‘I have to pray.’
‘We need it.’
The bathroom is already a mess again. I wash my tattered feet, make myself clean and go to my old room, which is strewn with the things those poor women didn’t have time to pack as they were forced from the building. I’m guessing that the makkar couldn’t continue with its leader dead. I hope it’s that. I hope they haven’t taken them all to be questioned, that they think someone else is mixed up in this.
I pray for them. I pray for us, and for Badra. For her faith, which was strong, and for her understanding, which was blind right up until the end. For those two brothers, except that word doesn’t feel right any more. Those two fighters. Two men. When I close my eyes I feel like I’m in a room with the three people I’ve killed, that we’re all sitting in a circle, and I want them to say something, to forgive me, or rage at me, but they’re mute, and they just look past me into space.
Finally I pray for Zarifa, and for Abraham, and the millions caught in this war. And then for myself, that I might finally understand. What do you want, Lord? What would you have me do?
I don’t hear Him. He doesn’t speak to me. It is unlawful for a believer to kill another believer. He may cast me out, the most glorified, the most high. But I will not cast Him out.
Empty, hollowed, I finish praying, find antiseptic and cloth, and boil water. Then I have my father sit with his back to me and the light from the city and I clean his wounds. Some have begun to heal over tiny pieces of fabric and as I carefully pick them out he jerks and does his best not to scream. You have to be quiet, I tell him. There are spies everywhere.
In the end they all sleep, because Sofia is right; there’s nowhere left to run. In Badra’s room they find an alarm clock and set it to ring in four hours. When they wake, they search the apartment and find fresh niqabs, shoes for Zarifa and a too-large shirt for Abraham in a suitcase of a husband’s clothes. In Badra’s room Sofia is ruthless: she pulls out all the drawers, drags the mattress off the bed, goes through every pocket of every piece of clothing. Abraham suspects that there’s something beyond mere thoroughness to it, and at one point, when he catches her eye, he thinks he sees a strange kind of guilt there, as if by showing Badra no mercy after death she’s convincing herself that there was no need to have shown her any in life. It doesn’t sit well with her.
‘Who was she?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘You knew her.’
‘She made out she was my friend.’
Sofia was taking books from the shelves, thumbing through the pages.
‘But she was a hard woman.’
Taped to the back of the cheap plywood wardrobe they find a plastic envelope, and in it a paltry collection of documents: Badra’s passport; statements from a bank in Germany, the most recent dated six months earlier; letters from her mother, begging her to return to Munich; and cash, which Sofia counts out onto the floor. Four hundred euros and three hundred and sixty dollars.
‘Some commitment.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If she was so committed to the khilafa why keep all this? To get out. When it didn’t work for her.’
She shakes her head and counts the money again, then holds it in her hand and looks at it as if it holds the answer to something.
‘Is it enough?’ asks Abraham.
‘To what?’
‘To get us out.’
‘It helps.’
She explains the rules. No woman can go anywhere in the city without her mahram. That’s clear and paramount. No woman under the age of forty-five can leave the city at all, except in the case of a genuine medical emergency, and then she still needs to be with a male relative. And for foreigners, men and women, it’s more or less impossible to leave because it’s assumed that if you’re foreign, you’re ISIS, which is mainly true. So having papers wouldn’t see them out – but not having papers makes it worse. With good Syrian documents, a decent story and a few hundred dollars, maybe that would be enough, but looking like they do and having no papers? They’d need thousands.
‘What about force?’
‘You’re serious?’
Abraham shrugs.
‘When you came in how many fighters were there? At the checkpoint.’
‘Four.’
‘There’s always at least four. Sometimes more that you can’t see. There are three of us. We have two guns. Only one machine gun. And none of us has fired one before today. Then, if we make it, chances are they’re ready for us at the next checkpoint.’
For a few minutes they sit and consider their assets: some money, a phone, two guns, and a car, the key pulled from Badra’s pocket. It ought to be better than nothing and yet it feels like nothing at all. Finally, Abraham breaks the silence.
