A Cave in the Clouds Read online

  The candies and chocolate biscuits Adlan gave me, along with the stories she told, made me soon forget Hassan and his guests. Most of the time, I felt unworthy of my father’s attention.

  But not this time.

  On this day, I stood like an ant in front of my father’s dusty, black boots, my heart racing. I crossed my arms and looked up at him. “I want to come,” I repeated, my voice croaking from nerves. “I want to go to school.”

  “You’re too young to go to school,” Hassan said, bending down. I could smell him now, cigarette smoke and the outdoors, dry earth after rain.

  “But I want to go now,” I said. “And I want to see Shingal. Everyone has been there but me. I want to learn things.” A tear dropped down my cheek. Images of myself doing math equations and learning Arabic, the language most widely spoken in Iraq, were starting to fade. I knew in my heart I was meant to start school, but I didn’t have the words to convince Hassan. I watched an ant scurry along the ground. The little ant seemed much stronger than me.

  “Okay,” my father said, stretching himself up.

  I jumped with surprise.

  “The teacher at the school in Kocho may not accept you for another year or two, but we’ll get your identity card and try. Majida and Hadil,” he bellowed, “move over. Badeeah is coming with us.”

  We bumped along the desert highway, swerving around the potholes Hassan spotted, flying over the others that had crept up on him too fast. Majida and Hadil were discussing the store in the market that sold fresh juices. Orange was Hadil’s favorite. Coconut was Majida’s. I knew my sisters were rubbing it in that they had visited Shingal and I hadn’t.

  I ignored them.

  My father talked, to no one in particular, about how at least now our identity cards said we were Yazidi. When Saddam led the country, many families refused to get identification cards because their nationality was listed as Arab. And since many Yazidi women gave birth to their babies at home, children also didn’t have birth certificates. That was how Adil, my eldest brother, landed on the frontlines of the first American invasion of Iraq in 1991 at the age of sixteen. The army thought he was older than he was, and since he didn’t have any identification to prove otherwise, they forced him into battle.

  I watched with excitement as the Shingal mountain range rose up around us, the weeds tumbling along the desert floor and birds flying alongside. Hassan put a Kurdish radio station on, as the only news available now came to the area by satellite from Kurdistan. Majida and Hadil sang along to the songs they recognized.

  As our truck rolled into the city and joined what seemed like a thousand cars and trucks all honking at the same time, Hassan turned off the radio and my sisters finally fell quiet. I had never seen so many people before: young men on motorbikes that farted thick, black smoke, older men driving rusty trucks, vendors hawking newspapers and electronics, women with their heads covered by long scarves that flapped in the air like flags.

  “Muslim women wear hijabs, head coverings, or khimars, that cover not only the head but also most of the body,” Majida informed me in a haughty voice. “We don’t.” What a know-it-all. I rolled my eyes and looked out the window.

  Our truck stopped, stuck in traffic, beside a woman sitting on a tattered blue blanket on the edge of the road. She was covered in black in what Majida said was a khimar and niqab set. The woman held a sign in Arabic, which I asked Hassan to translate:

  I am poor. I am a war widow. My husband was a martyr, a shahid. I have two small children to care for and no family to take me in. Please help.

  With her other hand, the woman shook a tin can. I could hear the rattle of dinar, Iraqi currency, and so I reached into the little shelf underneath the radio and grabbed some coins. I was opening the door to give them to her when Hassan stepped on the gas.

  “Why did you do that?” I yelled, slamming the door closed. “She needs money. Her husband was a martyr.”

  “It’s not safe,” he said quietly as we sped by some serious-looking men walking in twos along the side of the road. I knew they were soldiers. I recognized the blue-and-black uniform of the new Iraqi government army, who were fighting the guerilla groups opposing the Americans. The Kurds also had an army, called Peshmerga, who protected Shingal and our villages now.

  Majida and Hadil lowered their heads, nervously tying and untying the ends of the scarves they had wrapped around their shoulders. Their actions reminded me of a ritual we did when we visited Lalish. The tomb of one of the Yazidi saints, the twelfth-century mystic Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, is located in one of the three main buildings at Lalish. Whenever we visited, we would tie knots in the fabric draped over his tomb. As we did so, we would pray.

