The Beekeeper

by Dunya Mikhail

  “Forget about it. You already spent too much money on us, Reem. I’ll never forget the protection you offered us, from your own father even,” Zuhour replied.

  “I wish I had gone with you,” Reem said.

  A ray of light passed through the eye of her needle . . .

  Five Tricks for Escaping Daesh

  “You need tricks,” Badia told me when I asked her how she’d managed to escape Daesh.

  The first trick was to stop bathing for an entire month, until she smelled so bad that the fighters would stay away from her, refusing to buy her. The second trick was to claim that she was married, and that the little child beside her was her son. It took longer for married women to be sold. The third trick was to pretend she was pregnant in order to avoid being raped, even if only temporarily. The fourth trick was to say that she’d just stepped outside with her girlfriend to get some air — that was the only reason. The fifth trick was to ask permission to call “the American Emir,” to make it clear that she was not trying to run away from him.

  Badia told me her story: We were a big family living in the village of Kocho — my mother and father, and my five brothers and five sisters. In the beginning we heard that Daesh had occupied Mosul; we heard that they were killing people there, raping women; we heard that they were coming toward us, that they were going to do the same thing to us. We didn’t believe it. We traded these stories as if they were straight out of The Thousand and One Nights. We heard that they had severe and sullen faces, that they never smiled; we heard that they didn’t have mustaches, but long beards. We wondered: Is it true? Are they actually coming? How are they going to get here? Is it true that they are coming with black flags and swords, cutting down anyone who stands in their way? No, that was unthinkable. Daesh was a lie. And even if it wasn’t a lie, they would never make it to Kurdistan because the Peshmerga fighters would stop them. We had a hundred soldiers. Surely they would be able to protect us. We shared these rumors until late into the night. At two in the morning my father’s telephone rang. It was his friend from the village of Siba Sheikh Khidr. He said: “You have to leave. Daesh has reached our land. They’re going to kill us all.”

  We didn’t fall asleep until morning. We would take a few steps toward the door, then retreat. We’d make up our minds to leave, but then remain where we were. The sound of gunfire in the neighborhood grew louder. Meanwhile, conversations swirled among the people of our village and the surrounding villages such as Tal Azir and Karzarak. Finally, a caravan of thirty families emerged and headed toward the mountains. We decided to do the same. We joined our relatives and friends, but just as we were about to leave, a group of Peshmerga fighters arrived, saying they would put Daesh in their crosshairs and stop them in their tracks. Everyone was fired up, including my father. We decided to stay and assist the Peshmerga, or fight alongside them. Then we heard the terrible news that those thirty families that had set out before us had been stopped by Daesh, that they had killed all the men and enslaved the women and children. At that point the Peshmerga made up their minds to go assess the situation and then report back to us. They advised us to stay where we were until they returned with an update. They left and never came back. They didn’t send any word. They left us there, adrift. We never learned what happened to them. The only people left in the area were from our village and the village of al-Hatimiyah. Everybody was calling their relatives who had fled, trying to find out whatever they could about what was going on. None of the men picked up their phones. The women who answered their phones said that the men had all been killed. The women had been detained, Daesh had surrounded the area, and it was too late to get away.

  At 4 p.m. on August 3, 2014, Daesh came to our homes. Our first shock was seeing men we knew among them. They didn’t live far from our village. We even used to consider them friends. But now they had joined the ranks of Daesh. They behaved as if they were our enemies. The mukhtar of our village was with us. Abu Hamzah, a Daeshi emir, addressed him: “Raise the white flag and we won’t harm you. Hand over your weapons and we’ll leave you in peace.”

