Veiled by Choice (Radical Book 3) Page 11

  With a yawn, Raja scooped up a mound of charred baklava. He flicked his hand toward Ava. “Go to the women’s quarter with your brother’s wife. Your brother and I will eat together.”

  Instantly, Ava rose and walked toward the curtained doorway.

  Filthy language sprang to Kaleb’s tongue as he leaped up. “No, Ava, I need to talk to you.”

  Rather than acknowledge his words, Ava slipped through the curtain to the back part of the house.

  Kaleb whipped toward Raja, who carried a pistol and knives on his belt. “I want to talk to my sister.”

  “She is my wife. Sit and drink tea with me.” Raja smiled. He leaned back against a tapestry, both hands wrapped around a steamy teacup.

  On the other side of the room, Jessica moved. She had stripped off enough veils that her eyes showed, but black shrouded the rest of her face. Wordlessly, she slipped toward the curtain walling off the women’s quarters.

  Kaleb grabbed Jessica’s arm. He leaned close to her ear. Black cloth scratched against his mouth. “You ask Ava how she’s doing,” he hissed.

  Jessica dipped her eyelashes up, then down. “Of course, my husband,” she murmured.

  He was so not her husband.

  The curtain swished, hiding the departure of his sister and the wife he planned to divorce later today.

  How did he get Ava out of here when he wasn’t even allowed to talk to her in private?

  “How are you?” Jessica squeezed Ava into a hug as she shrugged her robes and veils off. The evening air that a fan blew through the curtained-off window cooled the pink flush that spread across her bare legs and arms as the blistering heat of daytime receded into night. “Also, I’m parched.”

  “Here.” With a little jostling noise, Ava set a pitcher on a small table. “Lemonade. I made it myself this afternoon.”

  The heavenly aroma tantalized Jessica’s senses. Perfectly square ice cubes jostled against the nourishment fit for paradise. Jessica grabbed a glass and filled it to overflowing.

  A half-drank cup of lemonade sat on Ava’s side of the table. If only they could open the curtains and enjoy the delightful moonlight. Of course, they couldn’t though, because then a neighbor might see their naked faces. What she’d give to turn her face up to the sky again and feel the breeze rush across her skin as she had in England.

  “You’re so pretty. I wish my clothes fit like that.” Ava yanked at her T-shirt that ballooned out around stomach fat. The white shirt shifted, revealing the yellowing edge of a bruise beneath her shirt sleeve.

  Tears sprang to Jessica’s eyes. She leaned over the table and wrapped her hand around Ava’s. “Did your husband do that?”

  The girl’s blue eyes widened as she looked at her, giving silent confirmation. “I’m so scared. Raja threatened to divorce me.”

  Jessica gulped. Tugging her chair over to Ava’s side of the table, she placed her hand on Ava’s shoulder. “I’m sure they were just words spoken in anger. Your husband won’t actually divorce you. Be a good wife to Raja.”

  Her stomach churned as, despite the last sixteen hours of fasting, all desire to eat left her. It happened all too often here in Allah’s caliphate. An ISIS soldier would divorce his wife over some petty argument. Smeared by the stigma of divorce and compelled to marry to avoid starvation, the divorcee would be passed to the first man who would have her, perhaps for a Koran-ordained “temporary marriage.”

  Jessica shivered. Some days she thought maybe the Koran was all lies. Allah certainly never answered her prayers.

  “Raja says if our baby is a boy, he won’t divorce me.” Tears trickled over the pimples on Ava’s face. Her quivering lips showed the gap between her two front teeth that some orthodontist would have fussed over in the West. “Is there anything I can do to make the baby a boy? My brother’s a doctor, I’ll ask him.” Shoving away the lemonade, Ava jumped to her feet.

  “No.” Jessica stopped Ava with her hand. “Ask your husband’s permission before you say anything of this to Kaleb.”

  “Why?” Ava blinked, her fair lashes almost disappearing into her pasty skin, unlike at the wedding when she’d painted them black with mascara.

  “If you appeal to your brother above your husband, it’ll anger Raja. He’ll divorce you for sure then.”

  “Maybe I could go live with you and Kaleb then. I’d like that.” Ava smiled. The peeling edges of nail polish stuck to her fingernails. “But I’d miss Raja.” She grabbed the edge of the tablecloth and started sobbing into it.

