by Henry Porter
At the end Anastasia turned to him and said, ‘We do have a lot to talk about, don’t we? I wonder when we will ever manage to do that.’
‘When I have my family with me in Germany,’ he replied.
‘I’m sure you’ll get there soon, but why Germany? Why not America? You speak such good English. You told me you wanted to become an engineer when we were in the camp together. Wouldn’t it be easier to learn engineering in a language you understand?’
‘I am learning to speak German. And my father does not like America because he says Americans hate Muslims and . . .’ For some reason, he was unable to go on. He tried again to complete the sentence, but stalled again and stood in the centre of the room feeling foolish and also rather hot and breathless.
Anastasia was sitting on the edge of the chair that Naji had occupied the night before, the boy standing a little way from her. She leaned forward and took both his hands then rose and pulled him gently towards her and hugged him. With Ifkar looking on, Naji was rather embarrassed, but part of him momentarily relished the hug and he didn’t resist.
She drew back to look in his eyes, as she had done in the market, and Naji felt the same temptation to crumple, but something in him wasn’t ready to give in, and now all he could think of was escaping her embrace. She held on to him for a few seconds longer, but then he twisted downwards and slipped free. He rushed to the door, and wrenched it open, letting it bang closed behind him as he ran out. On the narrow wooden veranda he was stopped dead in his tracks by the sight of four men silhouetted against the lights of a vehicle that had freewheeled silently into the yard. His first crazy thought was that the figures looked like aliens haloed in the fog, but then one of them laughed and he knew Al-munajil had found him.
*
They first drove up the track Samson had used when he’d descended the mountain two days before, but after finding nothing they reversed all the way down, because there was no place to turn the car. They took a trail that wasn’t displayed on either Hisami’s phone map or the vehicle’s satnav. There were some promising tyre marks in the mud, but a little way down the track Samson lost control of the heavy SUV and it slid into the undergrowth. Hisami immediately got out and built a bank of stones and logs to give the wheels purchase and after nearly an hour they got the vehicle back onto the track.
‘You don’t mind getting your hands dirty then?’ shouted Samson as they roared onwards.
‘I’ve dug out more vehicles than you ever will.’
‘How come?’
‘I did two years of military service before I went to college in the States.’
‘Who with?’
Hisami said nothing. He carefully took off his glasses, blew on the lenses and polished them on the end of his cashmere scarf. He replaced them and looked at Samson. ‘I served in the Peshmerga – the Kurdish forces in Iraq, Paul. But that’s not public knowledge and I’d be grateful if you kept it to yourself.’
Samson glanced at the slight, dapper figure beside him with a certain amount of surprise. ‘How come no one found out?’ he asked.
‘My sister and I changed our names when we came to America. New life, new name and I suppose a new past, though we did nothing reprehensible – nothing to be ashamed of. My sister served in the army also.’
‘And that’s why she returned?’
‘She was trained in treating battlefield trauma – gunshot wounds and injuries caused by explosions. It was how she came to medicine as a young woman, and yes, that’s why she went back.’ He stopped. Then, in what Samson knew was a rare unguarded moment for him, Hisami said, ‘Life’s adventure is nothing without her.’
It wasn’t self-pity, just a simple statement of loss. Samson had always known how dreadfully Hisami missed his sister, but knowing now what they had been through together, he understood what it meant to him even more.
A little way on, he braked sharply. ‘Can you reach that?’
Hisami wound down his window and tugged at a rag tied to a tree.
‘Looks like someone left a marker,’ said Samson. He moved on but stopped again after they had rounded a bend, because a vehicle – almost certainly a tractor – had flattened the vegetation on the right-hand side of the track. There were marks made by the same vehicle turning. Samson took only a few minutes to find the camp and note the same signs of occupation he had seen on the hillside a few days before – a fire similarly constructed, though this one had been built against a huge flat stone, and dog and human excrement. In the fire, the remains of a huge tree stump lay, still just smouldering. Beside it were the cans they’d used for cooking and some bloody rags.
