. She couldn’t face the humiliation of marriage again. If only she had never come to Islamic State.
In the darkness, the memories of before swept over her.
Three long years had passed since she’d felt the wind blowing against her hair, or tasted a drop of rain on her tongue, or lifted her face up to the sun’s rays. Even the freckles on her arms that had plagued her as a teenager had faded, leaving only the pasty white of trapped skin.
In her mind, she could see the spires of Big Ben, the glorious arches of Westminster Abbey, the regal stones of Buckingham Palace. If only she could return to them and imagine these last three years had been but a nightmare. Of course, she was lucky compared to Rosna. The Western women got the best treatment in ISIS, and being raped a few times by a husband didn’t even begin to compare to what Rosna had endured. She hadn’t seen any texts about a sabaya so that meant Rosna had got out safely. If only she could too.
Jessica threw herself on the narrow cot and stuffed her face into her pillow to block the flood of tears. The only way a Western woman deserted Islamic State was through the grave.
This Ava should know that before she chose to come.
Three months later
Ali crouched behind the rill that lent cover from the bombardment of daesh fire power. For three long months, he’d risen at dawn and marched and drilled. For three long months, he’d trained to take back the city that had held him captive—Mosul.
A few hundred yards ahead lay a tiny village that Islamic State had overrun eighteen months ago. The black tips of daesh rifles pointed out from windows and doors in the village houses.
“Ali, my brother.” A Kurdish man pointed right, to where a white truck sped around the curve of the road toward them. “Quickly. Daesh.”
Ali squeezed in on the trigger of his Kalashnikov. The other Peshmerga soldiers, hunkered down on the right and left of him, let loose their fire. The truck exploded in a burst of light as the black flag it waved burst into flames.
For three months, he’d lain in the trenches beside men and women alike. The camo uniform they all wore gave no hint of their religion. Muslims, Yazidis, and Christians crouched in the mud of spring rains together as they fought daesh.
These Peshmerga soldiers had invited him to sit at their table and made him part of their tribe. Last week, the Peshmerga commander had even offered his daughter in marriage to Ali.
Never before had a man offered Ali the Wanderer his daughter in marriage. Ali loaded another bullet clip as the wonder of this camaraderie swept over him once again. He’d refused the offer of marriage though. He could only ever imagine calling one woman wife.
The noise of firing increased. A Peshmerga fighter dropped from the rill. His gun rolled down the barricade as he clenched his leg.
The Peshmerga commander stood and took hold of the injured man’s leg. Keeping his head down, Ali scrambled into his pickup truck. Under cover of the rill, he backed the truck up toward his comrade. After three months, his truck was bloodstained and pocked by bullet holes.
A woman moved forward from the female unit fighting beside them. Rosna took hold of the wounded man’s other leg.
“May Melek Taus provide him healing,” she prayed as she hauled the man toward the truck bed.
Ali looked through the smoky air into her eyes. Her hair fell in a braid down her back. A red beret contrasted with her fair hair and dirt smudged her cheeks. She’d put on muscle since three months ago, and added color to her pale cheeks, and strength to her formerly feeble hands.
A Kalashni
kov slung over her back, beating against the camo jacket she wore. She held herself confidently beneath the male attire. No longer was she veiled in black, but rather clothed with the strength of firearms.
In the last three months, he’d spoken to more women than he had in his entire adult life beforehand. Many in Iraq would label the Peshmerga way immoral because women mixed with unrelated men, their braids uncovered, their faces naked.
After the first time an enemy came down on you, death in his eyes, and a woman put a bullet in your attacker’s heart, you didn’t think like that anymore. Here in the Peshmerga, you were comrades, brothers and sisters, all of you.
Perhaps this is how it could be in the new Iraq.
Blood covered Rosna’s right cheek, dripping down across her uniform.
Ali grabbed the wounded man under his arms. “Your blood or someone else’s?”
“Someone else’s.” She strained to help him get the wounded man in the truck bed. The man cried out, then fainted, his dead weight sliding into their arms.
