The Good Sister

by Chris Morgan Jones

  10

  Abraham slept, when he was allowed to sleep, in a dormitory for unmarried fighters, administrators and other minor components of the Islamic State machine.

  They were boys, each one of them. The way they jostled and brayed and bragged. The obsession with things: the biggest gun, the coolest car, the sexiest knife. Look at this motherfucker, that’s going to slice right through anything it wants, cut metal in two like a fucking melon. Like butter, brother. Like fucking water.

  Imagine the fucking damage this is going to do.

  Which was the sweetest kafir girl to take? It’s all in the teeth, brother, sweet white teeth. Bullshit. She’ll fucking bite down on you brother, you don’t want any fucking teeth. I knew a brother he nearly lost it, brother, she bit clean through. Smash them out first, maybe, take no chances. Some of these Yazidi girls, they’re blonde, the kafir cunts, imagine that, blonde here and down there, fucking beautiful. I’d pay for that, brother. I’d pay well for that, fucking four weeks’ wages, as long as she was clean. She won’t be so fucking clean after I’ve fucking finished with her, brother, and no way you’re getting in first, no way. I’m quick as fuck. I’ve heard that about you, brother. You come here and say that. Come right here. I fucking mean it.

  All night. Abraham felt as if he’d been dropped into a nest of rats. It smelled that way in here. A particular kind of sweat: acrid, fear-ridden, funky. These were the men his daughter idolized. This was what she’d married. This was where the family line was headed.

  Going to smash those kafirs tomorrow, brother. This baby’s going to do the job for me, aren’t you, my beauty? Going to clean you up good so the bullets fly straight and sweet right into some kafir cunt’s head, boom. You know it, brother. You, Cairo, you ever seen a head explode? At Dabiq I took this rebel fuck out, such a good shot, man, that was beautiful, I got him right here, yeah, right in the cheekbone, and his head burst all over the kafir standing next to him. Allahu Akbar, He gave me a great shot, the most glorified, the most high, and I took it. Those fuckers can’t fight. All over the guy’s face, he’s going fucking mental, jumping around and wiping it off while his friend just kind of crumples. Hysterical. Like he was just clothes. Ain’t no way you were putting that one back together, Cairo, he was well fucked, and that other cunt too, once I gave him a minute to get the taste of his friend out of his mouth.

  You’re full of shit. It fucking happened. Abu Kaba saw it. That would be the dead Abu Kaba? Fuck you. Don’t call me a fucking liar. How many kills, brother, if you’re so fucking clever?

  They bickered about that for a while. Six of them there were in this room, not counting Abraham himself, sitting on their bedrolls polishing their guns and talking shit like kids on a camping trip. Dinner had been pitta and houmous and some sort of cold meat slices that could have been beef. The water was not quite clear and tasted of soil; everyone else had drunk Coke. Abraham had eaten with his head down, acknowledging the odd taunting question with a nod or shake of his head. It was a new feeling, to hate anyone so much, but he realized there was a sort of fear in them as well, and as he ate and listened he began to realize that they were as unthinking as Sofia had been credulous. Fools manipulated by knaves.

  Tomorrow they were going out to the front, up to Kobani. You should come with us, Cairo, see some actual fighting. Are you kidding? Shit his pants. He’s too old. No fucking walking sticks at the front, brother Ibrahim.

  ‘I’ll be waiting here to stitch you back together again.’

  That got a laugh, and made him feel complicit. He didn’t want these men laughing with him, even if it might be useful to establish some trust.

  Don’t want stitching, Cairo.

  This was the youngest of them all; at least he looked the youngest, his beard so thin the straggly hairs barely covered his cheeks, which were chubby and soft like the rest of him. The unlikely jihadi, grown up too soon, a lumbering boy whose eyes were pinched and too close together. When he spoke he spoke slowly, every syllable deliberate, so that Abraham assumed his first language must be something other than Arabic, but from things the other fighters had said it seemed he came from Iraq. The others teased him about his age but not his appearance, as if obeying some unspoken code.

