A House in the Sky (36 page)

A crowd magnetized around us, men with puzzled faces, some
showing alarm. I saw our neighbor talking to a few of them, gesturing and pointing, as if explaining what he knew. And then Abdullah was upon me, having blasted through the door with Jamal just behind him, both wearing sarongs.

Abdullah lunged and I dodged, feeling his grasp slip off my shoulder. I ran to a far corner of the room, where another group of men sat on the floor. I said every Arabic word I could think of as they lifted their bearded faces toward me, appearing dumbstruck. Off to the side, Jamal had corralled Nigel against a wall and was hitting him repeatedly in the head, pounding on him with a closed fist, beating him with every ounce of strength he had. Nigel, I could see, was trying to hit him back, all the while shouting, “Jamal! Jamal!” as if to remind him that, in a weird way, they’d once been friends.

Just as Abdullah was about to reach me again, I ducked through a doorway leading out into the air, not thinking whether it was good or bad to exit the mosque, making a move that was desperate and frenzied.

My fear organized itself into speed. With Abdullah two paces behind me, I leaped over the three stairs that descended from the side door of the mosque, landing in heavy sand beneath the white glare of afternoon sun. I ran and he chased, but now I was fast and light, shedding my flip-flops as I moved. There were thickets of bushes surrounding this side of the mosque, and I passed through them like a deer, the urgency of the moment eclipsing the sensation of the thorns—two inches long and straight as pins—slicing into my ankles and bare feet, one of them driving itself like a torpedo into the soft skin beneath the toenail of my left big toe. A gunshot ripped overhead, hollowing out the air. I looked back to see Abdullah, who had stopped running long enough to fire at me. His gun blasted again. My mind looped back toward the mosque. Nigel was inside. Inside was safer than outside. Keeping my shoulders low, I did a high-speed twenty-meter end run around Abdullah, who was running toward me but slowed by the weight and bulk of his gun. I made another pass through the thornbushes, throwing myself back up the stairs and into the mosque.

The scene inside was oddly calm. Nigel had managed to shed Jamal and was sitting, not quite placidly but pretend-placidly, at the front of the mosque, in the semicircular area that served as the imam’s pulpit, surrounded by a loose cluster of maybe fifteen bearded men, most of them standing. Rushing to join Nigel, I saw Jamal and young Mohammed on the outskirts of the group, pacing and anxious, hands on guns. Whatever had happened, the power dynamic had reversed itself. Somebody had put the boys in their place. I dropped to my knees next to Nigel, who was speaking English with some of the men, sounding like he was answering to some skepticism that he was Muslim.

I remembered the backpack on my back, which held my Koran and two English-language books that our captors had given me early on, a small palm-sized purple paperback called
Hijab,
which was printed in Saudi Arabia and advocated the full veiling of a woman’s body, and another one, based on the
hadith,
also addressing the customs of Islamic womanhood.

I fumbled with the books, putting them into the hands of the men around us. “See? See?” I said. “We are good Muslims. Please help us.” I was begging. I reminded them that Muslims help Muslims. It was their duty.

Several of the men began to page carefully through my books, examining them with interest, passing them on for others to see. There was a large, low window to one side of the pulpit, and I could see a woman, sheathed entirely in black, peeking through it, until one of the men strode to the window and slammed its metal shutters closed.

Abdullah had reentered the mosque. I saw him creeping his way into the group of bystanders, his gun canted loosely in my direction, sweat gliding through his hair and shining his cheeks. In five months, this was the first time I’d had a clear look at him without a scarf covering his face. I was accustomed to his widely spaced eyes, but now they had a context, set beneath the broad half-dome of his forehead. He had a head of curly close-cropped hair and a sparse beard that made him look more like a kid.

Catching my eye through the sea of other people’s shoulders, he sneered. I looked away quickly.

Nigel, meanwhile, was loudly reciting a
surah
like a schoolboy before the assembled onlookers. Dozens of new people were pouring into the room, some of them in face scarves and carrying weapons. Who knew who they were? What surprised me was how many of the men around us seemed to speak some English.

One of the men explained to us that someone was phoning the local imam, who was in a different neighborhood but would come to hear our story and give his judgment. “
Inshallah,
everything will be fine,” he said, indicating that we should remain seated on the floor. “
Inshallah,
maybe fifteen minutes.”