‘They were here not long ago – we’re on the right track.’ He looked up into the trees. ‘The light’s fading – we’d better go.’
*
In the big, draughty barn, fifty metres down from the farmhouse, Anastasia and Ifkar were tied to posts that supported a beam that ran laterally across the ceiling. Moving like an automaton, Naji himself had tightened the ropes that held Ifkar and Anastasia; when Ifkar had cried out as Ibrahim pulled his damaged arm around the post for Naji to bind his hands together, he’d showed no concern. Even the looks of astonishment and horror on Anastasia and Ifkar’s faces did not register with him. He just did what he was told by Al-munajil’s crew. Whatever they needed him to do was fine. That was the way he survived.
The moment he saw Al-munajil appear from the mist in the yard he lost all will to escape, or to defend the people who had helped and befriended him. He did nothing when Irina was pistol-whipped by Usaim and fell unconscious to the floor of the farmhouse, or when Darko received the same treatment, or the couple were tied to their bed with their heads bleeding. He did nothing when Moon was stamped on and kicked and sent limping to a corner of the room where she collapsed; nothing when Ifkar and Anastasia were dragged from the house and down the steps towards the barn, there to be roughed up and, in Anastasia’s case, groped and humiliated on a cold stone floor that was covered with dried animal dung. His mind went dead, as it always did when Al-munajil and his men were doing unspeakable things. He’d seen the same cruelty from the back of Al-munajil’s pickup on countless occasions. They intended for him to witness the floggings and executions, and they might have succeeded in hardening him to their violence had it not been for his parents’ quiet goodness and the appalling prospect of Al-munajil taking his beloved sister as his wife. He’d kept something of himself to resist the monster, but you didn’t do that by crossing him or disobeying him. And so he bound the arms that twenty minutes before had held him and comforted him, ignoring the pain he was inflicting and the terror in Anastasia’s eyes.
When it was done, he stepped back, his eyes to the floor, and waited for Al-munajil’s next order. But in his rasping, cracked voice, Al-munajil was fussing about the barn being unclean. There was old straw and hay strewn everywhere, and dried shit on the ground and broken equipment and piles of old chains, anyone could see that, but Al-munajil insisted that pigs had likely been slaughtered in the barn and told them he knew pigs’ blood when he smelled it, however old. Someone needed to do something fast – that was what he was saying.
Usaim was in the farmhouse, guarding Darko and Irina and keeping watch on the tracks that led to the house from the west. Ibrahim was minding the barn door. Rafi, the fourth member of the gang, who seemed familiar to Naji, though he could not place him, was sent off to get something from the truck for Al-munajil to sit on. At the same time, he was told to hide the truck and check again that there were no mobile phones anywhere in the house.
During this time, Naji never lifted his gaze from the floor of the barn, but he could feel Al-munajil’s eyes boring into the top of his head. He knew he would be killed in the most painful way Al-munajil’s sick mind could concoct, and that made him shake and want to throw up, but he didn’t understand why he wasn’t tied up and being questioned about the data he had stolen.<
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*
Samson answered his personal phone with one hand, but the call dropped. He slowed the car and glanced at the screen. Out on the open hillside the reception was better than it had been in the forest, but it still wasn’t good.
‘Anastasia?’ said Hisami.
‘No. Looks like it’s Naji’s sister.’
He slowed the vehicle to walking pace, and when he saw bars appear on the screen he stopped and dialled the number. A young woman answered. ‘Is that Munira?’ asked Samson.
‘Who is this?’ came the voice.
‘Can I speak with Munira? I’m a friend.’
‘Yes, she’s right here.’
Munira came on the line. ‘I have a message for you,’ she said.
‘Who’s that with you?’ asked Samson.
‘My friend.’
‘Would you mind moving somewhere you can talk privately?’
When the rustling of her walk ceased, she said, ‘Naji phoned me an hour and a half ago to describe where he was and he left a message.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He says he is in a farm with your friend, but it is difficult to find. It is by some trees, south-east of the town, in the mountains. He says it is six kilometres in distance but the road is hard – not really a road at all.’
