A Cave in the Clouds Read online

  Contents

  Foreword

  A Note from the Authors

  Maps

  Prelude

  Chapter One: The Purpose of Life

  Chapter Two: Spoils of War

  Chapter Three: The Stranger

  Chapter Four: Invasion

  Chapter Five: Sabaya

  Chapter Six: Prisoner

  Chapter Seven: Adrift

  Chapter Eight: On the Other Side

  Chapter Nine: In Between Heaven and Earth

  Chapter Ten: Awakening

  Chapter Eleven: Immortal

  Chapter Twelve: The Dark Room

  Chapter Thirteen: The American

  Chapter Fourteen: A Cave in the Clouds

  Chapter Fifteen: Jinn

  Chapter Sixteen: Death

  Chapter Seventeen: Houses

  Chapter Eighteen: Reunion

  Chapter Nineteen: Escape

  Chapter Twenty: Return to Iraq

  Chapter Twenty-One: We’re Not Afraid of Darkness

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Return to Love

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Giving

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Freedom

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Foreword

  The Yazidi people are an ethnic and religious minority in the Middle East, with their largest population concentrated in Northern Iraq. Yazidis are Kurmanji-speaking and practice a monotheistic religion that reflects a spectrum of teachings and beliefs from various other religions including Gnostic Christianity, Judaism, Sufi Islam, and Zoroastrianism. Rather than formal ceremonies, their religious practice involves visiting sacred places. Yazidis participate in baptisms and feasts, sing hymns, and recite stories. Some of their stories are about historical and mythical battles fought in protection of the religion. Others, told over the centuries by generations of women, detail methods of resistance to the same threats that Yazidi women face today. The Yazidi people believe that they are descended solely from Adam, that angels guard the world, that reincarnation is possible, and that there is no distinc­tion between heaven and hell. Because these beliefs vary significantly from other religions, the Yazidis have been targeted throughout history and persecuted by Muslim rulers in the region who demanded that they convert to Islam. Yazidis have been labelled “devil worshipers,” “infidels,” and “non-believers.” These labels have, for centuries, served as the foundation of efforts to destroy Yazidi communities and alienated the Yazidis from other groups. Over the course of their history, the Yazidis have suffered and survived seventy-four separate genocidal attacks.1

  More recently, the Yazidis were made vulnerable by forced displacement under Saddam Hussein; the economic meltdown of Iraq under UN sanctions; the breakdown of the state and security after the US-led invasion of 2003; and the political failures that followed. In Iraq, there are now around 500,000 Yazidis, primarily from the Sinjar region in Nineveh province in the country’s north. The Yazidis of Syria and Turkey have mostly fled to neighbo­ring countries or to Europe.

  The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also known as ISIS and by its Arabic language acronym, Daesh) waged a targeted attack against the Yazidi people in Iraq in August 2014. The systematic sexually-based violence organized by ISIS against Yazidi women and girls commenced immediately. Most of the women and girls were forced into holding cells where they witnessed and experienced sexual assault as ISIS members “selected” women as unwilling partners or else sold them into sexual slavery. They were treated like property as they were assessed on appearance and then bought, sold, traded, and gifted between extensive networks of ISIS fighters throughout Iraq and Syria. UN findings illustrate the high emotional and psychological needs of these women, even after they’ve successfully escaped or been rescued from ISIS. Years later, women and girls are still considered the most vulnerable population of Yazidi refugees.

  Many Yazidi women are still hoping for the day when they can give their testimony as part of an official process to hold ISIS accountable for their crimes against humanity. As one anonymous victim has said, “It has been four years. We want to record everything that happened so it can be used as evidence. We are waiting.”2 By telling her story and bringing the experiences of Yazidi women to light, Badeeah is actively participating in this long-sought-after process of sharing and healing—revealing what has been in her heart since the first moment her village was attacked.