  And so they collected all the weapons that could be found in our village and left us there for three days, before returning to the mukhtar. Abu Hamzah wasn’t with them this time. They told the mukhtar that we would all have to become Muslims. The mukhtar replied: “We already gave all of our weapons to your Emir Abu Hamzah. And he gave us his word that we’d be safe. Tell him to come here and speak with us.” They actually left. Then, Abu Hamzah came just as the mukhtar had requested. The mukhtar told him: “Didn’t you tell us you spoke in the name of Daesh, and that we could stay in our homes in peace if we gave you all of our weapons? Why, then, have these men come and asked us to convert to Islam?” Abu Hamzah replied: “Don’t listen to anyone but me. Stay in your homes. You don’t have to convert to Islam.”

  The mukhtar took Abu Hamzah at his word. He assured us that Daesh were gone, that the whole thing was over. But this calm didn’t last for more than a day. Abu Hamzah came back with a Yazidi man who’d converted to Islam seven years earlier. Abu Hamzah told the mukhtar: “Mr. Kutay here is going to teach you how to be Muslims. What do you say?” The mukhtar said they would need some time to think it over. “You have three days,” Abu Hamzah replied. “I’ll be back on Sunday with Mr. Kutay.”

  The villagers of al-Hatimiyah heard about this conversation, and they fled the village in secret. Abu Hamzah returned and was angry to discover that the village of al-Hatimiyah had been deserted. He told the mukhtar: “I trusted you. Our understanding was that you were all going to remain in your homes. But the people of al-Hatimiyah disappeared. I can’t trust you anymore. I’m going to station some guards here. I’ll be back in four hours.” Meanwhile, tension was growing among the people of Kocho. The mukhtar told the guards: “We can’t trust you. You tricked us. We don’t want to become Muslims.”

  The guards spread a rumor that a decision had come down from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself that it wasn’t obligatory to convert to Islam. Then another group of Daeshis showed up and asked the mukhtar: “Are you going to convert to Islam so that you can remain in your homes? Or would you rather leave for Mount Sinjar?” The mukhtar replied: “We’re going to Sinjar.” And the people repeated after him: “Yes, we’re going to Mount Sinjar.” Then the Daeshi asked: “But why? You’d rather give up your land and your property than become Muslims?”

  “We don’t need anything. We just want to go,” the mukhtar said.

  “If that’s your decision, we’ll escort you up to the mountains.”

  That was 11 a.m. on August 15. About a hundred large trucks and military vehicles were waiting for us. They took us to the school, the only one in Kocho. I was a student there for six years; the school goes from first grade all the way through high school — everyone in Kocho went there. There were two floors. They divided the men from the women and children. Men were on the ground floor, women and children on the second floor.

  The mukhtar was with us — he was the only man on the second floor. He advised us to hand over all of our belongings to them. We put our telephones and gold and cash into large bags they’d brought. The mukhtar told us: “I don’t want you to upset them. Give them whatever you have. We just want to go and be rid of them. That’s all.”

  I was on the same floor as my mother and my sisters and my brother’s wife. My father and my brothers were on the ground floor. We heard gunshots. We asked the mukhtar: “Where are our men?” The mukhtar hurried to relay our question to them. They said: “We took your men to the mountains — we were killing all of the dogs. But now it’s your turn. Go back down to the first floor now.”

  We were terrified. The looks on their faces weren’t reassuring. We became even more afraid when they bound the mukhtar’s hands and put a blindfold over his eyes, taking him God knows where. They didn’t answer our questions. They took us to the school in Sawlakh, and separated the unmarried women from the married
women. I was the only unmarried woman among my sisters, but I had my three-year-old nephew with me. I told them I was married and that he was my son. My brother, the boy’s father, was with the men they had killed; his mother wasn’t with us because she had been away in another village with her father when Daesh came. At midnight, all the children who were older than six were taken away from their mothers and sent to a training camp. In the morning they took all the older women, even the pregnant ones, and killed them all. They dumped them into fishponds in the courtyard of the institute, then heaped soil on top so that not a single one of them could possibly survive. My mother was only fifty-seven years old — she wasn’t that old.

