by Chuck Dixon
It arrived in the evening at a checkpoint manned by Iranians from the Golden Battalion. After a cursory inspection, the black-clad soldiers waved the Mercedes through and toward the Kurdish safe zone. The ambulance stopped only long enough to allow a woman and two young boys to step out onto the verge of the road. The woman and the boys made their way north along a cracked asphalt road that wound between hills growing purple in the dying light. By full night they made it to the lights of an aid station at the edge of a refugee processing center.
The aid workers were Danes from an NGO funded through donations gathered from Lutherans all across Europe. They listened to the woman’s story. She and her sons were captives of Daesh until that morning. Her husband paid for their release and they were told to meet him at a Kurdish camp near Ba’ashiqah. A pair of volunteers, a married couple from Esbjerg, offered to drive the woman and her children to her husband the following morning.
The woman slept that night on a cot she shared with her sons. Or, truth be told, she tried to sleep. Anxiety over the reunion with her husband kept her awake until the hours just before dawn. For months, she thought of nothing else but seeing Farhad’s face again. Now the reality of what that moment might be like troubled her deeply. Every wife likes to believe they know the man they have married. In the isolation of the dark, she questioned her knowledge of the man, allowed doubt to steal away her faith in the man. Her treatment at the hands of Daesh did not break her because she held on to the hope that her life would return one day to what it was. The dismal realization that perhaps nothing could ever be as it seemed created in her heart a loneliness that was almost too painful to bear.
She would bear it for her sons. They slept close by her in the narrow bunk, their breathing easy — the first real sleep they'd had in the weeks since their capture. Her sons were safe now. They had a future once more. If she lost the love of her husband then she would have to take solace in the salvation of her boys.
And that would be enough for her. She pulled them closer to her, biting back hot tears and stifling sobs.
By the next afternoon, Dersima Aman and her boys were reunited with her husband at Ba’ashiqah. It was as though no moment had passed since the last time they saw one another. Farhad stumbled to his knees to embrace them all, planting kisses on his wife and sons, his eyes streaming with tears. He gathered them to him and whispered a prayer of thanks to God for their return.
Farhad brought Dersima and his sons to meet the man, an American, who made their delivery from bondage. This man paid their ransom somehow. He asked for little in return for his gift.
“What does he want from us?” Dersima said, her eyes cast down upon meeting the tall, lean man with a fresh scar on his forehead. He looked like a hard man but with a smile that came easily. His eyes were kind.
“I want nothing but for you to tell me your story. I ask you to be brave and spare no detail in the telling,” the American said in halting Kurmanji.
29
“You’re weird,” Lisa said.
“Why?” Merry looked up from her paperback, the spell of Phillip Marlowe’s Los Angeles broken for the moment.
“You run up here after dinner to read? Some old book?” Lisa crossed their shared room. She shoved the top sash of a window down. She rested a butt cheek on the sill before pulling a fresh pack of cigarettes from a hiding place behind the radiator.
“That’s not a good thing to do,” Merry said. She squinched her nose.
“You going to tell?” Lisa undid the cellophane and shook the pack to pull a butt free with her lips.
“I’m no tattle-tale.”
“You know how to keep a secret, huh?”
“I keep myself to myself.” Merry tried to return to her book. The acrid stink of a struck match was followed by the funk of a tobacco cloud.
“You learn that from your daddy? The outlaw?” Lisa was smiling at Merry. Not in a nice way. She sat balanced on the sill, long skinny legs crossed and the Marlboro between her fingers in imitation of some actress from a movie she’d seen.
“My daddy’s not an outlaw. He’s a good man.”
"Said every criminal's kid ever. I heard Carrie and Greg talking about your ‘daddy.'"
“What did they say?”
“They said he’s wanted by the police and nobody can find him. The court turned you over to foster care because once they catch him he’s going to prison forever.”
“They don’t know anything about my daddy,” Merry said. She wanted to say, “They’ll never catch him.” But that sounded like bragging. And it also sounded like her daddy was never coming back. Only he promised he would, promised he’d always come back. And her daddy never lied to her.
“Well, get used to a shitty life. It only gets worse from here.” Lisa blew a stream of smoke through the window screen.
“Why are you so mean?” Merry said.
"Think I'm mean? You don't know shit. You don't know fuck about anything." Lisa's smile quivered at the edges. Her eyes darkened, the sadness in them welling to the surface.
“I was reading,” Merry said.
“Fine.” Lisa swiped the cigarette across the screen, sending a spray of embers out into the night. She stomped from the room and down the hall. Merry heard the bathroom door squeal shut with a bang.
Merry turned back to the book and the sun-drenched streets of North Hollywood.
Merry woke to hushed voices. Someone sat on the edge of her bed, weighing the mattress down. A hand poked her side.
“Hey. Wake up.” The voice was a hiss. She opened her eyes. The room was dark.
She sat up suddenly, drawing away from the poking hand.
It was Blaine. The Knoxs’ son. He sat on the edge of her bed. He was shirtless. Across the room Lisa sat up in her bed.
“Leave her alone,” Lisa said.
