The Good Sister

by Chris Morgan Jones

  The next time, two policemen came and took Abraham up through the police station and along corridors to a bright office where dawn was beginning to show through the blind that covered the one high window.

  Vural was there. Dressed in his creased suit, and as lively as Abraham had seen him. His eyes were sharper, whiter, less hooded. He nodded at Abraham, and said something in Turkish to the two policemen, who hesitated for a moment, unsure. Then he nodded, and waited, and thanked the pair of them as they left, shutting the door behind them. He had a white mug in his hand and now he set it down on the desk in front of him and pushed it towards Abraham, gesturing to him to sit. Black coffee. If anything, the smell made things worse.

  ‘Abraham, I know this will happen. Something like this.’

  ‘Vural. Is that really your name?’

  Abraham’s tongue stuck in his mouth as he said the words.

  Vural nodded.

  ‘Vural, can I have some water? I need water.’

  Vural frowned.

  ‘I can see you need. Is thirsty, your work last night. One moment. But please, no tricks, yes?’

  ‘I don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘I know this.’

  Vural stood and left the room. Abraham looked at the open door and wondered what was going on. Was it an invitation? Did they want him to run so that they could shoot him in the back?

  Before any answer came, Vural was back, a small bottle of water in each chubby hand.

  ‘Here. Drink.’

  The water was ice cold and brought him back to himself, a degree. Vural waited for him to finish with his forearms resting on the desk, hands clasped together. Somehow, he was transformed. No sniffing, no oiliness. His voice was hard and his eyes shone.

  ‘Vural, I didn’t kill that man.’

  ‘You are here to go to Syria, to be ISIS, to be with your daughter.’

  ‘I . . . I don’t want to be with her.’

  ‘The dead man, he knew this, and last night he exposed you. So you killed him.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Where were you last night?’

  ‘At the hotel. I went to that bar, the Golden Lion, and then I went back to the hotel. To my room.’

  ‘When were you there?’

  ‘I don’t know. I . . . I drank a lot. I was drunk. I had some bad news.’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘My daughter. She’s married.’

  ‘You see? So you must join her in Raqqa.’

  ‘No, I don’t—’

  ‘What time you were in your room?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nine. Ten. The bar owner, Erol, he would know when I left.’

  ‘Someone saw you at the hotel?’

  Each question came quick and crisp.

  ‘No. I don’t know. I didn’t notice.’

  ‘How much you drink, Abraham?’

  Abraham closed his eyes tight. Enough.

  ‘I don’t know. A lot.’

  ‘You go right to bed?’

  ‘I passed out.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I told you. I don’t know.’

  Vural paused, nodding, then set off again.

  ‘Abraham, do you keep a knife?’

  ‘A knife? No. Of course not.’

  ‘There is no knife in your room?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If my friends in the polis look in your room they will not find a knife?’

  He smiled as he said it. It wasn’t a question, it was a hypothetical. A new avenue of fear opened up. They could do that. Of course they might do that.

  ‘No. No knife of mine.’

  Another pause.

  ‘What if someone saw you come from your room at two a.m.?’

  ‘No one saw me. I didn’t leave my room until those men arrived.’

  ‘Which men?’

  ‘The police. Your colleagues.’

  ‘I am not their colleague.’

  Vural reached across the table for the mug of coffee.

  ‘You don’t want?’

  Abraham shook his head. He was beginning to think that his mind had really unravelled. Vural thanked him and took a sip.

  ‘Perhaps I saw you.’

  ‘I didn’t leave my room.’

  ‘Perhaps I saw you and went after you to the first floor and saw you and the dead man in a fight.’

  Abraham was still shaking his head, and when he spoke again his voice sounded loud and twisted in his ears.

  ‘You didn’t. I never left my room.’

  ‘I heard noise, the door of your room. I had concern, because you had trouble last night. I came in the corridor, and I saw you, and I went after you.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Vural slurped coffee once, twice, then drained the cup and set it on the desk.

  ‘I know you do not kill this man. But they, they think it. They want it. Someone has seen you, they say. The Egyptian, last night, on that floor.’

  ‘I haven’t . . .’

  ‘I am sure. They are not. The polis do not like ISIS. Kurds they hate more but you are second.’

  ‘I’m not ISIS. You know that. Help me.’

  Nodding, Vural sniffed, like a man steeling himself to do his best.

  ‘Abraham, I am not polis. They are different kind of man, not like you or me. But I will try.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I try.’

  25

  Time in the cell was measured in meals. For breakfast, rice and kidney beans and a small loaf of bread that turned out to be lunch. For dinner, rice and chickpeas. Rice and tired green beans for breakfast the next day. Abraham ate the food because it was there and because he had nothing else to do – no book to read, no plan to make, no thoughts that he wanted to have. He craved water more than freedom. Two glasses a day in this heat; he felt like he was slowly turning to powder.

  No one came for him; his story wasn’t required. By the first evening he was sweating and an ache ran through him and he began to think about telling his guards that he needed his medication. They might not bring him water but maybe they had to bring him medicine if he was sick, maybe there was some convention in place, some international agreement. Failing that he could bribe them. But by now they had his things and anything valuable would have gone, including the pills themselves, and it was hopeless even to try.