Then she used an Arabic word that he didn’t understand. ‘Munkhafid. What’s that mean?’ he asked.
Hisami replied before she could. ‘A hollow, or a depression in the land.’
‘Okay, I’ve got it,’ he said to Munira. ‘Anything else?’
‘He says there are orange markers on sticks. If you find those sticks you will find the farm. That’s all he said.’
‘Do you have his number?’
‘He left a number but I think it’s wrong – it’s ringing out.’
‘Okay, thanks. I’ll call when we’ve found him.’
He hung up and explained that Anastasia was with Naji and they had to find some orange sticks. ‘This doesn’t seem right,’ he said, looking out onto the blank, grey hillside.
Hisami said he might have seen a stick some distance back – lower down. Then he said, ‘You like Anastasia?’
‘Yes, very much,’ said Samson, turning the car.
‘So do I,’ said Hisami. ‘She reminds me of my sister. She has the same moral imperative in her life.’ He left it a beat before saying, ‘Will you see her after this?’
‘I’m not sure. She’s very independent, you know.’
‘I had noticed,’ said Hisami. ‘But will you try?’
Samson cottoned on. ‘Why? Are you interested?’
Hisami said nothing.
*
‘That man,’ Al-munajil said suddenly to Naji, making Anastasia jump, ‘did you recognise him?’
Naji shook his head. ‘Which one, sir?’
He gestured after the man who’d left the barn – Rafi.
‘No, sir,’ Naji replied.
‘He was on your raft,’ said Ibrahim with a sadistic smile from the door.
Al-munajil took a few paces towards Naji, seized his jaw and forced him to look up. He had always avoided looking straight into Al-munajil’s face, not because of the sheer ugliness of his features – the thin-lipped, scowling mouth, the flared nostrils and crooked teeth, or the pitted skin and blotches of raised brown pigment around his eye sockets – but because Al-munajil’s stare was simply the most unforgiving and terrifying he had ever seen. For scores of people it had been the last thing they saw on this earth.
‘Brother Rafi is a hero,’ said Al-munajil, ‘for it was he who risked his own life in the sea to sink your raft with his knife. But you didn’t drown as we intended, Naji. You lived, while all those good Muslims died.’
Naji couldn’t help himself. ‘He sank the boat?’
‘At the point of maximum danger in the crossing,’ said Al-munajil, ‘he made sure your boat was doomed and he committed his life to the holy cause, but Allah the Mighty and Majestic decided to spare his life and he was saved at the point of death.’ Al-munajil snorted, then let him go and went over to Anastasia. He snatched her face with a force that made her cry out. ‘Then this meddling whore put you in a compound where we couldn’t get to you, and you escaped and we were forced to follow you with the Western spies chasing us.’ He looked back at Naji. ‘We know what this bitch did – she told the authorities what you took from us. We have brothers in the camp that kept us informed about her actions. They had access to her office and her computer, and now she will pay for what she did.’ Al-munajil’s hand slipped from her jaw to her throat and, as he pushed upwards to choke her, his other hand felt her breast and kneaded it roughly. Then he rammed his fist between her legs. She let out a gasp of pain and kicked out and managed to connect with Al-munajil’s knee. ‘How dare you!’ she screamed. ‘Untie me now! Naji, untie me!’
Al-munajil rubbed his leg and contemplated Anastasia’s defiant glare. Naji thought he was going to kill her there and then. ‘What is the whore doctor saying?’ he demanded.
‘She says please not to hurt her,’ said Naji, ‘because it is I – Naji – who stole your data.’
He swivelled to face the boy. ‘And that wasn’t all you took, was it? You stole from the caliphate to pay for the escape of your family. Where else would you get that kind of money?’ He grabbed him with both hands and shook him violently. Then, drawing a long, thin knife from his jacket, he spun Naji round and placed the blade across his throat. ‘I should cut your blasphemous little head off now. That’s what we did to the last man who was accused of skimming money from our group.’ He forced Naji to a kneeling position and pulled his head back by the hair. Naji felt the blade on his skin again.