  Yazidi women are not archetypal victims or heroes. They are individual human beings who have experienced atrocious crimes but who also made active decisions for their survival and protection, ultimately defying their perpetrators. As Adlan speaks to Badeeah during her time in captivity, “Always move to the light. Don’t let the darkness in. Hold onto love, so that darkness will eventually be banished.” Together, Yazidi women and girls have continued to preserve their religion, instill a sense of pride in their children and community, and speak out for oppressed people all over the world. Together, we will banish the darkness.

  —Nafiya Naso, founder of the Canadian Yazidi Association and founding member of Operation Ezra.

  Operation Ezra was founded to increase general awareness about the plight of the Yazidi people in the Middle East and to raise funds for the sponsorship of Yazidi refugee families to Winnipeg, Canada. To date, they have helped resettle dozens of Yazidi refugees. This project was set in motion by the Jewish Community in Winnipeg and has grown to include people from all walks of life.

  1. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. (July 2016). Evidence. 24th Report. 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. Available: www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/CIMM/meeting-24/evidence.

  2. Marczak , Nikki. “All the Survivors Have a Book inside Their Hearts.” SBS World News Online, SBS, 3 Aug. 2018, www.sbs.com.au/topics/life/culture/article/2018/08/01/all-survivors-have-book-inside-their-hearts.

  A Note from the Authors

  Badeeah Hassan Ahmed and writer Susan Elizabeth McClelland first met in the summer of 2016. At that time, Susan was asked by the magazine Marie Claire UK to write a story on a female survivor of the Yazidi genocide. Susan worked with translator Sozan Fahmi to research potential subjects. Badeeah’s story stood out from every other account that had been in the press. Among other things, Badeeah’s story spoke to the sacrifices so many Yazidi women and girls had made to help others at the risk of their own deaths. And her abduction shed light on a startling fact: in Syria, it is estimated that the majority of Daesh fighters (otherwise known as ISIS) are in fact foreign born and/or citizens of Western countries.

  When Badeeah first escaped Aleppo and it was discovered that it was an American, possibly a commander, who had taken her, she was flown to the United States. There, she gave talks at conferences about the genocide and worked with the US State Department to try to identify her captor. It was hard for Badeeah to relive her trauma at the hands of Daesh. But Badeeah realized that her story could bring international attention to the crisis experienced by the Yazidi people. She agreed to turn her story into a book in the hopes of reaching an even wider audience, so more people could know the truth of what is still happening in Syria.

  Over the course of a year, Badeeah, Sozan, and Susan worked together to retell Badeeah’s story. They consulted closely with members of the Yazidi community, including Dakhill Shammo, Nasir Kiret, and Imad and Fawaz Farhan, to accurately and sensitively reflect Yazidi culture and spirituality. It was very important to them not only to tell a story of captivity and of war and survival but also to highlight the resilience of a culture unknown to many around the world.

/>   But Badeeah’s is also a difficult story to tell. Because so much happened during the course of her captivity, it was impossible to chronicle every detail. In writing this book for young readers, some creative license has been taken to compensate for this, including reconstructing the order of events, combining some characters, and recreating dialogue where necessary.

  Today Badeeah and Eivan and his mother live in Germany. Badeeah is determined to become a nurse and give back to her people. A Cave in the Clouds is Badeeah’s story: it is not just about war and what it does to women and girls; it is about the restorative power of storytelling and the remarkable human ability to find meaning even in the darkest of times.

  August 15, 2014

  The walls of our house shook.

  Trucks roared down the road. Some were sparkling white, with missile launchers in the cargo beds. Some were armored trucks with long gun barrels.

  I ran.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t in Kocho anymore but in a thick forest of Zagros oak trees. I seemed to be in the hills near the Turkish border. A man was chasing me, calling out in a language I recognized from news reports as English.

  Then it was no longer day. The only light came from a half-moon behind a thin veil of clouds. I tripped and fell, hitting my head on a rock. My head throbbed with pain, but I scrambled to get up. The man was approaching fast.

  I called out for help, but all that came back to me was my own voice bouncing off the rocks.