  So this was how it felt to stop taking those things: like someone was pulling out your bones through the top of your head. Like being cored. He didn’t read the warning leaflet that he pulled from every packet, of course, no one did, but he knew what they said, and they didn’t begin to cover it. Muscle ache, fatigue, depression, sweating, shaking. Coughing and occasional bouts of diarrhoea. Listlessness. Disgust at one’s self. A strong sense of detachment and presence at once, of wanting to be anywhere else, anyone else, but knowing that you were stuck for all time with the soul and body you had been given. Shivering, yes, but not from real or imagined cold so much as the frozen vastness of the universe.

  Praying didn’t seem to help. His God was nowhere to be found, but Sofia sat with him all day, ever present. Happy to watch him sunk to this, but resisting the temptation to wag a finger because her piety wouldn’t allow her to score cheap tricks. You have suffered, she told him, but we all suffer, and in the face of that suffering we can choose to stretch up to Paradise, as I have done, or slip down into hell. I take no pleasure in seeing you there, nor any pride in my own choice. In his weakness, he just lay there and took it. Maybe she was right – maybe it was better to aspire to something wrong-headed than to aspire to nothing at all.

  But she was in her own cell, of course, the one of her making, somewhere across the border. They were both captives. Did she see that yet?

  26

  I am a woman now. Yesterday I was just a girl, with nothing, and now I have a husband, a house and a job. I begin to understand how a caterpillar can turn into a butterfly, but the miracle is to think all this was in me always, waiting to find wings.
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  My first day on the brigade is training. The Al-Khansaa Brigade – the most fearsome women on the planet. I’ve seen the pictures and now I’m one of them. My breath is actually short with excitement, I have to control it.

  Umm Karam is there, Idara, others I’m getting to know. It’s a real team. Umm Karam gives us a short speech about how women are the foundation of the khilafa, and how if they’re allowed to ignore sharia the whole building will come down. I get it. It fills me with pride, and nerves.

  For the rest of the day she trains us. What to look for. Who to look for. The appropriate punishments for transgressions. How to record punishments, and how to verify people’s papers.

  Tomorrow, she explains, you will be apprentices. Watch. Listen. Smell. You are His senses in the City.

  The next night Khalil comes to pick me up and we go for dinner at his favourite place. I’m still pinching myself. I’m tired, more tired than I think I’ve ever been, but I don’t feel it like tiredness, it’s just like every part of me has done what it was supposed to do and now I can take a moment to reflect, and relax. I don’t think I’ve ever known what work was before. Such fulfilment. Such release!

  The restaurant is full of our people, hanging out, chatting, taking it easy. We all work hard. We all deserve a bit of time before rejoining the front. Brothers are here with their wives, with their kids, it’s all so . . . natural. So right. No alcohol, no pressure, no one who isn’t on the same path.

  One of the things I love about the khilafa is that everyone is here for a different reason and the same one. Everyone has their own story to explain why they don’t fit in the world of lies and killing and greed, and no matter what that story is, somehow they slot into the khilafa like they were always made to be here. And that’s because we share the same faith, in every way. It’s like a universal language we all speak. A safe harbour for true souls.

  Khalil orders and he’s patient with the waiter, who seems nervous for some reason and doesn’t hear right the first time. Other fighters might shout at him but not Khalil, he patiently repeats what he said and leaves it at that. He’s so handsome tonight, I swear a light shines from his eyes, it’s like the sun sometimes. He has this way of just looking at me so that his eyes smile but the rest of his face is still serious – it’s hard to explain but it’s like he’s sending his love straight from his soul to mine.

  Tonight I have so much to tell him. What a day! My first catch, there’s no way I can keep it from him, but I wait till our food comes.

  ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Good. Just chilled. Prayed, watched videos. Building up my strength.’

  He grins as he pulls another wing apart with those strong soft hands.

  ‘You need your strength.’

  ‘If I’m not careful you’ll use it all up.’

  He grins again and I hope he can see that behind my veil I’m doing the same.

  ‘I made my first catch today.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I went out on patrol. I’m the new girl.’

  ‘That’s cool.’

  ‘There are four of us and they use me like a scout, I don’t have a gun so no one knows I’m in the brigade.’

  Khalil nods and picks meat off a bone with his teeth. So white!

  ‘We went to a market and they just told me to get on with it. And at first it was like my eye wasn’t in, you know, it’s difficult to see things when you’re not used to the background yet.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he nods. ‘I know.’

  ‘So for a while I just couldn’t see anything, like a good half hour, and I was beginning to think Oh no, what if I don’t find anything? They’ll throw me straight out and how would I explain that to you? Stupid, I know, but I just wanted to impress them.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Umm Sharik – she’s the leader, she’s great, so focused – she has targets for our team each day. She told us that’s what the kafir police do but there’s no reason we shouldn’t learn from them.’

  Dear lamb, he’s deep in his food, and I realize I’m not being very interesting. I need to get to the point.