Anastasia screamed, but then Al-munajil hefted his boot against Naji’s back and sent him sprawling. ‘An execution like that is too good for the deceiving son of Satan. You will know what it is to administer pain to your friends before you yourself die by fire.’ This last sentence came out in a broken, throaty whisper for, as Naji knew well, when Al-munajil’s mind seethed with murderous hatred, his vocal cords went into spasm.
The barn door opened and Rafi returned with a striped blanket over his arm. He whispered to Al-munajil before wiping a wooden feed box down with his sleeve and laying the rug across it. Al-munajil gathered his coat and sat down with the manner of a noble Bedouin chieftain surveying his tribe. His gaze settled on Naji. ‘They found nothing – not one mobile phone in the house. How is that, Naji? Where have you hidden the phone? And where is the whore’s phone? A Western whore like her always carries a phone.’
‘She lost hers and mine was stolen. A man took it when I was asleep.’ Naji shook his head hopelessly. ‘If I had it now, I would give it to you to stop all this.’
‘That is a lie,’ said Al-munajil. ‘The two men that we sent to find you, they took a phone from you, but that was a dummy phone – the one you meant to be taken.’
‘No, no,’ cried Naji. ‘That was the phone I stole because mine had already gone. I promise this is true.’
Sagging on the ropes that bound him and with his head lolling grotesquely, Ifkar murmured, ‘It is true. Believe him.’
But Al-munajil did not hear. He spread his lips in the closest thing he had to a smile. ‘You phoned your sister and sent messages to her – we know this, Naji. Indeed, we heard from sweet Munira very recently. You were kind enough to give her directions for the Western spy and that is how we found you so quickly.’
Naji’s mind reeled. ‘She . . . she hates and fears you – she would never help you.’
‘Munira knows I have chosen her for my wife and she will soon learn that she has only one duty, and that is to me.’ Again the lips splayed in their revolting manner.
‘She would rather die,’ he said. Suddenly he remembered Munira’s friend, the girl who was always with her wh
en they spoke. She must be Al-munajil’s spy.
‘We have wasted enough time,’ said Al-munajil. ‘Where’s your phone?’
‘I don’t have it. I told you, sir, it was stolen. It’s gone.’ He was terrified, but there was also a part of Naji that had contempt for Al-munajil’s technical incompetence. He was so dumb that he believed Naji would actually hide everything on a phone. Yes, he needed his own phone to get his bearings in his own maze, so to speak, but he remembered the reasoning behind most of his codes, so he could probably recreate them and, given time and concentration, he would be able to access everything.
‘We shall begin,’ said Al-munajil, taking out a gun from his pocket and holding the knife out to Naji. ‘Take it! Go on – take it!’ Naji took the knife, and Al-munajil levelled the gun at him. ‘I trusted you. I privileged you with my attention. You had things that no boy could dream of and a chance to dedicate your life to the caliphate. You repaid me with treachery and now you will feel the consequences of that betrayal.’ He paused, ran his tongue round his lips, opened his mouth and screamed, ‘Stab her! Put the knife into the whore now! Do it.’
The force of the command, which cracked on the last few syllables, shook Naji. ‘I cannot,’ he said, aware that the hand holding the knife was shaking. ‘She’s done nothing. She helps Muslims. She cares for people.’ The knife slipped from his grasp and clattered to the stone.
Al-munajil nodded to Ibrahim, who had approached Ifkar from behind the post. Naji glanced up as Ibrahim took hold of Ifkar’s hand and plunged his own knife into his forearm – straight through, so that the blade appeared on the underside of the arm and went into the post. Ifkar’s face froze in a rictus of agony before he let out a dreadful cry.
‘Pick up my knife, little traitor,’ said Al-munajil – very quiet, very calm. ‘For now you must use it on the infidel Yazidi, or the whore doctor will get it in the belly, or wherever Ibrahim feels like stabbing her. You must kill the Yazidi to save her.’