I felt relieved by this. An imam, I figured, would want to help us. I could hear Abdullah and Jamal arguing—politely—with some of the men.

Abruptly, a woman parted the crowd, elbowing her way past the men with the guns, through the chaos and the quarrelling. I recognized her. It was the woman who’d been looking through the window. She wore a black abaya and full hijab, including a niqab draped over her nose and mouth, covering everything but her eyes. Every man in the place was staring at her. The woman noticed no one. She came right over to me, kneeling down at my side without a word. Automatically, I reached for her hand. Her fingers wrapped around mine. I felt, for a second, safer than I’d felt in ages.

Her eyes were brown and somehow so familiar that it was as if I knew them from somewhere. The tops of her hands had been painted with delicate, tendriling patterns of rust-colored henna, the sort of ornament that one woman draws painstakingly on another. She was speaking in Somali to the men around us. I watched her, my nerves firing. I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I knew she was helping me somehow. I heard distress in her voice. When she looked at me, her eyes swam with emotion.

Without thinking, I reached out and brushed my fingers over her face, feeling the warmth of her cheek beneath the fabric. Amid the confused din in the mosque, I pulled her toward me.

I said, “Do you speak English?”

“A little,” she said, moving closer. “You are a Muslim?”

“Yes, from Canada.”

“You are my sister then,” she said. “From Canada.”

She reached out both arms, and I let myself fall. I sank my face into the pillows of her heavyset body, which was lilacy with perfume. Her arms fit snugly around me. I felt the edges of my vigilance soften, the domino fall of my defenses, and began to cry. As men jabbered around us, the woman tightened her hold on me. It was the most comfort I’d known in half a year, more if you counted back through the lonely months in Iraq. I wanted to stay there forever. I wanted to tell her everything. Lifting my head to find her eyes again, I told the woman I’d been a prisoner, that I wanted to go home. My voice rose and fell unevenly. Uttering the word “home” caused me to sob. I pointed toward where Abdullah stood scowling at us, about ten feet away. “He is abusing me,” I said, suddenly desperate. “He is raping me.” To be sure she understood, I used my fingers to mimic the mechanics of sex.

I watched the woman’s eyes get wide. She looked from me to Nigel, who nodded as if to confirm what I’d said.

“Oh,
haram,
” the woman said, “
haram, haram
.” She looked up to the crowd, her expression ferocious, holding my head against her chest, stroking my hair. She shouted a few agitated Somali words. A hush came over those around us. The woman was talking shrilly, in a blitz. She raised a finger and shook it at the men, delivering some sort of tongue-lashing. I felt a shudder pass through her body and realized that her eyes, too, ran with tears. Next to us, Nigel sat silently with his head bent, staring at the floor.

The dynamic in the room changed suddenly. Ahmed and Donald Trump had marched into the mosque, disheveled and furious, with Captain Skids right next to them, waving a pistol like a flag. Though they’d been absent for a month, they seemed able to materialize almost instantly in a crisis.

Ahmed located me and pointed a finger. “You!” he shouted. “YOU HAVE MADE A BIG PROBLEM!” People continued to flood into the room, all of them men. Clearly, the news of foreigners in the mosque
was making its way through the village, the gossip at a high pitch. The air became stuffy and uncertain, filled with noise. Then came a loud, concussive crack, a gun going off somewhere inside the room.

The sound of it broke the spell, the holding pattern. People began to stampede, running in all directions. Another shot rang out. I saw Abdullah pushing through the crowd in my direction, his head lowered like a bull’s. I screamed as he dove at me. I tried kicking, but he was strong. He had my feet in his hands. His gun was looped over one shoulder, swinging and hitting my legs as I thrashed. I felt myself sliding out of the Somali woman’s arms. Abdullah was now dragging me in the direction of the side door. I clawed at the ground as he pulled. I don’t remember any of the onlookers trying to stop him as he did.

It was only the woman who tried.

She clamped on to one of my wrists and pulled me back, using her weight for leverage, letting loose a torrent of Somali. For a few minutes, my body was strung between them, with Abdullah yanking my legs while the Somali woman, with both hands wrapped around my left arm, proved herself a stubborn anchor. When another man, someone I’d never seen, helped Abdullah by seizing my left leg and lurching us forward a few feet, I saw the woman, my protector, topple face-first. Undaunted, she used the break in contact to throw herself almost on top of me, repositioning her hands so that they were locked on to the flesh above my elbows. We were being dragged along—the two of us, linked like train cars—inch by inch across the floor of the mosque. My shoulder sockets ached to the point where I thought they’d pop.