“Shut up,” Blaine said, turning to her. He stood and waved Merry from the bed.
"Is something wrong?" Merry looked from Blaine to Lisa. His face was illuminated by the moonlight coming through the window, eyes lifeless as marbles. Lisa's face was hidden in shadow.
“Yeah. We want to be alone and you’re here. That’s what’s wrong. Get out.”
“Where do I go?”
“I give a fuck? Go into the bathroom.”
Merry looked to Lisa. She saw Lisa’s head nod in the dark.
She ran barefoot from the room down the hall to the bathroom and locked herself in. She sat on the edge of the tub in the dark, not sure what to do. Not even sure what to think. Maybe Lisa and Blaine were like girlfriend and boyfriend. Only they didn’t act that way. Lisa acted as if she didn’t like Blaine. Maybe she was even afraid of him. Now Merry was afraid of him too. A shiver came over her and she crossed her arms to hold in her body heat. Only she wasn’t cold.
Once she asked her father why her mother was gone, why her mother had to die.
“No one can answer that. At least no one in this world,” Levon told her.
“Will we ever know the reason?” she said.
“I like to think that Jesus will explain it all someday. Maybe that’s heaven’s greatest gift. Knowledge. We’ll all know why this or that happened, why it had to happen like it did. Every question we ever had answered.”
“How can Jesus answer all those questions?”
“Because he knows all the answers.”
“No. No. I mean there’s billions of people with jillions of questions. How can he answer them all?”
“Because he has all the time there ever was. And because he loves us.”
“What do we do until then?”
“We try and do what’s right. The world is filled with trials and God watches how we deal with them.”
“Find the answers for ourselves?” Merry said.
“That’s right, honey. Best we can,” Levon said.
Merry sat on the edge of the tub and prayed. She prayed for the trials to end. She prayed for God to see that she’d had enough of trials and only wanted peace for he
rself and her father. And Merry prayed for the soul of her mother, Arlene Cade, and hoped that she was with Jesus now. That her mother was through with suffering and had all the knowledge that her father promised was waiting for them all in Heaven. And that the knowledge brought her mother serenity.
A soft rap at the door woke her. She was curled up on the bathmat though she could not remember lying down there. Merry crept to the door and opened it an inch at a time until she could see the empty hallway. A door closed with a muffled click somewhere down the hall. She padded back to her room. It was fuzzy with gray light coming through the window.
Lisa lay covered up, her face to the wall and back to Merry. A sour smell like old sweat hung in the air. Merry slid into her own bed, the sheets cool. She lay trying to fall back to sleep, listening to the peep and twitter of birds in the trees outside. The gray light turned pink. Shadows stretched across the ceiling.
There was another sound from inside the room.
Lisa was crying, her face crushed into a pillow to hide her sobs. Wet sniffles and a rhythmic mewling in her chest. Merry turned to say something and stopped herself. She recalled their conversation about secrets. Lisa had her own secret to hide and it was plain that she didn’t care to share it.
Merry finally drifted off. She woke up to a clatter of breakfast dishes from downstairs.
Lisa’s bed was empty.
30
Dersima Aman’s well of tears was dry.
She spoke with mounting anger. Her hands shook. Her husband reached out to hold them still. She pulled her hands from his and pushed at him.
“Please, I will tell this man my story, Farhad. But it is nothing for you to hear. Be with our children.”
“I wish to be here with you. To be strong for you,” he said. She shook her head, chin high. Her lips were pressed shut. Farhad knew that his wife had said her final word on the subject. He left the medical tent without further protest.
“Thank you for speaking with me,” Levon said.
“I only do so because I believe you when you say you are here to rescue someone,” she said. Her dark eyes bored into his, searching for the truth there. She saw only immutable resolve and was satisfied. This man was foreign, from a world she would never know. Still, she recognized something in him that was familiar to her. There was a strength there, an honesty.
“You were taken with others from Baiji?” Levon said. He uncapped a fresh bottle of water and handed it to her. She nodded her thanks, taking the cool bottle but did not drink.
“Only women and children. And only those who worked for the oil company. And only those who were not Sunni.”
“And the Sunnis?”
“They pointed us out. The filthy swine brought them to our door. These men were our neighbors. They worked with my husband. They were to our homes for meals and we to theirs. But when Daesh came they betrayed us.”
“What happened to the men in Baiji? The ones who weren’t Sunni?”
“They shot them. In their kitchens. In their yards. There were dead in the gutters. I saw them. I covered my sons’ eyes to protect them, you see? I didn’t know they would see much worse very soon. They took us to trucks. They tried to pull my boys from me but I fought them, cursed them.”
“And Pejma Hassan and her daughters?”
“I saw her. She held her girls to her as I held my boys. They pulled her girls away. She fought as well. One of the Daesh struck her over the head with his rifle. She fell. He kept hitting her again and again until her head was crushed. They put the girls in another truck.”
“Did you see the girls again?”
“Many times. We were all taken to Mosul. To a stadium there. There were other women with their children. Hundreds. Maybe a thousand. They took pictures of us all. I saw Rona and Kani there until I was taken away by some of the men.”
