‘Over.’
Until now my husband has been standing by the bed but when I don’t understand him he kneels on it and turns me over by my shoulders onto my front, brings one leg over me and pushes my legs apart. He rests against me, leans against me on his hands, I hear his hoarse breath and feel it in my hair, smell the strong scent of sweat and force on him, and something else, something bitter, stale, and then he moves into me and we are joined. Joined, but not one. The Russian words he breathes into my ear are like insects finding their way into my brain, I close my eyes into the pillow and feel his weight push into me, his hand grips my neck and tightens, grows tighter with and against his weight until my breath thins and the red behind my eyes starts to go black and there’s nowhere left for me to go.
Only my faith remains. Strong, silent. Of everything unafraid.
Then he slows, and the weight lightens, and his grasp goes loose, and I wonder now what is in his eyes, whether now the hunt is over they show satisfaction or something more.
I understand his need. I understand my place. But I am glad he can’t see mine.
With one last word of Russian he rolls off me, and when I bring myself to look he is on his back, staring upwards, completely separate. The dark energy in him has not been spent. The muscles in his jaw are working, and when he closes his eyes for a moment it isn’t to rest but to gather strength, or to curse my image, I can feel it. I want to turn my head away from him but I don’t dare, because if I move he may remember I’m here, and right now he might be a thousand miles away. I want to turn on my side, wipe myself clean, be dressed again, search for sleep, but instead I lie as still as I can like a mouse pretending to be dead in the hope that the cat will move on. In the space I’ve made, ashamed by my tears, I try to remember the lesson. He is my husband now. A man of strength, a man who has killed a thousand times as many enemies as a boy like Khalil. And what, I want him to be gentle? I expected my innocence to end when I crossed the border but maybe this is the real border, right here, from being a girl to becoming a woman.
I lie in the dark for a long time and somehow I sleep. I wake to the sound of a child crying.
It’s definitely a child, not the baby. It sounds like a girl, yelping in pain. I still haven’t seen any of the children – their room is next to this, at the other end of the house from mine, and they seem to stay in there. For a while I lie in the dark and listen to it. A word comes to me, I don’t know where from. Keening. I think she must be ill, the crying has a weird inhuman quality to it, like she has a fever or something.
No one seems to be doing anything about it. As I get used to the darkness and being awake I realize that Borz has gone, there’s no one else in here. I have no way of telling the time but perhaps he’s already gone to work, or even to the front.
After some fumbling I switch on the bedside light and find my pyjamas. I have a headache, and my stomach churns a little when I stand, and it occurs to me that when the house is awake I might have a shower. I would like a shower. Maybe here it will be hot.
I stand in the doorway for a minute to listen as the crying stops briefly and then starts up again. Down the landing my bedroom door is shut. There are no lights on and no sounds of anyone moving about. I wonder if the brothers on guard outside can hear it and if they find it distracting. Poor child. It sounds horrible, whatever it is. She needs a doctor, or even to go to hospital. Suddenly I feel hugely protective towards her, and I wonder if that has to do with my own worries about being late, and I force that thought from my mind before it can take root.
If Borz isn’t here I’ll have to wake Hafa and hope that she knows what to do. Perhaps one of the brothers could drive us somewhere.
The children’s door is only a few feet from me, and I tiptoe to it. But as soon as I move that way I know that the noise is coming from somewhere else, and with my ear to the door I hear only silence inside.
It’s downstairs. It has to be. The stairs turn halfway down, and I stop there to listen. The crying is weaker now, but still distinct, and I’m caught about what to do. Maybe one of the children is sleeping downstairs. Maybe she left her room and is looking for help.
So I go down, slowly, listening on every step. I guess part of me thinks Borz may not be gone and while I have his children’s best interests at heart I don’t want him to get the wrong idea about what I’m doing. Like I’m trying to leave or something. The crying is definitely less intense, more tired, and it seems to be coming from the far end of the house, by the garage, underneath my room, and by the time I’m at the bottom of the stairs I’m sure of it. For a few seconds I stand there, and as I step off the last step I hear a whispered hiss from up above me that makes me stop. It comes again, and I can just make out a shape on the landing.
‘Up here,’ it says, in the same hiss. ‘Now.’
‘One of the children—’ I start to say, but it cuts me off.
‘Up. Quiet.’
As she says it I hear a door open downstairs and without really knowing why I zip back up the stairs as quickly as I can, two at a time. On the top step Hafa takes my arm and marches me in front of her into my bedroom and silently closes the door. There’s barely any light and I can’t see her face but the fear in her voice is as plain as day.
‘Do not move around this house at night. Ever. Now. Go to the bathroom. Quickly. Flush it and return to your bed. And pray he does not suspect. Go.’
She opens the door and pushes me out. The bathroom is in between my room and Borz’s, I find the toilet in the half-light, feel for the flush and leave, trying to look as if I’m not rushing.
