11

This morning I don’t feel like the teacher, or the jailer, I feel like one of the imprisoned. That’s why I’m here.

The Yazidis can sense there’s something wrong, but I just don’t have the energy to pretend. I fall back on old habits, take my copy of the Qur’an, explain to them that in each page there is wisdom and beauty and direction, and that by opening it at random we can see what God has in mind for us. As I let the pages spray under my thumb part of me is praying that the passage I find will be relevant to me and may contain some hope, but even as I catch myself thinking it I know it’s a superstition, a low instinct, selfish, base. But I do it anyway, because I’ve started to do it, and because my need for hope right now is greater than anything else.

Niran’s mother is back. I find it hard to look at her.

I close my eyes at the open page and point.

And the unbelievers say, ‘Why has no sign been sent down to him his Lord?’

I turn it on the Yazidis, tell them that their insistence on signs is a sign of their ingratitude, that Allah the most glorified has no need, no desire to let them know of his existence, and the words scour me with shame because I know each one applies to me. I have treated each moment of my time here as a sign, as something to be read, as something that was intended for me, and I am eaten up with hatred for my self-absorption.

The women are quiet. They can sense a change in me and I have no patience for them. I want them to go away.

If I was one of these women, every sign I saw would be of a world without God. They have lost their husbands. They have lost their sons. Their homes have been destroyed and their dignity taken, and I cannot make them see that this is the time above all others that they must believe. The lesson applies to me as well.

Until we get past this we won’t get anywhere. We all need courage. So I do something that even last week I couldn’t have imagined. I get the women to tell me about their lives. Not their religion, not their god and beliefs, but their stories. I want them to understand that God was not the cause of the suffering, and that now He can lead them from it.

I start with Besma, and when she sees that I’m serious and that this isn’t a trap, slowly she opens up. She was married, for twenty years, and her husband was killed in fighting on Mount Sinjar. No, that’s not true. I must report what she believes to be the full truth. He was injured in fighting, and she and two cousins took him to the hospital in the town, and there he was murdered by our fighters. They came in and shot him as he lay in his bed, but she didn’t see it because she was trying to find food for her youngest son, who was unwell.

I don’t interrupt her, I just let her talk. I need to understand her reality.

Then she and her son and many other women and children were taken across the border into Syria, where they were separated into groups and she was moved on. Her son was taken. He was fifteen. I ask her where her son is now and she says she has no idea, that for two weeks she had news of him because people have mobiles still and they talk to each other, but then there was silence and all she heard was that every boy was taken to be converted and trained as a fighter for IS.

What was his name, I ask. His name was Mirza but now it will be different. The first thing they take from you is your name.

As Besma talks the other women play with the cloth of their dresses, occasionally mutter something to each other. They hold the children close, and the children squirm away, restless. Not one of them has been outside for weeks.

I move on. I ask the mother of Niran to tell me about her family, how she came to be here. She is sitting cross-legged on the floor and running her hands through her daughter’s thick hair, picking out heaven knows what. From this angle Niran looks thinner than she was, some of the fullness has gone from her cheeks, but it might be the light and anyway her eyes are still bright and an amazing blue. Even in this place she shines. She reminds me of girls from my school who seemed to be outside the run of things, the really beautiful ones, God’s creatures, their beauty something that the rest of us could never aspire to. She has a way of narrowing her eyes when she focuses but now she’s just staring into the distance. I realize I’ve never heard her say anything, not a word.

Besma translates my question to her mother and she doesn’t seem to hear it, just keeps on separating Niran’s hair and playing it out through her fingers. I ask Besma to ask again and this time the woman’s hands stop, and she pushes Niran gently upright off her lap. Then she looks right at me and with a dip and shake of her head says something short in reply. Besma hesitates, but when I nod she translates.

‘She say she do not speak with you.’

Now she really starts, head bobbing from side to side, finger pointing at me, and the words flowing out in a stream that’s been ready to break for a long time. Even if Besma wanted to she couldn’t keep up. I nod, and try to look sympathetic, but having someone rage at you even when you don’t know what they’re saying is hard and I find it difficult to hold her eye. Flecks of her spit catch in the shafts of light from the high windows.

There is anger in me, I can feel it, like a residue from the past, but I ignore it, push it to one side. I want to know what she’s said.

‘She says, what good is your God if He cannot protect this little girl?’

I think if I tried to take Niran from her she would kill me with her hands.