Finally, she could hang on no longer. I felt the momentum shift as her hands fell away and Abdullah and the other man picked up speed. My abaya swept over the floor as we moved. As we reached the door, I managed to lift my head and look back. The woman was sprawled on the floor and weeping openly. Her head scarf and niqab had been torn off in the struggle, leaving her exposed. I could see that she was my mother’s age, in her early fifties, with a gentle, plump face and high forehead. Her hair had been braided in tiny cornrows over her head. She still had one arm outstretched in my direction. Three men with guns now surrounded her.

Completing my ejection from the mosque, someone lifted my shoulders, maneuvering me roughly over the stairs outside the building and into a walled courtyard. I was kicking, twisting, flinging myself wildly, my elbows knocking the sandy ground. Once we were outside, the man who’d been holding my shoulders let me drop.

My abaya and the dress beneath it had ridden up over my waist. My jeans, which were already baggy because I’d lost so much weight, were slipping toward my ankles as Abdullah jerked me forward, holding my legs on either side of his chest as if he were pulling a cart. As we moved over the courtyard, my body skimming the dirt, I felt my frayed underwear sliding off as well. I was naked, basically, stomach to knees.

I craned my neck to look for some form of help or escape, but there was nothing—only about twenty men looking down at me. I was a spectacle on full display. I felt something wet hit my stomach and realized I’d been spat on. I heard murmuring but couldn’t tell what was being said. We were moving past a metal gatepost marking the edge of the courtyard and the entry to the road, where there seemed to be an even larger crowd of people gathered. I reached out and caught the gatepost, latching on to it with both hands.

Abdullah turned to see what had stopped his progress. Beyond him and through the gate, I could see a blue truck waiting with its engine running. I was overcome by another rush of animal strength. I’d do anything not to reach that truck. Another gunshot echoed from inside the mosque.
Nigel,
I thought.
They’ve killed Nigel.
The thought was like a suck hole, a thing that could kill me. Abdullah pulled and I clung to the post, trying to kick my legs free. I spotted a woman’s narrow face looking down at me. She was part of the crowd outside the gate, her expression unreadable. I screamed at her in English: “WHY WON’T YOU HELP ME?”

She looked stricken. “I don’t speak English,” she said in perfect English.

Suddenly, the knuckles on one of my hands exploded in pain. Someone had kicked my hand to loosen my grip on the pole. I howled and let go. Then I was being pushed to my feet and toward the truck, which had a double cab and four doors. Abdullah shoved me into the
rear seat, but as he did, I saw one last opportunity: I rammed my foot into his crotch, hard, and watched him fall over backward.

I opened the door on the opposite side of the truck and ran, this time directly into the crowd, arms waving, ears ringing, pulling up my pants as I moved. I started reciting loudly the Arabic prayer that all Muslims say, the first
surah
of the Koran. I tried to make eye contact with everyone watching me.
Bismillahi ar-rahman ar-raheem. Al hamdu lillahi rabbi al-alamin. Ar rahman ar-raheem. Maliki yami d-di.n Iyaka na’budu wa iyyaka nasta in. Ihdina s-sirat al-mustaqim . . .
What it meant was “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds. The compassionate, the merciful. Master of Judgement Day. You alone we worship, and to you alone we pray for help. Guide us to the straight path . . .”

I was saying it badly and rapidly and at the top of my lungs, but I was saying it to them—screaming it, really—to dozens of bystanders, trying to prove something—if not perfect faith, then affinity, and if not affinity, then the simple fact that, despite being wild-haired and dirty and utterly foreign, I was also human.

Nobody budged. Nobody seemed to know how to respond. They watched me, appearing more afraid than anything as I shouted my Arabic into a void. I yelled the words until I was hoarse, even as I felt someone’s hands take hold of me from behind and start lifting me back toward the truck, even as I saw two other men hauling Nigel through the door of the mosque and in our direction. The sight of him brought a wash of solace and a hammer blow of anxiety. It had been all of forty-five minutes since we’d slipped through the window. We’d made it out but not truly out. We’d crossed the river only halfway.