I meet Borz as he climbs the last steps, and even in the near darkness there’s something so intimidating about his presence, the great mass of him, that no matter how hard I focus I shrink back. His breathing is thick and he’s sniffing, clearing his throat, so he doesn’t hear me and when he finally realizes I’m there he stops and swears in Russian, and then just stands over me, working out what to do, and even without really seeing him I have a sense of his hand closing into a fist. My heart is going so fast.
‘What you do.’
‘I needed the bathroom.’
There’s a tiredness about him now, a heaviness. I wonder what the options are that he’s considering. Part of me wants to run past him, down the stairs, past the guards and out to God knows where.
But in the end he turns, walks slowly away, and falls lifeless into bed. And I have no choice but to follow him.
The bed is full of snakes. My skin crawls with them and they wrap themselves round my brain.
I try to think about it, and I try not to think about it, and neither works because all there is in my head is the smell of him and the crying of that girl like a song that repeats and repeats no matter how much you want it to stop.
I don’t know her name. I don’t know if anybody does. Perhaps she’s forgotten herself. I think I would.
In my mind I am her, underneath that dark form, seeing and feeling that dark shape rolling and shifting, his smell working its way inside. I feel her pain, and it confuses me, because her pain should be different from mine.
Then a new thought comes to me, the worst I’ve had. What if this is a punishment, for all of us? What if this is what happens to unbelievers? All of a sudden my mind clears and a hundred memories rush in of mistakes and shortcomings and failures.
One begins to stand out from all the rest. I begin to realize with such great clarity what is happening to me.
8
They made doctors young in the Islamic State. The hard demeanour and brutal manner that Doctor Huq had learned from his brothers didn’t sit well on him. It was like watching a child play at soldiers. Why couldn’t Sofia have married an idiot like this and not one of the murderers-in-chief?
Huq may have been a fool but it didn’t make him any less dangerous. His new commission seemed to torture him: an opportunity for advancement, yes, but the slightest slip might send him to the bottom of the ladder, or somewhere worse tha
n that. It puffed him up into a quivering bubble of importance and fear. As my friend, you can expect great things, but if you do not do precisely as I say I shall have no choice but to count you as my enemy. He reminded Abraham of managers he had had throughout his career.
But he seemed straightforwardly pleased to have someone to order around. Later, Abraham might have to run some errands, everyone else was too important to leave the hospital, but for now he could accompany Huq on his rounds. For the next two hours, the two men went from room to room inspecting two dozen bearded young men who had been shot, maimed, burned, knifed and filled with shrapnel from exploding bombs. Not all had been injured in battle. Two had been crushed when the tunnel they had been crawling through had collapsed during an airstrike. And the knifing was a personal matter, according to Huq, who at first refused to elaborate and then in a low voice told Abraham that two fighters had fought over a Yazidi girl. Here in hell this sounded almost noble, until Huq revealed that the victim had been stabbed for selling a virgin who was not a virgin. He told the story confidentially, as if it might confer more importance on him, suggest some intimacy with the fighters’ affairs, but at the same time Abraham thought he detected a hesitation there, something short of total commitment to the cause. Again, he could have been playing a role. His commitment to this new life seemed to be built on an idea that wasn’t quite playing out as he had expected.
He was no doctor. As they moved from one bed to another Abraham watched him ask questions that betrayed his lack of knowledge at every point. Someone else must have been doing all the work. One young Bangladeshi, face screwed up in constant pain, had had a leg amputated below the knee after an airstrike on a barracks just north of Madan three nights earlier. The Americans, well-targeted. His other leg had been shredded by fragments from the blast, and yesterday he had undergone an operation first to remove these fragments, and then to graft some skin from his thigh onto an open wound on his ankle that otherwise stood no chance of healing.
Huq removed the dressing and spent a good minute carefully inspecting the leg, from the knee down a mess of blood and exposed flesh. In an instant Abraham knew that it was infected; there seemed to be swelling, although the skin was so damaged it was difficult to tell, and around the central wound on the ankle there was a raised section of skin that had turned a yellowish green. He had known it, in fact, as soon as he saw the patient’s face.
‘It’s infected,’ he told Huq.
‘I can see that.’
‘Is he being given antibiotics?’
Huq consulted the chart, which had been hanging on the end of the bed where it was supposed to be. It was odd, this, being in a place that felt just like a hospital and like no hospital at all.
‘Of course. By mouth.’
‘It’s not enough. He needs intravenous. Who did the work?’
Huq brought his chin in, a defensive reflex.
‘A civilian doctor. A surgeon.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Working.’
‘Find a drip. Now, or he’ll lose this leg. If you need to speak to this doctor, interrupt him. Otherwise we should take responsibility. I will.’
Huq looked at Abraham with a look that was rich with defeat and pride and some relief.
‘I don’t need to interrupt him.’
Abraham nodded. Huq was terrified, of his bosses, his patients, his colleagues. Any rational person would be, but then no rational person ought to be here. Perhaps the delusion that had brought him had simply worn off. The thought gave him hope.
