“I helped,” admitted Ismail, smiling.
“And the Great Pyramids of Giza?” she asked leadingly. “We will destroy them, too?”
“Inshallah,” he whispered.
Natalie set out toward the Temple of Baalshamin, but soon her limbs grew heavy and tears blurred her vision, so she turned around and with Ismail in tow made her way back through the date palms, to the gates of Camp Saladin. In the main recreation room, a few trainees were watching a new ISIS recruiting video promoting the joys of life in the caliphate—a bearded young jihadi playing with a child in a leafy green park, no severed heads visible, of course. In the canteen, Natalie had tea with Selma, her friend from Tunisia, and told her wide-eyed of the wonders just beyond the camp’s walls. Then she returned to her room and collapsed onto her bed. In her dreams she walked through ruins—a great Roman city, an Arab village in the Galilee. Her guide was a blood-drenched woman with eyes of hazel and copper. He is everything you would expect, she said. Inshallah, you’ll get to meet him someday.
In her last dream she was sleeping in her own bed. Not her bed in Jerusalem but her childhood bed in France. There was a hammering at the door and soon her room was filled with mighty men with long hair and beards, their surnames taken from their villages in the east. Natalie sat up with a start and realized she was no longer dreaming. The room was her room at the camp. And the men were real.
40
ANBAR PROVINCE, IRAQ
THIS TIME, SHE HAD NO sun or dashboard instruments by which to chart her course, for within minutes of leaving Palmyra she had been blindfolded. In her brief interlude of sight, she had managed to gather three small pieces of information. Her captors were four in number, she was in the backseat of another SUV, and the SUV was headed east on the Syrian highway that used to be called the M20. She asked her captors where they were taking her, but received no reply. She protested that she had done nothing wrong in Palmyra, that she had only wanted to see the destroyed temples of shirk with her own eyes, but again her captors were silent. Indeed, not a word passed between them throughout the entire journey. For entertainment they listened to a lengthy sermon by the caliph. And when the sermon ended they listened to a talk show on al-Bayan, ISIS’s slick radio station. Al-Bayan was based in Mosul and transmitted on the FM broadcast band. The panelists were discussing a recent Islamic State fatwa regarding sexual relations between males and their female slaves. At first, the signal from Mosul was faint and filled with waves of static, but it grew stronger the longer they drove.
They stopped once to add fuel to the tank from a jerry can, and a second time to negotiate an ISIS checkpoint. The guard spoke with an Iraqi accent and was deferential toward the men in the SUV—fearful, almost. Through the open window, Natalie heard a great commotion in the distance, orders shouted, crying children, wailing women. “Yalla, yalla!” a voice was saying. “Keep moving! It’s not far.” An image formed in Natalie’s mind—a thin line of ragged unbelievers, a trail of tears that led to an execution pit. Soon, she thought, she would be joining them.
Another half hour or so passed before the SUV stopped a third time. The engine died and the doors swung loudly open, admitting an unwelcome blast of dense wet heat. Instantly, Natalie felt water begin to flow beneath the heavy fabric of her abaya. A hand grasped her wrist and tugged, gently. She shimmied across the seat, swung her legs to the side, and allowed herself to slide until her feet touched the earth. All the while the hand maintained its hold on her wrist. There was no malice in its grip. It guided her only.
In the haste of her evacuation from the camp, she had been unable to put on her sandals. Beneath her bare feet the earth burned. A memory arose, as unwelcome as the heat. She is on a beach in the South of France. Her mother is telling her to remove the Star of David from her neck, lest others see it. She unclasps the pendant, surrenders it, and hurries toward the blue Mediterranean before the blazing sand can burn her feet.
“Careful,” said a voice, the first to address her since leaving the camp. “There are steps ahead.”
They were wide and smooth. When Natalie reached the top step, the hand pulled her forward, gently. She had the sensation of moving through a great house, through cool chambers, across sun-drowned courts. At last, she came to another flight of steps, longer than the first, twelve steps instead of six. At the summit she became aware of the presence of several men and heard the muted clatter of automatic weapons expertly held.
A few murmured words were exchanged, a door was opened. Natalie moved forward ten paces exactly. Then the hand squeezed her wrist and applied subtle downward pressure. Obediently, she lowered herself to the floor and sat cross-legged upon a carpet with her hands folded neatly in her lap. The blindfold was removed. Through the mosquito netting of her facial veil, she saw a man seated before her, identically posed. His face was instantly familiar; he was the senior Iraqi who had interrogated her before her transfer to Palmyra. He was lacking in his previous composure. His black clothing was covered in dust, his brown eyes were bloodshot and fatigued. The night, thought Natalie, had been unkind to him.
With a movement of his hand, he instructed her to lift her veil. She hesitated but complied. The brown eyes bored into her for a long moment while she studied the pattern of the carpet. Finally, he took her chin in the lobster claw of his ruined hand and raised her face toward his. “Dr. Hadawi,” he said quietly. “Thank you so much for coming.”