Northern Iraq, on the outskirts of Mosul
The pickup trucks juddered to a halt inside the walls of the compound just before dawn. Dust wafted up from the tires, coating the occupants huddled together in the backs of the vehicles with a fine layer of sand. In the desert night the air had grown cold, so cold Besma and her brother Havi were shivering, not just from the fear of death.
They lay in the bed of one truck with eight other girls and children, and a lanky jihadi guard with one empty eye socket whose lips quivered hungrily whenever he looked at Besma. Besma clasped her arms tight around her little brother. She lifted her head cautiously and when the guard looked away, peered out over the side of the truck. One boy had had his skull cracked for such an offense and moaned listlessly by the tailgate, his head in a pool of sticky blood that attracted flies now the truck had come to a stop. Her heart thumped, out of control—for him and the rest of them.
From what little she could see, three or four low buildings formed the compound, an old school by the looks of it, with the red, white and black Iraqi flag still painted over the door. Bombed at one time, the main structure had been rebuilt with crooked cinderblock and had a lopsided roof. All the windows were boarded up.
“Where are we, Besma?” her six-year-old brother whispered. He trembled in her arms.
“I think we are near Mosul,” she said softly, so as not to be heard by One-eye. She stroked her brother’s soft hair. She had glimpsed a road sign during one of her braver moments when she had risked lifting her head, while bouncing along the potholed highway. They’d left her village several hours ago, heading west, so that put them close to Mosul as well. Mosul was now one of the Jihad Nation strongholds.
The doors to the cab of their truck squealed open and men leapt out.
“Everybody out!” screamed One-eye, slamming down the tailgate. He wore a long Afghan style turban and had a scraggly dust-caked beard. He brandished a Kalashnikov, pointing it at one girl. She was about thirteen, almost Besma’s age. She flinched and quickly got out of the truck, a stream of urine running down her leg.
“Out, you Yazidi dogs!”
In the truck bed, up against the back of the cab, Besma and Havi crouched, waiting their turn.
“I’m scared,” Havi murmured into her chest.
What was there to say? “I know you are, Havi,” she said, squeezing him close. They clambered to the rear of the truck. “We all are. But remember what Dadi told us. We must be brave.”
“They killed mother, didn’t they, Besma?”
She didn’t answer. She wasn’t ready to face it herself.
“I said ‘everybody out’!” One-eye shouted again, lurching around the side of the truck. His one good eye met up with Besma’s fearful stare. “That means you too, Sabia!”
The name alone made her shudder; sabia was a slave captured during war. The underlying connotation: a sex slave. She stuffed her fear down deep inside and climbed out with Havi.
She gave her little brother one final embrace before helping him down to the ground. “We will probably be separated, Havi. Remember what I told you.”
“Surah Al-Maun,” he said, naming a verse of the Koran, his small body shaking in his shorts and thin T-shirt. He had lost a flip-flop.
“Good boy,” she said, slipping off her flip-flops and kicking them over to him. “Recite it perfectly. No fear in your voice now.” Knowing the Koran could mean the difference between life and death. Besma had sung the verse Al-Maun along with Havi several times on the trip, locking it into his memory.
“Get moving, already!” One-eye shouted at Besma. “When you’re my wife, you’ll listen. There will be no doubt of that.”
“Get in a line!” another jihadi shouted, brandishing his AK-47. “Girls here!” He pointed his gun to one side of him. “Boys there!”
The rest of the jihadis were climbing out of the back of the truck they had been riding in.
“I love you, Havi,” Besma said, pushing him away, knowing no mercy would be shown for any infraction.
As they were split into two groups, more fighters emerged from the main building, a sandstone-colored affair. They were primarily jihadis, many in full Afghan-style costumes, as well as a few ominous looking individuals dressed in black fatigues with black knit caps. One was light-skinned, obviously Caucasian, a foreign fighter. He had a red beard. But there were two women as well, dressed head to toe in black, including niqabs which covered everything but their eyes, visible only through veiled slits, making the women look eerily sinister. They wielded short Kalashnikov automatic rifles. Besma had heard stories of the Al-Khansa female police, brutal in their enforcement of the standards of strict Sharia law for women. They walked quietly while the men swaggered, laughed and smoked, some chatting on cell phones. A chill crawled up Besma’s spine as one woman eyed her shorts, revealing her bare legs and feet.
But it was one lone woman who truly took Besma by surprise, in camouflage fatigues and a short black hijab over her head, with a black headband and white Arabic writing across the front. A black scarf with similar writing covered her mouth and nose but much more of her face was visible than the two Al-Khansa women. She was a Caucasian as well, with pale skin and green eyes, a teenager as evidenced by the blotches of acne on her forehead. She was also a good twenty kilos overweight. She wore expensive-looking Columbia hiking boots. Besma suspected she was one of the Terror Brides she’d heard about, radicalized over the Internet and brought in to marry Jihad Nation fighters.
