‘For every soul there is a guardian’
(The Koran, 86:4)
Contents
September 2014
PART ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
PART TWO
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
PART THREE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
PART FOUR
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
September 2014
PART ONE
1
Abraham looked up at the great painted bear and in its raised paws and flaking black eyes saw a warning: the animals here may be caged, but the men are not. They’re running free with their guns and to them you look like prey.
Of course this was no place for him. The family in front, the woman at the counter – they could see it in his frown, the stoop of his shoulders, the tight smile he gave as he handed her his money. On his own, with no child, lonely or lost or far from home. The cashier smiled back, as you might at a patient who wasn’t going to make it, and he shuffled through the turnstile, glancing behind him one last time.
But this was a good rendezvous, even he could see that – right in one corner of the city, bounded on two sides by the main road, only one way in. Not crowded, not empty, plenty of shade from the afternoon sun. His thoughts ran along senseless lines. Did these people hold all their meetings here? Was the management friendly to their cause? He looked down at the texted instructions: turn left at the monkey house, then keep left until you get to the gazelles and the deer, where you’ll see three picnic tables in a row on a patch of grass. Sit down and wait.
The last table was under an oak whose leaves were dry and ready to fall. Legs crossed, foot tapping, Abraham chewed the nail on his little finger, watched his few fellow visitors pass and did his best to slow down, cool down, breathe. This was the first time in, what, two whole fevered days that he’d come to a stop, and it was a surprise to find the world still in order; mothers pushed pushchairs, children darted ahead to the next animal, a father hung back to talk into his phone, ignoring his daughter’s pleas to look at the tiny muntjac fawn, the size of a rabbit, nibbling at the grass.
His nerves peaked. He became conscious of the dark patches under his arms and the smell of sweat that rose up from them. The man was late, almost certainly not coming, and Abraham would have to do this himself, because no one else had any reason to care.
Two old women strolled and talked confidentially, arms linked, while the monkeys chattered and whooped. He felt in his pocket, found the two pills in amongst the change and the keys to the flat he would never go back to, and left them where they were.
Then there he was. Plainly him, with a heavy walk that took its time, his black eyes fixed steadily on Abraham as he approached, one shoulder drooping a little and a frown on his face that suggested he might be in pain, from an injury perhaps, a legacy of the war. If he was a soldier who could no longer fight, that might explain his new trade – a rebel who had found another way to engage the enemy. Abraham wanted to trust him. He watched the man’s face and told himself to concentrate, pay attention, read it well.
Abraham held out his hand, and after looking at it for a moment, the man shook it and sat down.
‘You are good man, I can see. Good father.’
‘Not so good. Or I wouldn’t be here.’
‘Children. They are bad for fathers.’
Good and bad. Abraham nodded.
‘Much money, crazy ideas.’
The man across the table tapped his temple with a thick finger, so hard that it made Abraham blink. The money and the ideas seemed to be linked, but it didn’t seem right, or useful, to ask him to explain.
‘Yes,’ was all he said in the end, and wished again that he had some experience of worlds beyond his own.
‘When she come?’
‘Two days ago. Monday.’
The man gave a slow bobbing nod from side to side.
‘Possible. Possible still here.’
‘You think?’
Don’t look too keen. He’s reading you while you’re trying to read him, and he’s better at it than you are.
‘Possible. Some time they cross like this –’ the man clicked his fingers with a snap – ‘some time they wait, go four, five at one time, some time they just wait. When time is not good – you know, trouble with Kurds, police, Free Syrians.’
‘Can you find them here? Do you know where they are?’
Abraham studied his new contact. A contact. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had a contact before. It could be a good face, under the hard shell, behind those hard eyes; imagine what they had seen in the last five years. Even in London a stranger’s eyes might let you in and tell you something, but here everyone needed a dark lens between them and the world, didn’t they, or how could they bear the horror?
The man ran his nails slowly along the iron-filing stubble on his cheek; they made a scratching noise like sandpaper on wood. He seemed to like it, and for a moment sat with his face held up to the light that filtered through the leaves, eyes closed, scraping his skin.
‘How old she is?’ he asked at last, without opening his eyes.
‘Seventeen. Just seventeen.’
‘She come with girls, boys?’
‘Alone, I think. The papers say alone.’
‘Name is Sofia.’
‘Sofia Mounir.’
A decisive nod now, the answer found.
‘I try. I know people, they know people, you know? In Gaziantep are places Daesh go, places they hide, I think maybe I can find. Not for sure, understand. No guarantees, my friend, no guarantees.’
With the stress on the second syllable, guaRANtees, sing-song in his gruff bass.
