The Good Sister

by Chris Morgan Jones

  ‘I meant why did you come? Why did you come after me?’

  ‘I thought I could bring you back.’

  I’m staggered. I’m sitting cross-legged in the pitch black but I feel myself swaying. He thought he could change my mind? Still? That’s what this is about?

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Nothing else seemed important.’

  ‘Why the fuck would I want to go back? What were you thinking? How did you get here?’

  He doesn’t answer straight away. I hear him pulling himself along the floor, I guess trying to sit up.

  ‘There’s broken glass.’

  He thanks me, takes another moment to get comfortable. My God, this is crazy. My head can’t fit it all in.

  ‘I couldn’t give you up. Not to this.’

  ‘I’m not yours to give.’

  He can’t answer that. For a minute or two we sit in the blackness and marvel that two people of the same blood could misunderstand each other so completely.

  ‘They think I’m a spy.’

  ‘Seriously? Have they met you?’

  ‘They’ve been through my phone. That’s how they know I’ve been talking to you. I’m so sorry.’

  It’s like he means some other life entirely, some other daughter. It crosses my mind that this isn’t my father after all, that it’s a final test from Him, that it’s important for me to make peace with the idea of him before I go. Like some sort of apparition.

  None of it makes any sense. I may be crazy.

  ‘Talking to me when?’

  Abraham tells her his story. All of it, from the moment he knew she had left to the realization that his foolishness had condemned them both to death. That a family execution was being planned. She lets him talk, but her silence isn’t just silence, it means something. It always does with her, and in the darkness he can picture her face, set and serious, some deep grievance behind it that he can never quite reach or resolve.

  ‘You’re Irene?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My God. My God. Someone has sent you. Is that what this is? You wouldn’t know how to do that.’

  ‘I had to have some connection with you.’

  ‘You are, you’re a fucking spy.’

  Though she can’t see it, Abraham shakes his head.

  ‘I’m not a spy. Try not to think like them. I love you. I came for you.’

  ‘Don’t tell me how to think.’

  Her silence is different now.

  ‘This isn’t you. You wouldn’t do this on your own.’

  ‘I was always terrified of losing you. When I lost you I wasn’t scared any more.’

  That reaches her, he knows it, and he waits before going on.

  ‘I knew it wouldn’t work. That you’d see this place for what it is.’

  ‘Sorry. What is it? This place.’

  ‘It’s a lie.’

  ‘God is a lie?’

  ‘Not God. This isn’t God. The idea. The khilafa. That you’re saving the world.’

  ‘Someone has to.’

  ‘You think that’s what they’re trying to do? The men in command. They want to save the world?’

  ‘They’re trying to save their people. My people. From death and torture and constant persecution. Dad, wake up. Stop taking those fucking pills and open your eyes. The world is sliding into hell.’

  It strikes Abraham that in London he and she had been equally out of place. It was home to neither of them.

  ‘And this isn’t hell?’

  ‘It’s a necessary stage.’

  ‘It’s necessary to throw people off buildings?’

  ‘The punishments are decreed.’

  ‘What happens after the hell stage?’

  ‘Shut up. I can’t believe I travelled thousands of miles to get away from you and I’m still having to listen to your shit.’

  Now we’re not talking. Three feet away from each other in the last place on earth and both of us are sulking. What’s more ridiculous, that I have to talk to my father here or that right now I won’t? I don’t know how long we just sit there in the dark but eventually I can’t stand it.

  He thinks he was right all along. That the fact we’re sitting here now is somehow proof I made the wrong decision. I can feel it, he’s just dying to tell me he told me so. But the khilafa has run out of patience with me, not the other way round. Badra was right. I’m not strong enough to make the sacrifices that need to be made. I’m in the way. I don’t want to be in the way. It’s as simple as that.

  ‘That was a shitty thing you did, with Mama’s picture.’

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be shitty.’

  ‘I gave up all that. I can’t have it dragging me back.’

  ‘You gave up your mother? That’s what God wants?’

  ‘No love is more important than love for Him, the most glorified, the most high.’

  ‘These men don’t love God. They love death, and power. And money. They love what men have always loved.’

  ‘Then why do they fight for Him?’

  ‘They’re not fighting for any God I recognize.’

  ‘You don’t know my God.’

  ‘I’ve read the Koran. Your God doesn’t want this.’

  I wasn’t expecting that. I imagine him going through it, looking for clues and objections.

  ‘You don’t know my God.’

  ‘I know God. And I understand why you’re here. You came to fight for a better world and I’m proud of that.’

  He’s silent for a while and I’m grateful for it. Not for long.

  ‘This is your house?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘It’s a nice house.’

  Not for me, I want to say, but I won’t give him the satisfaction.

  ‘Nice enough.’

  ‘The fighters and I, we sleep ten to a room and every night only eight come back.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘You should smell the stink of it.’

  ‘I know what you’re trying to do. This is a war. You show me any general who doesn’t live better than his men.’

