Restoration

by J. F. Krause

  The first time it happened, we lost the child because we didn’t know what was happening. We may never know who the child was, or where he came from. We also lost a good woman who was reaching out to help him. The next were single Yazidi children who listened to us when we told them to stand totally still with their hands in their pockets.” He had the same sad smile as before.

  I felt sick to my stomach. “Do you think you will be able to stop this?”

  “We don’t know. Fortunately, the murderers haven’t learned how to arm and detonate the bombs remotely so they have instructed the children to find some friendly faces and run up to them and surrender by putting their hands in the air. When they stretch their arms out, the explosives were rigged to go off. We know this now so as soon as we see them, we tell the children to put their hands in their pocket and sit down. We can disarm them then. The children are brought very close to one of our communities in blindfolds. Unfortunately, they haven’t been able tell us where they came from, and it is very mountainous here, so finding the terrorists has been impossible. So far. The German communities have also been kind enough to send us a volunteer dog handler with his sniffer dog. Even as we speak, there is a patrol trying to follow the scent of the little girls. Perhaps we will have good news before too long. We don’t know how many children they have under their control. We know from the children that there were a few women being held in their camp. We will keep searching, but I think they will run out of captives long before they run out of explosives. We think they may have felt some pressure to get away with the women while they can, and that is why they sent two little girls to us wearing vests. They may have been disposing of the last of their orphan hostages. It’s a horrible thought, but it just means we have no time to waste. They will only get more sophisticated and there are weapons and explosives everywhere from before.”

  The next morning, we went on a tour of Erbil in the morning. The community is based in a part of the city that was very modern and appears like any other Coalition Community of its size. According to Avery, the main area they are preserving for posterity is the Citadel. It’s quite impressive and very old. It has a sad history full of tragedy and intrigue. At one point, Erbil was a Christian center for the region but after an uprising of some sort, most of the surviving Christians were killed after the Citadel, where they made their last stand, fell. There are actually a few people living there now, but that isn’t where the residents of Erbil make their homes. Most of them live nearby though so it was just a nice walk on a cool morning.

  In the afternoon, we met with the Kuwaiti and Qatari Community leadership teams. They flew up as we toured the Citadel and were waiting for us over lunch. I was expecting lots of flowing Arab robes or something much different from what they were wearing. There were a few traditionally dressed men out of the fifteen men and women waiting for us: three to be precise. Everyone else was dressed in casual western dress. I was to learn the reason was simple. Most of the people who lived in Kuwait and Qatar were not Arab. At least, they weren’t yet. When The Sickness struck, there were literally hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, visitors, and soldiers in both of these countries. Afterward, with no government, the survivors hammered out a new community based on the simple reality that most of the people now living in the much smaller survivor communities were from somewhere else. They were only starting to band together when a group of very diverse survivors came through looking for a ship to take them to North America. That was the group that later went on to resettle in Broome, Australia. After the Broome survivors left, the survivor communities in Qatar and Kuwait came to the realization that they must do something for themselves before they lost all vestiges of civilization. Seeing the Broome refugees come and go ended their ambivalent attitude. They firmly realized that no one was going to help them but themselves.

  It was the American military survivors in Qatar that got the ball rolling both there and in Kuwait. They got the electricity, water, and basic phone service up and running and from then on it was just a matter of getting their organization functioning. In short order, they were in contact with Coalition member communities. Quite a few of the expat survivors in Kuwait and Qatar decided to go home when they learned that some communities were forming in their old homelands. Not all of the foreigners left, though. Some of them, upon learning that they had nothing to go home to, decided to put their trust in their fellow expat survivors and even some of the actual citizens of Kuwait and Qatar. For their part the locals recognized early on that things had changed and that they still needed the talents and ideas of the foreign workers. Councils were chosen and both communities asked to be included in the Coalition. All of this happened at about the same time the Kurdish region was joining the Coalition. By working together, they were achieving a balance of ethnicities and religions that they could all become comfortable with.

  So while Kuwait and Qatar were majority non Arab at the moment, they were continually getting more expats and Arab settlers, many from right next door in the Basra area or from the other Gulf states as well as the former Saudi Arabia which everyone referred to simply as Arabia now. The rest of the Arabian and Gulf communities were associated with either the Caliphate, the Sunni Homeland, or the Shiite Framework. And it was in Arabia that the Sunni Homeland was experiencing the most growth as well as conflict with the Caliphate because a few whole communities had simply withdrawn from the Caliphate and joined the Sunni Homeland. It’s not just individuals who can determine their own fates now.