  But I didn’t think Majida and Hadil were praying on this day. I thought they were scared.

  “Are we going to have another war?” I asked my father.

  “There is always war,” Hassan said, wiping his per­spiring forehead with the back of his hand. He, too, seemed anxious, which wasn’t like him. “Right now, the enemies are terrorists, including the group al-Qaeda. They hate that the Americans are here.”

  “Adlan says we Yazidi are special,” I continued, ignoring Hadil, who was slapping my thigh to get me to be quiet. She didn’t like it when I was the center of attention. “Adlan says we’re one of the oldest peoples in the world. She says our enemies are afraid of the knowledge that we bring with us from the beginning of time.”

  Hassan steered the truck to the side of the road. He sat looking forward for what felt like ages, then turned off the ignition.

  “If we’re so special, why do people want to hurt us?” I pressed on.

  “Everyone is special,” Hassan said. The color that had drained from his face was returning.

  “Adlan says that everyone has light inside of them. Is that what it means to be special?”

  “I guess so.” Hassan leaned over to look at me and smiled.

  “But I don’t know what this light is,” I said. “I’ve never seen it.”

  I could tell from my father’s wrinkled forehead that he was thinking hard about his answer. “The light we’re talking about isn’t a color,” he said finally. “It is like a feeling, like love. Not just the love of your family or even of yourself. That’s almost a selfish love. But love that abounds and never ends and brings us together. In the dead of night, love is your compass. Many people’s minds become deluded. They go crazy and forget about love, but it’s always there, even in the darkest corners. Our purpose in life is to hold onto love, so that darkness will eventually be succeeded by morning.”

  Hassan hopped out of the truck and motioned for Majida, Hadil, and me to follow him. The city wasn’t what I had expected. Gasoline fumes hung over it like a tent. And the dust! Country dust just made our dresses dirty. City dust was thick, coarse, and oily. It clogged my nose and throat and stung my eyes.

  As I coughed, I thought about what Hassan had said. It sounded a bit like a riddle. Eleven years later, I would discover the reality of what my father had told me that day in Shingal. Light would guide me home after I became one of the Islamic State’s sabaya, a prisoner of war.

  Chapter Two

  August 2, 2014

  Spoils of War

  “‘To the victor belongs the spoils.’ I think that’s what Allah says about war booty and sabaya.”

  My brother Fallah’s voice was hoarse from all his talking. It was late. He was sitting cross-legged on the rug beside Hassan in the guest room of our house. Adlan, Majida, and Hadil served him and the other men black tea in clear glasses, biscuits, and nuts. In contrast to the men, the women and girls seemed calm, moving like reeds of grass.

  I was sitting on the windowsill eavesdropping.

  Fallah and his three-year-old son, my nephew Eivan, were visiting us for summer holidays. They lived in Shingal, where Fallah was a police officer. Tonight was August 2,
the end of Chilé Haviné. As a family, we had planned to visit the gravesites of relatives who had died, including Dake, my grandmother, that afternoon. But only the women and children had gone. The men had set off to search for Delshan, who worked for my cousin Nadia’s family. Some sheep Delshan was minding had been stolen a few days earlier. Now Delshan himself was missing. He had been taken away by armed men no one recognized. Hassan, Fallah, and Adil had carried their own guns with them as they traveled to the Arab villages that surrounded Kocho. Delshan was nowhere to be found. Now the men were back, arguing over what to do next.

  As I grew older and understood more of what Hassan and the other men talked about in our guest room, I discovered that war, always war, was first and foremost in their minds. Like my brother Adil, Fallah had been forced into the Iraqi army. Before that, Fallah had wanted to go into law or politics, like Hassan, who had succeeded first in one election and then another. Before Fallah became a soldier, his smile could light up a room. His dark eyes sparkled. He told jokes and made us all laugh. Now, he was cold to look at most of the time; his fire and warmth were buried so far down they often seemed lost to him.