Ali laid the man carefully on a bed of much-worn blankets. This comrade would live, unlike many others they’d lost in the past three months of fighting.
Rosna tilted her face up to him, even the curve of her chin lovely. A tiny mole spotted the right side of her lip, the beauty mark lending character to her face.
Ali swung into the driver’s seat. He winced as his right arm moved. His own blood stained the camo jacket sleeve. Just a flesh wound.
From her position on the ground, Rosna glanced through the window separating the truck cab from the truck bed. “You should get a medic to look at your arm.” She scrambled up beside the wounded comrade and adjusted the blankets underneath him.
The sound of gunfire faded as Ali drove down the road, steering around potholes as Rosna tried to hold their comrade’s shattered leg still.
They crossed back behind Peshmerga lines and soon only the sound of the wind and warmth of the sun surrounded them in peaceful bliss. Craning his neck back, Ali looked at Rosna. “Ready for the battle for Mosul?”
“I don’t think anyone is ready for that holocaust.” She fixed her blue-eyed gaze on him. Courage shone along with fear.
“If we survive though, it’ll be a story to tell our grandchildren’s grandchildren.” With a glance to the road, he twisted back to look through the window into the truck bed again and gave her an encouraging smile. This skirmish was going well. They’d take the town with no loss of Peshmerga lives.
Rosna froze, hand planted on their wounded comrade’s injured side as her face paled.
Oh. He shouldn’t have said that about grandchildren. While the male Peshmerga fighters were free to marry if they choose, the female Peshmerga unit swore to never marry or have children. Yet another way Iraqi women always bore the brunt of war.
The Battle for Mosul
Rosna inhaled deeply of the spring air. The flag of the Iraqi Kurds, three stripes, red, white, and green, stretched across the breast pocket of the camo uniform she wore.
The trees raised their leafy boughs over her in the Sinjar mountains. Rosna squatted before the sun, the same sun that blazed forth from the Peshmerga emblem on her bosom, and murmured prayers to Melek Taus.
Three months now she’d been free of daesh. Three months of exploding grenades, flaming Kalashnikovs, daily training, and forced marches. Three months of paying in sweat and tears to free her people. Never had she dreamed as a young girl that her life would be this.
A familiar rush overtook her senses as her heart pounded against her ribs, cold sweat built on her legs, and her breath heaved in and out. She’d never hold a child of her own. Never. Rosna scooped up a pile of pebbles. She let the dirt fall through her open fingers and tried to slow her breaths, still they heaved one over the other.
“Rosna.” Ali moved out of the shadows of a tree grove. The underbrush gave way beneath his boots. He’d fulfilled his promise of joining the Peshmerga. She’d seen him at many formations and battles these past three months. Each time she saw him, her heart jumped with gladness.
Ali’s presence brought a calm to this abandoned bit of mountain woods.
Her breathing slowed. He’d be beside her when they joined the battle for Mosul. All the available Peshmerga forces would leave for Mosul within the hour. They’d drive daesh out and free her people, or die trying.
Did her cousins still live?
“I want you to have this.” Ali slid his hand into the square pocket of his jacket. The dusky light of predawn glittered off what he held. A gold necklace fine enough for a bride lay in his palm.
He extended his hand.
She drew back.
“Please take it. I have no one else to give it to.”
“What about the commander’s daughter?” Rumor had it the commander, a Sunni Muslim from the same faith as Ali, had offered him his daughter in marriage. Surely that would be a much better match than he and she, for it was family approved, within the faith, and would give Ali a family and people. Yet here Ali stood, talking to her.
“I do not fight side by side with the commander’s daughter.” He smiled as he extended the necklace again. “It will bring good luck before the battle.”
The edge of her hand brushed his palm as she took the necklace. She slid the jewelry over her neck and tucked it beneath the Velcro collar of her uniform. “It is very beautiful. I will wear it next to my heart and take courage in the attack. Thank you.”
Please, Melek Taus, let Ali survive the battle. She couldn’t even imagine the void she’d feel if he died. Never before had she felt such camaraderie with a man. Even Khadir, though she had loved him, was a man in a man’s world, living in a separate plane than her. Ali and she fought side by side in the Peshmerga.
