Erbil, Northern Iraq: several weeks later
“Now we defend ourselves from the evil,” Captain Rozaline Kalesh said, standing before the one hundred plus Yazidi women dressed in camouflage. “Whereas before we were its victims.”
Young and pretty, her blue eyes were accentuated by a red beret and a red and white checked scarf tucked into her camouflage tunic. With her infectious smile, no one would have suspected that the commander of the Sun Ladies had only recently escaped being a Jihad Nation sex slave, given to fighters as a reward for holy jihad, and that she would see her baby beheaded for crying.
And that she would now be commanding a unit of Yazidi paramilitary women with like backgrounds, fighting for vengeance against their former captors.
Women.
Some as young as fourteen, like private Besma Erol, standing ready, also in camouflage, with her red beret at a slant, her Kalashnikov by her side.
Havi was back home safe with Dadi, back home being the seat of a pickup truck, travelling endlessly to the far-flung refugee camps in Turkey where her father sought to reunite their people. But never alone. Their village destroyed and deserted, Havi would never be left alone again.
Not until he, too, was old enough to fight.