  Fallah was telling the men that Daesh, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as ISIS in America, was responsible for Delshan’s kidnapping. Daesh had entered Iraq from Syria and taken over the city of Fallujah, which was close to Baghdad, Iraq’s largest city. Now Daesh had captured another city, Mosul, just 100 kilometers (62 miles) away from Kocho. Many of the Daesh men in Iraq were either former prisoners freed by Daesh from Iraqi jails or extremist Sunni Muslims wanting to continue Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror, Fallah said.

  I looked out at the road. The turmeric-colored sand mixed with rubble had settled from the convoy’s return from searching for Delshan. The men in the guest room were smoking one cigarette after another.

  “Daesh has taken over the Mosul dam and an oil refinery,” Fallah continued. His nostrils flared and his fists were clenched tight.

  Adil broke in. “They’re launching an attack on Shingal from Baach and Bilich and other Sunni Muslim towns in the east and south.” After my eldest brother was forced to join the Iraqi army, he never left. His most recent position had been guarding the Iraqi-Syrian border. But when Daesh breezed over the border the previous spring, Adil and his army colleagues had been captured and imprisoned in Baghdad. After his release, Adil returned to Kocho to help protect us.

  “It’s not safe for anyone,” Fallah said, in a pleading voice. “We need to escape to the mountains.”

  “Agh,” said my father as he waved Fallah’s concerns away. I could hear in Hassan’s voice that he was tired. Tired of the talk of war, maybe. “It’s nothing more than rumors. We’ve dealt with far worse. We will be safe.”

  “We should at least get the women and children out,” my uncle Khalil protested.

  “I agree,” Adil snapped, banging a fist against the cement wall. Adil’s gun, like the other men’s guns, was propped up by the door alongside the mats Hassan kept there in case he had Arab guests over during the Muslim call to prayer. The AK-47s looked like firewood placed by a hearth. I knew that most of the guns had been bought secondhand in Mosul.

  My father sighed, repeating that he wasn’t concerned. Daesh was a Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim problem, he said. “Under Saddam, the Sunnis had the most power. Now the Shi’ites are in control of the government. This new war is between the two of them. Daesh just wants the Sunnis back running the country. Nothing to do with us.”

  The night song of the crickets was particularly loud that evening, probably due to the heat. It wasn’t breaking as quickly as it usually did at the end of Chilé Haviné. During the burning Iraqi summers, we all waited for the winds to pick up so we could enjoy going out in the daytime again.

  Fallah was talking now in a strained voice about his wife, Samira, Eivan’s mother. She had gone to her family’s village, Tal Banat, for a funeral. Fearing Daesh, Samira and her parents had decided to head into the Shingal Mountains to hide. Samira had told Fallah she would call when she was safe, but there hadn’t been a call. Some men had heard reports that Daesh were killing Yazidi or taking them as prisoners as they tried to escape to the mountains. Fallah was desperate to leave and find Samira, but Adil reminded him he would be no good to his wife or his son if he were dead.

  Hassan repeated again that everyone was overreacting.

  Back and forth they went . . .

  I knew I would be told to leave if I spoke up, but I wanted to remind Fallah that cell phones didn’t always work in the mountains. Whenever we visited Lalish, I would take long walks in the dry savannas. I always searched for caves in the mountains while I was there. It was in the caves, Adlan had told me, that the great Yazidi mystics came to understand God, which we refer to as the engineer of the universe. A few years earlier, I’d lost my way on one of those walks. When I tried to call my family for help, I discovered my phone didn’t work. I couldn’t find my way back. I was terrified, circling the same path over and over again. I finally knelt down and prayed to the chief of God’s seven angels, Tawsi Malak, known also as Tawûsê Melek or Melek Taus, for the wisdom to find my way back. When a butterfly floated in front of me, I felt the urge to follow it. It led me out into a clearing, and from there, I found my way back to Lalish.

  “Daesh are nothing but angry men,” my father argued, bringing me back to the present. “They’re not real Muslims, just like Saddam wasn’t. They use Islam to fuel their selfish wants. They’re not a threat to us.”

