‘The shop is closing! The shop is closing!’ Qoteh handed a journalist back his cash. ‘I’m sorry, we must close.’
The US Humvee outside the shop was revving impatiently as Saddiq loaded the last crate of wine onto its trailer. As it pulled sharply away towards the bridge, several crates tumbled off the back and smashed to the ground. Loitering children picked up the broken bottles and, laughing, poured what was left of the wine into tins and buckets.
Qoteh pulled down the shutters and a bullet ricocheted off the metal. Saddiq rushed inside. He reached for the padlock by the cash register. More bullets thudded into the plasterwork outside. A child screamed.
‘Don’t lock the front, Saddiq! Rozeh may need to—’
‘We must, Qoteh! If we see her, I will open it. I have a gun.’
Qoteh began reciting a prayer she’d heard from the midwife when her cousin’s child was born. The midwife had repeated it over and over again as the birth reached its crisis point.
O Khatun Fakhra, help her!
O Khidr Elias, help her!
O Sheykh Matti, help her!
Another explosion; more shots. Qoteh screamed. A hole had appeared at the side of the bridge; twisted steel bled from the concrete.
Qoteh looked to Saddiq. ‘Tell me, husband, tell me they won’t let the children cross the bridge. They will keep them at the school. Tell me, that is why she is late! They are keeping them safe at the school.’
‘Yes, Qoteh. I know she is safe.’
‘Tell me the angel is with her!’
‘He is with us, Qoteh. He is with us.’
The street between the shop and the once great River Tigris was empty now; the children had fled with their spoils.
A gun battle on the bridge. Shouts. Bullets. Cries.
‘That’s her! She’s come round the back.’
‘But… you have not seen her cross the bridge. Saddiq! Your gun, help her!’
More banging on the back door.
‘Rozeh, is that you? Is that you?’
The kicking on the door stopped. Saddiq stopped still in the shop, paralysed. More bullets outside. He was sweating; the air was angry. He reached for the gun beneath the cash register. It was there. Good. It was loaded.
‘Get out of here! Go! Go! I will call the police!’
‘They won’t come! They won’t help you! They’re on the bridge! Devil worshippers! Devil worshippers! Evil! Evil! Devils! Devils! Satans! Satans! We kill you! We kill you! We kill you all! Death to the infidel!’
Qoteh was standing at the foot of the stairs, steeling herself.
‘We can go, Qoteh! We have time.’
‘We cannot. Rozeh!’
‘Evil! Evil! Drinkers! Drunks! Corrupters of the faithful! Collaborators! Transgressors! Dogs! Devils! Devils! Devils!’
The chanting increased. The kicking on the steel door increased, echoing coldly around the shop.
‘We must wait for Rozeh. This is her home. We must be here for her. What if she comes back and we are gone?’
Qoteh started screaming at the mob. ‘Who are you? We know you! Yes, we know you. We know your fathers and mothers and grandmothers. They know us. You know we are not evil. You know we love God. We love God.’
‘Blasphemers! You Yezidis are Blasphemers! Kill the liars! Kill the devils! You bring temptation to the faithful! You ignore the Law! God smiles on the killers of the pagan Yezidi!’
‘We are not pagans! We love God! We are all human beings! Like you! Leave us! Go in peace! Do God’s will!’
The shop went quiet.
‘Unlock the shutters, Saddiq.’
‘And let them in at the front?’
‘If they get in, we can at least—’
‘No, we stay. We fight. If God wills, we will win.’
More explosions on the bridge; rapid fire; police alarms; the heat.
The couple heard an object roll against the metal door. A stone? Pray it be a stone.
‘Get down!’
The door flew into the shop smashing through a stack of beer cans. In rushed a gang of desert Arabs, teenagers, some in black headbands emblazoned with lines from the Koran, carrying knives and machetes.
O Khatun Fakhra, help us!
O Khidr Elias, help us!
O Sheykh Matti, help us!
Saddiq stood up. ‘In the Name of God, leave this house!’
A Fedayeen, his face hidden under the trademark black woollen turban of the paramilitaries loyal to Saddam Hussein, emerged from the group. ‘Polluters of the Sacred City! In the name of all the Fedayeen martyrs and all who defend the faith from the Crusaders, servants of Satan and the power of evil, you are condemned to die!’
The man gestured for the others to back off. He then took out a grenade from beneath his shirt and pulled the pin. Without a thought, Saddiq shot him between the eyes. The grenade dropped and the Fedayeen fell quickly on top of it.
‘Get out! Get out!’ cried one of the intruders.
The blast hurled Saddiq into the shutters as the shop’s ceiling collapsed.
By seven o’clock, the bridge was quiet. American reinforcements had arrived from the south and re-established the roadblock. The skirmish did not make the news – because it wasn’t news. Things like this happened all the time. At eight o’clock, teachers led a group of schoolchildren over the bridge. The boys played war games and the girls played pop music on their Walkmans.
As the line got closer to the other side, as the teachers were body-searched by the soldiers, as the moon vanished behind a huge cloud of burnt oil, as the dogs barked and life in Mosul went on, Rozeh saw her home. Only, it was not home any more.
Outside the battered shutters, buckled as if blasted by a huge fist and pulled up a few feet above a pool of deep, dark blood, was a row of bodies and body parts. These were not parts like you would buy to mend a car. These were parts that could never make a whole. They weren’t people and the people were no longer in the parts. Mute, cold, pale, signifying nothing but an absence of something that had woken up that morning, dreamed of better times to come, had lunch, had… life.
Rozeh, her thick black hair framing a face wet with tears, was suddenly an orphan, a daughter of the war. The boys who a few hours earlier had scraped as much booty as they could off the road were back to see what might be left in the shop. One of them came up to Rozeh, who was staring at the blankets, wondering which of the shapes beneath was her mother or father.
‘Can I give you a drink, lady?’
‘No.’
‘Is that your mother?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Maybe she’ll wake up, or come out of Paradise to see you.’
Rozeh cried. The police took her away.
At the shelled-out station near the old imperial post office, the police asked her a few questions, but she had no answers. She only had a question:
‘Why won’t they leave us alone?’