The Good Sister

by Chris Morgan Jones

  You are a good Muslim?

  — I try to be. But I will not be happy – God the most high will not be happy – until I am in Sham.

  Sham. An ancient word for Syria that he had seen her and others use.

  You must come.

  — Always I dream. But I am alone, no friends will come with me. And it will hurt my parents, they are good Muslims but old, they do not see.

  If easy to come, where is the glory to Him? swt.

  Swt. Subhanahu Was Ta’ala. Glory to Him, the Exalted. Before Abraham could reply, she sent another.

  Good Muslims will understand, even tho it hurts. They know glory to Him more important than their pain, swt.

  — Did your parents understand? Do you speak?

  As he sent it Abraham felt a stab of fear: that was too much, and too soon, she would suspect. But a moment later the reply came, and he had new reasons for regretting being direct.

  My mother is ill. My father is dead to me. A kafir and weak man led into darkness by false gods.

  That was the story, in twenty words that cut him as surely as twenty knives. Every one had weight. He had thought, fondly, that he had failed her as a lifeguard might fail a drowning girl; that he had stretched out his hand and found her beyond reach. But in her eyes he had pushed her in and held her down.

  Enough. This way lay only more pain. It had been a stupid idea in the first place, to pull the scab off the wound – the sensible thing to do was to let the conversation die over the next few days and then walk away.

  — Sorry for yr mother, sister. What is wrong with her?

  For two minutes, no answer.

  — Did you tell yr father when u left?

  Almost immediately her reply came.

  Nothing to tell. In my mind had already left. My true family is here, sister, so is yours.

  Abraham sat back in his chair. God, she was so hard. An absolutist from the moment she was born, sure about everything and so often right about it, too. To think that he was going to persuade her back was nonsense, stupidity.

  And yet what else was there? Through the screen they were joined, as somehow he knew they remained joined in life. Neither of them had the power to cut the bond clean through.

  18

  Aripiprazole was the first drug they tried. Sold as Abilify, which sounded friendly, and purposeful, and seemed to promise the only thing Abraham wanted: Ester made able again. Able to laugh when it was the right time to laugh, to talk, to greet him with the old life in her eyes. To sleep through the night and stay awake during the day. Able to tell the difference between a police car that happened to be driving down the street and a government operation to steal her thoughts. Little blue pills, lozenge-shaped, full of power and possibility, imprinted with an identification code that ten years on he still remembered, two boxes of twenty-eight to start with because they might take as long as eight weeks to work. The side effects would come sooner.

  Abraham understood all this. A year short of becoming a doctor himself, he had brought Ester back to London and listened to a careful, frowning psychiatrist tell him what he already knew. Drugs were essential. She wouldn’t get better without them. She had too much dopamine racing round her brain and the only thing that would begin to help was to close down some of her receptors, block them off, stop the overload that caused the behaviour. The new drugs were much better than the old drugs, more precise in their action, and while they came at a price they would almost certainly help – unless they didn’t. Abilify might suit one person and not another, and the only way of knowing was to plump for it and see. Wait and see.

  How he willed them to work. Prayed as he handed her each blue pill and watched her take it. In Cairo, life had been in balance; Ester worked, he studied, Sofia went to school and was happy. A steady breeze and the sun at their backs. But even on their best days in London, Ester trailed behind, low in the water, her bearings gone, and in a moment the winds that drove her might rise from nowhere and send her tumbling wildly across the waves like a kite cut loose from its string.

  She had always read to Sofia, in English, every night; and when she stopped, Abraham thought she must have a flu of some kind, a virus. He told her to rest, not to go to work, and was pleased when she seemed to listen and stayed in bed. But then for three days she didn’t wash, didn’t even clean her teeth – this, the most precise and careful of women. When he came into the room she would raise a hand to dismiss him and shake her head, saying nothing. Viruses can do this, he told himself, they can bring you down, and he squeezed oranges for her and made chicken broth. But she stayed away, far away. For weeks and then months, until it became clear that his prayers had no power. The woman who had pulled him along with her purpose and her stubborn joy about life had simply left – had been taken from him – and on his worst nights Abraham wondered at the God who could dream up such cruelty. If you’re going to take her from me, take her from me. Don’t take her and leave her here to force me to remember.