  “Al-Khansaa won’t allow it.” She’d worked long enough with Umm Sultan to know that. “You’ll be given to another husband. It could go really badly, Ava. I’ve seen it go really badly.” Jessica’s heart dropped in her chest. She’d hated working in Al-Khansaa, but taking that job had spared her from the night after night switching of brides in Koran-approved “temporary marriages,” a wife scarcely above a sex slave.

  Ava’s lower lip trembled. “Will you come back and visit me?”

  “If Kaleb lets me.”

  “He will. My brother’s nice.” With a loud blowing noise, Ava used the edge of the tablecloth as a tissue. Sweat trickled down her broad forehead into her pale, blue eyes.

  Fear flashed through Jessica. A light-headed feeling passed through her as an ache pounded against her head. “Your brother hates me.” Her stomach clenched. Fatima trusted her to make this marriage work so they’d not be sent to Omar the Murderer.

  “I’ll tell Kaleb you’re wonderful. You’re the first friend I found online.” Ava grabbed another piece of baklava and started chewing noisily.

  Not a good friend, or she’d have warned Ava not to come. Jessica hung her head as shame washed over her.

  Ava wiped sticky fingers on the tablecloth. “Remember that night a couple months ago on Valentine’s Day when I was going to take those pills and end it all?”

  The memory jolted through Jessica with a surge of adrenaline. She’d spent all night private messaging Ava, telling her not to commit suicide, telling her that Allah had a purpose for her life, and anything else she could think of.

  In the wee hours of the morning, she’d finally convinced Ava to flush the pills down the toilet and go to bed. A few days after that incident, she’d let a Yazidi sex slave go free and then Umm Sultan had cut off her computer access and switched Ava over to Raja’s recruiting caseload.

  “Mom was working all night. I know I would have gone through with it if it weren’t for you.” Dropping the baklava, Ava wrapped Jessica in a sticky hug, sweat and honey mixing in her warm embrace. “You were my only friend this last year.”

  “You mustn’t ever try anything like that again.” Jessica clenched Ava’s hand. The chandelier overhead reflected off this child’s hair. “You’re not going to that place in your head again, are you?” ISIS wives had no access to the internet or even much contact with other women. How lonely did Ava get when Raja was away on jihad?

  “Of course not. I only tried to end everything because Tyler said . . . you know what he said.” Ava’s lower lip trembled. She buried her face in the tablecloth. Tears rolled down the blue cloth.

  Ah yes, Tyler, the basketball team captain whom Ava had a huge crush on, pre-Raja. Ava had spent hours private messaging her about each Tyler sighting.

  “I slept with him, you know, and posted a picture of us online. Then he posted that it was a ‘pity lay.’ Everyone at my school saw what he posted!” Tears streamed from Ava’s face.

  Jessica patted Ava on the back as the girl hiccupped. The West was full of boys and men like Tyler. Men who women traded sex to in exchange for love only to be cast off and rejected. She’d thought ISIS would be different, but it wasn’t really. Here, the women traded sex for a marriage certificate that a man could revoke by merely saying “I divorce you” three times.

  Her chest caved in as she struggled for a breath. She’d thought that with a religiously pious man, one who worshipped his God—Allah, or Jesus, or a Hindu god, or any deity really�
�with his whole heart, she’d find the pure love she craved. She’d wanted to find a man who loved her enough to stay true to her even if staying true meant sacrificing convenience, livelihood, or life itself. She wanted a man who didn’t just leave when the going got hard like her dad had, and all the other stepdads after him.

  A sticky ball formed in Jessica’s throat.

  “Then, of course, I met Raja.” Ava stopped sniffling and a smile tugged her lips up. Her eyes shone. “And we talked for hours while my mom was at work. “

  Hugging her knees to herself, Jessica perched on the cushioned chair and listened as guilt welled inside her. If only she had warned Ava before Umm Sultan cut off her computer access.

  “Raja said I’m curvy, not fat. I didn’t even care that he hit me then because he said that. He can’t divorce me! I love him.” Ava’s shoulders shook. Her mousey hair hung in strings around her round cheeks as her tears rolled down her face.

