The Good Sister

by Chris Morgan Jones

  Huq was outside the operating theatre, wheeling about without purpose and watching nurses and the few doctors rushing about in the corridor.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’

  ‘I have no car. I had to run.’

  ‘You were meant to be here at six.’

  ‘You said seven.’

  ‘Never mind. Scrub up.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Airstrike. A barracks.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘How many what?’

  Jesus. ‘How many injured?’

  ‘Seventeen. Four aren’t going to make it.’

  Abraham ran to the changing room, threw on his scrubs and washed his hands and forearms as thoroughly as he could in the water that wasn’t good enough to drink, all the while conducting a conversation with himself in the mirror. What was he supposed to do? Save these men who would never show mercy to a soul? The idea repelled him. And even if he did his best to help them, what if his work did more harm than good? Was it a sin to botch an operation on a bad man in good faith? For a moment he considered the idiot staring back at him who had contrived such a mess, then shook his head, closed his eyes and with a deep breath went to find the job that was waiting for him.

  Huq was talking to Saad, standing in the doorway of a ward three doors up from the operating theatre, and past them Abraham could see a figure on a bed and blood on white sheets. Moaning came from the room, high and tight like a wounded dog.

  ‘I’m going to have to operate in here,’ said Saad. ‘I can’t wait for the theatre.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Find a nurse. All the basics. Tools, antibiotics, morphine if you can find any, whatever else is around if you can’t, gloves, soap, fuck, everything. Blood. Everything. And lights. Find some lights that haven’t been blown to shit.’

  Saad had cut away the fighter’s tunic and shirt and exposed the wound, or wounds: one deep, in his side between his hip and ribs, filled with blood, and several others shallower and smaller across that side of his belly. Judging from how tightly they were grouped he had been close to one of the strikes. His face was turned away but Abraham could see that he was biting down hard on the first knuckle of his fist, and through it the moaning continued at an even pitch.

  Abraham marvelled at Saad’s coolness. His eyes were bloodshot and sitting on heavy purple bags, but they shone. He was exhausted, propelled by will, inspecting each wound carefully, with concentration but no sense of urgency.

  ‘I can’t do this without blood. When I take that out . . .’

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘O. Negative. We’re out.’

  Two fighters stood against the wall, one white, one Arab, both in fatigues. The white man had cuts on his cheekbone and temple that bled into his beard. Now he spoke, in a voice that was too high for his heavy bearing.

  ‘Use other blood.’

  ‘I can’t. It will probably kill him.’

  The fighter was ungainly, lumbering. Abraham knew his type from his work: ill at ease, uncomfortable in the real world, here he had found his place. He wore metal-framed glasses that looked as if he’d borrowed them from someone else. For a while he and the doctor stared at each other, until Abraham began to will the doctor to look away. Then the fighter spoke.

  ‘Much blood here.’

  ‘There’s none. Not a drop. We used the last a month ago.’

  The fighter’s slack grey eyes went pointedly to the ceiling and then back to Saad.

  ‘Much blood.’

  Saad shook his head.

  ‘Uh-uh. A single transfusion won’t do it. I need four or five pints.’

  ‘They have.’

  Abraham was the first to understand. It was the finality with which it was said. Anywhere else it would have been a joke but here it was simply logic. That the doctor took so long to understand simply meant he was the better man.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Find blood.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You. You ISIS?’

  The fighter nodded at Abraham, who felt his legs go weak and acid rise in his throat. No. No I am not.

  ‘We go, find blood.’

  Abraham shook his head.

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  The fighter pushed himself away from the wall and came right up to Abraham, so close that their beards touched.

  ‘You, ISIS.’

  Abraham said nothing.

  ‘Yes?’

  Still nothing. The fighter looked back at his friend and said, in English, the accent London: ‘Unbelievable. I’m going to gut this cunt.’

  For ten seconds, he stood toe to toe with Abraham and looked up into his face.

  ‘You. With me. We find blood. Man, woman, child. Right blood. You get blood, come back. You give blood to my friend.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘That’s a fucking fighter, you prick.’ In English now. ‘A fucking hero. And you won’t save him for the sake of some godless kafir cunt?’

  Abraham closed his eyes, and shook his head once more.

  The fighter looked over his shoulder, shook his head in turn, and when he looked back brought his fist up hard into Abraham’s stomach, so hard that it lifted him an inch off the ground and sent him staggering backwards into the bed. He held out a hand to steady himself and in his side felt another blow that drove him down towards the floor. Saad was shouting; Abraham sensed the other fighter coming into it now, heard bone crack as a boot crunched into his chest, and then heard nothing more, because the final kick was to his ear and he only had time to see it connect.

  25

  Borz is out. Hafa tells me when I get back from work, and though I do my best not to show it she knows I’m relieved. It’s weak but I thank Allah the most glorified, because I could not face seeing that man right now. I don’t have the strength.

  I was expecting to be on cooking duty again but Hafa wants to do it on her own, so instead of hiding in my room away from all the things I don’t want to confront I go to check on Zarifa. I don’t know why she feels like my responsibility. Because I can’t protect Niran, maybe. Because each of them has been hurt, or will be hurt. The thought comes to me that maybe we’re all the same in some way but we’re not, I know I’m much luckier, I am on the path to the one true God and it’s my duty to take them with me.

