I count them when I come in. Nine women and five children, all girls. I asked Umm Karam how many there would be but she didn’t know, and neither did the brother who drove me here.
They look dirty, like they haven’t washed since they arrived, and tired. Every one of them has bags under her eyes, and none of them are veiled, though some of the women wear headscarves. Their clothes are garish and need a wash, you can smell the old sweat on them as soon as you come through the door, and worse, and they make me realize how ordered the khilafa is and how used to it I’ve become. The colours they wear look so cheap and unnecessary. Arrogant, even, as if the way they look is more important than what God wants.
Most of the women must be in their fifties or sixties but through the dirt it’s hard to say. The girls are young, tiny, innocent, confused – they’ve been through so much. The oldest is maybe eight, and she’s the only one who’s with her mother, a big woman, younger, with fat arms that hold her child foolishly, like they can protect her from anything. The rest are grandmothers, I think. Probably their daughters and sons died in battle.
We’re all lucky to be here. We all have a chance to save ourselves. But from how they’re looking at me they don’t see it that way – the children are sullen, the women full of a silent rage that they’re doing their best to drill right into me. I feel like every new teacher must have done when she came into our class for the first time and all the idiots who’d never amount to anything would stare her out. What did they think she was there for if not for them? It used to drive me crazy, but it taught me how not to respond at least, and not for the first time I’m full of a sort of wonder at how He has quietly prepared me for my life in this place.
Yazidis. Pagans. Pagans! I almost shake my head. How can pagans still exist anywhere? Soon they will not, as we clear them from their lands.
I asked Umm Karam why they hadn’t been killed. She has a look when she’s thinking about the best response, it’s not like she thinks I’m stupid, it’s just that she’s so far ahead of me, so full of knowledge and grace.
When we kill a sheep, she said, we do so knowing that it is one of God’s creatures and should not die in vain. So we take the meat and we eat it or salt it. We eat the kidneys and the liver and the heart and the sweetbreads, the eyes, anything that will not injure us. We use the wool for clothes and we tan the skin for leather. The bones we boil for stock. At the end, God can look at us and say you have not wasted My creation.
It is the same with the Yazidis. We kill the men because that is war. The boys we teach the one true faith and train to fight. And the women, the strong and healthy ones, they meet our fighters’ needs when they return from battle, or they are taken into our homes to do honest work, and the rest we must make use of as we can. The ones you will be teaching are the guts and the bones. They will require preparation and patience to yield anything of value, but we would rather not throw them away. The girls especially, they can grow up to be good Muslims and the khilafa needs all the future mothers it can get.
But they must be good Muslims. When we force them to convert at the edge of a sword their hearts remain unchanged and in a week they are wailing and disobeying and betraying us. So we are trying this new way.
Very good. You have two weeks to decide the fate of these people. You are a convert yourself, and know what it is to be born into the wrong faith. Succeed, and the khilafa will be stronger. Fail, and you will have hurt only yourself.
They’re all sitting against the far wall on a mess of grubby blankets and some of them look close to sleep, it’s so hot in here. The wind is up today and it’s blowing heat and sand in through the broken glass of the two small windows. I unhook my veil, and very deliberately inspect each of the women and children in turn, not saying anything.
To me they look like Iraqis, but some have wild hair with blonde in it and eyes between blue and green. The youngest girl is maybe four, she’s tiny, and you can tell just by looking at her that she hasn’t been corrupted by the nonsense of her family’s religion. Then there are two who are older who are on the verge of being sucked in. There’s resentment in their faces but they’ve learned it from somewhere. The oldest girl is very beautiful, peering shyly at me from her mother’s arms – or she would be beautiful after a wash, with clean hair, with the wildness combed out. I can see wisdom in her eyes, which seem to run deep into her, and I wonder whether she can see it in me. Here’s something I can work with.
I try not to blink as I move from face to face, even though I am nervous, I realize. My future is on the line as well.
The first step is to see who speaks Arabic. According to Umm Karam some of them do, but not many, and no one in this group has admitted to it. It suits them to pretend even greater ignorance than they have.
‘I am Umm Azwar,’ I say. ‘I am your teacher. You have a choice. A simple choice. You can convert to our faith. Or your children will be taken from you, and you will die.’