  Fear pitted in Jessica’s stomach. “He’s an Eastern man, not a Westerner like your brother. I don’t think he’ll divorce you.” Taban never had divorced her, and she’d gotten far more than one small bruise from Taban.

  Ava beamed through the tears. “I’m so glad we’re actually related now. Who would have known on Valentine’s Day that we’d be sisters soon?”

  Jessica made no expression, just squeezed Ava’s hand. Kaleb loved his little sister, that much she knew, but how much weight did his little sister’s opinion carry with him?

  “I have to go to the loo.” Jessica stood. She could only pray Ava didn’t realize that, given the Ramadan fast, that was an impossibility. Grabbing her black robes, Jessica moved toward the hallway behind them where the doors to several bedrooms stood open.

  “You don’t need your veil and robes.” Ava gestured up from her baklava. “Raja knows you’re here. He won’t come out of the dining room area without knocking.”

  Good. Because she intended to search Raja Khan’s bedroom for guns and ammunition. Jessica raised one hand in acknowledgement of Ava’s words as she slipped down the hallway.

  CHAPTER 14

  As the moon rose on Salaam Street, Kaleb stood on the doorstep of Raja Khan’s house. Why was he walking out of this dwelling with Raja Khan still breathing? He could grab Ava and disappear into the streets, but ISIS patrols were everywhere and he didn’t even know which unintelligible Arabic street name was which in Mosul.

  Leaning close to Ava, Kaleb dropped his voice to a whisper that wouldn’t carry to the pedophile inside and slipped a piece of paper into Ava’s hand. “This is my cell number. If anything happens, call me.”

  “Uh-huh. Be nicer to Jessica. She thinks you hate her,” Ava whispered back, the hangman’s noose of black strangling her, only her eyes visible above the veil. “You must be a better husband to her, promise?”

  “I am not planning on remaining her husband.” Swiveling his head, Kaleb cast a glance to the black-veiled figure a couple paces behind him who he assumed was Jessica. She’d come back into the dining room fully veiled.

  “You can’t divorce her!” Panic radiated from Ava’s eyes, her dismay evident even through the face veil.

  Divorce meant you actually considered yourself married because a terrorist group thrust a woman into the same house as you. He, for one, did not consider himself married to Jessica Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Was. “It’s not a big deal, Ava. Call me.”

  Ava gasped. “Promise me you won’t divorce her!” She grabbed Kaleb’s shoulder. Her nails bit through his shirt into his skin.

  Why was Ava flipping out? “Okay, promise.” Kaleb blinked as he pried her claws out of his arm. He clasped her hand with both of his.

  Ava’s chest heaved beneath the black robe as if she’d been on the verge of hysterics. Why?

  “Better now?” Kaleb looked into her eyes.

  “Enough. Leave.” Stepping around Ava, the terrorist bastard who’d raped his sister shoved between him and Ava.

  Knuckles white, Kaleb envisioned Raja Khan as a cadaver. In the vision, he plunged his scalpel deep into Raja’s lifeless flesh as he chopped up Raja’s internal organs for medical purposes.

  “Do not show so much emotion, Ava.” Raja drew his eyebrows down, expression stern. “It is haram forbidden. What you should cry over is the fate of the umma, our persecuted Muslim brethren.”

  Dropping her head, Ava shrunk back into the house. “I’m sorry, Raja.”

  His kid sister was with a rapist in a terrorist camp and she wasn’t allowed to be upset? Kaleb bit down all the things he’d like to say, and, focusing solely on the image of Raja as a cadaver being slit open navel to mandible, used polite words. “Ava misses her mother. Muhammad said lots of things about that in the Koran I’m sure.”

  “Say Muhammad, peace be upon him.” Raja drew his nose into a line. “Just because you are a foreigner does not mean you cannot learn the way of Allah.”

  “Peanut butter be upon him,” Kaleb muttered under his breath.

  The door swung shut, trapping Ava inside, and Kaleb turned toward the lump of black he’d promised not to divorce.

  The moon made a path on the empty street. Jessica fell in step beside him. An empty silence hung between them as they walked down the street, two strangers in a terrorist encampment. He really did need to divorce her. Jessica could easily be the emir’s spy. Even if she wasn’t, this stranger who had joined ISIS of her own freewill wasn’t his responsibility.