  Inshallah I will be shaheed tomorrow, I can feel it, He has willed it for me.

  That brought a solemnity on the group. Now there was no teasing.

  Inshallah, brother. Inshallah.

  Much murmuring, and then silence for a few seconds.

  Tomorrow I shall be in Paradise by the running brook. God willing, brother, in Paradise, with the virgins with the dark eyes.

  May we all be shaheed when He ordains it, brother, may we all be worthy of that glory.

  The sentimentality of it was complete. They pined for God and death, which were the same thing. But the dumb energy had only gone for a moment, and for another hour the chatter went on.

  In a break in the talk Abraham finally said the thing he had been wanting to say all this time, the one thing that might be useful.

  ‘Who here knows Borz?’

  ‘Borz? Course we know Borz. Man’s a fucking legend, brother. Took out half the Iraqi army with his fists. Killed a thousand Peshmerga. What you want with Borz, Cairo? You want to suck his dick for the fucking cause? Show your respect to a real man?’

  ‘Someone in his family’s ill. One of his children. I have to go there tomorrow but the address they gave me makes no sense, I think it’s wrong.’

  ‘You want us to give you Borz’s address? Serious? Cairo, you’re the fucking best.’

  ‘You think we’re directories or something, brother? What the fuck?’

  ‘It’s his kid. What if I don’t get there? What if something happens to it?’

  ‘Who told you to go, Cairo? Just get the address off them.’

  ‘They gave me the address.’

  ‘Then tell them it’s wrong. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I did tell them. They say it’s right. But I’ve looked, it doesn’t exist.’

  ‘I went there once. I had to pick him up, our detail.’

  ‘So where was it?’

  ‘He’s got this big fucking house out beyond that Shia mosque, the one we blew up.’

  ‘Ah fuck I know those houses, man, sweet. One day I’m having one of those.’

  ‘You’ll be dead long before that happens, brother.’

  ‘Fuck you, Khalid.’

  ‘What was the address?’

  ‘I don’t know, Cairo, it was months ago. Looks like you just killed Borz’s kid. Good luck with that.’

  ‘It’s on Hamra Street, fuck sake. It’s the one with a dozen fighters outside.’

  One by one the men began to undress and go to bed. They slept in their T-shirts and Calvin Kleins, Abraham in his shirt and boxer shorts. The whole thing was like a teenage sleepover with guns.

  ‘Cairo. Turn off the light.’

  He looked across at the fighter lying on his bedroll, head propped on his hand.

  ‘Last in.’

  Back in bed, his mind danced in the darkness. A boy in the hospital, his leg blasted, writhing against the pain. Murat’s face pressed into the road, his eyes as empty as the eyes of the man who had killed him. Black, dead eyes that stared at nothingness.

  One of these people had killed him. One of these interchangeable killers that swarmed through his imagination like an infestation, with the same face, the same clothes, the same leer, cocksure and petty, swaggering and murderous and barely formed. Cockroaches, locusts, a blight and a pestilence brought upon mankind for going its own way, swaggering into pure selfishness, heedless, stupid. In their millions they overran him and blacked out all thought.

  Sofia. Sofia, Sofia. Some part of the real her must remain, or why save him? No other explanation fit. Faith in this god or that god, that might come and go, but logic – there was nothing the rats could do against logic. Abraham lay in the darkness and cherished the light of that one idea.

  11<
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  This morning I don’t feel like the teacher, or the jailer, I feel like one of the imprisoned. That’s why I’m here.

  The Yazidis can sense there’s something wrong, but I just don’t have the energy to pretend. I fall back on old habits, take my copy of the Qur’an, explain to them that in each page there is wisdom and beauty and direction, and that by opening it at random we can see what God has in mind for us. As I let the pages spray under my thumb part of me is praying that the passage I find will be relevant to me and may contain some hope, but even as I catch myself thinking it I know it’s a superstition, a low instinct, selfish, base. But I do it anyway, because I’ve started to do it, and because my need for hope right now is greater than anything else.