‘Maybe we lucky. Maybe. Some time there is luck, okay. I can make luck, but for this I need money, lira, understand? I give money to people, they give money to people, understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘You have money?’
‘How much?’
Negotiate. Don’t take his first price. Who kn
ows what else you’ll need your money for, or how long you’ll be here.
‘Thousand dollars.’
‘I don’t have a thousand dollars.’
‘You say you have money.’
‘I’m not a rich man.’
‘Thousand dollars cheap price. Difficult work, my friend, difficult.’
‘I’m a pharmacist, a chemist. I’m not a rich man.’
‘Much danger, to me. To my friends.’
‘I can pay five hundred.’
The man whistled, turned the corners of his mouth down in an exaggerated frown.
‘Five hundred not my costs. Costs more than five hundred.’
‘I don’t have any more.’
‘Okay, too bad, okay. Five hundred not good for me, not good for you. Okay, we can leave.’
Giving Abraham a final shrug, no hard feelings, he swung one leg up and over the bench.
‘Wait. Seven hundred. I can pay seven.’
‘Thousand dollars, my friend. One price.’
‘Eight hundred.’
Abraham felt it slipping away from him, as he had known it would. Now he asked the question.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Aziz.’
‘Aziz. I’m Abraham.’
They shook hands, like people who wanted it to mean something.
‘English?’
‘Egyptian. I live in London. I lived in London.’
‘You look not English.’
No. Certainly he rarely felt it. Instinct told him to broaden the conversation, to appeal to the humanity he was sure he could sense in this man.
‘Do you have children?’
Aziz made him wait for the answer.
‘I have children.’
‘Where are they?’
‘One in Aleppo. One here. One, she is dead.’
The shell softened and Abraham felt he was looking into the man’s eyes for the first time.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Bad war.’
‘I know.’
‘I must eat, Abraham. My wife, my son.’
Racing here, jettisoning his old life, Abraham had felt as if all the pain in the world had been channelled at him, but now he knew he was surrounded by stories far worse than his own. He felt it, as you might damp in the air. A nation of suffering that cut across borders, and now he was just one of its citizens, waiting in line for some unlikely relief.
‘If I pay you the money, please, do your best. She’s all I have.’
Aziz nodded, and a look passed between them, of understanding and regret. Under other circumstances we might have been friends, it seemed to say. That was how Abraham read it, at least.
‘She’s been tricked. She’s been poisoned.’
‘Nine hundred,’ said Aziz.
‘Please. Find her for me. I don’t have long.’
‘Deposit.’
Abraham counted out the three hundred dollars he had brought with him, watched Aziz leave, and waited for five minutes, as instructed. Nine hundred dollars. He was going to have to be careful. But then, what was the money for?
No one stopped long at the deer enclosure, and that was a shame, because the gazelles were beautiful. Abraham could have spent all day looking at them. The hind legs curving into the strong back, the fur flashed with a touch of fire, and that streak of black on the flank that seemed to have no purpose but to make them look fiercer than they really were. The shyness and the sureness of them. In the eternal blackness of their eyes he searched for some encouragement.
2
Badra comes back in the early evening as the sun is going down and tells us all to get ready, there are mujahideen coming. I ask her what she means by ready and without looking at me she tells us to wash and wear our best niqabs. The twins are excited, they spend half an hour in the bathroom with the door shut, giggling, and when they’re finally finished Umm Nahar and I manage to get in there to wash our faces and brush our teeth. We are not veiled.
The four of us wait in the sitting room, all squeezed together on the long sofa, silent. Badra says no phones, and I’m not even allowed the Qur’an. It’s so warm in here without the air conditioning, and I’m exhausted from the endless airstrikes over Raqqa last night.
I don’t mind who I marry. It will be according to His will, so why would I give it any thought? As long as my husband is devout, dedicated to jihad, and a good Muslim – and I know that he will be all those things, or he wouldn’t be here. In my heart, though, I long for someone who burns with a pure fire. Someone with beauty in his soul. I tell myself that here it could hardly be otherwise.
Qadira and Jameela start to fidget. The wait feels long, though it can only be an hour. Then I hear a buzzer, and Badra leaves the room. Moments later there are men’s voices in the hall greeting her. They’re speaking Arabic, deep and clear, and I feel a thrill to think these men have even today been fighting the infidel. What in my old life could compare to this?
They spend a moment in the hall talking to Badra, and I catch enough to know they’re talking about us. How many? Where are they from?
And then they’re here. Three of them, two young, one older, maybe in his thirties, all with beautiful great black beards. I start to stand up as they come in but Badra signals with her hand that we should sit. The two younger ones have machine guns slung over their shoulders and she tells them to leave them by the door.