“This will be our biggest offensive yet.” He beamed, his white teeth showing. “My battle buddies are rearing for the fight. If we’d been around in 2014, daesh never would have taken Mt. Sinjar.” Excitement filled his voice, lending power to his frame. He looked eager to take on this war.
A sick feeling rose inside her. Rosna shook her head. At Mosul, the bullets would blaze around her day after day during the battle. The choking smell of gunpowder and stinging heat of aluminum casings would be her constant companions. She could hit her target every time now. She’d killed dozens of daesh fighters, but unlike some of her comrades, she kept no count of how many.
“You don’t get along with your unit?” Ali cocked his head, straining the muscles of his neck.
“I do, but . . . I want to till a garden, bake bread, tell my children stories. Daesh has taken all that away from me.” Tears formed in her eyes. She clenched the barrel of her Kalashnikov, holding onto her only purpose now, fighting for the freedom of her people.
The long, hard hours of war and sleepless nights of guard duty were all she had to look forward to now. Daesh had stolen every accoutrement of peace from her.
“My offer still stands. Once we liberate Mosul from daesh, Iraq can return to peace. Marry me, Rosna.” Ali stretched out his hand.
Unlike three months ago, Ali didn’t seem fearsome now. Despite that he was a Sunni and she a Yazidi, he felt like a brother. He was the reason she was free today, but Yazidis didn’t marry Muslims. “Peace? Iraq will never return to what it was before. My people will never return. So many are dead.”
A single tear formed in the corner of her eye as Rosna glanced at her hands. Her skin possessed a familiar brown hue again, tanned from many days in the sun instead of suffocated in darkness.
“We are alive though. We can make a life. Together.” A wistful smile tugged at his dark lips. His palms glistened in the sunshine as he reached out to her. A single leaf stem dangled from the edge of his red beret, sticking to the fuzz of his hair.
“You are not of my people. You are not of my religion. The village elders have stoned girls for less.” Rosna’s hand trembled as she forced herself not to look into his kind face. If she looked at him, she’d only desire more what she co
uld not have. She clenched the cold metal of the Kalashnikov barrel.
After three months of dawn wakeups and drills, the gun fit in a familiar callous between her thumb and forefinger. Who knew how many rounds of ammunition she’d use this day alone.
“It will be a new world once daesh is defeated. We can mourn the loss of the old or step into the new.” He touched her fingers, so much safety in his strong grip.
Pain tore through her, but she couldn’t say yes. “We would never be accepted, a Sunni and a Yazidi. Our children would have no home, no tribe.” If she married Ali, they would be scorned by all of Iraq. Why couldn’t he understand that? Why did he keep making her love him? Rosna pushed away the feelings that swelled in her heart.
Above them on the hillside, the Peshmerga started the cadence of the war dance as they raised their voices and songs in hope before the battle where they would no doubt bury many beloved comrades.
Men and women joined hands in the dance. The Peshmerga had no restrictions about unrelated men and women touching, because here all were brothers and sisters in this grand endeavor to drive out the pestilence of daesh.
“Then let’s go somewhere else. Canada’s taking refugees. You’d be first in line after what you endured. The West sees Yazidi girls as some kind of weird celebrities. I could apply too.” A yearning shone in Ali’s eyes.
Rosna swallowed as, for the faintest flicker of a moment, a life with Ali seemed almost conceivable.
“I do not wish to be a soldier forever either, fighting for a freedom in Iraq that has eluded us for centuries. I want to live in a country that is not split apart by war. That is another reason I said ‘no’ to the commander’s daughter.”
A picture she’d once seen of a Western nation glimmered in her consciousness. The mountains rose high. Lakes glistened by sandy seashores.
If she left Iraq, she’d never dwell with her people again.
If she married Ali, she could have children, raise a garden, embrace life instead of pursuing death while gripping the metal barrel of a Kalashnikov. Ali loved her and her heart responded to him as well.
Veiled by Coercion (Radical Book 2) Page 13