  They brought us inside the school. We didn’t know what to do when we heard the gunshots. I knew what was happening — they didn’t try to hide what they were doing — but I didn’t want to believe it. They admitted that they had killed all those women. Some other women witnessed what had happened, and they told the others. It was the worst day of my life.

  That night, they took us to Talafar. I was with my sisters and their children, as well as my sister-in-law and her six children. At the Azahir school in Talafar we met up with the thirty families who had left the village before us. Like us, there weren’t any men or older women with them. The exact same thing had happened to them. We all slept on the ground. We didn’t have any water. They only brought us a little bit of bread to last the entire day. I had to split a single sammouna with my nephew. Some of the women and children died of thirst. At that point a man showed up with a bucket of water. But before we could drink any of it, he threw in a dirty diaper. I don’t know why he did this, but we drank the water anyway, despite the filth. We nearly died of thirst. I think they put some kind of chemical in the water because all of us got dizzy and nauseous and tired.

  We stayed there for fifteen days, but it felt like fifteen years. After that they told us: “We’re going to take you to another village where you can stay in separate houses, where you can get some rest.” They took us to two villages near Talafar: Kasr al-Mihrab and Qazel Qiw. Most of the inhabitants of those villages had been Muslims, but they’d all fled, leaving their homes behind. Daesh occupied them. They took me along with twenty other women to the Kasr al-Mihrab school, where someone they called “the Caliph” came and announced that we would have to marry the fighters.

  We said: “We’re already married.” The Caliph said: “We killed all of your men. So now you’re for sale on the market.”

  A man came into the room, followed by two more men, then five, then even more. All of them were staring at us, smelling us, selecting whom they wanted. There was no use in resisting. Our numbers decreased until there were only ten of us left. They ordered us to bathe, but I went into the bathroom and came back out again without washing. I knew they were going to come and smell me, and cleanliness was dangerous in that situation. A month passed, and every day I began to smell worse. I didn’t even wash my face despite the fact that my eyes were itching from crying so much. They brought us fresh clothes to make us more enticing to the customers. They said: “Put on these beautiful clothes. The photographer will be here any minute.”

  Badia posed with her family for a group photo. The photographer did what he could to include all of the members of the extended family in the picture. Thirty-two people standing in three rows. She was in the middle with her mother and her father and her younger brother and her older sister. The rest of her brothers and sisters along with their families stood behind them and in front of them. The photographer gestured at them to squeeze in closer together so that he wouldn’t miss any of them. Finally he took the picture. Then he said: “Wait, don’t move, I’ll take another one just to be safe.”

  Badia looked up at the photograph hanging on the wall. She was alone in the picture. Underneath was a telephone number she didn’t recognize. She had been told that it was the number of her owner. Anyone could call him and offer a price to buy or rent her.

  Badia continued: I hadn’t changed my clothes since leaving the village; I didn’t go near the clothes they’d brought for us to wear in the pictures.

  Then, only seven women were left unsold. Someone came and told us: “Nobody wants you, so we’re going to send you to Syria.”

  They moved us to a building in Raqqa. There I was reunited with my sisters, my brother’s wife, and my friends — they said they’d been there for two weeks. After thirteen days they sold us off, ten of us for each man.

  An American came and bought me along with nine other women. He took us to his house in Aleppo. His guards there all called him “the American Emir.” The first thing he ordered us to do was bathe. He pointed toward the bathroom, saying: “Get in line. Each and every one of you has to take a bath. Or else.” Then he brought us new clothes and told us to put them on.

  Were they Islamic clothes? Or regular clothes? I asked Badia.

  Regular clothes. No hijabs. Islamic clothes were for leaving the house.

  Did you wear a hijab when you were in Kocho, before Daesh came?

  No. I wasn’t veiled. I loved wearing pants. I don’t like dresses.

  Were there any pants among the clothes the American Emir brought for you?

  No, only dresses. I had to wear one. He was very serious about it. He wanted to sell us off as quickly as possible. He said: “I’ll keep one of you for myself, and sell the other nine.” Then he approached me, and said: “You.”