  Niran’s mother is back. I find it hard to look at her.

  I close my eyes at the open page and point.

  And the unbelievers say, ‘Why has no sign been sent down to him his Lord?’

  I turn it on the Yazidis, tell them that their insistence on signs is a sign of their ingratitude, that Allah the most glorified has no need, no desire to let them know of his existence, and the words scour me with shame because I know each one applies to me. I have treated each moment of my time here as a sign, as something to be read, as something that was intended for me, and I am eaten up with hatred for my self-absorption.

  The women are quiet. They can sense a change in me and I have no patience for them. I want them to go away.

  If I was one of these women, every sign I saw would be of a world without God. They have lost their husbands. They have lost their sons. Their homes have been destroyed and their dignity taken, and I cannot make them see that this is the time above all others that they must believe. The lesson applies to me as well.

  Until we get past this we won’t get anywhere. We all need courage. So I do something that even last week I couldn’t have imagined. I get the women to tell me about their lives. Not their religion, not their god and beliefs, but their stories. I want them to understand that God was not the cause of the suffering, and that now He can lead them from it.

  I start with Besma, and when she sees that I’m serious and that this isn’t a trap, slowly she opens up. She was married, for twenty years, and her husband was killed in fighting on Mount Sinjar. No, that’s not true. I must report what she believes to be the full truth. He was injured in fighting, and she and two cousins took him to the hospital in the town, and there he was murdered by our fighters. They came in and shot him as he lay in his bed, but she didn’t see it because she was trying to find food for her youngest son, who was unwell.

  I don’t interrupt her, I just let her talk. I need to understand her reality.

  Then she and her son and many other women and children were taken across the border into Syria, where they were separated into groups and she was moved on. Her son was taken. He was fifteen. I ask her where her son is now and she says she has no idea, that for two weeks she had news of him because people have mobiles still and they talk to each other, but then there was silence and all she heard was that every boy was taken to be converted and trained as a fighter for IS.

  What was his name, I ask. His name was Mirza but now it will be different. The first thing they take from you is your name.

  As Besma talks the other women play with the cloth of their dresses, occasionally mutter something to each other. They hold the children close, and the children squirm away, restless. Not one of them has been outside for weeks.

  I move on. I ask the mother of Niran to tell me about her family, how she came to be here. She is sitting cross-legged on the floor and running her hands through her daughter’s thick hair, picking out heaven knows what. From this angle Niran looks thinner than she was, some of the fullness has gone from her cheeks, but it might be the light and anyway her eyes are still bright and an amazing blue. Even in this place she shines. She reminds me of girls from my school who seemed to be outside the run of things, the really beautiful ones, God’s creatures, their beauty something that the rest of us could never aspire to. She has a way of narrowing her eyes when she focuses but now she’s just staring into the distance. I realize I’ve never heard her say anything, not a word.

  Besma translates my question to her mother and she doesn’t seem to hear it, just keeps on separating Niran’s hair and playing it out through her fingers. I ask Besma to ask again and this time the woman’s hands stop, and she pushes Niran gently upright off her lap. Then she looks right at me and with a dip and shake of her head says something short in reply. Besma hesitates, but when I nod she translates.

  ‘She say she do not speak with you.’

  Now she really starts, head bobbing from side to side, finger pointing at me, and the words flowing out in a stream that’s been ready to break for a long time. Even if Besma wanted to she couldn’t keep up. I nod, and try to look sympathetic, but having someone rage at you even when you don’t know what they’re saying is hard and I find it difficult to hold her eye. Flecks of her spit catch in the shafts of light from the high windows.

  There is anger in me, I can feel it, like a residue from the past, but I ignore it, push it to one side. I want to know what she’s said.

  ‘She says, what good is your God if He cannot protect this little girl?’

  I think if I tried to take Niran from her she would kill me with her hands.

  12

  What did Badra say? Women mean nothing here. We need the men to be men. Maybe. Maybe that’s right in war. But what about the peace? When there is peace, we will need the women to lead, because the men will all be dead or like Borz. I don’t think many in the khilafa realize this. No one’s thought it through.