‘What if we stay?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What if we stay, get papers, do it properly?’
Sofia shakes her head.
‘They’ll find us.’
‘It’s a big city.’
‘It’s full of spies. I told you. There’s no way. Every hour is bad.’
‘Why?’
‘You have to ask why?’
‘Stupid questions can be useful.’
She shakes her head. ‘Because, because. Because they’ll come back here and find us. Because word will get round and everyone will be looking. Because even if we did find somewhere to stay we have no way of going out and getting food.’
‘How efficient are they?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, can we assume that every checkpoint already knows to look out for a man of my age and two girls of yours?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
10
There’s much talk of when to leave, before or after dark. At night they’re less likely to be recognized, but who would be sharp enough to distinguish these two veiled women and this bearded man from a hundred other identical groups that walked the city? Now I see a use for the veil, says Abraham, expecting a sharp look from Sofia, but instead he receives a smile. In the end they decide on dusk: everyone was more obtrusive at night, because locals simply slipped off the streets.
Sofia goes down first, and in the five minutes she’s gone Abraham again feels that sense of peril that seems to be growing sharper the closer they come to making it out – a possibility he daren’t think about and can’t help but imagine. Sofia and Zarifa with him on the dusty old bus north from Akçakale.
The stairwell is clear, the street seems clear, and so at six thirty, with the sun nearly gone and the mosques emptying from the last prayers of the day, the three of them walk swiftly down to the street and round the corner to Badra’s car in its spot, wary of every face they pass. Abraham is sure his eyes are too bloodshot and nervous for anyone who’s half-awake not to notice them, and wishes he had a veil for himself, but they reach the car easily enough, and it starts, thank heaven, and he sets off to the hospital with as much confidence as he can feign.
Sofia goes in slightly before Abraham, pushing Zarifa ahead of her at the barrel of the machine gun. She’s tried to explain how this is going to work ten times, but Zarifa hasn’t understood, and she mutters and half sobs as she walks.
God, Sofia was convincing in this role. The way she walks, all power and certainty, occasionally nudging Zarifa with the gun – if he didn’t have that final faith in her he’d swear she was still a member of the brigade and about to turn the tables on them. He follows in her slipstream at about twenty paces, past the battered and makeshift ambulances and the waiting mahrams, down the ramp, in through the main entrance of the building, along that ugly corridor with the sandbags in the windows, and the fighters milling about with more time than everyone else, and the dimly lit wards on either side. Sofia checks one closed door, doesn’t like it, tries another and without turning to look at Abraham goes inside after Zarifa. No one challenges her. Who would? She belongs.
One thought keeps cutting in: if they’re waiting for us this could be
the shortest of all escape attempts.
The long main corridor is U-shaped, and the room where they store the gowns and scrubs is at its furthest end. So many people to pass. Fighters, nurses, doctors, patients. Walk steadily, ignore the pain, you’re just a normal person.
Don’t look anyone in the eye. Be like Sofia, quick and sure.
It feels like a mile uphill but he makes it, and in the storeroom finds a clean set of scrubs that he puts on over his jacket. The gun is there. He ties on a surgical mask and for a moment is paralysed by the choice it presents. Mask up or down? Up, and someone with sharp eyes might wonder why, if he wasn’t operating. Down and he might be recognized. In the end he settles for down. Now the difficult part. Now to steal an ambulance.
Walking back towards the entrance he keeps his pace even and his eyes on the furthest point, resisting the strong urge to check every face, and as he turns the first corner, heart pumping at the base of his throat, fingers swollen at his sides from the surging blood, he sees Huq absently rounding the second, head down in someone’s chart that he almost certainly can’t understand. Twenty yards away, no more.
Abraham pulls up his mask and keeps his eyes on the floor. The rooms he passes are busy and there’s nowhere to go. So he carries on, watching the floor, wishing he had his own chart to look at; he should have found himself a chart. His hand slips through the hole in the gown and after some fumbling finds the gun in his jacket pocket.