  Why did he choose you?

  I don’t know why. Maybe because I was the youngest?

  How old are you, Badia?

  Nineteen.

  Did he speak Arabic?

  He introduced himself to me, and said, in formal Arabic: “I’m an American.”

  How was his Arabic, in general?

  Very poor, and his accent was quite distinctive. Sometimes he would ask one of his guards to translate for him.

  Do you know how much the women were bought or sold for?

  I’ve heard five hundred dollars. But I don’t know whether that was for one girl or for the whole group. He sold off eight of them. One woman, Nada, remained with me because the buyer refused to take her in the end.

  Describe the house for me, Badia.

  There was one bedroom for the Emir. I shared another bedroom with my nephew and Nada. There was a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and another room for the guards. And there was a room they called the library, where he met with his friends; it contained his personal possessions, his computer, his files, his cell phone, and his TV.

  Were there books?

  No.

  Maybe he meant office, because library and office are very similar words in Arabic.

  Maybe.

  Were the guards always in the house?

  The guards accompanied him wherever he went. But one guard always stayed at the house.

  What would he say to you?

  During the first three days he didn’t say a word. He wouldn’t come near us at all. On the fourth night the guard said: “The Emir wishes to invite you to his room.” I told Nada: “Come with me.” But the guard said: “No, come alone.”

  He was in the library — or, the office. He invited me to sit down. He said: “I’m going to marry you. You’ll become a Muslim, and we’ll raise your son together.”

  With tear-filled eyes, I said: “Why are you doing this to us? Why would you deprive this boy of his father? Why are you marrying married women?”

  “Because you aren’t going to become a Muslim unless you marry one. Tell me, when was your last period?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Because we don’t marry pregnant women.”

  “It’s been five months.”

  “Well then, I won’t marry you today. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the doctor to see whether or not you’re pregnant.”

  I went back to our room and Nada looked at me inquisi
tively. I said: “We’ve got to get out of here tomorrow. Otherwise the Emir is going to find out I lied, and then he’ll rape me.” Nada agreed that we would run away the next morning, as soon as the Emir left the house — he went out every day at 10 a.m., and didn’t come back until nine at night.

  When the Emir left in the morning, we had to figure out what to do about the guard. I told him: “We don’t have any bread. We want to buy some.” He said: “I’ll go get it for you,” and he left without locking the door. We made a run for it as soon as he had been gone for a few minutes. But moments later we ran into a group of Daeshis on the street. They said: “Why aren’t you dressed properly? Who are you with?” I told them: “With Emir Abu Abdullah the American.” They took us back to his house.

  We hadn’t forgotten about wearing Islamic dress but we couldn’t find any in the house. When the Emir got back that evening, he called me into his room. He asked: “Why did you try to run away? Was it because I wanted to marry you?”

  “No, we didn’t leave with the intention of running away,” I said, “we just wanted some fresh air. If we had intended to run away we would have worn Islamic clothes in order to avoid drawing attention to ourselves.”

  “I’m going to marry you today,” he said.

  “But I’m pregnant.”

  “I brought this pregnancy test. Use it now so that we’ll know the truth.”

  Naturally I wasn’t surprised when I saw the result. But the Emir was overjoyed, saying: “You’re not pregnant. I can marry you today. You’ll sleep in my bed tonight.”

  “But my son is going to wonder where I am. He’ll cry if I’m not with him.”

  “Let the boy sleep with Nada. She’ll take care of him tonight.”

  That night, there was no trick that could save me. He locked the door behind me and forced me to take off my clothes. He started touching me. I tried to stop him. He hit me. I started crying. I pushed back against him instinctively. Like any good woman, no man had ever touched me before. He bound my hands and feet and then raped me. He was surprised to discover that I was a virgin. “You lied to me,” he said. “You aren’t married. And the boy isn’t your son. I’m going to hand him over to the organization.”