Topzawa was a vast camp that looked more like a busy petrol depot than what it really was. The early-spring air froze in their lungs when they went out to meet the new arrivals. Balagjar village, in the Qara Dagh region. The backs of the cattle trucks opened and steam rose up from the huddled crowd inside. Soldiers jostled the first line of villagers, and an old woman fell to the mud. Two younger men hitched up their baggy pants and climbed down to help the others.
The men were separated to one side. Sixty in all. The women and children were led away somewhere else. Then the process began. They had them remove everything. Watches and rings. Then hats, scarves, belts, and shoes. Piled onto a canvas tarp that was bundled up and sent off.
When, finally, the men were cuffed to each other in pairs, the officers set down their teacups and began to go about their business. The intelligence officer from Tikrit went first, stripping the men of their wallets and identification cards as the man at the table matched each with the names on the lists.
“Omar Askari. Father, Ozer. Mother, Khadija.”
“You know what you’ve done, don’t you?”
“Sir, no. I have done nothing.”
“You have been found in prohibited areas.”
“That is my village. That is my home.”
The officer slaps the boy to the ground. “You are subversives.”
“No sir, we are farmers.”
The officer turned to the man at the desk and said, “Peshmerga. Next!”
An old man fainted and the officer ordered him back on his feet. The teenager cuffed to the old man tried to plead. “He is still suffering from breathing the —”
The boy did not have a chance to finish. The intelligence officer began beating and kicking the two men savagely until both fell motionless to the ground.
At some point, the man from General Security tapped the intelligence officer on the shoulder. “Let me have these two.”
Something about the way he said it made the Tikriti walk away. He knelt down in the mud, and asked for someone to bring them water. When the men could stand again, he walked them over to the office where they drank hot tea and talked in hushed voices. He had hot meals brought in, then cigarettes. Every now and then, the Tikriti came over and he waved him away again. He went over the names on the lists twice before letting the prisoners go to sleep. When he saw the boy could read, he sent the old man off. He shared the documents in the folder and together they read them out loud.
The next day, he continued his conversations with the boy. He didn’t interrogate. He didn’t threaten. He just continued reading with the boy by his side. By nightfall, he had the names of all KDP operatives in the village, including two who also worked for intelligence. After that, resistance in Qara Dagh crumbled. After that, the men from Tikrit gave him more respect.