  And all this in London, over a long winter, where the damp settled in his light Egyptian clothes and he was never, ever warm, and Sofia would ask him how long it would be until the sun came out again, and he had no answer for her. They were close then, he and Sofia, weren’t they, constructing their new lives? Ester walked when she was feeling expansive and watched television when she wasn’t, and no matter how much he might want to care for her she simply didn’t need him. This was terrifying in a new way, but it left him time with Sofia, who was terrified too and needed him more.

  Christ, she was courageous though, his daughter. He told her what was happening, used the word for it, wished there was a better one, something less scary. Schizophrenia. They couldn’t have made it sound more jagged and alien if they’d tried.

  And Sofia listened, asked questions, helped him tidy their new flat – always unbidden – prayed alongside him in church and went to school with the apparent faith of someone who still trusts that adults have solutions for everything. Her mother was ill, and illnesses were things people recovered from. Only at night when she asked him to read her the old books, the picture books, the ones she knew by heart, did she show any sign that her world had crumbled alongside his. Her courage made him feel weak, because he knew she was determined not to add to his burdens. If she could do it, why couldn’t he?

  19

  This morning at breakfast Badra is no different. As if our conversation never happened. Stern. Dark. It’s like living with your worst teacher.

  ‘Tonight, be ready to go out. At five. Make yourself clean. I will come for you.’

  That’s all she says. What on earth does that mean? I nod and mutter something and spend the whole day switching between hope and a terror I’ve never known.

  Badra’s late, in the end, and when we leave it’s almost six – the sun has lost some of its heat and the buildings are beginning to glow orange. There’s a breeze, and it feels so good on my face, like a blessing. I realize this is the longest time I’ve ever spent indoors, and an old memory comes to me, of my father coming to my bedroom to tell me to go outside and spend more time in the fresh air. I blink it away.

  Badra takes me to a car that’s waiting for us and the driver sets off. I want to ask her how it’s okay for us to be out without a mahram but she doesn’t seem to want to talk any more than usual.

  Raqqa is beautiful. Now that I finally see it, up close where the life is, with people everywhere on the streets and the roads full of cars. It’s dusty, a desert town, and even though it’s big, and modern, there’s something simple about it. The car windows are open and I can smell the heat from the road and petrol from the cars, the smoke from a grill as we pass a market that’s busy with men in dishdashas and women in their niqabs, going about their business and buying simple things that He has provided, and above everything I can see that they’re all living a simple life, a holy life that doesn’t need fancy clothes and excess. In accordance with His will.

  How stunning it is. In England I read all the
time that the people of Raqqa were oppressed and unhappy. The lies they told us! It’s like the memories I have of Cairo when I was very young, the memories that until now I wasn’t sure I could trust. Of course Cairo was like this. This is the Ummah! This is how Muslims should live. And will live, soon. There is damage, from the bombs I guess, but we didn’t ask for that. We’re not destroying the city, we’re protecting it, nurturing it.

  Most amazing is the black. Fighters in black, black flags, cars and trucks painted with the flag. The flag is everywhere. So black, and so simple. Why don’t other flags have words? I’ve never thought about it before but the answer comes to me straight away, as if Allah the most glorified had sent it directly to me. No other flag means anything. No other flag has anything to say. And here you can’t escape it. What would get you arrested in Britain is a symbol of pride in Raqqa. This whole city is black, and it is ours.

  Badra is watching me. I turn to her, our petty difficulties forgotten, and wish that she could see the effect this place is having on me. If she has any sensitivity at all she will feel it. She looks away and tells the driver to take us through Clocktower Square.