  Some of the refugees arriving from these areas were devout Muslims of one type or another who still wanted to live in a freer society while others were completely secular. Qatar, especially, was getting a heavily female mix of refugees. That is not to say it was very different in Kuwait. Women, frequently even very religious women, were literally fleeing the Caliphate. They were leaving the other communities as well, but just not as frequently. Both Kuwait and Qatar were receiving a fair sprinkling of Arabic Shiite women refugees. They were happy in their religion, but they wanted more personal freedom, so they voted with their feet.

  That was one of the three things on our agenda that afternoon. Would the Coalition support Qatar and Kuwait in defending the rights of refugee women to remain in their newly chosen home communities. That seemed fairly straightforward except that some of these women were pregnant or had newborns with them when they arrived.

  The other two items concerned help with their education needs and help with their defense situations, similar to the request from Erbil to the north. Since Kuwait and Qatar both already had military installations, what they needed most was help with training their local militias. Most of the surviving foreign military personnel wanted to return to their home countries eventually and they were looking for replacements for themselves.

  At my request, we handled the simple items first. It was a fact that our predecessor governments had maintained military installations in Qatar, Kuwait, and Kurdistan so their request, along with my recommendation to the Coalition Council would be to upgrade all three to military hub status with connections between all three main bases. There were actually more military bases in the three areas than just the hubs. None of the hubs would be large compared with before The Sickness, but they would all be large for current conditions.

  The education request was a slam dunk, at least as far as I was concerned. They wanted us to help them create a strong academic center using the Arabic language centered in Kuwait City. Erbil went along with that since we were also considering supporting the Kurdish Region in reopening the American University there. We have several Arabic speaking academics and teachers in the different Coalition Communities who might be able to help them out, but they will have to be willing. As for Qatar, they were asking for help with their Arabic communications programs. They had extensive equipment and infrastructure already in place having been a major television, radio, and print news center before The Sickness. That seemed to satisfy everyone so we moved on to tackle
the more complicated issue of pregnant refugees.

  While I was in Erbil, I would also be meeting first with representatives from the Shiite Framework and then the Sunni Homeland. I was to learn while I was there that the Farsi word the Shiites used was not a literal translation of Framework, but rather a concept that was difficult for non Farsi speakers to understand, let alone literally translate into a single word. And of course, they wanted to talk to us about the women who had left the SF to resettle in Kirkuk, Erbil, Kuwait, and Qatar, but mainly in Kirkuk and Erbil.

  That was also the subject the Sunni Homeland had asked for us to speak to their representatives about, although in their case, they were mainly concerned about women leaving for Qatar and Kuwait. We really needed to be on the same page since both the Kurdish Region and Kuwait/Qatar were facing the same demands that these women and their infants be returned to their former ‘loved ones’.

  Unfortunately, our translations of ‘loved ones’ weren’t the same, so this was going to be very complicated and probably unresolved. I had no intention of supporting sending someone back to a hostile environment. Unbeknownst to our hosts, knowing this question was on the agenda, I had already been given permission by the SLO leaders to offer any endangered women asylum in SLO. For us that was a no brainer since, literally, every life is precious nowadays. Survivors are so few in number now that we all want all the people we can find, almost regardless of their skills and circumstances.

  That brings us back to the Kuwaitis, the Qataris, and the Kurds. Again, I made a request. Since by now I realized that they were all facing the same predicaments and demands from their non Coalition neighbors, I asked that the leaders of all local coalition communities be invited to participate in all of the conversations that would be taking place. No one objected so representatives of all three leadership teams joined us as we started our own discussions in preparation for our negotiations with the neighbors.

  I started by laying out the problem as I understood it. “All of your communities have benefited by the addition of women from surrounding non-Coalition communities. Is that correct?” Seeing agreement, I continued. “These women have all chosen to come here of their own free will, correct?” Again, there was complete agreement. “Did they ask to be allowed to remain in your communities?” The consensus was that they had. “Some of these women were pregnant at the time they arrived?” Again yes. “Did some of them have infants with them when they arrived?” Yes. “Did any of them have children other than newly born infants?” There had been two of these, and the children had been their own, according to the mothers, and the fathers had not survived.

  “So, if I understand the situation correctly, women, some pregnant or with newborns or their own children have come to reside in your communities of their own free wills, and they do not wish to return to their former homes, their homes from before The Sickness. Is that a correct statement?”

  Surprisingly, it was the military commander, Marshall Paxton, who spoke for both Persian Gulf groups. “That is correct, sir. I would like to point out that several of these women report being raped, and others describe being forced into marriages, not of their own choosing. Not one of the women who have come to us, sometimes from great distances, left a loving partner with whom she had had consensual sex.”

  “How many of these women are we talking about?”

  “Are you talking about all the women or just the ones who are pregnant or have a child?”

  “Can you break it down for me? How many women have arrived alone who are not pregnant or caring for a child?”

  “There are almost 70 women who have arrived in our communities from an area outside the original country boundaries. I believe the last number I heard was 68.”