These two are in camouflage clothes, but clean and neatly pressed so I know they haven’t come straight from the battlefield. They’ve made the effort, as we have. The older man is wearing a long white dishdasha and a keffiyeh on his head. He has the blackest eyes I’ve ever seen, they seem to swallow the light, and as he stares at each of us in turn he smiles in a way that suggests he knows things we don’t.
But it isn’t enough to describe these brothers by the way they look. There’s an energy I can feel as they stand before us, an aliveness – and some of that life passes to us, to me. I feel it fill my whole body and pull me towards them. It’s a strange feeling, like a calm excitement – not a cheap thrill, like you’d get at the cinema or from music or something, but real, and lasting. Qadira and Jameela have gone quiet, but I am waking up.
The brothers greet us, and we greet them. As-salamu alaykum. They ask more questions of Badra, in Arabic, like we’re not there, like I don’t know what they’re saying. How old are they? I expect them to talk to us, but they don’t, and when I look at Badra she makes it clear that we’re to let them make their inspection. They’re in charge, and I’ll speak when I’m spoken to.
Grinning, one of the younger brothers says maybe he’ll take the Belgians, both of them, imagine. He’d thank Allah twice every night. But if he has to choose he likes the smaller of the two.
Not this girl here, she looks afraid. He means Umm Nahar. I’ve seen better women on the streets, says the older man – I’ve seen better-looking Yazidis. This makes them all laugh. My last wife, he says, she was a cunt but she looked better than this. I know the word. Kuss. It pains me to hear it, but I’m not fresh from battle. I really don’t understand anything.
She looks scared, he says – I like that. She should be scared. They laugh again.
What about the English? She’s okay, says one of the younger brothers. She looks intense. Passionate, maybe. He digs his friend in the ribs. No, his friend says. Too dark. Look, no breasts, and her skin is bad, across her cheeks, on her forehead. If Allah has given her spots what else has he given her?
I glance at Badra, but she looks away. She knows I’m getting all of it, and whatever her problems with me I wonder why she’s letting this happen. Now I’m scared, and angry. I try not to flush. I try to remember that I really know nothing.
Trouble, that one, says the older man. A heap of trouble and nothing like worth it.
He holds his hand out to Umm Nahar, who looks to me and then takes it. She’s Pakistani, she doesn’t know what they’re saying but you can tell she gets it, it’s in her eyes. He pulls her to he
r feet, stands back to look her up and down, has her turn on the spot. He holds his beard, frowning, has her turn again. How old, he wants to know. Sixteen, Badra tells him. A virgin? No. Married before. Her husband was executed for cowardice.
At that he raises his eyebrows, like he finds it interesting, and while he’s making his decision goes back to stroking his beard. He makes me think of a judge at a dog show. Then he sniffs, nods, says something to Badra, and Badra takes her away.
The two younger men discuss who is going to take who, and agree quickly. Qadira and Jameela sit still beside me. Badra has returned, and tells them to go and get their things together.
‘You,’ she says to me. ‘Back to your room.’
Hers isn’t a face you argue with.
3
Every girl in Gaziantep, the face was hers and not hers. It was a sort of blindness. Half of them wore headscarves, of course, as she had, so that any woman of her height was a candidate, and Abraham began to grow feverish with hope and swift disappointment. It was crazy, anyway, to think he would see her in this city of a million. He might as well bump into his mother. But that one, walking in front of him now, she had the same walk, that slight bounce on her heels and a lightness about her that he was sure he knew. He quickened his step, jogging a few paces, drew level and saw that it wasn’t her. The girl’s boyfriend, young and slick and innocent, gave him a look that said leave, quickly.
So he wandered on, because he had to do something while Aziz did whatever Aziz did, and what else was there? In shopping malls that might have been in London he sheltered from the heat, but they weren’t her places so he sought out the backstreets, where the smell of coffee and cumin, the smoke from cigarettes and pipes, the fumes from the harsh little mopeds that zipped about, and the shouting, and the haggling, and the music of lutes and flutes broadcast from every tenth shop all seemed to find their way to him deliberately and pull him back ten years into Cairo, which had once been home. That boy in the imitation leather jacket with the thick eyebrows and the wary look could have been him, at eleven or twelve, given the run of the city and not wholly sure what to do with it. And every little girl he saw, in floral print dresses, hand in her mother’s hand, reminded him of Sofia.
The language was alien but the feeling was so familiar, of a city run by its people without interference from above. He slotted into it, it seemed to accept him, and briefly he felt comfortable, even wistful. He allowed himself the fond idea that when this was done he would come here with Sofia, show her how rich the world was, how her grasp of it was as narrow as his perhaps had been. They could travel together. Learn about each other. Help her fill the hole in her spirit with good things.
The Good Sister Page 1