  On the other hand, he’d promised Ava not to divorce Jessica.

  Her footsteps pattered against the road not half a pace behind him. The evening breeze swished at her black covering, making her as mysterious as the night around them.

  A figure ran out into the street. Kaleb blinked. Cracked street lamps lent no light to see the man’s face.

  “You doctor, yes?” A frail man spoke in broken English.

  How did that man know he was a doctor? “Yes.” Kaleb peered through the darkness.

  “My granddaughter. My granddaughter. Please help.” The man gestured to his house.

  “Um, okay.” Kaleb shifted his medical bag on his shoulder and turned to Jessica. “I guess we’re going in that house.”

  No word came from the mound of black, but Jessica followed him. The house’s broken door gave way to crowded quarters.

  Small children stared wide-eyed from every corner of the cluttered house. One of the boys wore a cast on his arm that looked familiar. He vaguely remembered setting that boy’s broken ulna at Mosul hospital before falling asleep on his feet a couple days ago. The old man gestured into a back bedroom.

  On a low bed, a very gravid woman groaned underneath a pile of black that obscured even her face. From the way she writhed, she was approaching the second stage of labor.

  “Get that face veil off. The woman needs oxygen.” Thrusting a pile of knick-knacks onto the floor, Kaleb planted his medical bag on the newly vacated chair. He yanked the zipper open and poured antiseptic on his hands.

  The old man cowered and his hunched back bumped against the decorated wall. “No, I would never leave a woman in my household uncovered. No, I swear it, mujahideen. Do not punish me.”

  Biting back a curse, Kaleb turned to Jessica. “Get the burka thing off her. I need to do a pelvic exam.”

  Without removing her own face veil, Jessica moved to comply. Dust covered the black gloves Jessica wore and her outer robes smelled of sweat.

  “Take off that blasted burka and stop infecting my patient.” He pointed with his chin to the antiseptic bottle in his bag as he stretched rubber gloves over his hands.

  Slowly, Jessica flipped up her face veil. She looked oddly white as she peeled off her gloves, and though she rolled up the dirty sleeves of her robe, she made no move to remove the black cloth.

  The grandfather gasped as Kaleb felt for the granddaughter’s pulse. Had three years of ISIS rule made this entire city forget that people actually did need to be unclothed to get medical care and that women needed oxygen as well as men?<
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  The woman’s pulse was rapid and shallow. Sweat poured down her face. Now, without the face veils, she looked frighteningly young.

  Her stomach contorted with contraction after contraction, only about ninety seconds apart, but from the feel of her pelvic exam, the contractions were unproductive because she hadn’t dilated past a five or effaced more than fifty percent. Was this her first child?

  He felt for her pelvic bones and the top of the baby’s head brushed his glove. This girl was too small. The child inside her was never going to pass through that narrow of a birth canal.

  “She’s been in labor for two days.” The grandfather’s voice was hoarse.

  Kaleb spun toward the man. “Why didn’t you take her to the hospital?”

  “There is no room. The mujahideen must receive care. Please, sir, I am not complaining.” The old man trembled before him.

  Kaleb cursed. The woman needed a hospital, not a dirty bed ripe for infection.

  “Please, sir. C-section, yes?” Hope shone in the grandfather’s eyes.

  “Abdominal surgery would be insanely risky. I don’t have blood to transfuse her.” Kaleb felt for the woman’s pulse again. It died underneath his fingers. Her eyes glazed over as her labored breathing grew shallower yet. No! Sure she was in strenuous labor, but her pulse shouldn’t be fading in and out like this.

  He felt around her stomach. Blood gushed down her thigh. She was bleeding internally, hemorrhagic shock.

  She went limp against the bed’s pillows, face white as she lost consciousness. The woman didn’t have much time. He had to operate. Kaleb strung up a saline bag to the lamp by the bed and inserted the needle. He needed to support her blood pressure with fluids.

  He rubbed antiseptic on her quivering stomach where he’d have to cut her. Surgery was a terrible idea in these conditions. He could save her and the baby only to have them die of a secondary infection later.

  Once again, he examined her pelvis. The infant was stuck and blood streamed from the woman’s uterus. He had no option except surgery.