When they get back in the evening, Idara invites me to eat with her and Badra. I think she asks me because we can talk to each other easily and the rest of the time in here communication is quite difficult. Last night we all spent an hour or two together in the sitting room, most of us anyway, crowded round a tablet watching videos and saying prayers and that was great, all bound together by the universal language of faith. That’s the magic of those videos, I realize, I hadn’t thought of it before. You don’t need to know Arabic to appreciate their power.
Anyway, most of the time there’s a lot of nodding and gesturing and as a result the women here haven’t bonded as they might, families eat separately and tend to keep to themselves.
Idara talks more than her friend. She’s telling a story about an Iraqi fighter who got scared and tried to leave when he saw how many brothers were being killed by the Peshmerga. He was found cowering in one of the tunnels we’ve dug round the edge of the city to hide from drones and spy planes when we need to – three brothers literally bumped into him during last night’s airstrikes. At first they thought he was a terrified local woman, but when they pushed her out into the night one of them saw her combat boots. A fighter in a niqab. We know what God says about that. They cut off his head and put it on a spike, says Idara, and she makes a spitting noise – if you hurry up and get married maybe you’ll be out of here in time to see it.
Sometimes I think she might be teasing me but I don’t mind – I’d rather we talked. She asks me about my childhood, and my father, and my mother, and I’m happy to tell her. I never used to talk about my life but now it seems so far away it might as well belong to someone else. Idara’s response is amazing. She says my mother’s illness released me to come here, to travel the path I was always meant to take – that if she had still been well I might have found it hard to break away. What a blessing it is to be with others who have been guided by the Prophet and can help me illuminate my journey. I don’t tell them about my father, and the type of man he is, but suddenly all that makes sense too. If he’d shown me more real love maybe I wouldn’t be here. Of course it happened this way! There could be no other.
Badra is pretty quiet still. She’s from Germany, and Idara told me she came here with her husband, a Turk who died during the battle for Sadad. They used to be al-Nusra, committed before the khilafa even existed. My respect for her grows.
Idara’s from Sudan, but she was living in Egypt before, and when we talk about Cairo I feel so close to her. Her husband is away in Libya training our people there. She laughs when she tells me that he has just taken another wife, a fifteen-year-old local girl. When I ask her how she feels about that she shrugs and tells me it’s the law, and the will of Allah, praise be upon Him, and who is she to question it? Besides, she’s here and he’s there and this is another fact of life. Do not trouble yourself with things that cannot be changed, she tells me. She is a wise woman, Idara. She has seen a lot, and she understands. Would it bother me? she asks. If I was worried about my emotions I wouldn’t be here, I tell her. She laughs again, and nods. She looks at Badra. You see? She will do well here.
Dinner is pasta in tomato sauce, Idara makes it and it’s good.
When we’re washing up I ask Badra and Idara about the cigarettes I saw the brother take at the checkpoint as we entered the city. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and wondering whether to keep quiet about it, and in the end decide to ask their advice. Apart from anything else I can’t be sure that I’m not meant to say something, that the whole thing wasn’t a test. I do my best to be subtle.
‘Are any of the laws of the khilafa relaxed for the mujahideen?’ I ask. ‘When they return from battle.’
‘The laws are laws for all,’ says Badra, but Idara is looking at me, just a little sideways.
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Just generally.’
‘A general question?’
I nod, and Idara half frowns, half smiles.
‘You have an example?’
I hesitate. ‘In the way they treat their wives. How they behave. Smoking, that kind of thing.’
‘There’s something on your mind?’
‘Seeing the brothers here. Wondering what it’s like for them, coming home when they’ve seen what they’ve seen.’
Maybe this is what I’m worried about. Maybe the cigarettes are a distraction. Idara breathes in deeply through her nose, nodding.
‘The brothers are men like any other. And they are at war.’
‘What you think of them is not important,’ says Badra, looking hard at me.
I don’t understand her hostility. Everything I say she twists.
‘I just want to understand.’
I think I flush as I say it but I can’t help that.
‘You are not here to understand,’ says Badra. Her face is so pale and hard. ‘You are here to serve. You will never marry if you do not change.’
All the things I wanted to say go out of my head. I’m confused, and I ask Him for clarity.
‘The khilafa can’t be built on hypocrisy. There are laws. There is sharia.’
Badra just stares at me. I muster the strength to meet her stare, to stand my ground, but there’s something else in her eyes. They look almost sad.
‘You have no idea what we’re building here.’