  “I need to know your number as well, Hamdi.”

  The Kurdish Speaker quickly produced a number even higher at 82. That is a huge number in these times, and I’m sure their home communities wanted them back. Many of these women were educated and either came from more tolerant communities from before The Sickness, or they were living an unsatisfying life in a more traditional community. All of them made the decision to come to resettle of their own free will. Most were Muslim, a few were Christian and some were Yazidi or Zoroastrian. They have come from as far away as Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Afghanistan.

  While Hamdi was talking, a blonde woman near Lt. Paxton him handed him a note. “I stand corrected. There have been 71 women so far.” Lt. Paxton smiled at the woman and his eyes lingered just a moment too long. The woman smiled back. I notice things like that. I also noticed that he used the term Palestine rather than Israel or The West Bank.

  “And how many of these women were not pregnant or caring for a child?” I pointedly looked at the note passer when I asked my question knowing that she had the answer.

  She took the hint. Glancing first at Lt. Paxton as if for permission, which she instantly got through a tiny nod of his head, she responded. “57.”

  “Hamdi, do you have that information?”

  “Yes. It is 60.”

  “So, we are talking about 22 women in the Kurdish communities and 14 women in the Gulf, even though the SF and the SH have indicated they want to talk about all 153 of them. If you don’t mind, I want us to concern ourselves only with the 36 women for now. As far as I’m concerned, the others have made their decision, and there is nothing more to say. Is that okay with everyone here?”

  The woman, whose name was Hiltrud Bonhoeffer spoke up again. “Are you saying you would consider sending 36 women back, or their babies?” She spoke English with what I believed was a German accent.

  “Not at all, but I don’t want to confuse our discussions with the SF and SH by talking about non-issues. The 117 have made their decision, and there is nothing more to be concerned about. I don’t think the SF and the SH will have much to say about them as long as we make it clear that adults can make their own decisions. I just want us to focus on the others. Will that be okay? By the way, all of these women are adults aren’t they? They’re all at least 16 years old?”

  “They are now, at least in the Gulf. Some were only fifteen when they arrived. Some of the 15 year olds were pregnant.” Again, it was Hiltrud who spoke. Hamdi nodded his agreement.

  “Are we in agreement that we discuss only the 36?”

  “Why are we even discussing them with Framework and Homeland?”

  “Because they need to know why we’re saying no to their request that we send these women back to their original communities. We may disagree with them, but we must still communicate.” That seemed to have closed that particular line of dialog.

  “We are not talking to diplomats from the old days. We are talking to ordinary men, and they will all be men, who do not mean harm. They are not hateful, but they will not even consider that women have equal rights to men. This is going to be a very difficult discussion, and I don’t think it will be handled in one meeting.” This was Hamdi of the Kurdish Region.

  “I believe you’re right, Hamdi, but we must start somewhere, and here is where that somewhere is. We need to all be on the same page, though, before we begin our conversations with the SF or the SH. Do we agree that the women who came alone have the right to stay?”

  There was silent agreement throughout the room.

  “I’m taking your silence as an affirmation of your agreement. Do you agree that the 36 have the right to remain?”

  “With their babies?” Hiltrud was a great advocate.

  “This question is only about the women. The next will be about the babies. Do you agree that the women have the right to remain if they choose?”

  There was silent agreement from everyone except for Hiltrud. “I cannot agree to that!”

  “Okay. I don’t know how to respond to that.” I was genuinely confused.

  “I won’t vote on something like that! No! This is wrong. We shouldn’t be voting on the rights of these women to keep their babies. This is wrong!”

  “Hiltrud, please
! That isn’t what we are doing. We are only finding out if we have agreement. We’re not voting on these women’s rights to keep their babies. We have to know if everyone will support them when the time comes to defend these rights. We’re only finding out who agrees with us!” Lt. Paxton, speaking in a soft, intense voice, had just confirmed that he had feelings for Hiltrud who was clearly very wrought up over this whole discussion.

  “I apologize. I should have made myself clearer on this. Lt. Paxton is perfectly correct. This is not a vote. We need to know all we can about our own personal positions regarding the rights of these women, and I might add, the rights of all women. The Rights and Responsibilities make very clear that all residents, regardless of gender, are to be treated equally by the governing councils of each community. It is also very clear that it is the responsibility of the governing councils in each community to remove all impediments to equal treatment by their governing councils. Now, once again, I need to know if any of you feel differently about these women and their rights. Is there something about them that makes them an exception, in your opinion, to the Rights and Responsibilities of the governing councils of your communities?” I had to be very careful when I was asking questions to be as neutral as possible. I know what I stand for, but I didn’t know if these men and women would be willing to take the next steps if more steps became necessary.