Page 48 of There Are Rivers in the Sky

H— NARIN

By the River Tigris, 2014

I n a nondescript cinderblock house with a satellite dish on the roof, Narin stands at a sink, her elbows covered in grease as she scrubs hard at a saucepan. There is a strained silence all around, punctuated by outbursts of angry shouting. The mood among the militants has soured as bad news trickles in from the battle lines. They are losing men and ammunition, forced to give up territorial gains.

The commander is in a foul temper, despite having recently acquired two more sabaya . He does to them what he did to the others. The younger Yazidi woman weeps all the time, sobbing even in her sleep, and the elder, mostly quiet, is found one morning with a noose made of bedsheets around her neck, barely breathing. The commander strips her naked from the waist up and whips her in front of the entire household. She is punished both for attempting suicide and for destroying the bedlinen.

‘Hey, are you deaf?’

The little boy – the commander’s son – has entered the kitchen. ‘My father is calling you. They want tea! Go serve them.’

Carefully, Narin carries a tray loaded with glasses to the room upstairs. She taps on the door, waits. Assuming that they have responded, she pushes the door with her shoulder, just a tad. There are about twenty militants inside. The man sitting by the entrance has his back turned to her. He is holding an object in his hand. Narin looks closer, surprised to see that the signs impressed on its surface are similar to the ones on the clay tablet Grandma kept in her dowry chest.

Distracted, she takes a step forward, rattling the glasses. They all turn towards her and stop talking at once. Her throat closing in panic, the child walks through an intimidating silence.

She can barely stop her hands from trembling but she manages to pour tea for everyone. Just as she turns to withdraw, one of the militants mumbles something under his breath, seizes her from behind and starts to spin her in the air. Screaming, kicking, Narin tries to free herself, but her captor is much stronger than she is.

‘Enough, Abu Muawaya!’ It is the commander, a note of displeasure in his voice. ‘That’s my sabaya you’re messing with.’

Vexed at being chided in front of everyone, the man drops Narin like a ragdoll. Too terrified to cry, she staggers out of the room.

Three days later, as Salma is heading downstairs to do the cooking, she overhears the commander’s wife chatting with another woman in the kitchen.

‘The girl is pure evil, I’m telling you. She put a curse on Abu Muawaya. Otherwise why would a healthy man like him die all of a sudden?’

‘True. He wasn’t sick or anything; it makes no sense,’ the other woman agrees.

‘It’s because of her. The devil’s child! I wish the little bitch would get lost. I keep begging my husband to sell her.’

‘As he well should.’

‘We feed and clothe her, but she shows no sign of gratitude. I don’t want her under my roof. This is a devout house; we are pious people. She is Sheitan’s servant, and she brings bad luck, I can tell. If my husband doesn’t get rid of her, I will do it myself.’

After Salma relates this to her, Narin tries to steer clear of the commander’s wife, but, trapped as they are in the same house, it is almost impossible. Every time the girl enters the kitchen to wash the dishes or crosses the courtyard to hang out the laundry, she feels the woman’s gaze trained on her. Even her children fall quiet when Narin approaches.

‘I have decided to sell you,’ says the commander. ‘My wife is convinced you’ll bring us bad luck. I’m not one to give credence to superstitions, but I don’t like you. I don’t want you around.’ He regards the child for a moment, waiting for a reaction, and, when nothing comes, he adds: ‘Your new owner will collect you in about a week’s time. The man lives in Antep, so he’ll take you back to Turkey to serve him.’

‘Can Salma come with me?’ asks Narin, her voice barely more than a whisper.

‘Salma is going nowhere.’

He watches panic register on her face. He wants to break her, snap the tiny twigs of her resilience. ‘Your new owner, I heard he’s keen on unripe fruit. They say he likes his sabaya young. No older than twelve. He won’t care about stupid superstitions – you won’t get away with any of that nonsense with him.’

Narin is so petrified that she doesn’t notice the commander has walked out.

Alone in the room, the child shivers, though the day is hot. This, she knows, is how she will die. She does not expect to survive the next house, or the next man. Her only chance is to run away, but, even if she were to manage to get out and started to knock on strangers’ doors begging for help, how far could she go and who could she possibly trust, in a city where many will gladly betray a Yazidi girl in return for a bounty? She is aware of what happens to those who try and fail to escape – beaten, whipped and gang-raped while their owners watch.

Faint with fear, her knees give way. As she staggers, her fingers graze the lid of the trunk pushed up against the wall. She doesn’t remember it ever being left open before, but it is now. Her hand, groping around for support, brushes against something inside. It is the clay tablet she saw earlier. Its surface is pitted with tightly packed marks – the same old script that she has studied with Grandma.

Carefully, she takes out the ancient object. Sitting on the carpet, she traces the lines with the tip of her finger, recognizing a few words: ‘flood’, ‘water’, ‘the ark’ … Despite herself, her lips curve into a smile as she remembers Grandma’s stories. Glimpses of her previous life come to her, memories carried over the currents of the Tigris, like skimmed stones.

‘You little whore! What do you think you’re doing?’

A shriek escapes Narin’s lips as she backs away in panic. She hasn’t heard the man return.

The commander yanks the tablet away from the child’s hands. ‘How dare you rummage through my things?’