With only feet between them, Abraham senses that Huq has looked up, and at the moment he hears his voice start to protest he steps close in to him so that his mouth is by his ear and the gun is in his side. Huq’s breath still stinks of meat and decay, but there’s something else in there, a tinge of immediate fear, and Abraham knows that his only hope is to count on the considerable coward in him.
‘So help me I will put a bullet up through your heart if you make a single fucking sound,’ he says, in English, hardly believing the words as they flow from his mouth, grinding the barrel between two ribs.
I’m not sure about this plan. I’ve heard better but I can’t come up with anything else. The one advantage, the one thing that might help, is that it plays on the fighters’ fears. Of their commanders, and of women. We’ll see.
I manage to calm Zarifa down, but it takes a couple of minutes, poor girl. Heaven knows what she thinks is going on. Just sit, I tell her, we’ll stay here for a few minutes and then we’re going to be leaving. I just need you to be quiet. Everything will be okay.
It’s a crazy plan.
I think we’re in housekeeping. Ragged mops, buckets, filthy cloths, empty bottles of cleaning fluid. The floor is stained and the air smells of damp and mould more than anything else. I’m glad I didn’t get ill in the khilafa. Zarifa sits on the floor and I stand by her with my hands on the gun, for appearance’s sake.
When I was in the makkar I thought time passed slowly, but this is something else. Each minute by the clock on Badra’s phone feels like ten – at each voice I hear outside my finger tenses on the trigger. I reckon it should take him five minutes, no more. Get in, get dressed up, get out.
Something’s happened, no question, and soon I’m going to have to go and look. At twelve minutes, I stand by the door and I hear noise out in the corridor, shouting, the kind fighters do when they’re not getting what they want. Somebody’s in a real state, like the world’s about to end. Get me a doctor. Get me a fucking doctor. If my friend doesn’t get a doctor in the next thirty seconds I’m going to start shooting people. It’s getting closer – I can hear him opening doors, screaming into rooms, and I know that if he doesn’t find what he wants he’s going to be in here any minute, and there’s nowhere to hide. Zarifa has gone stiff again and I put my hand on her shoulder to reassure her. When the door opens I have my gun and my story ready.
‘In here,’ says Abraham, and pushes Huq into the storeroom where the gowns and the scrubs are kept. ‘Over there. Sit on the floor.’
For pride’s sake Huq attempts a scowl, but he sits compliantly enough, cross-legged by shelves of old linen, and now Abraham wonders what on earth he’s going to do with him. He can’t shoot him – even in Raqqa, gunfire in a hospital would bring people running – and anyway he couldn’t shoot him. Compared to some of these people, Huq was more or less a saint. Leave him alive, though, and he would sound the alarm immediately, and sure as Abraham was that he could concoct some story that would have kept the poor idiot terrified for long enough to secure a decent head start, only one course of action seemed safe. He was going to have to tie him up.
God. How to do that without help? He began to regret the plan. Sofia should have come with him.
It’s only Huq. Think, be careful, don’t rush. From a box by the door he takes two masks and throws one to Huq. The gun is out on display now.
‘In your mouth. Like this. Then tie it behind your head.’
‘I knew you were a spy,’ said Huq, not loud – not loud enough to risk a bullet.
‘I’m not a spy.’
‘All those trips upstairs. Is Saad in on this?’
Abraham takes a deep breath and shakes his head.
‘Enough. Tie that thing. Tighter. Okay. Let me tell you why I came here. I came to try and rescue my daughter from the insane killing party you people are having. That’s all. Saad gave me work because I wouldn’t only treat the killers. You do the same and there’s still hope for you. You could be a good doctor. You could make a difference.’
That wasn’t true, and it wasn’t half of what Abraham wanted to say. But humiliate Huq and Huq would eventually take it out on somebody else.