  The Yazidi maid is called Zarifa. This evening I help her prepare dinner and we try to talk. She has a little Arabic, not much, and at first she’s so shy she doesn’t want to say anything, probably because she thinks I’m going to stop smiling any minute and scold her, or even hit her. I can tell Hafa hits her, not because she’s bruised or anything, but just from the way she behaves around me. She can’t seem to believe I’m helping as much as I can – I guess when the others are on cooking duty the most they do is just stand and watch.

  We marinate chicken wings in lemon juice and oil and we shred lettuce and chop tomatoes and I fry the pitta for the fattoush – Borz likes it fried, Hafa briefs me on this.

  ‘You can cook,’ I tell her.

  She knows what she’s doing. Her chopping is quick, and before peeling the garlic she crushes it lightly under the blade of the knife like my mother used to do.

  Zarifa nods, eyes down on her work. Always down.

  ‘Who taught you?’

  She doesn’t understand, so I rephrase it.

  ‘This. How did you learn?’

  ‘Mother. She die.’

  She says this without looking up. In that moment her world opens up to me and I see her mother dying at our hands and it takes the strongest faith to remember that I should feel bad not for that, but because she didn’t have the chance to be taken into God’s kingdom. It’s like Zarifa knows what I’m thinking because then she says,

  ‘Sick.’

  ‘I’m sorry. My mother is sick too.’

  I make a vow there and then to make sure that Zarifa has the chances in life that her mother didn’t have.

  ‘How old were you?’

  She shakes her head and her shoulders go up just a little in a shrug, so I ask something else.

  ‘Have you got brothers? Or sisters?’

  Now she looks at me, and I can see the answer in her face, and it’s not good. The skin under her eyes is so dark she looks ill. A narrow face, with something ancient about it, like one of those African masks. She’s so skinny, I wonder what she gets to eat and who gives it to her. Every time I say something she bows her head an inch and her shoulders tighten as if she knows what’s coming next.

  She should cry. She should be able to cry. But I can tell that she’s past crying, that to cry would mean hope, and she has no
hope left.

  If only she could join my class. Poor creature, she has nothing to lead her from the darkness.

  ‘I will teach you,’ I tell her.

  She nods.

  ‘About God. About Allah, the most high, the most glorified.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and even if she doesn’t completely understand I think I’m getting through to her. And then I do something that surprises me. I take her by the arms and I look into her eyes and I bring her to me and hug her. Her stiff thin body shakes but after a second she relaxes and puts her hands behind my back.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ I tell her, and at the same time I think I’m telling myself.

  That night the four of us eat together in the dining room, Borz and his three wives. I sit on his left, Hafa on his right, and no one speaks. Maysan looks like she would shrink into nothingness if she could.

  Zarifa serves the food and leaves as soon as she is done. No one so much as registers her presence. Borz pulls his wings apart first, before ripping the flesh off them with his teeth. I have little appetite but I don’t want to draw attention to myself by leaving food, so I eat it.

  Borz’s face is bent over his plate, his red-blond beard drooping. I see this out of the corner of my eye, I don’t look at him, but I can hear the bones tearing and the salad crunching in his mouth. He eats with the hunger he keeps caged inside.

  On his fourth or fifth wing he stops and says something in Russian. Hafa looks up at him, and he shows her the meat, splays it out for her to inspect, then throws it back on his plate and sits back in his chair, arms crossed, like a man who cannot believe he has been so gravely insulted. Even from here I can see the red on the bone.

  ‘I must know who is responsible,’ he says, in Arabic now, to all of us and none in particular.

  Hafa looks from him to me, stands up and leaves for the kitchen. She comes straight back dragging Zarifa behind her. She pulls her to the table and shows her the chicken wing, takes her own fork and prods at it.

  ‘What is this?’ she asks. ‘It is raw. Blood. Look.’ She lifts the wing up and pushes it in her face.