  I think I’m still on the path. That man, he won’t leave my thoughts. His black mouth and his blue eyes on Niran like a trick from the devil himself – corrupting the khilafa, blackening its mission, debasing us all. I tell myself that today I did a little to defend it. Not enough, nothing like enough, but then others wiser and more powerful than I will deal with his kind when the time comes. My true test lies elsewhere.

  I’ve still heard nothing from Umm Karam, but the longer she’s silent the clearer the route I must take. My father’s curse will not lift on its own, and only one of us can survive here. I send her another text:

  I must see you and my father. He is not what he says he is.

  Zarifa is in her room, sitting on the bed, and when I knock and go in she inches back against the wall and clutches her knees. I tell her it’s okay and ask if I can come in, she nods and I sit next to her.

  For a moment we’re just silent – I look at her and every so often she looks up at me. I notice a bruise on her wrist that seems fresh and goes almost the whole way round, like a purple and yellow bracelet, and when I bring my hand up to it an understanding passes between us. Her other arm is in the sleeve of her abaya but now she brings it out and the bruises there are almost the same. Heaven knows what else is under that black fabric.

  I wish Badra could be here now to explain why it’s necessary for Borz to do these things.

  I have so little to give her. There’s almost nothing I can do. I go back to the kitchen and when Hafa asks me what I’m doing I tell her I’m hungry after a long day and need a snack before dinner. From the fridge I take cheese and tomatoes, and pitta from the bread bin,
and I put a plate together while she stares at me like I’m committing some unforgivable crime.

  Back in her room, Zarifa can’t quite believe I’m being straightforward but in the end she sees it in my eyes and when she starts to eat I can tell she’s trying not to wolf it down. She may be a pagan but she seems to have the same ideas about decency as I do. And then I have a thought. If I’m going to help her, we’re going to need to communicate better.

  I point to the bread. ‘Khubz,’ I say, and she gets what I’m doing straight away, like there is a real connection between us. When she’s finished her mouthful she repeats it, and we move on from there. Cheese. Plate. Hand. We’re a long way off reading the Qur’an but it’s a start. Wall, jadar. Bed, alssarir.

  Dest, she says, and touches my hand. Dest. She nods, and I say the word back to her. Her hand rests on my arm. Mil. These are pagan words and it feels strange to say them. Possibly I shouldn’t say them but I have to. Mil. Zarifa smiles and it’s the first time I’ve seen that. Then, as if she’s ashamed to have forgotten something important, she offers the rest of her bread to me. I shake my head and say it again, khubz. Nan, she says. We understand each other. It crosses my mind that maybe she could join my class.

  The door opens and she stops chewing. Borz is there. In the doorway. I sense him before I see him, it’s like he sucks all the air and light from the room. I feel my heart contract and my lungs clamp shut. Zarifa shrinks up onto her bed but to my surprise I just turn and lock eyes with him and when he tells me to get up I just keep looking. If he wants to abuse me he can do all the work.

  Grabbing my abaya, he hauls me off my bed and drags me across the hall and all that’s in my head is: you have no power over me. You are merely the instrument of my punishment.

  With a great swing of his arm he pulls me from behind and throws me ahead of him. I land hard and slide across the polished floor. My head hits the door of the dining room. Before I can right myself he’s there again, talking at me through my pain.

  ‘Up.’

  I rest my weight on my elbow and do my best to push, but his hands are on me again and he pulls me up with one hand and shoves me into the dining room, where I’ve never been.

  ‘Sit.’

  I fall onto a chair and try to make it look like sitting. I’m still me. I’m not a sack of bones for him to hurl about, not yet. Borz stands over me and I think he’s going to hit me but he doesn’t, eventually he just sits down opposite and stares into my eyes. My wrist feels sprained, I try moving it under the table, I can’t tell, I think I’m still in shock. I look at him and he looks at me. His mad eyes are concentrating, the left one wide open like it’s been propped. His nose is a hideous shape and covered in blackheads. I’ve never had a chance to really look at his face before and even though I hate it I can’t turn away, it’s like staring into the face of evil and it holds me. There’s no beauty there, no trace of God. I have to find Him there.

  ‘I want Yazidi girl, yes?’

  When he speaks his massive teeth are like bits of broken plate. I don’t know what he means. He leaves the question there for me to answer and when I don’t he says it again.

  ‘I want Yazidi girl, yes? This is what I want.’

  He knows I know about his night-time visits. Why does he care? Why the pretence? He has more power than that.

  ‘You tell my fighters what I want. A Yazidi child. You tell them. Where is gun?’

  I shake my head. I don’t know what he means, and then I do. Stupid. So stupid.

  ‘What gun?’

  ‘The fighter guards prisoners. Prisoners of war. You take his gun. A woman take his gun.’

  I won’t lie. And there is no good lie.

  ‘I took the bullets and left it in the building.’