“You don’t need to tell me anything about that.”
“You are a kind man.” Her eyes remained fixed on his face.
“When is the next time you saw the Hassan girls?”
“A few days later. I cannot be sure how long. They brought me to a hotel. I remember staying there once when my husband had business in Mosul. I was together with my boys again. That kept me alive. My boys are everything to me. I would endure Hell for them. Do you understand me? Are you a father?”
“I am. Yes.”
“Then you know you would do anything to make your children safe.”
“I do and I have. What about the girls?”
“They shared a room with three men. Arab trash. I would see them often, the girls. I was made to clean rooms, to collect their trash, wash their clothing. They did not trust us to make their food or I would have poisoned every one of them. I know how.”
“And the girls are still there as far as you know?”
“I believe they were there when I was taken to be returned to my husband. I saw them only four days ago.”
Levon asked specific questions about the hotel, its location, layout and every detail about the room the girls were being held in. Dersima Aman shared every detail she could recall about the number of men living in the hotel, the number of captives, entrances, exits, stairwells and elevators. In her role as a housekeeping slave to an ISIS unit she was allowed a degree of freedom within the hotel. The emir of the Daesh gang she was held by understood that she would never try to escape as long as her boys were prisoners. More comprehensive layouts and schematics for the Plaza Azur would be available online. But Dersima’s account provided vital details that only an eyewitness could provide as to the current conditions on the ground.
“Worse than what they did to me is what they did to my boys,” she said, at the conclusion of Levon’s questions.
Levon only nodded.
“There was a pool, a swimming pool, at the back of the hotel. It was only half-filled with water. Bad water, brown like shit. Their emir, this animal named Abd al Bari Sarraf, he would kill prisoners by the pool and push them in. Iraqi soldiers. Students. Storekeepers. They would kneel in a line while others pointed cameras at them. He would slit their throats and kick their bodies into that sewer.”
Her hands squeezed the water bottle; the plastic crackled in her grip. She lowered her eyes to the floor.
“That animal, that pig, would make my sons wash the blood from his blade. And he would reward them with candy and speak to them of God’s will and God’s justice. That is the worst. That he made them a part of his corruption, that he tried to take my husband’s sons and make them his own.”
She brought her eyes back up to Levon’s. She was looking past Levon, through him, seeing an image in her mind that was far from where they sat together.
“Will you promise me something?” she said.
“If it’s my power,” Levon said.
“You are going to bring back the Hassan girls. If you see this Abd al Bari Sarraf will you kill him for me?”
Levon asked for a detailed description of the man.
“If it’s God’s will I will bring him God’s justice.”
“You are a kind man. But maybe not a good man. Do you understand me? I mean no offense,” she said.
“None taken,” Levon said.
She handed him back the water bottle, crushed out of shape and warm from her hands.
“I will be with my boys now.” She stood and gave him a final nod.
And Levon was alone.
Hector sat with Bazît Hassan at a table where the Yazidi and some men from his unit were stripping and cleaning weapons. Russian- and Czech-made AKs. American-made M4s and a SAW.
“Hell of a world,” Hector said. He nodded at a girl no older than ten seated with the men. She was loading rounds into magazines.
“It is worse for children. I am afraid they will grow up hard, unforgiving,” Bazît said. He slid a long spring into the oiled action of an AK.
“Kids are tough.”
“Excuse me, but this is bullshit. You do not know children until you have had your own. The s
oul of a child is fragile. Americans always look for easy answers.”
“What about Arabs?”
“That depends on the Arab.” Bazît snapped the action of the rifle back into place with a metallic snap.
“Yeah?”
“There is the Arab who only wants to do business. He works hard and honors his god with his labor. Then there is the lazy Arab who does little to better his life and blames the world for his troubles. To the first Arab the Koran is a guide to a better life. To the second it is a haven for his failures that excuses his every fault and provides comfort for his hatred. And believe me, there are many more of the latter than the former.”
“And what kind are you?”
“I am neither. I am a Yazidi. Kind to my fellow man, attractive to women and rich in all things. That is why we are hated. Because we are happy. Even in battle.” Bazît translated for the others who smiled and nodded.
“Even though you’ve been denied your homeland?” Hector said.
“We will have it one day. In our hearts Kurdistan is already real. And the Kurds have always tolerated us. We have lived at peace with them for a thousand years.”
“But not the Arabs.”
“They call us Ibadat al-Shayton. They say we worship the lord of Hell.”
“The peacock angel.”
“Yes. Melek Taus.” The men around the table bowed their heads at the name.
“The Iraqis will never let you have your own land,” Hector said. “Or the Turks or the Persians or the Syrians.”
“Iraq,” Bazît said and spat. “What is it but the land between Persia and the western sea? It has been a place of violence since the chariot was invented, always ruled by others. The Persian, the Hashemite, the English. Then the Americans. It is a place that only recognizes strength. The leaders in Baghdad are weak fools without respect.”
“What about Saddam?”
“He left us alone.”
“But he was cruel.”