  I thank her. I know about Clocktower Square. It is the heart of the khilafa.

  We have to slow down now and squeeze our way through the people. I guess this is rush hour. Everyone is out.

  Badra tells the driver to stop and motions to me to get out. I find walking in the veil and niqab hard to begin with because I’m not aware of my feet as I walk. It’s a strange sensation, I feel a little unbalanced in the crush of people on every side, and I can’t really use my arms to steady myself. But how liberating it is not to be seen. In London, if I walked down Oxford Street, or even where we lived, men would look me up and down every five steps. A sixteen-year-old, in a headscarf, and they’d be checking me out. Diseased, all of them, but it’s not until this moment, finally walking in Clocktower Square, that I realize I played my part in it. Here, any brother who might go astray cannot be tempted from the path by any sister. How simple is that, and how safe?

  The infidels run up sins to their hearts’ content and then ask their god to forgive them. In His compassion, the one true God makes sure that we cannot stray.

  Badra leads me through the crowd until we reach a clearing, and I become aware that people have stopped to look at something. She puts her hand on my shoulder and nods ahead of her, and I follow her gaze. Against a wooden hoarding is a man on a cross. I shut my eyes for a moment, but force myself to open them again. I am meant to see this.

  The cross is wooden and not all that big. The man’s feet are close to the ground. They’ve been tied to the wood with thick rope, and two black nails have been driven through them. The surrounding skin is red and black with blood. He’s wearing normal clothes, grey trousers and a white shirt that’s stained with dirt and blood and pulled open over a grubby white vest. His body hangs down from his arms, which are held up by rope and nails in his hands. That’s not true. One of the nails has ripped through the skin and the hand flops down from the wrist. The blood is fresh there.

  When I saw pictures of Jesus on the cross, a great prophet himself, there was always a peace about him. His head rested on his chest. Here the man’s head is twisted upwards in pain, and his face is swollen and purple around the red and white gag in his mouth. There are dark holes where his eyes were.

  People walk by on their evening business, hardly noticing. Some of the women turn their heads away as they pass.

  I don’t find it revolting. When I first saw it I expected to but I don’t. I’m sure Badra expected it too. I can look at it. And that tells me something. If this was wrong, if this man didn’t deserve to die like this, as an example to others and as a sign of his shame, would I be able to look on it? I couldn’t watch an innocent brother being crucified, because that would be against the true order of things, which we call His will. The kafir will never understand this. He sees justice and mistakes it for horror.

  So many revelations in the khilafa. I can feel wisdom growing in me by the minute.

  ‘What did he do?’

  Even when I can see her eyes Badra is so hard to read. Right now it’s impossible.

  ‘A drinker. They told him but he wouldn’t stop.’

  It could be my father. I look at him again and wonder how much of that purple colour in his face is from the drink. It’s no wonder he doesn’t inspire pity.

  ‘I am commanded to exercise justice amongst you,’ I say. ‘Sura forty-two. Counsel.’

  Badra looks at me a moment longer and turns into the crowds of people flowing round us.

  The driver stops in front of a house on a wide street. My sense of direction isn’t the best but I think we’ve crossed the whole city. There are houses here, not flats, modern ones, and more space, but a lot of the buildings have corners that have crumbled away and further down the street two next to each other have completely collapsed. I guess there were airstrikes here, but when, I can’t tell. Badra and the driver are carrying on as normal and I do the same.

  Outside the house there are two fighters, in combat clothes, camouflage, with guns across their chests, talking as we walk up the path – joking, relaxed. If I knew why I was here that might make me feel safer. In the street there’s a lot of debris and dust but someone has swept the path clean. Two cars sit in the driveway, both clean and shining in what’s left of the sun.

  The fear I’m feeling isn’t for my safety, it’s for my future here. It’s like I heard someone say once, I’m not afraid of dying, I just don’t want to stop living. I haven’t started my life here yet.

