“I hope so.”
So do I. John went back to gazing out the window.
57
Hemin switched off the engine and climbed out of his pickup. He could hear children playing, and his face lit up in a smile. Stepping through the front gate, he called out, “Dilnaz, Parwen.”
He heard a squeal of delight, and two little girls came piling out the front door. He squatted down with his arms open, and they ran into his arms. He gave them both a squeeze, setting them off into a round of giggles, then looked up to see his wife, Rosna, standing in the doorway, drying her hands on a dishcloth. Hemin ruffled the two girls’ hair and stood. He winked at Rosna as the girls ran back inside.
“How did it go?” Rosna asked.
“Good.” Hemin smiled. “Easy.”
His phone buzzed, and he reached behind him to pull it out of his rear pocket. He glanced at the screen and raised a finger.
“I’ll be in in a minute.”
He waited for Rosna to turn around and head back inside, then tapped at the screen.
“Yes, boss.”
“Did they get across okay?”
“Yes. It all went smoothly.”
“Good.”
Hemin waited for Mehmet to continue. He walked over to the gate and leaned his elbows on the top. The street was still quiet, the low rays of the morning sun throwing long shadows across the road.
The men should be well on their way by now. He heard the girls behind him and turned to see them run out the front door again, giggling and laughing. They wrapped their arms around his legs and clung tight as their mother came out and tried to shoo them away. Hemin smiled and pried their arms loose, waving them back inside. If the men had found Ferhad, he would look after them. Hemin hoped they succeeded. No-one deserved to have a family member stuck in a war zone.
He heard Mehmet clear his throat. “Did they say where they were going?”
Hemin frowned. “Yes. Idlib.”
“Idlib? Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Hemin ran his fingers through his hair. He was uneasy. He had done a lot of work for Mehmet in the past, lucrative work, most of it on the wrong side of the law. He had to. He had no formal education; his family had been poor, and he had grown up the hard way. There was little work now, trade between the two countries affected badly by the war, and he needed to make ends meet. He had two daughters to look after, and if that meant working for people like Mehmet, that’s what he had to do, but he didn’t necessarily like or trust the man.
“And there were just the three of them?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Boss?” The phone line had already gone dead.
Hemin stared at the phone screen. What was Mehmet up to?
58
Mia knelt in the dirt, the stones digging into her kneecaps, but she daren’t move. She kept her head down, her hijab pulled forward to hide her face, just an anonymous black-clad figure crouched in the street.
She tried to understand the raised voices around her, but they spoke too fast. There were four or five voices; she thought one was Naeem’s but wasn’t sure.
Despite everything she had gone through since she had arrived in Syria, she had never felt as low as she did now. From the joy of hearing that Uncle Steve was about to save her to groveling in the street as the fighters stood around her, arguing. There was no hope now. She had managed to send the last message, but Abu Mujahid spotted the phone as she tried to slip it back inside the folds of her abaya.
Her ribs ached from where he had kicked her, and the sweet taste of blood was on her tongue. She probed her teeth with her tongue and winced as pain shot through her head from a loose incisor. The right side of her face throbbed, and she could barely see out of her right eye as it closed up. A tear trickled down her left cheek, and she sniffed. The argument grew louder, two voices, in particular, screaming at each other in rapid-fire Arabic. She heard a click, then felt something cold and hard press against the back of her head. This was it… the end. She took a deep breath as panic welled within her. Maybe it was better this way. The suffering would end... but Malak.... her life had barely started. Mia’s lip quivered, and she closed her left eye, took another deep breath, and retreated inward. The shouting grew fainter. Her lips began to move in silent prayer.
Bismillah ar-raḥmān ar-raḥīm, in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. If you really do exist, now is the time to prove it. You can take me, I am ready, all I ask is that you look after Malak, my beautiful angel. Please protect her, keep her safe from harm, so she can lead a full, joyful life away from all this suffering.
59
Exiting Al-Malikiyah was trouble-free, passing through the checkpoint on the west of the town easier than coming in. The guards were more interested in who was coming in than going out.
The road continued west, following the line of the Turkish border through more fields and patches of stony, uncultivable desert before joining the M4 near the town of Qamishli.
Until then, the only signs of war had been the checkpoints, but as they headed further west, there were more signs of military activity. Along one stretch of road, a convoy of armored vehicles was parked, the soldiers sitting beside their vehicles, brewing coffee, and watching idly as they passed. John noticed the red, white, and blue of the Russian flag flying on some of the vehicles. In the opposite direction, pickups and sedans passed, laden high with personal belongings, furniture, bags as