  His eyes should be full of wickedness and horror but they’re green like emeralds and they shine with the same cold light. An instrument of His vengeance, terrible, fearsome, final, an earthquake, a plague, a flood.

  ‘Your school, it is over.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Kafirs cannot be taught. You cannot. You all need justice.’

  He grabs my arm and marches me across the hall towards Zarifa’s room and I have just enough time to think that really I am Yazidi now and to be terrified by what he’ll do to Zarifa before he stops by the door to the basement, draws back the two bolts, opens it, and throws me inside. The stairs lead straight down and I crash to the bottom, half turning and landing on my shoulder, hard enough that my head rebounds off the concrete floor. Above me the door shuts and I hear Borz shooting the bolts back into place.

  I thought I had reached the bottom. I was wrong. I should know by now that’s not for me to judge.

  26

  When they slapped him awake, the first thought to come through the confusion was that he hadn’t expected to be alive; his second that he wouldn’t be for long. One hand slapped him and another gripped his arm so he wouldn’t fall to the floor. By the third slap he was back, trying to work out where he was and who was doing this to him and quickly understanding that neither mattered very much.

  Thin grey light came from somewhere; a window set high in the wall and hung with a black flag. Abraham tasted blood in his mouth and with his tongue felt at a cracked tooth, upper right, a canine. His left eye was swollen shut.

  ‘What is this?’

  English. He thought he recognized the voice but in the half dark with his one less than good eye he couldn’t make out the face, let alone the thing that was being thrust at him. Pulling back, trying to focus, he saw it. His phone. Open at his Twitter account.

  ‘The fuck is this?’

  It was impossible to swallow, and he had to swallow before he could talk. His mouth had dried to sand.

  ‘And this?’

  Vural had sent a final text.

  Remember our contract. You report to me.

  The hand slapped him again and with nothing to hold him he fell to the floor, cracking his shoulder and spreading his chest with pain.

  ‘Know what we do with fucking spies?’

  This was the fighter from the hospital. He couldn’t see his face but he knew. And someone else was there; past the man standing over him he saw sandy-coloured boots and desert camouflage.

  ‘Kafir fucking cunt.’

  With his boot the fighter rolled him from his side onto his back, squatted down and spat in his face. Abraham flinched and writhed but the spittle just stayed where it was, cooling on his skin and in his beard.

  The other man came forward, touched the fighter on the shoulder and took his place by Abraham. He was older, harder, and he spoke in Arabic.

  ‘You have help, yes?’

  Instinctively, Abraham shook his head, though he had no idea what this meant.

  ‘Father. Daughter. You think we are stupid?’

  Oh Jesus, no. Not this. He tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come.

  ‘She is here, you are here. She tells you things, you tell the fucking Turks.’

  He held up Abraham’s phone.

  ‘Not so clever.’

  ‘I didn’t . . . I came to . . .’

  The Arab shook his head.

  ‘No explanation. What do you think we are going to do now?’

  He let the question hang in the air a moment. There was no satisfaction in his face, no pleasure, just professional certainty.

  As soon as he began to speak again Abraham knew what he was going to say.

  ‘Family execution.’ He nodded. ‘A first.’

  No, Abraham tried to shout, as they dragged him from the room, but no sound came.

  Now they drove him through Raqqa for the last time. Bound, lying across the back seat, Abraham watched the sky and found more beauty in it than he ever had. The day was ending; the clear blue deepening and turning to black.

  Lord, forgive me. My attempts to do good seem only to expose my vanities and fears. By trying to keep her safe, I drove her here; by trying to save her, I have condemned her to
death. Is it part of Your plan, that when it’s too late to redeem our failings we finally understand them? That as we finally fall, we see the line above us? The line we should have taken and now cannot reach.

  The fighters talked but he didn’t hear them; pain pulsed through him but he barely felt it.

  He would see Sofia. That he gave thanks for. If they had to die at least they would die together, and she would see what her idols were made of. At the end, she would at least be reconciled with the truth.

  If she didn’t blame him. With fresh reproach that made his chest tighten he imagined the hundred arguments she might make – would make – possessed by that insane logic. That they were right to kill her, because her father was a spy. He had tainted her and threatened the foundations of the khilafa. There was no question they both must die.

  That was it, of course. From the start, death was what she had come here to find. Nothing but death would satisfy her.

  Abraham closed his eyes and stopped talking to his God.

  PART FOUR

  1

  ‘Who’s that?’

  My words seem to hang in the darkness and at first the only answer to them is a groan and the sound of a body in pain rearranging itself in the dust.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Sofia?’

  ‘My God.’

  Even though it’s dark I close my eyes and ask my Lord for strength. I’ve been preparing myself for the end and I thought I had it all under control but now this, this has knocked me off my feet and I don’t know where I am. But I’m stronger now than I was and I recover quicker. I don’t let the shock of it make me forget.

  Even so, his voice is soft and familiar.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Why are you here? What are you doing here?’

  ‘They brought me.’

  My God, please give me the strength for this. He still riles me. In this darkest hour, moments from death – unless some miracle is still in store for me, a miracle I don’t deserve – he still gets right inside me and twists everything up.