‘I’m very sorry, I didn’t mean –’

He punches her in the face. Narin falls flat on her back, winded. A trickle of blood drips from the corner of her mouth on to the rug. There is something brittle rolling on her tongue, like a seed rattling inside a gourd. It is a tooth – the one Grandma welcomed with laughter and love, in happier times. She coughs up blood, and for a confused moment she believes that the man has finished unleashing his rage – but it is only a temporary reprieve. He is putting the tablet away, swaddling it in cloth. The tenderness of the gesture contrasts sharply with his next move. He lunges back towards her and kicks her in the ribs.

Narin curls up in excruciating pain. It crosses her mind, swift as a swallow’s flight, that if she dies now she will get to see Grandma. A warm pool opens beneath her, and she slides into its liquid calm.

When she regains consciousness, every inch of her body is throbbing in agony. Her nose is clotted with blood, and her lips are swollen.

‘She’s coming round,’ says a voice.

There is someone else in the room – a doctor. The man lifts Narin’s head and tips a tasteless fluid down her throat.

‘Can she understand what I’m saying?’ the commander asks.

‘She should. I’ve given her a stimulant.’

The commander sits down next to Narin on the sofa. ‘Tell me, were you reading the tablet? How’s that possible? Speak!’

‘Grandma …’ Narin rasps so low both men have to lean over her to hear. ‘My grandmother … taught me.’

‘An ignorant village woman?’

Narin does not offer an explanation. She will not tell them about Leila and how she arrived in Hasankeyf. She will not tell them about the Englishman. Her family’s story is the only thing she owns that cannot be taken away from her.

The commander sighs. ‘I don’t expect you to understand. We’re building a new world, laying the foundations, clearing away the rot. Future generations will thank us – the founders of the Caliphate.’

He pauses as if expecting praise.

‘Listen,’ he says, the dreamy tone gone. ‘We have things from the Mosul Museum, and elsewhere. There are international buyers ready to pay big sums for this kind of stuff. But these tablets fetch more money if they contain poetry, I’m told. If someone could read these things, that’d help us assess their value.’

So, Narin thinks, this is why he has not killed her.

They not only murder, kidnap and rape. They have a sideline business: looting and trading antiquities. Despite the videos circulating of militants tearing down statues, vandalizing libraries and burning books, behind the display of indiscriminate destruction enormous profits are being made from smuggled artefacts. There are collectors across the world so eager to own pieces from Mesopotamia that they will blithely ignore their bloodstained provenance. Some items are openly auctioned; others quietly find their way into the hands of private buyers – in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin and London.

It’s nothing new – a repeating cycle. A decade ago, in the chaos following the American invasion, museums across Iraq were emptied. In a matter of days, thousands of artefacts disappeared – even those in the vaults of the Central Bank. Some curators tried to resist, barring the doors, risking their lives. Employees at the National Museum, in a last-ditch attempt to safeguard the exhibits, hung a sign warning that the building was under the protection of Western armed forces. A desperate lie. The American soldiers had no orders to save the museums or the libraries. When questioned about this later on, a military spokesman would simply say, ‘Stuff happens.’

Now, as before, the security cameras capture how the looters seem to know where to go, what to steal first. Forcing open glass cases, they abscond with cylinder seals, statuettes, bronzes and tablets. They rip out the gems and precious metals from the finest of the Lyres of Ur – the gold, the carnelian, the mother-of-pearl, the lapis lazuli. Its pitiful remains will someday be found discarded in a car park, smashed to pieces. The statue of the Assyrian king Sargon II travels to London and New York, before it is finally returned to Iraq. A figurine of Entemena, the Sumerian king of Lagash, turns up in a warehouse in Queens. Inside elegant emporiums, stylish shops, respected auction houses, Mesopotamian artefacts await their next buyers, while others resurface in street stalls. Several treasures from Nineveh trade hands on London’s Portobello Road. But the easiest targets are the tablets; those from the library of Ashurbanipal are much sought after. Especially the Epic of Gilgamesh . Light and portable, lines from the poem are spirited away to the four corners of the earth. While wealthy buyers may give the objects a safe home, it is a vicious cycle: demand increases theft, theft increases demand. The larger the sums offered, the more insatiable the looters’ appetite.

‘I brought you something,’ says the commander.

He opens a bag and puts a tablet on the table. Instead of clay like the others, this one is brightest lapis lazuli.

‘Is it true devil-worshippers have a thing about this colour?’

‘We don’t wear blue,’ Narin says. She doesn’t tell him that it is the colour of Melek Taw?s, a hue too holy for humans.

‘Stupid, heathen ways.’ He studies the child’s face – the bridge of her nose is bruised and swollen, the cuts on her lips still unhealed. ‘I want you to read this; it’ll bring us a ton of money!’

Narin lowers her eyes. ‘Only on one condition.’

‘What did you say?’

The child swallows, a burning taste on her tongue, but she won’t retract. ‘You will not call Salma to your room any more. Nor any of the others.’

He stares at her for a moment. ‘You halfwit. Start working. Don’t ever tell me what to do.’

That same night he sends for Salma. When she returns the next morning, there are cigarette burns all over her chest. Everyone knows that ISIS has forbidden smoking. They have shut down tobacco shops, banning the sale and use of cigarettes. Those found in violation of the rule will be flogged or punished with a broken finger. Each wound on Salma’s body is the commander’s message to Narin that he can and will do as he pleases.

That is when the child loses all hope. She stops eating. She stops speaking. She knows that sooner or later he will sell her and the next man will be worse. But she can no longer feel anything – no fear, no sorrow, not even pain. Only numbness. She waits for death.