She lumbered up to the line of girls and stood there with her hands on her substantial hips and scrutinized them, one by one, smirking with her eyes as she went from one fearful girl to another. She had a cold petulant stare.
It stopped on Besma.
“Name,” she demanded in clumsy Arabic. She was an Ameriki.
“Besma,” Besma whispered.
“No!” The girl lunged forward, striking Besma across the face with the heel of her hand. It packed a solid blow and knocked her to the ground. “Sharmoota! Your name is Sharmoota!”
Whore.
Besma sat up on the hard dirt, rubbing her cheek.
“Up!” the American girl shouted. “Up, Sharmoota!”
Besma climbed to her feet, her head ringing. She shook it off and stood up straight. The Terror Bride stood with her hands on her hips again, a self-satisfied grin showing through her scarf. She turned her head this way and that for signs of approval from the others. None came.
Just then Hassan al-Hassan came striding over, dressed in black, except for dirty white sneakers adorning his feet and a khaki ammunition belt over his robe. Besma immediately recognized him by his arrogant strut as the man who killed her mother with the butt of his rifle. He had removed his black headdress and his hair hung long and unkempt. His beard was thick, like a beehive. She knew she would hate him more than any other man, and for the rest of her life, however long that might be.
“What is happening here, Abeer?” he said to the American girl. He spoke slowly, Besma assumed, so that the girl could follow.
“Sharmoota,” she said, pointing at Besma’s bare legs.
The man nodded as he studied Besma’s legs, his eyes moving up her body, taking her in. He had thick lips. He reached for her face, holding her chin in his fingers.
“You again,” he said with an appreciative nod.
Besma trembled, fighting to keep from shaking. Be brave, her father had said.
“How old are you?” he said.
“Fourteen.”
“Look down when I talk to you.”
Besma did.
“Do you know who I am?”
“You’re Hassan al-Hassan,” she said quietly. “The leader.”
He seemed to be studying her.
“Strike her!” Abeer said. “Strike the sharmoota.”
“It seems you already did that,” he said.
“Sell her! Sell her in the slave market.”
“Do not tell me what to do, woman,” Hassan said to Abeer. “Go inside now.”
“But . . .”
He jerked his head to one side, glaring at her over his shoulder. “Don’t make me say it again.”
The girl named Abeer lowered her head, waddled back to the main building. The other men and the two Al-Khansa women seemed pleased with that outcome. Abeer was not popular.
“Take this one over there,” Hassan said to the Al-Khansa women, letting go of Besma roughly.
A flood of panic welled in Besma’s chest as the two women each grabbed one of her arms and frog-marched her over to the group of girls and boys destined to be sold as sex slaves or, at best, ransomed back to their families. Tears sprang up and she struggled to keep them in. It wouldn’t help Havi to see her weeping.
The men were already gathered around, saying they would take this or that girl for wives if the girls were lucky. Others would be bounty, sold or traded. Several men gawked at Besma. One wanted to know if she was a virgin. Meanwhile the Al-Khansa women inspected the line of boys, of which there were five. Two boys were taller than the others, close to puberty. The boy with the fractured skull had been left motionless in the bed of the truck.
A weak sun started to glow above the jagged stone wall in the east.
“Remove your shirts!” One woman waved her AK at the two tall boys.
They eyed each other nervously.
“Do it now!” the woman screamed.
The boys did as they were told, hunching forward, shirtless.
“Hands above your head!” the other female officer instructed them.
The boys obeyed. The slightly taller boy’s skinny arms shook as he raised them above his head.
“Aha!” the first woman shouted, turning to alert the men. “Come! Come!”
Three men came sauntering over. One was the Caucasian man with the red beard.
“See!” the woman shouted. “He has hair!”
The taller boy had faint wisps of underarm hair. Too old for conversion to Islam.
The two boys were told to lower their arms while the men broke out cigarettes. At first the boy was merely bewildered, looking back and forth at the men, as if they might be discussing who would take him under their wing.
“You take him,” Hassan al-Hassan said to the Caucasian fighter. “You need the experience.”
“Allāhu Akbar,” the man said. Then he said to the boy, “Let’s go for a walk.” He unsnapped the holster on his hip.
The boy’s face froze. He broke out in tears.
“Don’t be a coward,” the man said. He drew his pistol and pointed toward the gate of the compound. The boy stepped forward reluctantly, slumped over, head down.
Besma’s insides churned. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from her brother at the end of the line, where one of the men was now questioning him. She strained her ears to listen but couldn’t make out what he was saying over the pre-morning wind blowing in from across the desert. She prayed silently to the Peacock Angel of their faith that Havi would answer their questions well, that they would let him live.
From behind the wall, they heard a single shot, and the foreign jihadi who had led the boy away, yelling: “God is great!”
A pale orange sun edged higher, throwing slanted shadows across the compound.