  One of the fighters takes us inside to a sitting room where the air conditioning is turned up so high even the evening sun coming in through a big window to my left has no effect. On one of the sofas are a man and a woman, unveiled. I recognize her as an Arab woman who was in the makkar on my first day. The man has grey hair and the ends of his beard have turned almost white. In all I’ve seen and read about the khilafa there haven’t been many old people, and there’s a feeling he gives off instantly of holiness and wisdom. The whole room has a calmness to it that I think must come from him.

  Both are quite short, their feet only just touch the floor. I look away, embarrassed to have noticed.

  There is a third person in the room, a young man who has stood to greet us. I am so hit by his beauty I feel myself blushing under my veil. This is what Adam looked like. Not the hairless white man of the paintings they showed us at school but a real, dark, black-haired man, bearded and handsome but at the same time so . . . delicate, so human. His pale blue eyes are all I can see. His smile is shy and hardly there. He looks right at me and then down at the floor.

  Badra introduces Imam Talib and his wife, Karam. We bow, and he invites us to sit down on the sofa next to his, so that we’re opposite the young brother. I can’t help but snatch glances at him, even though I’m sure Karam is watching me to see if I do, and I curse myself for not being in control at this most critical moment. His beard runs along his chin but his top lip is clean. He seems so contained, like a warrior who has proven himself so utterly on the battlefield that he has no need to impress anyone any more.

  Imam Talib says some words about welcoming us to his home, and me to the new centre of the Ummah, but he speaks in a slow, high voice and I’m finding it hard to concentrate on what he says, though I’m sure it’s beautiful. Then he says something I don’t catch and there’s a silence I know I’m expected to fill. Badra looks at me expectantly and then tells me in a loud whisper that I can undo my veil. I hesitate, and she nods at me, and I unhook the veil so just my headscarf remains. She does the same, and turns to the imam.

  ‘Thank you, Imam Talib, for welcoming us into your home. Your hospitality is equal only to your wisdom. This is the young sister I was telling you about.’

  What has she been telling him? Imam Talib looks at me for a good twenty seconds, not smiling, then nods. He is a serious man, I can tell.

  As if he cau
ght the word from my thoughts he says, ‘Is she a serious person?’

  ‘I have seen many young girls come to the khilafa, and she is one of the most devout. She knows the Qur’an, and she knows many hadith. Her intentions are correct. She is not here to take but to give. And she speaks Arabic, Egyptian.’

  I am stunned. This is like hearing your greatest enemy was all along your greatest friend. I don’t know what’s going on, but my heart lifts. Partly because I’m not afraid any more, but mostly, and this is so confusing, because Badra is saying these words. I thought I was beginning to hate her and I’m so happy to be saved from that new sin.

  Imam Talib is looking at me calmly, and his face is different. He gives another one of his little nods but this time it’s not so stern.

  ‘And she wants to be married?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Badra.

  ‘This is true?’ He says it to me. Karam is smiling, I think at me, but she has one eye just off and it’s hard to tell where she’s looking. She has a kind face.

  I am so nervous. It strikes me that here I must be near the centre of everything, the heart of jihad, and I’m ashamed for being so impatient and ungrateful. I hope they can’t see my thoughts or the mood would change so quickly. I cast my eyes down and see his feet not quite touching the floor and I’m sure I go red, this is so stupid, I’m ashamed of my weakness and do my best to meet his eyes.

  ‘I will serve Him however He sees fit, the most high, the most glorified.’

  He’s watching me intently. I can feel his eyes on my thoughts and instantly I’m aware of all the bad ones, all the fears and doubts and the lingering pieces of my old self that aren’t worthy. The indecision, the vanity, the selfishness – they’re all so clear to me and must be so clear to him. Even at this stage I could fail.

  ‘And what do you want in a husband?’

  Honestly, it isn’t until this moment that I realize why I’m here. It’s instantly so obvious, but I’d made no connection at all between this wise, searching imam and the beautiful young man sitting opposite me. That’s how I come to be so unprepared for the question.