  Soon I was running again, until I spotted Eivan. He was slumped beside a stream, as if leaning into the water to play. I was so happy to see him. But as I neared, I realized that he wasn’t playing at all but was asleep, with one hand in the stream. The other was twisted behind his back, as if it was broken. I screamed.

  Chapter One

  August 2003

  The Purpose of Life

  It was August, near the end of summer holidays in our village of Kocho. My father and my older brothers and sisters were all on vacation. The Forty Days of Heat we call Chilé Haviné, which starts on June 24 and stretches until August 2, had ended. During Chilé Haviné, daytime temperatures in Iraq can soar to over 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). After that, the cooler tempera­tures roll in.

  That morning, my sisters Hadil and Majida awoke while it was still dark, curled and pinned up their hair, and put on their good dresses. They’d washed and mended them the day before with the help of our dake, our grandmother. My sisters were going to the market with our father, Hassan, in a rusty pickup truck he had borrowed from his brother.

  It was 2003. The Americans had been in our country for just a few months, and Iraq’s former president, the dictator Saddam Hussein, was in hiding. We Yazidi people were freer than we had been in generations. Under Saddam, there had been no national elections. He and his party, called Ba’ath, had appointed whomever they wanted to hold important positions. Those positions were mostly given to men of the same religion as Saddam, Sunni Muslims, and rarely to Shi’ite Muslims or any minority group, including the Yazidi. Now our country was moving toward democracy and having people vote in their leaders. My father, Hassan, was running to be the local representative for the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

  But on this day, as he prepared to go to market, he was Hassan the farmer.

  I watched as he loaded our neighbor’s truck with boxes of eggplant, green peppers, tomatoes, onions, and zucchinis we’d grown on our nearby farm. Hassan sold our fruits and vegetables in Shingal, about a 20-kilometer (12-mile) drive away. Kocho, which had a population of 1,785, was an entirely Yazidi village. Shingal was a mix of Yazidi, Kurds, and Arabs. The Yazidi have lived in northwestern Iraq for thousands of years, stretching all the way back to the ancient civilizations there, including the Sumerians. Christian and Jewish populations lived here, too. But under Saddam Hussein, our region had become increasingly Arab. Saddam’s army had invaded many Yazidi villages, forcing the inhabitants out and moving the Arabs, his own people, in.

  Hadil and Majida hopped into the truck and closed the passenger door. My heart exploded. I was desperate to go with them. They weren’t just going to the Shingal market. Hadil was old enough to go to school now so they were also going to the city to collect her Jinsiya, or identity papers. Majida, who was ten, already attended. Kocho only had a primary school. Many Yazidi families in Iraq didn’t send their children to school because the history and religion taught there was Islamic and the classes were in Arabic, and they feared losing their culture. But my parents believed in education.

  Hadil and Majida, chattering like cockatiels, had taunted me the night before, saying they both would be at school soon while I was home caring for our baby brother, Khudher. Khudher, three years younger than me, was hard work. When my mother, Adlan, came to the farm with us, I was put in charge of him while she tended the crops. Khudher wouldn’t sit still, not ever. The moment I turned my back on him, he’d scamper off, hiding in the plants and bushes. Hadil teased that while she was with our cousins at school every day, I would be learning to bake bread and cook dolma (meat, rice, and vegetables wrapped in leaves) and kubbeh (a meat dish made with spices and wheat). I hated cooking.

  A breeze blew around me, carrying sweet perfume from the blossoms of our dake’s orange trees in her yard next door. As with most Yazidi families in Kocho, my father had built his house next to his parents’.

  That morning, the scented air didn’t comfort me like it usually did.

  I scowled and tapped my foot.

  My mother pushed her way past me, the hem of her white dress sweeping the ground. As usual, locks of her gray hair slipped out from underneath her kufi, the white cap older women wear. She marched up to the truck and poked her head through the open window, reminding my sisters to bring back some black pepper and cumin for soups. “You forgot last time you went to Shingal, interested only in buying fabric for dresses,” she scolded.