  He thinks about that and when he speaks again it’s in this quiet voice that he thinks will get inside me.

  ‘How does he treat you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your husband. The general.’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Does he treat you well?’

  ‘I’ve been married to him for a week.’

  ‘And in that time?’

  ‘Leave it.’

  ‘Tell me. Would you introduce him to Mama?’

  That really gets me. How dare he exploit my mother to make whatever point he’s trying to make.

  ‘You don’t have the right to talk about her.’

  ‘She’s still my wife.’

  ‘After what you did to her.’

  ‘What did I do to her?’

  ‘She told me you started it. That she was ill because of you.’

  He’s quiet for a second and then asks me what she said.

  ‘That you’d done something to hurt her.’

  Now he doesn’t say anything for a long time and in the darkness I can sense the truth assembling itself in his head. I feel his hand reach for my leg, and rest on my knee.

  ‘My whole life I never did a thing to hurt her, or you. Your God or mine strike me down if I did.’

  A great sob moves up from the earth and through the whole of me and I work hard to control it. At least he cannot see my eyes.

  It must be two years since they’ve talked like this, and Abraham does his best to break the old pattern of their conversations. Don’t get cross. Don’t be riled. Have the energy and the will to keep her engaged. This may be the last time you talk to her – may be the last time either of us speaks to anyone.

  But in fact, it’s easy. After a lifetime of worrying about the future, the future has been taken away, and everything seems so clear, so calm. Right here at the end, I’m being shown what love is. My poor girl
, bewildered, incomplete, raging and afraid. I think I understand why you’re here. And it would be better before we die if you did, too.

  ‘Does he know you’re down here?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Borz.’

  ‘How do you know his name?’

  ‘You told Irene.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So they decide I’m a spy, and you must be too? Why doesn’t he stand up for you?’

  Every time she’s silent Abraham thinks he might be getting somewhere, but he waits, doesn’t push it.

  ‘That’s not why I’m here.’

  *

  I’ve got to tell him. For one, I’m not going to lie, it’s a sin, but also I don’t want him thinking he’s responsible for my fate. Not for this part.

  So I tell him. I tell him about Niran, and the fighter, and the gun, and even as I’m saying the words I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been and all the damage I’ve done.

  ‘You did the right thing.’

  He doesn’t know how complicated it is.

  ‘I put personal concerns before the khilafa.’

  ‘Protecting an eight-year-old girl isn’t a personal concern.’

  ‘It was a test. I failed the test.’

  ‘Sorry. Who set the test?’

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

  ‘Then you passed. What God would want you to abandon her?’

  He just doesn’t see it. He of all people ought to see it. I tell him that and he asks me what I mean.

  ‘It was for God to spare Isaac, not Abraham. Niran wasn’t mine to save. No one is. And now because of my mistake she will be lost forever. Don’t you see? If I’d been true to the khilafa she would’ve become a Muslim, a good Muslim, raised in a good family. And instead she’ll live and die in darkness. That was the test. I thought I knew best. That’s why I can’t be here. I’m not worthy of the khilafa.’

  Tears are building in me but I hold them, keep my voice steady. His breathing is slow and deep, and I hope he’s taking it in. It’s so important he understands.

  So twisted, her thinking. Each false thread pulls the knot tighter. She hasn’t been poisoned, she’s been programmed, so that everything is reversed. Dark is light, good is bad, death is life. Abraham casts around for the question to ask, the memory to invoke, the piece of logic that will magically cause it to unravel, and knows that none of them will work. But she’s upset, and that’s good.

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Niran.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What will happen to her?’

  ‘I don’t know, okay? How would I know?’

  ‘You know what the difference is?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Abraham’s sacrifice was to God.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Niran. Who was she being sacrificed to? You think God wanted that man to get pleasure from her?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You think He’d use that disgusting creature as His instrument?’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘How many are there like that, in the khilafa?’

  She doesn’t answer.

  ‘You think God would work through them?’

  ‘Can you be quiet?’

  ‘Your husband. A man like that. Would God work through him?’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Would He allow him to do the things he does to you?’

  A raging cry moves at him through the darkness and her fists connect clumsily, striking his chest until he finds and holds her arms and wrestles her closer to him. The pounding turns to twitching and the cry to sobs that shudder through her. The stuff of her abaya is heavy and her body hot inside it; her head rests on his chest, her breath making a warm circle on his shirt; slowly the seething spirit seems to leave her.

  ‘I’m proud of you.’

  She doesn’t say anything, and he wonders whether she’s falling asleep.

  ‘God chooses people like you for His work. Not people like them. Or like me.’

  When I wake I’m still leaning on my father and I’m so hot and I barely know where I am. I move off him, shuffle away, blink in the blackness. I think it’s daylight. I can see light coming through tiny cracks.

  ‘Good morning,’ he says.

  I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am. I feel like I’ve been taken apart and the pieces scattered across the desert.