‘Then let’s go.’
Huq breathed deeply and ushered Abraham away from the bed.
‘I can’t administer it.’
‘Why not?’
‘He is not a priority.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘His case is not a priority case.’
‘Then whose is?’ Abraham raised his voice and Huq raised a hand to quiet him. ‘Look at him.’
‘His wounds are serious.’
‘Exactly.’
‘He won’t fight again.’
The understanding passed into Abraham like a knife into flesh. Of course. This whole place functioned on icy practicality. He told himself never again to assume that any goodness existed in the dawla.
‘You’re serious?’
Huq said nothing.
‘Then why try to save his leg? Why not just amputate?’
‘Dr Saad thought it could be saved.’
Abraham looked from the patient to Huq, who was once again looking down at his shoes. The fighter was no doubt as repellent as the rest, but Christ, this was a hospital.
‘Double his dose at least. For fuck sake.’
And he left, disgusted, to continue Huq’s rounds.
Huq was from Canada. Toronto, or a town just outside. His parents were from Pakistan, originally, Lucknow, both doctors, well, medics – his mother was a dentist – and he had followed their example and studied medicine at school, but in his second year he had become disillusioned. Why work to cure people who were diseased in the soul? Years of studying and practising to prolong lives that had no value. It seemed almost to run counter to the teachings of Allah, the most high, the most glorified – to perpetuate the spread of consumerism and individualism and greed and mindless lust. And in Canada, half the patients he would end up treating would have made themselves ill in the first place. That was the curse of the kafir, and one day it would take them all down, it was a fatal condition. Sickness in the soul spread to the body, through gorging on sugar and godless rich food and alcohol and drugs. And sex, of course. What, he should give years of life he might devote to Him, the most high, the most glorified, to rid some homosexual of the illness he had brought upon himself? Was that what his life was for?
Huq harangued Abraham while they drank water from plastic bottles at the top of the ramp, rounds over. In Arabic, because Abraham didn’t want to let on that he spoke English. Huq was hopeless, and deluded, but there was a sort of twisted integrity in what he said, a diseased logic. His case reminded Abraham strongly of Sofia’s, and in another place he might have brought him into his confidence. Not here. Not with anyone, and least of all someone as changeable as Huq.
But he could still be useful.
‘My daughter, she’s here somewhere. In Raqqa.’
‘I know,’ said Huq, with a certain self-importance.
‘She was married yesterday. To a great fighter. A Russian called Borz.’
‘She’s married to Borz?’
As he said the words, Huq seemed to regret them. He should know everything about his charge.
‘You know him?’
‘Everyone knows him. They say he’s killed more kafirs than any other fighter.’
And now he’s married to my daughter. Abraham controlled the scream growing inside him.
‘A great honour.’
‘Yes,’ said Huq, unsurely. Behind his bulging eyes he seemed to be trying to work out how this changed things. Was Abraham more important now that he was connected to the very top rung? Could he be more useful? Certainly, if the two of them fucked up it would be more visible. Despite everything, Abraham took some grim pleasure from watching the fear ebb and flow in the man’s face.
‘Do you know where he lives?’
Immediately Huq filled with suspicion.
‘Why do you want to know where he lives?’
‘Because I saw my daughter yesterday, and she told me she was getting married, and I wanted to pay my respects. Meet my new son-in-law.’
‘Why didn’t she invite you to the ceremony?’
‘Before I . . . before we came here we had a fight. A father–daughter thing. She’s a teenager, you know how it is.’
Huq nodded and frowned. He did know, but that didn’t mean Abraham was off the hook.
‘Why don’t you just call her?’
‘She hasn’t given me her new number. She’s as stubborn as her mother.’
Abraham smiled, as one man of
experience might smile to another.
‘I don’t know where he lives. Of course not. What am I, your guide? And your mind should not be on personal matters. In the dawla there are no personal matters.’
Abraham felt his phone buzz twice in his pocket and telling Huq that, of course, he understood, he excused himself, desperate to read what she had sent.
But it wasn’t her. It was Vural.
— Are you there? Speak to me.
9
— Sister. Je suis arrivée. Dans le khilafa. I can hardly believe it. So amazing here. When can we meet?
that’s great sister. amazing you made it. i was beginning to doubt!!!
— It was scary but your example is so strong. I could not have done it without your help and direction.
— I would like to thank you face to face sister. I have something for you.
gifts not important sister. also i’m super busy right now, not a great time
— Not for long, sister. Just to see you and embrace you one sister and another.
you need a mahram sister until you are married you can’t go out. i had that problem
— I have a mahram sister, the husband of my cousin he is here since a year now
weird you didn’t mention that sister
— I did mention, I am sure that I did. His name is Yusef he is from Lyon.
oh okay sorry sister not myself. tbh so soon to be married again.
— what is he like your new husband? can I meet him too?
unlikely sister. unlikely
— why is that sister?
— okay sister goodnight I try you again soon
The Good Sister Page 21