Northern Iraq, near the Syrian border
Besma heard gunfire off in the distance, popping on the warm night wind. She stopped for a moment on the dark road leading to her village, her arms aching from the bags full of onions and leeks she carried.
“Besma—what’s that?” her brother Havi asked, standing next to her, staggering under the weight of a five-kilo bag of rice cradled in his small arms.
Cocking her head to a cobalt sky pierced with stars, she heard automatic rifle shots cracking louder, along with the roar of engines. Prickles of fear spread across her back. She imagined the jihadi fighters laughing as they waved their weapons from the back of their pickup trucks, their eyes wild from the pills they took.
“They’re here, Havi,” she whispered to the six-year-old, doing her best to control the trembling in her voice.
Jihad Nation.
The jihadis were coming. In their eyes, Besma and her people, Yazidis, weren’t fit to live. They were non-Muslims. Infidels.
She drew a deep breath. “Run for the shop, Havi.”
They picked up their feet, their flip-flops slapping, but were hampered by the weight of the food they’d been sent to fetch. Besma could run. She was fourteen, with limbs that grew longer every day, it seemed. But she kept a slower pace with Havi.
“Faster, Havi! It’s not that far!”
“I can’t!” Havi shouted, swerving off the dirt road as the bag of rice seemed to pull him off course.
Bursts of automatic gunfire grew louder, as did the whine of the trucks. And now she could hear them, screaming for holy jihad. Death to the devil worshipers!
“Give the sack to me,” Besma gasped, stopping, hooking both of her plastic sacks onto her hands as she squatted and curled up her forearms, taking the precious bag of rice from her brother. “You run ahead. Warn the others.”
Havi disappeared in front of her into the darkness, his short bare legs moving in a dusty blur. She wondered for one terrible moment if she would ever see him again.
She ran, too, laden down with the food. The plastic handles cut into her fingers like knives.
Even so, she began to pick up speed.
As she and Havi drew closer to the village, so did the jihadis, roaring with laughter, gunfire breaking the otherwise serene night. The single light over her father’s shop appeared in the darkness. Then she saw her uncle, standing by the door with two men, rifles ready. All the other men were gone, off to the south, or in the refugee camps, trying to rescue the women and children the jihadis had taken. The men by the shop checked their weapons and talked in anxious torrents, then moved in haste, shepherding the women and children into her father’s print shop. She saw Havi go in, but not before stopping to look her way.
Finally, she too reached the shop, where a boy about her age, with dark eyes and thick eyebrows, slung his rifle over his shoulder and helped her carry the food. “Get inside, Besma! You must calm the others.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Do you have your Koran?”
“Inside.”
“Keep it with you.”
It was rumored that if you could recite the Koran, they wouldn’t behead you. She had been learning verses, and teaching them to Havi.
Soon they were locked inside the shop, huddled in the back, about fifteen of them, women, girls, and children. Besma’s mother shot her a worried glance from under her black-and-white-checked scarf, blinking rapidly. She hugged Havi as she rocked back and forth, whispering prayers to Ezid—their God—to protect her son.
“Don’t worry, Mother,” Besma said. “The jihadis don’t harm children.”
Her mother frowned as she ratcheted up her prayers. It was clear she didn’t believe her.
Outside, in the dirt square across the street from her father’s shop, they heard trucks screeching to a halt amidst the chatter of weapons, the jihadis screaming that Allah would have his vengeance on the infidels.
“We must be strong and pray,” Besma said as she gathered with the others, her heart a piston that felt as if it would break if it beat any harder. Crouching, she put her arms around her mother and another woman from the village, who was battling tears as she clung to her own daughter. Havi crouched in the middle of it all.
“Give me your cell phone,” Besma said to her mother. With fumbling fingers, her mother produced a cracked phone from within her dark robe. It fell on the old tile floor and Besma scooped it back up, found the speed dial, and the number she needed. She pressed it with a shaking finger and held the phone to her ear.
Outside in the square the gun battle began, but with only a few of their men and so many jihadis, Besma feared it would be short.
The phone droned on. No answer. No rollover to voicemail. Her father was out of range. Last she heard, he was at a refugee camp in Raqqa, looking for women and children who had escaped the jihadis.
And then, as quickly as it began, the gun battle in the square was over. The jihadis shouted in victory.
It was all Besma and her people could do not to cry out in anguish. She wondered if the young man with the thick eyebrows, who had looked at her so kindly, was now dead.
The fighters searched the village, going from door to door while Besma and the others cowered in the back of the shop in silent fear.
It didn’t take long for the shop doors to rattle violently.
“In here!” one man shouted. “I can smell them!”
Soon the jihadis smashed in the glass and metal door to her father’s shop.
They stood there, more terrifying in real life, wild hair and long beards, all in black, holding their AK-47s, as they leered at the women, especially the younger ones. One man in a long afghan headdress bounded over, headed for her little brother.
“You!” he said. “Stand up like a man!” Havi trembled.
Besma reached for the man’s arm. “Please,” she said. “He’s only a boy.”
“Well, he’s mine now,” the man said to Besma in thick guttural Arabic. He licked his cracked lips and gave a wicked grin. “And look at you! Dark like an Arab. But with eyes as blue as the noon sky. A Yazidi princess. God is good to the victor.”
“She is indeed a prize, Hassan al-Hassan!” another man said. The man in the headdress was clearly the leader.
The other men laughed as they picked out girls, fighting over them, some offering to pay for the privilege of taking them first. Several hovered around Besma, ogling her bare legs in her shorts. Unheard of for a Muslim woman. Besma fought the hammering in her chest, summoning up the courage her father said they must all have, even if it was buried so deep she might have to dig forever.
Havi eyed her, terrified, as he stood by Hassan al-Hassan.
She must do whatever it took to stay by his side. “Take me with you,” she said. “I want to be with you.”
“Of course you’re mine,” he laughed. “Until I’m done with you.”
“Thank you,” Besma said, bowing, putting her hands together in prayer. “Thank you.” Then, “Take her, too,” she said, her head still bowed, indicating her mother next to her. “She is the best cook you will ever have. She can make any dish you desire.”
“That old hag?” Hassan al-Hassan laughed. Standing back, he raised his AK-47. As Besma’s mother shrank, her arms over her head, pleading, he brought the butt of his rifle down on her, cracking her mother’s skull. The women and children screamed and Besma battled waves of nausea as her mother fell to the floor, lifeless.
Havi yelped, as if he, too, had been struck, and could feel the blow.
She fought the gagging in her stomach, the roar of panic in her ears, the tears pulling at her eyes. She must stay strong for Havi; she would do him no good by collapsing like a panicked animal.
“Take them to the trucks,” Hassan al-Hassan said to the jihadis. “Her,” he said, pointing his rifle barrel at Besma. “She’s mine.”
Besma clutched her brother as the two of them were pulled away. Her body shook uncontrollably, but she struggled to calm herself, knowing she must dig deep for that courage, if they were to live.