  Majida brushed our mother away. Adlan clicked her tongue and shook her head. Majida was defiant. One of our older brothers, Fallah, said Majida was political, which was dangerous for this part of the world and especially dangerous for a ten-year-old Yazidi girl. Hadil, on the other hand, was carefree. She reminded me of a bird, one of the nightingales that nested in an olive tree outside our house. Fallah said I wasn’t like Hadil. I was responsible and careful. I talked little, but when I did, my words really meant something. Fallah said I wasn’t like Majida, either. She was sullen.

  Fallah had taken me aside on Charshama Sorr or Red Wednesday, the Yazidi New Year, which occurs on the first day of the Yazidi calendar: the first Wednesday between April 14 and 21. “You see beauty where others don’t,” he told me. We were celebrating the New Year at Sharfabeen, a temple on the south side of the Shingal Mountains. Sharfabeen and Lalish, a village in the rolling hills near the border of Kurdistan, are Yazidi holy places. We Yazidi believe Lalish is the center of the earth, where the earth itself was formed, and we walk barefoot through the village to absorb its spiritual energy. Lalish, some say, is half a million years old.

  That particular night, as we celebrated the New Year at Sharfabeen, people were gathered around fires, eating goat and gossiping. The young people were dancing. Dake, wrinkled like the sand at ninety-five, was barely able to move, her bones hardened like cement, but she sat on a cushion and watched. Many people approached her to kiss her hands, to honor her strength and wisdom. When the fires were at their brightest, I told Fallah that in Dake’s eyes, inky as a moonless night, I could see her dancing, as if she was enjoying an inner world of stars and music.

  Fallah smiled at me. He said I was bold, too, when I wanted to be.

  That morning, watching Majida and Hadil waiting to go to Shingal, was one of those times.

  I crept toward the truck and peered in. Majida and Hadil were fussing with each other’s hair. They both had long, dark-brown hair, like mine, which they brushed sometimes a hundred times a nig
ht, so it was silky and straight. I spied an opening in the back seat between the boxes of fruit and vegetables, a space big enough for tiny me, I thought.

  I slipped over to the driver’s side. I reached for the handle and pulled. But as I pried open the door, it squeaked, startling my father, who was now loading okra from his brother Khalil’s farm into the truck’s cargo bed.

  “What are you doing, Badeeah?” he called. My mother’s voice was bright and full, reminding me of the marigolds that danced in Dake’s garden, but Hassan’s voice was deep and throaty. It made me think of the wild water buffalo that used to live in the marshes of Iraq before Saddam Hussein had the marshes drained to punish those who sought to overthrow him.

  “I want to come,” I said nervously. My father walked over to stand right in front of me. I had to crane my neck to see his face. When he was on holidays or working at the farm, Hassan wore clothes similar to those of our Muslim or Arab neighbors in nearby villages: dishdashas and khaftans. But when he was out canvasing to be a politician, he wore a traditional Yazidi costume, with a checkered red-and-white turban called a Jamadani. Hassan’s hands, leathered and calloused, were on his hips. His trim beard was more salt than pepper.

  I liked being close to my father, which I often wasn’t. I shared him with my four older brothers, my younger brother, Khudher, my five older sisters, and also all of Kocho, it seemed. Adlan said that while our family was from the lowest caste, the Merids, our father did such important work that he was well respected even among the high castes, the Sheikhs and the Pirs. Castes mattered, especially in marriages. In the late afternoon, Hassan would sit in the room of our home reserved for male guests, his legs tucked underneath him, as the other men from the village dropped in to talk politics. My father would smoke hand-rolled cigars and cigarettes while his visitors smoked the shisha pipe. Adlan had long, thin hands that glided in the air when she spoke, like the outstretched wings of a hawk. With those hands, she would shoo me away from listening to Hassan and the village men. “They talk of violence and blood,” she would tell me, pushing me toward the kitchen.