  ‘Anyway, I couldn’t see anything and every woman looked completely fine and every veil was correct and everyone had a mahram and I was thinking, Oh great, my first day and the whole of Raqqa is suddenly under perfect sharia, and then I smelled it.’

  I wait for him to respond, and he looks up at me frowning.

  ‘What?’

  I know he’s going to be proud of me.

  ‘I smelled her. Perfume. Kind of faint at first and I thought I’d lost it but then I got a real hold on it and I followed my instincts and then it was just me and her walking away from the market with me calling Umm Sharik to come to us. She really stank, some horrible smell, like a kafir smell, you know? Like a London smell.’

  ‘Some of these women are so fucking stupid.’

  ‘I know.’

  We eat for a bit, letting each other’s words sink in.

  ‘So I caught up with her and questioned her and then Umm Sharik came with the others and gave her forty lashes.’

  ‘You didn’t do that yourself?’

  ‘She said maybe when I’ve settled in.’

  Khalil nods sympathetically and smiles. He tells me to eat, he wants to get home quickly to be alone with me. I love that about him, he’s so direct, and there’s more than one kind of hunger in his eyes right now. I want to talk to him about all sorts of things like his family and his poor mother who died at the hands of Assad and when he came to the khilafa and if he has brothers and sisters and on and on and on, but there’s time for that when he wants it. It will come.

  27

  Deep in the night, sunk in some shallow and disordered dream, Abraham felt himself being dragged by the feet like a carcass, and woke to find a hand around his ankle pulling him down his bed towards the bars. The grip was insanely strong, and for an instant his only thought was that he was being called to hell.

  Pain stabbed at his knee, which was being crushed between the metal; and as he pushed back with his other foot he found himself looking into the wild face of a young man, teeth bared, the veins in his temple pulsing. A guard had him round the neck but the man seemed possessed, there was no way he was letting go.

  ‘Murdering scum. He was ten times the man you are, Daesh cunt.’

  Wresting his free arm from the guard he grabbed Abraham’s T-shirt, pulled him up to the bars and spat in his face.

  ‘You’re going to fucking die in here.’

  He spat again, and Abraham pulled himself back up the bed, wiped his face on his T-shirt, and watched the man draw his finger across his throat with a final leer as another guard came and helped to pull him away.

  From down the corridor came a new noise, half shout, half wail, a terrible noise that made his senses vibrate at the pitch of fear.

  ‘Free. Syrian. Army. Free. Syrian. Army.’

  One voice at first, then a second, then five or six together, chanting without any urgency, knowing their time would come.

  28

  Sometime long after dinner on the second day, when Abraham had given up hope of seeing him or anyone else ever again, Vural appeared.

  ‘Abraham,’ he said, silhouetted against the light in the corridor. ‘I hope you have rest. Come.’ And he simply walked away, leaving the door to the cell open and the policeman who had unlocked it waiting with crossed arms for Abraham to leave.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Abraham had to trot to keep up with him.

  ‘You will decide.’

  They left the building, past sleeping prisoners, past the few policemen on duty, Vural going with such confidence that no one seemed to think to challenge them, and out into the car park, where he unlocked an old Toyota and ushered Abraham inside.

  ‘Quick. Before policeman changes mind.’

  Vural drove just as he walked – quickly and surely, darting from one empty street to the next – and the abrupt motion after tw
o days in one place made Abraham so disorientated he could hardly watch the streets as they slipped by. Gaziantep slept; dawn was just beginning to show, and they saw barely a soul. He felt it like limbo: he was here, and he wasn’t here. Just him and this unknowable man who might be his enemy and might be his friend.

  Neither said anything. After five minutes, Vural pulled over swiftly to the kerb, braking with a jerk. They had arrived at the bus station. Eight white buses neatly lined up and the first passengers setting down their bags on the kerb.

  ‘You look very bad, Abraham.’

  Vural frowned, as if somehow this was unexpected, and in response Abraham nodded.

  ‘Very bad. Here.’

  From a baggy jacket pocket Vural pulled Abraham’s phone, and his wallet. From another he produced his passport.

  ‘What about the rest?’

  ‘What I could get.’

  ‘I need my things.’

  ‘You have papers? You have money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have everything. Come.’

  ‘I have medication.’

  ‘Abraham. You are not sick. Are you sick?’

  Vural raised his eyebrows and looked hard at Abraham, who dropped his head in response.

  ‘You are man, not patient. Okay. Now you have choice to make.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘One. You go home. London, Cairo, what you like.’

  ‘I don’t want to go home.’

  Impatiently, Vural held up a hand.

  ‘Please. Hear. Two. You cross border and you work for me.’

  Abraham frowned his question back.

  ‘Inside Daesh.’

  The sky was light in the east now, and a breeze was blowing through the open window of the car. On Abraham’s skin it felt like balm. Another clear blue day, beautiful, free, full of promise: somewhere, for someone, life was good.

  ‘You mean it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m a Christian. They’ll kill me.’

  ‘You look like Muslim.’