  The men all began to talk at once.

  My mind drifted away again. Far, far away this time but not to the caves. I thought instead of Nafaa.

  Nafaa was two years older than me, a distant cousin on my father’s side. He often came by our home to share a meal or to hang out with my brother Khudher. Nafaa and I had recently fallen in love, and when it turned warm, we would sneak out to the fields, spread a blanket on the ground, gaze up at the clouds, and talk about our futures. He wanted to get married one day. I did, too, when I was older.

  “There’s a turtle,” Nafaa said one afternoon, pointing at a cloud. “It symbolizes movement and change . . . our journey together.”

  I play-slapped him, calling him a romantic. But secretly, I liked it when he talked to me like this.

  The last time Nafaa and I had seen each other was at a spring wedding. Benyan, the groom, was the nephew of the head of Kocho, a man named Ahmed Jasso. Ahmed Jasso was responsible for things in our village, like a mayor in a North American city. But Ahmed Jasso hadn’t been elected to his position. He was born into it. His official title was mukhtar. His father had been mukhtar and so had his grandfather.

  The wedding stretched over a week, starting with Benyan’s father asking the family of the bride, Nazma, for permission for the couple to wed. When Nazma and her family said yes, Benyan’s family paid a bride price, in gold, given to the bride’s parents to show how much respect the groom’s family had for their new daughter-in-law.

  On another night, the bride’s hands were hennaed.

  The festivities built up until the night of the main party.

  I wore a pale lavender dress with gold embroidery to the party. I curled my hair and then pinned it up in the front, with the back worn long and loose, stretching nearly to my waist. Majida and Hadil did my makeup: coral and dusty-blue eye shadow, eyes lined in kohl, mascara, and lipstick. When they were done, Hadil said I looked like the Kurdish singer and actress Helly Luv, who has high cheekbones, a square jaw, big eyes, and a tiny frame. Of all my sisters, I was the smallest: five-foot-two and thin, 100 pounds at my heaviest.

  I waved Hadil off. “Helly Luv is beautiful,” I exclaimed. “I’m plain.”

  “You’re not,” Hadil said, standing back to admire her makeup job. “If you lived in Erbil, you could be on TV. Maybe you’ll be the first Yazidi fashion model.”

  “I want to be a d
octor,” I protested.

  “You can be both!” Majida raised her fist. Majida, who’d grown into a tomboy, big-boned and strong muscled, loved Helly Luv because she was also an activist. Her breakout hit, “Risk It All,” was about women, the Kurds, the Yazidi—anyone who was oppressed.

  Hadil hummed the song, spinning around on her tiptoes.

  “We live in the new Iraq built by the Americans and Helly Luv,” Hadil enthused, “where girls can be more than daughters, wives, and mothers. We can be anything!”

  Majida gave Hadil a disdainful look. “We Yazidi already know that because of Mayan Khatun,” she said in that know-it-all tone. Mayan Khatun was a Yazidi princess who became regent for her six-year-old grandson, Mir Tahsin Beg, in 1913, when the Yazidi were emerging from hundreds of years of persecution by the Ottomans. War and death were all around us then, too, and the Yazidi men were taking out their pain on their families, abusing their wives and children. As leader of the Yazidi people, Mayan Khatun taught us that we could not triumph against our oppressors until the balance of male and female among us was restored. Neither male nor female should be dominant in a society, she said. Each was a powerful energy. Under her leadership, the Yazidi launched several successful battles that eventually saw the Ottomans withdraw from our area. Because of her courage and wisdom, Mayan Khatun holds an important place in Yazidi history.

  “Okay,” I said with a shrug. “But my anything is to be a doctor.”

  The evening of Benyan and Nazma’s wedding was warm. Hyacinths, roses, and lilacs were in bloom, dousing the air with their fragrance.

  The party was held in Kocho, outside, on the street. In front of the groom’s house stretched tables of rice, beef dishes, pastries, and cakes.

  By the time I arrived, musicians had already started playing music on framed drums, tamburs, and flutes.