Marriage Does Not Become a Ten-Year-Old

The journalists wanted to know what Sammy meant by being left with no choice except leaving. What had happened? What changed?

There was a certain man who wore his religion garishly. He rose up the ranks in the newly assembled army because of his ability to quote wide swaths of text from the holy book and, more important, because he was artful in belittling those unable to recall the Qur’an as well as he. Rumors were that he murdered both his parents and slit his two brothers’ throats for not being assiduously devout. Every Daesh fighter called himself Abu this and Abu that, but he called himself Abu el-Nabi.

“Father of the Prophet,” the translator explained.

“May God forgive him,” Sammy said.

“May God blind him,” Sumaiya said, “and burn his religion. May God never forgive him!”

Abu el-Nabi was a graduate of the infamous Tadmor Prison in Palmyra. It was said that before he was arrested, he considered religion an afterthought, that he’d never fully contemplated the role of Islam in his life. But the electrocutions he suffered, the beatings with thick PVC pipes, the torturers whispering into his ears that they were going to turn him into art, bringing forth many different colors on his skin, all that transformed him into a believer. The villagers over whom he and his cohort ruled mocked him behind his back, suggesting that he was once a tall man, but the security apparatus broke enough bones that he graduated from prison a ridiculously short one.

In a Baath Syria he would have been a nobody, a puny homunculus of a man, but in the Islamic state he was a giant. He had two wives and he wanted a third.

And one day, not too long ago, five Daesh men, well scrubbed and in their best clothes, knocked on Sammy and Sumaiya’s door. The emaciated dog of the neighborhood understood everything and he barked and barked, trying to warn Sammy not to open the door. Abu el-Nabi looked comical in all-over sea blue, that whitebait of a man drowned in a shalwar kameez. The men were invited in, offered tea and welcoming conversation. It was half an hour into the unscheduled visit when one of the men stated the reason they were there. They had come to ask Sammy for his daughter’s hand in marriage. They had heard only great things about ten-year-old Asma, and they were there to vouch for Abu el-Nabi’s incredible qualifications as a husband. He was brave and courageous in battle, his men had the utmost respect for him, as did his wives, and most important, he followed the correct path. He was nothing if not devout.

“He was nothing if not a son of a bitch,” Sumaiya said, “a most despicable man. May God never grant him health. And short too. Asma was already taller than him. Everybody was.”

The men said they would have preferred, for propriety’s sake as well as tradition, to have had their women with them at this most glorious occasion, but there was a war going on and the situation was difficult. Sammy announced that he would of course give permission, how could he not? Granted, his daughter Asma was young and had her whole life ahead of her, but she wouldn’t be able to find a more worthy husband than Abu el-Nabi. The family would be honored to have such a man as one of their own. What family wouldn’t? Truly, a blessing had descended upon the house. Sammy explained that Sumaiya was rather ill and they would need a little time to prepare Asma for her future life. The men should return in a couple of days or one week. Yes, they should have the marriage contract signed the following week with a feast to end all feasts in celebration.

“He thought one week would give us enough time to sort everything and leave,” Sumaiya said, “but I had had enough of those sons of whores.”

They packed as much as they could as soon as the men left. They woke their children, and everyone squeezed into the family’s thirty-year-old pickup truck. They drove to Sumaiya’s brother’s house, where they stayed for two nights before continuing to the Turkish border.

“We drove as if we were being followed by jinn that first night,” Sumaiya said, “so fast that I threw up twice before we reached my brother, had to put my head out the pickup window and regurgitate into the dark night.” She paused and took a short, labored breath. Her husband offered her a look full of concern and utter devotion. “There was no light anywhere,” she said. “We had to drive the whole way with the headlights off because we were afraid of snipers. We were used to the sound of low-flying planes, of artillery and rocket launchers. Everything appeared gloomy and purple, yet I was able to see olive groves as we drove along, cucumber fields and bushes of sumac. Will I ever see their like again?”

Sammy wrung his right hand with his left as if squeezing water from a cloth.