NAEEM II

“Easy? You think it’s easy to watch your loved ones be gunned down in front of you? To watch the very man who was supposed to protect you, give himself up to the very men that defiled his wife, to watch the very God you trusted and believed and prayed so religiously to, year after year, day after day, to abandon you at the time you could use a miracle? To watch yourself be contorted and shamed in front of hundreds of men? Huh?”

“Nadia, you just said whatever they’ve done to you has been done to me, I know, which is why I want to fight, to give us a chance to right the wrongs ‘cause there isn’t any man or God or religion coming to save us now. It’s us for us.”

“Yeah, and I think it’s time you face the fact that we are in all actuality nothing more than girls.”

“Nothing more than girls?” How could you say that? We are the true fighters, you just wait and see what’s ahead.”

“I don’t think I’ll live that long Naeem, I don’t have the energy for it. This is the now and ahead for me. But I like your spirit and so…”

Day 11. Either my time hadn't come or I was a log for the common pyre to burn harder and brighter to send a strong message to the “non-believers”, the stubborn. But not until your purpose is fulfilled they kept reassuring us with the smug grin of a trained assassin.

We were SPECIAL they told us, every aspect of our physicality having meaning. Hair to be used as a handle, our faces beautiful to remind the perpetrators that what they were doing in the form of rape/child bearing was a beautiful thing for the larger purpose of breeding a new generation of militants. And our bodies devoid of souls that we gave unto them for the greater good of purifying their land. We were the catalysts they kept reminding us, as they threw us out to either bleed to death, cry to death or even starve to death as we were crumpled like tissue papers after they wiped themselves on us.

I come from Silcus, a small town whose recurring motto was What goes around comes around, there’s no escape from her, because of the way our land was shaped—like an eight—and this was true for most part of it because we were always enveloped in a turbulence of sorts; and I was named Naeem by my parents as an anti-symbol of this turmoil, struggle and war surrounding us always, even as the greatest struggle stared them in the face over and over again—I was a girl. And girls more or less had the same path laid out for them even before they were born, to be Khums—tax money, if the family ever wanted to live with the peace of knowing that they would be kept alive and they should be glad as there is no greater purpose in this world than to be a vessel of pleasure unto God and His loyal “sons”. My mother took a combat to this line of thought by raising me in strict Yazidi traditions and cultures, using the fire against fire approach as she refused to give me any other identity other than this that I’ll need when the time comes. And so I was Yazidi, a Yazidi girl with an uncertain future but a definite end.

Lumm Sayaaf reminded me of my mother at times as she tried her best to be a strong protective mother-hen of the coop, protecting us whenever she could from abuse and sometimes even offering herself up as sacrifice—but they made sure that the division between married and unmarried was as demarcated as the distinction between men and women—rescinding to the rooster of her husband as he pecked at us from the orders of the “them”.

Sayaafa Abba entered that day with three girls who looked like they came from another part of the world, white as milk, dressed in the garb of men of trousers and a jacket, they had their hair pulled up into a bun on top of their heads as opposed to veil-covered heads that I was used to and spoke in a tongue that I couldn’t make head or tail of. Abba spoke to one of them in our language who seemed to get the gist of it as she translated the same to her friends of the foreign tongue and accent. Even though they clearly were the crème of our existing group and exotic as Nadia whispered to me, the one thing we all had in common was fear. Not fear of the unknown but fear of the impending. And the only thing that stuck as I strained my ears to listen was the word Nina.

Just then five men with guns and black garb barged open our front door as we were blinded by the floodlight of the sun and the storm of sand. We were told to shut up even though we were quiet as mice, chained and pushed onto a jeep. In the floodlight we saw that Rita and Anjum were either dead or highly unconscious as no amount of kicking from these men seemed to change their posture and hence they were left behind for a separate fate than ours that we were yet to see.

Number 26 one of them hollered.

Day 11 and I knew my time had come.