  ‘Good morning.’

  Saying it helps, a tiny bit. Something normal, everyday.

  ‘Is there any way out of here?’

  He’s crazy. I knew he was crazy.

  ‘There’s no point.’

  ‘Who but the lost would despair of God’s mercy?’

  More craziness. I thought I was already thrown but that throws me.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘You know where. The Qur’an.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  He starts to look. Or rather he feels. I can hear him inching around the room, touching the walls, stumbling over things on the floor, rattling things about. I don’t know what he’s looking for, he’s getting on my nerves and I want him to sit down again. What does he think, we’re going to find a hidden door and a tunnel to Turkey?

  ‘There are fighters everywhere. You don’t know this place.’

  ‘No. But you do.’

  As he moves I can smell the sweat on him, hear him breathing and making little noises as he rummages about. From the way his breath catches sometimes, I think he must be hurt. Something’s missing. That sweet stale smell of drink, it’s not on him, for the first time in so long, and for some reason it makes me think of him when I was little and I used to sit on the toilet in the bathroom and watch him trim his beard. I think about all the children in the world who will never know their father, and for a moment that chokes me up.

  I don’t know how long it takes but eventually he comes and sits down beside me, feeling his way and putting his hand on my shoulder as he lowers himself.

  ‘Take this.’

  He finds my hand, and puts something in it. His own hands are soft and dry, even in the heat down here.

  ‘What is it?’

  It’s hard and cool to the touch, metal.

  ‘I think it’s a chisel. There’s a box of tools. Hide it in your gown.’

  ‘Niqab.’

  ‘Your niqab, then. You may need it.’

  ‘We may need more than a chisel. Have you got one?’

  ‘No. The only other thing was a saw.’

  From out of nowhere I laugh. I don’t see it coming and for an instant it’s like there’s a third person down here, I haven’t laughed in so long.

  2

  Sitting at the long side of the table are four men and one woman. Abraham and Sofia are made to stand opposite them against the wall and told not to look at anyone. Abraham glances up occasionally; why not, now? There are no more threats or terror in reserve. Sofia stands by him, in her niqab; he still hasn’t seen her face.

  The big one is Borz, he’s seen the pictures. He’d know it anyway: he has the face of a man who’s taken pleasure in watching men die. White, translucent skin, damp-looking, hard and pudgy at once, like pig fat, and sticking out from it like bristles the red brown hairs of his too-big beard. Two muddy green eyes taking in everything as if all they need to know is how best to destroy it. Abraham has never met a man of this kind, the monsters who occupy the news, and he’s surprised to discover that he’s no longer particularly scared. Instead he feels disgust for the man, his new son-in-law, and pity for the daughter who married him.

  Borz is in fatigues, desert camouflage. On his left is another large man, in black robes, a black scarf on his head. His eyes have a different strain of cruelty, born of some never acknowledged inadequacy; they watch carefully, assessing, calculating the personal risk in everything.
To Borz’s right is an imam, and by him a woman in full niqab, her face covered. On the other flank is a compact, hard, dry man in his fifties, maybe, who might be a bureaucrat or a general but looks used to having command. Here, the man in black seems to have the power. When he talks, the others listen and are careful not to interrupt.

  A council. A jury.

  They talk as if their prisoners weren’t there, and Abraham wonders why he and Sofia have been called up from their confinement downstairs for this. There’s discussion of timing, and place, even before the trial begins. Trial – it’s their word and they pronounce it with great gravity, as if it truly means something. The trial is being conducted here because the matter is so unusually sensitive.

  The man in black presides, and he starts with Abraham. The spy Ibrahim Mounir deceived the Islamic State twice, once by claiming he was an Egyptian and again by pretending to be a doctor. As they now knew he lived in London and worked as a pharmacist, he was no doctor at all. It was also clear that he had had contact with state espionage agencies in the UK before he came to Syria.

  The charges go on. Mounir and his daughter were from the start engaged in a conspiracy to pass secrets back to their masters in London. What better spy than a seventeen-year-old girl? Who would come under less suspicion? They even devised a means of communicating with each other on Twitter, in plain sight, that allowed them to pass instructions one way and vital secrets the other. Before this was discovered the daughter was placed in positions of great trust, and her ascent through the administration of the State was steep. She was well trained to achieve this, evidently, and her access to sensitive information made her a valued asset of British intelligence.

  This was a serious case. All spying is treason. But this is a commander’s wife, a prominent person, with the ability to inflict acute damage on the State and its reputation. An example must be made.

  ‘She is not my wife.’

  ‘You are married to her.’

  The imam speaks. ‘The marriage can be cancelled.’

  The man in black shakes his head. ‘It is known. The British know. They will use it.’

  Borz shakes his in turn. ‘I will not cancel.’

  At the end of the table the general or whatever he is leans forward and says he has a suggestion to make in this regard. Abraham is struck by how official the whole conversation is. This isn’t anarchy, and these are not mere thugs.