They all just stare. I try to work out who’s in charge. In every group someone’s in charge. One woman, the oldest, stares at me with her eyelids half shut so that I can’t tell if she’s close to sleep or just can’t stand to look at me. Her face is yellow, wrinkled, unbelieving, a godless face, and her lazy eyes are like a snake’s, watching and waiting. If these people really do worship Satan she might be the high priestess.
‘Who speaks Arabic?’
I look from face to face, getting nothing. They’re like kids in detention, sulking, refusing to engage.
‘I know one of you does. Which one of you is it?’
One of them says something, not to me but to the floor, and the others mutter and make a sort of twittering noise. They’re so primitive, like a troop of monkeys. I half expect them to start picking bugs out of their hair.
I tell them to be quiet and take my time.
‘I know you understand me. Work with us, and this will be easy. You think this is as bad as it gets? It can always get worse. We can learn here together, or I will separate you and you will never see your children again. Talk it through. Don’t dwell on what you’ve lost. Think about what you still have left.’
As I say it I keep my eyes on the old woman and the two others whose heads are still up, and all I see there is defiance. I almost admire their spirit, but it would be better for everyone if they had less of it.
I veil myself and walk slowly from the room, closing the door behind me. It’s a steel door, this was some kind of storeroom, but the whole place is badly built and there’s a gap between the wall and the corrugated iron roof and I wait in the corridor outside to listen. The two brothers are squatting down against the wall and take no notice of me. It must be hard for them, not being at the front. Having no noble purpose.
This place is disgusting, a mess. I don’t know what it was, an old factory or workshop or something. There’s one big long room that takes up almost the whole building, full of workbenches and machines that look like they’ve been stripped for parts or scrap, then a corridor with three smaller rooms off it, and a bathroom, which even with the wind blowing through the place stinks like you wouldn’t believe. Some of the roof has been taken and there are weeds growing through the dirt floor. These women were captured five days ago but others have been held here – the stench is so bad and in the other rooms there are piles of clothes and suitcases and shoes, some women’s, some men’s. In town we have proper prisons for criminals awaiting trial but I guess that out here this is where we keep prisoners of war, the few we let live. They don’t know how lucky they are in there.
I lean against the wall and listen. It takes them a while to start talking and when they do they’re quiet at first, before the volume rises and they start really arguing. I don’t need to know Yazidi, or whatever they speak, to know what they’re saying. There’s disagreement, and that’s enough. If they hadn’t understood a word I said they wouldn’t have anything to disagree about. I let the talk peak and calm down before going back in.
The old woman is the only one looking at me now, and she just stares, without any urgency, from under those heavy eyelids.
I shout for one of the brothers, and just his presence changes the whole situation, there in his fatigues with his gun over his shoulder and that deadly lazy look in his eyes that so many brothers have. The old woman doesn’t move a muscle but there’s a general shrinking back amongst the rest, and the mother pulls her daughter close.
‘You have made your choice. Today I will take one of your children, and they will be raised in a good Muslim family in the khilafa.’ I watch them all so carefully as I talk. ‘Tomorrow I will take another, and the next day one more.’
One woman can’t help it. She’s sitting by a girl with wild unbrushed hair and black eyes, and as I talk the fear grows on her face and she reaches out a hand and places it on the girl’s shoulder. I’ve got her.
‘You. What did I just say?’
Her eyes are full of fear but all she does is tighten her lips into a line and clutch her granddaughter harder.
‘Why don’t you explain it to your friends?’
She’s paralysed. Even her skin looks tight across her bones.
‘I’ll take yours last. In five days’ time.’ I turn to the brother. ‘Take the youngest girl.’
As he takes a step forward the women start to shout, at her and at me, and she hasn’t got the strength for it. It’s such a good feeling to have won.
‘Don’t!’
I hold my hand up and tell the brother to wait.
‘Is that the only word you have?’ I ask her, my hand still raised.
It takes her a moment to find the strength.
‘No.’
‘You have others?’
‘I can speak it.’
Her voice is quiet, nervous. She’s looking at the floor by my feet, maybe to avoid the stares of her friends. Without turning to them she says something in their tongue, and I let them settle again.
‘You’ve explained?’
She nods, and as she glances up at me I get a glimpse of the hatred and resentment in her eyes. If she only knew the wonders I will open up to her!