‘Okay. This one round your ankles. In a figure of eight. Jesus, tighter. Okay. I’m going to put the gun down now but if you move an inch I’m going to pick it up again and I’m going to shoot you. Okay? And if you live I’m guessing you won’t be high up the surgical priority list.’
Abraham rests the gun on the nearest shelf, checks that Huq isn’t about to try anything, and takes a white sheet from a pile. He bites at the edge, works his teeth against the threads, opens up a split and tears the fabric from end to end. It’s worn and thin but good enough. In a minute he has two long strips and as he finishes he takes the gun and squats down by Huq.
‘Nearly done. Same deal. Don’t move.’
He puts the gun behind him, within reach, maybe two yards from Huq.
‘Your hands. Like this.’
As he holds them out Huq shifts his weight and throws himself forward with unlikely speed, grips Abraham by the throat and topples him onto his back, stretching with his free hand for the gun. Through the gag he’s making a roaring noise as if he’s finally become the warrior he’s always wanted to be, and his eyes are a crazed mixture of wild and afraid. Abraham is shocked, and his back is on fire, and he can’t breathe. He pushes helplessly against the weight, with all the strength he can find, but nothing gives. The little power he has is going. Huq’s fingers touch the gun, nudge it an inch further away, and as he adjusts his position to lunge for it again Abraham brings his knee up between the two of them and straightens it, pitching the other man awkwardly onto his side. Abraham kicks at him again; Huq grabs him by the ankle and pulls, recovering his momentum and launching himself forward.
Huq has the gun. Rolling on his side he twists and brings it round to point at Abraham, who finds just enough spring in his legs to push up and then fall. He falls on Huq and his hand closes on his wrist and for a moment the two men are locked together, bodies and wills rigid in struggle, the gun like a third player pointing first this way then that. A feeble amateur fight to the death, neither of them skilled, even competent. But Abraham has his legs, and now he brings his knee up hard into Huq’s groin, and again, and Huq’s body tightens and then relaxes, and his hand opens.
In one movement Abraham takes the gun, clumsily by the barrel, and without thought swipes it across Huq’s cheek, which seems to bend under the force and whips his head away so fast and so utterly that his neck mi
ght be broken. He raises his hand again, but Huq is gone. Not dead – his pulse is there – but out, and for a while.
Abraham kneels by him, panting from the effort and the heat, sweat across his screaming back. When his breath returns he finds the two strips of sheet and ties Huq’s hands as tight as he can, and his feet again, and finally he takes a mask and reinforces the gag. He drags him across the storeroom and, as an afterthought, passes a length of sheet around his ankles and ties it to the upright of one of the shelves.
What a waste, Abraham thinks as he fixes his scrubs and his mask and closes the door behind him. What a pointless life. What a worse than pointless life.
11
This brother is immense. Bigger than Borz, if anything, he fills the doorway of the storeroom, great dark head like an ox, a huge V of a chest, two chains of bullets crossed over it, gun pointing at the floor in his hand. The sight of me stops him, standing with my gun, he doesn’t know what it means. Thank heaven he can’t see how dry my mouth is or how fast my heart is beating.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Al-Khansaa Brigade, brother. What’s wrong?’
‘I need a fucking doctor. Find me a fucking doctor.’
‘I have a prisoner.’
‘Fuck your prisoner. He’s been shot in the neck.’
‘I can’t leave her.’
Every sinew in him is about to snap. He looks away, jaw clamped, head shaking, and when he turns back he lays each word down like blows.
‘You don’t have a prisoner any more. Move.’
He raises his gun and with the barrel motions me out of the way. I hold up a hand to him.
‘Wait. I’m coming. I’m coming.’
‘Why do you care about another dead cunt? Move out of the way.’
‘Your friend is dying.’
‘So stop holding me the fuck up.’
‘I’ll lock the door. It’s okay. It’s okay.’
By the look of him he’s a thought away from unloading his gun into me as well. Hand up, I tell him we’ll find a doctor, it’ll be okay, and I steer him from the room, making a show of locking the door behind me.
The Good Sister Page 31
